1894 In 1894 , a great many unusual events occurred in the London area . Either the Paternoster Gang or Henry Gordon Jago and George Litefoot were usually involved in these incidents . Margaret Travers was born . ( PROSE : " Beast of Fang Rock " ) Dated events . January - June . On 11 January , the Eighth Doctor and Samantha Jones encountered Professor George Litefoot and a group of Zygon s based in London . ( PROSE : " The Bodysnatchers " ) On 7 February , Tommy Brockless was born in Manchester to Thomas Brockless and Constance Bassett . ( TV : " To the Last Man " ) Also in February , the Royal Observatory in Greenwich had a large telescope installed . Shortly afterwards , about a thousand Gremlin s settled in the observatory . William Christie noticed bite marks caused by the Gremlins on the telescope ' s lenses and cleaned them . The next day , the " scratches " were back . After this occurred several times , Christie contacted the Paternoster Gang . Vastra used a special magnifying glass that could see though time to find the Gremlins and the observatory was almost destroyed . Jenny Flint negotiated with the Gremlins and they fixed all the damage they caused . The Paternoster Gang helped the Gremlins find a new home at the bottom of the River Thames . Two days later , dredger s in the Greenwich area were finding twice as much junk as usual and all of the junk had Gremlin bite marks on it . Rumours were circulating around local taverns of giggling coming from the bottom of the river . ( PROSE : " The Curious Case of the Miniature Menaces " ) In the spring , Vastra , Jenny , and Strax encountered the blue Minch men in Scotland . ( PROSE : " The Singular Case of the Blue Men of the Minch " ) In June , Faye Garrideb sought out Jenny Flint ' s assistance with helping to solve the mystery of who was driving customers away from the Palace of Wonder . The Paternoster Gang discovered an alien spaceship beneath the music house and freed it . The Palace of Wonder was utterly destroyed by the spaceship as it left . ( PROSE : " The Phantom of the Music House " ) June 1894 was Iris Wildthyme ' s favourite time to visit Paris . She visited Paris many times in this month . ( PROSE : " Enter Wildthyme " ) July - December . In September , Professor Thaddeus Maine attempted to demonstrate his working time machine at the Academy of Science , but Vastra talked him out of it after several attempts were made to steal it and kill him . Maine decided that instead of dismantling the machine , he would use it to travel to another time . ( PROSE : " The Singular Case of the Time Machine " ) In November , Strax ' s fighting drone malfunctioned and began roaming around Paternoster Row . Mrs Fenwick , one of the Paternoster Gang ' s neighbours , was attacked by the drone . Along with Mr Plumbly , Fenwick approached the Paternoster Gang and asked for help getting rid of the " ghost " . The drone began attacking Jenny , but stopped when it ran out of power . ( PROSE : " The Spectre of Paternoster Row " ) Around this time , the Ninth Doctor arrived in Birmingham after being displaced by the Bygone Horde in 2012 . ( AUDIO : " The Other Side " ) On 12 December , the Paternoster Gang were summoned to the London Zoo by Scotland Yard to deal with a fog laced with temporal radiation caused by the crash of a timeship . The animals in the zoo had been devolved by the fog and several police officers and Vastra were also affected by it . On the other hand , Strax was unaffected by the fog due the fact that his species were not a product of evolution . He was able to walk into the fog and shut it down at its source . ( PROSE : " The Evolution Episode " ) Near the end of the year , Harrison Crane infiltrated " Holmes ' Travelling Carnival and Freakshow " by using his vortex manipulator to be " the Dissolving Man " . Vastra and Strax joined the carnival as freaks to investigate the high levels of artron energy and discovered what Chase was doing . They had a confrontation with Chase that ended with him being killed after his vortex manipulator malfunctioned . ( PROSE : " The Case of the Dissolving Man " ) Other realities . In an alternate timeline , Martians invaded Earth on a Thursday in June . Iris Wildthyme and Panda took Simon and Kelly to Paris on this day on their first trip on the Celestial Omnibus . While they had dinner at the Moulin Rouge , Martian ships landed in Earth ' s most notable cities , including Paris , beginning a 7 year occupation of Earth . After finishing dinner , the four friends stayed in Montmartre for a few hours and watched the Martian invasion force come to Earth before leaving in the Omnibus . Anthony Marvelle , Missy , and Jenny Winterleaf used the Blithe Pinking Shears to follow Iris to this time and dimension and also had dinner at Moulin Rouge . After the Martians landed , Marvelle approached two Martian Time Agents and gave them front - row tickets to a Vince Cosmos concert in 1973 with instructions to assassinate Cosmos . ( PROSE : " Enter Wildthyme " ) Behind the scenes . The DWM 487 edition of " The Daft Dimension " depicts the Twelfth Doctor and Clara Oswald encountering the Paternoster Gang in 1894 Blackpool .