[1390] Dating Benny: The Vampire Curse: “Predating the Predators” (Benny collection #12c) - The year is given.
[1391] Borrowed Time
[1392] “The Time Machination”
[1393] “One hundred years” before Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead.
[1394] Dating Borrowed Time (NSA #49) - The year is given (p26).
[1395] The end of the century prior to The Time of Angels.
[1396] It’s established in TW: Captain Jack Harkness that he adopted a false identity.
[1397] The Doctor Dances first established that Jack is from the fifty-first century; the Boshane Peninsula is referenced in Last of the Time Lords and TW: Adam.
[1398] According to Jack in TW: Fragments.
[1399] Dating TW: Adam (TW 2.5) - No year is given, and the placement here is roughly derived from a) actor Jack Montgomery being 15 when he played Jack in Adam, and b) John Hart’s comment that Jack - presumably as an adult - was “Rear of the Year, 5094”. There’s no way of specifying how much time passed for Jack in-between the two - so in placing Adam, ten years have very arbitrarily been allocated.
[1400] TW: Miracle Day
[1401] TW: Captain Jack Harkness. The identity of his captors hasn’t been revealed.
[1402] Last of the Time Lords, TW: Adam. The clear implication is that immortal Jack will eventually transform into the Face of Boe, who was first seen in The End of the World. Those wishing to overlook this possibility often suggest that it could have just as easily been a punning nickname that Jack acquired because there was already a famous Face of Boe in his native era. Or, of course, both could be true.
There is no Boeshane Peninsula on present day Earth. That said, it’s a safe bet that some place names on Earth will change in the next three thousand years, particularly if various floods, ice ages, solar flares and other incidents create new geographical features. There’s never been any explicit confirmation that Jack grew up on Earth rather than another planet colonised by humans. Wherever the Boeshane Peninsula is, the people there speak with American accents.
[1403] TW: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, TW: Exit Wounds.
[1404] Eater of Wasps. The trio hails from “three thousand years” after 1932, but it’s after Emotional Chemistry, so Kala is rounding up. They are presumably working for the same Agency as Captain Jack.
[1405] The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances. The latter states Jack is from the fifty-first century.
[1406] TW: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
[1407] The backstory to TW: Fragments, TW: Exit Wounds.
[1408] Apparently around twenty years before A Good Man Goes to War.
[1409] Dating River Song is a Complicated Business
The Doctor refers to River Song’s native time - in other words, when she attends university and is later confined to Stormcage - as “the fifty-first century” on two occasions (in Silence in the Library and The Time of the Angels). However, the two instances when we’re given specific dates regarding River’s home era (Let’s Kill Hitler, 5123; The Pandorica Opens, 5145) occur in stories that chronologically take place before the Doctor’s remarks, and happen in the fifty-second century. This contradiction would perhaps be more irritating, were it not so emblematic of River’s history being even more complicated than it first appears.
The shorthand where River and the Doctor are concerned is that they meet in reverse order... the Doctor first meets River (from his point of view) when she dies (in Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead), and she looks “younger” each subsequent time they meet up (with a line in Let’s Kill Hitler explaining that she plays with her appearance). River broadly confirms in The Impossible Astronaut that she and the Doctor meet in reverse order (“It’s all back to front. My past is his future. We’re travelling in opposite directions. Every time we meet, I know him more and he knows me less.”), and the ending of Day of the Moon depends upon it. In that story, the Doctor kisses River for what to him is the “first time”, and River becomes alarmed that for her, this means it’ll be the final time.
The idea that River and the Doctor always meet in exactly reverse order starts to crumble once it’s considered that if that were true, why do they compare diaries to determine where they are in each others’ lifetimes? An exact reverse order would mean that River, at least, would always know the order of their meet-ups without having to ask. Perhaps she’s just playing along, but this risks the Doctor hearing spoilers about the future. It becomes all the harder to rationalise in instances such as her asking in Silence of the Library if the Doctor has experienced the crash of the Byzantium (The Time of Angels), when exact reverse order would dictate that of course he hasn’t. In fact, there are so many exceptions to the “reverse order rule” (the most glaring being that the Doctor, Amy and Rory are present when the Alex Kingston incarnation of River is “born” in Let’s Kill Hitler, and again encounter her older self after that point), a more accurate way of putting it would be, “River and the Doctor encounter each other in reverse order... except for all the occasions that they don’t.”
