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[70] Forty-Five: “False Gods”. Howard Carter says that Userhat’s tomb was sealed “three thousand years” prior to 1902. In real life, Amun was a patron deity of Thebes, and rose to prominence in the eighteenth dynasty (1550-1292 BC). The cult of Thoth gained notoriety somewhat before this, when its base of operations - Khnum - became the capital of the Hermopolite nome (a “nome” being an administrative district in ancient Egypt).
[71] The Eye of the Scorpion; Erimem’s father is named in The Roof of the World and Erimem: The Coming of the Queen.
[72] Erimem: The Coming of the Queen
[73] The Roof of the World
[74] The Veiled Leopard
[75] Dating Erimem: The Coming of the Queen (BF New Worlds novel #2) - Erimem is 16 according to the blurb and pages 6-7; she’s 17 when she meets the Doctor and Peri in The Eye of the Scorpion. In the real world, Thutmose (here named as Erimem’s half-brother) ruled Egypt as Menkheperura Thutmose IV from about 1400-1390 BC, and historically - as in the Doctor Who universe - he was the son of Amenhtep II. His death as reported in Erimem: The Coming of the Queen is a fairly significant deviation from history; writer Iain McLaughlin had privately decided that Erimem’s successor to the throne, Fayum, would get renamed and become the historical Thutmose. While this seems like a fairly convoluted way of going about things, nothing especially rules it out either.
[76] The Veiled Leopard
[77] Dating The Eye of Scorpion (BF #24) - The Doctor estimates the date as “about 1400 BC” from hieroglyphics; in the real world, it’s unclear as to whether the reign of Amenhotep II ended in 1401 BC or 1397 BC. Peri’s claim that Napoleon’s troops damaged the Sphinx’s face (historically, they arrived in Egypt in 1798) owes to an urban legend that they used it for target practice. The Doctor doesn’t correct Peri on this point, but there’s otherwise no evidence that Napoleon’s troops perpetrate the crime in the Doctor Who universe. In the real world, at least, erosion is the far more likely culprit.
[78] Dating Set Piece (NA #35) - The date is given as “1366 BCE”.
[79] TW: Trace Memory
[80] The Time Meddler. The earliest parts of Stonehenge were built around 2800 BC, but the final building activity occurred between 1600-1400 BC.
[81] Rags (p160).
[82] The Horns of Nimon
[83] Vincent and the Doctor. This presumably means the gardens of ancient Troy.
[84] The Mark of the Rani
[85] Dating The Myth Makers (3.3) - The traditional date for the fall of Troy is 1184 BC, although this date is not given on screen.
[86] Frostfire
[87] Dating Frostfire (BF CC #1.1) - The audio booklet concurs on a dating of 1184 BC for The Myth Makers, and the back cover dates Frostfire to 1164 BC, something that is reiterated within the story itself.
[88] Frostfire. A quinquereme is an oar-powered warship, and was developed from the earlier trireme. It was in use from fourth century BC to the first century AD.
[89] “Three thousand years” before the 1953 component of TW: Trace Memory.
[90] “Three thousand years” before “The Grief”.
[91] Timewyrm Revelation (p14). Wang was the last king of the Shang dynasty.
[92] Death to the Daleks. The Peruvian temples influenced by the Exxilons are around three thousand years old, so the collapse of Exxilon civilisation must be after that. In SLEEPY, Benny detects Exxilon influence in the Yemayan pyramid, dating from around “1500 BCE”.
[93] Mawdryn Undead. The ship has been in orbit for “three thousand years” according to the Doctor.
[94] Dating Primeval (BF #26) - It is “three thousand years” before Nyssa’s time.
[95] “Thousands of years” before Scapegoat.
[96] “Millennia” before Forever Autumn.
[97] “Millennia” before SJA: The Shadow People.
[98] “Three thousand years” before SJA: Eye of the Gorgon.
[99] “Thousands of years” before The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.
[100] Other Lives. The Queen was a contemporary of King Solomon, who lived circa 970-928 BC.
[101] “Three thousand years” before SJA: Enemy of the Bane.
[102] The Daemons
[103] The Song of the Megaptera. The Biblical book of Jonah is set during the reign of Jeroboam II (786-746 BC).
[104] K9: Dream-Eaters. No date is specified, and the information that the obelisk dates to “Celtic” times doesn’t pin one down.
[105] Seasons of Fear
[106] Dating Benny: Walking to Babylon (Benny NA #10) - The year is given.
