UNIT

UNIT is a fictional military organisation from the British science fiction television series Doctor Who and its spin-offs Torchwood, The Sarah Jane Adventures, and The War Between the Land and the Sea. Operating under the auspices of the United Nations and initially led by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, its purpose is to investigate and combat paranormal and extraterrestrial threats to Earth. Several UNIT personnel (such as the Brigadier, Sergeant Benton and Mike Yates) played a major role in the original Doctor Who series, and it was a regular feature from The Invasion (1968) until The Seeds of Doom (1976). The organization returned in the revived series, and has been led by Kate Lethbridge-Stewart since 2012.

Originally referred to as the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, it was revealed in 2005 that the real-life UN was no longer happy being associated with the fictional organisation and UNIT's full name could now no longer be used (the "UNIT" and "UN" abbreviations could be used as long as it was not explained what the letters stood for). The organisation was renamed to the Unified Intelligence Taskforce in 2008, with the name first being used in the episode "The Sontaran Stratagem." Despite the series now distancing itself from the real-life UN, dialogue in the episode, and several since, indicates that the in-world fictional version of the United Nations still supports UNIT.

Creation

In a 2014 interview, former script editor Terrance Dicks recalled that he was present at the "birth" of UNIT during the production of the 1968 Doctor Who serial The Invasion. He credited writer and script editor Derrick Sherwin and producer Peter Bryant as having come up with the idea beforehand, saying that they were testing the concept in The Invasion before it had become central to the show in the Doctor Who serial Spearhead from Space (1970). In a series of interviews originally recorded for the 2006 DVD of the Doctor Who serial Inferno (1970), actor Nicholas Courtney, who played Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart in The Invasion, similarly described The Invasion as a "dummy run" for the idea of the Doctor, the main protagonist of Doctor Who, being exiled to Earth. Dicks also said that the idea of exiling the Doctor was done because making every serial take place on Earth was cheaper to produce than if every serial had to have a new alien planet built, and that UNIT was an idea Sherwin had come up with to answer the question of what to do with the Doctor after he was exiled to Earth. Speaking in an interview on the 2012 DVD of the Doctor Who serial The Krotons (1968–69), Sherwin said that he wanted Doctor Who to be "down on Earth anyway, for credibility", and described UNIT as "the ideal vehicle" for this.