B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (163 page)

[
159
]
Terror of the Autons
, also referred to in
The Eye of the Giant
. Mike Yates doesn’t appear on screen until
Terror of the Autons
. He apparently doesn’t remember Nestene Energy Units in
The Scales of Injustice
.

[
160
]
Dominion

[
161
]
Who Killed Kennedy
is James Stevens’ account of the early UNIT years, and allocates firm dates for the stories, specifically:

Remembrance of the Daleks
(November 1963)

The Web of Fear
(August 1966)

The Invasion
(spring 1969)

Spearhead from Space
(October 1969)

Doctor Who and the Silurians
(November 1969)

The Ambassadors of Death
(December 1969)

Inferno
(February 1970)

Terror of the Autons
(April 1970)

The Mind of Evil
(November 1970)

The Claws of Axos

The Daemons
(May 1971)

Day of the Daleks
(September 1971)

The Dying Days
rather cheekily claimed that the government had insisted the dates be changed before allowing the book to be published.

[
162
]
Business Unusual

[
163
]
No Future
, which clashes with the Doctor saying he was “unpaid” in
Terror of the Autons
. This was the “early seventies” in
Return of the Living Dad
.

[
164
]
Old Soldiers

[
165
] Dating
Doctor Who and the Silurians
(7.2) - There’s conflicting dating evidence. A taxi driver asks for a fare of “10/6”, so this story appears to be set before the introduction of decimal currency in February 1971, but the cyclotron is a futuristic experimental machine that converts nuclear energy directly into electricity.

There’s no indication how long it’s been since
Spearhead from Space
, but the Doctor has settled in with UNIT and (recently) acquired Bessie. People are wearing winter clothes. The New Adventure
Blood Heat
states that this story is set in “1973”.

[
166
]
The Scales of Injustice
. Okdel was named in
Doctor Who and The Cave-Monsters
, the novelisation of
Doctor Who and the Silurians.

[
167
]
Who Killed Kennedy
. We see the Brigadier take the phone call in
Doctor Who and the Silurians.

[
168
]
The Hungry Earth

[
169
]
Blood Heat

[
170
]
The Scales of Injustice

[
171
]
The Eye of the Giant
,
The Scales of Injustice.

[
172
]
No Future
, a reference to
Blood Heat.

[
173
]
Blood Heat

[
174
]
Eternity Weeps

[
175
]
The Scales of Injustice
, a reference to the Audio Visuals story
Endurance.

[
176
]
The Devil Goblins from Neptune

[
177
]
Who Killed Kennedy

[
178
] “Eighteen years” before
Millennial Rites
, so in 1981. It is stated that
Inferno
was “early on in her tenure” and Anne had responsibilities for the British Space Programme (p14). That would place the UNIT stories later than most other references, but this dating scheme is perfectly compatible with that in
The Web of Fear
, which is after all where Anne Travers first appeared. That was “twenty-five years ago” (so around 1974), meaning there were seven years between
The Web of Fear
and her appointment.

[
179
] Dating
Old Soldiers
(BF CC #2.3) - The story takes place “a few weeks” after
The Silurians
, but before
The Ambassadors of Death
.

[
180
] Dating
Shadow of the Past
(BF CC #4.9) - Once again, the story happens “a few weeks” after
The Silurians
, and before
The Ambassadors of Death
.

[
181
] Dating
The Ambassadors of Death
(7.3) - This story is very clearly set in the near future. Britain has an established programme of manned missions to Mars. Professor Cornish remarks that decontamination takes “under an hour... it used to take two days” (the time it took the lunar astronauts when the story was made). There are colour videophones and we see a machine capable of automatically displaying star charts. SOS messages were abandoned “years ago”.

Those advocating that the UNIT stories are set in the year of broadcast admit this story causes them problems. One argument (used in both
Timelink
and
About Time
) concedes that Mars missions weren’t possible in 1970, but that as we still haven’t landed a man on Mars, it doesn’t prove this story is set in the near future. It’s an odd train of logic to say that something too advanced for 1980 (or indeed the world of today) therefore indicates a 1970 setting.

