| Universe | Whoniverse |
|---|---|
| Type | Intelligence agency, military organisation |
| Founded | Uncertain, sometime in the earlier-mid 2000s |
| Location | United Kingdom |
| Key people | Colonel Brimmicombe-Wood Sergeant French Corporal Ledger Captain Andrea Winnington Major Philip Kirby |
| Purpose | Protecting Britain from extraterrestrial and paranormal threats To monitor and eventually replace the UK branch of UNIT |
| Technologies | Scavenged and stolen alien technologies |
| Powers*** | Military authority in the United Kingdom |
| Affiliations | Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (Until UNIT: The Longest Night) |
The Internal Counter-Intelligence Service (ICIS) is a fictional military organization from the UNIT audio plays by Big Finish. A highly nationalistic and xenophobic organisation, they were originally intended to be a uniquely British replacement for the British contingent of UNIT in fighting extraterritorial threats; instead, they turned out to be a major threat.
The organisation first appeared in the audio play UNIT: The Coup. ICIS had been around for at least a few years before then, and were becoming increasingly concerned with Britain's involvement in the UN and the European Union. They recruited a young nationalist soldier named Brimmicombe-Wood soon after his training, and dispatched him as a double-agent within UNIT. By the time of The Coup, Brimmicombe-Wood was both the commander of UNIT's British arm and (secretly) ICIS, setting UNIT up for a fall. Soon, ICIS were working to eventually take over Britain in order to keep it from giving up any of its sovereignty to the UN and European Union. The British government was being convinced to shut down the UK arm of UNIT and hand over its operations to ICIS; simultaneously, ICIS were using alien technology and government helplines to program the general public into becoming sleeper agents. They were also using alien spacecraft blueprints stolen from UNIT to construct a time-space teleportation device.
The day before the planned handover, both UNIT and ICIS became involved in a battle against the Silurians at Tower Bridge; ICIS' troops swiftly proved themselves to be far more brutal than their UNIT counterparts. However, it would turn out that these Silurians were actually a diplomatic party trying to make peaceful contact with humanity, and ICIS had launched an unprovoked massacre. ICIS' Captain Andrea Winnington and Sergeant French (a former Forge operative) refused to believe the Silurians could be peaceful and attempted to kill their ambassador, getting themselves arrested as a result. The handover was called off and UNIT remained in control of extraterrestrial operations, while ICIS handled domestic British affairs.
ICIS did not rest. In UNIT: Time Heals, they secretly launched a raid on a UNIT transporter and stole the alien spacecraft it was carrying in order to further their transmat experiments, as well as "abducting" Brimmicombe-Wood so he could fully concentrate on running ICIS and leave UNIT confused. Their continued time-space experiments went wrong, causing fluctuations in time and space that caused a series of horrific accidents and attracted UNIT's attention. The complex where the experiments took place was destroyed and the accidents stopped, but ICIS remained undetected and the general public believed they'd been under severe terrorist attack. What nobody knew was that by tampering with the spacecraft, ICIS had released an alien virus that swiftly began sweeping its way through the world.
In UNIT: The Longest Night, when the Prime Minister had signed the Euro Combine treaty, ICIS finally triggered their coup. They began activating random sleeper agents across the country, starting a systematic wave of terrorist attacks designed to increase ethnic tensions and fear to dangerous levels. Andrea Winnington was freed from jail and sent to provoke UNIT's Public Relations Officer Col. Chaudhry into murdering her in order to discredit UNIT. (Winnington failed.) As the attacks increased and race-riots broke out in all major cities, ICIS agent and government press officer Philip Kirby subtly pressured the Prime Minister into declaring martial law and letting ICIS onto the streets; UNIT's commander Colonel Dalton was triggered as a sleeper agent to assassinate the Prime Minister once this had been done. UNIT just barely managed to stop ICIS and save Britain, though Dalton lost his life in the process when Kirby triggered a suicide bomb.
While the Prime Minister vowed to shut down ICIS in The Longest Night, they were still operational in UNIT: The Wasting (presumably Brimmicombe-Wood convinced the government that they hadn't really been involved and the plot was all Kirby). Knowing UNIT would be focusing on bringing it down (and that General Sir Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart was getting involved), they swiftly framed them for the deliberate murder of British civilians and secured orders to arrest them. Chaudhry and Lethbridge-Stewart led as many loyal UNIT soldiers as possible into going on the run, attempting to simultaneously bring down ICIS and stop the alien virus that had now become a global pandemic. While the discovery that Brimmicombe-Wood had been the head of ICIS all along and coming under attack by British armed forces demoralised them, UNIT (with assistance from NATO and the Silurians) succeeded in stopping the plague and ICIS. Brimmicombe-Wood was defeated in combat and arrested, and the work of journalist Francis Currie saw ICIS' crimes brought to light. The organisation was shut down and its leaders arrested on grounds of treason.