Welcome to Gaia! ::

The Unified Intelligence Taskforce.

This was mentioned by RTD in a recent interview somewhere. Name altered for real world reasons, apparently.

Maybe they'll be more competent now that the U.N. don't run it anymore... razz

I can't believe the UN is just now complaining about Doctor Who using their name...
It shows something's really changed over the years, doesn't it?

Anyway, I think UNIT now stands for UNified Intelligence Taskforce.
...they'll probably be just as bad shots xD

Hard to imagine the Brig working in an organization named LINDA, though. lol

Whovians in New York City might be able to do that. Isn't that where the UN Headquarters is?

They can't just go and change it like that! D:

. . . I bet it was Martha's coming on. >>

"Miss Jones, welcome to UNIT."
"UNIT?" o_O
"Yes. Unite Nations Intelligence Taskforce."
"/United Nations/?"
"I do believe that was what I just said, yes."
"Wha, does the U.N. run it or somefin?"
"Um..."
"Won't they get mad? -insert barrage of questions-"
"Y'know what, let's just change it then. "

I dissagree. If we had whovians all over the world protesting, they'd notice even more. We'll bug and annoy them until they HAVE to gove in. Although, I think, perhaps, protests should only be in countries with the Right to Protest right...Else peps could be in trouble. lol?
Also, I hope, La Fantome de le opera, that your complimenting Martha on her ability to observe, and her intelligence, and NOT insulting her or blaming her in any way...

Best way round it would be to have it offically stand for Unified Intelligence Task Force in all off-screen documentation, but just to have people cough loudly whenever they mention it on screen.

"I'm working for the Uni*COUGH* Intelligence Task Force"

"So, you're what's become of the Uni*Ahhh-CHOO!* Intelligence Task Force, eh?"

And so forth. wink

Thinking back to The Sound of Drums, now we know all this, the writing there is quite sneaky, isn't it? It lets us know that UNIT is still a United Nations organisation without ever explictly linking the two.

It just tells the audience that the contact with the Toclafane has to happen under UN auspices...and then tells us that it'll be happening on a UNIT ship. So the new audience is indirectly lead to understand UNIT is a UN body without anyone coming out and saying it. smile

According to wikipedia:
Following the broadcast of the 2005 series, in his regular column in Doctor Who Magazine #360 (August 2005), new series executive producer Russell T. Davies explained that the real life United Nations were no longer happy to be associated with the fictional organisation, and the UN's full name could not now be used. However, the "UNIT" and "UN" abbreviations can be used, as long as it is not explained what the letters stand for. It is unclear how this affects UNIT appearances in the various spin-off media.

Yeah, it would be nice if they just didn't bother stating explicitly what U.N.I.T. stands for, rather than saying on-air "Unified Intelligence Taskforce". I hope that's the case. In any event, they weren't wearing the U.N. blue berets in their New Series appearances, so that's also distancing it from the U.N. (though, now that I think of it, the only time I ever remember them wearing blue caps was the McCoy story 'Battlefield').