B00DPX9ST8 EBOK

by Parkin, Lance

  [688] “Over two hundred years” before The Abominable Snowmen according to the Abbot Songsten.

  [689] Dating The Doomwood Curse (BF #111) - The back cover says it’s “England, 1738”. The story is a little more vague - the Doctor estimates that it’s about “twenty years” after 1720, the date he spies on a tombstone. In real life, as in the Doctor Who universe, Turpin was a petty criminal and murderer whose exploits were over-romanticized in the likes of The Genuine History of the Life of Richard Turpin (1739), Black Bess and the Knight of the Road (1867-68), Rookwood and other stories. Historically, as here, Turpin was executed in April 1739.

  [690] Dating The Girl in the Fireplace (X2.4) - Reinette’s age as a young woman isn’t given, although she’s “23” the next time they meet.

  [691] The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, and specified on the back cover of FP: Sabbath Dei.

  [692] The Witch Hunters

  [693] The Many Hands

  [694] The Room with No Doors

  [695] Dating The Girl in the Fireplace (X2.4) - It is said that Madame de Chateauroux, the King’s mistress prior to Reinette, is “ill and close to death”. She died on 8th December, 1744. The scene probably occurs a few months beforehand, as Reinette is seen walking across a sunny patch of grass.

  [696] Dating The Girl in the Fireplace (X2.4) - It is the night that Reinette meets the King - historically this occurred in February 1745, after Chateauroux’s death. The Doctor says Reinette is “23”, which she historically would have been at the time. Incidentally, The Girl in the Fireplace fails to mention that the real-life Reinette was married at age 19 and later had two children, neither of whom lived beyond age ten.

  [697] The War Games

  [698] Dating The Highlanders (4.4) - The provisional title of the story was Culloden, and it is set shortly after that battle. Despite references in The Highlanders, The War Games and other stories, Culloden took place in April 1746, not 1745. This is first explicitly stated in The Underwater Menace, (although the draft script again said “1745”). The Radio Times specified that The Highlanders is set in April. The 1745 date has been perpetuated by the first edition of The Making of Doctor Who, and surfaces in a number of books, such as The Roundheads. Birthright has Jared Khan narrowly miss the TARDIS’ departure after The Highlanders, in a scene dated to 1746.

  [699] Dating The War Games (6.7) - Jamie is returned to his native time.

  [700] Birthright. Cagliostro, an occultist in real life, lived from 1743-1795.

  [701] “Eleven years” before the The Many Hands.

  [702] White Darkness

  [703] The Doomwood Curse. Brown lived 1716 to 1783.

  [704] The Cabinet of Light (p85).

  [705] The Daemons

  [706] Interference, FP: Sabbath Dei, FP: In the Year of the Cat, FP: “Political Animals”, FP: “Betes Noires and Dark Horses”.

  [707] FP: Coming to Dust

  [708] Interference, FP: “Betes Noires and Dark Horses”.

  [709] The Vampires of Venice

  [710] Dating The Girl in the Fireplace (X2.4) - It is “five years” before Reinette is 37. Owing to her 29th December birthday, she would have been that age almost the entirety of 1759, so it’s now 1754.

  [711] Smith and Jones. History records this as happening on 15th June, 1752.

  [712] The Stones of Blood

  [713] The Also People

  [714] “Nearly ten” Krillitane generations before School Reunion.

  [715] Hornets’ Nest: The Circus of Doom

  [716] “A century” before “The Screams of Death”.

  [717] Dating The Girl in the Fireplace (X2.4) - Rose says the clockwork men will come for Reinette “some time after your thirty-seventh birthday”, which was on 29th December, 1758, so it must now be 1759.

  [718] Dating The Many Hands (NSA #24) - The back cover and a caption before the first part of the book confirm the year.

  [719] ...ish, Synthespians™, The Gallifrey Chronicles

  [720] The Underwater Menace

  [721] “The Collector”

  [722] The Silent Stars Go By. Chingachgook appeared in the writings of James Fenimore Cooper, in stories set from 1740 to 1793.

  [723] Dating FP: Sabbath Dei / FP: In the Year of the Cat (FP audios #1.3-1.4) - The narrator says, “In the calendar of the West, this is the winter in the year seventeen hundred and sixty-two”.

  [724] Dating FP: The Labyrinth of Histories (FP audio #1.6) - Compassion tells Justine, “I’ll explain once you’re back here with us in 1763”, indicating that the New Year has come and gone.