A looming question that never gets answered is why they’re meeting in reverse order at all, as if someone or some thing is trying (however imperfectly) to actually make their meet-ups run back-to-front. One possibility goes to a theory mooted in About Time - that in classic Doctor Who, the TARDISes of Time Lords such as the Doctor, the Master, the Rani, etc., coordinate things so that their pilots keep meeting each other in chronological order. Perhaps such protocols are rent asunder following the obliteration of Gallifrey and the Time Lords prior to New Who, making the psuedo-reverse means by which the Doctor and River keep meeting better than nothing.
For the Doctor (and the audience), his meet-ups with River are: Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead; The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone; The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang; The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon (909-year-old Doctor); A Good Man Goes to War; Let’s Kill Hitler; The Wedding of River Song (1103-year-old Doctor) and, by extension, The Impossible Astronaut again. It is usually not specified exactly how many years pass between the Doctor and River’s encounters in either her home era or elsewhere. As River is a human-Time Lord hybrid with a more malleable appearance (per Let’s Kill Hitler), the time between their encounters is doubly indeterminate.
It should also be noted that Captain Jack Harkness hails from the late 5000s and so is a rough contemporary of River, but we’ve no record of their meeting one another. In Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, River has a squareness gun identical to Jack’s (although it’s entirely possible that she found Jack’s old gun in the TARDIS), and The Pandorica Opens has her buying a time travel-enabling vortex manipulator that’s “fresh from the [severed] wrist of a handsome Time Agent” (not that said handsome agent is necessarily Jack himself).
Timelink dated Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead to 5008, but saw print before it could take River’s appearances in Series 5 and 6 into consideration.
[1410] Dating Let’s Kill Hitler (X6.8) - The date River starts university is given in a caption. Professor Candy, who is named in the credits, first appeared in the short story “Continuity Errors” (also by Steven Moffat) and is mentioned in Benny: Oh No It Isn’t!
[1411] The background to much of Series 5 and 6, as given in The Wedding of River Song.
[1412] Dating Closing Time (X6.12) - No date is given, but as River has been awarded her doctorate, it’s at least several years since we last saw her in Let’s Kill Hitler.
[1413] After Closing Time and before A Good Man Goes to War. It’s not entirely clear how this came to pass, as it looks like River is convicted and imprisoned for the Doctor’s murder by the Clerics - the same organisation that helped to train and task her with killing him in the first place. That said, different factions within the Clerics might be working to different ends - by The Time of Angels, Father Octavian and his Clerics are not only willing to involve the Doctor in their affairs, Octavian blatantly draws the Doctor’s attention to the mu
rder (namely, his own) that River committed.
[1414] The Big Bang
[1415] Before The Big Bang.
[1416] She can adeptly fly the Ship (in her timeline) no later than The Pandorica Opens. River says (The Time of Angels) that she had TARDIS-flying lessons from “the very best” and that it was a “shame” the Doctor was busy that day, but yells “You taught me!” at the Doctor in The Pandorica Opens. In Let’s Kill Hitler, the TARDIS itself teaches River how to pilot it.
[1417] Dating The Pandorica Opens (X5.12) - The date is given in three captions. River and the Doctor seem to be married by now, as implied by her impish conversation with him at the end of The Big Bang.
[1418] In unknown circumstances between (from River’s point of view) The Big Bang and The Time of Angels.
[1419] At some point prior to The Impossible Astronaut, as revealed in The Rebel Flesh and A Good Man Goes to War.
