London

Multiple realities
(covers information from several alternate timelines)

A street in London

London was the capital city of England and later the United Kingdom on Earth.

History

In a Q-created illusion set in 12th century Nottingham, a servant told Maid Marian, if she married Guy of Gisbourne she would get the opportunity to live in London, since Gisbourne had a promising future. (TNG: "Qpid")

In the 19th century, the Royal Navy sailing ship of Captain Cray arrived badly damaged in the harbor of London eight months after the ship been hit by a typhoon in the Pacific Ocean, with its crew safely aboard. (VOY: "Year of Hell")

By the 1890s, Greater London was hundreds of square kilometers in size. The Sherlock Holmes novels and stories were largely based in this city. (TNG: "Elementary, Dear Data")

From 1888 to 1891, seventeen women were killed in London by the Redjac entity incarnated as "Jack the Ripper". (TOS: "Wolf in the Fold")

When an away team from the USS Enterprise-D had traveled back to San Francisco in 1893, Captain Picard claimed to lead a group of actors which had played in full houses in London, Paris, and Milan. (TNG: "Time's Arrow, Part II")

In 1924, a major publishing house with branches in this city and New York City published the story The Listening Man by John A. Moroso. (TNG: "The Big Goodbye")

In 1941, this same publishing house published the story The Long Dark Tunnel, a Dixon Hill detective novel, by Tracy Tormé. (TNG: "The Big Goodbye")

In 1953, a United Nations meeting took place in London. (DS9: "Far Beyond the Stars")

In 2005, Marina S. Despina, the future wife of Jonathan F. Raymond, was born in this city. (TNG-R: "The Neutral Zone", okudagram)

A holographic representation of 19th century London was created by Lieutenant Commander Data for his Sherlock Holmes Program 3A in 2365. (TNG: "Elementary, Dear Data")

In 2374, in a holoprogram set in France in 1944, British radio reported the sky over London was grey with a chance for rain in the afternoon. The entire broadcast, however, included an encrypted message to the French Resistance cell in Sainte Claire. (VOY: "The Killing Game")

In the late 24th century, Jack Crusher went to school in London. Dr. Beverly Crusher noted the formative experience contributed to Jack's English accent. (PIC: "Seventeen Seconds")

Alternate reality

London in 2259

In 2259 of the alternate reality, London was the location of the Kelvin Memorial Archive, which was secretly a Section 31 facility. Commander John Harrison approached one of the personnel, Thomas Harewood, who was visiting his terminally ill daughter at the Royal Children's Hospital. Harrison offered a blood transfusion for Harewood's daughter, if he would plant a bomb at the Archive. After the transfusion proved successful, Harewood walked into work and detonated the bomb, destroying the facility and claiming 42 lives. From the debris, Harrison recovered a portable transwarp beaming device, which he used to escape from his subsequent attack on Starfleet Headquarters.

Notable London landmarks in this reality included St Paul's Cathedral, the London Eye, the Kelvin Memorial Archive, and Nelson's Column. (Star Trek Into Darkness)

Additionally, Big Ben (or a future sound-alike replacement) makes an auditory appearance in the scene in which the Harewoods wake up to visit their daughter. Another London landmark, the Gherkin, was prominently seen in a series of promotional images and posters (example) designed around the idea of London burning, but not in the movie.

Literature

In The Big Good-Bye, the master criminal Silent Forrester, when introducing himself to the desk clerk at the Plaza, identified himself as, "I'm Mr. Forrester, London". (TNG: "The Big Goodbye")

The pages seen in the episode "The Big Goodbye" were actually from the detective novel The Listening Man, by author John A. Moroso. This novel was published in 1924. Information on London was from page 138.

London locations

• St Paul's Cathedral
• London Eye
• Kelvin Memorial Archive
• Nelson's Column
• Tottenham Court Road
• Baker Street
  • 221B Baker Street (fictional)
• River Thames

Background information

During the 21st century, London might have been the home of a professional baseball team, the London Kings, who were established in TNG: "The Big Goodbye" and DS9: "If Wishes Were Horses". However, since the team was a member of Major League Baseball (they played in the World Series, which was an MLB trademark), whose teams have traditionally been based in North America, it was equally likely the team could have been based out of London, Ontario, Canada. The current home baseball team of London, UK, was known as the London Warriors.

An unseen portion of the Picard family album created for Star Trek Generations had a letter by "KT" who expected Jean-Luc Picard to visit London in the future. It also mentioned the Barbicon Theatre.

The visual effects team that worked on Star Trek Into Darkness based much of the film's depiction of London on how it currently was, while also imagining how the city might have changed by the time of the movie's setting. "If you look historically at the way somewhere like London has changed in the last 100 years," stated Visual Effects Supervisor Roger Guyett, "there are many buildings that would potentially still exist [....] At the same time, you want a few landmarks in those shots to get the sense of what city you are in. In that case, there's St. Paul's Cathedral and the River Thames." (Star Trek Magazine issue 172, pp. 48 & 49) Director J.J. Abrams reflected, "We retained historical buildings along the River Thames, and then hypothesized what they might look like in 300 years." Guyett, from London himself, impressed upon the visual effects artists at Industrial Light & Magic the importance of retaining some of the city's original architecture. "The challenge," explained ILM Environments Supervisor Barry Williams, "was how to differentiate London buildings from San Francisco [....] We introduced the iconic St. Paul's Cathedral, the London Eye, the 'Gherkin' building, as well as some styles of architecture not present in San Francisco, to create a London vibe." (Cinefex, No. 134, pp. 72 & 74)

While preparing to show London in Star Trek Into Darkness, Roger Guyett accompanied an environment survey team on a visit to the city. The group captured views from high-rise structures as well as visual effects plates and reference images of the city and its environs. (Cinefex, No. 134, p. 72) "We [...] took a lot of pictures from different angles," stated Guyet, "to try to maintain the real geography of it." (Star Trek Magazine issue 172, p. 49)

For Star Trek Into Darkness, parts of London required a digital construction of areas in the city. [1] This model of London involved twenty-five high-resolution buildings clustered around the Thames. (Cinefex, No. 134, p. 74)

The writers of Star Trek Into Darkness additionally intended for Carol Marcus, in the alternate reality, to have grown up in London. [2]

On 23 March 2013, to promote Star Trek Into Darkness, quadcopters were flown into the sky following the end of Earth Hour and formed the Starfleet insignia. [3][4]

External link

• London at Wikipedia
• London at Memory Beta, the wiki for licensed Star Trek works