Republic of Great Britain

Republic of Great Britain
Type:	Nation
Location:	Earth, Inferno universe
First appearance:	Inferno
Appearances:	PROSE: Inferno PROSE: The Face of the Enemy PROSE: Still Lives PROSE: The Schizoid Earth PROSE: I, Alastair

Parallel counterparts ofGreat Britain

The Republic of Great Britain was an alternative Great Britain which existed in one parallel universe.

History

The origins of the British Republic stretch back to 1936 and the outpouring of grief over the assassination of Oswald Mosley. A prominent associate of Mosley assumed his title of "the Leader" and accused the government of orchestrating the assassination, rallying most of the British public behind his cause. When the democratic regime collapsed in 1943 the list of conspirators in the Mosley assassination had grown to include the Royal Family, who were subsequently executed along with many other members of the establishment and Great Britain was declared a Republic. (PROSE: I, Alastair) According to one account, the Leader was the parallel counterpart of the Doctor. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Revelation)

World War II never occurred as Adolf Hitler had been killed in a military coup in 1938, (PROSE: I, Alastair) leaving Europe free to be divided up between Great Britain and Russia. A cordial relationship between the two powers saw both sides share their most advanced technology with each other, especially military technology. The British armed forces adopted licence-made variants of the Russian Kalashnikov and SKS rifles, (PROSE: The Face of the Enemy) a copy of the PPSh-41 submachine gun as well as copies of Russian amphibious vehicles such as the BTR-60. (PROSE: The Schizoid Earth)

The Leader's regime discriminated against people who were not white Christians and enacted strict cultural policies such as banning jazz music from British radio and television, (PROSE: I, Alastair) although rock and roll and country music proved too popular to repress entirely and were tolerated. (PROSE: The Face of the Enemy, The Schizoid Earth)

The Republic maintained its own version of UNIT called the Republican Security Forces. The RSF fought a number of alien menaces, including a group of Bannermen who had landed in Wales in 1959, as they had in the primary universe; as well as the Great Intelligence and the Yeti, with the assistance of this universe's version of the Master, still known as Koschei.

The Security Directorate killed his colleague Ailla and the Vault confiscated his badly damaged TARDIS. Koschei was then imprisoned at Copernicus Moon Base.

With the aid of video surveillance recordings taken when the Third Doctor arrived in their reality at the Inferno Project at Eastchester, the Conclave realised that the remains of Koschei's TARDIS could offer them the means to escape their dead world and take over the other universe's Earth by impersonating their counterparts. Koschei, still grieving over Ailla's death, refused to help them, so the Security Directorate forced him to give up the information through torture, causing Koschei to use up his remaining regenerations during the interrogations. After meeting his counterpart from a parallel universe, he begged for death. His counterpart duly complied by disconnecting his life-support systems. (PROSE: The Face of the Enemy)

Behind the scenes

• Many of the government's actions and policies draw inspiration from real-world historical figures and events.
  • The Leader's irritability and tendency to manipulate members of his cabinet is inspired by Joseph Stalin.
  • The regime's paranoia about the threat of military coup is reminiscent of Papa Doc Duvalier's fears.
  • The deportation of non-white people from Great Britain to other territories of the British Empire alludes to "separate development" in South Africa.
  • The regime's distaste for jazz music while government employees hypocritically enjoy it in private is inspired by Benito Mussolini.
  • The execution of the Royal Family is deliberately reminiscent of the killing of Tsar Nicholas and his family in 1918 on the orders of Vladimir Lenin.
  • The regime's strong support for women's rights is inspired by the views of Oswald Mosley, Mao Tse-Tung, and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
  • Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart's "arranging" the death of the Leader in order to usurp power himself alludes to conspiracy theories alleging the complicity of Lyndon Johnson in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
  • The government's mythologisation of Oswald Mosley as a martyr references the posthumous cults of personality built around assassinated figures such as Corneliu Codreanu, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, and Horst Wessel.
  • The dictator simply being known as "the Leader" is reminiscent of such titles as "Führer", "Duce", and "Caudillo", which were used by Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Francisco Franco respectively. The title of "Vozhd" was also often used to refer to Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin in Soviet propaganda. Such titles represented the equivalent of "leader" in their respective languages.