The Panoptican Theatre in Cardiff opened in 1899, and hosted touring dramatic companies. [1169]
1899 - Players [1170]
The sixth Doctor and Peri stopped the murder of a 24-year-old Winston Churchill, who was serving as a war correspondent in South Africa. The Doctor helped Churchill escape from a P.O.W. camp, and Churchill returned home a hero.
1899 (26th December) - Castle of Fear [1171]
The fifth Doctor and Nyssa visited Stockbridge, and witnessed a mummery that entailed Father Christmas, St. George, a dragon... and a rendition of the fifth Doctor himself and his TARDIS. The travellers went back to 1199 to investigate the source of the play. They returned to 1899 to find that the Rutan spaceship in Stockbridge Castle had regrown in the interim, and was influencing the town residents to dig it out. The Doctor and Nyssa piloted the weakened ship into the stratosphere, but its engines triggered a hyperspatial warp-core explosion that flung them to Stockbridge in the early twenty-first century.
The Doctor and Iris met Oscar Wilde in Venice after his imprisonment. They also fought some “fish people”. [1172] Gerald Carter, age 24, joined Torchwood after being trained in military intelligence. One of his earliest missions was the Centurian Incident of New Year’s Eve, 1899. [1173]
The Twentieth Century
Joan Redfern had married Oliver, her childhood sweetheart, but he died at the Battle of Spion Kop. [1174]
The first Doctor was present at the Relief of Mafeking. [1175] In 1900, Emily Holroyd drafted a manifesto pertaining to Torchwood’s Rules and Regulations, including guidelines concerning the group’s succession of leadership. [1176] Professor Angelchrist saw H.G. Wells speak about The War of the Worlds at a bookshop on Charing Cross Road. [1177]
Battlefields from the Boxer Rising and the Boer War were lifted by the War Lords. [1178] Jack Harkness was in China for the Boxer Rebellion. [1179] Nurse Albertine studied battle surgery and saw some action during the South African War. She would come to work for Toby the Sapient Pig. [1180] Colonel Hugh served in the Boer War. [1181]
(=) By the beginning of the twentieth century, Dhakan - the alternate Earth ruled by Katsura Sato - had interstellar travel. [1182]
The Doctor told L. Frank Baum that if monkeys had wings, they technically would no longer be monkeys. [1183] Iris met Arthur Balfour in the Reform Club. [1184]
1900 (January) - Tales from the Vault [1185]
Kalicarache, an extra-terrestrial being composed of psionic energy and could possess dead bodies, escaped when the prison transport carrying it crashed in Africa. The first Doctor, Steven and Dodo confronted Kalicarache during the Battle of Spion Kop, after he had possessed the late Lt. Thornicroft. Kalicarache’s consciousness was left trapped inside the fabric of a coat worn by a killed solider, Tommy Watkins. In the decades to come, Kalicarache could control anyone wearing the item.
w - (=) 1900 (May) - FP: Warring States [1186]
Compassion furthered her gambit with the White Pyramid by placing the Empress Dowager Ci Xi in a garden within her internal dimensions, and then impersonating her. Cousin Octavia, accompanied by her Red Burial and Prester John, arrived in this time zone to lay claim to a casket found within the Pyramid by an archaeological team, as she believed that it held the secret of immortality. Compassion pitted Octavia against Liu Hui Ying, and they both travelled back to the Pyramid.
When Compassion’s stratagem finally failed, the archeological team found only an empty tomb.
The toadstool-like xXltttxtolxtol discovered their homeworld would extinguish in a few thousand years, and sent a stardrive through the Rift to “invite” to other species to travel to them... a means of identifying a world to conquer. The Queen granted George Herbert Sanderson of Torchwood permission to visit the stardrive’s planet of origin, a few solar systems distant, on behalf of the Empire. Sanderson experienced time dilation during the journey, and aged little as a century passed in the outside universe.
