A birthday party is being held for the parallel-universe Jackie, and Rose says - when she and the Doctor are outside the Tyler mansion - “February the first, mum’s birthday” (thereby indicating that “our” Jackie was born on the same day).
One point of confusion is that the official biography of the parallel Jackie - or so she claims - states that she was born the same day as actor Cuba Gooding Jr. He was actually born on 2nd January, 1968 (it would seem that someone on the production team didn’t take into account that in America, the date “1/2” means the second of January). We might imagine that Gooding was born on 1st February in the parallel reality, or it’s possible that Jackie’s biographers - in an attempt to make her sound more interesting - simply got the date wrong and nobody corrected her. (This is no more implausible an error than the real-life production team failing to fact-check Gooding’s birthday via Google.)
“Our” Gooding was born in 1968 - so if Jackie was born the same year, she should be 39 in Rise of the Cybermen, not 40 as she claims. In addition to everything else, then, it’s possible Jackie and Gooding’s parallel counterparts were born a year prior in 1967.
[1109] Evidently a reference to Vaughn’s company from The Invasion, which otherwise doesn’t appear to exist in this reality.
[1110] Doomsday. The Doctor names this version of Earth as “Pete’s World” (as Pete Tyler is alive there), and the term has caught on in texts such as Doctor Who: The Encyclopedia.
[1111] Dating I am a Dalek (Quick Reads #1) - No year is given, but the story has a present day setting.
[1112] Dating 100: “Bedtime Story” (BF #100c) - The story seems contemporary with the audio’s release in September 2007 - Jamie Oliver is referenced, and mention is made of the rumours surrounding Evelyn’s disappearance. There’s a glaring story flaw in that the Williams family has long since recognised the correlation between the birth of a son causing his grandparents to “drop dead”, and yet no generation has, apparently, refrained from siring children even knowing that the act will kill their parents.
[1113] Dating Love & Monsters (X2.10) - It’s “two years” since the events of Rose (set in March 2005). The story takes place after The Christmas Invasion, but before Army of Ghosts and Doomsday. Jackie says that Mickey has gone, placing it after The Age of Steel.
Elton says that Kennedy approached LINDA on “a Tuesday night in March”.
[1114] The Abzorbaloff reads the newspaper in Love & Monsters.
[1115] “Two months” before Army of Ghosts.
[1116] Dating Turn Left (X4.11) - This is “six months” before Donna would have met the Doctor in December 2007 (so, June). Rose says it’s “Monday 25th”, and June was the only month in 2007 when the 25th fell on a Monday. In the alternate timeline created by Donna turning right, there is no mention of Harold Saxon - because if the Doctor died defeating the Racnoss and Utopia didn’t happen, the Master presumably remained at the end of time.
[1117] Planet of the Ood, The Sontaran Stratagem, The Unicorn and the Wasp, Journey’s End, The End of Time (TV).
[1118] Dating Army of Ghosts/Doomsday (X2.12-2.13) - No month is given, but it’s after Love & Monsters and before The Runaway Bride (set at Christmas Eve 2007).
Backtracking the Torchwood Series 1 dating makes it somewhat hard to believe that the Battle of Canary Wharf occurs any later than July. (TW: Out of Time takes place right before Christmas; TW: They Keep Killing Suzie takes place beforehand but is “three months” after TW: Everything Changes - which TW: Miracle Day suggests occurs in October; Jack and Gwen chat about Canary Wharf in TW: Everything Changes, and don’t speak as if the battle there occurred, say, within the last week or so.) Army of Ghosts and Doomsday respectively broadcast on 1st July and 8th July, and could well take place on one of those dates in 2008.
[1119] Alistair Appleton, who might be among the casualties in the Doctor Who universe.
[1120] Smith and Jones, which explains why Freema Agyeman portrayed both Martha in Series 3 and Adeloa in Army of Ghosts.
[1121] TW: Everything Changes
[1122] Utopia
[1123] The Runaway Bride
[1124] Army of Ghosts. The sarcophagus is evidently a reference to Pyramids of Mars.
[1125] TW: Cyberwoman
[1126] Made of Steel
[1127] TW: Cyberwoman, with additional info from Torchwood.co.uk.
[1128] The Doctor deduces this in The Next Doctor.
