B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (113 page)

Thousands of words have been written trying to discount or reinterpret either the
Pyramids of Mars
or the
Mawdryn Undead
account of events. Dozens of distinct explanations - either within the logic of the fiction or taking account of production facts - have been proposed. They tend to be convoluted or to stretch the meanings of very plain English words beyond acceptable tolerances.

The only thing they have in common is that none of them would stand up in court. However you weigh up and prioritise evidence, the
Pyramids of Mars
and
Mawdryn Undead
dates are “as true” as each other. They are scripted and broadcast lines of dialogue within a single story that unambiguously state a firm date, then the characters go to that year and then the date is stated again.

Ultimately, the only way to come up with a consistent UNIT dating scheme is to pick one and ignore the other.

Broadly speaking, then, there are two schools of thought. Either the stories are set in the “near future”, as was originally stated (a view that actually elides
two
distinct accounts, as
The Invasion
had the UNIT era starting no earlier than 1979, but
Pyramids of Mars
pretty much ended it in 1980); or they are set in the year of broadcast, as was stated in the early 1980s (which glosses over/ignores/corrects what was said in those previous stories) in a version of history where certain aspects of technological progress were more advanced and the political situation was different.

As noted in the individual UNIT story entries, there are a wealth of clues beyond what’s actually said that might be used to tip the balance one way or the other. Different chronologies give different weight to these, and so come to different conclusions. But most try to address the following areas:

1. Technology:
There are an abundance of references to scientific developments that hadn’t happened at the time the UNIT stories were broadcast, but were reasonable extrapolations of what the near future would hold.

The technology is far in advance of the early nineteen-seventies: there are talking computers, compact walkie talkies, experimental alloys, laser guns and robots. Colour televisions and even colour videophones are commonplace. Man has landed on Mars, there are space freighters and advanced artificial intelligences. Comprehensive space and alternative energy programmes are underway.

It could be argued that the UNIT stories are set in a parallel history where by (say) 1970 mankind was more technologically advanced than the real 1970. One obvious reason for this might be that scientists had access to an abundance of alien technology from all the failed invasions, and so made great technological progress. There are examples of high technology being developed due to alien influence in some stories. For example, the interstitial time travel of
The Time Monster
is inspired by the Master, not because it’s part of mankind’s natural progress. There are other stories with no obvious alien influence, like
The War Machines
with its prototype internet and advanced artificial intelligence.

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 Company
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: