New York City
New York City was a city in New York state, the largest and one of the most impressive cities in the United States of America.
Geography
The city consisted of five boroughs - the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island. Manhattan was the centre of the city, containing landmarks such as Central Park, Wall Street and the Empire State Building. Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty lay off the shore. (TV: The Chase, Daleks in Manhattan, Utopia, The Angels Take Manhattan; PROSE: Salvation)
History
19th century
In August 1851, the 30.86 m schooner-yacht America, representing the New York Yacht Club, crossed the Atlantic Ocean in seventeen days on its way to the Isle of Wight, where it won the British Hundred Guinea yacht race, thereafter known as the America's Cup Race, on 22 August. (TV: Enlightenment)
The Mary Celeste departed from Staten Island on 5 November 1872, bound for Italy. En route, twenty days later, she was briefly boarded by the TARDIS containing the First Doctor and his companions. Moments after they dematerialised, the ship was boarded by Daleks, forcing all to abandon ship and eventually drown. (TV: The Chase)
Jack Harkness (who had left Great Britain for unknown reasons) visited Ellis Island in 1892. He died there but returned to life immediately after. This event made Jack realise that he could no longer die permanently. (TV: Utopia)
20th century
In 1927, Jack Harkness was sent on a mission by the Torchwood Institute to kill a brain parasite intended to to infect then-Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Here he met Angelo Colasanto. The two began a relationship. Upon Angelo's release from Sing Sing Prison the following year, he discovered Jack's immortality, resulting in Jack being repeatedly killed by a number of local residents. (TV: Immortal Sins)
In 1930, the Cult of Skaro established a base of operations in Empire State Building. At the same time, a community of the homeless, known as Hooverville (one of several Hoovervilles across the United States as a result of the Great Depression), had been established in Central Park. (TV: Daleks in Manhattan / Evolution of the Daleks)
Sometime prior to 3 April 1938, mob boss Julius Grayle hired private detective Sam Garner ostensibly to investigate the stories of moving statues at Winter Quay. Promptly upon his arrival at Winter Quay, Garner was vanquished into the past by the Statue of Liberty, for the Angels to feed from his time energy. (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan)
Time-travelling archaeologist Prof. River Song (née Melody Pond), whose areas of speciality included the Weeping Angels, established the Angel Detective Agency under the alias, Melody Malone, as a cover for her research. (PROSE: The Angel's Kiss: A Melody Malone Mystery; TV: The Angels Take Manhattan)
On the night of 3 April 1938, River's father, Rory Williams, involuntarily appeared, having been transported from 2012 by the Weeping Angels. He and River were quickly followed by their respective spouses, Amy Pond and the Eleventh Doctor in the TARDIS. After witnessing Rory's elder self's death, Rory and Amy dove from the building's rooftop in order to create a paradox, thereby destroying Winter Quay and the Angels. Both returned again from the future on an unspecified date. (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan)
In October 1938, Orson Welles and his radio drama production company resided in Manhattan, which the Eighth Doctor and his companion Charley Pollard visited. (AUDIO: Invaders from Mars)
The Sixth Doctor and Frobisher went to the New York City in or before 1957 to pick up Peri Brown, who had taken some time off from her travels in the TARDIS to visit the the borough of Brooklyn and see the Dodgers play baseball. (COMIC: Time Bomb)
In 1964, an aeroplane which left New York City with a crew of eleven and hundreds of passengers landed in London with no one aboard, not even the pilot. The matter was investigated by Professor Rachel Jensen of the Intrusion Countermeasures Group. (AUDIO: State of Emergency)
In April 1965, the Latter-Day Pantheon (aliens posing as modern-day gods) visited the city and established a short-lived religion based on their worship. (PROSE: Salvation)
The Empire State Building was once again visited very briefly by the Daleks, as well as by the First Doctor and his companions, in 1966. With the observation deck's guide having led most of the group around to another side, the only person who saw the TARDIS and its passengers was tourist Morton Dill. (TV: The Chase)
Circa 1967, the Second Doctor, John and Gillian visited New York City, where they defeated the plans of a mad scientist to liberate zoo animals with his reanimated dinosaurs. (COMIC: The Monsters from the Past)
In 1969, Special Agent Canton Delaware and the FBI tracked down River Song to a New York skyscraper that was under construction. While here, she also observed the presence of the Silents. River jumped off the edge of the building instead of surrendering. The Eleventh Doctor saved River by materialising the TARDIS horizontally in the path of her fall, and directing River's mother Amy Pond to open the doors leading to the swimming pool. A days- or weeks-older Canton Delaware was in the TARDIS, several floors below himself. (TV: Day of the Moon)
In January 1970, a sick young Melody Pond, the future River Song, had made her way from Florida, and regenerated in a New York City alley, to the horror of a homeless man who fled the scene. (TV: Day of the Moon)
On 24 December 1975, the Seventh Doctor and his companions Ace and Hex defeated the Kellenian invasion of Earth in New York City. (PROSE: Presence)
21st century
By 2000, Rory and Amelia Williams had each died and were buried in Queens. (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan)
During the early part of the 21st century, occult-oriented street gangs such as the Witchkids spread throughout the city (as well as the world). The Seventh Doctor, on a mission of his own, visited the city as part of his overall plot against the Butler Institute. (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Warhead)
During the Year That Never Was, New York was destroyed by the Toclafane. (REF: The Time Traveller's Almanac)
UNIT maintained a base in a skyscraper high above Manhattan, under the command of American Lieutenant General Sanchez. It housed a war room, research into Project Indigo and one of four Osterhagen keys. Martha Jones was stationed there following the defeat of the Sontaran invasion. In 2009, after the Earth was transported to the Medusa Cascade, a Dalek task force took the base, killing many of its personnel although Martha escaped using the Project Indigo teleport. The city itself suffered Dalek bombardment. (TV: The Stolen Earth)
The Vykoids attempted to enslave the population of Manhattan in June 2010 (PROSE: The Forgotten Army).
