Stockbridge

Stockbridge

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Stockbridge
Type:	Village
Location:	England
First appearance:	Doctor Who and the Iron Legion
Appearances:	see list

Stockbridge was a sleepy English town of uncertain location. Various accounts held that it was either in Gloucestershire, (COMIC: Stars Fell on Stockbridge) Norfolk (PROSE: Timewyrm: Revelation) Hampshire (AUDIO: Autumn) or Mummerset. (AUDIO: Castle of Fear) Wherever it was, though, it was definitely English and in a valley, alongside the River Stock, for which it was named. (COMIC: Endgame, AUDIO: The Eternal Summer)

The Doctor spent considerable time there in several incarnations. The Fifth Doctor in particular spent much time there, usually due to commitments to the Stockbridge Cricket Club. He described the settlement as "the one place in the universe where nothing ever changes". (AUDIO: The Eternal Summer) His friends Izzy Sinclair and Maxwell Edison were long-term residents. Stockbridge was the centre of many alien invasions and time distortions. The Doctor, over time, visited the town in all the stages of its life to save it from predators.

The local pub was the Redfern Inn. (COMIC: Stars Fell on Stockbridge, AUDIO: The Eternal Summer) The bed and breakfast Green Dragon, Justinian's Church, the duck pond — into which the Doctor fell — and the village green were some of the town's main features in the 20th and 21st centuries, (AUDIO: The Eternal Summer) although medieval Stockbridge was dominated by a castle. (AUDIO: Castle of Fear)

History

This section's awfully stubby.

Missing information from Castle of Fear.

While possessed by an elemental being which could "possess" technology, the Doctor's TARDIS appeared in Stockbridge in the distant past, leaving an imprint in a chalk quarry there, before travelling forward through time. (COMIC: The Stockbridge Horror)

Edward Linfoot was a resident of the village in the 19th century. He died in 1872, aged 56. (AUDIO: Plague of the Daleks)

The 20th century

During World War II, an Army base was situated there. (COMIC: The Tides of Time)

On 11 October 1979, Stockbridge was invaded by the Iron Legion. (COMIC: Doctor Who and the Iron Legion, AUDIO: Doctor Who and the Iron Legion)

While living there temporarily during the early 1980s, the Doctor, while playing cricket (which he did frequently in the village) saw a ball switch places with an Army grenade from the past in 1982, alerting the Doctor to the disruptions in the universe caused by Melanicus' mis-use of the Event Synthesizer. After a strange odyssey, the Doctor and his companion Sir Justin (whom he had met along the way) confronted the demon in a church in Stockbridge, now ruined by the Millennium Wars. Sir Justin destroyed Melanicus at the cost of his own life and the Doctor discovered the name of the church: St Justinian's. (COMIC: The Tides of Time)

After these apocalyptic events, the Doctor met Maxwell Edison, a nerdy UFO chaser regarded by the locals, with some justification, as something of a kook. Maxwell and the Doctor visited an alien ship in Earth orbit "haunted" by the same discorporate elemental which would later take over the TARDIS. Knowing the ship would break up when its orbit decayed allowed Maxwell to impress the folk of Stockbridge with a successful prophecy. (COMIC: Stars Fell on Stockbridge)

On 12 June 1984, Harold and Alice Withers, the owners of the Green Dragon, were married. (AUDIO: The Eternal Summer) Five years later on 24 June 1989, the local school burned down. Philip Withers died in the fire at age seven. (AUDIO: The Eternal Summer, Plague of the Daleks)

The Doctor's fifth incarnation would regularly turn up during summer to play in the Stockbridge cricket team. He usually tried to leave straight after the last match. (AUDIO: Autumn)

In 1992, the blast that obliterated Cheldon Bonniface extended to parts of nearby Stockbridge. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Revelation)

Years later, in his eighth incarnation, the Doctor met Maxwell Edison, again. This time, the Celestial Toymaker had turned every human in the village except Maxwell and his young friend Izzy into dolls which he could control. After the defeat of the Toymaker, Izzy left with the Doctor in the TARDIS. (COMIC: Endgame) Following many adventures together, the Doctor returned Izzy to Stockbridge on the same day that she had left. (COMIC: Oblivion)

The 21st century

Around the millennium, Lizzie Corrigan arrived and moved in. (AUDIO: The Eternal Summer)

In 2008, Alice Withers died. (AUDIO: The Eternal Summer)

The Doctor, now in his tenth incarnation, made yet another visit to Stockbridge in mid-December 2008, where he again met Maxwell. (COMIC: The Stockbridge Child)

On 4 August 2009, Maxwell returned from a negated timeline (see below) and was happy to see his village safe and sound again. (AUDIO: The Eternal Summer)

At some point, the Doctor became the head of the Stockbridge Chess Society. (COMIC: Fugitive)

In 2016, the Twelfth Doctor lured Josiah W. Dogbolter to Stockbridge, whose villagers the Doctor had frozen in time, so he could bring him down. Max and Izzy incapacitated Dogbolter, and the Doctor had Sharon Allen broadcast Dogbolter confessing to his crimes of murder to the Galactic Broadcasting Corporation in Dogbolter's century. This led to Dogbolter's arrest and the freezing of his assets. The Doctor then returned the villagers to normal. (COMIC: The Stockbridge Showdown)

Stockbridge's destruction

After the 45th century, Stockbridge was conserved in an environment dome after the rest of Earth became unhabitable. The place became a (unpopular) tourist attraction; guests of all worlds came to visit to see how humans lived in olden days. After the Fifth Doctor defeated Daleks which had invaded Stockbridge, Lysette Barclay destroyed the environment dome and Stockbridge to stop any Dalek technology being recovered. (AUDIO: Plague of the Daleks)

Alternate timeline

In an alternate timeline, the village "vanished" into thin air in 1950. The Psychic Investigation Group (PIG) was formed by Lizzie Corrigan to investigate this disappearance. In reality, the supposed disappearance was actually a stasis field around the town created automatically by a Rutan ship that came close to exploding. The people within the "bubble" of the stasis field relived past experiences every day and could never die, but these effects could not leave the bubble. Everyone who died in the main timeline between 1950 and 2009 remained alive. The Lord and Lady of the Manor, future versions of the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa, ruled, actually puppets of Viridios.

But, as the Fifth Doctor said, "eventually bubbles pop" — on 4 August 2009, the walls were destroyed and, with the help of Lizzie Corrigan and Maxwell Edison, the timeline was negated when the Doctor and Nyssa escaped, thereby never becoming the possible future versions that turned the village into "hell" in the first place. (AUDIO: The Eternal Summer)