[1129] TW: Fragments
[1130] The End of Time (TV)
[1131] Dating TW: Fragments (TW 2.12) - Ianto surely wouldn’t waste much time in approaching Jack after the destruction of Canary Wharf (in Doomsday), as he joins Torchwood Cardiff to care for his injured girlfriend, who was partly cyber-converted in the battle there. The modern-day component of Fragments occurs “21 months” after this flashback. TW: Dead Man Walking, set in 2008, says that the first Resurrection Gauntlet was recovered “last year”, i.e. in 2007.
[1132] TW: Long Time Dead, at an unspecified point between the Gauntlet’s recovery and Suzie’s first death.
[1133] “Two years “ before TW: Almost Perfect.
[1134] “Six months” before The Runaway Bride.
[1135] Dating Blink (X3.10) - The year is given by Kathy Nightingale (who claims she was transported from 2007 to 1920) and the Doctor, who says it’s “thirty-eight years” after 1969. The epilogue of the story takes place in 2008.
[1136] Dating “Fellow Travellers” (DWM #164-166) - Date unknown, but no-one has been inside the house “for years”.
The House at Allen Road
A good example of continuity between the New Adventures and the DWM strip is that both establish that the Doctor has a house in England which he occasionally visits.
The house is usually associated with the seventh Doctor. It first appeared in “Fellow Travellers” and Cat’s Cradle: Warhead. It was named Smithwood Manor in “Ravens” and “The Last Word”. The Doctor owned it at least as early as the Second World War (Just War) and has it in the early twenty-second century (Transit).
The eighth Doctor visits the house in The Dying Days and mentions it in The Scarlet Empress. He also has a house in the 1980s in part two and three of Father Time, which may or may not be the same house. So Vile a Sin depicts a parallel universe where the third Doctor lived in the house for a thousand years until the thirtieth century. Verdigris has the third Doctor using the house during his exile to Earth. The house is stolen in “Question Mark Pyjamas” (a short story from Decalog 2), but the seventh Doctor, Ace and Bernice recover it.
“Fellow Travellers”, “Ravens” and Cat’s Cradle: Warhead all indicate that the house has a mysterious reputation - and the last two have the street sign altered to read “Alien Road”.
[1137] Dating “Ravens” (DWM #188-190) - It’s “the near, harsh future”, and the story takes place at the same time as Cat’s Cradle: Warhead.
[1138] Dating The Nightmare of Black Island (NSA #10) - It’s “late September” and the story is set in the present day. This would mean that the tenth Doctor and Rose have landed a couple of months or so after the Battle of Canary Wharf in Doomsday - hardly impossible, as The Nightmare of Black Island is an isolated incident, and provides them with no warning about what awaits their personal futures.
[1139] Dating Cat’s Cradle: Warhead (NA #6) - A specific date for this story and its two sequels is not established in the books themselves. The blurb states “The time is the near future - all too near”. Shreela, a contemporary of Ace from Perivale first seen in Survival, dies of an “auto immune disease” at a tragically early age (p19).
The book is set in a year when Halloween falls on a Saturday (on p199 it’s Halloween, on p250 it’s the next day, a Sunday), making it either 1998, 2009 or 2015 - although in a number of stories, the real calendar doesn’t match that of the Doctor Who universe. Ace’s clothes are how Mancuso, a policewoman, dressed “twenty years ago” (p202), and Ace is from the late 1980s. Just War confirms that the Car
tmel books take place in the “twenty-first century timezone” (p250). However, mention is made of “President Norris” (p26) - with Obama being president in The End of Time (TV), set in 2009, an earlier dating for Cat’s Cradle: Warhead is preferable (see the American Presidents in the Doctor Who Universe sidebar). In his “Future History Continuity” document, Ben Aaronovitch suggested that Cat’s Cradle: Warhead was set “c.2007”.
[1140] Dating Project: Lazarus (BF #45) - Nimrod implies “three years” have passed since the first installment.
[1141] Happy Endings
The Reconstruction
The televised stories set in the twenty-first century offer a broadly consistent view of a peaceful Earth with a single world government, in which people of all nations cooperate in the field of space exploration and social progress. To reconcile this with the rather more downbeat New Adventures set in this century, Ben Aaronovitch suggested in his “Future History Continuity” document that a concerted global effort was made at some point in the early twenty-first century to repair the damage that had been done to Earth’s environment. A “Clean Up” is first hinted at the end of Iceberg, which is where we learn of the “Arms for Humanity” concert and the procuring of drinking water from icebergs, but we might suggest that it only gains impetus after Cat’s Cradle: Warhead, when all the corporations put their full weight behind it.
