Talk:UNIT dating controversy

Although perhaps still fuelling the controversy, the website 'The Whoniverse' gives very good explanations for when it dates all [yes, all] onscreen stories, including those in the U.N.I.T. era. These [italicised explanations] could, maybe, be used if someone on The Doctor Who Wiki had the time and inclination to agree with the notes [User: Stripey].


 * just include a link under External Links. I know of two other very well-researched Whoniverse chronologies (AHistory and Timelink by Jon Preddle, neither admittedly as up-to-date), so why give precedence to that one? (actually I think Wikipedia has a good one, too.) --Stardizzy2 22:05, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Another page to denote a similar controversy...?
Although it obviously wouldn't be as extensive or as long as this page, does anyone else think there should be a page called "Aliens of London dating controversy" about the "year ahead" problem caused by "Aliens of London"? The page would explain how due to the Doctor mistakenly bringing Rose to 2006 instead of 2005, each episode was subseuently said to be set a year ahead of its broadcast. It would also detail contradicting given dates (such as Donna mentioning "You [The Doctor] saved us all in 2008!"). The page would end with the section "Apparent resolution" which would detail how the problem was offset due to the lack of a full series in 2009, allowing the 2009 Doctor Who Specials, The Sarah Jane Adventures Series 2, The Sarah Jane Adventures Series 3, Doctor Who Series 4 and Torchwood: Children of Earth to all be set in 2009 in the Whoniverse and allowing Series 5 of Doctor Who to become contemporary with our universe once more. Does anyone agree that this article would be needed? Bttsstewart 08:08, April 23, 2010 (UTC)

Sarah Jane
I removed a few words under "Major Evidence" with regards to the reference in Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane indicating Sarah was in her early 20s when she met the Doctor "rather than her late 20s" (removed text quoted. I do believe it actually supports an episode of either the Pertwee or Baker era. Does Sarah not give her age as 23 in one of those early stories? 23skidoo 20:03, 6 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I hear it said a lot (I haven't seen the story in a while), Sarah gives her age as 23 in Episode 1(?) of Invasion of the Dinosaurs. --Stardizzy2 22:02, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

== Okay, until someone actually makes it possible for ANYONE to edit(as the hollow claim er claims) this will be the longest "topic" ever. In "Carnival of Monsters"Jo says they have gone 40 years back in time to 1926. The obvious explanation is that The ==



hmmmmm


there was a (non-televised) adventure between "The Three Doctors" and "Carnival of Monsters" set in c1966.


The controversy isn't the UNIT dating
I have rewatched some Davison Who, and it is obvious what is going on. :) There IS a way that Pyramids of Mars and Mawdryn Undead can both be right, but it will create a permanent rift between Classic and New Who. Here goes...

In an early appearance Sarah states that she is "23 years old"(anyone have the exact quote/ep?). Then, shortly afterwards, in Pyramids she is "From 1980". Thus she can't realistically be born before 1955, as that is at the beginning of her THIRD season. And seasons 12 and 13 take place over a short period of time. More like 1956.

In Terror of the Zygons the Brigadier is very much working for UNIT when there is a female PM(Mrs Thatcher), placing it about 1980. In fact two stories later is Pyrmaids, where Sarah states that she's from 1980. This all fits together.

However, the NEW series states that the Sarah was born in 1951!

Likewise, Mawdryn Undead states that the Brigadier retired in 1976!

However, the New Series makes this possible by stating that UNIT was formed in the 60's. Even though the Classic series states it was formed in in the 70's.

But here's something interesting. We meet Turlough when he is a student the Brig is teaching at. However, just a few episodes later (The Five Doctors of course) the Brigadier sees Turlough and...nothing. The Brigadier recognises Sarah easily enough, despite not having seen her for years (AND having suffered memory loss BEFORE meeting Turlough!)

A common explanation for Mawdryn Undead is that it is set in a parallel universe. We know that the TARDIS can travel to parallel universes(eg. Inferno). Id we accept this, then EVERYTHING becomes crystal clear.

