Doctor Who: 10 Things You Didn't Know About UNIT
9. There Was Almost A UNIT Spinoff In The 1990s
UNIT was the brainchild of writer Derrick Sherwin. After their successful introduction in The Invasion, UNIT continued to be a core part of Doctor Who long after Sherwin left for another show.
Fast-forward to the mid-1980s, and Doctor Who is in the news after Michael Grade unsuccessfully tried to cancel it. Around this time, Sherwin approached Grade about buying the rights to Doctor Who to produce it independently – but Grade unsurprisingly turned him down.
Undeterred, Sherwin was also keen to mount a UNIT spinoff around this time. Having seen the successful return of sci-fi shows to British screens in the 1990s, Sherwin approached the BBC, but was again rejected.
Because he created UNIT while working for the BBC, the corporation owned the rights to its use on TV, and not Sherwin. In his 2014 memoir Who's Next, Sherwin explains that the extensive legal costs involved prevented him from pursuing this further.
Decades later and Russell T Davies may have nicked Sherwin's idea, if all those rumours are anything to go by!