It was the Kraals’ first attempt at conquest, and although they were thwarted by the fourth Doctor and Sarah - as aided by Harry Sullivan and RSM Benton - Marshal Chedaki’s fleet survived.
SeneNet recovered a Kraal android. [341]
(early one month in autumn) - The Seeds of Doom [342]
The World Ecology Bureau was active at this time. They received reports that an unusual seed pod had been discovered in the Antarctic permafrost, and called in UNIT. The fourth Doctor and Sarah identified the item as a Krynoid seed pod and also discovered a second one. One Krynoid was killed in the Antarctic, while an RAF air strike on the mansion of Harrison Chase, the millionaire plant enthusiast, destroyed the other.
Sir Colin Thackeray ordered that cuttings be taken from the Krynoid remains, so a better means could be found of killing the creatures. [343]
The Pescatons [344]
Upon their return to Earth, the fourth Doctor and Sarah were attacked by a sea creature, which the Doctor recognised as a Pescaton. He hurried to the astronomer Professor Emmerson and watched Pesca, the homeplanet of the Pescatons in the outer galaxies, explode.
The Pescatons had escaped in a space fleet, which arrived on Earth and attacked many cities. A smaller number went to Venus. The Doctor located the Pescaton leader, Zor, in the London Underground and killed him with ultraviolet light. The Pescatons died without their leader.
The Pescatons and their sister race, the Piscons, both originated in the Picos system. While an expanding sun destroyed the Pescaton planet, the Piscons’ homeworld survived but became desert. The Piscons wandered around the universe acquiring water supplies - sometimes benevolently from unpopulated planets, sometimes illegally. [345]
The Hand of Fear [346]
The “obliterated” alien named Eldrad had fallen to Earth as a stone hand and regenerated into a humanoid (albeit female) form. There was near-meltdown in the main reactor of Nunton Nuclear Power station, although there was no radiation leak as Eldrad used the energy to facilitate his/her regeneration. The fourth Doctor and Sarah decided to escort Eldrad back to his/her homeworld of Kastria.
Afterwards, in answering a summons to Gallifrey, the Doctor was forced to return Sarah Jane Smith home. Although the TARDIS apparently failed to return Sarah to Croydon, she arrived in England.
The Doctor had dropped her off in Aberdeen. [347] Fortunately, it was the right timezone. Sarah resumed her work as a journalist. [348]
Wartime [349]
Benton was en route to UNIT HQ with a cache of radioactive material, and was passing through Bolton when he found himself haunted by apparitions of his mother, his late father and his dead brother Christopher. He also stopped a hijacker intent on stealing the nuclear cargo.
Realising that the Doctor’s visits were becoming less and less frequent, the Brigadier had Bessie mothballed. [350] The Brigadier announced his retirement from UNIT. Soon afterwards, he became a mathematics teacher at Brendon School. [351]
Unit Year 10
The Architects of History [352]
The seventh Doctor visited the new iteration of Elizabeth Klein, having erased the version of her that went to Colditz from history. The surviving Klein had been born in England to German parents, and now worked for UNIT. She acknowledged the Doctor as an ally in keeping the world safe.
UNIT Era Sidebar
British Politics in the UNIT Era
During the UNIT era, there are references to two Prime Ministers who are not the actual PM when the story was shown. However, both are semi-jokey references to actual opposition leaders of the time.
“Jeremy” mentioned in The Green Death would be Jeremy Thorpe, the leader of the Liberal Party at the time the story was made. Thorpe, of course, was never Prime Minister, although he was in the ascendant at the time The Green Death was shown. Shortly afterwards, in the February 1974 Election, the Liberal vote tripled to six million and they entered a pact with Labour to form a government.
In Terror of the Zygons, the Prime Minister is a woman. Margaret Thatcher had already been elected leader of the Conservatives when Terror of the Zygons was taped - the scene in which the Brigadier is phoned by the PM was recorded on 23rd April 1975, and Mrs Thatcher had been party leader since February of that year. The Labour government of the time had a tiny majority of four seats, and predicting a Conservative victory at the next election was a fairly safe bet (in much the same way that Zamper, written in 1995, referred to “Number ten, Tony’s den”).
