[306] Dating The Three Companions (serialised story; BF #120-129) - Jo has moved to Wales and the Doctor is companion-less, so it’s between The Green Death and The Time Warrior.
[307] Dating The Time Warrior (11.1) - Sarah states in this story that she’s from the twentieth century, and isn’t more specific than that. In Pyramids of Mars, it’s stated four times that Sarah is “from 1980”. The most straightforward interpretation of the line has to be that this story, Sarah’s first, is set in 1980.
[308] Dating The Paradise of Death (Target novelisation #156) - The Brigadier hasn’t heard of Virtual Reality, and the Secretary-General of the United Nations is a woman. There is no gap on television between The Time Warrior and Invasion of the Dinosaurs, but this features both Sarah and Mike Yates. Barry Letts decided to set this radio play before Mike Yates’ “retirement” from UNIT. Captain Yates is referred to in the book version.
[309] Dating Invasion of the Dinosaurs (11.2) - The balance of evidence is that this is the near future. The Whomobile is a new car and an “M” reg, but the human race are - in theory at least - capable of building manned ships capable of interstellar flight. Whitaker has built a Timescoop capable of calling up dinosaurs from hundreds of millions of years ago. The bunker was built “back in the Cold War days”.
[310] The Doctor’s car was never named on screen, but was dubbed both “Alien” and “the Whomobile” by the production team. The Doctor continues to use Bessie, as both are seen in Planet of the Spiders.
[311] SJA: Judgement Day
[312] Invasion of the Dinosaurs. The Doctor says that Chun Sen couldn’t be a suspect with regards to the dinosaur appearances as he “hasn’t been born yet”.
[313] Terror of the Zygons. Presumably the Brigadier didn’t have the Space-Time Telegraph before Invasion of the Dinosaurs, when dinosaurs were over-running London, or he would surely have used it.
[314] Hornets’ Nest: Hive of Horror
[315] Dating The Five Doctors (20.7) - The third Doctor is kidnapped after The Time Warrior as he recognises Sarah. Sticking strictly to what we know in the television series, his abduction must occur between The Monster of Peladon and Planet of the Spiders, because the other stories of Season 11 follow on from each other. However The Paradise of Death is set in a “nonexistent” gap between the first two stories of the series, so the Doctor might have been taken from that point.
[316] Dating The Ghosts of N-Space (MA #7) - For the Doctor and Sarah, the story occurs after Death to the Daleks. Clancy’s Comet returns to Earth every one hundred and fifty-seven years, and the last sighting was in “1818”, so it’s 1975. As the month is given as May, Planet of the Spiders, set in March, must take place the following year. Fitzoliver was Sarah’s photographer in The Paradise of Death.
[317] Dating Island of Death (PDA #71) - The story mentions Sarah’s trip to Sicily in The Ghosts of N-Space, and the Hallaton arrived on Stella Island on 20th September, so this story happens in UNIT Year 7.
[318] “A few months” before Robot. The system has passed to UN control by World War Three.
[319] The Sentinels of the New Dawn
[320] Dating Amorality Tale (PDA #52) - The story starts between The Monster of Peladon and Planet of the Spiders.
[321] The Doctor is conducting such research in Planet of the Spiders. It’s only mentioned in that story, and there’s no suggestion that the fourth Doctor continues the study.
[322] Dating Planet of the Spiders (11.5) - The story takes place three weeks before Robot. “Meditation is the in thing” according to Sarah Jane.
[323] Original Sin
[324] Dating Robot (12.1) - This is clearly set in the near future. As with Invasion of the Dinosaurs, the Cold War has been “over for years” according to the Brigadier. Advanced technology includes the K1 robot, the Disintegrator Gun and dynastrene. Sarah Jane Smith’s day pass to Think-Tank bears the date “April 4th”.
[325] SJS: Mirror, Signal, Manoeuvre
[326] Benny: The Relics of Jegg-Sau
[327] In The Ark in Space, Harry is surprised that the High Minister, “a member of the fair sex,” was “top of the totem pole”, suggesting Britain has yet to elect a female Prime Minister by his time. There must be a General Election or change of leadership in the government while he was away from Earth. In Terror of the Zygons, the Brigadier receives a phone call from the PM, whom he twice addresses as “Madam”, and later refers to her as “she”.
