The fifth chapter of Doctor Who: Flux, titled “Survivors of the Flux,” saw Kate Stewart back from Jemma Redgrave, scientific director of the United Intelligence Task Force (UNIT) and close friend of the Doctor who has never seen Season 9 Doctor Who appeared in 2012, but was played by another actress on a fan show almost two decades earlier.
Since 1987, Reeltime Pictures has been making independent films in which actors tell their Doctor Who characters, especially when the show was not airing. During their downturns in 1995, Nicholas Courtney, Elisabeth Sladen, and Deborah Watling played their respective roles as Lethbridge-Stewart Brigadier, Sarah Jane Smith, and Victoria Waterfield. They fought the Great Intelligence and its army of yeti robots without the Doctor’s help. This allowed the sergeant to reconnect with his daughter and separate from him while running UNIT and fighting various diseases on the Doctor’s side.
That girl is Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, played by Beverley Cressman in Downtime. After Kate corrected her relationship with her father, Kate was at the center of Demos Rising, another real-time film released in 2004, a year before Russell T Davies revived Doctor Who in 2005 7, episode 4, “The Power of Three” after “Remove Lethbridge” “from his last name so he can rise through the ranks of UNITY without the legacy of the late Brigadier General. Kate remained close to her father after the downfall, but noted that it was “even after did it done.”
Cressman remembered this connection between father and daughter when asked about his performance years later. In an interview with Time-Space Visualize, a Doctor Who online conference held in July 2020, she spoke of a “simple and natural relationship” between her and Nicholas Courtney that allowed them to reflect on Kate’s dynamics and transcendence in the script. . Growing up with Doctor Who as “the scariest thing on TV,” she took the opportunity to work with such established actors. Still, it was not long after she realized the following and her central role in her story.
Although he was not asked to play Kate on Doctor Who, Cressman wanted to praise his sequel as a “great actor.” When asked if Redgrave had influenced Kate during the downtime, Cressman agreed and replied, “I do not think she spoke to me personally or about my performance […], but she’s sure.” character, and I think it’s fantastic. “He also commented on how Doctor Who has exceeded his limits since his return, noting,” Amazing things that we could never have done years and years ago. ”
However, Cressman was not limited to just one viewer when she agreed to play Kate in another Reeltime Pictures movie called Anomaly. This means that her portrait will live on with Redgrave. Still, whether Anomaly will recognize Kate’s period with Doctor Who is unclear. It is also unclear when it will be released in light of the COVID-19 pandemic; Cressman said he was enslaved to begin filming in 2021, but it is currently unclear if this happened.
Regardless of the advances Anomaly has made, Cressman stressed the importance of downtime for Kate Stewart’s development and her continued popularity. After reflecting on everything that has happened since 1995, he said: “It’s a great tribute to the whole crew, the writers and everything that is not only going on with it all, but now I’m in Doctor Who. I mean , that’s pretty surprising. ”
It seems too late to revise that assessment when Conservative MP Nick Fletcher recently criticized Jodie Whittaker’s career as a doctor. Given his warning about an alleged substitute for heroic men, it seems entirely appropriate that First Doctor joins the successor to Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, a woman born of Doctor Who’s a positive influence on fans of all genres.
