THE RIPPER AND THE WHONIVERSE, Part 4

 After my analysis of the novel Matrix, the

 next step is to look at the further references

to the Whitechapel Murders in Doctor Who

media, since The Talons of Weng-Chiang

was first shown in 1977.

The serial opens as nine women (not specified

here in a family drama as prostitutes), including

Emma Buller, have now gone missing in East

London. The action seems to be set soon after

the 'Autumn of Terror' as Casey, stagehand at

the Palace Theatre, refers to 'Jolly Jack' (all

mention of the Ripper was omitted from

Terrance Dicks' novelisation). 

In Robert Holmes' draft script, Casey added

that the recent disappearances can't be the

Ripper's work because he "is in Canada". This

alludes to Prince Albert Victor, a suspect in the

Royal conspiracy theory, advanced in Stephen

Knight's book, The Final Solution, published

just months before the story was broadcast (the Prince actually

embarked on a seven month tour of India from October 1889).

The events of Talons must therefore occur between late 1889 and early 1892, when the Prince died (during part four, Litefoot is seen

reading the February 1892 edition of Blackwood's Magazine).

Location filming for the serial took place in Wapping, whilst it's

supposed setting of Limehouse (just east of Whitechapel) housed a

large Chinese community in Victorian times, and was also the site

 of Fu Manchu's hideout in the books of Sax Rohmer (the pen name

of Arthur Henry Ward) - surely another influence for writer Holmes.

The opium dens of Limehouse - seen here as the final refuge of Li

H'Sen Chang - inspired other writers like Dickens, and featured in

the From Hell graphic novel (1991-96, 1999) and film (2001).

Novels The Shadow of Weng-Chiang (by David McIntee) and The 
Bodysnatchers (Mark Morris) both set a date of 1889* for Talons

(the character of Professor George Litefoot returns in the latter

novel, wherein companion Sam Jones asks the Eighth Doctor if he

knows the Ripper's identity). The back cover blurb on Titan's Talons

script book quotes "London in the 1880s" as a setting.

Knight's thesis that Queen Victoria's own physician, Sir William Gull

(1816-1890) was the Ripper (expanded from Dr. Thomas Stowell's

1970 article in The Criminologist) has been perpetuated by two Jack

 the Ripper TV drama series (BBC, 1973 and Thames, 1988), and the

 films Murder by Decree (1979), The Ripper (1997), and From Hell.

Nigel Robinson's novel Birthright is set in the London of 1909. Here, 

more grisly murders in the East End are apparently the work of the

 legendary 'Spring Heeled Jack' who first terrorised the capital in the 

1830's.

Again the seventh Doctor exposes the real killers - the insectoid

Chaarl, and Ace even visits Hanbury Street, scene of the second 

Ripper murder [2]. This flying fiend always evaded capture, and the 

last account of this Jack came in 1904 when he leapt over the roofs 

of Everton in Liverpool, to escape yet again. The second season of 

BBC1's Luther featured the Punch killer who is obsessed with this

other Victorian bogeyman. The ITV series, Houdini and Doyle also

saw the titular investigators' account of the urban legend.

The Doctor Who play Hellblossom (2000, 2002, 2010) also features 

an alien Spring Heeled Jack, here revealed as the Hybrid. Similarly,

 in two versions of Johnny Byrne's The Time Lord scripts (1988 to

1990), the Doctor (disguised as a prostitute) dispatches the Ripper,

in reality the shapeshifting Weazll.

In Big Finish's Excelis Rising, a parallel series of murders took place

on the planet Artaris. Grayvorn tells the Doctor that the "Eastern 

slums prostitute murderer was identified and hanged, the murders 

stopped".
This reflects yet another theory that the sudden cessation of the real
slayings was the result of the Ripper's capture, the truth covered-up.

The seventh Doctor was present in Whitechapel prior to Matrix, in
Neil Penswick's The Pit. Here, his companion, the poet William Blake,
discovers the date of their arrival from the Evening News. The head-

line for September 30th 1888 reads: "Jack the Ripper strikes again"
 presumably reporting the 'double event' of that morning. Stride [3]
however is only murdered later on in the book. Then, lost in the alley-
ways, Blake sees the killer armed with his knife and is scared off by

a policeman. Later in the Old Nags Head pub, Blake hears of another
murder and proceeds to Berner Street, where the Doctor examines 

the victim, Stride, and concludes that the killing seems to be

ritualistic. They soon encounter the real culprits - the fanatical 

Fellowship, who sacrificed the women, a nod to the actual Masonic

 links of the Royal conspiracy.

TO BE CONTINUED

KEY Canonical Murders:

[1] Mary Ann Nicholls - Buck's Row, Friday August 31st 1888

[2] Annie Chapman - Hanbury St. Saturday September 8th

[3] Elizabeth Stride - Berner St. Sunday September 30th

[4] Catherine Eddowes - Mitre Square, also September 30th

[5] Mary Jane Kelly - Miller's Court, Friday November 9th

*this date is also posited in Lance Parkin's The History

of the Universe