On TV, there is no gap in which the first Doctor travelled without companions, although he did so in the Doctor Who Annuals in the sixties. This might suggest that this story takes place before the TV series starts - but the TARDIS is a police box, so this isn’t the case - yet there’s no mention of Susan, and the Doctor has no control over the TARDIS navigation. An alternative is that couple of the novelisations (The Massacre and The Five Doctors) took a cue from the first Doctor’s appearance in The Three Doctors to claim that he had a period of semi-retirement and reflection before his regeneration, spent in a beautiful garden. While it is unlikely that the Doctor dropped off a companion, retrieving them later, The Two Doctors seems to demonstrate that even as early as his second incarnation, the Doctor was able to drop Victoria off and expect to meet her later (and non-TV stories either suggest or state that he’s routinely done that since at least his fifth incarnation).
[1720] The Savages
[1721] Cold Fusion
[1722] The Suns of Caresh
[1723] The Infinity Doctors
[1724] Dating System Wipe (BBC children’s 2-in-1 #4) - The least trustworthy piece of dating evidence here, oddly enough, is the year that the Doctor names: “It’s 2222 AD”, he says (p12), without explaining how he’s come to that conclusion. Then, when Amy asks if the devastation of Chicago “Could [owe to] solar flares? It’s about the right era, isn’t it?” (p13), he gives the bizarre answer of “Possibly.” Even if they believe, per The Beast Below, that the solar flares occurred in the twenty-ninth century (and there’s reason to doubt this; see the dating notes on that story), it makes no sense that the Doctor would now think that the twenty-third century is “about the right era” for the solar flares. It would be like saying that 1340 is “about the right era” for World War II.
To make matters worse, “over one hundred years” (pgs 33, 95) have passed since the cataclysm that drove humanity from Earth - in conjunction with the “2222 AD” figure, this would mean that the solar flares devastated Earth in the early twenty-second century, at the infancy of Earth’s venturing into space and before even the Dalek Invasion of Earth. No matter how cleverly one shuffles Doctor Who continuity, this is a non-starter.
The Parallife constructs have no recollection of the year or what prompted humanity to leave Earth, so the only dating evidence that remains is the nature of the reconstruction itself. Presuming for the moment that this is Earth (and the only thing to substantiate this claim is that Parallife is programmed as a computer copy of Earth), the story occurs when humanity has left its homeworld in the hands of five hundred robot armies, who by all accounts have the ability to level the entire planet and make it suitable for human occupation once more. Again, this is well beyond the time of the solar flares - if humans had such resources and technology when the solar flares struck, it’s doubtful that they would have needed to resort to such desperate measures as venturing away from Sol on top of a space whale (The Beast Below), freezing humans aboard Nerva Beacon and hoping for the best, or leaving people behind to perish in thermic shelters (The Ark in Space). Rory raises this very question (p97), but never gets an answer.
Without more information to go on, the placement here is highly random, but contingent on the construction-robot armies being far beyond the solar flare era. The abandonment of Earth seen in The Mysterious Planet or The Sun Makers seems like reasonable guesses, but the choice made here speculates that the robot armies rebuilding Earth are part of the restoration done by the National Trust prior to The End of the World.
[1725] Dating Forty-Five: “False Gods” (BF #115a) - No date is given, but it’s obviously prior to Earth’s destruction, when the surface is uninhabitable due to the sun’s deterioration.
[1726] “Two hundred sixty years” before the year 4,999,999,999 component of “Agent Provocateur”.
[1727] Dating New Earth (X2.1) - The epilogue clearly occurs before The End of the World, but it’s difficult to judge how many years before, as there’s no way of knowing how long Cassandra survives as an elongated piece of skin.
[1728] Dating “The Forgotten” (IDW DW mini-series #2) - The judge and many other inhabitants appear to be Catkind.