The Classic Series and the New Series are set in parallel universes!

In the Classic Series, UNIT was formed in the 70's. In 1980 the Brig was visiting Scotland to investigate the Loch Ness Monster. Sarah was born c1956 and was travelling with the The Fourth Doctor.

The Doctor then travelled to a parallel universe c1983 where he met the parallel universe Brigadier, who retired from UNIT in 1976(and this UNIT had been formed in the 60's). He took Turlough with him.

When the Doctor returned to the Prime Classic Universe this Brigadier obviously didn't recognise Turlough, as he'd never met him before. The Classic Series is mostly set in this universe.

Beginning with Rose, the New Series is set in the Mawdryn Undead Universe where UNIT was formed in the 60's the Brig retired in 1976, and Sarah was born in 1951.

Other examples:

In the Classic Universe the Doctor had recently turned 953 when he regenrated into his seventh incarnation. In the Mawdryn/New Universe his ninth incarnation was still 900(and don't give me that "he doesn't know" crap! Of course he does. He has a symbiotic relationship with the TARDIS, and he can only ever return to Gallifrey in his "present".)

The opposing Cybermen origin stories.

The opposing "End of the Earth" stories The Ark versus The End of the World

Where were Torchwood while the Doctor was working for UNIT?

In Mawdryn Undead the Alt Universe Brigadier states that UNIT is a "top secret" organisation. This fits in with Torchwood's cluelessness of the Doctor being on Earth at the time.... However in Seasons 7-13 of the Classic Series pretty much everyone knew and spoke about UNIT.

In Mawdryn Undead the Brigadier states he has seen the Doctor regenerate twice before. In the Classic Prime Universe, he only saw the Doctor regenerate once.

The VERY different Classic Prime Universe and Mawdryn/New Universe Silurians.

Therefore, it's not a UNIT dating controversy. It's simply two parallel worlds. Davies and Moffat have created an entire New Series(plus spin-offs) set in the Parallel Universe first introduced in Mawdryn Undead. 41.132.116.62talk to me 18:04, June 24, 2012 (UTC)


 * Another glitch. If you look at "K9 & Company -- A Girl's Best Friend", the episode states that the Doctor left K9 for Sarah in 1978 and that it is currently Dec 1981. -- Faithful Companion

And then Battlefield is set in 1997. Zbrigniev states that he served in UNIT under Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. However, if the Brig had indeed retired in 1976(ie. 21 years before) how old would Zbrigniev have been when he was a UNIT soldier? Doesn't add up, does it?

Other Ideas
Maybe when Travers said 'The Abominable Snowman' happened 40 years ago he was wrong. He was an old man and could have gotten the dates wrong. Similarly characters could simply slip up when talking, making mistakes with dates.

But there were other people there, and no one corrected him. The Daily Mail ran interviews with Sherwin and Pertwee and they both stated "the 1980's". Certainly Season 7 could not possibly have been set in 1969, 1970 or 1975. Remember in 1969 NASA announced that after the Moon Landing they were planning on sending a man to Mars in the early 80's, and everyone believed it. Likewise, the novelisation of the Sea Devils(a 1972 serial) refers to 1977 as "years ago". The BBC had been planning to set up BBC3 in the late 70's. So everything pointed to "1980's". The two errors were Sarah stating "1980" rather than "the 1980's" and of course Mawdryn Undead. But Pyramids of Mars and Mawdryn Undead were both made after "The UNIT Years". Pyramids was made when UNIT were rapidly fading into the background, while Mawdryn was made many years later. And both were made by totally different production teams to the people who created UNIT. So should you believe the people who created UNIT, explicitly stated the dates both on-screen and off-screen, deliberately made things look "futuristic"....or do you believe ONE story made many years later by different people, who later admitted that they'd made a cock-up?

