However, there’s no evidence that, say, the British mission to Mars seen in The Ambassadors of Death uses alien technology (rather the opposite). One difference between it and The War Machines is that there are several explicit references to things being obsolete that were state-of-the-art at the time of broadcast. While it’s a little far-fetched that Britain could mount such an ambitious programme, there’s no technology in the story that NASA weren’t planning to have by the 1980s. In 1970, NASA planned - not just hoped - to have a man on Mars by 1982.
2. Historical and Political Details: Again, the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that either the political history of the early nineteen-seventies is very different to reality, or the UNIT stories aren’t set in the early 1970s.
There’s a Prime Minister called Jeremy in The Green Death, and one who’s a woman by the time of Terror of the Zygons. Both of these are clear - and clearly tongue-in-cheek - references to someone who was an actual opposition leader with an outside chance of winning the next election or the one after that. The United Nations is more powerful than its seventies equivalent. The Cold War has been over for “years” by the end of the era. Environmentalism has become a matter for Westminster politicians and civil servants. All of these things are clearly reasonable extrapolations, not a reflection, of the situation at the time the stories were made.
Two pieces of dialogue suggest it is the early seventies: in Doctor Who and the Silurians, a taxi driver wants his fare in predecimal currency, and Mao Tse Tung seems to be alive at the time of The Mind of Evil (he died in 1976).
3. Calendars: The month a UNIT story is set is often specified or can be inferred from information in a story, or by close observation of calendars on walls or other such set dressing. We are told that the barrow in The Daemons (broadcast 1971) is opened on Beltane (30th April). We can infer that it’s a Saturday or - more probably - Sunday (see the entry for that story). So, taken literally, that would mean that it was set in a year when 30th April fell on a Sunday - in the seventies, that would be 1972 or 1978.
While there have been some excellent attempts to reconcile this sort of information, this is not a level of detail the production team ever went into, and this is not a “key” to revealing a consistent chronology. The evidence is often contradictory, even within individual stories: four calendars appear in The Green Death, one stating that the story is set in February of a leap year, two more say it is April, the fourth indicates that it’s May.
4. Fashions: Except for The Invasion and Battlefield, the clothes, haircuts and cars all resemble those of the year the programme was made. There was no attempt to mock-up car number plates or predict future fashions. The UNIT soldiers sport haircuts that would have been distinctly nonregulation in the 1970s, but this is just as true today. The UNIT era looks and feels like the early 1970s, the characters have many of the attitudes and concerns of people in the seventies. However, is this evidence it was set in the early 1970s, or simply that it was made in the early 1970s?
5. Authorial Intention: We might also want to refer to interviews with the production team, to find out what they intended.
Derrick Sherwin, the producer at the time the UNIT format was introduced, said in the Radio Times of 19th June, 1969, that Season Seven would be set in “a time not many years distant from now when such things as space stations will be actuality”. In an interview with the Daily Mail two days later, Jon Pertwee stated that his Doctor would be exiled to Earth “in the 1980s”. The Doctor Who and the Sea-Devils novelisation by Malcolm Hulke, published in 1974, said that “North Sea oil had started gushing in 1977”.
The Terrestrial Index claimed that the decision was made to redate the UNIT era was taken when real life overtook it, but that didn’t happen. When asked in DWB #58 why the dates for Mawdryn Undead contradicted what was established in the Pertwee era, Eric Saward, the script editor for the story, admitted that the 1977/1983 dates were “a mistake”. In fact, the only reason the Brigadier is even in Mawdryn Undead is that William Russell wasn’t available to play Ian Chesterton in that story, and without the 1977 date given in Mawdryn Undead, there’s little to debate.
On the other hand, The Making of Doctor Who, written by Malcolm Hulke and Terrance Dicks and published in 1972, placed Spearhead from Space in “1970”.