If we assume the UNIT stories are set in the near future, then this is remarkably straightforward, as only the result of one “real life” election need be changed. According to The Green Death, there is a general election won by Thorpe’s Liberals at some point after 1973 (it can’t be before The Green Death was shown, or it wouldn’t be the future). Thatcher’s Conservatives defeat this government. We can pinpoint the date of that election - it’s between Robot and Terror of the Zygons, as Harry is surprised by the female leader in The Ark in Space. This coincides neatly with Sarah’s assertion in Pyramids of Mars that she’s from 1980. So the Liberals win the next General Election (one that had to be called by June 1975), the Tories win the one after that (possibly in May 1979, as in our history) and it all fits.
The date the Liberals come to power is harder to pin down. The model above assumes that it’s a single-term government. A four or five-year term in office would mean they came to power around the time the Doctor was exiled to Earth. The man who’s Minister of Ecology in The Green Death drafted UNIT’s charter. It’s possible to squeeze the Liberal election victory in before The Invasion, but there’s nothing that demands he was a member of the governing party when he drew up the charter. A diplomatic, military or even legal career could have made him the right man for the job (we can only say for certain is that it’s an unlikely job for a serving Minister of Ecology). Politics in the UNIT era is a world of grey, middle-aged men. There are occasional visionaries, but government is practically run by civil servants. There’s no obvious point where the government’s character changes in the UNIT stories.
Throughout the UNIT era, the government is throwing money at new energy projects. We see grand schemes in Doctor Who and the Silurians, Inferno, The Claws of Axos, The Green Death and Robot, although these all end in disaster and mankind is still dependent on oil in Terror of the Zygons. The environment is clearly a huge political issue, with concerns about pollution voiced in many stories. The existence of a Minister of Ecology as a cabinet post is telling. When the Tories come to power, a lot of these responsibilities might transfer to the World Ecology Bureau we see in The Seeds of Doom. It’s interesting to note that there’s no mention of Europe, especially as (perhaps because) the Common Market was a hot political issue at the time. (The EEC debate was - far more vaguely than most fans seem to think - satirised in The Curse of Peladon.)
This version, then, is consistent with what we’re told in the series and with what someone writing in the early seventies would extrapolate as a plausible backdrop for a science-fantasy adventure show set in the near future.
Some recent writers - particularly those who see the UNIT stories as being set at the time of broadcast - have developed a parallel political history for early 1970s Britain of the Doctor Who universe. Books like Who Killed Kennedy and The Devil Goblins from Neptune infer that events in the UNIT stories destabilised actual governments. This seems to be the logical consequence of the catalogue of incompetent government action, politicians dying, international crises and high profile disasters we see ... although in the TV series, politicians and civil servants are depicted, almost to a man, as complacent and obtuse. They seem far too secure, rather than people scared the government will fall at any moment.
All in all, the various things we are told about the parallel political history described in the books are difficult to reconcile.
In real life, the Prime Ministers since 1970 (along with the date of the general election, the winning party and their majority) were:
Wilson (28th February, 1974, Labour minority, 0)
Wilson (10th October, 1974, Labour, 4)
Callaghan (5th April, 1976)
Thatcher (3rd May, 1979, Conservative, 43)
Thatcher (9th June, 1983, Conservative, 143)
Thatcher (11th June, 1987, Conservative, 102)
Major (27th November, 1991)
Major (9th April, 1992, Conservative, 21)
Blair (1st May, 1997, Labour, 179)
Blair (7th June, 2001, Labour, 167)
Blair (5th May, 2005, Labour, 66)
Cameron (6th May, 2010, Conservative coalition, 0)
In the books, a Liberal-led coalition government was formed in January 1970. The Devil Goblins from Neptune (p8) states, “an alliance of Liberals, various disenfranchised Tories and Socialists, and a group of minor fringe parties, enter power on a platform of social reform, the abolition of the death penalty, and a strong interstellar defence programme”.