Leaving that aside, when
The Ambassadors of Death
was made, it wasn’t science fantasy. NASA had just landed on the moon and had plans to put a man on Mars in the nineteen-eighties. This wasn’t just a hope as the technology to get to Mars existed, at least in prototype form, and only a lack of political will and funding prevented it. At that point, NASA was seriously projecting that half of American employees would be working in space by 2050.

At the time that
The Ambassadors of Death
was made, then, what was shown wasn’t possible - but it would be, for NASA, in about ten years. The most implausible aspect was that Britain could do the same - but there had been a British space programme up until the early sixties, and, again, it was lack of funding rather than lack of expertise that killed it off.

The Doctor is still bitter about the events of
Doctor Who and the Silurians
, so this story probably happens only shortly afterwards. The Brigadier says he has known the Doctor “several years, on and off”, so it’s that long since
The
Web of Fear
.

[
182
]
Who Killed Kennedy

[
183
] “During that General Carrington business” according to
No Future.

[
184
]
The Dying Days

[
185
]
The Scales of Injustice

[
186
] Mars Probe 9 is referred to in
Dancing the Code
, and
The Dying Days
mentions Mars Probe 13.

The British Space Programme

Perhaps because they are acutely aware of the threat from outer space, the British government seems to have invested heavily in the space programme before and during the UNIT era. In
Invasion of the Dinosaurs
, some very clever and important people are fooled into believing that a fleet of colony ships could be built and go on to reach another habitable planet, although Sarah knows that even the most advanced spaceship “would take hundreds of years” to do so, and it transpires the ships are fakes. In
The Android Invasion
, an experimental “space freighter” has been in service for at least two years. There’s no obvious evidence that the British are using alien technology that they’ve recovered from one of the alien incursions in the sixties to speed up their space programme. On the contrary, they’re using pretty basic rocket technology.

The Christmas Invasion
features Britain sending an unmanned probe to Mars in late 2006, and portrays it as a pioneering effort.

[
187
]
Business Unusual

[
188
] Dating
Inferno
(7.4) - This story seems to be set in the near future. The computer at the project uses perspex/crystalline memory blocks. Stahlman has a robot drill capable of boring down over twenty miles. A desk calendar in the parallel universe says it is “July 23rd”, and the story runs for five days - the countdown we see early in the story says there is “59:28:47” remaining before penetration.

The word “Primord” is not used in dialogue, but appears in the on-screen credits. The name “Eastchester” is only used in a scene cut from the original broadcast (but retained in foreign prints and the BBC Video and DVD release), when the Doctor listens to a radio broadcast in the parallel universe. Stahlman spells his name with two “n”s in the parallel universe. The Doctor claims this is the first attempt to penetrate the Earth’s crust, forgetting the attempt he’d seen in
The Underwater Menace
.

[
189
]
Timewyrm: Revelation

[
190
]
The Face of the Enemy

[
191
]
The Scales of Injustice
,
Business Unusual.

[
192
]
The Devil Goblins from Neptune
.
The Face of the Enemy
says Ian is on a year-long exchange programme.

[
193
]
Byzantium!

[
194
]
Who Killed Kennedy

[
195
] “Seven or eight months” before
Scales of Injustice
, “twenty years” before
Business Unusual.

[
196
] “The previous year”, “late last year” and “eight months” before
The Devil Goblins from Neptune.

[
197
] The Christmas before
The Scales of Injustice.

[
198
]
The Devil Goblins from Neptune
. The new members were presumably Billy Preston and Klaus Voormann.

The Beatles

Doctor Who
has a terrible record for predicting the future, one that can best be summed up by noting that
Battlefield
predicted a near future with Soviet soldiers operating under the UN’s aegis on British soil - but between the story’s filming and its broadcast, the Soviet Union collapsed. In the entire twenty-six-year run of classic
Doctor Who
, it made two successful predictions - that there would be a female British Prime Minister (
Terror of the Zygons
), and that there would, one day, be a museum dedicated to the Beatles in Liverpool (
The Chase
).