[328] Hornets’ Nest: The Stuff of Nightmares
[329] Dating Terror of the Zygons (13.1) - It is the near future. The Prime Minister is a woman. In Pyramids of Mars, two stories after this one, Sarah states that she is “from 1980”. According to No Future, this story is set in January 1976.
[330] SJA: Judgement Day
[331] The Kingmaker. In real-life, Target published the Doctor Who Discovers... books, the fifth of which (here unnamed) was Doctor Who Discovers Early Man. This would also explain why the fourth Doctor was chosen to present a segment of children’s show Animal Magic. Naturally, as that was broadcast in 1980, it’s final, clinching and irrefutable proof that the UNIT stories are set in the future.
[332] “Six months” before No Future, and also referred to in Return of the Living Dad.
[333] SJA: Death of the Doctor. Date unknown, but probably no earlier than Terror of the Zygons - although the Doctor does aid UNIT in The Android Invasion and The Seeds of Doom, his association with the group is on the decline, and he doesn’t step foot in UNIT HQ on those occasions.
[334] SJS: Buried Secrets, SJS: Fatal Consequences. It’s unclear when Will was recruited, but it’s almost certainly after Harry joined UNIT, and even more probably after he went travelling with the Doctor and Sarah.
[335] Dating Heart of TARDIS (PDA #32) - The dating seems particularly confused. UNIT knows the fourth Doctor, but Benton’s a Sergeant and Yates hasn’t been discharged. This is after the 1982 Falklands War, and there is a Conservative government. We could infer from the gold reserves reference that UNIT have fought the Cybermen - either in The Invasion, the 1975 invasion mentioned in The One Doctor and Dalek (presuming that’s a different invasion) or another incident entirely.
[336] Dating No Future (NA #23) - The date is given (p6).
[337] No Future, and a reference to the 1981 BBC drama The Nightmare Man - adapted by Robert Holmes and directed by Douglas Camfield.
[338] Return of the Living Dad
[339] The Brigadier is in Geneva during The Android Invasion and The Seeds of Doom.
[340] Dating The Android Invasion (13.4) - This is the near future. For at least the last two years, Britain has had a Space Defence Station, a team of Defence Astronauts, and has been operating space freighters. The calendar in the fake village gives the date (every day) as “Friday 6th July”. The nearest years with that exact date are 1973, 1979, 1984 and 1990.
[341] Business Unusual
[342] Dating The Seeds of Doom (13.6) - On balance, it seems to be the near future. There is a satellite videolink to Antarctica and UNIT have access to a laser cannon. The Antarctic base has an experimental fuel cell. On the other hand, Sarah only wants 2p to use the public telephone. Chase says it is autumn (location work for the story was recorded in October/November). The Doctor is invited to address the Royal Horticultural Society on “the fifteenth”.
[343] Hothouse
[344] Dating The Pescatons (Argo Records LP, novelised as Target #153) - The story is set in Sarah’s time. It was released in August 1976, between Seasons 13 and 14, so it’s been placed after The Seeds of Doom. The bit with Professor Emmerson and the telescope is in the novelisation, not the original record. It’s quite the impressive telescope too - able to watch events on another planet in real-time, which is impossible.
[345] Peri and the Piscon Paradox
[346] Dating The Hand of Fear (14.2) - While it doesn’t feature UNIT, Sarah is returned home at the end of the story. It has to be set before December 1981 and K9 and Company
, in which she’s back at work. According to The Visual Dictionary, it is “thirty years” before School Reunion.
[347] School Reunion
[348] K9 and Company
[349] Dating Wartime (Reeltime Pictures film #1) - Wartime was released in 1987, and John Levene (understandably) looks older, suggesting that some time has passed since Benton’s last TV appearance (The Android Invasion). The Brigadier is still in command of UNIT; otherwise, placement of this film is only a rough approximation. The Android Invasion establishes that Benton has a kid sister, but nothing is said about her here.
[350] Battlefield. The Seeds of Doom is the last story to feature UNIT until Mawdryn Undead, and it is established in the later story (and implied in Time-Flight) that the Doctor hasn’t visited the Brigadier for years.
[351] Mawdryn Undead, a year before 1977.
