B00DPX9ST8 EBOK

by Parkin, Lance

  However... at the end of The Christmas Invasion, the Doctor seems to abruptly unseat Jones from office, and potentially cancels out this history. From stories like Father’s Day and I am a Dalek, it seems the Doctor is “allowed” to make small historical changes, but averting the career of a three-term Prime Minister would seem to cross the line. Does the Doctor really deny Britain its Golden Age because he’s fallen out with Jones? At the very least, he certainly erases Jones’ part in it. (For more on this, see the “Vote Saxon” essay.)

  The Doctor doesn’t seem to know much about the history of the first decade of the twenty-first century - he explicitly says he doesn’t know about the “first contact” situation seen in Aliens of London (a remarkable gap in his knowledge of Earth’s history, whichever way you look at it). Compare and contrast with Captain Jack’s continuous assertion in Torchwood that the twenty-first century is the time that “everything changes”.

  [1056] The Christmas Invasion

  [1057] Boom Town

  [1058] TW: Slow Decay. A potential glitch is that Ianto needs to ask if Toshiko was involved - and she was.

  [1059] Dating “F.A.Q.” (DWM #369-371) - The date is given, and means Rose is here travelling a year or so into her past (although the Doctor had been planning to take her to China, not London).

  [1060] Dating The Time Travellers (PDA #75) - The dates are all given. The implication of the book is that the “real” timeline of the universe is one without the Doctor, so one where the monsters win. The Doctor is actually changing history when he defeats them. WOTAN appeared in The War Machines, and the Dalek technology stems from Remembrance of the Daleks.

  [1061] The Slitheen Excursion (p129). This is unrelated to The Time Travellers, which occurs on the very same day.

  [1062] Dating Winner Takes All (NSA #3) - The story is set after Aliens of London/World War Three and before Boom Town.

  [1063] Dating Circular Time: “Autumn” (BF #91) - The story seems to end in early September, with the Doctor and Nyssa lodging in Stockbridge for at least five weeks beforehand. The year isn’t given, but it’s suggested that the Doctor has been coming to Stockbridge (the setting for his DWM comic strips) to play cricket for some time now. (Specifically, it’s said that the clubhouse has photographs of “the Doctor’s family” going back years.) A contemporary dating is supported by mention that the whole country has gone a bit mad about cricket since “England won the Ashes” - presumably a reference to the 2005 series, in which England bested Australia and won for the first time in eighteen years.

  Traken Village isn’t real, as appealing as it might sound. The Doctor says that Nyssa (a Trakenite) and Andrew (a human) have roughly the same lifespan, which isn’t helpful to anyone trying to reconcile discrepancies in the Doctor’s age by suggesting that he and Nyssa travelled together for many years (possibly even decades) between Time-Flight and Arc of Infinity.

  [1064] Dating “A Groatsworth of Wit” (DWM #363-#364) - Greene is transported to the present day.

  [1065] Dating Boom Town (X1.11) - A caption at the start says it is “Six Months Later” than World War Three. The evening is “freezing” and it’s dark relatively early, suggesting it’s at least September (the month it would be if World War Three was set in March). A mention of Justicia in the story is a reference to the ninth Doctor novel The Monsters Inside. The mention of venom grubs - named as such in The Web Planet novelisation (entitled The Zarbi), but called “larvae guns” in the TV story - suggests Margaret hails from the Isop galaxy. (Bad Wolf also names Isop as the home galaxy of the Face of Boe.)

  [1066] TW: The Twilight Streets

  [1067] TW: Everything Changes

  [1068] Dating The Deviant Strain (NSA #4) - The year isn’t given, although there are references to the Cold War ending “twenty years” ago. It would seem to be set in Rose’s home time.

  [1069] Dating Only Human (NSA #5) - The story takes place after Boom Town (and The Deviant Strain), but - owing to Jack’s presence - before The Parting of the Ways.

  [1070] Jack says that Suzie found the lock-pick “last year” in TW: Cyberwoman.

