122 Leadenhall Street
By 2013, 122 Leadenhall Street was a skyscraper with a slanted side, located on Leadenhall Street in the City of London.
By one account, the skyscraper located on the site had an Art Deco architectural style, which was used by UNIT for their headquarters in 2022. (TV: The Power of the Doctor [+]Loading...["The Power of the Doctor (TV story)"])
History
In 2013, the helicopter transporting the Eleventh Doctor's TARDIS flew past the skyscraper. (TV: The Day of the Doctor [+]Loading...["The Day of the Doctor (TV story)"])
Around the mid-2010s, whilst Clara Oswald hung outside the doors of the TARDIS in the skies above London when searching for the Trap Street, she was near the Shard, Tower Bridge, 122 Leadenhall Street and the City of London. (TV: Face the Raven [+]Loading...["Face the Raven (TV story)"])
In 2017, the Monks' Cathedral was located in the City of London near 122 Leadenhall Street. (TV: The Lie of the Land [+]Loading...["The Lie of the Land (TV story)"])
The A Charitable Earth headquarters were located on the other side of the River Thames from 122 Leadenhall Street by the late 2010s. (WC: The Promise [+]Loading...["The Promise (webcast)"])
By 2022, 122 Leadenhall Street was leased to Kate Stewart of UNIT for their headquarters. However, Kate and Tegan Jovanka soon had to activate the structural termination system to implode the building and entomb the Cyber-Warriors led by a cloned Ashad, during the Master's Dalek Plan. (TV: The Power of the Doctor [+]Loading...["The Power of the Doctor (TV story)"])
However, by November 2023, (PROSE: The Star Beast [+]Loading...["The Star Beast (novelisation)"]) a new headquarters with a helipad was constructed in the approximate area of 122 Leadenhall Street, which had inexplicably returned. (TV: The Star Beast [+]Loading...["The Star Beast (TV story)"], The Giggle [+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"])
Behind the scenes
Opened in July 2014 but constructed during the preceding three years, the Leadenhall Building at 122 Leadenhall Street has been present in many Doctor Who episodes in establishing shots and scenes set in London's skies, although it never had any narrative significance, unlike other London skyscrapers such as the Gherkin or One Canada Square.
However, this changed with 2022's The Power of the Doctor [+]Loading...["The Power of the Doctor (TV story)"]. Through digital SFX, the skyscraper was transformed into the Art Deco skyscraper which became UNIT's headquarters. While this particular building had never been seen in previous stories — such as the 2019 mini-episode The Promise [+]Loading...["The Promise (webcast)"] set in the late 2010s, for a chronologically close example — the onscreen geography was mostly faithful to the real location, with Leadenhall Street being seen below Ace when she parachuted from the top of the skyscraper. However, the scene ostensibly set outside the building after its destruction is clearly a different location, as it was filmed at West Bute Street, Cardiff.
Matters became even messier with The Star Beast [+]Loading...["The Star Beast (TV story)"] and The Giggle [+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"], released a year later in 2023, which not only showed that the real Leadenhall Building had returned, but that the new UNIT HQ was logically located in the middle of Leadenhall Street, as it didn't replace any of the real buildings but was sandwiched between them; it can be seen that the Scalpel and 40 Leadenhall Street are located to the immediate area east, the Leadenhall Building north, the Lloyd's building and Willis Building to the south, and the construction site of 1 Leadenhall Street to the west.
Location information
Though it's possible that a real world location doesn't exist in the same geographic space in the Doctor Who universe, such cases are few and far between. Thus, the map to the right is probably a good indicator of the DWU location of 122 Leadenhall Street.
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