  [725] Dating FP: Coming to Dust / FP: The Ship of a Billion Years (FP audio #2.1-2.2) - The year is given. Corwyn expects his ailing daughter will die “by this summer”, so it’s earlier than that in the year.

  [726] FP: Body Politic

  [727] Dating FP: Ozymandias (FP audio #2.5) - Marne says that it’s been “more than six months”, since they last saw Justine, but Finton later comments that it was “a year ago”. Either way, it’s most likely 1764 now.

  [728] Dating The Girl in the Fireplace (X2.4) - The final sequence takes place shortly after Reinette’s death. This historically happened on 15th April, 1764 - the same year as is listed on the painting at the end of the story. The King says Reinette was “43” when she died, but historically she was only 42. (Writer Steven Moffat has conceded this as a mistake.)

  [729] Dating FP: The Judgment of Sutekh (FP audio #2.6) - The dates are given in Pennerton’s letters.

  [730] P.R.O.B.E.: The Devil of Winterborne

  [731] “Five hundred years” before The Daleks.

  The Neutronic War on Skaro

  The Neutronic War referred to in The Daleks is clearly a different conflict from the Thal-Kaled War seen in Genesis of the Daleks, given that the Neutronic War in The Daleks lasted just “one day”, whereas the Thal-Kaled War lasted “nearly a thousand years”. In the first story, a Dalek tells the Doctor that “We, the Daleks and the Thals” fought the Neutronic War, implying that this was after the Daleks were created (a version of events supported by the TV Century 21 comic strip). The Thal named Alydon speaks of this as the “final war”, maybe suggesting that there was more than one.

  It’s interesting to note that after the Neutronic War, both the Thals and Dals mutated until they resembled the state they’d been in at Genesis of the Daleks - the Thals becoming blond humanoids, the Dals becoming green Dalek blobs.

  [732] This is the opening caption of the first “The Daleks” TV Century 21 strip.

  [733] Dating “The Daleks: Genesis of Evil” (TV21 #1-3, DWW #33) - This is the first story in “The Daleks” comic strip printed in TV Century 21. As the story starts with the birth of the Daleks, but ends at a time when Earth has spaceships (shortly before The Dalek Invasion of Earth, it seems), and “Legacy of Yesteryear” is explicitly “centuries” after “Genesis of Evil”, the strips have been broken into two blocks, with events of each block happening over a relatively short time, but with hundreds of years between the two.

  The year this story - and so the rest of its block - is set isn’t given in the strip, but Drenz was killed in 2003 according to both The Dalek Book and The Dalek Pocketbook and Space-Travellers Guide, both of which are otherwise consistent with the strip. However, this isn’t 2003 AD: The Dalek Outer Space Book mentions the “New Skaro Calendar”, with Year Zero being the year the “Thousand Years War” started. It also says the Daleks emerged in the year 1600 and “The Year of the Dalek” lasted until the year 1,000,000 (the original date given in scripts for The Daleks’ Master Plan, which may or may not be a coincidence). This would account for a line in “The Dalek World” stating it’s not unusual to find Daleks that are a million years old. See the Are There Two Dalek Histories? sidebar for how this can be reconciled with Genesis of the Daleks.

  So... the blue-skinned original Daleks appear in 1600, “Genesis of Evil” is set in 2003, and The Daleks takes place five hundred years after “Genesis of Evil” (s
o around 2503). We also know that Genesis of the Daleks is set at the end of the Thousand Years War, so in 1000. Making the assumption that a “year” is the same length as a year on Earth (as this chronology does, unless stated otherwise), and using other dates from this chronology, we can work back. The Daleks is set in 2263 AD and 2503 according to the New Skaro Calendar, so to calculate an Earth date, you subtract two hundred and forty from the Skaro date. Therefore, “Genesis of Evil” starts in 1763 and Genesis of the Daleks is set in 760 AD.

  [734] “Legacy of Yesteryear”

  [735] Dating “The Daleks: Genesis of Evil” (TV21 #1-3, DWW #33) - It is two years later.

  [736] “Duel of the Daleks”

  [737] Dating “The Daleks: Power Play” (TV21 #4-10, DWW #33-34) - “Two months” after “Genesis of Evil”.

  [738] Dating “The Daleks: Duel of the Daleks” (TV21 #11-17, DWW #35-36) - It’s set soon after “Power Play”.

  [739] Dating “The Daleks: The Amaryll Challenge” (TV21 #18-24, DWW #36-37) - It’s not stated how long the Daleks experiment with spacecraft, but they design and build thirteen different prototypes, test them and then build a fleet of the winning design in the first installment. This allows one of only two gaps in the narrative (the other is between “Impasse” and “The Terrorkon Harvest”), which have to add up to the “centuries” between “Genesis of Evil” and “Legacy of Yesteryear”. That said, there’s no indication it takes the Daleks very long to develop space travel.

