The Doctor and his companions found themselves on The Roof of the World today in 1964 - in the first episode of Marco Polo. One of the reasons this story crops up so often in "rediscovered missing episodes" rumours is that everything around it still exists, so people find it hard to understand how this might not. How can a whole story vanish when the stuff either side of it still survives? One day it may come back. Yes, one day. But until then, there must be no tears, no anxieties...
Elsewhere, The Seeds of Death approached its conclusion with its fifth instalment in 1969.
In 1975 the Sontarans made their first comeback, in Part One of The Sontaran Experiment. Kevin Lindsey returned as another of his kind - Styre.
Finally we had a duo of third instalments of Peter Davison stories - The Visitation in 1982, and Terminus in 1983.
His first brush with the programme was a near miss, when he was considered for the role of King Richard I in The Crusade. Director Douglas Camfield had thought that his first choice, Julian Glover, would turn him down, so Courtney was his back-up plan.
Camfield remembered him when it came to casting the part of space security agent Bret Vyon in the first four episodes of The Daleks' Master Plan a season later. William Hartnell talked him into changing his agent, and he was out of work for the best part of a year.
Camfield once again used him on The Web of Fear in 1968. He was cast as Captain Knight, who was destined to perish before the end of the story. Another character in the story was Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart, who was to be played by David Langton. Langton had to pull out, and so Camfield promoted Courtney from Captain to Colonel - and the rest is history.
When Derrick Sherwin, script editor and future producer, contemplated bringing the Doctor down to Earth for his seventh season, turning him into a Quatermass-style figure who would often find himself allied with the military, a trial run was made with a Cyberman story - The Invasion. Sherwin planned to bring back three of the characters from The Web of Fear, but in the end only carried the Colonel forward - now a Brigadier and placed in charge of an outfit called UNIT (United Nations Intelligence Taskforce). Courtney was asked if he would like to become a regular on the seventh season, and he readily agreed. He appeared throughout Seasons 7 - 11 in at least two stories per year.
Once Barry Letts handed over the producership to Philip Hinchcliffe, and Tom Baker became the Doctor, Courtney realised that his time might be up. He appeared in only two Tom Baker stories - Robot and Terror of the Zygons. Stage work prevented him from returning for The Android Invasion and The Seeds of Doom, but his role would have been greatly reduced in them anyway.
He did eventually return in Mawdryn Undead in 1983, the Brigadier now retired from UNIT and teaching maths at a boys school. This was quickly followed by The Five Doctors, where he was paired with Patrick Troughton's Second Doctor after Frazer Hines proved unavailable to make a full appearance.
His final appearance in the programme was in Battlefield, in the final season. The character was all set to be killed off in this, which Courtney was happy with so long as it was a noble ending, but the writer couldn't bring himself to kill the Brigadier. Apart from an appearance in the unofficial video production Downtime, which featured a daughter named Kate for the Brigadier, Courtney did not appear as the Brigadier again until a pair of episodes of The Sarah Jane Adventures - Enemy of the Bane.
Ill health had prevented him from appearing in the parent programme, but his character has been referenced many times, especially once Kate Stewart was introduced.
After Courtney's death, his character was announced as having passed away in The Wedding of River Song.
Nicholas Courtney - splendid chap...
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