[639] Return of the Living Dad and Father Time. The space shuttle is never mentioned in a television story, and The Tenth Planet depicts an international space programme of a far greater extent than the real 1986.
[640] “Black Destiny”
[641] Wooden Heart, although The Torchwood Archives says she was born on 14th September, 1984. Freema Agyeman was born on 20th March, 1979.
[642] TW: A Day in the Death
[643] TW: The Twilight Streets
[644] TW: “The Legacy of Torchwood One!”
[645] “Four hundred and fifty years” after 1536, i.e. 1986, according to Recorded Time and Other Stories: “Recorded Time”. Mind you, the Doctor doesn’t say that his coat was fashionable on Earth.
[646] Dating Harry Sullivan’s War (The Companions of Doctor Who #2) - It is “ten years” since Harry left UNIT, and so placing this story is subject to UNIT dating. It’s clearly set in the mid-nineteen eighties.
[647] Dating The Nightmare Fair (BF LS #1.1) - The story was written for Season 23, and intended for broadcast in 1986. It’s “about a hundred years” after The Talons of Weng-Chiang. 1778 was “over two hundred years ago”.
[648] Dating “Time Bomb” (DWM #114-116) - The caption reads “Earthdate 1986”. The dinosaur men are not Silurians.
[649] Dating The Tenth Planet (4.2) - A calendar gives the date as “December 1986”. This is the clearest example so far of real life catching up with “futuristic” events described the series, but in Attack of the Cybermen (broadcast in 1985), the date of “1986” for this story was reaffirmed. Radio Times and publicity material at the time gave the date as “the late 1980s”, as did the second edition of The Making of Doctor Who. The draft script set the date as “2000 AD”, as did Gerry Davis’ novelisation. (The book followed a draft of the story rather than the broadcast version, as the draft included more scenes with the Doctor.)
The Making of Doctor Who (first edition) also used the “2000” date. The first two editions of The Programme Guide set the range as “1975-80”. This confused the American Doctor Who comic, which decided that The Tenth Planet must precede The Invasion and both were set in “the 1980s”. John Peel’s novelisation of The Power of the Daleks set the preceding story in “the 1990s”.
[650] The First Wave
[651] The Tenth Planet, The Power of the Daleks. The term “regeneration” isn’t used until Planet of the Spiders.
[652] Original Sin
[653] Iceberg
[654] Human Resources
[655] “Ten years” before Battlefield.
[656] Dragonfire establishes much of Ace’s background, with further details given in Battlefield and The Curse of Fenric. She first returns to Perivale in Survival.
The tie-in stories offer more detail. The timestorm was in 1987 according to Timewyrm: Revelation (p70) and Independence Day (she saw Withnail and I a few days before the timestorm occurred). She’s from 1986 in White Darkness (p130) and First Frontier (p45). Crime of the Century establishes that Ace left Earth before Black Monday (19th October, 1987), and Thin Ice establishes that she doesn’t know about such late-80s political elements as glasnost.
[657] Matrix
[658] During The Crystal Bucephalus.
[659] The short stories “Mondas Passing” (from Short Trips, 1998) and “That Time I Nearly Destroyed the World Whilst Looking For a Dress” (from Short Trips: Past Tense 2004). Both are outside the boundaries of this guidebook, but are referenced here because it’s relevant to Polly and Ben’s status in The Five Companions.
[660] The Also People
[661] Death and Diplomacy. Jason was “nearly 13” when Lucy was “nine” (p150).
[662] “Two years” before Business Unusual.
[663] Mad Dogs and Englishmen
[664] TW: First Born
[665] SJA: The Glittering Storm
[666] The Eight Truths, Worldwide Web.
[667] The Room with No Doors
[668] This date is given in the Writers’ Guide and in an article written by Russell T. Davies in the 2006 Doctor Who Annual. However, Rose is “19” according to the Doctor in The Unquiet Dead and Army of Ghosts, when she really ought to be 18. It’s said in Rise of the Cybermen that Rose was “six months” when her father died, which would fit her written birthday of 27th April and the dating of Father’s Day to 7th November.
[669] According to Kathy’s tombstone as seen in Blink. Her handwritten letter to Sally seems to be dated “7th February, 1987”.
[670] Crime of the Century
[671] Benny: Nobody’s Children
[672] Dating Damaged Goods (NA #55) - The date “17 July 1987” is given (p8).
