A couple of curiosities relating to The Snowmen – not sure what these indicate, but they might shed light on other theories:
The business cards for the Great Intelligence Institute (image here) show the address as being 2 Bloomsbury Lane, London N31. Setting aside the basic matter of the address itself being fictional, there is the more interesting point that ‘N31’ looks like a numbered district within the ‘N’ postcode area, but in the timeline we’re familiar with, numbering wasn’t introduced until 1917.
Similarly, the newspaper cutting in Simeon’s file, detailing the story of the previous governess frozen in the pond, includes a story immediately above the ‘Governess’ headline, referring to Fumimaro Konoe as the prime minister of Japan – an office he held, in our timeline, from 1937-1939 and from 1940-1941.
Do these oddities, both relating to paperwork associated with the GI, reflect interference in time-streams, such that the postal system and the government of Japan in the 1890s were different from what might be expected – we already know that the GI (or another related Great Intelligence?) was active in other places and times than Simeon’s 50 years, given its use of Padmasambhava in The Abominable Snowmen?
Alternatively, were the postal system and the government of Japan exactly as we expect them to be, and do these documents reflect the more localised activities of the GI in moulding Simeon to its purposes, filtering his perceptions so that he was more useful to it, and if these mind-games were being played, does this explain the Doctor’s apparent forgetfulness of what the GI might have to do with the Underground?