This process was named “the Reconstruction” in Happy Endings. We would suggest that this period of international co-operation lasts for around seventy years. Earth during this time is a relatively happy, clean and optimistic place.
[1142] Travelling by car is a lot easier in Warlock than Cat’s Cradle: Warhead (Warlock, p179), and we learn about the monitoring systems (p224) and new road system (p211), yet London traffic has barely improved (p265).
[1143] Dating Torchwood Series 1 - Gwen joins Torchwood after Doomsday, as events of that story are mentioned in TW: Everything Changes and TW: Day One, and form the basis of TW: Cyberwoman. This shifts the Series 1 stories to a year after they were broadcast, like all the “present day” Doctor Who stories since Aliens of London.
In TW: Miracle Day, Esther says Gwen joined Torchwood in “October 2006”, with the “year ahead” rule seemingly forgotten about (and in a script by Russell T. Davies, who engineered the convention, no less!). There are a couple of escape contingencies here... the CIA files that Esther is reading from might list the year wrong, or she might misread the year while repeating the information to Rex.
If the “October” reference is correct, however, then every story between TW: Everything Changes and TW: Border Princes (set at “nearly Halloween”) must happen in that month. Also, Everything Changes must take place in early October, as “three months” (technically accurate with benefit of rounding) pass between it and TW: They Keep Killing Suzie (which must occur before TW: Out of Time, set near Christmas).
Most details presented in Torchwood Series 1 support a dating of 2007 - in TW: Ghost Machine, for example, 1941 is “sixty-six” years ago. However, there are some anomalies in stories such as TW: Random Shoes and TW: Out of Time. See the individual episodes for more detail.
[1144] Archie is cited by name in TW: The Twilight Streets and The Torchwood Archives.
[1145] TW: Everything Changes
[1146] How Public is Torchwood?
In Tooth and Claw (set in 1879), Queen Victoria creates Torchwood as an ultra-secret organisation devoted to defending Britain’s borders against alien/supernatural incursion. Similarly, The Christmas Invasion (set in 2006) seems to imply that Torchwood is so secret and so clandestine, the Prime Minister - in this case, Harriet Jones - isn’t even supposed to know that it exists. Yet in Torchwood Series 1, Captain Jack and company can race through the Cardiff streets with the name “Torchwood” prominently displayed on the side of their SUV, the group (or Owen, at least) orders pizza under the name “Torchwood” and so forth.
The on-screen evidence offers a simple solution to this, even though Torchwood Series 1 doesn’t spell it out very succinctly: The authorities are well aware of Torchwood’s existence, and believe the group is a Special Ops team to whom they must yield authority. Episodes that support this notion include TW: Everything Changes (the police blatantly regard Torchwood as Special Ops), TW: Cyberwoman (Gwen mentions Torchwood to a contact at Jodrell Bank), TW: Countrycide (Gwen thinks a “policeman” - actually a treacherous cannibal - might know of Torchwood as a Special Ops group), TW: They Keep Killing Suzie (police units clear the roads for the Torchwood SUV) and more.
Put very simply, it’s only the organisation’s goal of harvesting alien technology that’s secret, not the very mention of Torchwood itself. This fits most of the evidence, but requires one to retroactively assume that in The Christmas Invasion, Harriet Jones is suggesting that the Prime Minister isn’t supposed to know Torchwood’s true purpose, or that they have a super-weapon capable of obliterating spaceships. At the very least, this explains how Jack can talk to the Prime Minister about Torchwood funding issues (TW: Greeks Bearing Gifts).
In Fear Her (set in 2012), Torchwood is mentioned in a TV broadcast, but the reference is too obscure to tell if the group’s real agenda is known to the public, or if they’re still considered an elite branch of the military.
