Thoughts on UNIT (and Other) Dating
Oct. 21st, 2014 10:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jjporLike, wouldn't it be nice if the Brigadier had taken Liz out to a nice restaurant for a meal and a few drinks? And then they could have gone back to his post-divorce bachelor pad to look at his etchings, because the Brig seems like the sort to have etchings.
Oh right, the other sort of UNIT dating?
So I've got my fic mojo back a little bit these past couple of weeks. Basically, re-watching The Web of Fear and The Invasion while in the right frame of mind has made me commit a bit of Brig fic (more to come soon). And doing that sort of leads me to consider the old UNIT dating conundrum. I know, I know, it's effectively insoluble (1980, Sarah Jane, really?!)and better Who minds than mine have been defeated utterly by it, but I was just musing about it and musing led to looking things up and, well, it kind of veered off UNIT dating into thinking about 1960s Doctor Who stories generally. So, yeah.
Warning for extreme fanw*nkiness below! ;)
First things first:
1. There is no hard and fast Doctor Who "canon". Even the new series has a tendency blithely to ignore things already established in previous stories when it thinks of something more fun to do later on. This is as it should be; we are not, after all, Trekkers (I kid!). However, I take the somewhat slippery position that television episodes come first and books, audios etc come second in order of (non)canonicity. Because then I can ignore those godawful John Peel Dalek novels from the EDA range.
2. a. An Unearthly Child (the episode, not the whole four-parter) definitely takes place in 1963, the same year it was broadcast. It's stated in dialogue by both Susan and Ian and confirmed again in Remembrance of the Daleks. Also, unless explicitly stated, it's usually a fair bet that "contemporary"-set television programmes are meant to be happening right now.
b. In the About Time books, Tat Wood and Lawrence Miles make some fairly cogent arguments as to why An Unearthly Child probably doesn't take place in November 1963 as we all tend to imagine. However, Remembrance quite obviously takes place days, not weeks (at most) after One, Susan, Ian and Barbara depart the present, given that the French Revolution book is still on the table in Ian's classroom when Ace goes in there (and yes, I know the cover is different from the one in the original story, but just go with it). Plus the calendar in the café says November. So November it is. And we'll just ignore the fact that Remembrance seems to take place for the most part in reasonable sunshine and that it doesn't seem to get dark as early as you might expect at that time of year...
c. This raises the interesting thought that Coal Hill School's headmaster (played by the legendary Michael Sheard) was already either mind-controlled, or possibly replaced with a duplicate, by the Daleks at the time when Ian and Barbara were still working there. In fact, there was already a Dalek transmat terminal - and a Dalek! - in the school boiler room when they naively thought the weirdest thing going on around them was Susan not knowing about pounds, shillings and pence.
d. The first episode of An Unearthly Child takes place on a week night because it is mentioned that there is school the next day. The abandonment of the school in Remembrance even before the RAF take it over suggests that it's a weekend. But nobody's talking about JFK, whose assassination on Friday, November 22 you would expect to get a mention even in parochial early-60s Britain if it took place literally the previous day (or even the same day). So, pure guesswork, but if we want it to be taking place as close as possible to the day of the actual first transmission of Doctor Who, perhaps Remembrance takes place over the weekend of 30 November-1 December 1963, with An Unearthly Child taking place sometime the previous school week. Maybe Thursday 28 November, to cut down on the amount of time that book spent lying on that desk unattended. Alternatively, perhaps An Unearthly Child takes place in the school week 28 October - 1 November and Remembrance the week after, which could plausibly be the school's half term holiday when British schools have a week off. So people aren't talking about JFK's death because it hasn't happened yet.
e. Susan (An Unearthly Child): "I love your school. I loved England in the twentieth century. The last five months have been the happiest of my life." So, assuming the above is correct, at the time of Ian and Barbara's trip to the junk yard, the Doctor and his granddaughter have only been in 20th Century England since about May-June 1963 at the earliest, and she has probably only been at Coal Hill since the current term started in September. This doesn't rule out them having been on Earth longer than that, but in different eras (their first trip to the French Revolution, for instance?), although the Doctor's ability to control the TARDIS seems to be erratic even before Ian breaks it with his futile attempts at heroics. So the fic I did where they were in London a full year earlier at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis is right out, then.
So, that's one thing, then. Share any thoughts you may have in the comments below, and I may well be back at this in the near future with thoughts on some of the other 60s stories, and hopefully actually get to UNIT eventually. :)
Thank you for your patience!
Oh right, the other sort of UNIT dating?
