Fantastic Beasts: 10 Ties To Doctor Who You Might Have Missed

Writers of fantasy and science-fiction series’ set in Earth’s present or past, often feel obliged to explain why nobody seems to remember alien invasions or the wizards, witches, monsters and demons who walk among us.

An obvious starting point is to take their cues from the secrecy of real world institutions and departments, such as Area 51.

Doctor Who has UNIT and Torchwood, but it is the latter organisation that shares more than a passing resemblance to MACUSA in Fantastic Beasts. Not only are Torchwood and MACUSA hidden in plain sight in their respective city centres, but their agents go out of their way to protect their secrets, cleaning up the mess to hide any trace of alien or magical involvement.

Captain Jack Harkness and his team preserve their integrity by using an amnesia pill laced with ‘retcon’ which can remove selective memories and in some cases create false alternative ones. MACUSA can keep its wizards secret from the no-mag’s by the obliviate spell.

For both organisations, their centre of operations is home to their biggest secrets and yet they are located in highly public places. Torchwood’s underground Cardiff hub contains prison cells holding various aliens. The entrance is hidden by a perception filter in the Roald Dahl Plaza on Cardiff Bay, which also houses the Welsh Assembly Building and the Millennium Centre.

MACUSA’s offices, occupy hundreds of floors hidden inside the Woolworth Building and although the main purpose of the organisation is to deal with rogue wizards, their paranoia about non-mag’s discovering their kind is immediately obvious in the highly prominent ‘Magical Exposure Threat Level Monitor.’