Assassination of John F. Kennedy

The Kennedy assassination refers to the murder of the American President John F. Kennedy at Dealey Plaza, in Dallas, Texas on 22 November 1963.

The assassination
The Master mentally programmed UNIT Private Francis Cleary and sent him from the near future to prevent the assassination. This would change history and possibly enable the Cuban Missile Crisis to proceed in a way that would lead to a nuclear war. James Stevens, a journalist obsessed with the assassination attempt, went to 1963 using a time ring to stop Cleary. Stevens discovered the actual gunman who had killed Kennedy and recognised him as an older version of Stevens himself, travelling back from the future a second time. In order to preserve the course of history, in 1996, after writing a book revealing the truth, he used the time ring again to carry out the assassination (MA: Who Killed Kennedy).

The assassination and Doctor Who
The première of Doctor Who on 23 November, 1963 happened just one day after the Kennedy assassination, a fact frequently mentioned in media overviews and non-fiction literature on Doctor Who.

A persistent, but untrue, rumour states that Doctor Who had been scheduled to première on 22 November but was postponed due to news coverage of the assassination. In fact, the premiere had always been scheduled for 23 November.

The Kennedy assassination happened during the recording of an episode of The Daleks, interrupting shooting as the cast and crews learned of the news. A common rumour states that news coverage of the killing caused the interruption of the normal television schedule, too, so that on 23rd November, 1963, one day after the assassination, the first episode of the first Doctor Who story, An Unearthly Child, aired five minutes late; however it actually went out only ninety seconds later than scheduled. As the episode was not seen in parts of the country due to a power outage, it was rebroadcast the following week; it is often stated that it was replayed due to the assassination coverage, but this too has been debunked.

Other references

 * In Doctor Who and the Crusaders, a philosophical discussion at the beginning of the book makes note of the Kennedy assassination.


 * The Seventh Doctor admits in Original Sin "that he was doing something" around the time of the Kennedy assassination, referencing the premiere of Doctor Who.