Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during World War II.
Biography
Winston first met the Doctor when he was a boy. On his fifth birthday, 30 November 1879, at Blenheim Palace, Winston encountered the Doctor, then in his fourth incarnation. The Doctor was hunting Cybermats while posing as a Punch and Judy man. (REF: The Brilliant Book 2011)
Winston next met the Doctor in his second incarnation at St. George's Prepatory School in Ascot in March 1882 The Doctor gave him lessons in Latin. Winston was curious at the time as to why the Doctor taught him how to address a table in Latin. (REF: The Brilliant Book 2011)
Winston next met the Doctor in his tenth incarnation on 26 October 1895, while the Doctor was looking for Sontaran grenades. (Oddly, Winston claimed to be twenty-one years old on this day. 26 October was the day in 1951 that he became Prime Minister for the second time.) (REF: The Brilliant Book 2011)
Winston encountered the Third Doctor at Omdurman in the Sudan on 3 September 1898. The Doctor was battling mummies at the time. (REF: The Brilliant Book 2011)
In November 1899, Churchill was a newspaper correspondent during the second Boer War. The Sixth Doctor and Peri saved him from certain death some time in the conflct. (PDA: Players)
One 11 January 1911, the TARDIS appeared again. However it was the First Doctor who stepped out of the doors and told Churchill it was an honour to meet him. When Churchill informed him they had met before, the Doctor chuckled and said "That's the trouble with time travel". (REF: The Brilliant Book 2011)
At Chartwell in May 1931, Winston and his wife joined the Fifth Doctor for a game of cricket. (REF: The Brilliant Book 2011)
Winston was at Chartwell again on 16 November 1936, when he met the Seventh Doctor. The Doctor told Winston that that the King's lover, Mrs Wallis Simpson, was an alien. (REF: The Brilliant Book 2011)
The Eighth Doctor had Churchill's autograph. He had obtained this during the hundred years he spent on Earth. (EDA: The Tomorrow Windows)
At some point in 1940, two Daleks were presented to Winston by Edwin Bracewell as man-made superweapons. Churchill named them 'ironsides'. Unsure what to make of them, he telephoned the Eleventh Doctor. (DW: The Beast Below, Victory of the Daleks) By the time the Doctor arrived a month later, Winston was sure the 'ironsides' would win the war. The Doctor tried to make Churchill understand the Daleks' true nature, but Winston would not listen, insisting they would be a valuable asset against Nazi Germany. The Daleks showed their true intentions once the Doctor had given his 'testimony'. They created a new race of pure Daleks which tried to destroy London by making it vulnerable to German bombers. The solution to defeating them lay with Bracewell, so Winston and Amy Pond talked him out of committing suicide and into helping them. Churchill told Bracewell "it's time to think big", giving him the idea to use modified Spitfires. Following the Daleks' escape, the Doctor removed all of the alien technology. While Winston protested that it and the Doctor could win him the war in a day, the Doctor told him the Empire would come through without it and himself. Churchill hugged the Doctor farewell and picked the TARDIS key from the Doctor's pocket. Amy noticed and made him give it back. (DW: Victory of the Daleks)
Later, the showman Vorgenson captured Churchill with the Minimiser on 6 June 1944, whilst Churchill was organising the Normandy landings and brought him to 2010. Vorgenson used Churchill in a complicated scheme to attract the Doctor to his show. Churchill was given a phone by the audience, and he called the Doctor. The Doctor arrived, foiled Vorgenson's plan to trap him, and sent Churchill back to his own time. (SP: Doctor Who: The Monsters Are Coming!)
