Assassination of John F. Kennedy

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

The assassination
According to one account, mentally programmed UNIT Private Francis Cleary and sent him from 1971 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. (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy)

Another account held that the Kennedy assassination was engineered by an agent of the Great Houses during the War in Heaven, overwriting a timeline in which he was infected by Enemy life-spores. (PROSE: The Annotated Autopsy of Agent A)

One of Kennedy's last official acts before his assassination was to order Moonbase Eisenhower to shoot down the US Rocket Lincoln, which had been stolen by the Sixth Doctor and Larisa Petrov. Although Kennedy did not rescind the order before his death, the moonbase's commanding officer General Paterson countermanded it when Petrov contacted him and proved that she was an American spy working in the Soviet Union. (AUDIO: 1963: The Space Race)

The Zapruder footage depicted the assassination. (AUDIO: The Conspiracy)

Following the assassination, FBI agent, Warren Skeet was employed to investigate the premises where the assassin had been spotted. Simultaneously, newspaper Dallas Morning News published a series of articles on the assassination, written by journalists Mae Callon and Jim. (PROSE: Shroud of Sorrow)

Alternate timelines
According to one account, Kennedy originally lived past 1963 and became a very inspirational figure of the 1960s. Enemy life-spores infected Kennedy during his second term in office and almost used the psychic energy surrounding him to rewrite Earth's history, but he died of a heart attack in 1967 before that could happen. Despite this, an agent of the Great Houses realised that the Enemy would still be able to fester in Kennedy's timeline and so arranged for him to be assassinated before he could be infected. (PROSE: The Annotated Autopsy of Agent A)

In an alternate timeline caused by the Valeyard's use of the Dark Matrix, Kennedy was killed by zombies some time prior to 1963. (PROSE: Matrix)

In an alternate timeline envisioned by James Stevens, Kennedy survived the assassination while his wife died instead. His survival led to a nuclear war. (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy)

Minor links
Peri Brown once commented that everyone remembered where they were when Kennedy was assassinated. She was in the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at the time. (AUDIO: 1963: The Space Race)

The Third Doctor mentioned to James Stevens in a telephone call that the prevention of the assassination would cause an historical embolism, which would result in the Doctor himself being erased from existence. (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy)

The Seventh Doctor implied to Ace that the proximity of Nemesis to Earth had caused or influenced the assassination. (TV: Silver Nemesis)

The Eighth Doctor once claimed that he had been accused of the assassination. (AUDIO: Zagreus)

A contemporary photo from the Washington public archive found by Clive Finch showed the Ninth Doctor as a spectator to the assassination. (TV: Rose) This same image was later found by Adam Mitchell. (COMIC: Mystery Date)

Darius Pike showed K9, Starkey and Gryffen the 23 November 1963 issue of the Daily Standard, with the latest news on the Kennedy assassination as the headline. (TV: The Cambridge Spy)

Ian Chesterton pondered the possibility of Russian invasion during the turmoil after Kennedy's death. (AUDIO: 1963)

The crew of the Teselecta stated that the Kennedy assassination was an example of how time could be rewritten. (TV: Let's Kill Hitler)

Conspiracy theorist George Wilson suggested the assassination was carried out by aliens. He joked to Jack Harkness that he could say something as ridiculous as that, but if he referenced the wrong frame of the Zapruder footage, he would never hear the end of it. (AUDIO: The Conspiracy)

Behind the scenes
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.

The Kennedy assassination happened during the recording of an episode of The Daleks, interrupting shooting as the cast and crews learned of the news.

Other connections

 * The charity special NOTVALID: Dimensions in Time, which took place on 23 November in 1973, 1993 and 2013, includes a 1973 mention of the assassination having occurred ten years earlier.
 * In Doctor Who and the Crusaders, a philosophical discussion at the beginning of the book makes note of the Kennedy assassination.
 * Chapter 6 of the novelisation of The Evil of the Daleks is titled 'Kennedy's Assassination', referring to the Kennedy from that story and his death at the hands of the Daleks.
 * Kennedy's assassination was mentioned in the docudrama An Adventure in Space and Time.