B00DPX9ST8 EBOK

by Parkin, Lance

  [1007] Aliens of London. Mickey’s surname isn’t established on screen until Boom Town.

  [1008] Dating UNIT Series 1 (UNIT: The Coup, #1.0; UNIT: Time Heals, #1.1; UNIT: Snake Head, #1.2; UNIT: The Longest Night, #1.3; UNIT: The Wasting, #1.4) - The audios were released from December 2004 to June 2005. The blurb for The Coup (the prelude to the mini-series, packaged with DWM #351) says it takes place in “London, the Near Future”. Two details support this - a) the train bombings in Spain that occurred in 2004 are said to have happened “a few years ago”, and b) Captain Winnington was born in the 1980s, suggesting a mid-to-late 2000s dating at the minimum. The Brigadier also suggests in The Coup that The Silurians occurred “thirty years ago”; that’s subject to UNIT dating.

  Everything else about the mini-series seems contemporary, including the suggestion that some of the terrorist incidents are reprisals against Britain for its military intervention in Iraq - a hot button issue in 2005. Most importantly, the UNIT production team had no way of taking the new series - in particular the continual social disruption and political upheaval seen throughout Series 1 to Series 4 - into account. (Along those lines, it’s very hard to believe that the Brigadier’s public unveiling of a Silurian would so easily be dismissed after the likes of The Christmas Invasion, etc.) Trying to place UNIT in-between developments in New Who becomes a fairly ridiculous shell game, especially as the Prime Minister seen (or, rather, heard) in The Longest Night and The Wasting clearly isn’t Harriet Jones or Harold Saxon. It’s feasible to think that the UNIT Prime Minister was in power between Jones and Saxon, but then the lack of any mention in Series 2 of the compound crises and high death toll in UNIT becomes conspicuous by its absence. It’s alternatively tempting to think that the UNIT Prime Minister is Brian Green from TW: Children of Earth, but they don’t sound the same. The idea that the UNIT Prime Minister succeeds Green isn’t very appealing, as Children of Earth is set in 2009, and so UNIT - featuring the older Brigadier - would have to occur in a hellishly narrow window before he’s restored to his youth in Happy Endings.

  The far simplest solution is to place UNIT at time of its release, and to assume that the Prime Minister of UNIT is the one whose corpse is seen in Aliens of London. A 2005 dating has the massive benefit of reconciling the comparatively weakened UNIT in the audios with the far more powerful group in New Who, which is fortified enough to have a flying aircraft carrier. Under this scenario, the only lingering issue is that 10 Downing Street is destroyed twice - in The Longest Night and World War Three - and was presumably rebuilt in-between, all in the space of about a year.

  Within UNIT itself, events happen in fairly rapid succession. Presuming Colonel Dalton’s statement that he fought an invisible vampire on Southend “hours ago” can be taken at face value, a day at most passes between episode two (Snake Head) and episode three (The Longest Night), and two weeks pass between episode three and episode four (The Wasting) as Colonel Chaudhry recovers from the explosion that destroys 10 Downing Street. The Wasting also claims that the flu outbreak caused by the virus released in episode one (Time Heals) started “a few weeks ago”, and so it’s possible, depending on when the first symptoms manifested, that the entire mini-series takes place over that duration of time. Either way, Kevin Lee claims in Snake Head that “it will be summer soon”, so we know that episodes two to four (and possibly The Coup and Time Heals as well) take place in spring.

  The Coup is the first Doctor Who story to state that the Brigadier has been knighted, which was later mentioned on screen in The Poison Sky and SJA: Enemy of the Bane. Colonel Brimmicombe-Wood first appeared in the apocryphal Sympathy for the Devil, and was mentioned in Project: Valhalla. Albion Hospital was seen in Aliens of London and The Empty Child. Mention is made of Planet 3, the broadcaster from in Big Finish’s Sarah Jane Smith audios. The ICIS isn’t related to Torchwood, although both groups share a “Britain first” philosophy.

  The help that the Silurians here give to Harry Sullivan compliments Eternity Weeps, set in 2003, in which some Silurians are aiding UNIT even though the public is unaware of their existence.

  [1009] The UNIT audios Time Heals and Snake Head.

  [1010] Bricommbe-Wood’s allegiances are revealled in UNIT: The Wasting, and the effects of the flu aren’t known until UNIT: The Longest Night.

  [1011] Reports of members of the royal family being killed are contradictory and never confirmed, and so can perhaps be ignored.

