1953

Events

June

• 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. (DW: 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. (NA: Cat's Cradle: Witch Mark)

December

• 18 - The airplane Sky Gypsy vanished. It actually time travelled to 2007. (TW: Out of Time)

Unknown dates

• Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, based on the witch trials at Salem Village, was written. The First Doctor and his companions saw a production of the play in Bristol the following year. (PDA: The Witch Hunters)
• Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart began his military career. (DW: Mawdryn Undead)
• The BBC television series Nightshade, starring Edmund Trevithick as the title character, was first broadcast. It ran for five years and was rebroadcast on BBC2 in 1968. (NA: Nightshade)
• 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. (DW: Dreamland)

Behind the scenes

January

• 10 - Maya Woolfe was born.
• 15 - Gareth Hale was born.

February

• 12 - Nabil Shaban is born.
• 17 - Norman Pace is born.

May

• 21 - Trevor Cooper is born.

July

• 18 - The Quatermass Experiment, written by Nigel Kneale, the first of the Quatermass television plays, debuts on BBC Television. Many of the ideas and situations in the serial were later used in Doctor Who. Quatermass himself arguably exists in the Doctor Who universe.

August

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

November

• 21 - Jon Older is born.

December

• 5 - Christopher Guard is born.