British Rocket Group



The British Rocket Group was a scientific think-tank advising on space matters and the United Kingdom's official space agency.

20th century
The group was formed in the early 1950s, initially as a private group, with its first rocket in 1953. (WEB: Guinevere One: About the British Rocket Group) During this decade, Rocket Group ran rocket launches with such controversial results that some scientists decided to leave or to retire early. (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy) Several of their staff were former Nazi scientists, with Heinrich Shumann being a former war criminal; everyone at the Group suspected the truth but the organisation officially denied it. (AUDIO: ''Threshold (audio story))

Rachel Jensen worked there some time before 1963, before being drafted as the scientific advisor to the Intrusion Countermeasures Group. In the British Rocket Group, she had worked under "Bernard". (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)

Using International Electromatics technology and now re-christened the British Space Centre, Professor Ralph Cornish took over the organisation, based at this time in Hertfordshire. The Space Centre co-ordinated the Mars Probes launched by Great Britain. (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy) It would revert to its original name after this.

During the 1970s, it worked closely with the Space Security Department and shared their offices at London's Space Centre. (WEB: Guinevere One: About the British Rocket Group) However, the British space programme came to a brutal end when Mars Probe 13 was attacked by the Argyre Clan of Ice Warriors. (PROSE: The Dying Days)

During the 1980s and 1990s, with the space programme over and the Security Department closed down, the British Rocket Group again became a small private venture. The Group moved to Harrogate and concentrated on developing new tools for the analysis of metreorites, as well as setting up a linked chain of orbital satellites for deep space observation. (WEB: Guinevere One: About the British Rocket Group) In 1997 it was reborn as a powerful government agency with the creation of the Mars 97 mission, but this was part of an Argyre Clan/Lord Greyhaven plot and the mission was wiped out. (PROSE: The Dying Days)

21st century
The British Rocket Group remained, however. By 2001 it hired Professor Daniel Llewellyn to oversee a new series of space probes. The Guinevere One Mars probe project began in 1 August 2003 (WEB: Guinevere One: Daniel Llewellyn) and was launched on 31 October 2006. This occurred during the administration of Prime Minister Harriet Jones. (TV: The Christmas Invasion)

Some time in the early to mid 21st century, the Group was bought by space tourism billionaire Campbell Irons. (AUDIO: The Feast of Axos)

Later in the 21st century, British astronauts would be part of NASA rather than the British Rocket Group. (TV: The Waters of Mars)

Behind the scenes

 * The British Rocket Group originated not on Doctor Who but in the BBC's 1950s horror-science fiction television serials featuring Bernard Quatermass. The first Quatermass serial, The Quatermass Experiment, featured the grotesque transformation of a British astronaut as a dangerous alien organism took over his body. This would explain why a number of the scientists involved would have opted for an early retirement. The first (and only, in televised terms) references to the British Rocket Group (and of "Bernard") occurred as an in-joke in Remembrance of the Daleks. Given the nature of the joke and the manner in which it was made, it appeared to have been a cultural reference by the characters to a television serial, not to an actual organisation which they believed to exist.
 * In The Christmas Invasion, the British Rocket Group does not get a direct mention, but in-universe websites did so.