  [1012] UNIT: The Longest Night

  [1013] Dating Death Comes to Time (BBCi drama, unnumbered) - No year is given, but Tony Blair is the Prime Minister and George W Bush is President of the United States, suggesting a contemporary setting. The story was webcast in 2002. Lee Sullivan’s illustrations suggest that UNIT is operating a moonbase at this time, and although such details aren’t in the script or dialogue, this could nudge the story a couple of years into the future (there was a moonbase in the 2003 of Eternity Weeps and SJA: Death of the Doctor, after all). See “American Presidents in the Doctor Who Universe” for why this story seems to take place after 2004.

  Is Death Comes to Time Canon?

  As the seventh Doctor dies at the end, all Time Lords are revealled to have godlike powers that they simply haven’t used before and all the Time Lords are extinguished or otherwise removed from the universe during the seventh Doctor’s time, a strong case can be made that this story is apocryphal. Crucially, the Time Lords’ godlike abilities aren’t reconcilable against the Gallifrey History section of this book. However, references to Anima Persis in Relative Dementias and The Tomorrow Windows and the Canisians in Trading Futures suggest Death Comes to Time may well be canonical. As with all Doctor Who, readers can include or ignore this story as they wish.

  [1014] Trading Futures, making reference to Death Comes to Time.

  [1015] Iris: The Claws of Santa. It’s not specified if this is George W. Bush or his father, although the younger Bush was more commonly regarded as being clumsy, such as a 2002 incident where he briefly fell unconscious after choking on a pretzel.

  [1016] Dating TW: Fragments (TW 2.12) - Owen’s fiancée dies “four years” before the 2009 component of this story. The weather seems decent, and Owen comments that he promised Katie “a summer wedding”, suggesting that it’s spring. Some time must elapse, however, between Owen first meeting Jack in 2005 and his being recruited to work for Torchwood - TW: Exit Wounds says that Owen was only on the job his “second week” when Aliens of London, set in March 2006, occurred. The Torchwood Archives concurs that Owen “hooked up with Jolly Jack” in 2006, and TW: SkyPoint, set in 2008, says that Owen joined Torchwood “two years” ago (p24).

  [1017] Dating “The Flood” (DWM #346-353) - It’s “the early twenty-first century”, and the story was published from 2004 to early 2005. Thematically, the resolution of this story is much like Rose unleashing the power of the Time Vortex in The Parting of the Ways.

  [1018] Dating The Gallifrey Chronicles (EDA #73) - The date is given (p75).

  [1019] “Two years” before TW: Small Worlds.

  [1020] Dating Sarah Jane Smith Series 2 (SJS: Buried Secrets, #2.1; SJS: Snow Blind, #2.2; SJS: Fatal Consequences, #2.3; SJS: Dreamland, #2.4) - These four audios were released from February to April 2006, but seem to have been written with 2005 in mind. Somewhat definitively, Josh says in Fatal Consequences that he’s been protecting Sarah for “three years”, denoting how long it’s been since SJS: Comeback, set in 2002. Little clues throughout Series 2 support a 2005 dating: in particular, Natalie says in SJS: Buried Secrets that a Medici burial chamber was located “in July 2004” - a phrasing she’d be unlikely to use in 2004 itself. Two items establish that Series 2 can’t take place any later than 2007: Buried Secrets mentions that the Dauntless was originally scheduled for lift-off “in 2008”, but has now been moved up, and it’s said in SJS: Dreamland that Chuck Yeager broke the speed of sound “nearly sixty years ago” (he did so on 14th of October, 1947).

  As Series 2 ends on
a cliffhanger, a 2005 dating is preferable to 2006 (or 2007, even) in that it allows more time for an unspecified adventure in which Sarah Jane returns to Earth and wraps up any and all lingering details from her dealings with the Crimson Chapter before casually witnessing events in The Christmas Invasion, which she mentions upon meeting the tenth Doctor in School Reunion.

  Series 2 ends with the Dauntless launching into space on 27th of September, and all signs are that the series begins some months beforehand; see the Series 2 episode entries for more. It seems likely, although it’s not actually stated, that Sarah Jane recovers some of her professional standing between SJS Series 1 and Series 2 - at the very least, she’s no longer living under cover identities, and is currently having to dodge media inquires about Hilda Winters’ death.