[673] Dating Father’s Day (X1.8) - The date is given. The Reapers are not named on screen, but are named as such in the script.
[674] The Powell Estate is cited in episodes such as Aliens of London and Tooth and Claw. Victor Kennedy specifies Rose and Jackie’s address as “Bucknall House, No. 48” in Love & Monsters. The full address, with the post code, appeared in the Doctor Who Annual 2006.
[675] The Dying Days (p94).
[676] Sky Pirates! (p334).
[677] TW: Miracle Day. He’s born in 1912 and dies age 76, presuming the file on his adopted alias can be trusted.
[678] Dating The Company of Friends: “Izzy’s Story” (BF #123c) - The Doctor tells Izzy that they’ve arrived at “The village of Stockbridge, relative date: Friday, the 8th of April, 1988.”
[679] J&L: Swan Song
[680] Brave New Town
[681] SJA: Death of the Doctor. Date unknown, but actor Finn Jones, who played Santiago, was born in 1988.
[682] Army of Ghosts. Construction of the building began in 1988.
[683] Twenty years before the Doctor kills the Captain, as related in The Eyeless.
[684] Dating Silver Nemesis (25.3) - The first scene is set, according to the caption slide, in “South America, 22nd November 1988”. The Doctor’s alarm goes off the next day - although it is a beautiful sunny day.
[685] Option Lock
[686] “Eighteen years” before Red Dawn.
[687] SJA: Wraith World. This happened “back in the 80s”, but also “twenty years” before 2010.
[688] Amy is repeatedly said to be seven when she meets the Doctor in The Eleventh Hour, set in Easter 1996. “Forever Dreaming” names her birth year as “1989”, so she was evidently born before Easter. Her middle name is given in The Beast Below.
[689] Mel first appeared on television in Terror of the Vervoids, but the events of her joining the Doctor were shown in Business Unusual.
Mel’s First Adventure
The Writers’ Guide for Season 23 suggested that Mel joined the Doctor after an encounter with the Master, and this is echoed in the Missing Adventure Millennial Rites (p83). This appears to be contradicted by The Ultimate Foe when Mel fails to recognise the renegade Time Lord, but Business Unusual establishes that Mel didn’t actually meet the Master on that occasion. The Writers’ Guide also suggested that Mel had been travelling with the Doctor for “three months”. It is entirely possible that Mel started her travels with the Doctor at the end of The Ultimate Foe, negating the need for a “first adventure”, but this idea is riddled with paradoxes (i.e.: she is from her own future and would have memories of her first few adventures before she arrived).
The period set after The Trial of a Time Lord, but before the Doctor has his “first meeting” with Mel (in Business Unusual), is now brimming with book and audio adventures. These include the Doctor’s time with companions Frobisher, Evelyn Smythe, Thomas Brewster, Charley Pollard (after she travelled with the eighth Doctor), Grant Markham (who only appeared in two Missing Adventures: Time of Your Life and Killing Ground), “Flip” Jackson, Jason and Crystal (The Ultimate Adventure) and a Land-of-Fiction version of Jamie McCrimmon.
In Just War, Mel says that she has never been to the past before, “only the future”. Subsequent stories such as Catch-1782 and “The Vanity Bo
x” contradict this.
Millennial Rites and Business Unusual both have Mel meeting the Doctor in 1989. She’s from “1986” in Head Games (p154) and The Quantum Archangel (p17).
[690] Dating Business Unusual (PDA #4) - The date is given (p15). From the sixth Doctor’s perspective, he first meets the Brigadier circa 2000 in The Spectre of Lanyon Moor.
[691] Spiral Scratch. Linus is that universe’s version of Bob Lines from The Scales of Injustice, Business Unusual and Instruments of Darkness.
[692] Instruments of Darkness. On p93, Evelyn claims the Doctor dropped her off in 1988. The Doctor conferred with Evelyn off panel during the events of Business Unusual, set in June 1989.
[693] TW: Captain Jack Harkness
[694] In Survival, according to “Emperor of the Daleks”.
[695] Dating Survival (26.4) - Ace returns to Perivale. When she asks how long she’s been away, the Doctor replies “as long as you think you have”. Her friends Midge and Stevie vanished “last month”; Shreela the week before.
[696] First Frontier
[697] All “a decade” before The King of Terror (p130, p141 and p144).
[698] “Eleven years” before Escape Velocity.
