Jemma Redgrave to Reprise Kate Stewart for New DOCTOR WHO Spinoff Series UNIT

 
Here's hoping these Whoniverse spinoff plans won't be countermanded.

Deadline has confirmed a previous report by British tabloid newspaper The Daily Mirror that the first of two new Doctor Who spinoff series to stream on Disney+ will be UNIT, based on the fictional military organization currently led by Kate Stewart, daughter of original UNIT commanding officer Brigadier Alastair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart.

According to the reports, actress Jemma Redgrave will reprise her role as Kate Stewart for the new series after returning for Doctor Who's 2023 Christmas Special, the first episode to star Ncuti Gatwa as the incoming Fifteenth Doctor. Redgrave, 58, made her debut as Kate Stewart in the 2012 episode "The Power of Three" and reprised the role several times, most recently in Jodie Whittaker's final episode as the Thirteenth Doctor, "The Power of the Doctor". Since 2015, she has also starred as Kate Stewart in the audio drama spinoff UNIT: The New Series from Big Finish Productions.

UNIT first appeared in the 1968 Doctor Who serial "The Invasion" as the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, which featured Patrick Troughton's Second Doctor and his companions Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot joining forces with Nicholas Courtney's character the Brigadier and UNIT to defeat an invasion from the Cybermen. UNIT was featured heavily during the Jon Pertwee era while Pertwee's Third Doctor was exiled on Earth by the Time Lords, but was gradually phased out of the show by the second season of Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor in 1975. Courtney's Brigadier and UNIT occasionally returned for a few more serials until 1989's "Battlefield" as part of Doctor Who's final season of the classic era.

In 2005, Russell T Davies brought UNIT back without the Brigadier in the two-parter "Aliens of London/World War III" when Doctor Who returned with Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor. Three years later in "The Sontaran Stratagem" with David Tennant's Tenth Doctor, UNIT was renamed the UNified Intelligence Taskforce after complaints from the real-life United Nations, who became unwilling to be associated with the fictional organization. UNIT remained without a notable commander until Redgrave's Kate Stewart debuted in the era of Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor.

The Daily Mirror also mentions that a second Doctor Who spinoff is being planned involving "monsters".