Late in her life, Queen Victoria commissioned Agnes Havisham to serve as the Torchwood Assessor. Havisham would enter cryo-sleep at a storage facility in Swindon, and only awaken when automatic systems predicted deadly peril for a Torchwood station. Havisham was to have absolute authority over Torchwood in such cases. Her hibernation chamber was finally ready in late 1901. She would only awaken four times in the next hundred years - for “two invasions, one apocalypse and a Visitation by the Ambassadors of the Roaring Bang”. [1187]
1900 (December) - Foreign Devils [1188]
The second Doctor followed Jamie and Zoe’s passage through the “spirit gate” in 1800, arriving exactly a hundred years later. The Chief Astrologer’s curse started murdering the descendants of Roderick Upcott, and the Doctor teamed up with Carnacki, an investigator of the supernatural, to look into events at Upcott House. The curse used the spirit gate’s dimensional energy to remove the house from time and space, and transformed Roderick Upcott’s corpse into a dragon. The Doctor destroyed the spirit gate, which returned the house and made the dragon crumble to ash.
1901 - TW: Exit Wounds [1189]
Alice Guppy and Charles Gaskell of Torchwood unearthed Jack Harkness, who had been buried since 27 AD. At Jack’s urging, they placed him into cryo-freeze and timed his revival for the twenty-first century. Jack’s younger self continued working for Torchwood.
= Iris was “instrumental” in the final battles against the Martians in an alternate dimension. [1190]
In 1901, the Night Travellers were responsible for the disappearances of eight people from Church Stretton. [1191] In the same year, an English author began to write boy’s stories for The Ensign. [1192] The Doctor saw the assassination of President McKinley. [1193] Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec died in 1901. [1194] Jack Harkness dated Proust for a while, and claimed the man was rather immature. [1195] Jack was married at least once. [1196]
1901 (20th October) - Cryptobiosis [1197]
The sixth Doctor and Peri sought to vacation aboard the Lankester (sic), a cargo ship en route from the Cape of Good Hope to New Orleans. The Lankester’s chief mate, Jacques De Requin, was smuggling two captured mermaids - Anthrotrite and her daughter, Galatea - to sell them for profit. Other mer-people, led by Anthrotrite’s father Nereus, breached the ship’s under-carriage. Anthrotrite died, the Lankester sank and the mer-people captured de Requin to torment him. The Doctor and Peri returned Galatea to her grandfather, and convinced him to discretely rescue any Lankester survivors. As part of these events, the Doctor was drafted to serve as a medical professional attached to the Merchant Navy.
On 12th December, 1901, John Lafayette, a linguist, accidentally travelled along a space-time path to ancient Babylon. [1198] Jack Harkness met a precognitive named Sam who had just returned home from the Boer War. [1199] In the same year, Jack, Emily Holroyd and Alice Guppy defeated a shadowy terror that brutalised the imagination. [1200]
Baden-Powell taught the Doctor the rudiments of tracking. [1201] By 1902, there were Polynesian/alien hybrids on Easter Island again. They used the teleport device to resettle their forefathers’ homeworld. The explorer Stockwood was still alive, and planned to return to the alien homeworld also. [1202]
Sarah Bernhardt starred in Hamlet at the New Regency Theatre. [1203] The Doctor told P.G. Wodehouse - who was saddened because he didn’t know what he was writing about - that it sounded as if he had a story that was trying to get out. [1204] The first Doctor learned some housebreaking skills from A.J. Raffles. [1205] In 1902, Rupert Gaskin started building the Gaskin Tunnel, hoping to find the lost highwayman’s gold rumoured to be beneath a well in Creighton Mere. The construction was abandoned when Gaskin died from influenza. [1206]
The Corialiths of Masma engineered memory devices to house the mental engrams of their dead. A Corialith came to Earth with one such Mnemosyne unit, but was feared by members of the public and killed. The young Mnemosyne sequestered itself in the alcoves of the Northern Line. [1207]
c 1902 - Horror of Fang Rock [1208]
The fourth Doc
tor and Leela arrived at Fang Rock lighthouse as a series of mysterious murders took place. The Doctor discovered the culprit was a Rutan scout, then destroyed the scout and its mothership.
Earth was now strategically important for the Rutans in their war with the Sontarans. According to the Doctor, the Rutans “used to control the whole of the Mutters Spiral once”.
1902 - Forty-Five: “False Gods” [1209]
The Time Lord formerly worshipped as Thoth was now “Jane Templeton”, an associate of Howard Carter. She directed him to excavate what she believed to be Userhat’s tomb, hoping that her TARDIS was located inside. The Ship was dying, and caused temporal disruption that drew the seventh Doctor, Ace and Hex to the tomb. The Doctor convinced Jane that her TARDIS had to be euthanised in the heart of a sun, and she duly went back in time to do so.