Has anyone considered what Adric said in "the Keeper of Traken"? He is reading the Doctor's old time Logs. "Well, look, I read about something that's just happened." The Doctor: And? Adric: Well, the next page says it didn't happen at all. The Doctor: So? Adric: Over this page it says it did happen, but many years ago. The Doctor: Ah, yes. Well, I suppose it is a bit above your head.

And to Sarah Jane "That can't be. I'm from 1980!" and the Doctor replies "for every moment of time, there is an alternate. You've been to alternate time."

They work together. Mawdryn undead simply refers to an incident like "The Two Doctors", where the second Doctor gets chosen by the Timelords to stop something and states to the 6th that he has "earned certain privileges" and that they are bound to bump into each other "in future and in past" in complete contradiction to the laws of the Timelords. Matt Smith in "The wedding of River Song" "crossing my own timestream. Best not." This is no different than what Adric saw and what the Doctor calls "the Time Web". Many different possibilities intersecting. One timeline meeting others. mawdryn Undead is simply from a different timeline - let's just say it's the same timeline as "The Two Doctors" and write them both off as fun adventures from elsewhen.

(Please sign posts.) And another explanation: ask the Ninth Doctor about the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire before "The Long Game", and then ask him about it afterwards. Details of varying significance can easily be changed by random interference in the time stream, whether intentional or not. The Brigadier may have chosen to retire in a different year because of one event or another that either did or didn't happen as a result of another event that either did or didn't happen because of yadda yadda yadda after a temporal anomaly from the Doctor defeating a time-traveling enemy or something. Time is in flux, the past can be changed out of order, and one can have memories of multiple timelines, even if only one if any are correct anymore (ask post-"Big Bang" Amy). —BioniclesaurKing4t2 - "Hello, I'm the Doctor. Basically, . . . run." 03:48, June 23, 2013 (UTC)

That has always been my theory, BioniclesaurKing4t2. It's a show about the Doctor, and others, traveling through time why is it so hard to believe that the dates things happen could change as he did other stuff in the past? GrimmShadows ☎  02:46, September 17, 2014 (UTC)

Battlefield
Is Battlefield and how much older Courtney looks in an already post-retirement story really relevant to dating what I assume is mainly the 1969-1975 era? -- Tybort (talk page) 16:16, October 2, 2013 (UTC)

Has nobody considered this theory

 * Because it's flatly impossible to have the Brigadier retiring before he's even become the Brigadier

Unless he had a very good friend with a magic blue box that can travel through time.


 * When? When would he have travelled back in time with the Third or Fourth Doctors? And it's not like he travelled to the Victorian era or retired on another planet. The discrepancy is about 5-10 years, well within the Brigadier's original lifespan if he were originally from the late 1970s-early 1980s. And he's living in England as well. And how would he be retired when his birth certificate and service record wouldn't have changed? He still has the same name and history with UNIT, right, despite them ostensibly have happened while he was teaching maths? And did Benton take the same kind of trip when he became a used car salesman? -- Tybort (talk page) 15:00, February 22, 2014 (UTC)

Sources section
I'm not sure, seeing as this is a real-world page, but considering that the problem is related to narrative issues, I'm gathering that T:CITE DEF and the whole "a citation means that you know — because you've actually checked — that the fact appears in that story" applies here? Why are About Time and A History of the Universe linked to at the bottom of the page under a "sources" header? Nothing regarding information related to production notes, deleted scenes and lines in the original shooting scripts cite these resources, while A History of the Universe appears to be Lance Parkin's speculative "history of the DWU", which really only belongs in the theory index. -- Tybort (talk page) 15:47, February 22, 2014 (UTC)

The Dating Protocol
I have an idea that possibly solves some of the Dating problems! It came to me when Kate Stewart mentioned the old files of her father in THE DAY OF THE DOCTOR and where to find them with the "Dating protocol". It reminded me on Kurt Vonnegut's novel "Timequake" (1997), where a phenomenon with the same name happend, that turned the whole Universe back 10 years in the past. All its Residents where forced to repeat themselves, they had to do exactly as they did in the first place. Vonnegut also spoke about the problems of dating the events. For example: If the Timequake take place now (in 2015) and turns us back to 2005, and you repeat your life for another two years, would you count the year as 2007 again or as 2017?