The editors of the early New and Missing Adventures consciously chose to set the UNIT stories on or about the year they were broadcast. In practice, when a date is specified it was left pretty much to the discretion of an individual author, and there were a number of discrepancies (see the entries for each story). More recent novels mentioning UNIT have been far more coy about specifying dates, for the most part, and a number (like No Future, The Dying Days and Interference) have suggested fictional reasons for the confusion. Big Finish has shown little interest in weighing in on the topic, although a token effort was made to place its UNIT audio series in the near-future of release.
6. Real Life: The late eighties/early nineties fit the UNIT era almost perfectly - the Cold War was over, China was hardline communist, the British government was unstable, there was a female prime minister, the UN was powerful, environmental issues were at the forefront of political debate, there was video conferencing, British scientists were working on their own space probes and Microsoft were putting a computer in every home and making IE’s attempts at world domination look half-hearted.
To top it all, a trend for seventies retro meant that the fashionistas were all dressing like Jo Grant. The Doctor’s reference to Batman in Inferno was clearly because he’d just seen the Tim Burton movie. It’s uncanny.
7. Other Reference Books: The balance of fan opinion, or at least the fans who write books, has definitely tipped towards setting the UNIT era in or around the year of broadcast. The Terrestrial Index, The Discontinuity Guide, Who Killed Kennedy, Timelink and About Time all - give or take a year here or there - concur. A clear majority of the original novels do. However, the BBC-published Doctor Who - The Legend sets the UNIT era in the “near future” and concludes that Mawdryn Undead is the anomaly.
The Conclusion: It is very tempting to hope for a right answer, but Doctor Who is fiction, not a documentary and a “one right answer” just does not - cannot - exist. Even if we limit ourselves solely to dates specifically and unambiguously given in on-screen dialogue, then the Brigadier retires from UNIT three years before his first appearance as the commanding officer of UNIT. It is utterly impossible to try to incorporate every calendar, E-reg car and videophone into one consistent timeframe. People who claim to have done so have invariably, and by definition, missed or deliberately ignored some piece of evidence established somewhere.
However, none of the dates given place the “UNIT era” earlier than the late sixties or later than the early eighties. A right answer doesn’t exist, but something everyone ought to be able to agree on is that the UNIT stories took place in “the seventies”, give or take a year or so.
The personal preference of the authors of Ahistory, for the record, neatly reflects the main split in fandom on this issue: Lance prefers that the UNIT era takes place in the near future, five or so years after broadcast, while Lars favours the stories being set at time of broadcast, or near enough for comfort.
For the Purposes of this Book: Even though it’s not possible to specify the year, it is possible to come up with a consistent timeline. Many UNIT stories contain some reference to other UNIT stories, so it is possible to place them relative to each other. Furthermore, the month a story is set is often given. While there are inconsistencies (which have been noted), it’s therefore possible to write a broadly consistent history of the “UNIT era”.
The stories of the UNIT era have been separated from those of the other contemporary and near-contemporary stories, and instead talk in “UNIT years”. “UNIT Year 1” in this scheme is the year that The Invasion and Spearhead from Space are set. This only applies to the “UNIT era” - the stories set in the seventies - by the time of K9 and Compan
y in 1981, real life seems to have caught up with the near-future of the series whichever way you cut it.
Depending on which story’s dating scheme you adopt (and give or take a year in all cases), Unit Year 1 is:
The Invasion - 1979
Pyramids of Mars - 1974
Mawdryn Undead - 1969
Unit Year -5
Around this time, the Cybermen contacted Tobias Vaughn, who offered them help with their invasion. Soon afterwards, Vaughn’s company, International Electromatics (IE), marketed the micromonolithic circuit. It revolutionised electronics, and made IE the world leader in the field. [127]
Unit Year -4
The Web of Fear [128]
Mysterious cobwebs started to appear across London, the fog thickened and “bears” and “monsters” attacked people in the Underground. Londoners fled in terror, and the army was called in to restore order. They found themselves under siege in the London Underground, where the disturbances were concentrated. Faced with an attack from the Intelligence, a sentience billions of years older than Earth and with its own army of robot Yeti, the military were reduced to blowing up tunnels to try to contain the situation. The second Doctor arrived with Jamie and Victoria, and met Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart for the first time. Together, they fought the Yeti, and the Doctor banished the Intelligence.
