THE RIPPER AND THE WHONIVERSE, Part 5

This post explores the most prolific

references to Jack the Ripper in Doctor

 Who media - namely the three-part

comic book series, Ripper's Curse.

Released by IDW Publishing in early

2011, and written by Tony Lee, this

graphic novel offers another fictional

interpretation of the infamous White-

chapel Murders. Unlike BBC Books tie-

in Matrix, this story features many real

-life people involved in the case. Here,

the Eleventh Doctor must stop Jack's

reign of terror.

PART ONE opens in the early hours
of Sunday September 30th, 1888.

A stranger offers to walk 'Long Liz'

Stride home to Spitalfields. Sensing

another client, the prostitute agrees,

and on reaching Berner Street she

proffers a bag of "cashous" sweets [i],

but he suddenly stuns her with a nerve paralytic. By 1 am, Liz lies

dead, and as pedler Louis Diemschutz turns his cart into Dutfield's

Yard he makes a grim discovery.

The killer has reverted to human form and flees just as the TARDIS

materialises nearby. As the Doctor exits, his sonic screwdriver detects

Kryon energy, which has pulled his ship to Earth. The police activity

street attracts the travellers and the Doctor is asked to examine the

murdered woman: "her throat was cut, she died instantly" he

observes and rushes off to confront the same stranger. The Doctor

 discovers "a reptile in a shimmer suit" [ii] emitting "a lot of

radiation from the Matrua Nebula." Meanwhile, Amy and Rory

introduce themselves as Miss Marple [iii] and Inspector Clouseau

 [iv], of CSI London!

We then witness Sir Charles Warren being quizzed by Tom Bullen

of the Central News Agency, about the Ripper and the 'Dear Boss'

letter [v]. Warren declares the correspondence a hoax, then is

 informed of this victim's details: "Elizabeth Stride, aged 44, throat 

slashed, killer interrupted". She had been seen earlier by PC Smith,

 with a fair-haired man. Warren then reads Rory's identity from the

psychic paper: he's the Earl of Leadworth, the actual inspiration for

Doyle's Sherlock Holmes! [vi] Amy now realises the truth - this is 

"the night of the double murder" and they must get to Mitre Square 

to save Catherine Eddowes: "she's next!" Inspector Frederick 

Abberline arrives and deduces that the killer is right-handed,

contrary to current opinion [vii].

Amy sees the alien Ripper as she enters the Square, but she's too

late to prevent the next canonical murder, and is herself stunned by

a dart to her neck. The Doctor appears just in time to save Amy by

attacking the reptile's noise-sensitive "tympanic membranes" with

his screwdriver. The police arrive and arrest the Doctor at this new 

murder scene. Bullen announces, news-vendor style: "Ripper

captured!"

NOTES

[i] Stride (the third canonical victim) was reported to be clutching a packet of cachous (breath freshening lozenges) in her left hand, although other contemporary accounts replace these with grapes.

[ii] Akin to the Shimmer technology employed by the Vinvocci in The End of Time.

[iii] Between 1927 and 1976, Agatha Christie's English spinster sleuth, Jane Marple, appeared in twelve crime novels and twenty short stories, then in many film, TV, radio, and stage versions (she is also mentioned in The Unicorn and the Wasp by Donna: "Come on Agatha, what would Miss Marple do?").

[iv] Bungling French detective, Jacques Clouseau, appeared in The Pink Panther

film series, and was played by Peter Sellers. It's telling that in comic-form, Rory

is still perceived as a bumbler, and given the guise of Clouseau.

[v] Inspector John Littlechild (1847-1923), who named American 'doctor' Francis Tumblety (1833-1903) as a Ripper suspect in 1913, also revealed that journalist Bullen (in fact, Thomas Bulling) and his editor, John Moore (manager of the Central News Agency) were the true authors of the 'Dear Boss' letter.

[vi] Rory later presents himself (via the psychic paper) as a Dr. Joseph Bell-like figure, the actual inspiration for the Great Detective. There is a long tradition of 'Holmes versus the Ripper' fiction, and even Conan Doyle teamed up with Oscar Wilde (in Gyles Brandreth's Jack the Ripper: Case Closed, 2017) then Bell (in A Knife in the Fog by Bradley Harper, 2018).

Read Dr. Watson's account of the killings in Michael Dibdin's The Last Sherlock 

Holmes Story (1978), Dust and Shadow (2009) by Lyndsay Faye, Bernard

Schaffer's Whitechapel: The Final Stand of Sherlock Holmes (2011), The Autumn of Terror (2016) by Randy Williams, and The Ripper of Whitechapel by MK Wiseman (2020).

Brian Clemen's play, Holmes and the Ripper, premiered in Swansea in June 1988 - Francis Matthews and Frank Windsor played Holmes and Watson.

Sigmund Freud (Andrew Sachs) joined Watson (Norman Rodway) on a tour of the murder sites in The Singular Case of Sherlock H and Sigmund F, Cecil Jenkins' BBC Radio 3 drama broadcast in February 1990 - Ronald Pickup portrayed the detective. In Holmes & Watson: Madrid Days (a Spanish film of 2012), the duo pursued the Ripper to Spain.

Doyle met Bell in 1877, and served as his clerk in Edinburgh. Their working relationship was the basis of the BBC's Murder Rooms and the first serial even featured Dr. Thomas Cream (1850-1892), another candidate for Jack. Supposedly, Bell submitted the name of his Ripper suspect to the police, and a week later the murders ceased. Doyle attended the Crimes Club walking tour of the murder sites in 1905, and theorised a 'Jill the Ripper' suspect.

Doyle was introduced to the Doctor by Bell in The Monstrous Menagerie (2014),

and the writer appeared in John Peel's Evolution (1994), and Revenge of the

Judoon by Terrance Dicks (2008). Doyle was also known to Redvers Fenn-Cooper (see Ghost Light).

[vii] Here, Rory compares (the real Inspector) Abberline to (the fictional one, depicted by) Johnny Depp, as seen in From Hell.