Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde
Species:	Human
Place of origin:	Earth
Appearances:	AUDIO: Beautiful Things COMIC: Bat Attack! COMIC: Dead Man's Hand
Main actor:	Alan Cox

Oscar Wilde was a 19th century Irish author and playwright.

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 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. 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)

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 an unknown incarnation of the Doctor earlier than the eighth met him at some point after his arrival in Paris. (PROSE: The Scarlet Empress)

When she was eight years, the Second Doctor's companion Zoe Heriot read Wilde's complete works in a day. (AUDIO: Echoes of Grey)

References

• In 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)
• 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)
• 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. Litefoot mentioned that he had previously met Wilde. (AUDIO: Chronoclasm)
• 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)
• The Sixth Doctor claimed to have attended the premiere of Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest. (AUDIO: Assassin in the Limelight)
• 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)

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 Stephen Fry in the 1997 film Wilde.