This became known as the London Event, and the official story was that there had been an industrial accident. Lethbridge-Stewart retained the Locus, a small carved statuette of a Yeti as a memento. Six months later, he met Air Vice-Marshall “Chunky” Gilmore in the Alexander Club and learnt that Earth had been invaded in the winter of 1963. He also learned there was evidence of aliens visiting Earth since the time of the Pharoahs. [129]
The public were told that the Yeti incident was actually a nerve gas attack. [130] Lethbridge-Stewart attended a Middle East Peace Conference. [131]
Aware that the world faced new threats, the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce (UNIT) was established. [132] Lethbridge-Stewart appeared before the UN Security Council and, in part, UNIT was formed because of his efforts. [133] The Russian branch of UNIT was called Operativnaya Gruppa Rasvedkoy Obyedinyonnih Natsiy (OGRON). [134] The French branch was called NUIT. [135] UNIT had a liaison office in Bombay. [136] There was also a South East Asian branch, UNIT-SEA. [137]
Enabling legislation was passed in the UK (it was drafted by the future Minister for Ecology). [138] Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, the Scots Guards Colonel who had led the soldiers that repelled the Yetis in the Underground, was promoted to Brigadier and made commanding officer of the British UNIT contingent. [139] The Brigadier was present when UNIT took ownership of Kriegeskind Castle in Germany, and made it one of dozens of worldwide UNIT facilities that watched for signs of invasion, the paranormal and the unexplained. [140]
Gas warfare was banned by international agreement. [141] SOS signals were abandoned. [142] The British space programme was blossoming with a series of Mars Probe Missions. Space technology had dramatically improved since the old moonshot days. The new fuel variant M3, though highly volatile, provided a great deal more thrust than conventional fuels, and decontamination procedures had been reduced from two days to one hour. Space research took place at the Space Centre in London, not far from UNIT HQ. In this complex was Space Control (callsign: “Control”) where missions were co-ordinated. Astronauts were selected from the military. [143]
The British astronauts Grosvenor and Guest became the first men on Mars. They planted the Union Flag on Mount Olympus. [144] The British astronaut Carrington, part of the Mars Probe 6 mission, discovered radioactive aliens on Mars that killed his crew. Returning to Earth, and terrified by what he saw as a threat to humanity, Carrington formed an elaborate plan to destroy them. On his return, he was promoted to General and led the newly-formed Space Security Department. [145]
Tales from the Vault [146]
A criminal gang staged a series of robberies in Manchester, Birmingham and the surrounding counties, using an alien crystal to erase the memory of any eye-witnesses. The second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe foiled the scheme. The Doctor later gave the crystal to the Brigadier, complete with a copy of Zoe’s memories as a user “manual”/interface. UNIT used the crystal to extract memories from anyone who witnessed alien activity, keeping secret the existence of extra-terrestrials.
(20th December, 1968 to 30th January, 1969) - The Left-Handed Hummingbird [147]
Early in its history, UNIT had a Paranormal Division. After extensive trials, they recruited six genuine human psychics. The division was run by Lieutenant Hamlet Macbeth, and investigated Fortean events. Following “the Happening”, a massive psychic event in St John’s Wood, London on 21st December, 1968, the Paranormal Division was disbanded.
Ace foiled an attempt to kill the Beatles on the roof of the Apple building on 30th January, 1969. At least two of the Doctor’s incarnations went to Woodstock.