[107] Option Lock. Pythagoras lived 580-500 BC.
[108] The fourth Doctor name-drops Sun Tzu in The Shadow of Weng-Chiang, and the seventh Doctor and Ace refer to meeting him in The Shadow of the Scourge.
[109] Set Piece, during the “Fourth Century BCE”.
[110] Three thousand years before Benny: Tempest.
[111] Benny: The Empire State. The legend of the Stone claims it’s “about three thousand years old”, and Benny (speaking from 2607) says it has existed for “the whole of recorded human history”. Braxiatel concurs, but also says he was inert as the Stone “for a couple of millennia”. In Benny: The Judas Gift, Bev Tarrant says Braxiatel spent “three thousand years asleep”.
[112] The Daemons, City of Death.
[113] “One hundred generations” before Four to Doomsday.
[114] The Vampires of Venice. Records suggest that the Olympic Games were first held in 776 BC.
[115] The Spectre of Lanyon Moor. This would be around 440 BC.
[116] Enlightenment. Pericles died, age 70, in 429 BC.
[117] Robot. Alexander lived 356-323 BC.
[118] The Keys of Marinus. Pyrrho lived c.360-270 BC.
[119] The Slitheen Excursion
[120] Omega. This would have been around 350 BC.
[121] Horror of Fang Rock, Logopolis.
[122] “Voyager”
[123] City at World’s End, The Two Doctors. Archimedes lived c.287-212 BC.
[124] Island of Death
[125] Eye of Heaven (p181). Eratosthenes lived c.276-194 BC.
[126] Cat’s Cradle: Witch Mark
[127] “The Crimson Hand”. Depictions of Zephyrus and Hyacinth (a target of Zaphyrus’ love, and killed by him when Hyacinth favoured Apollo) date back to the fifth century BC.
[128] Dating Benny: The Oracle of Delphi (Benny audio #6.5) - The year is given. Historically, the plague that struck Athens in 430 BC returned in 429 and 427 BC.
[129] Benny: Epoch: The Kraken’s Lament
[130] The Fires of Pompeii. Presumably this refers to the original Sybil, at Delphi.
[131] “Three thousand years, give or take” (p51) years before Benny: The Doomsday Manuscript.
[132] TW: The Sin Eaters. The year isn’t given, but the historical record suggests that eruptions occurred at Etna in 396 BC, 122 BC, 1030, 1160 (or possibly 1224), 1669, 1928, 1949, 1971, 1981, 1983 and 1991 to 1993.
[133] Survival of the Fittest. Aristotle lived 384 to 322 BC.
[134] Dating Farewell, Great Macedon (BF LS #2.1) - The year is given at least three times. The Doctor’s group spends some “long weeks” with Alexander before leaving on the day of his death, which is cited as “June 13th”. (A solid claim, although his passing is alternatively ascribed to the 10th or the 11th.)
Many of the events in Farewell, Great Macedon are drawn from historical accounts, but extreme liberties have been taken with the timeframe, and entirely disparate events have been rolled into a single narrative. Cleitus is thought to have died about five years before Alexander (in autumn 328 BC), Calanus about a year and a half beforehand (in late 325 BC), and Hephaestion some months beforehand (in autumn 324 BC) - here, they all perish in a matter of weeks. Calanus and Cleitus died in circumstances similar to those described here, but Hephaestion likely died from typhoid fever, and here succumbs to a snake bite. Antipater is rumoured to have orchestrated Alexander’s death, while th
e historian Plutarch rejects this idea, and it’s equally likely that Alexander died from natural causes. Either way, Antipater isn’t implicated as having anything to do with Cleitus, Calanus and Hephaestion’s deaths. Nor did Antipater die at Selecus’ hand - he was, in fact, named regent of Alexander’s empire and given control of Greece before dying from an illness, after returning to Macedon in 320 BC.
[135] “A thousand years” before Genesis of the Daleks.
[136] Marco Polo
[137] Or so the artificial version of Huang claims in “The Immortal Emperor”. Huang was born in 246 BC.
[138] Enlightenment
[139] The Nightmare Fair. Imperial China started in 221 BC; the Toymaker’s involvement could have happened at any point until its end, in 1912 AD.
[140] Dating The Emperor of Eternity (BF CC #4.8) - The evidence is confusing when weighed against the historical accounts. The Doctor specifies that it’s “210 BC”, within a few days of the Emperor’s death (on September 10th of that year), but the meteor incident that prompted the slaughter of Dongjun is historically dated to 211 BC. It’s possible that the meteor event happened a year later in the Doctor Who universe, but it’s equally likely that the Doctor has just gotten the year wrong.
