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Soon afterwards, all of the New York Exchange’s systems were wiped, the Nasdac went into freefall and Flight 4906 came down over Berlin owing to computer error. Some surviving Autons tried to channel through Lockwood’s mind a pulse that would awaken all the dormant Nestene on Earth, but he stopped their scheme by killing himself.
1999 (July) - The King of Terror [844]
The alien Jex sought to conquer Earth, and had fronted the communications conglomerate InterCom to this end. They were secretly stockpiling plutonium to detonate and raise Earth’s temperature to better accommodate their race. The Canavitchi, formerly enslaved to the Jex, worked to exterminate their former masters. The Brigadier received reports of extra-terrestrial involvement in California, and summoned the fifth Doctor, Tegan and Turlough to UNIT’s Los Angeles office.
The Doctor and his allies brought InterCom to ruin as rival Jex and Canavitchi warfleets showed up in Earth orbit. The Doctor used Earth’s satellite network to create a planetary defence shield as the warfleets slaughtered one another and departed. The Doctor advised the Brigadier to co-ordinate with the American CIA and help capture the Jex and Canavitchi agents still at-large.
1999 (July) - Dominion [845]
Department C19 had resumed active service by this time.
Professor Jennifer Nagle, a UNIT scientist, experimented with captured alien equipment at a C19 base in Sweden. She accidentally created a dimensional wormhole into a pocket universe named the Dominion. The larger universe expanded into the Dominion, threatening many races there. Some of the carnivorous Ruin fled through the wormhole to Earth, but Earth’s higher gravity killed them.
The Dominion was completely eradicated, but the eighth Doctor evacuated fourteen of the frog-like T’hilli and their Queen to a habitable planet, saving the race from extinction. The wormhole terminated, but an energy backlash destroyed the C19 base and killed Nagle.
(=) In July 1999, an encounter with Lord Roche’s dead TARDIS inflicted young Ezekiel Child with Jeapes’ Syndrome, a condition in which a person matures backwards in time rather than forward. Child was 21 in 1999, but age 46 in 1972, and failed to notice anything odd about this. The Doctor’s involvement retroactively averted the Child anomaly.
In 1999, a lingering side-effect of temporal interference turned the Independent on Sunday newspaper into the Sunday Telegraph. [846] Shortly after Joseph Heller’s death, documents were found among his effects with the recollections of Alan Turing, Graeme Greene and Heller himself of their encounter with aliens in Dresden, 1945. [847]
w - 1999 - The Taking of Planet 5 [848]
UNIT was called in to investigate an anomaly in the Antarctic that had been detected by satellite, and discovered a protoplasmic creature inside an alien structure. The eighth Doctor, Fitz and Compassion eventually arrived from twelve million years in the past, where they’d been thwarting the machinations of a group of future Time Lords.
c 1999 - “Darkness Falling” / “Distractions” / “The Mark of Mandragora” [849]
The party drug M - Mandrake - was a problem. Captain Muriel Frost and Sergeant Jasper Bean of UNIT discovered a Mandrake factory at the popular Falling Star nightclub in London, but an energy creature killed Bean.
The Mandragora Helix was warping the TARDIS’ structure and drawing it towards Earth. The seventh Doctor and Ace found themselves at the Falling Star with Frost, and Lethbridge-Stewart vouched for their identities via video link from Geneva. Returning to the Falling Star, they arrived to see the Helix energy manifesting in a bid to take over the Earth, then the universe. The Helix started to kill the clubbers, whose will had been sapped by the Mandrake drug, and Frost ordered in the UNIT troops. The Doctor was convinced the Helix had won, but the circuit broke. It appeared that the TARDIS had disintegrated, but it rematerialised at UNIT HQ a few days later.
The very public threat convinced the United Nations to increase UNIT’s powers and put it on a more public footing. A new United Nations team - Foreign Hazard Duty - was set up to deal with problems that had to be kept more secret. Muriel Frost was promoted to Major.
1999 - Zygons: Homeland [850]
UN military adviser Guy Dean and his allies stopped a group of Zygons from unleashing a shoal of Skarasen upon the world, but perished while self-destructing the Zygons’ spacecraft.
