[405] The Mutant Phase
[406] He’s 19 in Killing Ground.
[407] The Janus Conjunction
[408] The Time Meddler
[409] The Doctor is booked up for “two hundred years” after The Seeds of Doom.
[410] In The Androids of Tara, Zadek, one of Prince Reynart’s men, states that the plague was “two hundred years” ago.
[411] “Fifteen years” before Fear Itself (PDA).
[412] “Forty-seven years” before SLEEPY. The Brother-hood plays a role in The Death of Art and So Vile a Sin.
[413] Seeing I (p83).
[414] “Twenty-five years” before Longest Day.
[415] The Five Doctors. How much time has passed since Susan left the Doctor isn’t clear, but she does look older.
[416] Dating The Year of Intelligent Tigers (EDA #46) - It’s the “twenty-second century” (p145), and references to colonies on Lvan and Gidi link it to Nightmare of Eden. It is clearly early in humanity’s colonisation of other planets. That said, the spaceport has been established for a hundred years, so it must be the latter part of the century.
[417] “Three years” before To the Death. It’s possible that this happens concurrent with the start of Lucie Miller circa 2188, but as only two years elapse from the outbreak of the plague to the end of To the Death, the plague must take some time to spread.
[418] Dating An Earthly Child (BF special release #8), Relative Dimensions, Lucie Miller and To the Death (BF BBC7 #4.7, 4.9-4.10) - These Big Finish audios explore what becomes of Susan on post-Dalek invasion Earth. The blurb to the first of these, An Earthly Child, says it’s “thirty years on” from the Daleks conquering Earth. Within the story, it’s repeatedly said that it’s “thirty years since the invasion, twenty years since we set ourselves free” (in The Dalek Invasion of Earth). Susan suggests that everyone over 35 remembers where they were when the invasion came; one of her associates, Duncan, doesn’t because he’s only 33.
In the follow-up audio, Relative Dimensions, the Doctor picks up Susan and Alex on “Christmas Eve”- events in An Earthly Child are said to have happened “six months ago”, establishing that An Earthly Child probably happens in summer. The Doctor seems to drop off Susan and Alex (along with Lucie) on the day they left, and the concluding two-parter (Lucie Miller/To the Death) plays out over a period of two years (to judge by Alex’s remark that Lucie fell ill during the initial plague outbreak “two years” ago).
These audios are virtually impossible to reconcile against Legacy of the Daleks, set circa 2199, and which also covers Susan’s life on post-invasion Earth. Some of the contradictions pertain to Susan’s personal life - An Earthly Child presents Alex Campbell as Susan and David’s son, Susan acknowledges seeing her grandfather in The Five Doctors, and David Campbell has died beforehand in unspecified circumstances. Against all of that, Legacy of the Daleks claims that Susan and David never had biological children, and instead adopted three war orphans (in some accordance with The Five Doctors novelisation); Susan says she hasn’t seen her grandfather since The Dalek Invasion of Earth (although the eighth Doctor, somehow, remembers their meet-up in The Five Doctors), and David Campbell dies saving the Doctor’s life from the Master. In both stories, at least, it’s established that Susan worked to secure Dalek technology left over from the invasion.
Perhaps the bigger concern, however, is that Lucie Miller and To the Death entail a second Dalek invasion of Earth - and the accompanying deaths of millions due to Dalek plague - that isn’t referenced in any other Doctor Who story.
The conclusion that seems rather hard to overlook is that history has been changed here, either by a) the Dalek Time Controller arriving in the twenty-second century from Amethyst station, or b) the Meddling Monk intervening on the Daleks’ behalf. (The Monk, we know, has the ability to change history - so adamant is the Doctor about this in The Time Meddler.) History might have gotten off its established path, in fact, the moment the Monk nipped back a few years and threw the plague vial out of his TARDIS door.
Earth society is in relatively good shape in An Earthly Child, but is practically down to feudal levels in Legacy of the Daleks - this would be extremely hard to reconcile, were it not for the second Dalek invasion falling between the two, and almost inevitably setting Earth back some notches. In short, what remains of Earth after To the Death could easily slide into the “dominions” seen in Legacy of the Daleks.