1902 - Revenge of the Judoon [1210]
A lizard-like alien altered his form and became “Professor Challoner”, the head of a British secret society that investigated extreme science: the Cosmic Peacemakers. Challoner wanted to take over the world by installing Edward VII as a global emperor, and to this end involved Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - whose memory of Challoner’s plot was erased.
The tenth Doctor and Martha landed at Balmoral Castle while Edward VII was there... only to find that the castle had vanished. They recognised this as the work of the Judoon, who had been tricked into aiding Challoner under a false warrant. Martha interviewed Doyle about the Peacemakers while the Doctor used the TARDIS to locate Balmoral - which was in the Arabian Desert. He also met Baden-Powell, who was investigating the disappearance. Challoner had established Temporal Reversion devices that could eliminate all of Britain’s rivals, but the Doctor got Balmoral back to its normal location and convinced the Judoon of Challoner’s duplicity. The Judoon left, and Challoner fell victim to his own device. The Doctor and Martha departed for a working holiday as they cleared out Challoner’s Temporal Reversion devices from all the world’s capitals.
The Doctor was technical advisor on A Trip to the Moon. [1211] In 1902, Monroe Stahr saw a film about the unearthing of an Egyptian tomb that would later inspire him to finance the movie The Curse of the Scarab. [1212]
@ The eighth Doctor drank absinthe in Prague, 1903. [1213] In the summer of 1903, Toby the Sapient Pig attended a gathering of creative minds in Vienna. By 1913, owing to his addled memories, Toby would believe that all present were pigs. [1214]
(=) The TARDIS’ simultaneous arrival in 1903 and 2003 massively disrupted the timelines. In 1903, the Doctor helped the English defeat the Daleks, who had attacked Central London. Only two Daleks survived and were taken captive. The first World War still happened, but the British used the captured Dalek technology to take control of the whole world. The British government locked the Doctor and Evelyn in the Tower of London for propaganda purposes, and Evelyn starved to death. [1215]
1903 (December) - The Sleep of Reason [1216]
The Sholem-Luz were creatures that could tunnel through the Time Vortex, and were attracted to mental turmoil as part of their life-cycle. In December 1903, a Sholem-Luz was drawn to Mausolus House, an asylum. The Sholem-Luz essence infected an Irish wolfhound, which became monstrous and triggered a series of murders. Joseph Sands, the nephew of a Mausolus House patient, slew the creature and burned its corpse in a fire that had started in a chapel on the grounds. The eighth Doctor arrived through a time corridor from around 2004, and the second Sholem-Luz accompanying him also perished in the fire. Not wishing to relive the twentieth century over again, the Doctor went into suspended animation for about a hundred years.
Dr. Thomas Christie, the governor of Mausolus House, found a dog’s tooth - all that remained of the Sholem-Luz - and made a pendant from it. It reappeared a century later.
Parts of The Book of Tomorrows had been lost over the centuries, but now the Orphans of the Future stole it entirely. By the early twenty-first century, their number included scientists, philosophers, inventors and other key individuals in Europe and North America. [1217]
1905 - Freakshow [1218]
The fifth Doctor, Tegan and Turlough visited Buzzard Creek, Arizona, and saw a travelling carnival: Thaddeus P Winklemeyer’s Menagerie of Medical Marvels. The freaks on display were alien beings, and Winklemeyer was actually a Vmal, an alien who propagated via micro-organisms that he sold to the crowd as an “elixir of life”. The travellers thwarted Winklemeyer’s plans, alerted galactic authorities as to his actions and took his captives home.
At this time, Cyvaks were horned serpents that inhabited the swamps of the planet Pallios, near Trion.
