The Doctor (and here I mean Tennant) mentioned during the course of the show that ‘nothing much’ was going on in London in 1851. Dare I suggest that 1851 has resounded in history as a turning point both for the industrial revolution and Victorian design and aesthetics? The advent of the great exhibition might have been at least worth a line of dialogue such as ‘Well, we’ve missed the great exhibition, I’m afraid’, if Davis was determined to set the special in that year. I can hardly blame the Beeb for not attempting to send the Doc back to the Great Exhibition or to the subsequent Crystal Palace, beautiful though it would be; it’s a project that would singlehandedly put £50 on the licence fee, and only the late Michael Crichton has made even a cursory attempt to render Paxton’s beautiful glass structure, in The First Great Train Robbery (1979). Pictures from Life’s archive at Google. Click for full size original images… nb: The final pic is from the 1851 exhibition. Doctor Who: The Next Doctor review
