[1506] Dating The Glamour Chase (NSA #42) - The year is repeatedly given. According to p59, it’s a Sunday. The Doctor rattles off a list of the “true greats” of archaeology (p139), but as he does so while expressly lying to Enola Porter that she’s going to number among them (and as the list includes at least one real-life fraud, Shinichi Fujimura) the whole thing looks so improvised, it’s probably best to not take it seriously.
[1507] Dating Wolfsbane (PDA #62) - Harry is abandoned on 27th November, 1936, according to p24. Harry’s fate is left ambiguous due to the presence of multiple timelines, which were finally compressed to one history in Timeless. Sometime Never says the Council of Eight had a hand in engineering Harry’s “death”.
[1508] Dating Wolfsbane (PDA #62) - It’s 11th December, 1936 (p49).
[1509] Grimm Reality
[1510] Dating Players (PDA #21) - The date is given (p150).
[1511] Dating Pier Pressure (BF #78) - The year is given. Mention that Charlie Chan at the Opera is currently showing in Brighton is potentially a glitch, as some documentation indicates it wasn’t distributed in the UK until 8th January, 1937. Miller states that he’s 40; he’s approximating, because he would have been 42 at the time.
[1512] Pier Pressure. This refers to the West Pier’s real-life decay. It partially collapsed on 29th December, 2002, then further caved in on 20th January, 2003.
[1513] History 101
[1514] Dating Benny: Secret Origins (Benny audio #10.4) - The year is given.
[1515] TimeH: The Sideways Door. The Hindenburg went down on 6th of May, 1937.
[1516] Dating History 101 (EDA #58) - It’s “Barcelona, 1937” (p1).
[1517] The Shadow of Weng-Chiang (p208).
[1518] Superior Beings (p58).
[1519] Dating The Shadow of Weng-Chiang (MA #25) - The date is given (p1).
[1520] “Tooth and Claw” (DWM). Threshold’s involvement and the date are confirmed in “Wormwood”.
[1521] Ghost Ship
[1522] TW: Miracle Day
[1523] J&L: Swan Song. This dating is somewhat arbitrary, as the date of Jago’s death isn’t known, but it must occur before the New Regency’s destruction in 1940.
[1524] Dating “The Curse of the Scarab” (DWM #228-230) - The date is given.
[1525] Dating Let’s Kill Hitler (X6.8) - The date is given in a caption. In all of the Doctor Who stories that involve Hitler, this is the only one where he actually sees the TARDIS.
[1526] Dating TimeH: The Albino’s Dancer (TimeH #9) - The exact day is given, p1.
[1527] Dating Invaders from Mars (BF #28) - The date is given, although the Welles play was actually broadcast on 30th October, not the 31st. Big Finish claims to have deliberately changed the date as part of the historical alterations affecting the second season of McGann audios. There are a couple of further anachronisms, such as a mention of the CIA and Welles not knowing about Shakespeare, which are explained in The Time of the Daleks.
[1528] Timeless. The bookshop is said to be on Charing Cross Road, but it was on Euston Road in Time Zero.
[1529] Time Zero
[1530] Silver Nemesis
[1531] Dating The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe (X7.0) - It is three years before the story’s main action.
[1532] The Shadow in the Glass
[1533] TW: Miracle Day
[1534] “A year or two back” before Illegal Alien.
[1535] The Daemons
[1536] The Impossible Astronaut. The movie appears to be The Flying Deuces (1939).
[1537] Dating “Tooth and Claw” (DWM #257-260) - It’s “1939”, according to the opening caption.
[1538] Dating A Blind Eye (BF Gallifrey mini-series #1.4) – The exact day is given.
[1539] The Web of Fear
[1540] Doctor Who and the Pirates
[1541] Ghost Ship
[1542] Endgame (EDA)
[1543] Wishing Well
[1544] Heart of TARDIS. This was “several years” before Crowley’s reported death in 1947 (p6).
[1545] Heart of TARDIS
[1546] Project: Twilight
[1547] Resistance. The start of the war is generally dated to 1st September, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland.
[1548] Dating Timewyrm: Exodus (NA #2) - Part Three of the novel is set in “1939” (p111).
[1549] Remembrance of the Daleks
[1550] Sontarans: Old Soldiers
[1551] The Paradise of Death (p25).