[699] Dating “Business as Usual” (DWW #40-43) - The Doctor says the meteorites fell “that summer night in 1989” in the framing sequence; Stellar Plastics opens in “August 1990” according to a caption.
[700] Dating Crime of the Century (BF LS #2.4) - Raine’s dairy specifies the day she meets the Doctor as “October 13th, 1989... It’s Friday the 13th”, and the action continues from there, with Raine saying that it takes her “a few days” to get over her jet-lag.
[701] Dating Father Time (EDA #41) - The date is never specified beyond “the late 1980s” (p199), but the Berlin Wall fell on 9th November, 1989.
[702] Forever Autumn
[703] System Shock
[704] The Shadow in the Glass
[705] Escape Velocity, The Slow Empire. She’s 28 and left home when she was 17.
[706] “Five hundred years” after The Masque of Mandragora. The DWM strip “The Mark of Mandragora” dealt with this return.
[707] Downtime
[708] TW: Adam. This would be in February 1990.
[709] The Beast Below. The Queen seems to personally know the Doctor when she wishes him Merry Christmas in Voyage of the Damned.
[710] Death Riders (p130). If it’s the current Queen’s mother (1900-2002), this could occur just about anywhere in the twentieth century.
[711] Benny: A Life Worth Living: “A Summer Affair”. McGinley is a professor of twenty-first century literature at the Collection, and it seems likely that he hails from that period.
[712] Dating “Train-Flight” (DWM #159-161) - There’s no indication of the date, although the concert is an Oscar Peterson one, and so probably takes place before his stroke in 1993. There’s nothing to suggest it isn’t set the year it was published (1990). Sarah seems to be living in the same house she was in during The Five Doctors. This is the first time she’s met the Doctor’s seventh incarnation. They don’t take K9 along, but they have the option, so he’s still active.
[713] Dating Cat’s Cradle: Time’s Crucible (NA #5) - It is “three years” since Ace left Perivale.
[714] Dating “Seaside Rendezvous” (DWM Summer Special 1991) - There’s no date given, but the story has a contemporary setting and was published in 1991.
[715] TW: First Born. The year is given. Sebastian, born 3rd March, 1981, is “almost ten”.
[716] Timewyrm: Revelation
[717] Jenny is mentioned in such stories as Verdigris and appears in Iris: Enter Wildthyme; the information here comes from Iris: Iris and the Celestial Omnibus: “The Deadly Flap”.
[718] Brave New Town
[719] TW: Random Shoes
[720] SJA: Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?
[721] “About five years” before Auton, although one of the Warehouse workers, Winslet, says he’s been there for “seven years”.
[722] “Forever Dreaming”
[723] Orbis
[724] Dating Cat’s Cradle: Witch Mark (NA #7) - The book saw release in June 1992 and seems contemporary. It’s “early summer” (p57).
[725] Dating “Invaders from Gantac” (DWM #148-150) - Leapy says it is “1992”.
[726] Dating Timewyrm: Revelation (NA #4) - “It was the Sunday before Christmas 1992” (p2). The Doctor confronts “Death”, here a creation of the Timewyrm, but will often encounter the living embodiment of Death itself in the New Adventures.
[727] Thirteen years before the present-day portion of Night Thoughts.
[728] Rani is an Aries according to SJA: Secrets of the Stars, which puts her birth date between 20th March and 20th April. As she’s 17 in SJA: Lost in Time, set on 23rd November, 2010, she must have been born in 1993. By comparison, Clyde turned 15 in June 2008 (if one aligns information on him provided in Secrets of the Stars and SJA: The Mark of the Berserker), meaning he and Rani out to be a year apart in school, even if they seem to share a fair amount of classes together.
[729] “Four years” before The Rapture.
[730] Dating Touched by an Angel (NSA #47) - The exact day is given (p228).
[731] Dating Blood Heat (NA #19) - This story is a sequel to Doctor Who and the Silurians, containing many elements from its novelisation Doctor Who and the Cave-Monsters. Thus, the Silurians are called “reptile people”, but the Doctor wears his velvet jacket, not coveralls, when he goes potholing and the Silurian leader is named Morka. It is repeatedly stated that the first encounter with the Silurians took place “twenty years” ago in “1973”.
[732] No Future
[733] Death and Diplomacy, and reiterated in Benny: The End of the World.
[734] Dating The Left-Handed Hummingbird (NA #21) - The date of the massacre is given. The Doctor arrives in “1994”.
