[1157] Dating TW: Out of Time (TW 1.10) - Owen says in TW: Captain Jack Harkness that Diane flew back into the Rift on 24th December, denoting when the story ends. Diane says the Sky Gypsy flew into the Rift on 18th December, 1953 - Captain Jack Harkness also claims that she and Owen only had “a week” together, so it would appear that the Sky Gypsy reappears on the very same day it flew into the Rift, just in half a century later. (The Rift surely doesn’t care about matching the Gregorian calendar for aesthetic reasons, so this must owe to the position of the Earth around the sun or some other factor.) An anomaly is that 29th December is said to be a Friday - which is was in 2006, not 2007. The Cardiff Examiner is seen with the headline, “Drunk Driving Records Soar This Christmas”.
[1158] Dating The Runaway Bride (X3.0) - It’s “Christmas Eve”, and the Sycorax invasion was “last Christmas”. It’s also after the Battle of Canary Wharf (Doomsday). Strangely, Donna comments in The Fires of Pompeii that the Doctor “saved her in 2008”, seemingly referring to this story (she must be rounding up from “Christmas 2007” by way of discussing temporal mechanics with the Doctor). Donna’s surname is misspelled “Nobel” by some sources such as Doctor Who Adventures and in the official Doctor Who Exhibition.
[1159] Dating Turn Left (X4.11) - This is the alternate timeline version of The Runaway Bride.
[1160] The Sontaran Stratagem
[1161] The Sound of Drums
[1162] Partners in Crime
[1163] Events in 2008 include the last few episodes of Torchwood Series 1, the “present day” sequences of Doctor Who Series 3, most (but not all) of Torchwood Series 2, and The Sarah Jane Adventures Series 1.
[1164] The Janus Conjunction (p79). It’s referred to as around in the twenty-second century in The Face-Eater.
[1165] “A little over two hundred and seventy-one days” from Borrowed Time.
[1166] According to a label on Martha’s television in The Sound of Drums, referencing The Idiot’s Lantern.
[1167] Mad Dogs and Englishmen
[1168] The Waters of Mars
[1169] The certificate for this is hanging on his bedroom wall in SJA: The Curse of Clyde Langer. This would appear to be a school competition, separate from the “country’s most promising young artist” contest that Clyde wins in SJA: Mona Lisa’s Revenge. Even so, there’s a small continuity error in that Mona Lisa’s Revenge is better suited to occur in 2009, and yet Clyde protests that his being entered in a “nerdy competition” isn’t “good for his image”, as if such a thing hasn’t happened to him before now.
[1170] Situation Vacant. The global recession that Lawson triggered is presumably the same as the real-world economic thrashing that started in 2008.
[1171] Dating The Girl Who Never Was (BF #103) - Fireworks spell out the new year as 2008, and the audio came out in December 2007. A glitch is that Madeleine is said to have been 21 in 1942, but is “85 now” - even allowing that she hasn’t had a birthday this year, that only gets matters as far as 2006. Contrary to that, the Doctor says (allowing for the new year) that the Bavaria has been missing for “sixty-six years”.
[1172] Dating TW: Combat (TW 1.11) - Owen is greatly depressed and avoiding work owing to the loss of Diane, and Gwen here learns from Tosh about their relationship. Both facts suggest that weeks (or possibly just a week) rather than months have passed since TW: Out of Time (set in late December). It is possible, therefore, that TW: Combat takes place before the New Year, although a 2008 dating is perfectly feasible. (The episode itself broadcast on 24th December, the same day that TW: Out of Time concludes.) One anomaly is that TW: Combat opens with Gwen and Reece having dinner at an outside restaurant, and looking very comfortable despite their lack of winter clothing.
[1173] Dating TW: Captain Jack Harkness (TW 1.12) - The last two episodes of Torchwood Series 1 seem to occur in rapid succession, and placing them on the timeline is problematic. Deciding where to date them depends on whether one favours the overall aesthetic of Captain Jack Harkness and the pacing of plotlines in Series 1 (in which case, it’s probably January 2008) or a “Vote Saxon” poster seen outside the Ritz dance hall in Cardiff (in which case, it’s probably June 2008).
