Oscar Wilde was a 19th century Irish author and playwright. He was a good friend of the Paternoster Gang. (PROSE: The Importance of Being Strax)
Biography
The Sixth Doctor told Evelyn Smythe that Wilde was "not out of short trousers" in 1865. (AUDIO: Assassin in the Limelight)
During his days at the University of Oxford, an alien infected Oscar with a disease that turned him into a vampire. Returning home to Dublin, he passed the disease to Florence Balcombe. (COMIC: Bat Attack!)
In 1882 in the town of Deadwood, Wilde crossed paths with the Eleventh Doctor and Clara Oswald. At one point, while aboard the Doctor's TARDIS, he found the Eighth Doctor's old Wild Bill Hickok outfit and tried it on, finding it a perfect fit. (COMIC: Dead Man's Hand)
In 1893, Wilde stayed at the Diogenes Club. (AUDIO: The Adventure of the Diogenes Damsel)
Oscar tries on the Eighth Doctor's attire and finds it a perfect fit. (COMIC: Dead Man's Hand)
He lived in London with his wife Constance and their two children during the early 1890s. By this time, he had written a widely read novel entitled The Picture of Dorian Gray in addition to being a successful playwright. (AUDIO: Beautiful Things)
Following the appearance of metal spheres from the future in London in the 1890s, the Metropolitan Police Service issued the cover story that they were a stunt by a group by Bohemian artists. When Professor George Litefoot raised the possibility that this may, in fact, be the case, Sergeant Quick told him that the police had interviewed Wilde to that end and were confident that he had nothing to do with it. (AUDIO: Chronoclasm)
Having been supplied with tickets by Professor Claudius Dark, Henry Gordon Jago, Leela and Ellie Higson attended the premiere of his latest play A Woman of No Importance at the Haymarket Theatre. Wilde was accompanied to the premiere by his close friend Lord Alfred Douglas. Warren Gadd, who observed him in Douglas' company, threatened to tell Constance that Wilde had a terrible secret which he was keeping from her if he did not cooperate. (AUDIO: Beautiful Things)
In 1895, he invited Vastra, Jenny and Strax to the opening performance of The Importance of Being Earnest at St James's Theatre. The actress playing Lady Bracknell was actually an alien from the planet Proscenia. She paralysed the audience with laughter, Oscar was the able to resist her laughter ray because of his superior intellect. "Lady Bracknell" was defeated when she was punched by Strax. The play continued with one difference; Lady Bracknell was played by Strax. (PROSE: The Importance of Being Strax) The Sixth Doctor was also present at this performance. (AUDIO: Assassin in the Limelight)
Bernice Summerfield noted that Oscar Wilde's era had been less than enlightened in respect to his bisexuality. (PROSE: All-Consuming Fire)
In 1897, he was imprisoned in Reading Gaol, where the prison doctor experimented on him. After the Tenth Doctor cured Wilde of his vampirism and he was released from prison, Wilde left for Paris. (COMIC: Bat Attack!) Iris Wildthyme and one of the Doctor's first seven incarnations met Wilde at some point after his arrival in Paris. (PROSE: The Scarlet Empress)
References
In the 1970s, on Earth, the artificial intelligence BOSS explicitly misquoted the writer by saying: "As Oscar Wilde so very nearly said, to lose one prisoner may be accounted a misfortune, to lose two smacks of carelessness." (TV: The Green Death)
In his fourth incarnation, the Doctor recalled having met Wilde. (PROSE: The Clanging Chimes of Doom) Later the Eighth Doctor mentioned having met George Bernard Shaw at a party hosted by Wilde. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles)
In his tenth incarnation, the Doctor joked that his first incarnation had got his walking stick in an adventure involving Wilde and "midget assassins". (COMIC: The Forgotten) He cited Wilde as an example of a "name-dropper". (AUDIO: The Sword of the Chevalier)
Wilde and Noël Coward were two people that Professor Whitaker wished he could use his Time Scoop to meet. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Dinosaur Invasion)
Henry Gordon Jago erroneously believed that Wilde wrote Widower's House, which was actually written by his fellow Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw. (AUDIO: Beautiful Things)
Shortly before his death on 31 December 1926, Major Cyril Haggard quoted Wilde's line, "We're all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars." (AUDIO: The Emerald Tiger)
In Washington DC on 14 April 1865, Wilde was impersonated by Robert Knox in the lead-up to the assassination of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. The Sixth Doctor realised the incongruity immediately because the real Wilde would have been too young. (AUDIO: Assassin in the Limelight)
Jack Bartlett checked out two Oscar Wilde books and one by James Baldwin from the Holborn Library. He felt as though the librarian could tell his secrets by his reading choices. In his hurry to leave, he ran into Eddy Stone who had similar interests. (PROSE: Bad Therapy)
When she was eight years old, the Second Doctor's companion Zoe Heriot read Wilde's complete works in a day. (AUDIO: Echoes of Grey)
When the Eighth Doctor visited 1976 San Francisco with Sam Jones, Carolyn McConnell, upon first glimpsing him, thought of the Doctor as "a long-haired guy dressed like Oscar Wilde". (PROSE: Vampire Science)
Dorothy Bell quoted Oscar Wilde as saying: "When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers." (COMIC: Spiral Staircase)
Behind the scenes
- According to The Brilliant Book 2012, a book that contains non-narrative based information, in River Song's World Wilde was available on social-networking sites and was friends with Charles Dickens.
- He was portrayed by Peter Egan in the 1978 TV series Lillie, Stephen Fry in the 1997 film Wilde and Steffan Rhodri in the Big Finish audio series The Confessions of Dorian Gray.