The First Emperor of China
Qin Shi Huang (who ruled under the name “First Emperor” from 221-210 BC) is featured in three Doctor Who stories, in three different formats: the novel The Eleventh Tiger, the DWM comic “The Immortal Emperor” and the audio The Emperor of Eternity. All are reasonably reconcilable if one is flexible as to the final fate of the original Emperor. For all that we’re told, the real Huang might, as history claims, have simply died after ingesting a series of “immortality pills” that gave him mercury poisoning - but that his mind was copied (by both Meng Tian and the Mandragora Helix, for entirely different purposes) beforehand. In The Eleventh Tiger (p267), the first Doctor concurs with this, saying that the “Emperor” he meets is a duplicate of the original’s memories “in a personality matrix”, and isn’t the genuine article. (That, certainly, would explain why the Emperor is portrayed a lot more ruthlessly in The Eleventh Tiger, and seems very intent on obtaining the immortality that he forsakes in The Emperor of Eternity.) Similarly, it’s possible that the “Emperor” in “The Immortal Emperor” is nothing more than a robotic construct crafted by Meng Tian, who wants to remain the power behind the throne once the original Huang has died/otherwise become unavailable. The robot might even think he’s the genuine article, although it’s admittedly an oversight on Meng Tian’s part to leave out a failsafe that would prevent his faux Qin Shi Huang from becoming outraged and killing him. The only remaining stumbling block is that the tenth Doctor claims (“The Immortal Emperor”) that Huang just disappeared one night and that “no-one knows how he died” - something that isn’t true in real life, as the first Doctor knows (The Eleventh Tiger, p267 again).
Whatever the case with Huang, it’s possible that Meng Tian built the terracotta army (found in real life in 1974) as robots that collect dust after Meng Tian’s death until the Mandragora Helix makes use of them in 1884 (in The Eleventh Tiger), once the stars align as it requires.
[141] “Two thousand years” before The Eleventh Tiger.
[142] Dating “The Immortal Emperor” (The Doctor Who Storybook 2009) - It’s “a couple of centuries BC”, at the end of the First Emperor’s reign.
[143] “Two thousand years” before The King of Terror.
[144] “The Collector”
[145] The Quantum Archangel
[146] Dating 100: “100 BC” (BF #100a) - The Doctor attempts to go forward nine months in time from October 101 BC, but appears to instead go backward by the same amount. Julius Caesar’s older sister Julia was indeed born in 101 BC. Nothing is here said about Julius’ other older sister, who was also named Julia, and is only mentioned in the accounts of the biographer/historian/gossip monger Suetonius.
[147] Dating 100: “100 BC” (BF #100a) - The month and year are given, and are extrapolated from Caesar’s birth on 13th July, 100 BC. The story title was doubtless intended to tie into Big Finish’s 100th audio release, but is deliberately misleading in that - as the Doctor and Evelyn figure out - they were never in 100 BC.
[148] Empire of Death, and evidently a separate occasion from 100: “100”.
[149] The Gallifrey Chronicles
[150] The War Games
[151] “The Greatest Gamble”
[152] The Colony of Lies
[153] City of Death. He’s listed as “Roman Emperor” in the script, but it’s possible he’s a senator or other Roman of rank.
[154] The Doctor has already visited Rome on his travels before The Romans. He mentions Hannibal (247-182 BC, he crossed the Alps in 219 BC) in Robot, and Cleopatra (68-30 BC) in The Masque of Mandragora.
[155] The Settling
[156] The Girl in the Fireplace
[157] Ghosts of India
[158] The Wedding of River Song
[159] Loups-Garoux
[160] Iris: Enter Wildthyme (p83).
[161] Dating State of Change (MA #5) - The Doctor thinks that it is “the year 10 BC, approximately” (p41). The Cleopatra of this world died around 15 BC (p45). Terra Nova is part of the universe’s timeline by the end of the story, yet despite its prosperity and technological advantage over the proper Earth, it’s never heard of again.
[162] Voyage of the Damned
[163] Relative Dimensions. The Doctor mentions that this was “right about Zero BC/AD”, although estimates of Christ’s birth year by historians generally range from 6 BC to 6 AD.
[164] Dating TW: Exit Wounds (TW 2.13) - The year is given.
