Mike Yates

Captain Mike Yates is a fictional character in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, played by Richard Franklin. He was adjutant of the British contingent of UNIT, an international organization that defends Earth from alien threats. Character history Yates first appears in the Third Doctor serial Terror of the Autons, the latest in a line of Captains assisting Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, although the Doctor implies that he was around for previous stories. He proves more durable than his predecessors, appearing semi-regularly on the programme from 1971 to 1974 alongside the Brigadier and Sergeant Benton. Together with the Doctor and his companions, Yates fights off alien invasions, the machinations of the renegade Time Lord known as the Master, rogue computers and mutated maggots. Little is known of him outside of his time with UNIT. He is cool under fire, efficient, and both gives and carries out his orders with a minimum of fuss. He appears to have a relatively good rapport with his men, although he does remind Benton on occasion that "rank hath its privileges." The Third Doctor's assistant, Jo Grant, is dressed up to go on a night on the town with Mike at the start of The Curse of Peladon, only to be taken on a trip in the TARDIS by the Doctor. Yates's fall from grace starts when he is brainwashed by the artificial intelligence BOSS in the 1973 serial The Green Death. The brush with ecological disaster apparently made Yates very concerned about the future of the planet, and he is easily recruited by Sir Charles Grover into a conspiracy to reverse time and return Earth to a "golden age" (Invasion of the Dinosaurs). The conspiracy is thwarted by the Doctor, and in return for his past service to UNIT, the Brigadier allows Yates to take medical leave and then quietly resign (actor Richard Franklin believes the initial plan for this story was to kill off Yates).