The wild card here is to what degree, barring a complete and total temporal catastrophe, History might actively try to restore itself to its established path. Doctor Who, cumulatively, is less than clear on to what degree this is the case, but stories such as The Waters of Mars support the notion. (Actually, The Kingmaker is downright whimsical about it, claiming that the motto of the Celestial Intervention Agency is, “The [historical] details change, the story remains the same...”) An entirely new timeline of Earth might have unfolded had the Monk’s intervention led to the Daleks succeeding - but their defeat at Lucie Miller’s hands might enable History to get back on track, give or take. An innate tendency of History to bend back into shape when possible might also explain David Campbell’s contradictory fates - perhaps he initially died in Legacy of the Daleks, and in the revised history, he dies as a sort of temporal “pre-shock”. (This wouldn’t explain, of course, why Susan in the revised history has given birth to Alex if she was childless in the original timeline - but it might explain Alex’s death in To the Death, if he was never supposed to have been born, and History is manoeuvring to both eliminate him and thwart the Daleks in the process.)
This is all, naturally, the result of us trying to pound a round peg into a square hole. Some open-ended questions will remain no matter how this is played. (If the audios overwrote Legacy of the Daleks, for instance, then how did the Roger Delgado Master come to be gravely wounded and dying on Terserus?) Still, if one squints a bit, it’s possible to accept that intervention on the Monk’s part has left Susan’s life irrevocably altered, even though Earth’s history runs pretty much as intended.
The Venus de Milo is collected by the Monk and possibly destroyed in To the Death; Benny: The Sword of Forever alternatively states that it was destroyed during the Thousand-Year War.
[419] Legacy of the Daleks
[420] “Four years” before Killing Ground (p71).
[421] “Last month” according to Relative Dimensions.
[422] Dating “Echoes of the Mogor” (DWM #143-144) - There’s no indication of the date, but it seems to be early in the history of Earth’s interstellar exploration. There are bullet holes in the walls at one murder scene, so the FHD might have projectile weapons, although weapons that resemble these are called “lasers” in “Hunger from the Ends of Time!”. Due to the presence of the FHD, and their wearing the same uniforms and carrying the same weapons, we’ve assumed that this story, “Hunger from the Ends of Time!” and “Conflict of Interests” all take place around the same time.
In “Conflict of Interests”, mankind has a base on Rigel (between seven and nine hundred light years from Earth in real life), and spacecraft capable of “light by six”.
[423] Dating “Hunger from the Ends of Time!” (DWM #157-158) - “Conventional filing has been obsolete here on Catalog for centuries.” The FHD squad’s uniforms and weapons are identical to those in “Echoes of the Mogor”, so the two stories are probably set around the same time.
[424] Dating Time of Your Life (MA #8) - It is “three weeks into Earth year 2191” (p1).
[425] Dating Killing Ground (MA #23) - This is set the same year as Time of Your Life. Grant’s departure from the TARDIS isn’t conveyed in canonical Doctor Who; by default, then, the short story “Schrodinger’s Botanist” in the Missing Pieces charity anthology serves to explain what becomes of him.
[426] Dating “Conflict of Interests” (DWM #183) - As with other FHD stories, this seems to be set in an early colonial period. Humanity doesn’t have translation devices. The story has to be set b
efore “Pureblood”, when the Sontarans withdraw from human space. Aleph-777 is the planet seen in the back-up strip “The Final Quest”.
[427] Benny: Beige Planet Mars
[428] Dating Fear Itself (PDA #73) - It’s decades after the Dalek invasion of Earth (p274), but still the twenty-second century according to the back cover and p4.
[429] Cyber Wars in the twenty-second or twenty-third century were postulated in Cybermen and The Terrestrial Index, and a number of stories that used those books as reference (including Deceit, Iceberg, The Dimension Riders, Killing Ground and Sword of Orion) have referred to “Cyberwars” in this time period. This is not the “Cyber War” involving Voga that is referred to in Revenge of the Cybermen. We might speculate that while the main force of Cybermen conquer Telos, another group remained active and travelled into deep space, perhaps colonising worlds of their own, and that this breakaway group was wiped out in the Cyber Wars. They seem to keep well away from Earth and only menace isolated human colonies.
[430] The Janus Conjunction (p98).
[431] Deceit (p23).
[432] Interference (p305).
