Background (DWPM 7 short story)
- You may be looking for the DWPM8 short story.
Background was the first of the two short stories in DWPM 7 which tied in with Remembrance of the Daleks. Written by Alan Barnes, it gave an overview of the interference of extraterrestrial life and the United Kingdom in the mid-20th century leading up to the Shoreditch Incident.
As such, it included references to numerous other Doctor Who stories, as well as to Quatermass (referenced more discreetly in the TV story). It also elaborated on another minor reference in the TV story, the nod to an in-universe Doctor Who TV series.
Summary
The 20th century is "the dawn of a new age" of contact between Mankind and the stars. In 1953, the British Rocket Group send out an experimental three-man mission into space, of whom only one man returns, quickly mutating into an alien organism. Tracked to London by the B.R.G.'s director, the creature is caught on TV by the BBC; however, the Home Secretary covers up the incident by making a public broadcast insisting that the televised footage was a realistic science-fiction programme, not footage of real events. This inspires the BBC to intentionally create a science-fiction programme, eventually resulting in the premier of a long-running sci-fi TV series (occasionally based on real events) in November 1963.
Subsequently, government agencies shine a new light on scattered reports of strange events from previous years, including events in Tibet in 1935 involving Robot Yeti (reported by "a certain Professor Travers" to the War Department) and at a top-secret cypher centre in 1943. At the height of the Cold War, in 1955, an out-and-out alien invasion attempt was observed at an Essex refienry, with the British Rocket Group again proving instrumental to saving the day discreetly. Things become so tense that a secret agreement is brokered between the East and West superpowers should a large-scale alien invasion be attempted.
As 1963 approaches, the climate becomes ever more unmanageable, with the discovery of a mysterious skull in Knightsbridge in Christmas 1958 causing "mass panic", and the CIA receiving reports of aliens in Wales from their agents Hawk and Weismuller.
Characters
Worldbuilding
- The passing off of the British Rocket Group's defeat of an alien as misinterpreted fiction is intentionally patterned after a 1938 incident involving a Orson Welles audio play causing such panic in the United States of America.
Notes
- The events involving the British Rocket Group are those of the two first BBC Quatermass serials, The Quatermass Experiment and Quantermass II. The dates given for the events are 1953 and 1955; these were the dates of broadcast, but, interestingly, the actual serials were implied to take place in the near future, similar to the Jon Pertwee Doctor Who era's UNIT stories. The allusion to the events of Quatermass II places its events at a refinery in Essex; although Essex was the main filming location, it was not identified as such in the serials themselves.
Continuity
- The British Rocket Group and a TV series which debuted in November 1963 on the BBC are both discussed. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)
- Professor Travers returned to London in 1935 from Tibet, with blurry photographs of Robot Yeti and a live specimen (forwarding all of these to the War Department). (TV: The Abominable Snowmen)
- A top-secret cypher facility fell victim to "an incident" in 1943 Northumbria. (TV: The Curse of Fenric)
- A five-million-year-old skull was discovered in Knightsbridge in 1955 and sparked mass panic. (TV: Image of the Fendahl)
- CIA agents Hawk and Weismuller observed UFOs in Wales in 1958, including one disguised as a bus. (TV: Delta and the Bannermen)
