76 Totter's Lane
76 Totter's Lane (also known as Totter's Yard or Foreman's Yard) was a junkyard in Shoreditch, London, owned by I.M. Foreman. The Doctor's TARDIS, disguised as a police box, resided there for approximately five months in 1963.
History
1960s
Susan Foreman, the First Doctor's granddaughter, attended the nearby Coal Hill School during this time, and gave the school the junkyard's address as her home address. This raised suspicion in her teacher, Barbara Wright, who followed Susan home one evening to find the junkyard where a house should have been. Later, Wright and another teacher, Ian Chesterton, entered the scrapyard and discovered the TARDIS sitting in it, leading to their life-changing first encounter with the Doctor. (TV: An Unearthly Child)
Earlier that day, Sarah Jane Smith (then twelve years old) briefly explored the junkyard and saw the TARDIS before returning to her aunt Lavinia. (PROSE: Playtime)
Later in 1963, but much later from the Seventh Doctor's perspective, a battle between a Renegade Dalek and Group Captain Ian Gilmore's Intrusion Countermeasures Group took place there. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)
- This event more or less inaugurated the beginning of the Shoreditch Incident. Though never stated, it can be assumed that the Dalek went there because the Renegade Daleks knew the TARDIS had earlier landed in that location.
The First Doctor watched a film on the fall of Rome and complained it was historically inaccurate. When asked to leave, he was seen heading back towards the junkyard. (WEB: whoisdoctorwho.co.uk)
1980s
In 1985, the TARDIS returned to the junkyard in response to a distress signal sent by Lytton. (TV: Attack of the Cybermen)
1990s
In 1997, the TARDIS landed in the junkyard once more after the Eighth Doctor fell victim to a trap by the Master. Sam Jones entered the junkyard to get away from Baz Bailey and his gang (PROSE: The Eight Doctors).
The junkyard was actually a Gallifreyan space-time event known as I.M. Foreman's One-Species Nongenetically Engineered Travelling Show (PROSE: Interference - Book Two).
2000s
The Ninth Doctor visited Totters Lane soon after his regeneration, where he encountered Steven Hudson (WEB: whoisdoctorwho.co.uk).
Sometime in an alternate future, the Eleventh Doctor parked the TARDIS there. (GAME: Worlds in Time).
2020s
In October 2021, the Seventh Doctor kept his TARDIS at parking bay number seventy-six of a carpark on Totter's Lane while investigating the Cybermen at St. Gart's Hospital. By this time, Totter's Lane was a commercially zoned area of Shoreditch which was mostly made up of office blocks. (AUDIO: The Harvest)
References
- In 1580, the Eleventh Doctor showed a group of "vampires" his library card in place of his psychic paper. The library card listed 76 Totter's Lane as his residence. (TV: The Vampires of Venice)
Behind the scenes
- In the pilot episode of Doctor Who and in An Unearthly Child, a studio set represented 76 Totter's Lane (both inside and out). In Attack of the Cybermen and Remembrance of the Daleks, actual exterior London locations represented the yard. In the latter story, due to a mistake, the letters on the outside gate say "I.M. Forman" rather than the original "I.M. Foreman" of An Unearthly Child.
- The name "Totter's Yard" was first used in part 1 of TV: Logopolis.
- In the Doctor Who Confidential episode Bigger on the Inside, Neil Gaiman reads from his script for the episode TV: The Doctor's Wife, in which his stage directions describe the junkyard in the bubble universe as "The Totters Lane at the end of the universe."