Doctor Who Series 3 takes place over a four-day period in June, and the “Vote Saxon” poster seems to indicate the national election that concludes in The Sound of Drums. However, TW: Out of Time ends on 24th December, 2007, and Combat seems to take place shortly thereafter. Moving Captain Jack Harkness and End of Days to June because of the poster would mean, then, that six months pass between Torchwood episodes eleven and twelve.
While this might sound plausible in theory, it is hard to watch Torchwood Series 1 and genuinely believe that such a six-month gap has taken place where none was apparently meant to exist. Not only does the general flow suggest that events in Out of Time were fairly recent (notably the rawness that Diane’s departure has inflicted on Owen - as Ianto’s “You’ve been off, haven’t you?” comment helps to indicate), the costuming indicates January. Jack wears his trenchcoat regardless of the weather, but Toshiko and Bilis have on winter clothes that no sane person would wear in June. Owen and Gwen are dressed a bit more casually, but their jackets are still out of place for daytime in summer.
The apparent symmetry of Rift travel also suggests a January dating. Jack and Tosh travel through the Rift and arrive in 1941 on 20th January, and as previous Rift travellers seemed to arrive on the same calendar day they left (Out of Time), a case can be made that the two of them similarly depart on 20th January, 2008.
Overall, it has become a convention of modern-day television that time within a series progresses in relation to the time of broadcast - even some non sci-fi shows (such as Boston Legal) adhere to this rule, and in the main Torchwood is no exception. Series 1 seems to open a couple of months after Doomsday, and episode eight (TW: They Keep Killing Suzie) occurs “three months” after the series opener - it’s actually been more like two months in the real world, but it’s in the ballpark. Viewers innately tend to follow this pattern, and among those who keep track of this sort of thing, a January dating (roughly concurrent with the broadcast of Captain Jack Harkness and End of Days) seems to cause far less confusion than June.
One possibility is that the “Vote Saxon” poster indicates the Saxon Party, as mentioned by Saxon himself in The Sound of Drums. Little is known (beyond a general sense of instability) about British politics between Harriet Jones’ downfall and Saxon becoming Prime Minister, and the poster could refer to a secondary election that takes place in January. Similarly, the Daily Telegraph headline in Love & Monsters that reads “Saxon Leads Polls with 64 percent” is just as likely to refer to the party as Saxon himself.
[1174] Dating TW: End of Days (TW 1.13) - There is an obvious need to link this story to Doctor Who Series 3, as Jack here registers the TARDIS’ arrival and chases the Ship down at the start of Utopia. Related to the dating issues in TW: Captain Jack Harkness, it seems far simpler to presume that it’s February 2008 when the Doctor and Martha land to refuel in Utopia, even though this (plausibly) means they’ve arrived four months before their first meeting in Smith and Jones, and that Jack is gone from Cardiff for that duration of time. The Torchwood website supports this with a missing poster of Jack that’s dated to February 2008.
[1175] Dating Utopia (X3.11) - The precredit sequence of Utopia matches up with the end of TW: End of Days, and shows Jack reunited with the Doctor - explicitly for the first time since The Parting of the Ways. End of Days is set shortly after Christmas 2007, so the Doctor and Martha must land a few months in her past.
[1176] Dating TW: Consequences: “Kaleidoscope” (TW novel #15b) - The story occurs shortly after Jack goes missing from Torchwood in Utopia, and TW: End of Days is cited as being “recent”. It’s wrongly claimed that Gwen and Rhys are already married (p69).
[1177] Dating The Condemned (BF #105) - Menzies starts interrogating the Doctor at “1:05 am on 29th February, 2008”; the Doctor and Charley seem
to arrive in Manchester a couple hours or so beforehand. The baddies here try to poison the Doctor with a bit of aspirin - something fandom has presumed as being the pill the third Doctor thinks will kill him in The Mind of Evil, but which goes unnamed on screen.
[1178] Dating The Haunting of Thomas Brewster (BF #107) - The year is given, and it matches the year of this audio’s release.
[1179] Dating “Warkeeper’s Crown” (DWM #378-380) - The Brigadier is in his seventies, which (probably) means this is the first decade of the twenty-first century.
[1180] Dating The Eleventh Hour (X5.1) - It’s “two years” before Amy finally starts travelling with the Doctor, which is firmly established as 2010. When the Atraxi scan Earth, they see the Vashta Nerada, Hath and Ood - three races that we’ve never seen attack Earth. The image of the Cybermen marching is from Rise of the Cybermen, so it technically happened on a parallel Earth, but it presumably stands in for similar events from Army of Ghosts/Doomsday.