1999 - Krynoids: The Root of All Evil [851]
The Chase Foundation had a website that provided some information on Krynoids. Eve Black, a biologist working for the Ministry of Agriculture, destroyed two Krynoids that hatched on an isolated Yorkshire farm.
Steven Carter - the son of Joe and Alice Carter (née Sangster), and the grandson of Jack Harkness - was born on 4th October, 1999. [852]
1999 (29th and 31st October) - Touched by an Angel [853]
The older Mark Whitaker used his clout to secretly get his younger self a job with the law firm of Pollard & Bryce. The younger Mark Whitaker proposed to his beloved, Rebecca Coles.
The Millennium
The turn of the twenty-first century was one of the Doctor’s favourite parts of Earth’s history, and he suspected that he had visited it more times than he’d been on the Titanic. [854]
Ben Jackson’s wife was “gone”. Polly Wright was estranged from her son, Mikey. On the last day of 1999, Ben and Polly acknowledged their love for one another at a house that belonged to the Doctor, where they had gathered with the second Doctor and Jamie. [855]
Dana Morgan, a thrall of the Mandragora Helix, heightened the prominence of his company, MorganTech, on a news special broadcast that was live on 31st December, 1999. [856]
1999 (31st December) - “Plastic Millennium” [857]
The seventh Doctor and Mel gatecrashed a New Year’s Eve hosted by Alisha Hammerson, director of the world’s largest plastics factory, for the world’s business leaders. Hammerson gassed the CEOs and planned to replace them with Autons. The Doctor brewed up a phial that he used to destroy the meteor that represented the link to the Nestene, and Hammerson melted.
1999 / 2000 (30th December to 1st January) -
Millennial Rites [858]
Ashley Chapel had worked for International Electromatics before forming his own company, ACL. Following the collapse of I2, ACL quickly bought up all their hardware and software patents, and Chapel became a multi-millionaire. He funded the construction of the new Millennium Hall on the banks of the Thames, and began work on a powerful computer program - “the Millennium Codex” - that would use quantum mnemonics and block transfer computation. This would change the laws of physics to those of the universe of Saraquazel, which was created from the ashes of our own.
Elsewhere, Dame Anne Travers became worried about the return of the Great Intelligence. She attempted to banish the sentience, but inadvertently summoned it.
On the stroke of midnight, 31st December, 1999, magic returned to the world as the Intelligence and Saraquazel fused over London, transforming the city into an aeons-old battleground between the forces of three factions: the Abraxas, Magick and Technomancy. After only ten minutes of real time, the new laws unravelled and the world was returned to normal. Fifteen people had died. Saraquazel took Chapel back with him to his own universe.
1999 (31st December) - TW: Fragments [859]
Alex Hopkins of Torchwood used an alien device to foresee the future... and was so horrified by events to come, he mercy-killed his teammates and then himself on the stroke of midnight, the year 2000. The unkillable Jack Harkness, having given Torchwood Cardiff a century of service, assumed command of it.
Jack subsequently severed all links between Torchwood Cardiff and Torchwood London. [860]
1999 (31st December) - Iris: The Panda Invasion [861]
Iris and Panda went to San Francisco, New Year’s Eve, 1999, to find the biggest, happiest party in history - but Iris opened up a multi-dimensional rift after spilling gin into her bus’ engine. Lional Pandeau, a version of Panda from a parallel universe, was drawn through the rift and poured more gin into the eng
ine, widening the rift and summoning an army consisting of versions of himself/Panda from alternate realities. Parts of San Francisco were beset by flying vampire Pandas from five million years in the future, as well as the lumbering monstrosity Panda-zilla. Panda pulled Lionel and himself into the rift, sealing it and returning the other Pandas to their native realities. Iris went in search of her lost friend as San Francisco authorities dismissed reports of the Pandas as a hoax or part of the millennium festivities.
1999/2000 (30th December to 1st January) - Doctor Who - The Movie [862]
The seventh Doctor was transporting the Master’s remains to Gallifrey from Skaro when the Master - now a gelatinous creature - forced the TARDIS to make an emergency landing. The Doctor was shot in San Francisco and died on the operating table when surgeons misunderstood his alien physiology, regenerating into his eighth incarnation. The Master took over the body of an ambulance worker. He attempted to steal the Doctor’s remaining lives by use of the TARDIS’ Eye of Harmony, and his scheme threatened to destroy the entire planet. The Doctor stopped the Master with the help of heart surgeon Grace Holloway, and the Master was sucked into the TARDIS’ Eye.
