Number 17 sees us reach the debut of UNIT - the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, as was.
The Invasion is a sequel of sorts to The Web of Fear, which was a sequel proper to The Abominable Snowmen.
Certain dates and timescales are mentioned in these three stories. Add in the thoughts of certain production teams, and this led many to believe that all UNIT stories were set in the "near future" - five to ten years or so on from the broadcast date. This was seemingly confirmed in some later stories - but then totally demolished by a single Peter Davison story. It would take a spin-off from the revived series to finally sort this mess out...
First things first - we are ignoring dates given in Radio Times and other press releases. These are unreliable (Earth having a colony on Vulcan in 2020 for instance). Only what is shown or said on screen counts from this point on.
The Abominable Snowmen does not have any year mentioned in its dialogue, except to say that the Doctor's first visit to Det-sen was in 1630, and that was 300 years ago. It would be wrong to take this literally and assume a date of 1930, as people round up or down when talking in terms of such large figures as centuries.
Being set in the wilds of Tibet, there is no technology evident to help date it. Travers is the only Westerner. He carries a rifle, a weapon whose design remained unchanged for decades, and his clothing could date from anywhere in the first half of the 20th Century. Things aren't helped by the fact that he wears his heavy coat most of the time and we don't get a close look at the rest of his outfit, which might have helped.
It is in the first episode of The Web of Fear, when Travers is reunited with Jamie and Victoria, that we are told that the Tibet incident was in 1935. Travers has to think for a bit and then claims that was "over forty years ago". That would place the story around 1975.
How reliable is the dating in The Web of Fear? Julius Silverstein twice states that the Yeti has been in his museum for 30 years, since Travers sold it to him. Did Travers really hang on to it for a whole decade before letting it go?
The Doctor tells Victoria that Underground trains come from after her time, yet the Metropolitan Railway opened in January 1863, between Paddington and Farringdon Street. Even if she had never set foot on it, Victoria would have known about this from newspaper reports or from her scientist father, and she did not join the TARDIS until three years later.
It is Travers' daughter Anne who actually gives the year of Tibet as 1935, and her dad is now an old man, under considerable stress. He could well have meant 30 years, tying in with what Silverstein says, rather than 40 since last meeting Jamie and Victoria.
There is one very obvious problem with the second Yeti story being set in 1975. We see it in every episode. The Victoria Line does not appear on the illuminated map in the Goodge Street fortress - yet it was opened to the public in 1969. The map matches the date of broadcast (1968), but not any near-future setting.
The Invasion sees the return of Lethbridge Stewart, now leading UNIT. Of the Yeti incident he says: "Must be four years ago now". The wording has a certain vagueness about it. He doesn't categorically state that it was four years ago. It may have occurred only three and a bit years ago, and he's rounding up. If we take the last story to be set in 1975 then Tobias Vaughn is helping the Cybermen in 1978/9.
If only 1968 then it is now 1971/2. Something else to bear in mind here is that Mondas does not turn up until December 1986, and no-one seems to know anything about Cybermen before then - so neither of these dates fits with Cyber-history as it was known at the time.
We get to see a lot more of the locations for The Invasion, and all the vehicles have registration plates dating them to 1969/70.
All of the Pertwee UNIT stories have this problem. Car registrations, fashions (especially Jo Grant's) and shop prices, pre- and post-decimalisation, are all firmly in the late 1960's / early-1970's.
In Spearhead From Space, the Brigadier talks of seeing the Doctor last in terms of months rather than years, so this doesn't push the dates on too much.
One very big thing which doesn't fit a near broadcast date - but does a near future one - is the state of British space exploration, as seen in The Ambassadors of Death (and again in The Android Invasion).
We learn that there have been at least two manned visits to Mars by the UK space agency, and a deep space mission has been to the vicinity of Jupiter. However, later stories will maintain that the first Moon landing did take place in July 1969 (e.g. Blink, The Day of the Moon), and no-one gets to Mars until 2059 (The Waters of Mars).
Space travel isn't the only divergence from the audience's time-line. Aliens of London / World War Three is set in 10 Downing Street, and we see photographic portraits of all the most recent British Prime Minister, including James Callaghan and Edward Heath - yet The Green Death features a PM named Jeremy, and Terror of the Zygons has a female PM four years before Mrs Thatcher.
The near future thing rose its head again with Pyramids of Mars. The Doctor has taken the TARDIS to 1980 - he claims - but it is the 1980 which will happen if they don't stop Sutekh's return in 1911. The TARDIS has only ever once been shown to land in an alternative future, and that was in The Space Museum when a component failed. (Inferno involved a totally different universe).
Sarah says that she is from 1980, but this doesn't necessarily mean that this is the current year for her. The Doctor told her that they were in 1980, and she simply identified this as her general time zone.
Fans could argue about dates - broadcast or near future - as much as they liked, but then Mawdryn Undead came along. Despite fan adviser Ian Levine's advice to avoid this, to establish one of the two time periods in this story they opted for the late Queen's Silver Jubilee, which fell in 1977.
This stated, categorically, that the Brigadier had retired from UNIT that year. Benton and Harry Sullivan had also left the organisation by 1977.
The only way this could fit what had gone before was to maintain the broadcast date theory, ignoring Travers in favour of Silverstein and rounding down some of the timescales such as the "must be four years..." between Yeti and Cybermen for the Brigadier.
Confirmation that all the UNIT stories take place in the year as broadcast came, finally, with The Sarah Jane Adventures.
The story Whatever Happened To Sarah Jane Smith? gives her date of birth as 1951, as she is 13 years old in 1964. The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith later confirms her birth year as 1951.
In Invasion of the Dinosaurs she gives her age as 23, so it must be set in 1974. The Liz Shaw and Jo Grant stories must therefore predate that year, as must the Troughton Yeti stories.
And before you dismiss SJA for its spin-off status, remember that the Doctor appeared twice in the series, and Sarah and her son Luke appeared twice in the parent programme. In Death of the Doctor Jo Jones (nee Grant) features, and the Shansheeth harness her and Sarah's memories - which are all scenes from classic series stories, including UNIT ones.
SJA's canonicity is rock solid - and draws a line under the UNIT Dating Controversy.
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