[1181] The Forgotten Army
[1182] “Seven months and eleven days” before TW: Adrift, which means that the Rift likely “abducts” Jonah in March. A continuity glitch exists in that Jack investigates the incident on the very day that Jonah is taken - even though he should be off world with the Doctor and Martha (per Utopia). It’s possible that Jack used his Vortex Manipulator to go back and look into Jonah’s disappearance after the fact.
[1183] Alan claims that Chrissie “took [their] home apart six months” before SJA: Eye of the Gorgon.
[1184] TW: The Undertaker’s Gift
[1185] The actor who played Geoff Noble in The Runaway Bride, Howard Attfield, died in October 2007, during the filming of Series 4. We learn that Donna’s father had died when we see her again in Partners in Crime. The novel Beautiful Chaos cites the day of Geoff’s death as 15th May, 2008, but see the dating notes on that story for why this must be called into question.
[1186] Dating Smith and Jones (X3.1) - In The Sound of Drums, Martha says it’s “four days” since she met the Doctor. As that story takes place the day after a General Election, and elections are always held on a Thursday in the UK, it would mean that The Sound of Drums starts on a Friday and so Smith and Jones is set on a Monday.
Smith and Jones is clearly set after the Battle of Canary Wharf (Doomsday), and Martha, as a medical student, has upcoming exams. In The Shakespeare Code, the Doctor boasts that Martha is going to love reading the last Harry Potter book - eagerly anticipated at time of broadcast, but released on 22nd July, 2007, the year before he met her. Perhaps she’s mentioned she’s not read it, but as The Shakespeare Code follows directly on from Smith and Jones, there are maybe two opportunities for this off-screen conversation to occur.
In Utopia, Martha says the Cardiff earthquake (Boom Town, set in 2006) was “a couple of years ago”. A small oddity is that the Doctor’s John Smith persona (in TV’s Human Nature) dreams that he’s from “2007”, not 2008.
[1187] Dating Turn Left (X4.11) - This is the alternate timeline version of Smith and Jones. It’s “six months” since the alternative The Runaway Bride - despite dialogue saying the Thames “remains closed”, it looks fine in the footage we’re shown. Funnily enough, as Sarah Jane goes to the moon in this version of events, the story title Smith and Jones is still apt.
[1188] Dating The Lazarus Experiment (X3.6) - The Doctor says that Martha has only been away “twelve hours”. This has to mean “twelve hours” after she left in the TARDIS with him at the end of Smith and Jones, not when they first met each other in the kidnapped hospital - otherwise, Martha and her family would be made to experience Leo’s party and events in The Lazarus Experiment on the same evening.
[1189] Dating Made of Steel (Quick Reads #2) - This is the first time Martha has returned to the Royal Hope Hospital. The events of Smith and Jones are “recent”, and her absence is a source of curiosity to Rachel rather than serious concern - however, it’s clearly after The Lazarus Experiment, which is Martha’s first return to her own time. Martha’s exams are “soon”.
[1190] Dating The Family of Blood (X3.9) - The year isn’t given, but Latimer’s extreme age and the fact the service is conducted by a woman indicates at least a near-present-day setting. It’s likely Martha’s “present day”.
[1191] Dating Wishing Well (NSA #19) - The year isn’t given, although it seems to be around Martha’s native time. A 1989 mountaineering accident occurred “nearly twenty years” ago (p53). The book saw release in December 2007.
[1192] Dating “Bus Stop!” (DWM #385) - The story was published in 2007, and might follow the “year ahead” rule pertaining to Series 3.
[1193] Dating “Death to the Doctor!” (DWM #390) - None of the villains are said to have time-travel capabilities. Given the flashback of the ninth Doctor and Rose at the Powell Estate - and the third Doctor’s defeat of the Mentor in the UNIT era - this presumably happens in accordance with the story’s publication in 2007, allowing for the “year ahead” paradigm of Series 3.
[1194] Dating Blink (X3.10) - A caption says it’s a year later in the broadcast version, but doesn’t appear in the DVDs (possibly the result of a last-minute change the DVD-authoring house didn’t know about). The earlier sequences were explicitly set in 2007.
[1195] At the end of 42.