[1552] Island of Death
[1553] Business Unusual
[1554] Old Soldiers
[1555] In Mawdryn Undead, the 1983 Brigadier talks of “thirty years of soldiering”. He doesn’t have a moustache in the regimental photograph seen in Inferno. He is a member of the Scots’ Guards in The Web of Fear. Other information here comes from The Invasion and The Green Death.
[1556] The Spectre of Lanyon Moor
[1557] Matrix
[1558] Illegal Alien (p211). The Nazis occupied Jersey on 1st May, 1940.
[1559] TW: Sleeper
[1560] Dating The Nemonite Invasion (BBC DW audiobook #3) - The date is given, and the story takes place at the start of the Dunkirk evacuation, which took place from 26th May to 4th June, 1940.
[1561] Dating Timewyrm: Exodus (NA #2) - The story coincides with the historical evacuation of Dunkirk, and the Doctor exorcises the Timewyrm from Hitler’s mind shortly prior to that.
[1562] Just War
[1563] The Nemonite Invasion
[1564] Resistance, in which it’s said that his “third birthday” occurs in the summer of 1943.
[1565] Grimm Reality
[1566] The Turing Test (p59).
[1567] Dating Illegal Alien (PDA #5) - Tomorrow’s date, “14 November 1940” is given (p20).
[1568] TW: Captain Jack Harkness. The Battle of Britain lasted 10th July to 31st October, 1940.
[1569] J&L: Chronoclasm
[1570] Just War. The date is given as 1941 (p4), but that is a mistake and should read 1940.
[1571] The Lazarus Experiment. Lazarus names the year as 1940. The Blitz began on 7th September, and lasted into 1941. The Doctor refers to having seen the horrors of the Blitz, which he did in The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, as well as in a number of the novels.
[1572] In The Rescue, Vicki claims that Barbara ought to be “550” years old. As The Rescue is set in 2493, this means Barbara was born in 1943 - making her twenty in 1963, and therefore too young to be a history teacher. Jacqueline Hill was born in 1931, and was 34 when The Rescue was made - meaning that Vicki is clearly rounding down. The finalised Writers’ Guide for the first series said Barbara was “23”, although she certainly seems older.
[1573] Dating FP: Warlords of Utopia (FP novel #3) - Scriptor arrived on the first Nazi Earth in time to hear the original broadcast of Churchill’s “Fight them on the beaches” speech, which was delivered 8th June, 1940.
[1574] “A few months” before Victory of the Daleks, and presumably after Dunkirk, or Churchill would have deployed the Ironsides then. The Daleks seen here seem to be survivors from the events of Journey’s End. (The Doctor: “When we last met, you were at the end of your rope, finished.” Dalek: “One ship survived.” The Doctor: “And you fell back through time, crippled, dying.”) In the Monster File on the DVD extras, writer Mark Gatiss states that “The last three Daleks who survived Davros and the Reality Bomb have arrived back in 1940”.
[1575] “A month” before Victory of the Daleks.
[1576] SJA: The Mark of the Berserker
[1577] Dating Victory of the Daleks (X5.3) - There’s no year given. The story takes place during the Blitz (September 1940 to May 1941) and there’s reference to St Paul’s being hit - it was never hit in real life, but there was a famous near-miss that destroyed much of the surrounding area on 29th December. This might be when the story is set, but there’s no evidence of it being around Christmas. When we see Bracewell and Churchill again, in The Pandorica Opens, the caption te
lls us it is 1941.
[1578] Victory of the Daleks, A Good Man Goes to War
[1579] The Shadow of Weng-Chiang (p23).
[1580] From The Torchwood Archives
[1581] Torchwood.org.uk
[1582] The Big Bang
[1583] Dating TW: Trace Memory (TW novel #5) - The exact day is given, p30.
[1584] Dating The Pandorica Opens (X5.12) - The date is given in a caption. No explanation is given for why Bracewell, who seemingly went into hiding in fear of being deactivated (Victory of the Daleks) is working for Churchill again. Bracewell’s black glove, indicating the hand he lost in Victory of the Daleks, proves that The Pandorica Opens comes after that story.
[1585] Dating TW: Captain Jack Harkness (TW 1.12) - The story takes place on 20th January, 1941 (as is stipulated on the dance hall poster), and the original Jack Harkness is fated to die the following day.
[1586] The Empty Child
[1587] TW: Captain Jack Harkness
[1588] Dating The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances (X1.9-1.10) - The date is repeatedly given as 1941. Jack says it’s the “height of the Blitz”, which ended 16th May.
