(left to right) Reinette (Sophia Myles) in The Girl in the Fireplace (2006), Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) in The Curse of the Black Spot (2011) and Sam Swift (Rufus Hound) in The Woman Who Lived (2015).
On 13 July 1643, the English Civil War (1642-51) came to the village of Little Hodcombe.Oliver Cromwell’s Roundheads met with Charles I’s Cavaliers in the local church – but “destroyed each other, and the village” (as described in The Awakening, 1984). That battle was made bloodier still by the fact that an alien probe, the Malus, was feeding on the psychic energy generated by the slaughter. According to the Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison), the creature had lain dormant in the area for centuries until the psychic energy generated by the conflict woke it up. The people brought the bloodshed on themselves; it was they who started the fire, not the Malus. And it was the people who, by tradition, burned to death the loveliest girl in the village – their Queen of the May, known as ‘the Toast of Little Hodcombe’.
Sir George Hutchinson (Dennis Lill) in The Awakening (1984).