B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (186 page)

[
1123
]
The Runaway Bride

[
1124
]
Army of Ghosts
. The sarcophagus is evidently a reference to
Pyramids of Mars
.

[
1125
]
TW: Cyberwoman

[
1126
]
Made of Steel

[
1127
]
TW: Cyberwoman,
with additional info from Torchwood.co.uk.

[
1128
] The Doctor deduces this in
The Next Doctor
.

[
1129
]
TW: Fragments

[
1130
]
The End of Time
(TV)

[
1131
] Dating
TW: Fragments
(
TW
2.12) - Ianto surely wouldn’t waste much time in approaching Jack after the destruction of Canary Wharf (in
Doomsday
), as he joins Torchwood Cardiff to care for his injured girlfriend, who was partly cyber-converted in the battle there. The modern-day component of
Fragments
occurs “21 months” after this flashback.
TW: Dead Man Walking
, set in 2008, says that the first Resurrection Gauntlet was recovered “last year”, i.e. in 2007.

[
1132
]
TW: Long Time Dead
, at an unspecified point between the Gauntlet’s recovery and Suzie’s first death.

[
1133
] “Two years “ before
TW: Almost Perfect.

[
1134
] “Six months” before
The Runaway Bride
.

[
1135
] Dating
Blink
(X3.10) - The year is given by Kathy Nightingale (who claims she was transported from 2007 to 1920) and the Doctor, who says it’s “thirty-eight years” after 1969. The epilogue of the story takes place in 2008.

[
1136
] Dating “Fellow Travellers” (
DWM
#164-166) - Date unknown, but no-one has been inside the house “for years”.

The House at Allen Road

A good example of continuity between the New Adventures and the
DWM
strip is that both establish that the Doctor has a house in England which he occasionally visits.

The house is usually associated with the seventh Doctor. It first appeared in “Fellow Travellers” and
Cat’s Cradle: Warhead
. It was named Smithwood Manor in “Ravens” and “The Last Word”. The Doctor owned it at least as early as the Second World War (
Just War
) and has it in the early twenty-second century (
Transit
).

The eighth Doctor visits the house in
The Dying Days
and mentions it in
The Scarlet Empress
. He also has a house in the 1980s in part two and three of
Father Time
, which may or may not be the same house.
So Vile a Sin
depicts a parallel universe where the third Doctor lived in the house for a thousand years until the thirtieth century.
Verdigris
has the third Doctor using the house during his exile to Earth. The house is stolen in “Question Mark Pyjamas” (a short story from
Decalog 2
), but the seventh Doctor, Ace and Bernice recover it.

“Fellow Travellers”, “Ravens” and
Cat’s Cradle: Warhead
all indicate that the house has a mysterious reputation - and the last two have the street sign altered to read “Alien Road”.

[
1137
] Dating “Ravens” (
DWM
#188-190) - It’s “the near, harsh future”, and the story takes place at the same time as
Cat’s Cradle: Warhead
.

[
1138
] Dating
The Nightmare of Black Island
(NSA #10) - It’s “late September” and the story is set in the present day. This would mean that the tenth Doctor and Rose have landed a couple of months or so after the Battle of Canary Wharf in
Doomsday
- hardly impossible, as
The Nightmare of Black Island
is an isolated incident, and provides them with no warning about what awaits their personal futures.

[
1139
] Dating
Cat’s Cradle: Warhead
(NA #6) - A specific date for this story and its two sequels is not established in the books themselves. The blurb states “The time is the near future - all too near”. Shreela, a contemporary of Ace from Perivale first seen in
Survival
, dies of an “auto immune disease” at a tragically early age (p19).

The book is set in a year when Halloween falls on a Saturday (on p199 it’s Halloween, on p250 it’s the next day, a Sunday), making it either 1998, 2009 or 2015 - although in a number of stories, the real calendar doesn’t match that of the
Doctor Who
universe. Ace’s clothes are how Mancuso, a policewoman, dressed “twenty years ago” (p202), and Ace is from the late 1980s.
Just
War
confirms that the Cartmel books take place in the “twenty-first century timezone” (p250). However, mention is made of “President Norris” (p26) - with Obama being president in
The End of Time
(TV), set in 2009, an earlier dating for
Cat’s Cradle: Warhead
is preferable (see the American Presidents in the
Doctor Who
Universe sidebar). In his “Future History Continuity” document, Ben Aaronovitch suggested that
Cat’s Cradle: Warhead
was set “c.2007”.

[
1140
] Dating
Project: Lazarus
(BF #45) - Nimrod implies “three years” have passed since the first installment.