[735] Dating Conundrum (NA #22) - The Doctor thinks that it is “November the second, 1993”.
[736] Dating The Dimension Riders (NA #20) - The scenes in Oxford are set in “1993”, “November 18th”.
[737] Dating “Time and Time Again” (DWM #207) - The date is given.
[738] Dating Goth Opera (MA #1) - It is “1993”, “November”.
[739] Dating Instruments of Darkness (PDA #48) - The Doctor and Mel arrive on 29th December (p69). “John Doe”, although his surname is never mentioned, is likely Jeremy Fitzoliver, Sarah Jane’s associate from The Paradise of Death and The Ghosts of N-Space (although this would clash with Interference). Sudbury was mentioned in Time-Flight.
[740] The Sun Makers first mentions the discovery, the year of which is given in Iceberg. It has to be discovered after The Tenth Planet, or the story would have been called “The Eleventh Planet”. GodEngine and The Crystal Bucephalus refer to the Battle of Cassius.
[741] Interference
[742] Dreamland (DW)
[743] Tales from the Vault. Construction on the Angel of the North began in 1994.
[744] Dating The Land of the Dead (BF #4) - The year is given.
[745] According to SJA: Secrets of the Stars, Clyde’s birthday is 5th June. He’s 15 in SJA: The Mark of the Berserker, likely set after that date in 2009.
[746] Dating Touched by an Angel (NSA #47) - The exact days are given (pgs 34, 39, 79). Page 224 appears to contain a mistake, saying that Mark was sent back to 2003, not 1994.
[747] Dating Invasion of the Cat-People (MA #13) - It is “AD 1994”, the adventure starting “Friday the eighth of July 1994”.
[748] Dating P.R.O.B.E.: The Zero Imperative (P.R.O.B.E. film #1) - The film was released in 1994, and seems contemporary. The story appears to begin on 8th August (as noted when a clinic worker who seems to be arriving for work checks off 7th August on her calendar, suggesting that it’s the next day). Liz’s desk calendar at one point reads (albeit somewhat hazily) “August 1994”, and roughly mid-way through the story, she flips her desk calendar to reveal that it’s now 10
th August. A mortician tells Liz how unusual it is that the ground around the body he’s examining was “frozen in August”. The story ends on the night of perihelion, presumably the same day (13th August) as in 1945 when O’Kane killed his family.
[749] Zamper
[750] Who Killed Kennedy (p271).
[751] The Five Companions
[752] “Ten years” before UNIT: Time Heals.
[753] About ten years before Iris: Wildthyme on Top.
[754] Dating “Star Beast II” (DWM Yearbook 1996) - Beep’s been imprisoned for “fifteen years”, and it’s “1995”.
[755] According to publicity material, she’s “13” in SJA: Invasion of the Bane.
[756] TW: Greeks Bearing Gifts
[757] Utopia
[758] Dating TimeH: Echoes (TimeH #6) - The year “1995” is given on the cover of the printed book and the cover of the audiobook, and is reiterated at least four times within the text. However, a frequently used online version of the cover (including the one on the Telos website) gives the year as 2006.
[759] Dating Downtime (MA #18) - The story is set “about thirty” or “over twenty-five” years after The Web of Fear, “nearly twenty years” after Fury from the Deep and Sarah’s time in UNIT, and about ten years after 1984. The Brigadier has been teaching at Brendon for “twenty odd years”. The Intelligence’s next incursion on Earth - Millennial Rites, set in 1999 - is “four years” afterwards. “Brigadier Crichton” is said to still be with UNIT.
[760] Between Mawdryn Undead and Battlefield, and shortly after the Missing Adventure Downtime. Doris is first mentioned in Planet of the Spiders.
[761] Dating P.R.O.B.E.: The Devil of Winterborne (P.R.O.B.E. film #2) - The video came out in 1995, and seems contemporary. Liz’s father has passed away recently enough for her boss to offer condolences, and her father’s tombstone in P.R.O.B.E.: The Ghosts of Winterborne says he lived “1919-1995”.
[762] “Six years” before Psi-ence Fiction.
[763] The Feast of Axos, respectively referencing Remembrance of the Daleks and The Android Invasion.
[764] The Hollow Men
[765] “Eleven years” before The Gathering.
[766] Dating “Memorial” (DWM #191) - “The TARDIS chronometer read December 20th 1995”.
B00DPX9ST8 EBOK Page 102