  [740] Dating “The Daleks: The Penta Ray Factor” (TV21 #25-32, DWW #37-39) - The story follows straight on from “The Amaryll Challenge”.

  [741] Dating “The Daleks: Plague of Death” (TV21 #33-39, DWW #39-40) - The Emperor is summoned back at the end of “The Penta Ray Factor”, so this story starts while that story is running.

  [742] Dating “The Daleks: Menace of the Monstrons” (TV21 #40-46, DWW #40-42) - The Monstron ship arrives while the Daleks are rebuilding after “Plague of Death”.

  [743] Dating “The Daleks: Eve of the War” (TV21 #47-51, DWM #53-54) - It’s “a few months” after “The Menace of the Monstrons”, and the Daleks have spent the time rebuilding their city. The Mechanoids in the TV Century 21 strip physically resemble the ones seen in The Chase, but see the dating notes on that story for more.

  [744] Dating “The Daleks: The Archive of Phryne” (TV21 #52-58, DWM #54-55) - The story is set shortly after “Eve of the War”, with the Daleks gearing up to fight the Mechanoids.

  [745] Dating “The Daleks: Rogue Planet” (TV21 #47-51, DWM #53-54) - The Daleks are still preparing to fight the Mechanoids, so this is shortly after “The Archive of Phryne”. The rogue planet is accidentally called Skardel in a couple of the later instalments.

  [746] Dating “The Daleks: Impasse” (TV21 #63-69, DWM #62-66, 68) - The story ends the immediate threat of war between the Mechanoids and Daleks.

  [747] TW: Trace Memory. Sheridan was an Irish actor, educator and proponent of elocution movement.

  [748] Minuet in Hell

  [749] Dating Hornets’ Nest: The Circus of Doom and Hornets’ Nest: A Sting in the Tale (BBC fourth Doctor audios #1.3-1.4) - The date is given.

  [750] “Two centuries” before Revolution Man.

  [751] The Adventuress of Henrietta Street. Sabbath is working with the service prior to this in the Faction Paradox audios; this must represent his initiation into its higher echelons.

  [752] Timeless

  [753] Dating Transit of Venus (BF CC #3.7) - The adventure occurs over a period of “less than two months” in 1770, and concludes “days” after the Endeavour gets stuck on the Great Barrier Reef on June 11. Susan’s empathic link with Banks is deemed an offshoot of the telepathy she used in The Sensorites. Ian claims to have seen “the metal seas of Venus”, but it’s not stated that he actually met any Venusians; the Doctor, Ian and Barbara do so in Venusian Lullaby.

  Transits of Venus are extraordinarily rare - pairs of transits will occur at eight-year intervals, then not be seen again for two hundred and forty-three years. A transit of Venus occurred in 1761; Cook’s party witnessed its “pairing” in 1769.

  [754] The Many Hands

  [755] “Two hundred years” before The Many Deaths of Jo Grant.

  [756] Dating FP: “Political Animals” and FP: “Betes Noires and Dark Horses” (FP comic #1-2) - The year and month are given. The story was interrupted by the cancellation of the Faction Paradox comic after two issues.

  [757] The Adventuress of Henrietta Street

  [758] The Unquiet Dead

  [759] The Mark of the Rani. The American War of Independence ran from 1775-1783.

  [760] The King of Terror

  [761] The Impossible Astronaut

  [762] Survival of the Fittest. Jefferson lived 1743 to 1826.

  [763] Seasons of Fear. No date is given, but Franklin died in 1790. The modern-day American government didn’t start until 1789, so unless Franklin was President in the Doctor Who universe under its predecessor, the Articles of Confederation, then he must have served during the term normally attributed to George Washington.

  The mistake wasn’t deliberate - writer Paul Cornell genuinely believed that Franklin had been President. In Neverland, a line that the “wrong man became President” was meant to denote the Bush/Gore election in 2000, but fans have cited it to cover this mistake.

  [764] FP: Warlords of Utopia

  [765] “Two hundred years” before The Daemons.

  [766] City of Death

  [767] We see the portrait of Ace hanging in Windsor Castle in the extended version of Silver Nemesis. In Ace’s personal timeline, she had not yet sat for the painting. Gainsborough lived from 1727-1788, painting society portraits 1760-1774 before turning to landscapes.

  [768] Timeless (p93). Kalicum says that D’Amantine, who’s alive in 1830, is the third generation affected by his alterations.

