Assassination of John F. Kennedy

The Kennedy assassination refers to the murder of the American President John F. Kennedy at Dealey Plaza, in Dallas, Texas on 22nd November, 1963.

The assassination

The Master mentally programmed UNIT Private Francis Cleary and sent him from the near future to prevent the assassination, which would change history and possibly enable the Cuban Missile Crisis to proceed in such a way that it would lead to a nuclear war. James Stevens, a journalist with an obsession with the assassination attempt, went to 1963 using a time ring to stop Cleary. Stevens also discovered the true gunman who had killed Kennedy and recognised him as an older version of Stevens himself, travelled back from the future a second time. In order to preserve the course of history, in 1996, after writing a book revealing the truth, he used the time ring again to carry out the assassination (MA: Who Killed Kennedy).

References

• The Doctor implied to Ace that the presence of Nemesis nearing Earth had caused the Kennedy assassination (DW: Silver Nemesis)
• A contemporary photo found by Clive Finch seemed to show the Doctor as a spectator to the assassination (DW: Rose).

Behind the Scenes

The Kennedy assassination and the production of Doctor Who

The premiere of Doctor Who on 23rd November, 1963 happened just a day after the Kennedy assassination, a fact frequently mentioned in media overviews and non-fiction literature on Doctor Who.

The Kennedy assassination happened during the filming of an episode of The Daleks, interrupting shooting as the cast and crews learned of the news. News coverage of the killing caused the interruption of the normal television schedule, too, so that on 23rd November, 1963, one day after the assassination, the first episode of the first Doctor Who story, An Unearthly Child, aired five minutes late. As the episode was not seen in parts of the country due to a power outage, it was rebroadcast the following week; it is often stated that it was replayed due to the assassination coverage, but this has been debunked.

Other references

• In Doctor Who and the Crusaders, a philosophical discussion at the beginning of the book makes note of the Kennedy assassination.

• The Seventh Doctor admits in Original Sin "that he was doing something" around the time of the Kennedy assassination, obviously referencing the premiere of Doctor Who.