Unit Year 1
A Cyber-scout ship surveyed Earth in preparation for an invasion, but its pilot died when the vessel crashed near Cambridge. It remained buried until Gareth Arnold, a local dentist, happened upon it some years later. [148]
(April) UNIT radar stations tracked a shower of meteorites in an odd formation over Essex. [149]
(summer) - The Invasion [150]
UNIT began monitoring the activities of International Electromatics after hundreds of UFO sightings occurred on IE property. IE now controlled every computer line in the world by undercutting the competition, and Tobias Vaughn had built a business empire around his philosophy of uniformity and exact duplication. One of IE’s most successful products was a disposable radio, which had sold ten million units. Vaughn was in league with the Cybermen, who were using his company as a front for their invasion plans. The second Doctor, Jamie, Zoe and UNIT defeated the Cybermen. Vaughn was apparently killed.
One cybership crashed in the South Pole. [151]
After the collapse of IE, Ashley Chapel, Vaughn’s chief scientist, set up his own company named Ashley Chapel Logistics. [152] Vaughn, though, had survived by downloading his consciousness into a waiting robot body. For the next thousand years, he would secretly run a succession of massive electronics corporations that developed state-of-the-art equipment. He would re-encounter the Doctor in 2975. [153] The public were told the mass unconsciousness that occurred during the Cybermen incursion was because Earth passed through the tail of a comet. Isobel Watkins’ photos of Cybermen were dismissed as fakes. [154]
The “Big Bug Era” began, as Earth was invaded and threatened by alien life. Many books and fanzines trying to catalogue and expose these invasions were published. [155] One of the most popular fanzines was Who’s Who and What’s That. The government, though, covered much of UNIT’s work with D-notices, making it difficult to keep track of the dates. The time-displaced Isaac Summerfield set up a secret organisation to “mop up” after UNIT, with the intention of getting stranded aliens home. Initially, it was based in Llarelli. [156]
Mars Probe 7 was launched. After seven months, Mars Probe 7 landed on Mars and radio contact was lost, but two weeks later it took off from the red planet... or at least, something did. [157]
The third Doctor exiled to Earth
(October, “months” after The Invasion) - Spearhead from Space [158]
UNIT went on a covert recruitment drive, bringing Liz Shaw up from Cambridge to act as a scientific advisor. The very same day, reporters were tipped off that a mysterious patient with two hearts was present at Ashbridge Cottage Hospital.
This “spaceman” was the newly regenerated third Doctor, exiled to Earth in the twentieth-century timezone by the Time Lords. He turned up the morning after a meteorite shower, and UNIT were soon on the scene. The meteorites were Nestene Energy Units, part of a plan to conquer the Earth using killer automata Autons. With the Doctor’s help, UNIT led an assault on a plastics factory in Essex, mere hours after reports surfaced of “walking shop dummies” in city centres. They defe
ated the Nestene.
Captain Mike Yates led the clean-up operation after the Nestene Invasion, and discovered a single Energy Unit that had not been recovered by the Autons. It remained UNIT property, but was loaned to the National Space Museum. [159] Gareth Wostencroft was one of the UNIT soldiers involved with the first Auton invasion. [160]
The Nestene invasion was covered up as a terrorist attack, which became known as Black Thursday. A report filed by journalist James Stevens had all references to UNIT erased. This prompted him to start investigating the mysterious organisation, an undertaking he would pursue for several years. [161]
The Vault, Department C19’s storehouse of discarded alien artifacts, recovered two Nestene Energy Units. Dr Ingrid Krafchin, a researcher for SeneNet, began experiments with plastic. [162] The Doctor was put on UNIT’s payroll as “Doctor John Smith”, but did not cash his cheques. [163] The Brigadier saw his friend, Kolonel Heinrich Konrad, after a debriefing on the initial Auton incident. [164]
Unit Year 2
(winter) - Doctor Who and the Silurians [165]
UNIT investigated power losses at the experimental Wenley Moor research centre. These were caused by the Silurians, reptile people who ruled the Earth millions of years before, and who had revived from suspended animation. The Silurians saw the humans as apes and plotted to wipe them out - first with a plague, then by dispersing the Van Allen Belt. This would have heated Earth to a level suitable for Silurians, but not to human life. The third Doctor attempted to negotiate, but the Brigadier triggered explosives that sealed off the Silurian base and possibly killed those within.
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