[
1141
]
Happy Endings

The Reconstruction

The televised stories set in the twenty-first century offer a broadly consistent view of a peaceful Earth with a single world government, in which people of all nations cooperate in the field of space exploration and social progress. To reconcile this with the rather more downbeat New Adventures set in this century, Ben Aaronovitch suggested in his “Future History Continuity” document that a concerted global effort was made at some point in the early twenty-first century to repair the damage that had been done to Earth’s environment. A “Clean Up” is first hinted at the end of
Iceberg
, which is where we learn of the “Arms for Humanity” concert and the procuring of drinking water from icebergs, but we might suggest that it only gains impetus after
Cat’s Cradle: Warhead
, when all the corporations put their full weight behind it.

This process was named “the Reconstruction” in
Happy Endings
. We would suggest that this period of international co-operation lasts for around seventy years. Earth during this time is a relatively happy, clean and optimistic place.

[
1142
] Travelling by car is a lot easier in
Warlock
than
Cat’s Cradle: Warhead
(
Warlock
, p179), and we learn about the monitoring systems (p224) and new road system (p211), yet London traffic has barely improved (p265).

[
1143
] Dating
Torchwood
Series 1 - Gwen joins Torchwood after
Doomsday
, as events of that story are mentioned in
TW: Everything Changes
and
TW: Day One,
and form the basis of
TW: Cyberwoman
. This shifts the Series 1 stories to a year after they were broadcast, like all the “present day”
Doctor Who
stories since
Aliens of London
.

In
TW: Miracle Day
, Esther says Gwen joined Torchwood in “October 2006”, with the “year ahead” rule seemingly forgotten about (and in a script by Russell T. Davies, who engineered the convention, no less!). There are a couple of escape contingencies here... the CIA files that Esther is reading from might list the year wrong, or she might misread the year while repeating the information to Rex.

If the “October” reference is correct, however, then every story between
TW: Everything Changes
and
TW: Border Princes
(set at “nearly Halloween”) must happen in that month. Also,
Everything Changes
must take place in
early
October, as “three months” (technically accurate with benefit of rounding) pass between it and
TW: They Keep Killing Suzie
(which must occur before
TW: Out of Time
, set near Christmas).

Most details presented in
Torchwood
Series 1 support a dating of 2007 - in
TW: Ghost Machine
, for example, 1941 is “sixty-six” years ago. However, there are some anomalies in stories such as
TW: Random Shoes
and
TW: Out of Time.
See the individual episodes for more detail.

[
1144
] Archie is cited by name in
TW: The Twilight Streets
and
The Torchwood Archives
.

[
1145
]
TW: Everything Changes

[
1146
] How Public is Torchwood?

In
Tooth and Claw
(set in 1879), Queen Victoria creates Torchwood as an ultra-secret organisation devoted to defending Britain’s borders against alien/supernatural incursion. Similarly,
The Christmas Invasion
(set in 2006) seems to imply that Torchwood is so secret and so clandestine, the Prime Minister - in this case, Harriet Jones - isn’t even supposed to know that it exists. Yet in
Torchwood
Series 1, Captain Jack and company can race through the Cardiff streets with the name “Torchwood” prominently displayed on the side of their SUV, the group (or Owen, at least) orders pizza under the name “Torchwood” and so forth.

The on-screen evidence offers a simple solution to this, even though
Torchwood
Series 1 doesn’t spell it out very succinctly: The authorities are well aware of Torchwood’s existence, and believe the group is a Special Ops team to whom they must yield authority. Episodes that support this notion include
TW: Everything Changes
(the police blatantly regard Torchwood as Special Ops),
TW: Cyberwoman
(Gwen mentions Torchwood to a contact at Jodrell Bank),
TW: Countrycide
(Gwen thinks a “policeman” - actually a treacherous cannibal - might know of Torchwood as a Special Ops group),
TW: They Keep Killing Suzie
(police units clear the roads for the Torchwood SUV) and more.

Put very simply, it’s only the organisation’s goal of harvesting alien technology that’s secret, not the very mention of Torchwood itself. This fits most of the evidence, but requires one to retroactively assume that in
The Christmas Invasion
, Harriet Jones is suggesting that the Prime Minister isn’t supposed to know Torchwood’s true purpose, or that they have a super-weapon capable of obliterating spaceships. At the very least, this explains how Jack can talk to the Prime Minister about Torchwood funding issues (
TW: Greeks Bearing Gifts
).

In
Fear Her
(set in 2012), Torchwood is mentioned in a TV broadcast, but the reference is too obscure to tell if the group’s real agenda is known to the public, or if they’re still considered an elite branch of the military.