The episode was entitled An Unearthly Child and starred the wonderfully tetchy William Hartnell as the Doctor and Carole Ann Ford as his granddaughter Susan.
It wasn’t until four weeks later that the enemy who became synonymous with the series, the Daleks, entered the natons’ consciousness.
The title music was composed by Ron Grainer and its haunting, and at the time futuristic, nature was realised by Delia Derbyshire of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
This iconic character first appeared in Doctor Who in the Patrick Troughton era but became an integral part of the show during John Pertwee’s incarnation.
The actor who played him, Nicholas Courtney, had appeared in the programme in another role as early as 1965 opposite William Hartnell and – as Lethbridge-Stewart, in charge of the British arm of UNIT – with all the later TV versions of the Doctor up to Sylvester McCoy excepting that of Colin Baker.
As Colonel and Brigadier he was playing an essentially decent man who was (to my mind rather unfortunately) too prone to resort to his area of expertise, military means. The phrase most associated with the character was, “Five rounds rapid!” So much so that Courtney used that as the title of his autobiography.
While Courtney appeared in many other roles it is probably as Lethbridge-Stewart that he will be best remembered – certainly by fans of Doctor Who.
William Nicholas Stone Courtney: 16/12/1929-22/02/2011. So it goes.
