1953

1953 in

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the DWU • vital statistics

In 1953, Queen Elizabeth II was crowned.

Events

• 1-2 - Queen Elizabeth II was crowned at Westminster in London, an event which the Wire attempted to exploit by absorbing the identities of everyone watching the event on live television. The Tenth Doctor stopped and trapped her. (TV: The Idiot's Lantern) No one in the Welsh village of Llanfer Ceiriog had a television, so the townsfolk travelled by bus to Doctor Snape's house in Gwydyr to watch it on his set. (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Witch Mark)

• 18 - The airplane Sky Gypsy vanished. It actually time travelled to 2007. (TV: Out of Time)
• 25 - Queen Elizabeth II made her second annual Christmas speech. While his granddaughter Susan Campbell and great-grandson Alex Campbell were celebrating Christmas in the TARDIS with him and Lucie Miller, the Eighth Doctor wanted to watch this particular Christmas speech using the Time-Space Visualiser, as 1953 was a "great year." (AUDIO: Relative Dimensions)

Unknown dates

• Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, based on the witch trials at Salem Village, was written. The First Doctor, his granddaughter Susan Foreman, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright saw a production of the play in Bristol on 9 November 1954. (PROSE: The Witch Hunters)
• Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart began his military career. (TV: Mawdryn Undead)
• The BBC science fiction television series Nightshade, starring Edmund Trevithick as the title character, was first broadcast. It ran for five years and was rebroadcast on BBC2 in December 1968. (PROSE: Nightshade, PROSE: The Left-Handed Hummingbird)
• A spacecraft carrying Rivesh Mantilax on a mission to rescue his wife, Seruba Velak, was shot down over Area 51 in the United States. He was rescued by a group of Native Americans led by Night Eagle and kept hidden from American authorities for the next five years. (TV: Dreamland)
• The Mau Mau Uprising against the rule of the British Empire took place in British Kenya. (AUDIO: A Thousand Tiny Wings)
• It was discovered that the Piltdown Man was not the missing link in human evolution but a human cranium and a filed down ape jaw. (AUDIO: The Suffering)
• In Scotland, Clement McDonald was born. (TV: Children of Earth: Day Three)
• The last known sighting of the Ilin island cloudrunner occurred this year. In reality, the last one was sent to the Museum of the Last Ones. (PROSE:The Last Dodo)

Alternative timeline

• In an alternative timeline in which Nazi Germany won World War II and eventually conquered Africa as a result of the Seventh Doctor and Ace accidentally leaving laser technology in Colditz Castle in October 1944, the Mau Mau Uprising against Nazi rule took place in Kenya. The Luftwaffe was sent in immediately. On the orders of the Führer Adolf Hitler, they proceeded to carpet-bomb the tribal areas and wipe out most of the native population. Within three years, a virulent plague had broken out in Kenya which killed many German soldiers. In 1957, Hitler placed Elizabeth Klein in command of a team of medical doctors and scientists who attempted to discover the cause of the plague. However, they were unable to do so. (AUDIO: A Thousand Tiny Wings)

Behind the scenes

• 10 - Actor Maya Woolfe was born.
• 11 - Actor John Sessions was born.
• 15 - Actor Gareth Hale was born.

• 12 - Actor Nabil Shaban was born.
• 17 - Actor Norman Pace was born.

• 7 - Actor Gareth Milne was born.
• 21 - Actor Trevor Cooper was born.

• 1 - Actor Tim Bentinck was born.
• 22 - Composer and producer Ian Levine was born.

• 30 - Actor Phil Davis was born.

• 9 - Actor Roberta Tovey was born.
• 17 - Actor Stephen Flynn was born.
• 29 - Actor Doña Croll was born.

• 10 - Actor Stuart Milligan was born.

• 4 - Actor Christopher Fairbank was born.

• 21 - 1st assistant director Jon Older was born.

• 5 - Actor Christopher Guard was born.