Lethbridge-Stewart - The Forgotten Son

With the plans of the Great Intelligence foiled and the Earth saved, the Doctor has taken his companions and left, dusting off his hands and chalking up another victory over evil. But the mess that is left behind had to be cleaned up, and Colonel Lethbridge Stewart is appointed the task of managing the aftermath of what has been called the London Event. The city must be cleaned of all evidence of the attempted invasion and made ready for the return of its citizens, but just as things start to get on track, the dead start to walk and large shaggy creatures appear elsewhere in the country. If the Intelligence is back this soon, it's going to be up to Lethbridge Stewart and the army to stop it on their own.

Spin offs from any series are sometimes a gamble; you have to pick the right aspect of the series to craft into the focus, be it a character or a situation, and then develop it to make it into its own property rather than just a pause where one waits for the original series elements to return. Doctor Who has several spin off franchises already, starting with the one off K9 and Company, a short lived Target novel series The Companions of Doctor Who, and the successful Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures. The greatest success was with the latter two series, both of them taking a popular companion character and asking the question "Is there life after the Doctor?" The Lethbridge Stewart series looks at the life of Colonel Lethbridge Stewart in his early years, between his first and second meetings with the Doctor, transforming him from skeptical army Colonel into the eventual head of an entire taskforce under the direct control of the United Nations.

Lethbridge Stewart is tired from the battles with the Yeti, and he is still somewhat confused by the Doctor (although for copyright reasons the Doctor's name is never mentioned), but he's got very little time to rest and sort thing out before he has to take on the Yeti once more. This time, though, it's personal, and it looks like the Intelligence is attacking Lethbridge Stewart himself, dragging his mother into the events and making him return to the town he was born in before he and his mother left. Coming home is not always easy, especially when the ones you leave behind have changed as well, and there are personal demons to lay to rest as well as those from outer space.

The Intelligence itself is tired, because this is not the Intelligence direct from the Underground tunnels but the Intelligence from far in the future on a mission of revenge. Without giving too much away it's a bit of a continuity bombshell springing from events in a 2013 episode The Name of the Doctor, and from this perspective if someone were following the episodes as I am blogging them here it wouldn't mean a great deal. In hindsight, of course it does, but what can be said is the Intelligence hates the Doctor, for obvious reasons, and it wants revenge, and the Doctor's allies would also be a part of that revenge. Especially one as vital to the Doctor's future as Lethbridge Stewart.

So bravo to Candy Jar Books for taking this one on and doing well with it. The stories are published in print and are available direct from their website and are well worth a read, but if like me you like an audio version the first four have been created as audiobooks read by Terry Molloy who does a great job at recreating the precise clipped tones of the late Nicholas Courtney. Those can be found here. What will be interesting to see will be how they immerse Lethbridge Stewart into situations involving aliens and still keep him from becoming jaded by it all; the majority of the stories will take place within the year between The Web of Fear and Invasion and the challenge will be to balance out the "unknown" elements. Of course, delving into Lethbridge Stewart's personal life is one way of doing it, so I expect to see him rise through the ranks to Brigadier eventually and see where his secret office romance is going to take him.

Meanwhile....

NEXT EPISODE: THE DARK PATH