Wales

Wales
Type:	Nation
Location:	Great Britain
First appearance:	Gemini Plan
Appearances:	see list

British Isles
British IslandsUnited Kingdom
Channel Islands

Wales was a British nation whose capital and largest city, Cardiff in South Wales, sat on a time rift (TV: The Unquiet Dead, et al.) and was the home of Torchwood Three. (TV: Everything Changes, et al.) Rex Matheson called the country "the British equivalent of New Jersey". (TV: The New World) Wrexham was a town in North Wales. (AUDIO: Forgotten Lives)

Torchwood Three's Gwen Cooper (whose family came from Swansea) and Ianto Jones were both of Welsh nationality, as was Gwen's husband, Rhys Williams. Wales was also the location of Aberystwyth University. (TV: Random Shoes)

Geography

Wales shared a land border with the south-west of England. (TV: Army of Ghosts) It was typically split into the regions of South Wales (TV: The Stolen Earth) and North Wales. (AUDIO: Forgotten Lives) The city of Caernarfon, the Cardigan Bay coastal area, and Powys were located in West Wales. (PROSE: Torchwood: The Encyclopedia ^[+]Loading...["Torchwood: The Encyclopedia (reference book)"]) East Wales was bordered by the rural English county of Herefordshire. (PROSE: Doctor Who: The Encyclopedia ^[+]Loading...["Doctor Who: The Encyclopedia (reference book)"])

Wales was situated to the west of the prime meridian and thus located within the Western Hemisphere. (TV: Fear Her ^[+]Loading...["Fear Her (TV story)"])

Notable cities in Wales, included Aberystwyth, Cardiff (TV: Army of Ghosts) and Swansea. (TV: The Categories of Life)

Tenby was located on the South Wales coast. (PROSE: Meet Rose)

Government

Wales' location. (TV: Army of Ghosts)

The parliament of Wales was known as the Welsh Assembly. (AUDIO: Changes Everything) The UK government in London had responsibilities for Wales, but Blon Fel-Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen noted that they paid no notice to goings-on in the country, claiming that the South Wales coast could "fall into the sea" without them noticing. (TV: Boom Town)

History

Early history

In 1400, Geoffrey Chaucer went into hiding in Wales under an assumed name. (AUDIO: The Doctor's Tale)

From 1558 to 1603, Elizabeth I reigned as Queen of England as well as Ireland and Wales. In 1601, the Poor Relief Act created a national poor-law system for England and Wales, forming the origin of workhouses. (PROSE: A History of Humankind)

The United Kingdom

19th century

Based in Cardiff, Torchwood Three was founded in 1885. (PROSE: Slow Decay) It was founded under the suggestion of Agnes Havisham, who believed that the Rift posed a threat after its recent activation. (PROSE: Risk Assessment)

20th century

Throughout the century (if not before), the inhabitants of Brynblaidd in the Brecon Beacons mountain range secretly indulged in murder and cannibalism. (TV: Countrycide)

The 1902 Education Act overhauled the education system of England and Wales, establishing Local Education Authorities which funded the state-run schools and those affiliated to the Church of England and the Catholic Church. (PROSE: A History of Humankind)

David Lloyd George (1863-1945) was the only Welsh Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, taking office on 7 December 1916. The Liberal MP for Caernarvon had served as President of the Board of Trade, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Minister of Munitions and Secretary of State for War before heading the coalition government that led the country through the second half of the First World War. Lloyd George was an aggressive campaigner against alcohol, famously declaring that Britain had three enemies: "Germany, Austria and Drink; as far as I can see, the greatest of these three deadly foes is Drink." His attempt, as Chancellor, to ban alcohol entirely led to the introduction of licensing laws to increase taxes on alcohol and to restrict its sale and the opening hours of public houses. In private, however, (PROSE: The Time Traveller's Almanac) Lloyd George drank the Ninth Doctor under the table. (TV: Aliens of London)

In 1959, a Navarino group, together with the Seventh Doctor and Melanie Bush crashed at Shangri-La holiday camp in Wales. The Bannermen attacked the camp but were defeated by the Chimeron princess. (TV: Delta and the Bannermen)

