B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (183 page)

[
1031
]
Interference

[
1032
]
St Anthony’s Fire

[
1033
]
Placebo Effect
(p12).

[
1034
]
Iceberg

[
1035
]
Something Inside
. This occurred on 25th May, 2005.

[
1036
] “Years” before
TW:
“Somebody Else’s Problem”.

[
1037
]
TW: In the Shadows

[
1038
]
TW:
“The Legacy of Torchwood One!”

[
1039
]
Voyage of the Damned

[
1040
] Dating
TW: Trace Memory
(
TW
novel #5) - Gwen is already a police officer and here meets Andy, but the year is unclear. Rhys eats some Marmite even though the “sell-by date said fifth of March” (p80), so Bellini must visit after that.

[
1041
] Events in 2006 include the “present day” sequences of
Doctor Who
Series 1 from
Aliens of London
onwards, and
The Christmas Invasion.

The Year Ahead Era (2006-2009)

When the ninth Doctor returns Rose home in
Aliens of London,
“twelve months” after she left (in
Rose
), the subsequent “present day”
Doctor Who
episodes (as well as many of the related
Torchwood
and
The Sarah Jane Adventures
stories) adhere to a dating scheme in which they are set (roughly) a year or so after broadcast. This paradigm ends with
Planet of the Dead
, which has to occur in 2009, the year in which it aired (see the dating notes on that story for why).

Torchwood
Series 1 adheres to the “year ahead“ approach, Series 2 deviates from the pattern, Series 3 (a.k.a. TW: Children of Earth) occurs about two months rather than a year ahead of broadcast, and Series 4 (a.k.a. TW: Miracle Day) happens in the same year it was shown, 2011.

The way in which
The Sarah Jane Adventures
initially accommodates the “year ahead of broadcast” dating scheme, then returns to a “time of broadcast” setting midway through Series 3, means that the whole of the show (Series 1-5) elapses over a total of two years and nine months (from August 2008 to May 2011).

See the entries for 2007, 2008 and 2009 (and by extension 2010 and 2011) for a more specific list of which stories occur in those years.

[
1042
] Per his on-screen bio in
The Sontaran Stratagem
.

[
1043
] “Five years” before
TW: Miracle Day.

[
1044
]
TW: Miracle Day.
It’s variously said that Danes uttered his quote during his arrest/at his trial.

[
1045
]
Blood of the Daleks
,
Human Resources.

[
1046
] “Three years” prior to
TW: Almost Perfect.

[
1047
] The background to
Aliens of London
and the Slitheen’s subsequent appearances, as detailed in
SJA: Revenge of the Slitheen
and
SJA: The Gift
. The two accounts don’t entirely match up: where does Raxas Prime (another name for Raxacoricofallapatorius, perhaps?) fit into the Raxas Alliance hierarchy? And if the Slitheen were given death sentences, why did the Judoon “force them out” rather than arresting them? (Perhaps the Slitheen were “forced out” in the sense that they fled in the wake of the Judoon’s overwhelming force.) Either way, the timeframe of exactly when all of this occurred is uncertain.

[
1048
] The year is unknown, but she’s alive in the 2004 portion of
TW: Fragments
, and yet is a ghost in
TW: End of Days
(set in early 2008).

[
1049
] Dating
Human Resources
(BF BBC7 #1.7-1.8) - Lucie has been “pulled back to her natural place in time”, which according to
Blood of the Daleks
is 2006.

[
1050
] Dating
Night Thoughts
(BF #79) - The setting is roughly contemporary, and the audio was released in February 2006. Dickens and the Deacon served in the Falklands War (which took place in 1982), and the researchers have subsequently met or permanently lived on the island for the last thirteen years.

[
1051
] Dating
TW: Trace Memory
(
TW
novel #5) - Cromwell’s death is dated to “14/02/2006” (p99).

[
1052
] Dating
Let’s Kill Hitler
(X6.8) - The three of them are acquainted while age seven, and this happens after Amy has known Rory for “what, ten years?” The way in which Mels helps to push the two of them together means that River Song, as if her life wasn’t complicated enough, helped to facilitate her own conception.

[
1053
]
The Girl Who Waited

[
1054
]
TW: Exit Wounds
. This confirms that “Dr Sato” in
Aliens of London
, as played by Naoko Mori, is the same character as Toshiko from
Torchwood
.

[
1055
] Dating
Aliens of London
/
World War Three
(X1.4-1.5) - It is “twelve months” since
Rose
, and a missing persons poster says Rose has been missing since 6th March, 2005 - so it’s March 2006, and for all we know specifically 6th March. The (BBC’s) UNIT website gave the story the date of “28 June 2006”.

