Operation Mannequin (short story)

Operation Mannequin, also prefixed as Operations Board: Operation Mannequin on the story's page, was the seventh short story and eleventh release published exclusively on the U.N.I.T. website on 18 April 2005 by the BBC webteam. Operation Mannequin was the first release in the Operations Board series of in-universe chat logs between UNIT personnel, although it would later be ordered after the second story, Operation London.

This story tied into the television story Rose and was set concurrently with the short story UNIT's Position on The London Incident.

Plot
Just after midnight, in the first hour of 27 March 2005, Staff Sergeant A. Frederick reports on an operations board that the information-based clean-up of Operation Mannequin has been set up, finishing by asking how footage of the incident will be dealt with on the internet. About forty minutes later, Lt David Judd states that footage of the incident had been identified and measures have been put into place to corrupt any copy of the footage that is on the internet.

An hour later, Capt Panos Karpidas regretfully tells the other officers that debriefing of those affected, despite how careful UNIT had been, was not successful due to the staggering amount of widespread casualties. Karpidas hopes to contain the situation through manipulation of public information.

Four hours later, Sgt Catherine Petts writes about the cleaning of melted plastic off the streets, and puts forth a triage of casualties. About fifteen minutes later, Frederick shares the false theory she's trying to seed the press with, though she doubts anybody would actually accept the theory.

Characters

 * Staff Sergeant A. Frederick
 * Lt David Judd
 * Capt Panos Karpidas
 * Sgt Catherine Petts

Referenced only

 * The Consciousness

Continuity

 * The story is set directly after TV: Rose.
 * Communication over phones was largly impossible during the incident. (PROSE: Rose)
 * Radio transmissions can affect Autons. (TV: The Big Bang)