In 2012, Rory Williams was twice sent back in time by Weeping Angels. His wife and son-in-law, Amy Pond and the Doctor, followed in the TARDIS to rescue him the first time. He and Amy re-materialised in a cemetery in Queens after having created a paradox in the past. Moments later, Rory discovered that they had landed on his own grave and an Angel behind promptly exiled him permanently into the past. Unable to rescue him or follow in the TARDIS, Amy decided to allow the Angel to send her back as well. With her daughter's encouragement and over the Doctor's objections, she bid them farewell and backed into the Angel. Her name and age at death immediately appeared below those of her husband on their gravestone. (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan)
In 2067, New York was destroyed by nuclear bombs during the secret Myloki war. (PROSE: The Indestructible Man)
Due to its cold climate and northern latitude, the Ice Warriors sent their Seed Pods here to create an atmosphere lethal to humans, but which the Ice Warriors could thrive in. This was foiled when the Second Doctor used the Weather Control Unit to destroy the pods with rain. (TV: The Seeds of Death)
Later history
Circa 2157, the Daleks destroyed New York City in the course of their invasion of Earth. (TV: The Chase, The Dalek Invasion of Earth) The city had yet to be rebuilt in its entirety by the 23rd century. (PROSE: Salvation)
After the inhabitants of the Nerva Beacon recolonised Earth in 16087, the main settlement Nerva City was built on the former site of New York City. (AUDIO: Wirrn Isle)
By the time of the founding of New New York on the planet New Earth, the city had been re-created fourteen times, prompting the Tenth Doctor to joke that New New York would more accurately be called "New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New York." (TV: New Earth)
Alternative timelines
In an alternative timeline in which Nazi Germany won World War II as a result of the Seventh Doctor and Ace accidentally leaving laser technology in Colditz Castle in October 1944, the Nazi scientists were able to refine uranium and create nuclear weapons. They subsequently bombed New York City, forcing the surrender of the United States and winning the war for Germany. (AUDIO: Klein's Story)
The Weeping Angels established a "farm" in a Manhattan apartment building at an unknown date no later that the end of the 19th century, to which Angel's victims from the future would be sent backwards in time to live out their lives. This timeline was erased when Rory and Amy killed themselves, thus creating a paradox, thus removing the farms from history. (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan)
Behind the scenes
- Though they did not film any scenes involving actors, members of the Doctor Who production team visited the city in 2006 to shoot some of the location footage seen in Daleks in Manhattan and Evolution of the Daleks. In post-production, the team altered to make the city look as it had in 1930 to ensure that the scenes matched the scenes shot back in Great Britain featuring the main actors and extras. The New York filming marked the first time in the decade since Doctor Who, that any production of Doctor Who had taken place outside of the UK, and first filming ever done in the United States.
- Russell T Davies considered having the city destroyed in The Stolen Earth but decided against it. (The Writer's Tale)
- According to the unfinished story P.S., Amy and Rory were sent back in time from 2012 to fifty years before Rory's birth when the Doctor was unable to retrieve them. In 1946, they had adopted a son, Anthony Brian Williams. At some point, Amy and Rory bought a house with a small garden in which Rory took up his father's gardening hobby.
- Filming for the Doctor Who television episode The Angels Take Manhattan was filmed on location in New York.[1]
Footnotes
- ↑ "Marcus" (24 March 2012). Production: Convention News. Doctor Who News. Retrieved on 23 August 2012.