[1420] Dating The Rebel Flesh and A Good Man Goes to War (X6.6-6.7) - No firm date is given, but Dorium’s presence (he was last seen in The Pandorica Opens) suggests that this is River Song’s “native time”. It’s a bit of an oddity that River is born after her adult self has been confined to Stormcage, but it’s no more strange than so many other things about her. The River who appears at Demon’s Run can independently travel in time; for all we’re told, she only gains the vortex manipulator that lets her do so in The Pandorica Opens. The Cybermen seen here are the first in the new TV series that don’t have the Cybus logo on them, and are clearly a galactic power in the far future.
[1421] Let’s Kill Hitler
[1422] The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon
[1423] Dating The Wedding of River Song (X6.13) - No date given, but we can infer that all of these events occur in the same timezone. Dorium’s appearance is explicitly after the main events of A Good Man Goes to War.
[1424] Dating A Good Man Goes to War (X6.7) - This is tricky to place. The fact that River has knowledge of events at Demon’s Run - in particular, that the Doctor will then learn her true identity - suggests that for her, those events have already happened.
River doesn’t seem to know, until Rory arrives, that it’s the day that Demon’s Run will occur - so even though it’s her birthday, it’s presumably a different year from when she was literally born. This has the slightly awkward consequence that while A Good Man Goes to War is set in River’s native era, Rory must not visit Stormcage at the exact same time as the effort to rescue Amy from Demon’s Run. With the Doctor recruiting allies from all throughout time and space, it’s possible that Rory or the Doctor just told the TARDIS, “Take us to River”, and it acted accordingly. (Hence Rory’s comment that, “The time streams, I’m not quite sure where we are...”)
[1425] In River’s lifetime, these events happen before The Impossible Astronaut.
[1426] Dating The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon (X6.1-6.2) - The general reverse order of the Doctor and River’s meet-ups would suggest that these two episodes would, for her, occur prior to A Good Man Goes to War. Also, River acts as if she and the Doctor who took her to the 1814 frost fair are quite chummy - so if Day of the Moon is indeed the last time she kisses him, the frost fair trip likely occurs (for River) before that event.
[1427] Dating The Time of Angels, Flesh and Stone and The Big Bang (X5.4-5.5, X5.13) - River tells the Doctor that they will next meet “when the Pandorica opens” - meaning that for her, it’s after The Pandorica Opens (set in 5145).
[1428] The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone. There’s no mention of her being imprisoned after this point.
[1429] The Wedding of River Song. River says that she “climbed out of the wreck of the Byzantium” and is dressed as she was at the end of Flesh and Stone. She has very possibly been released from prison at this point, although that’s not explicitly stated.
[1430] As the Doctor let slip to her in The Time of Angels, and as she introduces herself in Silence in the Library. Octavian refers to her as “Doctor Song” in The Time of Angels.
[1431] Forest of the Dead. River tells the Doctor, “You never show up in the right order, though. I need the spotter’s guide.” As he doesn’t meet her before his tenth life, it perhaps suggests that River meets other Doctors past the Matt Smith version. This would further violate the notion that River and the Doctor meet in exact reverse order, though.
[1432] At some point before Silence in the Library. If the Doctor does indeed not tell River his real name when they’re wed (The Wedding of River Song), and instead tells her the secret (“Look into my eye”) that he doesn’t have to die after all, then the most likely place that this occurs is when he’s dying and whispers in her ear in Let’s Kill Hitler. That, or the Doctor’s real name actually is “Look Into My Eye”.
[1433] All before Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead.
[1434] Dating Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead (X4.8-4.9) - For River, the story takes place an unspecified amount of time after Flesh and Stone. See the Dating River Song essay.
[1435] Six hundred years after Tomb of Valdemar, according to the Doctor.
[1436] Dating “Fire and Brimstone” (DWM #251-255) - The Doctor says “some two hundred years ago, I saw the Cauldron launched”, a reference to “The Keep”. The humans in this story don’t recognise the Daleks.
[1437] Dating “Wormwood” (DWM #266-271) - It’s “twenty years” since “Fire and Brimstone” according to Chastity. Earth’s moon is here destroyed (albeit without any mention of the environmental havoc such an event would inevitably mean for Earth itself), but might be restored off screen, as it looks whole in “The Child of Time” (DWM). By The Long Game (set in 200,000), Earth is the centre of the Fourth Great and Bountiful Empire, and has five moons.