[1729] Dating “Agent Provocateur” (IDW DW mini-series #1) - The date ties in with New Earth; New Savannah is being turned over to the Earth Empire as part of the impending year five billion, and a businessman says, “In eight hours, it’ll be midnight, and we enter the year five billion”. As part of this, a sign reads “Happy New Millennium”. Curiously, in issue #5, the term “fifty-first century” is used to denote “five billion” - the Doctor says the technology being used “shouldn’t exist on Earth outside the fifty-first century” and that he “was there recently... first on Savannah then on Omphalos”, when he clearly visited those worlds in the time zone of New Earth. Martha makes the same mistake - even though Wain is a native of this time, she also says he’s from the fifty-first century. At different points in the story, we’re told that it’s the psychic trauma of the people who have disappeared and the alignment of the planets that causes the Rend.
The Milk Bar sequences (from issue #1 of this mini-series) occur after the Sycorax Tribe of Astrophia died out in the forty-first century, but otherwise shy toward the undatable side of things. Even so, they fit here as well as anywhere else.
[1730] Dating “The Deep Hereafter” (DWM #413) and “The Crimson Hand” (DWM #416-420) - No year or era of time given. The story’s author, Dan McDaid, intended that New Old Detroit was broadly analogous to New New York as seen in New Earth and Gridlock. It seems likely that New Old Detroit isn’t located on the New Earth seen in those stories, as the tenth Doctor would hardly be likely to let Majenta live there prior to a devastating plague that he knows (Gridlock) will wipe out most of the population.
[1731] Dating The End of the World (X1.2) - The Doctor tells Rose “this is the year 5.5/apple/26, five billion years in your future”. This story seems to contradict The Ark (and, by implication, Frontios), which saw the destruction of the Earth a mere ten million years in our future, and had a different fate for humanity. The obvious inference to make is that the Earth wasn’t completely destroyed in The Ark, and the National Trust’s renovations were more extensive than the Doctor told Rose.
[1732] New Earth
[1733] Dating New Earth (X2.1) - It is “twenty-three years” after The End of the World.
[1734] “Twenty-four years” before Gridlock.
[1735] “Twenty-three years” before Gridlock.
[1736] “Twelve years” before Gridlock.
[1737] “Three years” before Gridlock.
[1738] Dating Gridlock (X3.3) - The Doctor gives the date as “the year five billion and fifty three”.
[1739] Gridlock
[1740] New Earth
[1741] The Unicorn and the Wasp
[1742] The Feast of Axos
[1743] Colony in Space. It’s possible the Doctor witnessed this for himself. It doesn’t contradict The Ark, which had Earth crashing into the Sun, not the Sun going supernova, or The End of the World, where the Sun merely expands enough to destroy the Earth.
[1744] Dating “Autopia” (IDW DW one-shot #3) - We’re told, unhelpfully, that it’s “somewhere, someplace, sometime”. The people of Autopia are described as “human”. This story has been placed in the far future.
[1745] Dating The Savages (3.9) - At the end of The Gunfighters, the Doctor claims that they have now landed at “a distant point in time” (see the quote above). The Elders have the technology to track the TARDIS, but are not capable of time travel themselves. They declare themselves to be “human”.
[1746] “A few years” before The Five Companions.
[1747] The Five Companions
[1748] Dating The Armageddon Factor (16.6) - No clues are given on screen, but The Chaos Pool stipulates that Atrios exists “much closer” to the end of time - an opposite number, of sorts, to the Teuthoidians who stem from the universe’s early days. Marking a mor
e specific placement than that, however, is a bit problematic.
It’s said that Princess Astra lives to be more than 200 following The Armageddon Factor, and she participates in events on the planet Chaos - which is said to exist sixty-six minutes from the end of time (The Chaos Pool). However, this is not to say that The Armageddon Factor literally takes place just two centuries before the universe’s end. Firstly, it’s very hard to believe that a society of Atrios’ level could be functioning so close to the universe’s total heat death without specific technology in place (as that of the Grace or the Council of Eight in Sometime Never) to counter-act this. Second, it’s doubly hard to believe that Astra and the Atrions accompanying her could have been flitting about in a spaceship without noticing that the universe is little more than an hour away from total extinction. Third, The Chaos Pool ends with Zara retiring to Atrios - not something she’d be likely to do if it had only sixty-six minutes left to exist.
It’s far more likely that Chaos is held in suspension at the exact moment of sixty-six minutes from the end of time, and that some time-shifting is required to visit it. As further proof of this, time on Chaos seems to operate independently from that of the outside universe - there’s no sense, for instance, that those on Chaos have only sixty-six minutes to live, just as more than eleven days can pass for those living within the boundaries of Faction Paradox’s Eleven-Day Empire.
