In this episode of the podcast, I deal with the so-called UNIT dating controversy, which suggests that we, and everyone in the Doctor’s universe, have no idea when Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart headed the organization. Were all the records destroyed and people’s memories erased? Did something timey-wimey happen? Of course not. Hopefully, we can put this issue to rest once and for all.

Transcript

What U.N.I.T. Dating Controversy?

If you’ve been a fan of Doctor Who for any length of time, you’ve probably heard by now of the “U.N.I.T. Dating Controversy.” There were some in-jokes made about it in recent episodes of Doctor Who, having to do with whether the stories featuring the Doctor and U.N.I.T. took place in the 1970’s or 1980’s, and this may have prompted you to look it up. Or you may have been a fan for a long time and knew about it already. But to be honest, there really isn’t all that much to argue about. It’s very clear when those stories took place, if we interpret the show according to the principles of canon that I outlined in Podcast #2. If you haven’t listened to that episode yet, I recommend you cue it up and give it your ear.

Let’s go back to the story The Web of Fear, which features the first appearance of Lethbridge-Stewart, who later will become the Brigadier who heads U.N.I.T. The story never states explicitly the year in which it is set, but it does provide some chronological indicators that imply it. First, in episode one, in the scene set in the museum, we are told that the Yeti creature, which Professor Travers brought back from Tibet, has been in the museum for 30 years. The implication is that Travers returned from Tibet about 30 years previously. But then in episode 2, Travers recalls that he first met Jamie and Victoria “over 40 years ago.” Jamie and Victoria, you see, had met him in Tibet, when he first encountered the Yeti. Why the discrepancy between episodes 1 and 2? It would seem that The Web of Fear originally was set in the present day, but Story Editor Derrick Sherwin made the decision, somewhere in between the shooting of episodes 1 and 2, to set The Web of Fear rather in the near future. So he increased the length of time between the Tibet adventure and this current one from 30 years to over 40 years. Terrance Dicks, who wrote the Target novelization of The Web of Fear, repaired the discrepancy by changing the period that the Yeti was in the museum from 30 years also to 40 years. In what year did the Tibet adventure take place? (This, by the way, was depicted in the story The Abominable Snowmen earlier in the season.) Victoria tells Anne in episode 2 of The Web of Fear that they were in Tibet in 1935. This would mean that The Web of Fear must be set sometime after 1975.

Now the first U.N.I.T. story is The Invasion. In that adventure we are told that it has been four years since the Brigadier has seen the Doctor (in The Web of Fear), so this would indicate that the first U.N.I.T. story is set sometime after 1979. The run of classic U.N.I.T. stories, from Spearhead from Space to The Seeds of Doom, would therefore have to take place from about 1980 forward. Five winters are depicted in this run, so that would mean at least 4 years pass during this period.

The problem is that, even though the years of these classic UNIT stories are never stated in dialogue, indications are that they take place, not in the 1980’s, but in the 1970’s. So, for example, in The Green Death, a calendar is shown, which has the month February as a leap year, and the 29th of the month falls on a Sunday. In the entire period from the 1960s to the 1990s, only 1972 would fit that calendar. Also, at the time of the Third Doctor’s regeneration into the Fourth Doctor (Planet of the Spiders and Robot), Sarah Jane Smith carries a U.N.I.T. pass dated “4th April 1974.” In Robot, the Doctor’s roadster Bessie has a road fund licence disk set to expire April 1975.