Gulliver's Travels

Gulliver's Travels was a book by Jonathan Swift published around a hundred years after 1616. (PROSE: The Empire of Glass) Its protagonist was Lemuel Gulliver. (TV: The Mind Robber)

Contents

According to Eleanor Woods, the book began with Gulliver setting sail from Bristol. (PROSE: Visiting Hours)

As the First Doctor noted, Laputa was a fictional island within the book's narrative. (PROSE: The Empire of Glass)

At one point in the novel, a war was waged between two empires over the proper way to crack an egg. Brak, a Sontaran stranded on Earth in the early 20th century, read the book, and later referenced this event to Alice Wells as an example of the usual futility of humans' motives for making war. (AUDIO: Old Soldiers)

History

Lemuel Gulliver was brought to life in the Land of Fiction, and there encountered the Second Doctor. He could only speak passages from the novel. (TV: The Mind Robber)

The First Doctor read Gulliver's Travels while living on the Isle of Hoy, Orkney for several years in the 1950s. (AUDIO: The Revenants)

The Second Doctor had a copy, and gave it to Eleanor Woods to read. (PROSE: Visiting Hours)

In 1190, Barbara Wright, while a prisoner of Saladin, planned to tell him stories such as that of Gulliver's Travels. (TV: The Crusade)

In 1828, Marc Brunel had a copy of the book in his library. (AUDIO: Iron Bright)

In 1937, Mary Gore was reading the book to Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart. (PROSE: The Bledoe Cadets and the Bald Man of Pengriffen)

Both UNIT officer Alice Wells and her Sontaran prisoner Brak had read Gulliver's Travels. When Brak made a passing reference to it during one of their interviews, Alice was shocked to learn that the Sontaran had read a book of satire, having thought his species too single-minded to enjoy the arts; Brak scoffed that the Sontarans were soldiers, not barbarians. (AUDIO: Old Soldiers)

The Fifth Doctor made a "literary reference" to the book, joking that the Scientifica had no more cucumbers to offer as they'd used them all up trying to extract sunbeams. (PROSE: Cold Fusion)

In the far future, Professor George Litefoot compared the Venusian floating city Amtor to the flying island Laputa from the novel. (AUDIO: Voyage to Venus)

Behind the scenes

• The Cold Fusion joke is a reference to the following passage from the novel: "He has been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers."
• Julian Glover, Catherine Schell, Robert Rietti, Murray Melvin, Denise Bryer and David Prowse appeared in the 1977 film adaptation.
• Andrew Burt played the title character in the 1982 television serial Gulliver in Lilliput, which was written and directed by Barry Letts. Elisabeth Sladen, Leon Eagles, Andrew McCulloch, Linda Polan, Barry Andrews, Jenny McCracken, George Little, John Baker, Bartlett Mullins and Glen Murphy all also appeared in the serial.
• James Fox, Warwick Davis, John Standing, Richard Wilson, Graham Crowden, Navin Chowdhry, Annette Badland, Ricco Ross, Cyril Shaps, Malcolm Stoddard, Sylvester Morand, Philip McGough, Gordon Sterne and Roger Ennals appeared in the miniseries adaptation. Ailsa Berk was the choreographer on the miniseries.
• Catherine Tate and James Corden appeared in the 2010 film adaptation.