Summary
- Doctor Who
showrunner Russell T Davies explains how the Doctor has forbidden UNIT from time travel experiments. - UNIT’s latest time travel innovation sheds light on previously unexplored historical research.
- The Time Window chamber offers a unique way to look into the past without physically traveling through time.
Russell T Davies explains how UNIT’s latest attempt at crafting their form of time travel via the Time Window fits into the organization’s long-running Doctor Who history. Debuting during the Second Doctor’s (Patrick Troughton) era, UNIT has safeguarded the Earth from extraterrestrial threat since 1958 and is currently headed by Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (Jemma Redgrave) from their London skyscraper HQ. After a brief appearance in “73 Yards'” alternate timeline, the organization returned in “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” as Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor and Millie Gibson’s Ruby Sunday use the Time Window to glimpse at the night of Ruby’s abandonment.
Recently, Davies broke down UNIT’s latest scientific advancement to Doctor Who: Unleashed, shining a light on an unexplored area of the organization’s research. While UNIT has rarely engaged in mastering time travel, the showrunner revealed that the Doctor had forbade them from carrying out any experiments regarding science during the organization’s early days in the show. Check out Davies’ explanation below:
“The Time Window chamber is a great device that UNIT has had secretly hidden away. We’ve never seen UNIT traveling in time. It’s funny, they’ve never invested in it, and we realized through a bit of dialogue that the Doctor’s always forbidden them. It’s a means of looking into the past without traveling there by TARDIS. For the Doctor, it’s kind of crude.”
UNIT’s Brief History With Time Travel Explained
This Goes All The Way Back To The Third Doctor.
While the complicated time-traveling scheme of Susan Triad (Susan Twist) sees her technology incorporated into UNIT’s systems, it is unclear whether the Time Window is a UNIT project or part of Sutekh’s (Gabriel Woolf) greater plans.
With Davies having previously teased that the finale had connections to Jon Pertwee’s Doctor Who era, the Third Doctor is the incarnation that time travel experimentation became forbidden during his career as UNIT’s first scientific advisor to prevent any historical change. Furthermore, UNIT has had an active presence in ensuring that the technology isn’t crafted by the wrong hands, be it halting conspiracies involving dinosaurs in modern London or keeping the TARDIS safe when the Doctor isn’t present. Despite this, Doctor Who‘s UNIT organization has had its hands on time travel technology outside the Doctor’s knowledge.
Related
Doctor Who’s The One Who Waits Identity Explained: How They Return & Fourth Doctor Connection
The One Who Waits finally shows his face in Doctor Who season 14, episode 7, “The Legend of Ruby Sunday,” and he has a history with the Doctor.
In Doctor Who‘s 50th-anniversary special “The Day of the Doctor,” Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman) joins Kate in visiting the newly relocated Black Archive in the Tower of London after the collection was moved from its previous facility after an alien incursion. A treasure trove of leftover alien technology the Doctor would not approve of UNIT owning, the area included items like Jack Harkness’s (John Barrowman) donated deactivated Vortex Manipulator. While Kate claimed it was to keep it safe, the organization was clearly keen to keep its first scientific officer in the dark.
While alternate timelines have shown what UNIT could do if they attempted to harness the technology, Doctor Who season 14’s recent episode has opened a glimpse at a previously unexplored chapter of the organization’s history. While the complicated time-traveling scheme of Susan Triad (Susan Twist) sees her technology incorporated into UNIT’s systems, it is unclear whether the Time Window is a UNIT project or part of Sutekh’s (Gabriel Woolf) greater plans. Nevertheless, with Davies keen on having UNIT be a continued presence in the series, more hidden projects could be the focus of future stories.
Doctor Who releases new episodes every Friday simultaneously on Disney+ for international audiences and BBC iPlayer for UK viewers.
Source: Doctor Who: Unleashed
Doctor Who
Originally premiered in 1963, Doctor Who is a sci-fi series that follows a powerful being known as a Time Lord, referred to as the Doctor. Using an interdimensional time-traveling ship known as the TARDIS, the Doctor travels time and space with various companions as they solve multiple problems and help avert catastrophe as much as they almost cause it. Though the Doctor is always the same character, they experience regenerations, allowing them to be recast every few seasons as a unique immortal being with new personality traits.
- Release Date
- November 23, 1963
- Seasons
- 14
- Franchise(s)
- Doctor Who
- Writers
- Mark Gatiss , Toby Whithouse , Neil Cross , Steven Moffat , Chris Chibnall