[1196] The Sound of Drums
[1197] Dating The Sound of Drums (X3.12) - The Doctor, Martha and Jack arrive back from the future “four days” after Smith and Jones, the following morning when the Toclafane are unveiled. Constitutionally, there wouldn’t be an existing Cabinet, as the Master would have had to appoint one before killing its members.
Vote Saxon
There are apparent inconsistencies concerning the rise and election of Harold Saxon.
The facts are laid out as follows: Harriet Jones is deposed as Prime Minister after The Christmas Invasion (set in Christmas 2006). The Abzorbaloff in Love & Monsters holds a paper with the headline “Saxon Leads Polls with 64 per cent” (this occurs before Doomsday, as Jackie Tyler is still living on “our” Earth). Mr Saxon rises in prominence after ordering the shooting down of the Racnoss ship in The Runaway Bride (Christmas 2007, and explicitly after Doomsday). In TW: Captain Jack Harkness (set sometime after Christmas, as TW: Out of Time ends on 24th December), there’s a Vote Saxon poster in front of the disused Ritz dance hall. The “contemporary” stories in Doctor Who Series 3 (Smith and Jones, The Lazarus Experiment, a sequence in 42, The Sound of Drums) all take place in the same week, with a General Election the day before The Sound of Drums. We’re told it’s eighteen months since The Christmas Invasion in The Sound of Drums (so it’s June 2008).
The problems are:
1. The Vote Saxon poster outside the Ritz suggests that TW: Captain Jack Harkness is set during the General Election campaign that elects Saxon, but the episode itself seems to be set soon after Christmas 2007, not June 2008. We can probably discount this problem pretty easily - the Vote Saxon poster doesn’t have to be part of the General Election campaign, it could have appeared quickly in the wake of the events of The Runaway Bride, as the start of the momentum that sees Saxon elected six months later.
2. Saxon is ahead in the polls (Love & Monsters) before he comes to prominence (after The Runaway Bride). The “poll” Saxon leads in late 2007 can’t be one for the General Election of June 2008, as British election campaigns only take four to six weeks. This is harder to explain, but it is possible…
Following The Christmas Invasion, it’s a turbulent time in British politics, as stated in The Sound of Drums. What we’re told in the series actually would lead to political problems - Harriet Jones’ party won a landslide victory, but confidence in Jones evaporates overnight. Under the British constitution, there’s no obligation for either Jones to hold a general election, or for there to be a general election if her party deposed her as leader… unless the government lost a vote of no confidence, and in practice no party with a “landslide” majority could lose such a vote. The Christmas Invas
ion implies that Jones resigns or is deposed soon after. Her party won an election largely because of her, and holds a massive Commons majority, but she’s no longer in charge. Whoever took part is at least third choice to lead the party (after the former Prime Minister who was assassinated by the Slitheen in Aliens of London, and Jones), and would almost certainly start out as a lame duck. We should probably note that this instability, exploited by the Master in Series 3, is actually instigated by the Doctor when he deposes Harriet Jones in The Christmas Invasion.
In this situation, people would be looking for alternative leaders, and papers would be running polls. Saxon becomes the Minister of Defence at some point in 2007, the www.votesaxon.co.uk website has him as a published novelist (the novel is called Kiss Me, Kill Me) and he’s married to the daughter of a Lord - so he’s clearly a public figure before The Runaway Bride. The Racnoss attack, and his handling of it, must be the last piece that makes his succession inevitable.
So the poll in Love & Monsters is almost certainly speculative, and perhaps even the first time most people had heard of Mr Saxon. It’s also very probably been placed there by Saxon himself.
[1198] Dating The Story of Martha (NSA #28a) - The book contains four of the many stories (“The Weeping”, “Breathing Space”, “The Frozen Wastes” and “Star-Crossed”) that Martha relates in her travels across the globe, with linking material that details, among other things, her involvement in thwarting the Drast.
[1199] Dating Last of the Time Lords (X3.13) - Time is reversed to 08:02, just before the Toclafane appeared in great numbers. This means Saxon is still elected and kills his Cabinet and (as is explicitly stated) President Winters is still assassinated. The last detail is something of a glitch, as all of the Toclafane’s actions (Winters’ death included) should have been temporally erased. Another problem is that the Doctor, Martha and Jack should still be known as “public enemies number one, two and three” despite the historical reversal (as is the case in The Sound of Drums), yet they’re later seen casually chatting in public with no fear of arrest.
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