Black Archive
- You may wish to consult
Black Archive (disambiguation)for other, similarly-named pages.
The Black Archive, also called the Black Vault (AUDIO: The Screaming Skull [+]Loading...["The Screaming Skull (audio story)"]) or the Tower Archive in reference to other Black Archive facilities, (AUDIO: The Ghost of Bannerman Road [+]Loading...["The Ghost of Bannerman Road (audio story)"]) was a secret vault maintained by UNIT in the Tower of London. The dangerous equipment it contained was such that even the Archive's own staff were forbidden to know what it held. (TV: The Day of the Doctor [+]Loading...["The Day of the Doctor (TV story)"])
Nature[[edit] | [edit source]]
Relation to other facilities[[edit] | [edit source]]
Some accounts indicated that this was the singular location known as the Black Archive. (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor [+]Loading...["The Day of the Doctor (novelisation)"], For the Girl Who Has Everything [+]Loading...["For the Girl Who Has Everything (short story)"]) The Black Archive was not the sole UNIT collection of alien artefacts, with other separate facilities supporting the Archive including the Under Gallery (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor [+]Loading...["The Day of the Doctor (novelisation)"]) and the Vault under the Angel of the North. (AUDIO: The Screaming Skull [+]Loading...["The Screaming Skull (audio story)"]) One account indicated that the Black Archive contained all potentially volatile alien artefacts, and that the adjacent Grey Archive contained a much larger collection of all the other artefacts which needed less supervision. (PROSE: For the Girl Who Has Everything [+]Loading...["For the Girl Who Has Everything (short story)"])
Other accounts indicated that there were multiple Black Archive facilities. (AUDIO: Armageddon [+]Loading...["Armageddon (audio story)"], GAME: The Black Archive [+]Loading...["The Black Archive (game)"], WC: INCOMING TRANSMISSION [+]Loading...["INCOMING TRANSMISSION (webcast)"]) Another Black Archive facility, which was also sometimes referred to as being "the Black Archive", (TV: Enemy of the Bane [+]Loading...["Enemy of the Bane (TV story)"]) was by one account an overflow facility for the main Black Archive under the Tower of London. (AUDIO: The Ghost of Bannerman Road [+]Loading...["The Ghost of Bannerman Road (audio story)"]) Another account indicated that "the Black Archive" referred to a global collection which spanned many facilities across the world connected by T-Mat, including the Tower of London facility. (GAME: The Black Archive [+]Loading...["The Black Archive (game)"])
Security[[edit] | [edit source]]
The staff at the main Black Archive had their memories erased after every shift. In the event of alien invasion the contents of the Black Archive were deemed so dangerous that a nuclear warhead situated 20 feet beneath the archive was to be detonated in order to prevent the invading species from gaining access to the technology contained within the archive, despite the destruction it would wreak on surrounding London. (TV: The Day of the Doctor [+]Loading...["The Day of the Doctor (TV story)"])
Missy was easily able to break in by tearing a small hole in space-time, although she noted that that the Archive was equipped with a mind field that would liquidate the brains of any intruders after 5 minutes. (AUDIO: The Lumiat [+]Loading...["The Lumiat (audio story)"])
Layout & Inventory[[edit] | [edit source]]
By one account, the layout of this Black Archive was an enigma to most staff, with only the entrance and Athenaeum being stable and everything else often seeming to change every time an employee tried to navigate it. Some speculated this was because the site was a damaged TARDIS or another multi-dimensional gadget salvaged by the Curator or because the site was engineered to shift its rooms around like a puzzle box. However, the truth was the site had a stable layout and was smaller than it appeared, and visitors were merely confused by a steady stream of false data from the memory filters. (GAME: The Black Archive [+]Loading...["The Black Archive (game)"])
Entrance[[edit] | [edit source]]