  [1071] Dating The Gathering (BF #87) - The date is given, and reinforced by a radio broadcast citing the birthday of Australian rocker Nick Cave, and discretely mentioning the same for Billie Piper - both were born on 22nd September. In an attempt at symmetry with The Reaping, a radio broadcast also mentions an interview with Colin Farrell about the 2006 Miami Vice movie. However, the broadcast implies the film isn’t out yet - it was actually released in Australia about five weeks prior on 10th August, 2006. Tegan’s mother is still alive.

  [1072] Dating The Parting of the Ways (X1.13) - No specific date is given, but there’s no evidence that much time has passed since Rose and Mickey’s meeting in Boom Town. In The Christmas Invasion, Jackie’s been going out with Howard for “about a month”, and Rose doesn’t know about their relationship beforehand, so The Parting of the Ways is probably set before late November.

  [1073] The date of the publication was given in the Remembrance of the Daleks novelisation, and was confirmed by Set Piece. In Transit, Yembe Lethbridge-Stewart states that Kadiatu was named after his great-grandmother, the historian. Although in Set Piece, Kadiatu claims that her namesake was her “grandmother”, presumably for brevity’s sake.

  [1074] Boom Town. This was due to happen on “the nineteenth” and “next month”.

  [1075] “About a month” before The Christmas Invasion.

  [1076] TW: Children of Earth

  [1077] Dating Iceberg (NA #18) - The main action of the book takes place in 2006, from “early November” (p25) to “Friday 22 December” (p1). The epilogue is set on “Wednesday 31 January 2007” (p251).

  [1078] Dating The Christmas Invasion (X2.0) - The story takes place at Christmas, shortly after The Parting of the Ways. Subsequent stories establish that this is indeed Christmas 2006. “A third” of the world’s population is two billion people at this time.

  When Do the General Public Accept the Existence of Aliens?

  It’s was a long-held tradition in classic Doctor Who that there are plenty of alien invasions, yet no one in the present day believes in them, or even really notices. Even given the Doctor’s comments in Remembrance of the Daleks and Rose that humans are blind to what’s going on around them, that most alien attacks are covert or limited to isolated locations, and that the government keeps hushing up the existence of aliens, there are a number of stories set before 2085 (cited in The Dying Days as humanity’s first official diplomatic contact with alien races) where the general population really can’t escape the existence of aliens. Such stories include The Tenth Planet, The Dying Days, and Aliens of London. By the end of the last two, people have already started declaring that the aliens are a hoax, and this seems to become the accepted view of what happened.

  This has shifted now, though. The new Doctor Who occasionally jokes about humanity’s willingness to overlook the blatantly obvious, but by Last of the Time Lords, only people as obtuse as Donna Noble can be in much doubt about the existence of extra-terrestrial life. Between 2006 and 2008, humanity is made to witness a spaceship destroying Big Ben and crashing into the Thames (Aliens of London); another spaceship arriving over London, and its sonic boom causing a swath of damage - this is accompanied by a third of humanity being compelled to stand on rooftops while strange lights illuminate their heads, the face of the Sycorax leader being transmitted on BBC1, a newscaster’s declaration that it is “absolute proof that alien life exists”, and a super-laser destroying the departing spaceship (The Christmas Invasion); the public acceptance of “ghosts”, who manifest as five million Cybermen and capture Earth before they’re pulled through the sky - along with a flying Dalek army - into Canary Wharf (Army of Ghosts/Doomsday); the Racnoss spaceship firing bolts of energy against London, and Mr Saxon gaining prominence because the military destroys the ship on his orders (The Runaway Bride); a horned demon looming over Cardiff, and its shadow killing droves of p
edestrians (TW: End of Days); Royal Hope Hospital vanishing, leaving behind only a crater before reappearing some hours later - this coincides with the hospital appearing on the moon, and about a thousand people inside being scanned by space rhinos (Smith and Jones, although it’s still possible for Clive Jones’ girlfriend, Annalise, to dismiss the idea of aliens); and - most tellingly of all - the British Prime Minister presenting the Toclafane to the world, a day before one of their number murders the American President during a worldwide broadcast (The Sound of Drums). The destruction of the Paradox Machine undoes the Toclafane’s capture of Earth, but explicitly everything up to and including the assassination of the President still happens. And soon after that, the sun turns a cold blue (SJA: Invasion of the Bane), an event that is (flimsily) attributed in a cover story to a “temporary reversal of the Earth’s magnetic poles”.

