We know that Doctor Who leaps back and forward in time with quite some regularity, often visiting important moments in history. However, as far as we know, the Time Lord has yet to attend Kings Charles III coronation this week (although he may do sometime in the future, time-wimey and all that!).
However, there’s no doubt that he was around for the coronation of Charles’ predecessor, his mum, Queen Elizabeth II. In fact, back on 2 June 1953, the Doctor saved the day, saved the country and more or less saved the Crown!
How did Doctor Who’s coronation story come about?
The 2006 episode The Idiot’s Lantern saw the Doctor visit London while in his ninth incarnation (that’s the David Tennant one, but the first time around — again, timey-wimey!). He was accompanied by his plucky companion Rose Tyler aka actress Billie Piper.
The episode was the seventh installment of the show’s second series since its 2005 revival and took its title from a disparaging nickname for television sets back in the day.
The League of Gentleman star and Who fan Mark Gatiss penned the episode. The story was inspired by the rush for television sets in the run up to the coronation, the country desperate to see their new Queen crowned.
He came up with a plot which saw an evil alien entity attempt to take over the British population via their TV sets, sucking their brain energy as they sat in their living rooms glued to the coronation.
Previous ideas for the story included an alien which takes over its victims via rock and roll songs. This had a bit of a hangover in the finished version, with the Doctor and Rose arriving dressed to go to an Elvis performance in 1956, but soon realising they’re a few years early out and a few of thousand miles off course!
What’s the plot of The Idiot’s Lantern?
The story sees the Doctor and Rose arrive in North London, where they are intrigued to spot a figure being bundled out of a house under a blanket by police and driven away.
Soon, they meet a local family, the Connollys, and discover the clan is hiding a secret – their grandma tucked away in the back bedroom with her entire face missing!
At a local TV shop, Magpie Electricals, Rose discovers 'the Wire'– an evil alien who escaped execution by its own people by turning itself into electrical form.
The Wire can now only manifest itself via TV screens as a prim lady BBC continuity announcer. It has an evil plan to consume the minds of the UK public via their television sets during the coronation broadcast, that energy then enabling it to return to a physical form.
But before Rose can act, she is consumed by the Wire and she too becomes a faceless shell.
Soon, the Doctor is on the case, discovering where the police are holding the faceless victims, then investigating Magpie’s shop and encountering the Wire. The Doctor now faces a race against time to stop the Wire’s plan.
As the coronation broadcast begins, and the Doctor scales the mast of the Alexandra Palace transmitter — home of the BBC TV back in 1953 — to attach a device which will allow him to capture the Wire. While the country watches the Queen in Westminster Abbey, the Wire starts to consume each individual's energy. But the Doctor blocks the Wire in the nick of time — trapping the entity on a Betamax video cassette!
The episode ends at a coronation street party. The faceless people have been returned to themselves, and the locals celebrate the start of what will be their Queen’s record-breaking reign.
Who stars in The Idiot’s Lantern?
While the Doc sadly doesn’t meet the Queen on her big day, Her Maj does feature in the episode. The show was allowed to use clips from the BBC’s archive footage of the 1953 coronation. We see these scenes on the television screen in the Connolly’s living room, but no clips of the moment of the coronation itself were allowed to be used.
The main guest star is Maureen Lipman, who plays the Wire. She filmed all her scenes in one day in Alexandra Palace itself, as she was appearing in a play in London at the time (the rest of the show was filmed in and around the show’s Cardiff base). Maureen wore a dress of her own, which she had used for her award-winning tribute show to Joyce Grenfell, Re: Joyce!.
Maureen, the star of countless films and TV series, has since become a Dame of the British Empire on the orders of the Queen herself. She’s currently bringing her formidable skills to Coronation Street, playing the sharp-tongued battle-axe Evelyn Plummer.
Another guest star with soap future is Jamie Foreman, who plays bullish Connolly family dad Eddie in the episode. He will dial the loathsomeness up to the maximum to play dastardly Derek Branning in EastEnders from 2011 to 2112.
Meanwhile, Margaret John, who plays Gran, is best known for her role in sitcom Gavin and Stacey, as Gwen’s foul-mouthed, sex-mad elderly neighbour Doris. Margaret then found further fame late in life. Her final role was in the international hit Game of Thrones. She featured in two episodes of the drama, with plans in place for her to appear in more before her death in 2011 after a short illness.
Finally, Ron Cook, who portrayed shop owner Mr Magpie, went on to appear in acclaimed drama series Des – which starred one David Tennant in the lead role – as well as The Salisbury Poisonings and most recently Star Wars spin-off Andor.
Is The Idiot’s Lantern any good?
In the series’ 2006 series run The Idiot’s Lantern is sandwiched between the action-packed two-part Cyberman origin story Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel and the rather dark, gruelling two-pater The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit. So, it was conceived to be a light and fun interlude.
With that in mind, the episode does its job, with some genuinely scary moments — the blank-faced people closing in on the Doctor must having given more than a few kids sleepless nights — as well as a jaunty pace and a just the right side of over-the-top performance by Maureen Lipman as the evil Wire. When Doctor Who Magazine polled its readers in 2014, the episode was ranked a middlingly low 195 out of the 241 stories that had been broadcast to that time.
When were the Doctor’s other royal encounters?
The Doc’s had influence on the crown on more than one occasion.
Queen Elizabeth II may have had no idea that the Time Lord saved her coronation, but she did show her gratitude when he stopped a spaceship Titanic crashing into Buckingham Palace in the 2010 in the story Voyage of the Damned, waving her "thank you" from the Palace.
Also, if she’s been a bit more eagle-eyed, the Queen would have spotted the Doc and Ace snooping around Windsor Castle in 1988, the pair narrowly avoiding an encounter with the monarch and her Corgis in the story Silver Nemesis.
The previous Queen Elizabeth met the Doctor at two different times in her life. In The Shakespeare Code, the furious Queen reveals that the doctor married her years before, then disappeared without a trace.
We then see the Doc’s seduction of the younger Elizabeth I (played by Gavin and Stacey’s Joanna Page) in the 50th anniversary special, The Day of the Doctor, where a shape shifting Zygon also morphs into a double of the Queen.
At other times, the Doc has helped Queen Victoria fight off a werewolf in 2006’s Tooth and Claw, and the 13th doctor encountered King James VI as she investigated alien goings-on during the 17th century witch trials in 2018’s The Witchfinders.
And, if you don’t want any royal spoilers, then do stop reading now. The Doc also meets the future Queen Elizabeth X (or ‘Liz Ten’ as she’s known by then) in the 2010 story The Beast Below. Set thousands of years in the future, Liz Ten and all her subjects are living on a huge spaceship called Starship UK, which is powered by a flying space whale!
Episodes of Doctor Who including, The Idiot’s Lantern, are available on BBC iPlayer.
