Jack The Ripper in Fiction - Television

Television

By the 1960s, the Ripper was established in American television as a "universal force of evil", who could be adapted to suit any villainous niche. In an episode of The Twilight Zone from 1963 entitled "The New Exhibit", Martin Balsam plays the curator of a wax museum who becomes so obsessed by five wax figures of murderers, including Jack the Ripper, that he commits murder to protect them. In the Star Trek episode "Wolf in the Fold" (1967), writer Robert Bloch reused parts of his short-story "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper", which had already appeared as a 1961 television episode of Thriller. An eternal entity, referred to as "Redjac", feeds on fear, and has committed a string of murders, including those attributed to Jack the Ripper, as a means of sustaining itself.

In the Cimarron Strip episode "Knife in the Wilderness" (1968), written by Harlan Ellison, Jack continues his work across America ending in Cimarron City where he meets his end at the hands of Indians. In the Get Smart episode "House of Max" (1970), Jack the Ripper is an animated wax dummy. (When the Scotland Yard detective declares that "Jack the Ripper is not a man," Max wonders out loud, "Jacqueline the Ripper?".)

In The Sixth Sense's "With Affection, Jack the Ripper" (1972) a man is driven mad during a paranormal experiment when he inhabits the body of Jack the Ripper. A Fantasy Island episode, also titled "With Affection, Jack the Ripper" (1980), was written by the same writer as the episode of The Sixth Sense, Don Ingalls. Lynda Day George plays criminologist Lorraine Peters who uses a time portal to confirm her suspicion that Jack the Ripper was a doctor, Albert Fell, played by Victor Buono. Fell follows her back through the portal, grabs Peters and takes her back to 1888, where the enigmatic Mr. Roarke intervenes fortuitously, and Fell dies moments later while fleeing. The name Fell is clearly lifted from Margery Allingham's 1948 radio play Room to Let. A time portal is also used in "A Rip in Time" (1997), the first episode of the short-lived TV series Timecop, in which a timetravelling cop travels back to 1888 to catch a criminal who has killed, and displaced, Jack the Ripper. The Babylon 5 episode "Comes the Inquisitor" (1995) features a character named Sebastian who is Jack the Ripper, abducted by the alien Vorlons in the year 1888 and made into their inquisitor so that he can test (through torture) beings who are called to lead an important cause.

Jack the Ripper (1973) by Elwyn Jones and John Lloyd linked with the police drama Z Cars. The program featured Z Cars detectives Barlow and Watt, played by Stratford Johns and Frank Windsor respectively, investigating the murders from an historical perspective. In the first episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974), titled "The Ripper", reporter Carl Kolchak pursues a supernatural killer whose victims match the patterns of the original Ripper murders. The killer has superhuman strength and is invulnerable to weapons, but Kolchak dematerialises the apparently immortal being by electrocuting him. An episode of The Outer Limits titled "Ripper" (1997) was set in 1888 and starred Cary Elwes as Dr. Jack York, who kills women whom he believes are possessed by an alien entity. In an episode of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, "The Knife" (2001), the explorers meet the two men blamed for the murders in Stephen Knight's royal conspiracy theory: Sir William Gull and Robert Anderson. Spike Milligan parodied the Ripper-genre in the "sublimely daft" The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town. The 2007 science-fiction series Sanctuary details the possession of John Druitt (implied to be historical Ripper suspect Montague John Druitt) by a demonic energy creature which ultimately turns him into the Ripper. In the first episode of the Soul Eater anime, Jack the Ripper is depicted as a demonic monster who eats innocent souls for power, and has a mechanical armor, with claws and a pumpkin-like mask. His kishin egg (pure evil soul) is eaten by the title character when he kills Ripper. Jack The Ripper is also a female in Black Butler (kuroshitsuji) who died soon in the anime series. In the seventh season of Smallville, a doctor called Curtis Knox says he can cure meteor-freaks, but is lying so he can kill them. Knox is discovered to be immortal and claims to be Jack the Ripper. In the Canadian series Murdoch Mysteries, the opening episode of the second season involves late 19th-century detectives investigating a series of murders which they describe as being very similar to the ones that occurred in Whitechapel. In the 2009 ITV1 miniseries Whitechapel, a copycat killer commits murders on the same date, time and fashion as the Jack the Ripper murders, and the police struggle to catch up.

The animated series, "Magic Master", has a villain named Jacquelyn who uses Jack the ripper as her personal ghost.

A 2011 episode of Doctor Who entitled A Good Man Goes to War reveals that Jack was defeated - and, in fact, eaten - by a female Silurian warrior named Madame Vastra living undercover in 1888 England.

The 2012 BBC One series Ripper Street is set in Whitechapel in 1889, six months after the Ripper murders, as detectives from London's H Division battle to solve murders they believe may have been committed by the infamous killer.