  [769] The Nightmare Fair

  [770] The Devil Goblins from Neptune. He ruled 1780-1790.

  [771] The Stones of Blood. Allan Ramsay, a Scottish portrait painter, lived 1713-1784.

  [772] Three months before Catch-1782.

  [773] Dating Catch-1782 (BF #68) - The dates of Mel’s arrival and departure from this era are given.

  [774] Dating The Adventuress of Henrietta Street (EDA #51) - It is “March 1782” on p2, more specifically “March 20, 1782” on p15. The Siege of Henrietta Street happens on “February 8”, 1783 (p259). Scarlette’s funeral is dated 9th February on p269 and the back cover, with the Doctor departing Henrietta Street on February 13 (p273), and his final conversation with Scarlette occurs on the same day. An epilogue with Sabbath and Juliette happens on “August 18 1783” (p278).

  The book is told in a style reminiscent of a history book, and some of the key facts are open to dispute. With that in mind, novels after this one state that Anji has been travelling with the Doctor only for “months”, suggesting the timeframe of Henrietta Street might be more condensed than the book itself suggests.

  Scarlette is the young girl Isobel from the Faction Paradox comic series, which covers some of her early history and takes place in 1774.

  [775] Dating Dead of Winter (NSA #46) - The six days that pass within the story - starting with “4th December 1783” (p10) and ending with “10th December 1783” (p251) - are listed in various journal entries and letters.

  [776] The Spectre of Lanyon Moor

  [777] The Haunting of Thomas Brewster. Franklin died in 1790.

  [778] A bit more than two hundred years before The Nightmare Fair.

  [779] Hexagora. Date unknown, but this is within the lifetime of Queen Zafira, who as a Hexagoran has a life-span of five hundred years.

  [780] Dating Helicon Prime (BF CC #2.2) - The next Companion Chronicles audio starring Frazer Hines, The Glorious Revolution, suggests that the same amount of time has passed for Jamie as has passed in the real world since the broadcast of The War Games in 1969. If that’s the case, the framing sequence of Helicon Prim
e (which was released in 2007) probably takes place circa 1784.

  [781] Dating The Glorious Revolution (BF CC #4.2) - The Time Lord says that it’s been “forty years” since The Highlanders, which is set in 1746, evidently mirroring the real-life time that’s passed for Frazer Hines since he left Doctor Who in 1969. Additionally, it’s said that 1688 was “a hundred years ago”, and that King James VII died “eighty years ago” (he lived 1633-1701). Jamie’s wife, named as “Kirsty”, is presumably Hannah Gordon’s character of the same name from The Highlanders.

  [782] The Death of Art

  [783] Silver Nemesis

  [784] The Taint. Fitz is named after Freddie’s brother.

  [785] Dating “The World Shapers” (DWM #127-129) - It’s “the eighteenth century” according to a caption, and the Doctor thinks he’s miscalculated by “about forty years”. The previous edition of Ahistory dated this story to circa 1785, but the inclusion of The Glorious Revolution at circa 1786 makes it advisable to bump “The World Shapers” ahead in time a bit, under the assumption that personal matters go downhill for Jamie afterwards. Peri remembers The Two Doctors as being “a couple of years ago”. The reference to Planet 14 appeared in The Invasion.

  [786] Doctor Who and the Pirates. The Spinning Jenny was invented in 1797.

  [787] The Space Museum. James Watt lived 1736-1819.

  [788] Day of the Daleks, Alex Macintosh, the television commentator in that story, states that the house is “Georgian”.

  [789] “One and a half centuries” before “Tooth and Claw” (DWM).

  [790] According to Susan in The Reign of Terror.

  [791] In An Unearthly Child, Susan borrows a book about the French Revolution, but already knows a great deal about the subject.

  [792] The Scapegoat. The Bastille was in operation as a fortress prison from 1370 until its storming on 14th July, 1789.

  [793] Christmas on a Rational Planet

  [794] Just War

  [795] “The Golden Ones”

  [796] Dating 100: “100 My Own Private Wolfgang” (BF #100b) - It’s the day of Mozart’s death. His last composition, Requiem in Mass D minor, is regarded as one of his most popular works - but it’s also unfinished, and was completed by Franz Xaver Sussmayr or other parties after Mozart’s death. In Time and Relative, Susan relates that her grandfather regards Mozart as a “bad-mannered show-off with a silly hairstyle” - but as Susan herself hasn’t met Mozart, this is likely just the first Doctor’s opinion without benefit of having met the man.