Just as Terry Nation famously retained rights over the Daleks, so did Henry Lincoln & Mervyn Haisman over their characters and creations who starred in ‘The Abominable Snowmen’ and ‘The Web of Fear’.
The latter tale, of course, famously featured the debut of the Doctor’s long-standing ally Alastair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart – best known to Doctor Who fans as The Brigadier.
Approved by Lincoln and Haisman’s literary estate, this novel “from the classic era of Doctor Who” stars Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart, fresh from fending off Yeti down the London Underground and with his eyes opened to the threat of alien intelligence.
Opening by breathing life into Jon Pertwee’s classic quip about a Yeti sitting on your loo in Tooting Bec, ‘The Forgotten Son’ shows our hero overseeing the clean-up and repopulation of London after the evacuation seen in ‘The Web of Fear’.
While he is not yet the stoic old soldier we came to know and love, author Andy Frankham-Allen imbues his central character with plenty of familiar Brigadier-ness, as he follows the puzzling trail of the resurrected Sgt Arnold from a mortuary slab to his childhood home.
We learn plenty about Lethbridge-Stewart’s current position, both professional and personal, as the story centres on pre-war events in the Cornish village of Bledoe where the young Alastair was raised. For this Doctorless rematch the Great Intelligence has formulated a complex plan and, as ever, is a master of biding its time.
Although focusing primarily on the man himself, we were thrilled to see some other familiar faces pop up; cowardly Driver Evans appears, and is granted a moment of glory, while Anne Travers arrives with the cavalry, now working as a Scientific Advisor to the military – now there’s a good idea!
Pleasingly styled like a Target book, Frankham-Allen knows his audience and there are plenty of enjoyable future echoes to Lethbridge-Stewart’s time with the Time Lord. We spotted a reference to an early Big Finish tale, as well as nod to the young Lethbridge-Stewart’s aspirations to be a maths teacher, making some sense of ‘Mawdryn Undead’ which is no mean achievement!
As much as it deals with the adventure in hand, ‘The Forgotten Son’ is an exercise in world building too. While we know the Colonel is destined to lead UNIT and defend our skies from alien incursion, he is at the start of a personal mission to prove the existence of such threats to his superiors.
With a hugely enjoyable first step, this series promise to chart a journey well worth following, especially with the promise of contributions from David A McIntee and Terrance Dicks, who contributed the forward to this volume and talks about his love/hate relationship with the Doctor’s Earth Exile and the UNIT family.
Published on 26 February 2015 by Candy Jar Books.
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