[1749] The Chaos Pool
[1750] Timewyrm: Apocalypse, The Infinity Doctors, Father Time, Hope, The Eye of the Tyger, Sometime Never.
[1751] “Eight billion years” after Cold Fusion.
[1752] The Eye of the Tyger
[1753] Dating Timewyrm: Apocalypse (NA #3) - The novel is set “several billion years” in the future (p3), “ten billion years” before the end of the universe (p178).
[1754] Zagreus. These facts were presented as part of a simulation, and so may not take place.
[1755] The Quantum Archangel. The Ministers first appeared in the short story “The Duke of Dominoes” (Decalog, 1994).
[1756] The Infinity Doctors, Father Time.
[1757] Unnatural History
[1758] Dating Father Time (EDA #41) - The exact timescale is unclear, and is stated to be “a few million years in the future”, “several million years hence”, and “a million years in the future”. The physical state of the universe, however, suggests it is much later than that.
[1759] Dating Miranda (Miranda comic #1-3) - It’s “billions of years” in the future. Three issues of this projected six-issue story were published by Comeuppance Comics. The story simplified/ignored some of the plot points in Father Time (such as the existence of Cate, a robot Miranda, Miranda not knowing at first that Ferran was evil and the inclusion of the characters Rum and Thelash, who apparently died in Father Time).
[1760] Dating Hope (EDA #53) - The Doctor pushes the TARDIS to see how far into the future he can take it and the TARDIS goes “too far”. This is the same far, far future time period referred to in The Infinity Doctors and Father Time, which alluded to Silver and this period (p191).
[1761] Sometime Never
[1762] The Magic Mousetrap
[1763] Dating Singularity (BF #76) - It is clearly toward the end of the universe. It’s said that the Ember base is located “trillions of years” in the future, but it’s also mentioned that, “This far into the future, numbers become meaningless.” Technically, Xen’s claim that he is “the last human” seems dubious, as episodes such as The End of the World and New Earth indicate that no purebred humans exist after Cassandra’s era. The planet Ember bears no apparent relation to the star of the same name from The Suns of Caresh, although that story might explain why the Doctor here mutters “Ember… I’ve heard that name before.”
[1764] “Thousands of years” before Utopia.
[1765] Utopia. It’s said in The End of the World that the Face of Boe also hails from the Silver Devastation.
[1766] Dating Utopia (X3.11) - The TARDIS is propelled into the far, far future, with the last date the Doctor reads being “one hundred trillion years” (it’s possible it lands even later). As in The Sun Makers and Frontios, the Doctor states that the Time Lords didn’t travel this far into the future, although he never explicitly rules out the possibility he’s been here before, as we saw in a number of books and audios.
[1767] The Sound of Drums
[1768] Last of the Time Lords. The number of Toclafane is given by the Master in The Sound of Drums.
[1769] Timewyrm: Revelation
[1770] The Cradle of the Snake - provided we take the title literally.
[1771] Dating The Infinity Doctors (PDA #17) - The date is given (p137). This is “within a few decades of Event Two” (p130).
[1772] The Dark Flame
[1773] Sometime Never
[1774] Benny: Epoch: Judgement Day
[1775] Dating The Judgement of Isskar and The Chaos Pool (BF #117, 119) - Chaos is held in stasis “sixty-six minutes” from the end of the universe. Details on the Key were first given in The Ribos Operation. The fifth Doctor knows that Romana has returned to Gallifrey (in accordance with Goth Opera); she’s not yet President, but she might already be a High Council member.
[1776] Dating Graceless: The End (Graceless #1.3) - Events happen on the planet Chaos, following The Chaos Pool.
[1777] Dating Sometime Never (EDA #67) - The scene in the Vortex Palace ends with the end of the universe.
[1778] “Agent Provocateur”
[1779] Timewyrm: Apocalypse
[1780] The Infinity Doctors
[1781] “Hunger from the Ends of Time!”
[1782] FP: Of the City of the Saved, with additional detail given in FP: The Book of the War.
[1783] The prologue to FP: Warlords of Utopia, published at the end of FP: Of the City of the Saved...