The entrance to the Black Archive was within UNIT HQ, Tower of London. (TV: The Zygon Inversion [+]Loading...["The Zygon Inversion (TV story)"]) Several accounts showed the entrance to the Black Archive as being a dark corridor which led directly into the main vault. It had a desk area where a security guard could sit; (TV: The Day of the Doctor [+]Loading...["The Day of the Doctor (TV story)"], The Zygon Inversion [+]Loading...["The Zygon Inversion (TV story)"]) this was occupied by Atkins at the time of the Zygon invasion of Earth (TV: The Day of the Doctor [+]Loading...["The Day of the Doctor (TV story)"]) and was unmanned at the time of the Truth or Consequences rebellion. (TV: The Zygon Inversion [+]Loading...["The Zygon Inversion (TV story)"])
An account which indicated that the Black Archive was larger than just its main vault indicated that the entrance was a large security checkpoint manned by a receptionist and two guards at all times. The entrance led into the Athenaeum. (GAME: The Black Archive [+]Loading...["The Black Archive (game)"])
Main vault[[edit] | [edit source]]
The central part of the Black Archive was a large room which housed most of its artefacts, by one account known as the "Cabinet of Curiosities". (GAME: The Black Archive [+]Loading...["The Black Archive (game)"]) Several accounts indicated this room amounted to the entire Black Archive collection. (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor [+]Loading...["The Day of the Doctor (novelisation)"], The Zygon Invasion [+]Loading...["The Zygon Invasion (novelisation)"])
According to the Zygon that impersonated McGillop, the UNIT staff didn't know what half of the inventory did. The technology contained within the Black Archive could allow alien races that understood how it all worked to conquer the Earth in a day. (TV: The Day of the Doctor [+]Loading...["The Day of the Doctor (TV story)"]) During the negotiations of Operation Double, Clara Oswald observed the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors fiddling with the inventory, suspecting that they were disabling it. (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor [+]Loading...["The Day of the Doctor (novelisation)"])
The room was lined with shelves of boxes with UNIT logos on them. It also had several shelves extending into the middle of its space, a work area, and several windowed containment boxes (TV: The Day of the Doctor [+]Loading...["The Day of the Doctor (TV story)"]) of the same design UNIT used to contain and study Shakri cubes during the Year of the Slow Invasion. (TV: The Power of Three [+]Loading...["The Power of Three (TV story)"])
The wall to the left of the room's entrance had Kahler-Mas's Attack Drone, a stack of boxes with a Dalek Tommy gun on top, and a space-time telegraph originally given to Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart by the Doctor.
The wall on the side of the entrance had a red leather armchair, a work table with a Sontaran blaster on it, the photograph board of the First to Fourth Doctors' companions, and was where Gallifrey Falls No More was kept when it was in the Archive.
The wall to the right of the entrance had a smaller room labelled U.N.I.T. F6 0012/45 which at one point contained Jack Harkness's vortex manipulator (TV: The Day of the Doctor [+]Loading...["The Day of the Doctor (TV story)"]) and at another had a Mire battle helmet. (TV: The Zygon Inversion [+]Loading...["The Zygon Inversion (TV story)"])
The wall across from the entrance had a shelf with a rocking horse and a piece of arch from the controls of the Sontaran command ship. Next to this wall was a box with the dome of a Type E Supreme Dalek, (TV: The Day of the Doctor [+]Loading...["The Day of the Doctor (TV story)"]) which had a terminal connected to it which UNIT operatives could use to access Dalek information from the dome. (GAME: The Black Archive [+]Loading...["The Black Archive (game)"])
One shelf extended from the wall by the entrance and ran closely parallel to the left wall. Its first section had Mickey Smith's gun, a Silurian gun, and a Clockwork Droid mask. Its second section had Jack Harkness's TARDIS coral, River Song's stilettos, a disc bomb, and a resurrection gauntlet. Its third section had a Magna-Clamp and Amy Pond's sonic probe.
Another shelf began near the second section of the previous shelf, extending parallel to the entrance wall towards the right wall. Its first section had Amy Pond's pinwheel.
The central area of the room had a chair from the Naismith mansion.