The Doctor once went for a stroll in Edwardian Bromley. [1219] The National Foundation for Scientific Research, UK, originated as a group of private researchers that adopted the name and gained charity status after World War II. The organisation eventually leased a house from Melanie Bush’s great-uncle. [1220] The Doctor trained the Mountain Mauler of Montana. [1221]
The Doctor learned a great deal from Houdini. [1222] Houdini was slightly shorter than five slightly scary girls that the Doctor encountered: the Vampires of Venice. [1223] The Doctor also learned sleight of hand from Maskelyne. [1224]
The Kalarians turned Ockora into a holiday resort, and hunted the natives for sport. They did not realise the Ockorans were intelligent. [1225] An alien gave J.M. Barrie the idea for Peter Pan, based on a popular extra-terrestrial story. [1226]
@ The Doctor claimed to have chained Emmeline Pankhurst to the railings outside 10 Downing Street. [1227] Pankhurst stole the Doctor’s laser spanner. [1228] The Doctor met Einstein. [1229] The chess master Swapnil Khan and his daughter Queenie Glasscock were present during a chess tournament in Nuremberg, 1906, where Rudolf Spielmann played David Prezepiorka. The Doctor intended on being there, but his train was delayed by anarchists on the line at Baden-Baden. [1230]
In 1906, Jack Harkness set up a bank account that gathered interest for at least a century. [1231] Eliza Cooper had met Jack Harkness by this point. [1232]
1906 - “Final Sacrifice” [1233]
Robert Lewis and Eliza Cooper of Torchwood visited Alexander Hugh, Professor of Advanced Sciences at Oxford, and his assistant Annabella. Hugh had built a time portal using repulsors from an alien tripod that crashed in Surrey, and the batteries from a giant metal man recovered from the Thames. But when the four of them stepped through the portal, intending to arrive just five minutes into the future, they found themselves twenty thousand years and five star systems away from their starting point.
The tenth Doctor and Emily Winter eventually gave Hugh a lift back home. The Doctor concluded that the slain Annabella was a fixed point in space and time - she should have lived, while Emily should have died. To correct the situation, Emily left the Doctor’s company twenty years before she had met him, and adopted Annabella’s identity. Funded by horse-betting information that the Doctor provided, Emily/“Annabella” came to own a theatre in Peckham, to discover the comic actor Archie Maplin, and to create United Actors Studio with him.
Jack Harkness first happened upon the uninhabited Tretarri housing district after enjoying a good night with a sailor and a showgirl together. An invisible force kept him from entering the location. Over the next century, he would make fourteen attempts to do so. [1234]
(=) 1906 (March) - TW: The House That Jack Built [1235]
Jack Harkness was the first owner of Jackson Leaves, a Cardiff house built in 1906. Interdimensional beings who fed off paradoxes were drawn to Jack and retroactively inserted themselves into the house’s history, causing all who lived there to die violently. Jack was secretly the lover of both the realtor who sold him the house, Alison, and her fiancé Miles. The exchange of vows at their wedding was extremely awkward, each of them worried that the other had discovered their involvement with Jack.
The day after Miles and Alison were married, he drowned her. An older version of Jack altered history so he didn’t purchase the house - the interdimensional beings were consequently wov
en into a massive paradox, and consumed themselves.
In the amended history, Alison lived and had a son, Gordon Cottrell.
In 1906, Charles Gaskell and a Torchwood team discovered advanced alien cryo-tech that could be used to freeze the dead. [1236] A 5.2 earthquake wracked Swansea on 27th June, 1906. It was suspected that Torchwood Cardiff suffered aftershocks, and that a number of its personnel died. [1237]
(=) 1906 (24th December) - The Chimes of Midnight [1238]
The eighth Doctor and Charley discovered the inhabitants of an Edwardian manor house were trapped in a time-loop. The servants were brutally murdered, but at midnight time would roll back two hours and the process would repeat itself. The Doctor found that the house was imprinted with the murders and that Edith Thompson - one of the servants - would later work for the Pollard family. Edith had killed herself in 1930 upon learning of Charley’s death in the R-101 accident, but Charley’s paradoxical arrival in 1906 left history confused as to whether Edith had cause to kill herself or not. The Doctor decisively talked Edith out of killing herself, ending the time-loop.
Azathoth and her army of Rakshassi were destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, following the Doctor’s intervention. [1239] The vampire Weird Harold was buried alive in the San Francisco earthquake. [1240]
Emily Winter, a companion of the tenth Doctor, was born in 1907. [1241] In the same year, Gerald Carter assumed command of Torchwood Cardiff. [1242] The Doctor visited in Brighton in 1907. [1243]
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