[433] The Nowhere Place
[434] Seeing I
[435] The Also People (p29).
[436] “A decade” before The Final Sanction.
[437] Dating Fear Itself (PDA #73) - Anji is separated from the Doctor and Fitz for “four years”.
[438] Fear Itself (PDA). The “Paris crater” is evidently a reference to the Martian-propelled asteroid that obliterated Paris in the Thousand-Day War, as told in Transit and GodEngine. Transit specifies that Paris is rebuilt in the decade to follow this event, but a monument area might remain.
[439] Dreamstone Moon (p18).
[440] Dating Wooden Heart (NSA #15) - No date is given, but it’s “at least a hundred years” since the Castor was launched. The hints we get are that the Castor was operating very early in Earth’s era of interstellar travel, and the fact it’s “Century-class” might link it to the Century ships referred to in Killing Ground. Space is divided into sectors and largely unregulated, suggesting the Castor was launched before The Space Pirates.
[441] Dating The Nowhere Place (BF #84) - The story opens on 15th January, although Oswin files a report at 15:38 on the 16th, which suggests the Doctor and Evelyn don’t arrive until that date.
[442] The Janus Conjunction (p100).
[443] Four hundred years before Benny: The Doomsday Manuscript.
[444] Dating Legacy of the Daleks (EDA #10) - Susan met David when he was 22, and he’s now 54 (p15), so it’s thirty-two years after The Dalek Invasion of Earth. The blurb says it is the late twenty-second century. It’s unclear why the Doctor is searching for Sam by travelling in time, rather than space, yet that’s the implication of p27, where he “allows” for Thannos time. This does seem to mean he’s looking for Sam before he lost her in Longest Day circa 2202, but he is admittedly diverted to Earth by a telepathic signal from Susan. While the Doctor thinks he is in the right timezone, perhaps the TARDIS has taken him just a handful of years earlier.
See the dating notes under An Earthly Child for the argument as to whether Legacy of the Daleks has been erased from history or not.
[445] The Pit (p86).
[446] Managra (p63).
[447] The Shadow of the Scourge
[448] Genocide (p27).
[449] Autonomy
[450] “The twenty-third century” according to Cold Fusion (p180).
[451] “They Think It’s All Over”
[452] Colony in Space. Many of the books pick up on this theme.
[453] The Final Sanction, no date is given on p146, but it must be some time before 2203.
[454] “Hundreds of years” after “Ripper’s Curse”.
[455] Dating Longest Day (EDA #9) - It’s “Ex-Thannos system, Relative Year 3177” (p15). In Legacy of the Daleks, it’s stated “In Thannos time it had been 3177” (p27), so it’s almost certainly not 3177 AD. This is the same time zone as Legacy of the Daleks (give or take), Dreamstone Moon and Seeing I.
[456] Dating Dreamstone Moon (EDA #11) - For Sam, six days have passed (p7) since Longest Day.
[457] Dating Seeing I (EDA #12) - Sam was en route to the planet Ha’olam at the end of Dreamstone Moon, and has only just arrived at the start of this novel. The Doctor sending out Data-umphs in 2202 looking for Sam must mean that he expects to find her in that year. “James Bowman” was the alias that Grace attributed to the Doctor in Doctor Who - The Movie.
[458] Dating The I: I Scream (BBV audio #26) - The unnamed central character of I Scream describes Earth as having “ground cars, power plants, killer smog and diseases” - a state of affairs that loosely fits conditions of the late thirtieth century. Then again, such a description could just be part and parcel of the Company’s propaganda machine, designed to prevent the Galspar residents from wanting to venture off world. Another X-factor is whether or not the I’s scheme has any measure of success; the period of the Earth Empire is documented well enough that people turning into I en mass would probably have warranted a mention in some other Doctor Who-related story. Either the scheme is thwarted off screen, then, or I Scream actually takes place in an indeterminate era. The dating is arbitrary, but fits an early colonial period.
[459] The Janus Conjunction (p98).
[460] According to The Final Sanction, p75. Page 146 suggests the war has been going on for a year.
[461] The Final Sanction (pgs 73, 255) says this occurs “almost a year” before 2204.
[462] The Final Sanction (p196).
