Shoreditch

Shoreditch
Also called:	Soers' Ditch
Type:	District
Location:	Hackney
First appearance:	An Unearthly Child
Appearances:	see list

Shoreditch, originally called the Soers' Ditch, (AUDIO: The Soers' Ditch) was a district of London, located within the borough of Hackney. Coal Hill was located in Shoreditch.

Geography

Shoreditch was the location of Coal Hill School, (TV: The Day of the Doctor) which later became Coal Hill Academy. (TV: For Tonight We Might Die) The district also had a library. (TV: The Vampires of Venice) A junk yard belonging to an I.M. Foreman was located at 76 Totter's Lane. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)

Streets in Shoreditch included Coal Hill Road, (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks, The Metaphysical Engine, or What Quill Did) Foreman Street, (TV: For Tonight We Might Die, Nightvisiting) Great Eastern Street, (PROSE: Joyride) Hinchcliffe Avenue, (COMIC: The Fractures) Leonard Street, (PROSE: Joyride) Shoreditch High Street, (PROSE: Time and Relative, Joyride) Swallow Avenue, (PROSE: Joyride) Totter's Lane (TV: An Unearthly Child) and Wellington Road. (TV: Co-Owner of a Lonely Heart)

Inhabitants

Madame Zelda was from Shoreditch, (AUDIO: Storm Warning) while the First Doctor and his granddaughter, Susan Foreman, lived in the I.M. Foreman junk yard in 1963. (TV: An Unearthly Child)

Clara Oswald lived in a flat in Shoreditch while she worked at Coal Hill School. (COMIC: Clara Oswald and the School of Death) While attending the same school, Andrea Quill and Charlie Smith lived at 1 Wellington Road, where they were later joined by Matteusz Andrzejewski. (TV: Co-Owner of a Lonely Heart)

History

19th century

In the late 19th century, Madame Vastra read in the newspaper about an outbreak of smallpox in Shoreditch. (AUDIO: Family Matters)

1940s

Shoreditch was in a part of London which was badly damaged by enemy bombing during the Blitz in World War II. (PROSE: Ash)

1963

The First Doctor and his granddaughter, Susan Foreman, arrived in their TARDIS circa May 1963, in the I.M. Foreman junk yard, at 76 Totter's Lane. The Doctor was in possession of the Hand of Omega. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks, COMIC: Time & Time Again) Susan posed as a human teenager and enrolled in the Coal Hill School, (TV: "An Unearthly Child") and the Doctor facilitated his own studies by registering at the local library. (TV: The Vampires of Venice)

The two Time Lords and their TARDIS' sensors were oblivious to the arrival of two adversarial factions of Daleks and of their preparations for battle. The Doctor took advantage of the Hand of Omega's casket-like appearance, consigning it to an undertaker in preparation for burial, sometime not long before 21 November. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) Also in November, Lavinia Smith purchased sweets for her niece Sarah Jane Smith at a Shoreditch shop adjacent to the junk yard. Sarah Jane ventured into the yard and noticed the TARDIS' police box appearance; as the Smiths walked along the street thereafter, Sarah Jane saw Susan enter the police box. (PROSE: Playtime)

One evening, two of Susan's teachers, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright followed her into the junk yard. Thinking that she was being held captive, the pair forced their way past the Doctor and into the TARDIS. The Doctor de-materialised the TARDIS with his three passengers, lest they be discovered by the police. (TV: "An Unearthly Child")

The Seventh Doctor returned to Shoreditch on 29 November 1963, accompanied by Ace. The pair arrived just in time to protect humanity from the 22-30 November battle between Imperial Dalek and Renegade Dalek factions in the Dalek Civil War, an event which later became known as the Shoreditch Incident. While there, the Doctor participated in the "funeral" for the Hand of Omega. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks, PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy) The Shoreditch Incident became a battlefield early in the Last Great Time War when the unified Dalek Empire manipulated Susan into retrieving the Hand of Omega for them only for the Eighth Doctor to thwart the plan, allowing history to proceed as it should. (AUDIO: The Shoreditch Intervention)

1966

After defeating WOTAN on 20 July 1966, the First Doctor returned to check that the Hand of Omega had been buried in November 1963 as per his instructions, only to discover that it had been removed. He determined that his future self had arrived at an earlier point to deal with it. (PROSE: The Rag & Bone Man's Story)

1985

In the course of trying to change Halley's Comet's trajectory and cause it to impact Earth, the Cybermen established a command post in a Shoreditch sewer in 1985. Meanwhile, the mercenary Gustave Lytton was posing as a jewel thief in order to recruit criminals to free Telos from the Cybermen. The Sixth Doctor and Peri Brown arrived in the TARDIS which appeared as ornate furniture and as a pipe organ, and defeated the Cybermen. (TV: Attack of the Cybermen)

21st century

2013

While travelling as a companion of the Eleventh Doctor, Clara Oswald moved to Shoreditch and became a teacher at Coal Hill School. (TV: The Day of the Doctor) She continued to work there after his regeneration into the Twelfth Doctor. (TV: Into the Dalek)

2014

By 2014, the Doctor's repeated visits to the Shoreditch area of London had left high levels of artron energy, particularly around Coal Hill School. This caused the creation of localised space-time rifts. (TV: The Caretaker, et al.)

On one occasion, the Doctor had discovered that a Skovox Blitzer, a dangerous robot killing machine, was trapped in Shoreditch, having killed at least one local policeman. With the help of Clara as well as her fellow teacher and boyfriend, Danny Pink, the Doctor managed to neutralise the threat and return the Skovox Blitzer to space. (TV: The Caretaker)

2016

In spring, the Barbara Wright Building was built as part of the Coal Hill Academy renovation project. (TV: The Coach with the Dragon Tattoo)

In October, the trunk of the Lankin emerged through a space-time rift. It attempted to feast on grief-stricken residents of Shoreditch by camouflaging it's branches as images of their loved ones. (TV: Nightvisiting)

The following month, killer petals gathered in Shoreditch and thrived on the flesh of local wildlife and residents. (TV: Co-Owner of a Lonely Heart) They were later destroyed by the Shadow Kin. (TV: Brave-ish Heart)

Later history

Towards the end of the 21st century, Coal Hill was converted into a block of flats. The building more or less survived the first Dalek invasion of 22nd century, but it was not made habitable again until following the second invasion in the 2190s, (AUDIO: Lucie Miller / To the Death) when Susan Foreman moved in, eager to take the opportunity to make a new home in that "lovely old building." The Eighth Doctor came to Shoreditch to intercept Hypercube messages which were being sent by the Time Lords. He was, however, ultimately unable to stop Susan from answering and accepting their request to aid them in their war against the Daleks, with a TARDIS arriving to pick her up. (AUDIO: All Hands on Deck)

Behind the scenes

The website whoisdoctorwho.co.uk had a list of sightings of the Doctor from which people had ostensibly been submitting to Clive Finch, a conspiracy theorist character from Rose.

A submission from Steven Hudson claimed that Steven saw the Doctor "a couple a years ago" [sic] wearing an Edwardian outfit, rather than his usual leather jacket, but still the individual in Clive's photographs — the Ninth Doctor. He saw the Doctor wandering around a building development on Totter's Lane. According to Steven, he was muttering, "They're all gone, I'm the only one left", alluding to the Doctor's involvement in the Last Great Time War.