The latest adventures for the Ninth Doctor are all themed around hidden menaces from the past emerging centuries later to endanger the Doctor’s present.
In the second episode,
The Running Men,
that menace is a very real artefact from West Yorkshire history – the Halifax Gibbet.
“The gibbet was an early form of guillotine with an axe head instead of a blade,” explains writer Mark Wright. “It was used in Halifax to execute criminals from the 16th to the mid-17th of my head for years, probably since I century. It was said to be unique in this moved back to Halifax, my hometown, country, and even by historical standards in 2010,” says Mark. “It’s not often you it’s seen as a harsh and savage means can literally write scenes in the actual of punishment. Its use was eventually places they’re set, and I could just see outlawed by Oliver Cromwell, but not Christopher Eccleston striding around before 52 criminals were executed. these locations.