By some accounts, the Black Archive facility was an above-ground warehouse which was the location of UNIT's vaults, being where they kept everything that shouldn't have existed on Earth but did anyway. (TV: Enemy of the Bane [+]Loading...["Enemy of the Bane (TV story)"])
- You may wish to consult
Black Archive (disambiguation)for other, similarly-named pages.
While some accounts referred to this location as being the singular Black Archive, (TV: Enemy of the Bane [+]Loading...["Enemy of the Bane (TV story)"], COMIC: Don't Step on the Grass [+]Loading...["Don't Step on the Grass (comic story)"], GAME: Defending the Earth: The UNIT Sourcebook [+]Loading...["Defending the Earth: The UNIT Sourcebook (game)"]) others indicated that there were other Black Archive facilities, including a major one underneath the Tower of London. (TV: The Day of the Doctor [+]Loading...["The Day of the Doctor (TV story)"], GAME: The Black Archive [+]Loading...["The Black Archive (game)"]) One account reconciled this by stating that this Black Archive was an overflow facility for the Tower of London location. (AUDIO: The Ghost of Bannerman Road [+]Loading...["The Ghost of Bannerman Road (audio story)"])
By one account, it was located in London. (COMIC: Don't Step on the Grass [+]Loading...["Don't Step on the Grass (comic story)"]) By another, it was at an unknown location in Central England, only known to high ranking UNIT officials. (GAME: Defending the Earth: The UNIT Sourcebook [+]Loading...["Defending the Earth: The UNIT Sourcebook (game)"])
The facility required a UNIT level one clearance to gain entrance. (TV: Enemy of the Bane [+]Loading...["Enemy of the Bane (TV story)"])
History[[edit] | [edit source]]
This Black Archive was started operation at the time of UNIT's formation. (GAME: Defending the Earth: The UNIT Sourcebook [+]Loading...["Defending the Earth: The UNIT Sourcebook (game)"]) The Tenth Doctor remembered that one of his past incarnations had been involved in the foundation of the Black Archive. He also remarked that "Black Archive" was not the only name this facility had gone by. (COMIC: Don't Step on the Grass)
On 4 June 1972, UNIT bought the Tunguska Scroll from a private collector and placed it in one of the Black Archive facilities. (TV: Enemy of the Bane)
In the 2000s,[nb 1] Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart smuggled Sarah Jane Smith into a Black Archive to steal the Tunguska Scroll. (TV: Enemy of the Bane)
In 2009, the Tenth Doctor sent Martha Jones and Matthew Finnegan to the Black Archive to fetch information on the Krynoid virus in the hopes that it might hold a key to stopping the Enochian invasion in Greenwich Park. (COMIC: Don't Step on the Grass)
Legacy[[edit] | [edit source]]
In the Memory TARDIS, Clyde Langer told Jo Grant that Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart had helped Sarah Jane get into the Black Archive. (TV: The Three Doctors [+]Loading...["The Three Doctors (TotT TV story)"])
Inventory[[edit] | [edit source]]
Its inventory included the Tunguska Scroll, stolen by Sarah Jane Smith in the 2000s.[nb 1] (TV: Enemy of the Bane)
Behind the scenes[[edit] | [edit source]]
- The Web of Lies, a proposed storyline for The Sarah Jane Adventures, would have involved a Metebelis crystal being stolen from the Black Archive.[1]
Footnotes[[edit] | [edit source]]
Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 No on screen date is given for the first two series of The Sarah Jane Adventures, outside of The Day of the Clown from the second series being set shortly after 9 October in an undisclosed year. While Donna Noble's present from the fourth series of Doctor Who is set around the same time as the first series of The Sarah Jane Adventures, and The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith from the second series of The Sarah Jane Adventures is explicitly described as being set a year after Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? from the first series, Doctor Who's fourth series is not consistently dated, with TV: The Fires of Pompeii, TV: The Waters of Mars, and AUDIO: SOS setting the present of the 13 regular episodes in 2008, and PROSE: Beautiful Chaos setting them in about April to June 2009.