In June 1970, Heath defeats Wilson, just as in our history (Who Killed Kennedy). This can’t be easily reconciled with The Devil Goblins from Neptune, which also takes place in June 1970.
Shirley Williams is Prime Minister in No Future, set just after Terror of the Zygons in 1976. We’re told that Thorpe had resigned mid-term, but there is also reference to Wilson.
In Millennial Rites, a female PM lost an election in the early eighties. In 1999, the leader of the Opposition is a woman (“all handbag and perm”). The Prime Minister is a man.
The unnamed winner of the 1997 general election was assassinated in The Dying Days. Edward Greyhaven is installed Prime Minister by the new Martian King of England, but dies during the course of the story.
Terry Brooks, Prime Minister in 1999, tries to fake a military coup as a pretext to dismantle the military and spend the money health and education instead. He is forced to resign, and is replaced by Philip Cotton. (Millennium Shock - they’re a thinly-veiled Tony Blair and Jack Straw).
Tony Blair is alive, well and Prime Minister in Project: Twilight and Death Comes to Time. Mickey mentions him in Rise of the Cybermen.
Interference lists the recent British Prime Ministers as Heath, Thorpe, Williams, Thatcher, Major, Blair and Clarke. (The last could be senior Conservative Kenneth Clarke, but could possibly be Labour’s Charles Clarke. The proofreader added the “e” - Lawrence Miles’ original intention was that it was Tory MP Alan Clark.)
Aliens of London and World War Three had scenes set in Downing Street, with photographs of Callaghan and Major on the stairway (no photos of Thorpe, Williams, Brooks, Cotton or either Clarke were visible!). The Prime Minister of the day is murdered by the Slitheen, and Harriet Jones becomes PM sometime between this story and The Christmas Invasion.
Once we’re clear of the confused accounts of the 1970 elections, the sequence of Prime Ministers and when they come to power would seem to be:
Thorpe (Liberal coalition, in power at the time of The Green Death)
Williams (Labour, in power during Terror of the Zygons and No Future)
Thatcher (Conservative, who came to power in the early eighties, later than in real life)
Major (Conservative - we might infer he’s the assassinated winner of the 1997 election)
Greyhaven (briefly in 1997 and almost certainly not counted officially)
Brooks (Unknown party, possibly leading from 1997 to 1999)
Cotton (The same party as Brooks, takes over in 1999 - the leader of the opposition at this time is a woman, so isn’t... )
Blair (Labour, the dates are uncertain, but he comes to power later and apparently leaves earlier than in real life, and thus manages to avoid two successful alien assassinations of a British Prime Minister.)
Clarke (Unknown party, presumably the Prime Minister seen in the UNIT audio mini-series and assassinated in Aliens of London in 2006 - although the body looks more like Blair than either Kenneth or Charles Clarke, both of whom could comfortably accommodate a Slitheen in real life!)
Jones (The same party as Clarke. The ninth Doctor says in World War Three that she was originally supposed to serve three terms - possibly until c 2016 in Trading Futures, where the PM was male. However, her first term is curtailed by the tenth Doctor in The Christmas Invasion - this would seem to be a significant deviation of established history, unless the ninth Doctor was mistaken in World War Three to think Jones was a three-termer.)
Unknown. (There is at least one interim Prime Minister after Jones’ downfall in The Christmas Invasion. A blurry picture of him is seen in TW: Out of Time, along with the apparently sceptical headline, “Working Hard, Minister?”)
Saxon. (According to The Sound of Drums, he leads the newly-formed Saxon Party, which has attracted support from across the political spectrum. While time is reversed in Last of the Time Lords, his outing himself as the Master and ordering the death of the US President on global TV “still happens”. Saxon dies at the end of the story, which is set in 2008.)
Fairchild. (Killed in 2009 when the Daleks shoot his plane down in The Stolen Earth; he’s named as “Aubrey Fairchild” in Beautiful Chaos.)