  The Dauntless launch is cited throughout Series 2 as being Earth’s first “space tourism” flight... while the attempt made in Escape Velocity probably wouldn’t count owing to an alien invasion scuttling it, by 2004 that ship had long since sailed in the real world; Dennis Tito and Mark Shuttleworth made “space tourist” flights in 2001 and 2002 respectively. That said, nothing within Who itself (other than Escape Velocity, maybe) particularly contradicts the Dauntless being the first tourist flight as stated.

  [1021] Eighteen months before SJS: Fatal Consequences. “Mandrake” is the English equivalent of “Mandragora”, for reasons given in SJS Series 2. It’s also the name of a drug in “The Mark of Mandragora”.

  [1022] Dating SJS: Buried Secrets (SJS #2.1) - SJS: Snow Blind establishes that Sarah spends two months after Buried Secrets recovering from a gunshot wound. The month in which Buried Secrets takes place, however, still isn’t clear (see the dating notes under Snow Blind for why). Natalie specifies that the story opens on “the 20th”, and if the two subsequent “midday headlines” reports are any gauge, the action wraps up two days later. The Crimson Chapter’s role in Winters’ death is revealled in SJS: Dreamland.

  [1023] Dating SJS: Snow Blind (SJS #2.2) - The amount of time that passes between Snow Blind and Fatal Consequences is rather vague. The two installments could easily take place in the same month (meaning that Buried Secrets occurs in June) - then again, they might be further apart than that (meaning that Buried Secrets occurs in May or even April).

  [1024] Dating SJS: Fatal Consequences (SJS #2.3) - It’s said that a round-the-clock vigil at Pangbourne labs has lasted for “six months”, and SJS: Buried Secrets says the same vigil started “last Christmas” - so by logical extension, Fatal Consequences should take place circa June. However, a news report in SJS: Dreamland simultaneously mentions that the Dauntless is “cleared for lift-off next month” (September, according to Dreamland) and that the Marburg incident in Fatal Consequences occurred “last week”, meaning that the “six months” figure has to be taken as rounding, and Fatal Consequences must occur in August. That squares with Sarah in rapid succession attending the funeral of Will Sullivan - who’s shot dead at the end of Fatal Consequences - and then embarking on a four-week training course so she can join the Dauntless launch.

  [1025] Dating Red Dawn (BF #8) - It is “thirty years” since the “Mars Probe fiasco” of The Ambassadors of Death, which is a UNIT story. So to cut a very long story short, it’s the now first decade of the twenty-first century. As The Dying Days was “over twenty years” after The Ambassadors of Death, this story is set before 2007. The impact of Tanya’s ambassadorship to Mars must be minimal, as humanity and the Martians are in conflict by The Seeds of Death.

  [1026] Both “ten years” before Trading Futures.

  [1027] TW: Long Time Dead. Brown appears to be an otherwise unmentioned member of Jack’s Torchwood team.

  [1028] TW: They Keep Killing Suzie. This is part of Suzie’s insurance policy in case of her death, although it doesn’t entirely account for why she kills herself in TW: Everything Changes. (One explanation is that Suzie knows she’s going to get fired - meaning mind-wiped - from Torchwood, and her suicide/resurrection gambit is a desperate means of maintaining her memories and identity.)

  [1029] Human Resources. The Lonsis operation has been running for “a year” prior to 2006, and Hulbert acts as if he’s been in charge of the company for some time before that.

  [1030] Iceberg and Cat’s Cradle: Warhead are both set around the same time and feature an Earth on the brink of environmental and social collapse. The two books are broadly consistent, although the odd detail is different - in Iceberg, for example, journalist Ruby Duvall muses that sunbathing in England is impossible nowadays, whereas Ace sunbathes in Kent during Cat’s Cradle: Warhead. The Connors Amendment is mentioned in Warlock.

  [1031] Interference

  [1032] St Anthony’s Fire

  [1033] Placebo Effect (p12).

  [1034] Iceberg

  [1035] Something Inside. This occurred on 25th May, 2005.

  [1036] “Years” before TW: “Somebody Else’s Problem”.

  [1037] TW: In the Shadows

  [1038] TW: “The Legacy of Torchwood One!”

  [1039] Voyage of the Damned

  [1040] Dating TW: Trace Memory (TW novel #5) - Gwen is already a police officer and here meets Andy, but the year is unclear. Rhys eats some Marmite even though the “sell-by date said fifth of March” (p80), so Bellini must visit after that.

  [1041] Events in 2006 include the “present day” sequences of Doctor Who Series 1 from Aliens of London onwards, and The Christmas Invasion.

