Tramalot Part VI

The Twenty-First of July Two Thousand and Fifteen. Tuesday.

I came back down the Bury Line and got off at Queens Road. I then took a short walk to the first station on the penultimate line of my trip around the trams.

The Rochdale Line


MONSALL

'Doctor, the shaking and the groaning have stopped.' The Doctor smiled sympathetically. 'Have they? Good. I'm so glad you are feeling better now, my dear.'

 Hah! I can't for the life of me remember why I chose The Rescue for Monsall. I remember it had something to do with the Monsal Trail and Haddon Hall but I can't remember what. I think it might have been that Eva Haddon was in the Radio 4 spoof Whatever Happened to Susan Foreman? and that's kind of what they were wondering in this story. Was that it? It had got to four in the morning by the time I'd got this all organised. Everything was a blur.


CENTRAL PARK

'A gateway?' said Romana. 'But what kind of gateway?'

 This station is on a road called The Gateway. Easy as that.


NEWTON HEATH AND MOSTON

Not far away, in his attic laboratory at the Newton Institute, Professor Thascalos held a trident-shaped crystal aloft.

 Professor Thascalos, eh? Why, that's slightly misspelled Greek for...


FAILSWORTH

The Doctor smiled back at him. 'Oh, what a nice new uniform,' he gushed. 'Smart, very smart. I wish I had one like that.'

 What? Bloomin' John Peel (not that one). He cornered the market in Dalek-related stuff in the nineties (he was the only person who got to write original Dalek novels and he did the Target adaptations) but he would insist on tweaking stuff. I chose The Power of the Daleks for all the hat business Troughton went in for in his early stories - Failsworth is a centre for the production of hats - but Peel has changed the above from the televised line 'I would like a hat like that'. Why would he want a uniform? That doesn't make sense. Hats! He'd want a hat. Sheesh!


HOLLINWOOD

Sarah moved close to the Doctor. 'Listen,' she whispered. 'I saw a Mummy. A walking Mummy!'

 There used to be a manor house called Birchen Bower in Hollinwood, home in the 18th century to an eccentric woman called Hannah Beswick. She was afraid of being buried alive, so upon her death she was mummified rather than interred. She was kept at her doctor's on King Street in Manchester, but returned to Birchen Bower every 21 years. When she was eventually put on display in a museum she was known as The Manchester Mummy. Cool, eh?


SOUTH CHADDERTON

Sarah looked round the quiet street, trying to get her bearings. 'This isn't Hillview Road. It isn't even South Croydon!'

 All right, this one is particularly poor. It's a bit of a stretch to claim that South Chadderton sounds a bit like South Croydon. But Sarah does say that it isn't South Croydon, so that makes it count doesn't it? Hmm? (I was in Croydon this weekend, incidentally).


FREEHOLD

Josiah moved slowly towards Control. 'You basest of creatures! You dare to defy me! I am a man of property!'

 So I suppose a man of property might have a freehold. Author Marc Platt alluding to the Forsyte Saga there.


WESTWOOD

To hear Holliday tell it, life aboard the TARDIS can't have been all candied yams and sassafras at the best of times.

 Wild West. Westwood rather than Eastwood, I suppose (that was another time traveller...)


OLDHAM KING STREET

'We sing in praise of total war, against the Saracen we abhor...'

 The King's Demons is my favourite Doctor Who story. But never mind that right now. Have the Horror Channel just cut the last shot of ep 3 of The Deadly Assassin where Tom's being drowned? Congratulations, Mary Whitehouse. You finally won.


OLDHAM CENTRAL

'The whole lower half of London is called Central City,' he said. 'There hasn't been a London for over four hundred years.'

 I think that's supposed be 'lower half of England'. I think that's what they say in the TV version (haven't checked). It doesn't make sense, 'lower half of London', if there's no London, does it? No sign of The Flash at any rate.


OLDHAM MUMPS

'Their infection will kill every living thing,' he said, almost proudly. 'I thought the local plaque was already doing that.'

 Mumps is a type of plague, isn't it?


DERKER

'As it is well known, malefactors trifle with me at their peril!'

 This is the story where the Doctor says he enjoys fisticuffs and that he taught the Mountain Mauler of Montana. And Derker station is just around the corner from a boxing gym.


SHAW AND CROMPTON

Liz Shaw returned  to the UNIT laboratory, a mug of coffee in each hand.

 There is a Doctor Who companion called Shaw. There isn't one called Crompton.


NEWHEY

Zoe raced across the grass to Doctor Who.

 This war memorial in Newhey is a grade II listed building.

MILNROW

Bells tinkled and cymbals clashed and horns blew as the Ceremonial Snake weaved its way towards the Cave.

 Part of the soundtrack for this story was released as 'Janissary Band'. Why, here it is on Ootoobay!

Janissary bands were the forerunners of the modern brass band and Milnrow has a particularly fab one of these.


KINGSWAY BUSINESS PARK

'You have blundered, Crozier, you have reduced the greatest business brain in the universe to a mere catchere of sea snakes!'

 I don't know if the Mentors of Thoros Beta have visited Rochdale at all, but if they have it would probably be here.


NEWBOLD
 

On a scale of 1 to 12 according to the Shebunken Formula, which was devised by Prof. Igor Shebunken of the University of New Caledonia to measure the destructiveness of international or interplanetary conflict, the Argolin-Foamasi War scored a 10.3, somewhere below total destruction and above the semi-genocidal level.

I just remember The Leisure Hive being described as a bold, new direction. What with the new theme music and titles and what have you. Is that a bit of a stretch? Ah, so what? Big deal.


ROCHDALE RAILWAY STATION

'What's a railway station?' asked the Alzarian. 'A place where one embarks and disembarks from compartments on wheels pulled along those rails by a steam engine.' The Doctor looked along the shimmering rails with nostalgic eyes. 'Rarely on time,' he added.

The TARDIS lands in a railway station! This should happen more often.


ROCHDALE TOWN CENTRE

'People like Clancey - miners and prospectors - were the first men to go out into deep space.'

The home of the Rochdale Pioneers is the perfect place to read about Space Pioneers! And that's the Rochdale line. One more to go....

More soonliest.