B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (181 page)

[
986
] Dating
Sometime Never
(EDA #67) - An invitation states that an exhibition at the Institute of Anthropology opens on 31st January, 2004.
Sometime Never
was published in the same month.

[
987
] “A year” before
The Gallifrey Chronicles
. Greg was introduced in
Timeless
.

[
988
]
Transit of Venus
. The most recent transit happened in June 2012 - another won’t occur until 2117.

[
989
]
The Five Companions
. This happens at an unspecified point after Ben and Polly become a couple on New Year’s Eve, 1999. Ian, although constantly said to be “older”, is still spry enough to run down corridors and dodge Dalek laser beams with the best of them.

[
990
] Dating
Project: Lazarus
(BF #45) - The dating clues are very conflicting. According to Professor Harket’s journal, the story opens on 18th July, 2004 , and the first track is explicitly titled as such. However, the Doctor says it’s “late November”. He lets the TARDIS choose the destination, though, so perhaps he’s confused. Nobody can quite agree on how much time has passed since
Project: Twilight
- the Doctor thinks it’s been “a couple years”, Cassie suggests it’s been “a few years”, and Nimrod specifies that it’s “five years”.
Project: Destiny
seems to establish that
Project: Twilight
was set in 2001, and its back cover reiterates that Cassie died in 2004.

[
991
] Dating
The Tomorrow Windows
(EDA #69) - Trix’s clothes are “very 2004” (p13). The Earth year 2004 is equivalent to the Galactic Year 2457. All the events on alien planets in
The Tomorrow Windows
seem contemporaneous, and the Doctor even says on p278, “we only travelled in space, not in time”.

[
992
] Dating
TW: Trace Memory
(
TW
novel #5) - Owen is now a doctor (
TW: Greeks Bearing Gifts
says that he was six months into his residency in September 2001) and has a girlfriend (who isn’t necessarily his future finance, seen in
TW: Fragments
), but the year is still a bit unclear.

[
993
] Dating
TW: Fragments
(
TW
2.12) - It’s “five years” prior to the story’s 2009 component. This synchs with
TW: Greeks Bearing Gifts
(set in 2007, where it’s said that Tosh has been with Torchwood for three years) and
TW: To the Last Man
(set in 2008, in which Toshiko has known Tommy - who revives from stasis annually - for “four years”).
The Torchwood Archives
is the odd man out on this one, saying that Tosh was arrested “late 2004/early 2005”, but held for eight months before Jack approached her.
TW: SkyPoint
alternatively says that she was imprisoned for “six months” (p87).

[
994
] Dating
The Sleep of Reason
(EDA #70) - It’s the “near future” according to the blurb, but references to things like Limp Biskit and
Casualty
suggest it’s at most only a few years after publication. It is “a hundred years or so” since 1903 (p273).

[
995
] Dating
The Algebra of Ice
(PDA #68) - It’s apparently set “several years” after the Brigadier first met the seventh Doctor (in
Battlefield
). From his perspective, the Brigadier previously met the seventh Doctor in
No Future
, but the Doctor mind-wiped the Brigadier’s recollection of those events, and doesn’t restore these memories until
Happy Endings
, set in 2010.
The Algebra of Ice
falls in the period where the Brigadier would recall
Battlefield
as their first meeting. Lloyd Rose wrote this story with “the modern day” in mind.

[
996
] Dating
The City of the Dead
(EDA #49) - No year is given, but it’s “a few years” after Anji’s time.

[
997
] Dating
The Deadstone Memorial
(EDA #71) - There’s no specific date beyond “early twenty-first century” (p51). It’s set in the modern day.

[
998
] “Two years” prior to the 2007 component of
TW: Fragments
.

[
999
] Dating
The End of Time
(X4.17-4.18) - Rose gives the date.

[
1000
] Dating
The Eleventh Hour
(X5.1) - In the precredits sequence (a late addition to the story), as the TARDIS is seen swooping over London, both the Millennium Dome (started in 1996) and the London Eye (built in 1999) are visible. The opening action, then, presumably entails the new Doctor flailing about in the same time zone in which he regenerated, not when he meets Amy.

[
1001
] Dating
Iris: Wildthyme at Large
(Iris audio #1.1) - The story seems contemporary with the audio’s release in November 2005. A case could be made for dating it slightly later, though, as
Iris: The Devil and Ms. Wildthyme
- which takes right after this story - is said to occur “thirty years” after December 1978.

[
1002
]
Iris: Enter Wildthyme

[
1003
] Dating
Iris: The Devil in Ms. Wildthyme
(Iris audio #1.2) - The story directly follows
Iris: Wildthyme at Large
.

[
1004
] Dating
SJA: Lost in Time
(
SJA
4.5) - Date unknown, but the setting seems a bit contemporary in that the babysitter has a compact mobile. Even so, this portion of the story is unlikely to occur simultaneous to Sarah’s starting point in 2010, as the Shopkeeper meant to send her “through time” to this location.