Harriet Jones, British Prime Minister

We learn in
The Christmas Invasion
that Harriet Jones took office shortly after
World War Three
, winning a general election by a landslide. As she’s a member of the governing party, she presumably became its leader (perhaps unopposed), so became Prime Minister, then called a snap election. In
World War Three,
the ninth Doctor remembers her ushering in the British Golden Age and serving three terms.

Three full terms as Prime Minister would be fifteen years, although constitutionally it’s technically possible - if highly unlikely - that someone could serve three terms as a Prime Minister in a matter of months. As of
Aliens in London
, Harriet Jones was almost certainly Prime Minister for around a decade. We might speculate that Jones was a prime mover behind the Reconstruction mentioned in some of the New Adventures, itself portrayed as the beginning of a golden age. There’s a female Prime Minister in
The Shadows of Avalon
who, retrospectively, could well be Harriet Jones. Shortly after that, in stories like
Time of the Daleks
and
Trading Futures
, British politics becomes more turbulent.

However... at the end of
The Christmas Invasion,
the Doctor seems to abruptly unseat Jones from office, and potentially cancels out this history. From stories like
Father’s Day
and
I am a Dalek
, it seems the Doctor is “allowed” to make small historical changes, but averting the career of a three-term Prime Minister would seem to cross the line. Does the Doctor
really
deny Britain its Golden Age because he’s fallen out with Jones? At the very least, he certainly erases Jones’ part in it. (For more on this, see the “Vote Saxon” essay.)

The Doctor doesn’t seem to know much about the history of the first decade of the twenty-first century - he explicitly says he doesn’t know about the “first contact” situation seen in
Aliens of London
(a remarkable gap in his knowledge of Earth’s history, whichever way you look at it). Compare and contrast with Captain Jack’s continuous assertion in
Torchwood
that the twenty-first century is the time that “everything changes”.

[
1056
]
The Christmas Invasion

[
1057
]
Boom Town

[
1058
]
TW: Slow Decay
. A potential glitch is that Ianto needs to ask if Toshiko was involved - and she was.

[
1059
] Dating “F.A.Q.” (
DWM
#369-371) - The date is given, and means Rose is here travelling a year or so into her past (although the Doctor had been planning to take her to China, not London).

[
1060
] Dating
The Time Travellers
(PDA #75) - The dates are all given. The implication of the book is that the “real” timeline of the universe is one without the Doctor, so one where the monsters win. The Doctor is actually changing history when he defeats them. WOTAN appeared in
The War Machines
, and the Dalek technology stems from
Remembrance of the Daleks
.

[
1061
]
The Slitheen Excursion
(p129). This is unrelated to
The Time Travellers
, which occurs on the very same day.

[
1062
] Dating
Winner Takes All
(NSA #3) - The story is set after
Aliens of London/World War Three
and before
Boom Town
.

[
1063
] Dating
Circular Time
: “Autumn” (BF #91) - The story seems to end in early September, with the Doctor and Nyssa lodging in Stockbridge for at least five weeks beforehand. The year isn’t given, but it’s suggested that the Doctor has been coming to Stockbridge (the setting for his
DWM
comic strips) to play cricket for some time now. (Specifically, it’s said that the clubhouse has photographs of “the Doctor’s family” going back years.) A contemporary dating is supported by mention that the whole country has gone a bit mad about cricket since “England won the Ashes” - presumably a reference to the 2005 series, in which England bested Australia and won for the first time in eighteen years.

Traken Village isn’t real, as appealing as it might sound. The Doctor says that Nyssa (a Trakenite) and Andrew (a human) have roughly the same lifespan, which isn’t helpful to anyone trying to reconcile discrepancies in the Doctor’s age by suggesting that he and Nyssa travelled together for many years (possibly even decades) between
Time-Flight
and
Arc of Infinity
.

[
1064
] Dating “A Groatsworth of Wit” (
DWM
#363-#364) - Greene is transported to the present day.

[
1065
] Dating
Boom Town
(X1.11) - A caption at the start says it is “Six Months Later” than
World War Three
. The evening is “freezing” and it’s dark relatively early, suggesting it’s at least September (the month it would be if
World War Three
was set in March). A mention of Justicia in the story is a reference to the ninth Doctor novel
The Monsters Inside
. The mention of venom grubs - named as such in
The Web Planet
novelisation (entitled
The Zarbi
), but called “larvae guns” in the TV story - suggests Margaret hails from the Isop galaxy. (
Bad Wolf
also names Isop as the home galaxy of the Face of Boe.)