Great Fire of London The Great Fire of London was a massive fire started when a Terileptil weapon overloaded in a bakery on Pudding Lane , London on 2 September 1666 . ( PROSE : " Doctor Who and the Visitation " ) The Fifth Doctor and his companions Adric , Nyssa and Tegan Jovanka left the scene while Richard Mace attempted to put the fire out . The fire proved helpful in clearing plague from the city . ( TV : " The Visitation " ) The Fifth and Tenth Doctor s took credit for the fire , but stated it was completely necessary . ( AUDIO : " The Gathering " , COMIC : " Black Death White Life " ) Prior to witnessing the cause , the Doctor had been accused of starting the fire . ( TV : " Pyramids of Mars " ) The Fourth Doctor witnessed the outset of the fire at a distance and urged the Republicans and the forces of Charles II to stop fighting and work together to put out the fire . Sergeant George Mullens , suspicious of the strangeness of the Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith , attempted to arrest them for starting the fire . ( PROSE : " The Republican ' s Story " ) Shortly thereafter , George , Helen , Ida and Alan Mortimer were rescued from the Great Fire by the First Doctor . It is possible that , for a brief period after the First Doctor ' s arrival , there were three separate incarnations of the Doctor co - existing in the same time period and in close promixity to one another . ( PROSE : " Doctor Who and the Invasion from Space " ) In the aftermath of the Great Fire , the English Catholic s were falsely accused of having started it . ( AUDIO : " The Glorious Revolution " ) The renegade Time Lady Iris Wildthyme claimed to have been present for the Great Fire . ( AUDIO : " Excelis Dawns " ) A play entitled " Ye Unearthly Childe " , purported to have been written by William Shakespeare , was part of a set of diaries which were badly damaged in the Great Fire . The play was rediscovered in the 1960s but its possible importance as a lost Shakespearean play was not realised until the 2010s . ( PROSE : " Ye Unearthly Childe " ) A column at the bottom of King William Street — close to the Bank of England building in the City — commemorated the event . Its plaque , however , neglected to mention the Doctor ' s involvement in the tragedy . It read in part : As the Terileptil involvement was equally unknown , it was widely believed that the people of London were so scared they set fire to London . Alistair Gryffen noted this as an example of events concerning the spread of fear . ( TV : " Fear Itself " ) The Twelfth Doctor forewarned the Great Fire of London to the immortal Lady Me in 1651 , noting that it would come after a second bout of the bubonic plague ravaged London , realising that Me had endured the Black Death of 1348 . Me suggested that she would be the one to start the fire , only for the Doctor to tell her that the Terileptils would be responsible . ( TV : " The Woman Who Lived " ) During the Great Fire , the Master organised fireworks for the members of the Scoundrels Club . He set them off on the building ' s roof . ( PROSE : " Dismemberment " ) Behind the scenes . The date of 2 September is derived from prose sources . It ' s " Matrix " and the novelisation of " The Visitation " , not the serial , that give the specific date . The novelisation ' s rendition of the scene in episode one where the Doctor and Nyssa are sneaking around the manor house contains a line where he claims it ' s the first of September . Since night falls during the course of " The Visitation " , it ' s reasonable to assume that the Great Fire occurs on 2 September . " Matrix " takes away all guesswork by quoting a commemorative plaque which flatly gives the date . One possible " game over " for the video game " Don ' t Blink " has the player being sent back in time by a Weeping Angel to the year 1666 to die in the Great Fire .