In TW: Everything Changes, military records claim that Captain Jack Harkness failed to report for duty on 21st January and was presumed dead. Some fans and commentators have adopted this date for The Empty Child two-parter, under the assumption that Jack was “presumed dead” because he left on that date with the Doctor and Rose. However, it’s stipulated in TW: Captain Jack Harkness that the original Captain Jack Harkness died on 21st January, and “our” Jack admits that he falsified the military’s records to cover up the man’s death. The reference to Harkness “failing to report for duty”, then, must refer to the genuine article, not “our” Jack.
It is unlikely that “our” Jack would start passing as “Jack Harkness” before the original has died; nor does it ring true that he takes the name, experiences the events of The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances and departs in the TARDIS all in a twenty-four hour period. Moreover, The Empty Child states that the Doctor and Rose don’t turn up until “a few weeks” or perhaps “a month” after the alien probe has landed. “Our” Jack presumably passes as “Captain Jack Harkness” during that time, as he has no way of knowing when the targets of his con-job - the Doctor and Rose - will arrive.
The most likely scenario, then, is that the original Jack Harkness dies on 21st January, the time-travelling con man (whose real name - for all we know - might well be “Jack”) adopts his identity shortly thereafter, the con man gets cosy with the soldiers seen in The Empty Child and the Doctor and Rose land “a few weeks” or “a month” later - meaning February 1941 is the most probable time for this story to occur.
The Torchwood website says that Captain Jack disappeared on 5th January, which doesn’t fit what we’re told on screen.
[1589] Dating Just War (NA #46) - The main action of the book starts on “the morning of 1 March 1941” (p5).
[1590] Dating SJA: Lost in Time (SJA 4.5) - The precise date is given.
[1591] TW: Ghost Machine
[1592] Dating TW: “Overture” (TWM #25) - The day is given.
[1593] Dating TW: The Twilight Streets (TW novel #7) - The exact day is given, p17.
[1594] Dating “The Way of All Flesh” (DWM #306, 308-310) - The date is given.
[1595] Dating “Me and My Shadow” (DWM #318) - The date is given.
[1596] TW: Captain Jack Harkness. Pearl Harbor was attacked on 7th December, 1941.
[1597] TW: Trace Memory
[1598] Dating The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe (X7.0) - A caption says Reg is shot down “three years later” than the day Madge first met the Doctor. The telegram she receives states that he was shot down on the “20th”. A second caption states that the Arwells arrive at Uncle Digby’s house on “Christmas Eve”. Madge later tells Droxil she is from “1941”.
[1599] According to a plot synopsis issued on 20th May, 1966, Ben and Polly are both “24” at the time of The Smugglers. Michael Craze (Ben) was then 24, Anneke Wills (Polly) was 23. The document also gave Polly’s surname as “Wright”, which is never used on screen, but is mentioned in the Missing Adventure Invasion of the Cat-People. In the same book, Polly says she was brought up in Devon. In The War Machines, Kitty, the manageress of the Inferno nightclub, remarks that they rarely get anyone “over twenty” into the club, which might suggest that Ben and Polly are a little younger. Mind, neither of them look younger than twenty, and The Murder Game reaffirms their birth year as 1942, and Resistance concurs that Polly was born before 1944.
[1600] Resistance
[1601] Torchwood.org.uk. The Torchwood Archives claims that Gerald died during the Blitz in January 1941, possibly juxtaposing his fate with the one the website attributes to Charles Quinn.
[1602] Beautiful Chaos (p105). The first air raid on Singapore occurred on 8th December, 1941, followed by a long respite until the prolonged Battle of Singapore (29th December, 1941, to 15th February, 1942).
[1603] The Doctor knows of the Bismarck in Terror of the Zygons.
[1604] The Sea Devils. Two World War II battles were fought at El-Alamein, an Egyptian town, in 1942. The first lasted 1st to 27th July. The second, 23rd October to 4th November, saw the Allies forcing the Axis to retreat back to Tunisia.
[1605] Autumn Mist, The King of Terror (p241).
[1606] “Six months” before The Curse of Fenric.
[1607] Just War
[1608] Divided Loyalties (p46).
[1609] Benny: The Tub Full of Cats, presuming Rogers’ claims can be given any credit.
[1610] Endgame (EDA)
[1611] Dating The Girl Who Never Was (BF #103) - The date is given.