[463] Benny: The Relics of Jegg-Sau
[464] “Centuries” before Benny: The Heart’s Desire. Eternals first appeared in Enlightenment, but compared to the Eternals seen there, Hardy and Barron’s modus operandi is more akin to that of the Celestial Toymaker.
[465] Benny: Another Girl, Another Planet
[466] Dating The Final Sanction (PDA #24) - The date is given (p4).
[467] Dating Seeing I (EDA #12) - The Doctor is imprisoned for “three years”. Oddly, according to SLEEPY, also by Kate Orman, FLORANCE was trapped in a lab at this point.
[468] “Fifty years” after GodEngine.
[469] Dating The Demons of Red Lodge and Other Stories: “Doing Time” (BF #142c) - This all seems roughly in keeping with humanity’s stage of development per the likes of Seeing I. The participants don’t appear to be massively removed from present-day humanity - not only is the Gregorian calendar (or some local variation of it) in use on Folly, one of the locals references Bonnie and Clyde. Interstellar travel is possible, but takes some time - a year is here required to cross “three [solar] systems”. One of the Doctor’s fellow prisoners is alien, and relations with his race are such that his parents are allowed to visit.
While no year is given, the date of the explosion - 10th of May - is named as a Monday. In this era, and assuming the Folly calendar is exactly in synch with the Earth one (hardly a guarantee), that narrows the possibilities to 2202, 2213, 2219, 2224 and 2230.
[470] Dating The Janus Conjunction (EDA #16) - It is “Dateline 14.09.2211 Humanian Era” (p16).
[471] Dating Benny: Secret Origins (Benny audio #10.4) - Bernice names the year. Peter’s math is very bad when she does so, as he reckons that 2212 was “nearly three centuries” prior to 2609.
[472] Dating The Cradle of the Snake (BF #138) - It’s currently “Manussan Year 2215”, which is here presumed to be the same year in the Earth calendar (see the dating notes to Snakedance). Where the day is concerned, “Tomorrow’s New Year”.
[473] The Highest Science (p17).
[474] Strange England (p7).
[475] “Seventy years” after GodEngine.
[476] Dating SLEEPY (NA #48) - While investigating the Dione-Kisanu Corporation in 2257, the Doctor sends Roz and Bernice back “thirty years”, to “2227”.
[477] Dating Frayed (TEL #11) - No date is given, but as children are screened for psychic abilities, and this is an earl
y colony world, it ties in with information given in SLEEPY. The oldest child is 12, perhaps suggesting the colony has been established that long.
[478] Rain of Terror. This is twice implied as happening “centuries” ago. The Doctor suggests that it was “millions of years” (p381) ago, although it’s not evident how he comes to that conclusion.
[479] “A hundred and fifty years” before The Dimension Riders (p61).
[480] “A hundred and fifty years” before The Romance of Crime (p8). There’s another Great Breakout in the year 5000, according to The Invisible Enemy. Uva Beta Five was re-named “New Earth”, but is not the planet of the same name in Time of Your Life or New Earth.
[481] Dating “Spider-God” (DWM #52) - No date is given, but it seems to be the early colonial period. It is twenty years since Frederic joined the survey corps, and three years since the Excelsior left Earth. The Earthmen have a hover car “scouter” and energy weapons.
[482] Benny: The Sword of Forever (p40).
[483] Dating Memory Lane (BF #88) - It is two hundred twenty-seven years and some months after Kim and Tom departed Earth, an event that occurs near the modern day.
[484] SLEEPY
[485] “Profits of Doom”. It’s “eight decades” before 2321.
[486] At least “a century” - or four termite generations - before Valhalla.
[487] The “mid-twenty-third century at least”, according to Benny in Benny: Epoch: Private Enemy No. 1.
[488] Lords of the Storm
[489] The Leisure Hive
[490] Placebo Effect
[491] Dating The Game of Death (DL #6) - No year is given. The dating clues are somewhat fleeting... the Mars-Centauri Grand Prix is mentioned (and treated as a contemporary event), and it’s said that General Augustus Korch fought in “the last” Dalek War, and was instrumental in securing the release of the infamous Aurora hostages. (This is sometimes confused with the “Auros” incident from Prisoner of the Daleks - also by Trevor Baxendale - but Korch didn’t appear in that book, and the two events are very different in detail.)
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