UNIT's Position on The London Incident (short story)

UNIT’s Position on The London Incident
Main character(s):	Staff Sergeant A. Frederick
Main setting:	England, March 2005
Key crew
Publisher:	BBC
Writer:	BBC webteam
Release details
Genre:	Science fiction
Release date:	18 April 2005
Website:	U.N.I.T.
Format:	Online short story
U.N.I.T. website fiction
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UNIT's Position on The London Incident, prefixed as PRESS STATEMENT: UNIT’s Position on The London Incident on the story's page, was the sixth short story exclusively published on the U.N.I.T. website on 18 April 2005 by the BBC webteam. UNIT's Position on The London Incident was the fifth release in the UNIT Press Briefings series of in-universe press briefings.

UNIT's Position on The London Incident was the first story in the UNIT Press Briefings series to correspond with a television story — Rose — however it was released around a month after. It was also set concurrently with Operation Mannequin. Notably, the page of the press briefing was seen in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it montage shot of websites that the Tenth Doctor scrolled past while searching for H.C. Clements in The Runaway Bride.

Plot

In an embargoed press briefing following the London Incident, set to be released at 08:00 on 28 March 2005, filed by UNIT Staff Sergeant A. Frederick, asserts that the danger, whilst undeniably a threat to national security, is not in fact proof of alien life; while the briefing does not say outright what the threat was, refusing to indulge in the allegations that the threat "[were] disguised members of a terrorist coalition, or specially modified robots under remote-control by an unconventional aggressor", he explains that teams across London have confirmed that there was nothing unusual found at the sites of attack, and that the combatants' compositions consisted of entirely normal plastic.

Characters

• Staff Sergeant A. Frederick

Worldbuilding

• The London Incident took place on 26 March 2005.

Notes

• Unlike other accounts that dated the Auton invasion to 5 March 2005, this story instead dates the invasion to the air date of Rose, 26 March, twenty-one days later. This date is also reiterated in the short story Dummy Massacre released on the Who is Doctor Who? website.
• Combatants is misspelt "combatanats".

Continuity

• The incident apparently involved terrorists. (AUDIO: One Rule)
• The incident took place in March. (TV: Aliens of London)

External links

• UNIT’s Position on The London Incident at U.N.I.T. via the Wayback Machine