  The final straw for anyone too thick to believe in aliens prior to this is, surely, The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End - in which Earth is both teleported into a sector of space with twenty six other abducted worlds, incurs massive casualties while being overrun by the Daleks, and is physically hauled through space while being returned to its natural orbit. Clyde Langer’s father later mentions the Daleks by name (SJA: The Mark of the Berserker), and it’s an event so hard to ignore, Gwen Cooper can tell someone who has been in cryo-freeze, “These days the whole alien cat is rather out of the bag... The Daleks invaded.” (TW: Risk Assessment, p83)

  Circa 2009 to 2011, the public also experiences the moon being set on a collision course with Earth (SJA: The Lost Boy), astrologer Martin Trueman hijacking every TV broadcast and hypnotising large swathes of the public according to their astrological symbols (SJA: Secrets of the Stars), the entire human race (sans Wilf and Donna) turning into Prime Minister Harold Saxon/the Master (The End of Time), everyone on Earth being made to think a meteor is hurtling toward them (SJA: Goodbye, Sarah Jane Smith), the children of Earth simultaneously speaking words in English (TW: Children of Earth) and death being suspended across the globe for a period of at least two months, possibly more (TW: Miracle Day).

  It remains to be seen if future production teams will “erase” the public’s belief in aliens and credit this change to the Cracks in Time in Series 5, but at time of writing, there’s reason to believe this hasn’t happened (see the Cracks in Time sidebar). The occasional glitch remains (Adam in Dalek - set in 2012 - thinks that the existence of aliens isn’t public; Hex, who originates from 2021, believes the same in Project: Destiny), but for now, at least, there’s no need to do anything as drastic as put most of Series 1-4, the Tennant specials, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures into alternate-universe bubbles.

  One story from the non-TV media is worth mentioning: the DWM strip “The Mark of Mandragora” establishes that the events of “Invaders of Gantac” and (perhaps a little oddly) Battlefield led the general public to the realisation that aliens existed. That was contradicted by Rose, but the new TV series swiftly established that - in the words of Captain Jack in Torchwood - “the twenty-first century is when everything changes”.

  [1079] Love & Monsters

  [1080] The Runaway Bride

  [1081] TW: Everything Changes, and confirmed in Utopia. The Doctor lost his hand in The Christmas Invasion.

  [1082] “The Widow’s Curse”

  [1083] “Eighteen months” before The Sound of Drums, and by implication very soon after The Christmas Invasion. It’s not clear who runs Britain for those eighteen months - possibly it’s a weakened Harriet Jones. As Jones had only recently won by a landslide, it’s easy to infer that the opposition parties are also in disarray. The fact that Saxon’s Cabinet in The Sound of Drums is composed of people from various political parties would seem to support that. However, the Prime Minister as seen in a blurry photograph in TW: Out of Time (set in late 2007) looks male.

  The official “Vote Saxon” website states that Lucy’s father (mentioned, but not named, in The Sound of Drums) is called Lord Cole of Tarminster, so it’s likely her maiden name was “Lucy Cole”.

  [1084] Love & Monsters

  [1085] Dating “The Lodger” (DWM #368) - This would seem to fit into the gap between The Christmas Invasion and New Earth. This strip contains a few jokes and story beats later seen the Series 5 episode of the same name (also written by Gareth Roberts), but the two aren’t so similar that they become as contradictory as the two versions of Human Nature. Any commonalities can, ultimately, be written off as coincidence.

  [1086] Dating New Earth (X2.1) - The Doctor and Rose leave the Powell Estate, some undetermined amount of time after The Christmas Invasion. The cheerful note on which that story ends might make one think that they intended on leaving immediately afterwards - except that in New Earth, the TARDIS has moved; Jackie, Mickey and Rose are all wearing different clothes; Rose now has luggage with her; and the ash from the Sycorax ship has gone. Also, they still had some Christmas food waiting inside (not to mention that they hadn’t opened any presents). It’s not impossible, though, that they left straight after The Christmas Invasion, returned after some unseen adventures, then left once again.

