I should really watch the classic era Doctor Who episode “The Talons Of Weng-Chiang” some time, possibly while Tubi has it up if I can’t afford the DVD. Despite cultural depictions of Chinese people that were out of date when the show aired (which is a plot point for the tale as it puts the Fourth Doctor and Leela in Victorian England), it’s surprisingly important to the show. It has the Doctor playing Sherlock Holmes going up against a stand-in for Jack The Ripper, not the real world killer himself thankfully, which of course involves time travel beyond the TARDIS team. We look at that in a previous posting from Dalek 63•88. It introduced two character so appreciated by fans that Big Finish has an audio drama series about the pair solving mysteries. It even got referenced in an IDW story starring the 10th Doctor.
Dalek 63•88 also went back to this story for a mystery of their own. Fans love to find old filming locations of their favorite movie and television scenes, or often used establishing shots. It’s just something cool. However, what happens when some of those locations no longer exist due to disaster or simple progress? That’s what happened to the shooting locations of “The Talons Of Weng-Chiang”, as the area used for some of the location footage is not what it was in the 1970s. So the team played Sherlock Holmes themselves to find the areas on Clink Street where the episode, including some lost footage, was shot. As I’m under the weather today (notice there was no comic review or daily quickpost), we’re going to go exploring with Dalek 63•88 as they hunt for those locations, using footage from other productions filmed there, Google Earth & Maps, and production shots from the episode as well as the footage that was shot there. Funnily enough, a movie with Sherlock Holmes tracking Jack The Ripper is one of those tracking sources.
If anyone from that area lives there, did you know this episode was partly filmed there?
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