The Euro-Sea Gas Corporation supplied natural gas to England and Wales. (PROSE: The Universal Databank ^[+]Loading...["The Universal Databank (reference book)"]) Their North Sea refinery supplied all the gas for the whole of Wales and the south of England. (TV: Fury from the Deep ^[+]Loading...["Fury from the Deep (TV story)"])

In the 1970s, the Third Doctor worked on his TARDIS in a barn on a Welsh mountainside. (COMIC: Gemini Plan)

A few years later, the Third Doctor and Jo Grant, both of whom worked for UNIT at the time, visited the small Welsh mining town of Llanfairfach as well as Wholeweal, a small countercultural commune nearby. (TV: The Green Death)

In 1992, the Seventh Doctor and Ace found a portal from a stone circle near Llanfer Ceiriog linking it to an alien world called Tír na n-Óg. (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Witch Mark)

21st century

During the ghost shift craze of 2007, ghosts, actually Cybermen from Pete's World, were forecast as appearing throughout Wales, most notably in Aberystwyth and Cardiff. (TV: Army of Ghosts)

Torchwood Three's hub was destroyed in September 2009. (TV: Children of Earth: Day One)

By the time of the Miracle Day phenomenon, Welsh people greatly disliked being mistaken for or called English; when a CIA agent insulted Gwen Cooper in this way, Gwen furiously told her that she was Welsh and punched her in the face. (TV: Rendition)

In 2010, a fake funeral for the Doctor was held at UNIT Base 5 inside Mount Snowdon. It was actually a ruse by Tia Karim and the Claw Shansheeth of the 15th Funeral Fleet to steal the Doctor's TARDIS. (TV: Death of the Doctor)

In 2020, a tribe of Silurians was awakened from a drilling operation in Cwmtaff, sealing its residents behind a force field. (TV: The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood)

Later history

It was still a part of the UK in the 33rd century, when the British population bar Scotland inhabited Starship UK. (TV: The Beast Below)

Alternate timelines

In the Game of Napoleon and Wellington, the United Kingdom was among the nations which were conquered by France and thus incorporated into Napoléon Bonaparte's World Empire. When the Empire collapsed upon Napoleon's death, the conquered countries split up into separate mini-states, discreetly encouraged by the Players. "Revert[ing] to type", the United Kingdom split into the three separate kingdoms of England, Scotland and Wales, any two of them usually at war with the third. (PROSE: World Game)

Other information

Prejudice against Welsh people was known as Cymrophobia. (AUDIO: Superiority Complex)

Wales was well known for being made up of numerous valleys. In 2005, Ianto Jones had earned the nickname "Valley Boy" simply for being Welsh. (AUDIO: Uprising)

Water Wales supplied water to Wales. (AUDIO: Day Zero)

In 2009, Ianto Jones posed as the Welsh ambassador to Switzerland (with Gwen Cooper as his wife) to gain entrance to the Large Hadron Collider's gala opening and investigate alien activity there. (AUDIO: Lost Souls)

When the Miracle Day phenomenon required the presence of Torchwood in several missions in the United States, on several occasions Americans who met Gwen mistakenly believed that she was English, much to her annoyance. (TV: Rendition, End of the Road)

Commander Paul Keele, Dr. Eleanor Harcourt and Professor Ivor Fassbinder of Dark Space 8 were once sent back in time to medieval Wales. (AUDIO: Bang-Bang-a-Boom!)

Wales had an Extremism and Counter-Terrorism Unit. (AUDIO: A Mother's Son)

Behind the scenes

• Location filming for The Abominable Snowmen and The Five Doctors were filmed in desolate-looking areas of North Wales. Outside shooting for The Masque of Mandragora was done in Portmeirion, also in North Wales.
• Since its revival in 2005, production of Doctor Who and various spin-offs in the franchise have been based in Wales, specifically the Cardiff region. Several episodes such as The Unquiet Dead and Boom Town have been explicitly set in Cardiff.
• Series 1 and 2 of Torchwood primarily take place in the Cardiff region, with series 3 and 4 having a number of scenes set there as well.
• Production of the franchise (which as of February 2023 is only the parent Doctor Who series) was headquartered out of Wolf Studios in Cardiff since 2022. Previously, it was also located in Cardiff, in Roath Lock from 2012 to 2021, and in Upper Boat Studios in nearby Pontypridd from 2006 to 2012.