Some time after those events, Bracewell got his hands on one of the final paintings by Vincent van Gogh, found in an attic in France. He showed it to Churchill and, without understanding what it meant, they recognised it as a message for the Doctor. Churchill tried to telephone the Doctor to tell him, but was diverted to River Song in the 52nd century, alerting her of its existence. (DW: The Pandorica Opens) Since the Doctor later altered the timeline so that ultimately the painting did not come to exist, these events never happened. (DW: The Big Bang)
At Buckingham Palace on 8 May 1945, Winston ran into the Ninth Doctor. The Doctor took Winston on a trip in the TARDIS to Ancient Rome, where they encountered a creature disguised as one of Emperor Tiberius's reclining benches. Winston now realised why, back in 1882, he had been taught how to address a table in Latin. (REF: The Brilliant Book 2011)
The makers of EarthWorld believed that Churchill had famous seaside boxing matches. This was result of his speech "We will fight them on the beaches" and its distortion over time. (EDA: EarthWorld)
Other Timelines
In an alternate timeline in which Germany won World War II, Churchill was executed as a war criminal. (NA: Timewyrm: Exodus)
In a timeline in which the Doctor did not find the Ironsides, they successfully turned the tide of the war and took the fight to Germany. After the war was won, Churchill was pressured by Stalin and Truman into having the Ironsides destroyed by a nuclear bomb. (DWAN: Doctor Who The Official Annual 2011)
When River Song caused time to collapse when she refused to kill the Doctor, Winston Churchill was the Holy Roman Emperor in Britain, and had had many negotiations with Cleopatra. He was one of a minority who noticed that time never moved on, and it was always two past five in the afternoon of 22 April, 2011. He was also involved in the Conquest of Gaul. (DW: The Wedding of River Song)
This Churchill was available on social-networking sites, where he was friends with Cleopatra. (REF: The Brilliant Book 2012)
The Doctor, whom Winston knew as a soothslayer, was locked up. His presence was demanded to explain the problem with time. The Doctor told him the story of how he had gotten there. As he did, they had several run-ins with Silents, although neither of them could remember. Just as the Doctor got to the end, the two discovered hundreds of Silence hanging from the ceiling above them. (DW: The Wedding of River Song)
At that moment they were saved by Amy and her soldiers. What happened to Winston afterwards, and whether he retained any knowledge of the experience, is unknown. (DW: The Wedding of River Song)
Personality
Winston Churchill was a close friend of the Doctor, meeting him in several of his incarnations. However when the eleventh Doctor arrived, he greeted him by having his men point guns at him, though he clearly had no intention of actually shooting him and the two of them acted as though this was a sort of game. They also displayed their close friendship by hugging each other before the Doctor left.
Winston had an obsession with being able to pilot the Doctor's TARDIS, even stealing the TARDIS key at one point. He gave it back as soon as Amy noticed he had taken it. Churchill cared a great deal about his country and the lives of his citizens and was eager to use the TARDIS to save the lives of his people. However because he had no knowledge of the laws of time, the Doctor repeatedly refused to give him access to the TARDIS. Churchill was also a good and strong leader and the Doctor told him that many people saw him as a beacon of hope.
References
- The Doctor claimed to have thought up the "blood, sweat and tears" speech for him. (SP: Doctor Who: The Ultimate Adventure, BFA: Doctor Who: The Ultimate Adventure)
- Harold Saxon was described as "a modern Churchill" by Vivien Rook (DW: The Sound of Drums).
- In 2009, then-current Prime Minister Brian Green had a small caricature figure of Churchill in his office. (TW: Children of Earth)
- When Clyde Langer was sent through a time window to 1941, he said what he remembered of Churchill's speech to George Woods while spying on a group of Nazis landing on the coast. "We shall fight them on the beaches, we shall fight them in the... other places." (SJA: Lost in Time)
Behind the scenes
- Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss decided to portray the Doctor and Churchill as old friends in Victory of the Daleks, rather than attempt to portray their first meeting.[1]
- Actor Ian McNeice had previously played Churchill in the Royal National Theatre's 2008 production of Never So Good.
- Part three of The Romans, Conspiracy, was broadcast on the same day as Winston Churchill's funeral, resulting in a lower viewing count than the serial's other episodes.
- Churchill has appeared in a total of four episodes of the revived series - three episodes in series five and one in series six - giving him the distinction of being the first recurring Celebrity Historical character. The only other focal characters of a Celebrity Historical episode to appear in more than one episode are Charles Dickens and Vincent van Gogh, the former having a cameo in The Wedding of River Song, and the latter in The Pandorica Opens, coincidentally Churchill's third appearance in the show.
Footnotes
- ↑ Doctor Who Confidential - "The War Games"
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