A section of the room near the entrance wall was a workspace with a desk. The desk had a Clockwork Droid face mask on it. A containment box nearby had the head of a Cyberman identical to the Chess-playing Cyberman. (TV: The Day of the Doctor [+]Loading...["The Day of the Doctor (TV story)"])
Other items in this room included TOMTIT. (AUDIO: The Lumiat [+]Loading...["The Lumiat (audio story)"])
Some items were most likely to be in this room, but may have been in the warehouses of other parts of the international Black Archive. These were the Dalek alien detector, Artron Goggles, Black Box Rigs, Cat's Eyes, Chameleon Armbands, Compression Fields, Data Leeches, Dermal Symbiotes, Drone Flies, EMP Emitters, Environmental Shields, Link Stones, Jeremiah Kettlewell's living metal, Magnetic Glue, Nestene Skeleton Keys, Superphones, the Toy Soldiers, a Gallifreyan Transdimensional Box, the Translation Staff, and Universal Identification Cards. (GAME: The Black Archive [+]Loading...["The Black Archive (game)"])
Other areas[[edit] | [edit source]]
One account indicated that this Black Archive had other areas, including a hospital and sections of the Omega Locker and Enigma Vault. (GAME: The Black Archive [+]Loading...["The Black Archive (game)"])
History[[edit] | [edit source]]
During the reign of Elizabeth I, the Zygons, seeking to invade and colonise Earth, built a living support chamber beneath the Tower of London. After they had abandoned it, the organic walls calcified into black rock to one day become the Black Archive's vault. (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor [+]Loading...["The Day of the Doctor (novelisation)"])
At some point, UNIT started keeping a particular eye on the Doctor's companions. They kept two boards of photographs of the companions in the Black Archive. Clara Oswald and many others were taken to the Archive as part of this screening but all of them had their memories wiped after their visits. (TV: The Day of the Doctor [+]Loading...["The Day of the Doctor (TV story)"])
Following the Racnoss invasion of 2007, UNIT took advantage of the Thames being drained to expand the Archive underneath the Thames. The Bracewell spitfires were stored in a hangar in this area. (GAME: The Black Archive [+]Loading...["The Black Archive (game)"])
In the 2010s, Kate Stewart put Jastrok and Kalana into hibernation half a mile beneath the Black Archive to await the Silurians' judgement. (AUDIO: United [+]Loading...["United (audio story)"])
In the 21st century, a vortex manipulator had been donated to the archive by Captain Jack Harkness. A Zygon impersonating Kate took Clara there to retrieve it. Clara used the manipulator to escape the Zygon, and travel to 1562 to rescue the Eleventh, Tenth, and War Doctors. Having free reign of the base, the Zygons believed that they could overrun the Earth easily with the amount of alien technology now in their possession. The real Kate Stewart then turned up however, and activated the nuclear armed self-destruction mechanism located under the base. The Zygon who was imitating Kate was able to shut off the device, which was keyed to respond to Kate's voice, but the real Kate could likewise countermand it. This resulted in a deadlock between the two. Eventually the Doctors arrived to stop her. They activated the memory erasing equipment in the ceiling, meaning the two sets of people forgot whether they were human or Zygon, and stopped the self-destruction mechanism. This saved themselves and the whole of London, also resulting in peace talks between the humans and the Zygons. (TV: The Day of the Doctor [+]Loading...["The Day of the Doctor (TV story)"])
The archive was later the repository of the Osgood Box, which symbolised the peace between humans and Zygons. By this point in its history, the Twelfth Doctor, along with Osgood and Clara Oswald, were allowed to access the archive. (TV: The Zygon Inversion [+]Loading...["The Zygon Inversion (TV story)"])
In 2022, Osgood brought Abby McPhail, Cleo Proctor and Shawna Thompson to the Archive for their help in investigating disappearing the records. Amongst UNIT's collection at this point was an Adipose pill, a Dalek and the head of a robot. Cleo and Shawna discovered a storage of possessions that had belonged to people who'd died encountering aliens, including Clive Finch and Cleo's dad. (AUDIO: Recruits [+]Loading...["Recruits (audio story)"])
Wormwood once used Clyde Langer to steal a piece of technology from the Black Archive. (AUDIO: The Ghost of Bannerman Road [+]Loading...["The Ghost of Bannerman Road (audio story)"])
Undated events[[edit] | [edit source]]
Missy once visited the Black Archive while looking for information on the Lumiat, who she thought was an incarnation of the Doctor. Once she broke in, she decided to "liberate" anything she found in the Archive's inventory that could be used as a weapon, or which she fancied as a souvenir. This included a Sontaran blaster, a Dalek Tommy Gun, the Cyber-head, the Mire battle helmet, the red stilettos, and finally TOMTIT, which she fondly called "old friend". (AUDIO: The Lumiat [+]Loading...["The Lumiat (audio story)"])
Behind the scenes[[edit] | [edit source]]
- The Black Archive appeared in Doctor Who and the micro:bit.
- In an interview[which?] after the broadcast of The Day of the Doctor, Steven Moffat revealed that the Black Archive was at one point also to house two movie posters for Dr. Who and the Daleks and Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D., which Clara was to have been seen examining, establishing the Peter Cushing films as existing within the Whoniverse. Unworkable rights fees prevented this from happening.
- The Black Archive is also the title of a series of novella length critical monographs from Obverse Books.
- The Black Archive is vaguely reminiscent of the fictional SCP-foundation. Both deal with the containment of dangerous things that shouldn't exist, both have a series of bases around the world, both use memory erasing technology to preserve secrecy, and both have on-site nuclear warheads in case the site is compromised.