[1438] “Thirty years ago” in The Mutant Phase.
[1439] “Twenty years” before The Apocalypse Element.
[1440] Dating The Mutant Phase (BF #15) - No date is given, but this is the first Doctor Who audio set in the period of the Dalek Empire series; see the dating notes on The Genocide Machine.
[1441] Dating The Genocide Machine (BF #7) - The dating for this story - which otherwise seems so unimposing - is surprisingly important, in that the whole of the Dalek Empire mini-series and its related Doctor Who audios (The Mutant Phase, The Apocalypse Element, Dust Breeding, Return of the Daleks) are contingent on the placement of this one adventure. (See the dating notes under the individual audios, and especially those under Dalek Empire I, for why.)
Only four pieces of evidence, however, exist to help make this decision: 1. In The Genocide Machine, the war between the Knights of Velyshaa and Earth (mentioned in The Sirens of Time as ending in 3562) is said to be “centuries ago”. 2. The Big Finish website at one point dated The Genocide Machine to 4256. 3. Bev Tarrant, a native to the era of The Genocide Machine, twice states in Benny: The Judas Gift (definitely set in October 2607) that she’s from “three thousand years in the future”. 4. Dalek Empire II (set some “centuries” after The Genocide Machine) ends with a “Kill All Daleks” pulse being sent out into the Milky Way and Seriphia galaxies. (So, any placement for The Genocide Machine can’t be just before a story with high Dalek involvement in those territories.)
The two pieces of evidence central to this discussion are the website date and Bev’s statements. They can’t be reconciled without concluding that when Bev said “three thousand years”, she actually means only about 1650-ish years. Previous editions of Ahistory favoured the website date, but did not include the Benny series. This edition takes the “three thousand years” lines and rounds it somewhat to fit it around other stories, so that The Genocide Machine is set in 5256, not 4256.
One potential hiccup is that this is not long after the native time of Captain Jack Harkness and River Song, in which humanity has time technology at its disposal - whereas it manifestly doesn’t throughout Dalek Empire. This is an issue, however, irregardless of Dalek Empire’s dating - in that one brief period, mankind (or certain memb
ers of it, at the very least) has time-tech, and yet it clearly doesn’t on an ongoing basis. No explanation has been provided in any Doctor Who story for why this is the case.
[1442] Benny: The Judas Gift
[1443] Dating The Apocalypse Element (BF #11) - This is another story set around the time of the Dalek Empire audios.
[1444] Dating Storm Harvest (PDA #23) - No date is given. Reg Gurney, an engineer and spy on Coralee, spent thirty years in the Space Corps and fought in the Dalek Wars, supporting that dating.
[1445] Dating Dust Breeding (BF #21) - It is “several centuries” in Ace’s future, in Earth’s colonial period and after the Dalek Wars. Bev Tarrant is also present, and for her, it is after The Genocide Machine.
[1446] Dating Prime Time (PDA #33) - It is a year after Storm Harvest.
[1447] Dating The Caves of Androzani (19.6) - There is no indication of dating on screen. Sharez Jek seems worried when it appears that the Doctor and Peri are from Earth, suggesting it has political influence (and hasn’t been evacuated). The machine-pistols suggest a colonial setting, but Sirius society is long-established; there seems to be an interstellar economy and the androids are highly advanced. The Spectrox supplies must be so limited as to have little long-term effect on the human race, explaining why it is not referred to in any other story. The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe features a Harvesting team from Androzani Major in the year 5345, and the Harvester team seems to share the same capitalist ethos seen in the earlier story. It seems reasonable to place The Caves of Androzani in roughly the same era - although this is slightly arbitrary, and they could take place many centuries apart.
The Terrestrial Index made a dubious link between the “federal forces” on Androzani Minor and the Galactic Federation (The Curse of Peladon), dating the story to the fifth millennium. Timelink chose “3983”, and About Time thought it was “The future, date unspecified”, while acknowledging that a dating of as early as the twenty-second century was feasible. All of these books, however, were published before being able to take the evidence from The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe into account.
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