[352] Dating The Architects of History (BF #132) - Klein implies that the Doctor hasn’t visited UNIT for two years. Steve Lyons, the author of this story, commented: “That last scene is set two years after the Doctor left UNIT, circa Terror of the Zygons/The Android Invasion. Battlefield hasn’t happened yet, because Klein would recognise the Doctor more immediately if it had (she only knows of [his seventh] incarnation through second-hand reports of his adventures), and anyway, she’d be a lot older than she is”.
The only other clue, oddly enough, is that the CD track containing this scene is labelled “UNIT 1960’s” (sic) – which is incorrect under any dating scheme.
[353] Project: Lazarus. This refers to Elton John, presumably, but no date is given.
[354] “The Betrothal of Sontar”. The Doctor also claims to have swum the Channel in Doctor Who and the Pirates. There’s no indication exactly when this happened, but it’s apparently after “Lunar Lagoon”, when the fifth Doctor said he’d never learned to swim. (He seemingly has by Warriors of the Deep, however.) Oliver Reed, an actor known for such films as The Three Musketeers (1973), lived 1938-1999.
[355] “The early seventies”, according to Return of the Living Dad (p66).
[356] Peacemaker
[357] The Hounds of Artemis. No date is given, but Stapleton was a young man in 1929.
[358] TW: A Day in the Death
[359] TW: Miracle Day
[360] TW: The Dead Line
[361] Demon Quest: The Relics of Time
[362] Apollo 23 (p51). Apollo 20 was cancelled on 4th January, 1970; Apollo 18 and 19 were cancelled after that, on 2nd September of the same year. The last Apollo flight, Apollo 17, launched on 7th December, 1972.
[363] Beautiful Chaos. Geoff died in 2008, after he and Sylvia had been married “thirty-eight years” (p26).
[364] “Forty years ago” in SJA: The Vault of Secrets.
[365] SJA: Goodbye, Sarah Jane, in accordance with Sarah being born in 1951 (SJA: Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?). This probably denotes when Sarah started doing journalist work - “doorstepping” is a UK term meaning the practice of parking oneself outside the home of a celebrity/politician to snag a quote or photograph.
[366] SJA: The Man Who Never Was
[367] SJA: Judgement Day. This is “a few years” before Sarah joins UNIT.
[368] SJA: The White Wolf
[369] Who Killed Kennedy
[370] Dating Day of the Moon (X6.2) - A caption says it is “6 months later” after the main action of the story. Melody isn’t identified by name until A Good Man Goes to War. It’s not directly established why Melody regenerates; it’s not even certain that Amy’s gunshot (the end of The Impossible Astronaut) actually hit her. It’s possible that Melody’s immune system was compromised because she was initially raised in a spacesuit acting as a life-support system. Doctor Who: The Encyclopedia says that Melody regenerated because she was “exhausted and injured”.
[371] Let’s Kill Hitler. This leaves around a quarter-century gap where we don’t know what Melody Pond was doing. Fortunately, the same story makes it clear that Melody/River has some control over her appearance - she looks about age seven when we see her with young Amy and Rory, and presumably she allows herself to outwardly age with Amy and Rory from childhood to adulthood. It would appear that she didn’t regenerate a second time between 1970 and meeting up with Amy and Rory as children, because when she regenerates in Let’s Kill Hitler, she mentions “the last time” she did such a thing, in New York (in Day of the Moon). Mels’ surname isn’t given on screen, but is listed in Doctor Who: The Encyclopedia.
[372] Dating The Underwater Menace (4.5) - Polly discovers a bracelet from the 1968 Mexico Olympics; she and Ben guess that they must have landed about “1970”. The Atlanteans are celebrating the Vernal Equinox.
The Programme Guide says the story is set “1970-75”; it’s “soon after” 1969 according to The Terrestrial Index. The TARDIS Logs claimed a date of “1969”. Timelink chose “1970”. The Legend simply states it’s “after 1968”.
[373] The Shadow in the Glass (p172).
[374] Revolution Man (p247).
[375] Ace’s Early Life
According to The Curse of Fenric, Ace does “O-Levels”, not GCSEs, so she must be a fifth former (i.e.: 15 or 16 years old) by the summer of 1987 at the latest. This supports Ghost Light, where she is “13” in “1983”. As Ace has a patch reading “1987” on her jacket in Dragonfire, it seems that the timestorm which swept her to Svartos must have originated in that year. Fenric is therefore rounding up when he tells Ace that Audrey Dudman will have a baby “thirty years” after The Curse of Fenric. Sophie Aldred was born in 1962, making her nine years older than the character she played.
