I think it's explicit that UNIT and Torchwood have a turf war. For one thing, UNIT is international in scope (United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, based in Geneva) whereas Torchwood is explicity parochial (serving Queen and Country in the UK only).
To me, the Doctor worked secretly for UNIT all along. I think as an advisor he was never acknowledged outside of Need to Know only. Can anyone think of a time this was contradicted?
Wherease, Torchwood itself was an undercover operation, or as we'd say in the US, a "shadow" operation, where the organization was never really official and always had plausible deniability. I don't think in reality there could be an organization that reported ONLY to the Crown... but maybe?
So, yeah. I think you could have Torchwood since the 19th Century.... it was just underground and didn't have much to work with besides Jack ): whereas UNIT was real and acknowledged, but kept working with the Doctor under wraps.
Not to mention that it's implied (on one of Martha's "Torchwood" episodes) that the Doctor suggested that UNIT hire Martha, which would be hard to do if they weren't actively aware of/in touch with him.
Torchwood had a crown charter. Its stated mission was to investigate and contain alien threats, especially those caused by the Doctor, or words to those effect. Which means they should have been right there on the scene when the bubble wrap monsters attacked.
My main query was what 10 had done to his own timeline by changing history in such a way that an organization had specifically created to contain the threat that Queen Victoria perceived him to be.
Both Torchwood and UNIT coexist. I know there's some tension between them. I'll get back to you about that once I re-watch Torchwood Children of Earth tomorrow. But I think the idea is that UNIT is under jurisdiction of the government while Torchwood operates independently, to the point Canary Wharf Torchwood got more powerful than UNIT, so it was them Harriet Jones turned to for a weapon to kill the Sycorax. And then UNIT were happy to just ignore Jack's Torchwood and let them take care of the Rift, and they didn't cross paths till CoE.
UNIT is chartered under the UN, or at least it was until the actual UN complained about its name being used at which point the acronym was shifted around slightly. It's supposed to be international in scope, although they were always Jonny on the spot during UK crises, operating out of several facilities.
By the time Torchwood (the show) got started, the general implication was the only thing that kept their royal charter from being yanked was their specialist knowledge of the Rift. Any mission statement about containing the threat of the Doctor had long been swept under the rug.
My general conundrum was the earlier years. What affect the Doctor changing history had on his relationship with UNIT. Did it by necessity become more clandestine? Did UNIT become the more sinister operation that was implied in the Torchwood episode Fragments, where Toshiko is their prisoner, without the Doctor's steadying influence, or would that, did that happen anyway? That sort of thing.
I suspect that the unit stuff was always a little dubious re timings but that the time war has utterly rewrite the timeline... Brig etc protected by tardis travel and awareness of timelines keep memories, but unit not so much hence the intermittently awful attitude of the post time war unit who have been influenced by the touchwood thing....
They can co-exist, and reasonably peacefully. In the way the show treats them, Torchwood and UNIT have very similar functions. However, in what one can extrapolate about their general goals and operating styles, however, they have only a tiny amount of overlap. UNIT is an international military organisation which happens to have at least one base in Britain, and does all sorts of things. These do include 'stopping alien invasions' and 'babysitting stranded Time Lords', but also 'transporting decommissioned nuclear warheads' and 'supervising diplomatic meetings between the Americans and the Chinese'. We see more of the alien bits than anything else because... well... it's a sci-fi show, and because that's what the Doctor was assigned to
( ... )
Making Torchwood operate on the quiet, where UNIT assumed the 'boots on the ground' operations makes s certain degree of sense, although I suspect Torchwood was tasked with dealing the less frequent alien incursions that likely happened prior to the nuclear age. (Assuming that was the point we became interesting to ETs.)
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To me, the Doctor worked secretly for UNIT all along. I think as an advisor he was never acknowledged outside of Need to Know only. Can anyone think of a time this was contradicted?
Wherease, Torchwood itself was an undercover operation, or as we'd say in the US, a "shadow" operation, where the organization was never really official and always had plausible deniability. I don't think in reality there could be an organization that reported ONLY to the Crown... but maybe?
So, yeah. I think you could have Torchwood since the 19th Century.... it was just underground and didn't have much to work with besides Jack ): whereas UNIT was real and acknowledged, but kept working with the Doctor under wraps.
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I'd love to see Kate and Jack interact, though...
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My main query was what 10 had done to his own timeline by changing history in such a way that an organization had specifically created to contain the threat that Queen Victoria perceived him to be.
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By the time Torchwood (the show) got started, the general implication was the only thing that kept their royal charter from being yanked was their specialist knowledge of the Rift. Any mission statement about containing the threat of the Doctor had long been swept under the rug.
My general conundrum was the earlier years. What affect the Doctor changing history had on his relationship with UNIT. Did it by necessity become more clandestine? Did UNIT become the more sinister operation that was implied in the Torchwood episode Fragments, where Toshiko is their prisoner, without the Doctor's steadying influence, or would that, did that happen anyway? That sort of thing.
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Tl;dr timey wimeyness
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