U.N.I.T. (tie-in website)

In April 2005 the BBC launched the U.N.I.T. website to coincide with the 2005 series of Doctor Who, one of several websites created at that time. While the website seems to have been bought by the BBC on 23 November 2004, the earliest archives of content on the site is from late April of 2005, around the premiere of TV: World War Three. On 20 April, the Doctor Who website added a link to the U.N.I.T. website, visible as "Alien Hotline", after the site updated to focus on World War Three.

The website contained a mix of narrative and non-narrative prose fiction, all told from an in-universe perspective, as if you were reading the very pages on the in-universe website itself. The website prominently featured many references to the original and early revival eras of Doctor Who. Currently, non-narrative information is treated as an invalid source on this Wiki, so sources from this website vary in validity.

UNIT History
This webpage gives an overview of the history of UNIT.

UNIT Press Releases
This webpage gives a list of press briefings released by UNIT to the public.

UNIT Conferences
The page announces a conference to be hosted by UNIT.

UNIT Publications
A list of new publications published by UNIT is given.

UNIT News
The news webpage reports on several topics.

Privacy Policy, Disclaimer and Terms of Use
This webpage acts as a disclaimer for UNIT.

Operations Board
On the website, there is a password entry point. There are three passwords, each with a different purpose.
 * "bison" is the password to enter the operations board
 * "badwolf" later replaced "bison", but it was eventually reverted back to "bison"
 * "buffalo" allows access to a missile launch page, with other links to other private UNIT information

The United Nations' Legal Actions
Notably, the disclaimer page had a direct link to the United Nations website, however, after the launch of the website, the real UN began to take legal action. They firstly faxed BBC lawyers, requesting the name to be changed, however the lawyers misinterpreted this as a hoax and they displayed the fax in a kitchen in pride. Their pride soon turned to panic when the UN threatened imprisonment under the Geneva Convention, and the main website editor at the time, James Goss, emailed Russell T Davies, fearing extradition. Script editor Helen Raynor quickly came up with the new name, the "UNified Intelligence Taskforce", and the disclaimer on the site was made more prominent at the behest of the UN. Thus, this was the catalyst for the name "United Nations Intelligence Taskforce" to be changed to the "Unified Intelligence Taskforce" in all later appearances.

On 13 November 2022, as part of a discussion about the incident on Twitter, Goss retrieved the first fax from an old hard drive, however the second fax that included the legal threat was lost.