Some fans are uneasy with the notion that Torchwood - even as an organisation that by definition is given to deception - could have existed throughout the twentieth century without the third Doctor or UNIT learning about them. A few attempts have been made to explain this, and a recurring one speculates that, temporally speaking, Torchwood didn’t exist until the tenth Doctor and Rose went back and annoyed Queen Victoria (Tooth and Claw). This theory is hard to credit, however, partly because it overlooks the obvious point that Torchwood does, in fact, predate the Doctor and Rose’s trip to 1879. The group is mentioned in Bad Wolf and The Christmas Invasion, and in the latter story obliterates the departing Sycorax spaceship.
There is nothing special about Tooth and Claw in terms of time mechanics, so if such revision occurred, it would almost presuppose that the timeline gets revised nearly each and every time the TARDIS lands. Logically, this would suggest that the Great Fire of Rome shouldn’t exist in time until the first Doctor inspires Nero to do it (The Romans) - even though the Doctor and Vicki both mention it beforehand. A similar case applies to the fifth Doctor causing the Great Fire of London in The Visitation, even though it’s cited in Pyramids of Mars. Therefore, the idea that Torchwood didn’t “exist” until Tooth and Claw might help to explain its secrecy in the 1970s, but would throw the entire Doctor Who timeline into chaos.
It is far, far simpler to think that Torchwood was officially listed in the 70s as a Special Ops group; that Torchwood let UNIT get on with the business of actually combating alien incursions; that the Torchwood agents of the time operated with a high degree of stealth (not surprising, if a “Britain first” group were attempting to out-fox a United Nations organisation); and that the Doctor and UNIT were never given reason to look upon the group with suspicion.
[1147] Dating Ghost Machine (TW 1.3) - Thomas Erasmus Flanagan and his daughter say they’re watching the Strictly Come Dancing finals - this is a bit hard to credit, as the show routinely starts in October and finishes in late December. It’s possible they’re watching a rerun, but it’s presented as if it’s the original broadcast.
[1148] Mentioned in TW: Another Life.
[1149] Dating Another Life (TW novel #1) - The novel is set before Cyberwoman - Ianto is seen sneaking down to the basement in the novel. The spines of the first three Torchwood novels fit together to make one picture, suggesting a reading order of TW: Another Life, TW: Border Princes and TW: Slow Decay.
[1150] Dating Border Princes (TW novel #2) - There are three mentions of the book taking place in October, one of which reads “An October night, almost Halloween” (p221). It’s after the release of Pirates of the Caribbean III (in May 2007).
[1151] Dating TW: Web of Lies (TW an
imated serial #1) - The year is given in a caption.
[1152] Dating Small Worlds (TW 1.5) - A calendar appears in Jasmine Pearce’s kitchen, but it’s too fuzzy to read.
[1153] Dating TW: Hidden (TW audiobook #1) - The story takes place during Torchwood Series 1. Ianto and Jack are decently friendly toward one another but don’t seem to be an item, suggesting a placement between TW: Cyberwoman and TW: They Keep Killing Suzie. Also, Ianto tells Tosh during a crisis that he should “never leave the bloody office ever again”, which could be taken as a reference to TW: Countrycide.
[1154] Dating TW: Greeks Bearing Gifts (TW 1.7) - Tosh estimates that the dead British soldier who was killed in 1812 has been buried for “one hundred ninety-six years, eleven to eleven and a half months”. This would seem to suggest a dating of 2009, save that Tosh stresses she’s estimating, and - for that matter - can hardly be expected to have knowledge of the on-screen caption denoting the murder as occurring in 1812. Most likely, Torchwood - without benefit of the omnipotent narrator - concludes the soldier was killed in 1810.
[1155] Dating TW: They Keep Killing Suzie (TW 1.8) - “Three months” have passed since Suzie’s death in TW: Everything Changes.
[1156] Dating TW: Random Shoes (TW 1.9) - The story is rife with minor glitches. The eBay listing for Eugene’s alien eyeball claims the auction began on “14-Oct-06”, but the date only appears on the full graphic on the Torchwood website, and isn’t actually seen on screen. As such, it can be safely ignored. Another anomaly is that the “Black Holes and the Uncertainty Principle” flyer says the convention will begin on the 27th, a Thursday. This doesn’t match any later month of the year in 2006, but such a day happened in September and December 2007. Those months don’t seem viable (given this episode’s relation to other Torchwood Series 1 stories), but the flyer is minor evidence. More glaringly, Eugene says it’s been “fourteen years” since his father left in 1992 - which would indicate a dating of 2006.
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