[1784] Dating FP: Of the City of the Saved... (FP novel #2) - According to FP: The Book of the War (p33), the City exists after the end of the current universe, and before the beginning of the next one. The short story collection FP: A Romance in Twelve Parts contains scattered accounts from the Civil War that breaks out following Of the City of the Saved, citing that casualties at one point exceed 4,000,000,000,000.
[1785] Millennial Rites
[1786] “The Stockbridge Child”
Cracks in Time
The Cracks in Time seen throughout Series 5 have three primary functions…
1. Erase individuals who are exposed to the Cracks’ time energy from history. As the Doctor tells Amy (Flesh and Stone): “If the [Crack in Time] catches up with you, you’ll never have been born. It will erase every moment of your existence. You will never have lived at all.”
2. Consume/erase nodes of history. This seems to explain why, in Victory of the Daleks, Amy doesn’t remember the Dalek invasion of 2009 (The Stolen Earth). In Flesh and Stone, the Doctor implies that the same fate befell the Cyber King (The Next Doctor).
3. Act as “magic doorways”, i.e. enable alien races to cross from Point A to Point B in space/time (The Vampires of Venice, The Pandorica Opens).
Why the Cracks function as “magic doorways” and also “erase things from history” is never said – their abilities change from story to story, per Steven Moffat regarding Doctor Who as a fable. The most candid, if unsatisfying, explanation is to say that the Cracks function as magic doorways “just because they do”.
However, do the Cracks in Time erase individuals from history entirely? Despite the Doctor’s insistence about this, all the evidence says otherwise. When the Cracks “erase someone from history”, that person’s absence does not create a new timeline - Amy not only keeps existing when the Cracks consume her parents (pre-The Eleventh Hour), the alleged “historical deletion” of her lifetime best friend and fiancé causes no long-term personality changes beyond her no longer being sad, as she can’t remember that a Silurian shot him dead (Cold Blood). Nor does Rory’s “erasure” seem to affect River – which it should, as he’s her f
ather.
Granted, Amy is unique because she grew up with a Crack in her bedroom, but the same principle applies to four of Father Octavian’s Clerics being “erased” (Flesh and Stone). If the Clerics “never lived at all”, then as each one is dematerialised, another should instantly appear. Octavian started the mission with twenty Clerics, so if four were retroactively “never born”, it shouldn’t create a timeline where he only took sixteen instead.
More noticeably, when the Doctor is “erased” (The Big Bang), Earth in 2010 still exists. Considering how many times he has saved the planet, deleting the Doctor from history should, almost without fail, result in a 2010 where Earth is under alien domination or totally destroyed (see Pyramids of Mars, et al). Similarly, Captain Jack’s Torchwood team and Sarah Jane’s adeptness at fighting aliens would never have happened without the Doctor, so every menace they defeated in their own series would be back on the table.
What must actually happen when the Cracks consume somebody is that said person’s (to coin a term) “temporal opacity” must get lowered to zero. The effects of their lives remain, but they’re so “temporally transparent” that nobody can acknowledge said effects. When Amy “remembers” the Doctor back into existence (The Big Bang), it’s likely that her “seeing” his existence and acknowledging him as real restores his temporal opacity to normal. This supports the continued (and otherwise nonsensical) claim that, “If something can be remembered, it can be brought back…”
A final question: Is the universe that the Doctor “restarts” in The Big Bang a different continuity from the previous one? The answer would seem to be “no”… the whole point of the universe being rebooted is that everything comes back as it was before, not “everything comes back, save for the huge tracks of history that the Cracks destroyed”. In Series 6, the only thing suggesting that history has changed is in A Good Man Goes to War, when the Doctor develops a convoluted theory to specify that Amy and Rory conceived River in the TARDIS on their wedding night. But this comes from a being who claims to not really understand human sexuality (“[Sex] is all human-y, private stuff… They don’t put up a balloon, or anything”), and might just be crafting a tortured alternate explanation. Rather than attributing the timing of River’s conception to a massive overwrite of universal history, Occam’s Razor suggests that she could have “started” at any point in Amy and Rory’s TARDIS travels because they were feeling saucy and didn’t have a prophylactic handy.
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