[165] Planet of the Dead
[166] Matrix. The Wandering Jew was a shoemaker or tradesman who mocked Jesus on his way to the Crucifixion, and was reportedly condemned to walk the Earth until the Second Coming of Christ. There is little Biblical evidence for this, but records of the legend go back to the thirteenth century.
[167] The Slow Empire
[168] The Resurrection of Mars. Caligula ruled 16th March, 37 AD, to 24th January, 41 AD, presuming this meet-up happened during his reign as emperor.
[169] Dating Iris: The Two Irises (Iris audio #2.3) - It’s during Caligula’s time as Emperor (37-41 AD).
[170] Demon Quest: The Relics of Time
[171] Dating Demon Quest: The Relics of Time (BBC fourth Doctor audio #2.1) - The Doctor says it’s “nearly two thousand years earlier” than the present day. A Celt says Julius Caesar invaded “almost a century ago”, and it’s referred to a couple of times as “the first century”. Although “Claudius” is actually a shapechanging demon, it would seem to be later in the year that the Doctor knows the real Claudius came to Britain: 43 AD. However, Mrs Wibbsey dates this story to 46 AD in Demon Quest: Starfall.
[172] Demon Quest: Sepulchre
[173] Human Nature (NA)
[174] TW: Small Worlds
[175] The Blue Angel. Salome lived in the first century AD.
[176] “Seventeen years” before The Fires of Pompeii.
[177] Said to be “over two thousand years” before The Stolen Earth, although in truth it’s slightly less than that.
[178] Paradise 5. Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD), author of Naturalis Historica (Natural History) wrote about smelling salts.
[179] The Nightmare Fair
[180] Dating The Rescue (2.3) - This happens right at the end of the story, as a literal cliffhanger. The date is established in The Romans, but Byzantium! establishes that the TARDIS crew have another adventure first...
[181] Dating Byzantium! (PDA #44) - This story takes place immediately before The Romans.
[182] Dating The Romans (2.4) - The story culminates in the Great Fire of Rome. The TARDIS crew have spent “a month” at the villa.
[183] Archaeologists date the site to “about 70 AD” in I am a Dalek (p24).
[184] Dating The Fires of Vulcan (BF #12) - The story ends with the
eruption of Vesuvius.
[185] The Algebra of Ice (p15).
[186] Made of Steel. It’s not specified that this was during the famous historical eruption.
[187] “Two thousand years” before The Art of Destruction.
[188] Dating The Fires of Pompeii (X4.2) - The date is a matter of historical record. The Doctor claims he’s been to Rome “ages ago” before during the great fire, a reference to The Romans - but as we’ve seen, he’s made a couple of other trips to the city.
[189] The Fires of Pompeii. According to a vision the High Priestess of the Sybilines has of the “Pyrovile alternative” timeline.
[190] The Fires of Pompeii
[191] Dating The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang (X5.12-5.13) - The Doctor says it’s “102... not am, not pm, AD”. The real Cleopatra, as is mentioned, has already died (in 30 BC).
The Cybermen seen here warn that “all the universes are deleted”, which is in keeping with their having the Cybus logo (meaning they’re from Pete’s World). However, they now have Cyberships, teleportation and their heads sprout tentacles and can operate independently - all of which seems more advanced than the Cybus models first seen in Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel. Those Cybermen discarded the whole body apart from the brain, but the faceplates of these newer models open up to reveal bone skulls, and hunt for “organic components”. The conclusion is either that the Cybermen seen here are the first from our universe seen in the new series (having melded the Cybus tech with their own), or that they’re from the future of Pete’s World.
[192] The Big Bang
[193] TW: Trace Memory
[194] Dating The Stone Rose (NSA #7) - The date is given.
[195] The Way Through the Woods. The Roman invasion of England began in 43 AD, and formally ended in 410.
[196] Only Human
[197] Ghost Ship
[198] “The Collector”
[199] The Shadows of Avalon
[200] TW: End of Days
[201] Dead London. The “lost legion” that’s used to populate the Roman London is presumably Rome’s notorious Ninth Legion, whose real-life disappearance has led to much speculation. Sources claim the legion went missing as early as 117 AD, although it’s possible it occurred later. Tellingly, the Ninth isn’t listed amongst the legions active during the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161-180), so it was presumably “lost” prior to that. Films inspired by this historical oddity include The Last Legion (2007) starring Colin Firth, and Centurion (2010) starring Dominic West, with Noel Clarke in the cast.