[1612] Dating The Scapegoat (BF BBC7 #3.5) - The Germans are currently occupying Paris, and did so from June 14, 1940 to August 25, 1944. The Doctor here says his regenerative powers won’t save him if he’s decapitated - this contradicts what occurs to another Time Lord in The Shadows of Avalon, but as the Doctor is here in danger of being beheaded for sport, he could just be bluffing to save his current life.
[1613] Dating Mad Dogs and Englishmen (EDA #52) - The date is given.
[1614] Dating The Shadow in the Glass (PDA #41) - The date appears on p217. This contradicts Timewyrm: Exodus, which the Doctor says is his first meeting with Hitler.
[1615] Just War (p252).
[1616] Utopia
[1617] TW: Small Worlds. Jack’s relationship with Estelle lasted weeks, at most, but it was serious enough for them to have a photograph (with Jack in uniform) taken together.
It isn’t specified whether Estelle met Jack while he was working as a con man prior to The Empty Child, or while he was immortal and living through the entire twenty-first century. The latter seems more likely for a couple of reasons. Such a heartfelt relationship appears more characteristic of the slightly bitter, emotionally withdrawn and immortal Jack than the carefree con man who knows he’s working to the clock and is possibly involved with Algy (The Empty Child). Additionally, it’s specified that Jack met Estelle “a few weeks before” Christmas, yet it’s unlikely that he started using the name “Jack Harkness” until the original died in January 1941 (TW: Captain Jack Harkness). Unless Estelle thinks the “son” has a different surname to his father (unlikely, although in truth she never calls him anything other than “Jack”), her meeting him in December 1940 seems suspect.
An earlier dating is probably preferable, as the odds of Jack and Estelle keeping in touch increase as World War II comes to a conclusion. However, the Torchwood website dates some final correspondence between Jack and Estelle to 1944.
[1618] Jubilee
[1619] The Devil Goblins of Neptune (p10). Actress Caroline John, who played Liz, was born in 1940. Liz’s father was named in P.R.O.B.E.: The Devil of Winterborne.
[1620] The Cabinet of Light (p86).
[1621] The Cabinet of Light (p17).
[1622] SJA: Lost in Time. Date unknown, but actress Rowena C
ooper was born in 1935, and so fits the timeframe of being Morris’ granddaughter.
[1623] Dating The Curse of Fenric (26.3) - Ace says that the year is “1943”. The script stated that the time is “1943 - probably May”.
[1624] The Seeds of Doom
[1625] The Time Monster
[1626] Just War
[1627] “Forty years” before “The Tides of Time”.
[1628] “Fifty years” before “Evening’s Empire”.
[1629] Dating The Turing Test (EDA #39) - It’s “in January 1943” (p116).
[1630] Who Killed Kennedy, taking its cue from the Remembrance of the Daleks novelisation.
[1631] The Hollows of Time
[1632] Autumn Mist
[1633] Dating The Macros (BF LS #1.8) - The day is given. The mythos around the Philadelphia Experiment claim it commenced around 28th October, 1943. Autumn Mist offers an alternative explanation for what happens to the Eldridge - it’s possible to reconcile the two if the ship wasn’t entirely destroyed in The Macros, enabling the eighth Doctor to find it in a still-dephased state and make use of it in 1944. (Alternatively, see Unfixed Points in Time.) The “cover up” story of the Eldridge mirrors the real-life explanation for what became of the vessel.
[1634] The Cabinet of Light
[1635] The independent film Wartime, based upon some graffiti that reads “CB + JB 1944”.
[1636] The independent film Wartime. The Allied invasion of Normandy occurred in 1944.
[1637] “About forty years” before Rat Trap. Both Operation Daylight and Cadogan Castle are fictional; D-Day actually commenced, under the codename Operation Neptune, on 6th June, 1944.
[1638] Dating Resistance (BF CC #3.9) - The back cover says it’s “February 1944”; the same month and year appear on Polly’s train ticket.
[1639] Dating Colditz (BF #25) - The date “1944” is given. The detail about New York and Moscow being bombed comes from “Klein’s Story”. A Thousand Tiny Wings relates what happens to Klein between 1944 and when she next meets the Doctor.
[1640] The Architects of History
[1641] The Impossible Astronaut
[1642] “Five months” before The Turing Test.
[1643] Dating Deadly Reunion (PDA #71) - The date is given (although as previously noted, it does make Lethbridge-Stewart older than most other stories would have him).
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