London Event
The London Event was the later official name for the takeover of London and its underground rail system by robot Yeti controlled by the Great Intelligence. (PROSE: Downtime) There were multiple accounts as to when it happened. It either took place in August 1966, (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy) 1968, (PROSE: Downtime, Revolution Man, HOMEVID: Global Conspiracy?) February 1969, (PROSE: The Forgotten Son) or March 1975. (PROSE: The Enfolded Time)
It was a fixed point in time. (PROSE: Home Fires Burn)
History
The event began with mist across London, causing a rash of disappearances; central London was evacuated and cordoned off. Two days later, a web-like fungus infected the Underground, causing that to be closed off. Two days after that, the Yeti began cutting telephone lines.
The British Army, from a command hub based in a Second World War transit camp at Goodge Street tube station, tried to hold back fungus and Yeti.
Three weeks after the British Army established their command base in the Underground, the Intelligence brought the Second Doctor's TARDIS to London after ensnaring it in space. (TV: The Web of Fear) Ramón Salamander was caught in the temporal wake of the TARDIS and brought to London as well. (COMIC: The Heralds of Destruction)
The arrival of the Doctor also saw an engagement of troops at Holborn, a sustained attempt by the Intelligence to cut off the transit camp, and the arrival of the new commander Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart.
An army operation followed with the intent to retrieve the Second Doctor's TARDIS from the web fungus in the London Underground. Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart and seven other soldiers were ambushed by Yeti at Covent Garden as they attempted to reach the TARDIS from the surface. Although they managed to destroy a number of the robots, the soldiers were vastly outnumbered and soon ran out of ammunition. Only Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart, having lost all seven of his men, including Corporal Blake, made it back to HQ following the engagement. (TV: The Web of Fear)
Following this engagement the Doctor was able to sever the Intelligence's connection to Earth, but almost the entire Army platoon was wiped out in the operation. (TV: The Web of Fear)
Aftermath
The cover story for the event was that there had been a major nerve gas leak. While the government claimed this had been an industrial accident, journalist James Stevens later reported it was more likely an attack by an undisclosed foreign power. (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy)
The London Event directly led to the creation of UNIT, (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy, TV: The Invasion) after a meeting was held between Lethbridge-Stewart and Air Vice-Marshall Ian Gilmore. (PROSE: The Scales of Injustice, The Dogs of War)
A battered cardboard file containing a full Ministry of Defence report on the London Event was discovered by Sergeant Beagles in the security vault at UNIT H.Q. Being pre-UNIT, the report was not known to exist except on hard copy. Brigadier Crichton had hoped the file would be of help during the Great Intelligence's fourth attempted invasion of Earth in 1995. However, before the information contained therein could be acted upon, the file was stolen by Captain Cavendish. (PROSE: Downtime)
New Jupiter had some knowledge of the attack, with replica Yeti walking around the EarthWorld museum's Twentieth Century Zone. (PROSE: Earthworld)