UNIT spread a cover story blaming the freak effects caused by the opening of the TARDIS’ Eye of Harmony on “freak fluctuations in the Earth’s magnetic pole”. [863]
2000 (Saturday, 1st January) - Millennium Shock [864]
Silver Bullet Solutions developed chips to help combat the Y2K bug, but this was a front by the Voracians, who were trying to re-assemble the sentient computer virus Voractyll and seize control of Earth’s computers. The Silver Bullet chips exacerbated the switch-over from 1999 to 2000, temporarily cutting power in Malaysia, Auckland and parts of Britain, and jamming Hong Kong’s traffic. The fourth Doctor, working with MI5 agent Harry Sullivan, re-programmed the Silver Bullet chips to also endow Voractyll with a Y2K sensitivity. The creature terminated, and the Voracians, serving as part of Voractyll’s command nodes, perished also.
Disgraced Prime Minister Terry Brooks tried to exploit the chaos and declare martial law to advance his private agenda. Officially, it was said that his Cabinet lost faith in him, and he resigned “for personal reasons”. Philip Cotton, Brooks’ deputy, was appointed his successor.
2000 (1st January) - “The Forgotten” [865]
The fourth Doctor brought the second Romana to Paris again, this time for the turn of the millennium. They saw a mime vanish into a space-time portal and followed him, meeting soldiers from 1810. Together, they disturbed the sanctum of Taureau the Minotaur, who demanded the answer to his riddles in return for the key to the portal. The Doctor pickpocketed the key, and Taureau was destroyed when he opened the door.
At the turn of the Millennium, the Brigadier became a media icon as he led King Charles’ troops in a blockade of Westminster Bridge. The King offered him a role in the Provisional Cabinet, but he declined. [866]
The Twenty-First Century
“The twenty-first century is when everything changes, and you’ve gotta be ready...” [867]
The nonprofit organisation Livingspace was formed at the beginning of the twenty-first century. [868] News interpretation software sifted the media for the user’s own preferences. Televisions could be set so that news bulletins automatically interrupted regular broadcasts. [869]
Early in the twenty-first century, Britain joined the Ecu, the single European Currency. [870] The pacifying gas pacificus was developed in the twenty-first century. [871] Walton Hummer was a popular three-foot tall kazoo player from the twenty-first century. [872] The musician Sting was assassinated in the early twenty-first century. [873]
Since 1969, Billy Shipton had “got into” publishing, then video, then DVD production. On the tenth Doctor’s instructions, he secretly inserted Easter Eggs onto seventeen DVDs that Sally Sparrow would come to own in future. [874]
The Doctor theorised that if Queen Victoria was infected by an alien werewolf cell, it might take “one hundred” years to mature in her children, and “be ready” by the early twenty-first century. [875]
The broadcast journalist Riley Smalls was cryo-frozen in the early twenty-first century, and would be revived as a Cryogen in the twenty-sixth. [876] Archaeologists excavated the throne room containing the robotic version of Emperor Qin Shi Huang in the early twenty-first century. [877]
2000
By the year 2000, the Hourly Tele-press kept the world’s population up to date with events around the globe. One of the Tele-press’ most popular features was the strip-cartoon adventures of The Karkus. [878]
The first Space Wheel was constructed in 2000. [879] In the same year, Arthur Tyler III was working on the Space Dart and Earthrise private space projects. Diagnosed with terminal cancer, he threw himself into his task. [880]
Based upon The Book of Tomorrows, the White and Crimson Chapters of the Orphans of the Future both believed that aliens would return to Earth in the year 2000. When this failed to happen, the Chapters fell into a philosophical crisis, and their representatives met for the first time in a century. They increasingly focused upon mention in the Book of a human herald - variously identified as “Sarah” and “SJS” - who would serve as a harbinger of the aliens’ return. They increasingly believed that Sarah Jane Smith was this very herald. [881]