In the New Adventures, starting with Timewyrm: Revelation, Ace’s birthday was established as 20th August (Sophie Aldred’s birthday). In Falls the Shadow, the Doctor says that she was born in “1970”. Paul Cornell attempted to establish that Ace’s surname was “McShane” in Love and War, but series editor Peter Darvill-Evans vetoed this at the proof stage. Conundrum (p245) and No Future (p19) both suggest that Ace’s surname begins with an “M” (although when asked in the latter, Ace claims it is “Moose”!). It wasn’t until Kate Orman’s Set Piece that “McShane” was officially adopted.
Ace is “Dorothy Gale” in some books by Mike Tucker, notably Matrix (p124) and Prime Time (p234). The Rapture attempts to reconcile this by stating that her middle name is Gale. In Loving the Alien, which appears to be set prior to The Rapture, Ace dies and is replaced by a parallel timeline version of herself. The Doctor says this swap accounts for much of the confusion regarding Ace’s last name.
[376] Father Time. Miranda is “ten” in the first part of the book (p54), and “two months old” when she arrives on Earth.
[377] Island of Death - although there isn’t actually a Nobel Prize for Philosophy.
[378] I am a Dalek
[379] The Dying Days (p101).
[380] Project: Twilight
[381] TW: The Sin Eaters. Prior to 1971, the Emirates were known as the Trucial States.
[382] FP: The Book of the War
[383] An Unearthly Child. Susan is also familiar with the Beatles before their first hit single in Time and Relative.
[384] Just War (p178).
[385] Night of the Humans. Pioneer 10 was launched 2nd March, 1972.
[386] “Forty years” prior to the modern day portion of Iris: Enter Wildthyme.
[387] SJA: The Man Who Never Was
[388] “Five years” after Thin Ice.
[389] Night Thoughts
[390] SJA: Enemy of the Bane
[391] The Shadow in the Glass. This is historical. The skeleton was identified first through dental records, then twenty-seven years later through a DNA test.
[392] Mad Dogs and Englishmen
[393] Dreamland (DW), SJA: The Vault of Secrets.
[394] SJA: The Vault of Secrets
[395] “Thirty years” before Drift.
[396] Iris: The Land of Wonder
[397] Night Thoughts. Kathleen is Ace’s grandmother as seen in
The Curse of Fenric.
[398] Love & Monsters
[399] “Twenty-three years” before The Sands of Time.
[400] TW: “Hell House”. This presumably references the horror film The Legend of Hell House (1973).
[401] TW: Something in the Water
[402] Nuclear Time. The day is given (p7). A janitor says “the war’s over” (p9), presumably referring to the Paris Peace Accords signed on 27th January, 1973, which were intended to end the Vietnam War. The conflict actually lasted until 30th April, 1975, when Saigon fell.
[403] SJA: Wraith World
[404] According to the writers’ guidelines. She was “28” in Escape Velocity, set in February 2001.
[405] Per The Torchwood Archives.
[406] Dating Iris: The Land of Wonder (Iris audio #2.2) - The year is repeatedly given.
[407] Dating Iris: Enter Wildthyme (Iris novel #1) - The month and year are given.
[408] The Doctor Trap
[409] When she was “13”, according to The King of Terror.
[410] Byzantium! (p8).
[411] Revolution Man (p248).
[412] The Rapture
[413] Partners in Crime
[414] Mad Dogs and Englishmen
[415] Dating “Agent Provocateur” (IDW DW mini-series #1) - The Doctor names the year, and a flier advertises the exhibit as being open from “July 8” to “September 5”. Martha says it’s “ten years before I was born” (in 1986 according to Wooden Heart, 1984 according to The Torchwood Archives).
[416] The King of Terror (p32).
[417] “Ten years” before The Zygon Who Fell to Earth.
[418] Dating “Urgent Calls” (BF #94b) - The year is given on the back cover. This is the first in a series of one-part stories related to the viruses released in Patient Zero.
[419] Dating Horror of Glam Rock (BF BBC7 #1.3) - “It’s 1974”, the Doctor says.
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