Post Office Tower

Post Office Tower
Also called:	BT Tower, Telecom Tower
Type:	Tower
Location:	London
First appearance:	The War Machines
Appearances:	TV: Hallo My Dalek COMIC: Invasion of the Scorpion Men TV: Rose TV: Aliens of London TV: The Sound of Drums TV: The Poison Sky AUDIO: Sleeper Agents AUDIO: The Dead Star
Memorable moment
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The Post Office Tower, later known as Telecom Tower and subsequently the BT Tower, was a large tower in London designed to carry telecommunications traffic to the rest of England.

History

Commissioned by the General Post Office (GPO), at 177m (588ft) high it was the tallest building in the UK capital when it officially opened in either 1966, (TV: The Faceless Ones) or 1965, having cost £2.5 million. A later account stated that the tower was 175m (574 ft), with its aerials making it 188m (620 ft) in total. The chief architect for the tower was Eric Bedford. It was located on Cleveland Street, where it would remain the tallest building in London until 1981. It closed to the public in 1980. (PROSE: Creatures and Demons ^[+]Loading...{"page":"89","chaptname":"The War Machines and Wotan","1":"Creatures and Demons (reference book)"})

Polly Wright was set up with a job at the tower by her Uncle Charles Wright, working as a personal assistant for Professor Brett. (PROSE: Invasion of the Cat-People) In 1966, Brett's self-aware artificial intelligence WOTAN occupied the top of the Tower and directed preparations for C-Day, its robot War Machines, and mind controlled human slaves from there before being stopped by the First Doctor. (TV: The War Machines) This was later covered in the newspaper Daily Reflection. (TV: The Faceless Ones)

In the chaos following the WOTAN incident, Angela Leamann and Tobias Harmer managed to infiltrate the building and set themselves up as working for the magazine Penumbra, to which Polly Wright was seconded following her return to Earth after travelling with the Doctor. They used this position to kidnap Polly and her friend Ben Jackson in an attempt to gain knowledge of the Doctor. (AUDIO: Sleeper Agents)

Later in that year, with WOTAN defeated, Igrix the Kustollon left his spacecraft there. As the Ninth Doctor raced to get to Igrix's ship, unknown to both parties he passed his first incarnation's companions Ben Jackson and Polly Wright, both visiting the Tower. Both companions had had involvement in the C-Day affair. (COMIC: The Love Invasion)

At some later point during the 20th century, the Post Office Tower was noted by Sarah Jane Smith to be the tallest building in London. When the Dahensa invaded Earth, the Third Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith went to the top of the Post Office Tower to create a sonic manifold feedback loop that drove the invaders from Earth. (COMIC: Invasion of the Scorpion Men)

In 2009, Rani Chandra believed that the strange lights that had been seen around the BT Tower were not lightning bolts, as reported in the Ealing Echo, but an alien spacecraft. However, Sarah Jane Smith had Mr Smith investigate and he determined that it was in fact lightning. (TV: The Mad Woman in the Attic)

In August 2021, the Doctor, under the alias "John Smith", posted a review of the BT Tower, stating that he was forced to visit it. (PROSE: John Smith's Google Maps reviews)

By 2028, UNIT had a base named WOTAN 1 under "the BT Tower", from which they monitored every other computer system in the world. (AUDIO: A Death in the Family)

Behind the scenes

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• The Post Office Tower is heavily mentioned in, and the unseen setting for the whole first portion of the 1975 parodical TV story Hallo My Dalek, where the Doctor has parked the TARDIS on top of the Tower, to the irritation of the Home Office.