NASA discovered the six-billion-year-old Cthalctose Museum on the Moon. Construction started on Tranquillity Base to better study the alien artifact, and there were regular moonshots to service it. [882] The Greytest Hips of Johnny Chess was released in the early 2000s. [883]
Henry Louis Noone, a friend of Ace, was born on 10th February, 2000. [884] When Thomas “Hex” Schofield was two, his mum left him in Bolton with her mother, Hilda Schofield, while she sought work in London. [885] When Eve Pritchard was four, she was struck by a car, and entered a near-death state in which the Mi’en Kalarash inserted a shard of itself into her mind. Over the next twenty years, it influenced her to develop Rapid-Emotional Programming technology. [886]
Hokrala Corp, a law firm in the forty-ninth century, believed that Torchwood and humanity as a whole would bungle the challenges of the twenty-first century, and wanted to sue Earth for a mismanagement of history. To this end, Hokrala commenced, once every year since the turn of the century, trying to land a writ on - or otherwise assassinate - Captain Jack Harkness. [887]
(=) 2000 - “The Glorious Dead” [888]
In an alternate timeline, Paradost was a planetary museum that celebrated a million alien races. Earth, known as Dharkan, was a wasteland ruled by Cardinal Morningstar - who the Doctor previously knew as Katsura Sato. The eighth Doctor, Izzy and Kroton were on Paradost when it was invaded. Kroton left the Doctor’s company to take control of a reality-bending device known as the Omniversal Spectrum, and restored the established timeline.
2000 - Sontarans: Old Soldiers [889]
Brak had now been held captive for eighty years, and had lived longer than any Sontaran in history. Captain Alice Wells of UNIT escorted Brak to the Weapons Crisis Conference in Geneva, where he was to testify concerning his ties to Kobalt Blue. Brak planned on providing the secret of harnessing Kobalt Blue, but before he could do so, a Sontaran operative executed him for cowardice.
? 2000 - Time and the Rani / The Rani Reaps the Whirlwind [890]
The newly regenerated seventh Doctor and Mel prevented the Rani from creating a Time Manipulator - a world-sized cerebral mass, with immense powers over time and space - on the planet Lakertya. Afterwards, the Rani’s bat-like servants, the Tetraps, rebelled and forcibly took her back to their homeworld, Tetrapyriabus, so that she could develop additional supplies of plasma for them...
Tetrapyriabus was once populated with a species not unlike dinosaurs, but these had gone extinct, and so the Tetraps had turned to animal husbandry of other species. The Rani escaped Tetrapyriabus, but was forced to leave her TARDIS behind. She intended to re-engineer a conventional spacecraft so that it could travel in time, and to then exact revenge upon her fo
rmer servant, Urak.
c 2000 - Grave Matter [891]
The European space probe Gatherer Three explored the outer planets and returned to Earth, where it was discovered to have picked up alien DNA. This was named “Denarian”, and seemed to have miraculous medical properties. In actuality, Denarian was an alien creature that possessed bodies to survive. A team of scientists relocated to the Dorsill islands off the south west coast of the UK and began secret experiments on animals and the local population. The sixth Doctor and Peri found the islands overrun with walking corpses, but the Doctor discovered that a second dose of Denarian cancelled out the first.
c 2000 - Imperial Moon [892]
The fifth Doctor and Turlough materialised near Earth’s moon to avoid hitting themselves in the Vortex. A time safe aboard the TARDIS opened and revealled a diary purporting to be the log of a Victorian expedition to the moon - which historically did not occur. They went to 1878 to learn the truth.
c 2000 - The Marian Conspiracy [893]
Time disturbances surrounded history professor Evelyn Smythe. The sixth Doctor met her and concluded that the problem lay with her ancestor John Whiteside-Smith, who lived at the time of Elizabeth I. They departed to investigate.
(=) By Evelyn’s time, the immortal Mozart had been producing substandard works for hundreds of years. Some thought that “Mozart” was a shared alias. He’d begun work on his 10,000th symphony (the soundtrack to a remake of The Italian Job), had started to use electronic drum kits, had appeared in various Eurovision entries, and, tragically, had discovered hip-hop. [894]