  [1087] “A couple of years back” according to Sarah Jane in SJA: Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? It’s almost certainly a reference to the interactive story Attack of the Graske that appeared on the BBC website (and which is outside the remit of this book).

  [1088] SJA: Death of the Doctor

  [1089] Events in 2007 include the “present day” sequences of Doctor Who Series 2 and most (but not all) of Torchwood Series 1.

  [1090] “Three months” before School Reunion.

  [1091] SJA: The Man Who Never Was

  [1092] TW: Long Time Dead (p206).

  [1093] “A few years” before TW: First Born.

  [1094] The year before “The Stockbridge Child”.

  [1095] Throughout the year prior to TW: A Day in the Death.

  [1096] “Three years” before Situation Vacant.

  [1097] Deimos

  [1098] “Eighteen months” before SJA: Revenge of the Slitheen.

  [1099] “Eighteen months” before SJA: The Lost Boy, and after K9 begins monitoring the black hole, as they have not met before that story.

  [1100] Dating The Stone Rose (NSA #7) - Mickey hasn’t joined the TARDIS crew, but Rose knows about Petrifold Regression, so it’s set between New Earth and School Reunion.

  [1101] Dating The Feast of the Drowned (NSA #8) - The story is set between The Christmas Invasion and School Reunion.

  [1102] Dating Cuddlesome (BF promo #7, DWM #393) - The audio saw release in March 2008 and seems contemporary, including mention of texting. However, a radio report says that authorities in England are investigating a possible outbreak of H5N1 avian flu, which in real-life was a concern in the UK in 2007.

  [1103] Dating School Reunion (X2.3) - The story features Mickey, and Sarah refers to the events of The Christmas Invasion as “last Christmas”, so the story is set in 2007 (and at some point during a school term).

  Sarah Jane’s Reunions with the Doctor

  In School Reunion, the very strong implication is that Sarah hasn’t had any form of contact with the Doctor since she left him at the end of The Hand of Fear. Somewhat tellingly, the Doctor comments that he’s regenerated “half a dozen times” since she last saw him.

  Some commentators have seized upon this as evidence that the non-TV media (which entailed a post-Hand of Fear Sarah meeting the Doctor on more than one occasion) are apocryphal, but in truth this scenario doesn’t match the TV series either. In the first place, the Doctor sent Sarah a K9, and in K9 and Company, she even says “so he didn’t forget me after all”. Yet in School Reunion, Sarah says she thought the Doctor had forgotten about her after dropping her off. Also, she was reunited with the third Doctor - and met the fifth - in The Five Doctors. Clearly, as occasionally happens, the series chooses not to complicate the narrative by invoking every possible relevant previous story. Indeed, a new or more casual viewer would
infer from what Sarah says that some time ago, the Doctor left her and K9 on Earth to go and fight the Time War.

  Sarah Jane also appeared in a number of stories in other media set after The Hand of Fear: “Train-Flight” (set c 1990), System Shock (set in 1998; she didn’t meet the Doctor in that story, but neither did she believe he was dead or had abandoned her), Interference (set in 1997, and portraying her as romantically involved with a man called Paul) and Bullet Time (also set in 1997). Ergo, Sarah Jane has encountered four of the “half a dozen” incarnations that the Doctor has been through between The Hand of Fear and School Reunion. The basic story beat is the same in each case - Sarah continues to be a successful journalist, while missing the Doctor.

  [1104] Established on the BBC website; the sonic lipstick is seen in SJS: Invasion of the Bane.

  [1105] “Eighteen months” before SJS: Invasion of the Bane.

  [1106] Dating “The Green-Eyed Monster” (DWM #377) - School Reunion and The Girl in the Fireplace are both referenced, but it’s before Rise of the Cybermen, as Mickey is still around.

  [1107] Dating Borrowed Time (NSA #49) - The year is given (p60). The Chancellor of the Exchequer is to give a speech based upon the booming economy following “the first six months of 2007” (p201), so it’s likely summer. Certainly, nobody complains about the weather. It’s a Tuesday (p72).

  [1108] Dating Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel (X2.5-2.6) - Mickey finds a newspaper that he says is dated to “1st February, this year” - in other words, the year School Reunion is set, 2007. Lumic cites the day as 1st February.