  The Year Ahead Era (2006-2009)

  When the ninth Doctor returns Rose home in Aliens of London, “twelve months” after she left (in Rose), the subsequent “present day” Doctor Who episodes (as well as many of the related Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures stories) adhere to a dating scheme in which they are set (roughly) a year or so after broadcast. This paradigm ends with Planet of the Dead, which has to occur in 2009, the year in which it aired (see the dating notes on that story for why).

  Torchwood Series 1 adheres to the “year ahead“ approach, Series 2 deviates from the pattern, Series 3 (a.k.a. TW: Children of Earth) occurs about two months rather than a year ahead of broadcast, and Series 4 (a.k.a. TW: Miracle Day) happens in the same year it was shown, 2011.

  The way in which The Sarah Jane Adventures initially accommodates the “year ahead of broadcast” dating scheme, then returns to a “time of broadcast” setting midway through Series 3, means that the whole of the show (Series 1-5) elapses over a total of two years and nine months (from August 2008 to May 2011).

  See the entries for 2007, 2008 and 2009 (and by extension 2010 and 2011) for a more specific list of which stories occur in those years.

  [1042] Per his on-screen bio in The Sontaran Stratagem.

  [1043] “Five years” before TW: Miracle Day.

  [1044] TW: Miracle Day. It’s variously said that Danes uttered his quote during his arrest/at his trial.

  [1045] Blood of the Daleks, Human Resources.

  [1046] “Three years” prior to TW: Almost Perfect.

  [1047] The background to Aliens of London and the Slitheen’s subsequent appearances, as detailed in SJA: Revenge of the Slitheen and SJA: The Gift. The two accounts don’t entirely match up: where does Raxas Prime (another name for Raxacoricofallapatorius, perhaps?) fit into the Raxas Alliance hierarchy? And if the Slitheen were given death sentences, why did the Judoon “force them out” rather than arresting them? (Perhaps the Slitheen were “forced out” in the sense that they fled in the wake of the Judoon’s overwhelming force.) Either way, the timeframe of exactly when all of this occurred is uncertain.

  [1048] The year is unknown, but she’s alive in the 2004 portion of TW: Fragments, and yet is a ghost in TW: End of Days (set in early 2008).

  [1049] Dating Human Resources (BF BBC7 #1.7-1.8) - Lucie has been “pulled back to her natural place in time”, which according to Blood of the Daleks is 2006.

  [1050] Dating Night Thoughts (BF #79) - The setting is roughly contemporary, and the audio was released in F
ebruary 2006. Dickens and the Deacon served in the Falklands War (which took place in 1982), and the researchers have subsequently met or permanently lived on the island for the last thirteen years.

  [1051] Dating TW: Trace Memory (TW novel #5) - Cromwell’s death is dated to “14/02/2006” (p99).

  [1052] Dating Let’s Kill Hitler (X6.8) - The three of them are acquainted while age seven, and this happens after Amy has known Rory for “what, ten years?” The way in which Mels helps to push the two of them together means that River Song, as if her life wasn’t complicated enough, helped to facilitate her own conception.

  [1053] The Girl Who Waited

  [1054] TW: Exit Wounds. This confirms that “Dr Sato” in Aliens of London, as played by Naoko Mori, is the same character as Toshiko from Torchwood.

  [1055] Dating Aliens of London/World War Three (X1.4-1.5) - It is “twelve months” since Rose, and a missing persons poster says Rose has been missing since 6th March, 2005 - so it’s March 2006, and for all we know specifically 6th March. The (BBC’s) UNIT website gave the story the date of “28 June 2006”.

  Harriet Jones, British Prime Minister

  We learn in The Christmas Invasion that Harriet Jones took office shortly after World War Three, winning a general election by a landslide. As she’s a member of the governing party, she presumably became its leader (perhaps unopposed), so became Prime Minister, then called a snap election. In World War Three, the ninth Doctor remembers her ushering in the British Golden Age and serving three terms.

  Three full terms as Prime Minister would be fifteen years, although constitutionally it’s technically possible - if highly unlikely - that someone could serve three terms as a Prime Minister in a matter of months. As of Aliens in London, Harriet Jones was almost certainly Prime Minister for around a decade. We might speculate that Jones was a prime mover behind the Reconstruction mentioned in some of the New Adventures, itself portrayed as the beginning of a golden age. There’s a female Prime Minister in The Shadows of Avalon who, retrospectively, could well be Harriet Jones. Shortly after that, in stories like Time of the Daleks and Trading Futures, British politics becomes more turbulent.