So I've got my fic mojo back a little bit these past couple of weeks. Basically, re-watching The Web of Fear and The Invasion while in the right frame of mind has made me commit a bit of Brig fic (more to come soon). And doing that sort of leads me to consider the old UNIT dating conundrum. I know, I know, it's effectively insoluble (1980, Sarah Jane, really?!)and better Who minds than mine have been defeated utterly by it, but I was just musing about it and musing led to looking things up and, well, it kind of veered off UNIT dating into thinking about 1960s Doctor Who stories generally. So, yeah.
Warning for extreme fanw*nkiness below! ;)
First things first:
1. There is no hard and fast Doctor Who "canon". Even the new series has a tendency blithely to ignore things already established in previous stories when it thinks of something more fun to do later on. This is as it should be; we are not, after all, Trekkers (I kid!). However, I take the somewhat slippery position that television episodes come first and books, audios etc come second in order of (non)canonicity. Because then I can ignore those godawful John Peel Dalek novels from the EDA range.
2. a. An Unearthly Child (the episode, not the whole four-parter) definitely takes place in 1963, the same year it was broadcast. It's stated in dialogue by both Susan and Ian and confirmed again in Remembrance of the Daleks. Also, unless explicitly stated, it's usually a fair bet that "contemporary"-set television programmes are meant to be happening right now.
b. In the About Time books, Tat Wood and Lawrence Miles make some fairly cogent arguments as to why An Unearthly Child probably doesn't take place in November 1963 as we all tend to imagine. However, Remembrance quite obviously takes place days, not weeks (at most) after One, Susan, Ian and Barbara depart the present, given that the French Revolution book is still on the table in Ian's classroom when Ace goes in there (and yes, I know the cover is different from the one in the original story, but just go with it). Plus the calendar in the café says November. So November it is. And we'll just ignore the fact that Remembrance seems to take place for the most part in reasonable sunshine and that it doesn't seem to get dark as early as you might expect at that time of year...
c. This raises the interesting thought that Coal Hill School's headmaster (played by the legendary Michael Sheard) was already either mind-controlled, or possibly replaced with a duplicate, by the Daleks at the time when Ian and Barbara were still working there. In fact, there was already a Dalek transmat terminal - and a Dalek! - in the school boiler room when they naively thought the weirdest thing going on around them was Susan not knowing about pounds, shillings and pence.
d. The first episode of An Unearthly Child takes place on a week night because it is mentioned that there is school the next day. The abandonment of the school in Remembrance even before the RAF take it over suggests that it's a weekend. But nobody's talking about JFK, whose assassination on Friday, November 22 you would expect to get a mention even in parochial early-60s Britain if it took place literally the previous day (or even the same day). So, pure guesswork, but if we want it to be taking place as close as possible to the day of the actual first transmission of Doctor Who, perhaps Remembrance takes place over the weekend of 30 November-1 December 1963, with An Unearthly Child taking place sometime the previous school week. Maybe Thursday 28 November, to cut down on the amount of time that book spent lying on that desk unattended. Alternatively, perhaps An Unearthly Child takes place in the school week 28 October - 1 November and Remembrance the week after, which could plausibly be the school's half term holiday when British schools have a week off. So people aren't talking about JFK's death because it hasn't happened yet.
e. Susan (An Unearthly Child): "I love your school. I loved England in the twentieth century. The last five months have been the happiest of my life." So, assuming the above is correct, at the time of Ian and Barbara's trip to the junk yard, the Doctor and his granddaughter have only been in 20th Century England since about May-June 1963 at the earliest, and she has probably only been at Coal Hill since the current term started in September. This doesn't rule out them having been on Earth longer than that, but in different eras (their first trip to the French Revolution, for instance?), although the Doctor's ability to control the TARDIS seems to be erratic even before Ian breaks it with his futile attempts at heroics. So the fic I did where they were in London a full year earlier at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis is right out, then.
So, that's one thing, then. Share any thoughts you may have in the comments below, and I may well be back at this in the near future with thoughts on some of the other 60s stories, and hopefully actually get to UNIT eventually. :)
Thank you for your patience!
Benton/Yates 4evar
Date: 2014-10-22 01:06 am (UTC)I always think UNIT dating is way easier if we all pretend Mawdryn Undead didn't happen. Which it is a good one but I'd be willing to ignore it if only because it says Benton sells used cars which is clearly a lie of some sort.
Re: Benton/Yates 4evar
Date: 2014-10-22 07:04 pm (UTC)Which is the important thing we need to remember in all of this, I agree. ;)
I think that Mawdryn Undead is basically the one thing that stuffs it all up - if that didn't exist then there'd be no problem just assuming that everything takes place in some vaguely defined near future relative to whenever it happened to be broadcast. It kind of does exist, though, which is certainly a stumbling block.
And of course, even if Benton was trading used cars it was only as a cover for his real career as a suave international man of mystery. Clearly.