[
1005
] Dating
Erimem: The Coming of the Queen
(BF New Worlds novel #2) - Wilton is said to discover the tomb “today”, and the novel was published in 2005.

[
1006
] Dating
Rose
(X1.1) - The year isn’t specified, but there’s a contemporary setting. The story is clearly set after 2003, as the Doctor reads a paperback copy of the novel
The Lovely Bones
by Alice Sebold.
Aliens of London
shows a missing persons poster that definitively cites Rose as last seen on 6th March, 2005. The casualty figures come from the www.whoisdoctorwho.co.uk website, which also has pictures with time-stamps that offer an alternative date 26th March, the day of broadcast.

[
1007
]
Aliens of London.
Mickey’s surname isn’t established on screen until
Boom Town.

[
1008
] Dating
UNIT
Series 1 (
UNIT: The Coup
, #1.0;
UNIT: Time Heals
, #1.1;
UNIT: Snake Head
, #1.2;
UNIT: The Longest Night
, #1.3;
UNIT: The Wasting
, #1.4) - The audios were released from December 2004 to June 2005. The blurb for
The Coup
(the prelude to the mini-series, packaged with
DWM
#351) says it takes place in “London, the Near Future”. Two details support this - a) the train bombings in Spain that occurred in 2004 are said to have happened “a few years ago”, and b) Captain Winnington was born in the 1980s, suggesting a mid-to-late 2000s dating at the minimum. The Brigadier also suggests in
The Coup
that
The Silurians
occurred “thirty years ago”; that’s subject to UNIT dating.

Everything else about the mini-series seems contemporary, including the suggestion that some of the terrorist incidents are reprisals against Britain for its military intervention in Iraq - a hot button issue in 2005. Most importantly, the
UNIT
production team had no way of taking the new series - in particular the continual social disruption and political upheaval seen throughout Series 1 to Series 4 - into account. (Along those lines, it’s very hard to believe that the Brigadier’s public unveiling of a Silurian would so easily be dismissed after the likes of
The Christmas Invasion
, etc.) Trying to place
UNIT
in-between developments in New
Who
becomes a fairly ridiculous shell game, especially as the Prime Minister seen (or, rather, heard) in
The Longest Night
and
The Wasting
clearly isn’t Harriet Jones or Harold Saxon. It’s feasible to think that the
UNIT
Prime Minister was in power between Jones and Saxon, but then the lack of any mention in Series 2 of the compound crises and high death toll in
UNIT
becomes conspicuous by its absence. It’s alternatively tempting to think that the
UNIT
Prime Minister is Brian Green from
TW: Children of Earth
, but they don’t sound the same. The idea that the
UNIT
Prime Minister succeeds Green isn’t very appealing, as
Children of Earth
is set in 2009, and so
UNIT
- featuring the older Brigadier - would have to occur in a hellishly narrow window before he’s restored to his youth in
Happy Endings
.

The far simplest solution is to place
UNIT
at time of its release, and to assume that the Prime Minister of
UNIT
is the one whose corpse is seen in
Aliens of London
. A 2005 dating has the massive benefit of reconciling the comparatively weakened UNIT in the audios with the far more powerful group in New
Who
, which is fortified enough to have a flying aircraft carrier. Under this scenario, the only lingering issue is that 10 Downing Street is destroyed twice - in
The Longest Night
and
World War Three
- and was presumably rebuilt in-between, all in the space of about a year.

Within
UNIT
itself, events happen in fairly rapid succession. Presuming Colonel Dalton’s statement that he fought an invisible vampire on Southend “hours ago” can be taken at face value, a day at most passes between episode two (
Snake Head
) and episode three (
The Longest Night
), and two weeks pass between episode three and episode four (
The Wasting
) as Colonel Chaudhry recovers from the explosion that destroys 10 Downing Street.
The Wasting
also claims that the flu outbreak caused by the virus released in episode one (
Time Heals
) started “a few weeks ago”, and so it’s possible, depending on when the first symptoms manifested, that the entire mini-series takes place over that duration of time. Either way, Kevin Lee claims in
Snake Head
that “it will be summer soon”, so we know that episodes two to four (and possibly
The Coup
and
Time Heals
as well) take place in spring.

The Coup
is the first
Doctor Who
story to state that the Brigadier has been knighted, which was later mentioned on screen in
The Poison Sky
and
SJA: Enemy of the Bane
. Colonel Brimmicombe-Wood first appeared in the apocryphal
Sympathy for the Devil
, and was mentioned in
Project: Valhalla
. Albion Hospital was seen in
Aliens of London
and
The Empty Child
. Mention is made of Planet 3, the broadcaster from in Big Finish’s
Sarah Jane Smith
audios. The ICIS isn’t related to Torchwood, although both groups share a “Britain first” philosophy.