Green. (Seen in TW: Children of Earth, set in September 2009 - he almost certainly takes over when when Fairchild dies earlier in the year. The story ends with Denise Riley, a member of Green’s cabinet, obtaining incriminating evidence on him, but it’s not said if she plans to force him out and become prime minister herself, or just pull his strings from behind the scenes. Either way, given the abominable events of Children of Earth - including the army being used to forcibly take thousands of children from their parents - it’s difficult to imagine the party in power winning the next election. TW: The Men Who Sold the World, set in 2010, alludes to the UK having a new coalition government.)
The Non-UNIT Seventies
NB: The line between a UNIT and non-UNIT story isn’t always clearly defined. When a reference makes a direct link to a UNIT era story, it is included in the UNIT Era section. When there’s a more vague or general reference to UNIT, it’s included here.
The Doctor once took piano lessons from a man called Elton. [353] He also had to swim the English Channel naked, after losing a bet with Oliver Reed. [354]
Isaac Summerfield moved his team to London, where they were based in a centre for the homeless. [355] The Doctor fought the Geomatide Macros on Sunset Boulevard in the 1970s, and defeated their plan to use ceiling tiles as a mathematical hyperspace vector generator. [356]
The archaeologist Bradley Stapleton died as an exhibit of his work was being prepared. The eleventh Doctor sent Amy Pond’s journal of Stapleton’s doomed 1929 expedition to the man’s granddaughter. [357]
NASA sent messages - including maps of the solar system and details about humanity - into space in the 70s. One alien race sent a reply, which wound up in the possession of Henry John Parker, a millionaire collector of alien artifacts. [358]
Jack Harkness had a moustache at some point in the 70s. [359] He claimed that movies in the 1970s were so bad, making out was guaranteed. It wasn’t unknown for him to wear platforms and five-inch lapels. [360]
1970
In 1970, the book Great Finds described the Roman mosaic discovered in 1964. [361] The United States officially cancelled the Apollo spaceflight programme, bowing to criticism of its expense, but continued it in secret - if for no other reason than every dollar spent on Apollo yielded $14 back from related exports, patents and expertise. [362]
Geoff and Sylvia Noble, the future parents of Donna Noble, were married. [363] A ship containing a hundred Veil crashed on Earth and was taken to a hyperdimensional Vault by the Alliance of Shades. [364]
Sarah Jane Smith began doorstepping when she was 19. [365] Lionel Carson served as Sarah Jane’s editor when she first started out with the national papers, but he later moved on to the food and wine circuit. [366] Professor Edward Shepherd educated Sarah Jane on the ethics of journalism while she was at university, and
was the best teacher she ever had. [367] Sarah Jane specialised in English and humanities. [368] She studied under James Stevens, as did Ruby Duvall. [369]
1970 (January) - Day of the Moon [370]
Six months after escaping the Silence, young Melody Pond - now wandering the streets of New York - regenerated in an alleyway.
Melody’s new body looked like a toddler. A quarter-century later, she would end up in Leadworth, meet her future parents (Amy and Rory) and become their best friend, Melody “Mels” Zucker. [371]
c 1970 (20th March) - The Underwater Menace [372]
The mad Professor Zaroff died in agony while attempting to raise Atlantis from the ocean floor with his Plunger.
On 5th April, 1970, Hitler’s remains were exhumed and destroyed on the orders of Andropov, head of the KGB. [373] On 14th August, the Revolution Man cult claimed Ed Hill was the Messiah. [374]
The seventh Doctor’s companion Ace was born Dorothy Gale McShane on 20th August, 1970, to Audrey and Harry McShane. [375] Around 1970, an Imperial bodyguard and nurse fled from the far future with Miranda, the daughter of the Emperor, following a revolution in which the Imperial Family were hunted down and killed. The fugitives settled in the Derbyshire village of Greyfrith. [376]
Hilda Hutchens won the 1970 Nobel Prize for Philosophy. [377] The tenth Doctor changed history, allowing Frank Openshaw to meet his wife a few years earlier than he otherwise would have. [378]
The British launched a military satellite, Haw-Haw, to block extra-terrestrial signals in 1971. [379] Nimrod’s encounter with the vampire Reggie left Reggie recuperating for three years. [380] Captain Jack helped sort out a problem during the early days of the United Arab Emirates, when something under the ground was disturbed. [381]
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