I don't want do emply it would be the same in the case of the UNIT dating controversy, but maybe it's something simular! Maybe it's possible that something happend that only the Doctor and some of the UNIT staff could remember!

The other possibility for this protocol could be, that UNIT just mixed up their dates for reasons of secrecy or to prevent possible timetravellers on altering specific events! 194.118.52.9talk to me 14:24, September 6, 2015 (UTC)

"The Enfolded Time"
The opening story, "The Enfolded Time", in The HAVOC Files limited-edition anthology, gives an in-universe explanation (albeit a rather sketchy one) for the dating inconsistencies & for the need to have differing dating protocols.

Because "The Enfolded Time" hasn't been published anywhere else & there are only 300 copies of The HAVOC Files, the story may not be very accessible. Nevertheless, the story is worthy of an article of its own & ought to be referred to in this article. --89.241.219.216talk to me 21:46, April 25, 2016 (UTC)

Corrected story title. --89.241.219.216talk to me 02:09, April 26, 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't think accessibility need play a role in deciding whether anything is worthy. This wiki references comic strips, newspaper-published short stories, and online stories that in some cases have been inaccessible to most people for decades. Just as long as they meet the DWU inclusion rules set out in the policies pretty much anything "official" (BBC-licensed or creator-licensed) is fair game even if only a few copies, for now, exist. 23skidoo ☎  13:45, November 14, 2016 (UTC)

Class
There should be some mention made of Class here (which does have connection to UNIT as UNIT's been referenced a few times in the spin-off). The Series 8 episode "In the Forest of the Night" states that that episode takes place in 2016 (which makes sense as there is dialogue in "The Caretaker" indicating that Clara and Danny have known each other for at least a full school year by that point, even though they meet for the first time in "Into the Dalek"). Working from there, "Last Christmas" could only have taken place in 2016 if not later, and then we have all the events of Series 9 before Clara's death, so she couldn't have died earlier than 2017. Yet the first season of Class has had several direct references to taking place in 2016, but after Clara's death. I think that's a legitimate enough conundrum to be included in the "Other" section. And since the show is making at least a peripheral connection to UNIT (I stopped watching the show after the first couple episodes but a character was trying to hack UNIT in one of them) I think it's worth noting. 23skidoo ☎  13:41, November 14, 2016 (UTC)

The Ripple Effect
My resolution of the controversy comes from how I resolve NuWho canon contradicting Classic Who: the Time War.

It's established in the Big Finish Time War audios how the TW affects all of time, chopping, changing, rewriting. Throw into the mix the Master activating the Heavenly Paradigm and it's not a big stretch to imagine that time before the Time War became so convoluted that only after the war ended in relative time did time settle down. Except the damage was done enough for new relative time to rewrite the old time (pre-Time War), which allows NuWho canon to supersede Classic Who.

So, if the Time War managed to distort time so heavily as to reset a huge amount of canon that was established before (e.g. How 2018 is supposed to look, widespread usage of 4:3 video screens in Classic Who instead of 16:9), then it's not too far a stretch to consider that time might also not have completely healed itself, allowing different versions of the same timeline to exist or to have existed. Consider the Daleks, for instance. Though their history was massively rewritten by Genesis, one thing about it has always bugged me: vertical slats on the midriffs. The Daleks in The Dead Planet did not have them, yet the Genesis Daleks did. Could it be that this is a ripple effect caused by the distortion of time?

In that case, the UNIT dating controversy could be resolved by the constant rewriting of time caused by the Time War. The events happened, yet did not happen, e.g. the Brigadier was able to retire at the point he did because time had been shuffled about so much.