Victoria
- For other meanings, see Victoria.
Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, Empress of India, more commonly known as Queen Victoria, was a powerful and influential monarch on Earth in the 19th century, ruling from 1837 to 1901. Her reign, known as the Victorian era, was marked by tremendous strides in technology and the arts in Britain and elsewhere. Victoria is known to have met the Doctor at least twice; once during her coronation ceremony in 1838, and in 1879 she experienced an adventure with the the Tenth Doctor. The latter led to her effectively banishing the Doctor from her country and to form the Torchwood Institute, as the British Empire's defense against the dark forces with which the Doctor seemed to consort.
Biography
The Third Doctor claimed to have attended Queen Victoria's coronation in 1838. (DW: The Curse of Peladon)
Queen Victoria's late husband Prince Albert had known Sir George MacLeish, the owner of Torchwood House. (WEB: visittorchwood.co.uk)
Following an adventure with an alien werewolf, the Queen knighted both Rose and the Doctor for saving her. However, she abruptly had a change of heart and banished the Doctor from the British Empire. Shortly after, she founded the Torchwood Institute, taking the name from the estate where she encountered the Doctor. Despite his having saved her life, Victoria had the Doctor listed as "an enemy of the Crown" in Torchwood's original charter (DW: Tooth and Claw), as related by Yvonne Hartman. (DW: Army of Ghosts) Among other matters, the Queen took an interest in the Cardiff rift. (WEB: torchwood.org.uk)
The Queen seemed very guarded about a bite the werewolf may have given her, leading Rose and the Doctor to jokingly speculate that the werewolf curse was subsequently passed down through the royal line. (DW: Tooth and Claw)
Four years later, in 1883, the being calling itself Josiah Samuel Smith, trained the deranged Redvers Fenn-Cooper as an assassin to kill the Queen. Cooper had an invitation to visit Buckingham Palace to meet the Queen, so Smith saw him as the perfect assassin to kill her, which would enable Smith to take over the throne. Fenn-Cooper believed the monarch to be a wild animal called the "Crowned Saxe-Coburg". (DW: Ghost Light)
Knowledge of the Doctor passed down from one generation of the Royal Family to another following the incident with the werewolf and exile by Queen Victoria, being remembered as far as the 33rd century by Elizabeth X of Starship UK. (DW: The Beast Below)
- Although only mentioned in the 33rd century, Elizabeth X was still alive in the 52nd century.
Parallel Universe
In Pete's World, Queen Victoria still went to Torchwood House. The Werewolf attacked the house and Queen Victoria was killed in this event. It is theorised this was the splitting point that created Pete's World. (REF: Doctor Who: Creatures and Demons)
Minor References
When he mentioned his companion Victoria Waterfield to her, Sarah Jane Smith jokingly suggested to the Fourth Doctor that Queen Victoria had travelled in the TARDIS with him. (DW: Pyramids of Mars). Elizabeth X mentioned her when telling the Doctor and Amy Pond about how her family have grown up around stories about the doctor all their lives.
There was a statue of Queen Victoria in the garden of Harrison Chase mansion (DW: The Seeds of Doom).
Appearances in Other Media
In the Fifth Doctor novels Empire of Death and Imperial Moon, the Fifth Doctor has two adventures involving Queen Victoria; in Empire of Death he is temporarily appointed her scientific advisor while investigating a recently-discovered rift that appears to lead to the afterlife -- revealed during the confrontation to actually lead to another dimension which shaped itself according to the wishes of the inhabitants -- and in Imperial Moon, having prevented a catastrophe after the British Imperial Space Fleet's trip to the Moon result in the alien life-forms known as the Vrall being unleashed on Earth; the Doctor has his companion Kamelion pose as a vision of Albert to convince Victoria to abandon space travel (Although Victoria and the Doctor never meet here, the Doctor possibly wishing to avoid the awkward explanations about his presence here after their previous meeting in Empire). It is possible that the 'vision' of Albert is responsible for Victoria's rejection of the chaos and inexplicabe crises that the Tenth Doctor appears to bring during their later meeting, taking her 'late husband's' words about the dangers of space travel almost too literally to the point of excessive paranoia and hostility.
External Links
- December 1899 address of Queen Victoria to the Torchwood Institute (Torchwood website)
- August 1883 address to the Torchwood Institute on the Cardiff rift (Torchwood website)
- December 1884 address on the importance of secrecy (Torchwood website)
- July 1882 speech to the Torchwood Institute (Torchwood website)
- account of Queen Victoria's visits to Torchwood House (Torchwood House website)
