B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (275 page)

World Wars

The First and Second world wars occur much as we know them. There are fears of a Third World War in the UNIT era. It occurs some time between Anji joining the TARDIS crew (2000) and
Trading Futures
(c.2016) - whether the events of the episode
World War Three
qualify is unclear. World War IV was mentioned in
The Also People
and
Frostfire
, but no details are given. In
Christmas on a Rational Planet
, it’s said that people danced in the ashes of Reykjavik during World War IV. The Doctor says he saw World War V in
The Unquiet Dead
.
Borrowed Time
references mutant crabs active in the 4900s; these were engineered to eat the marine vessels used in World War V. World War VI is averted in the year 5000, according to
The Talons of Weng-Chiang
.

[
48
]
Heritage.
In terms of
Doctor Who
history, the earliest mention of humans cloning humans is in
Trading Futures
.

[
49
] “Nine years” before
Project: Destiny
.

[
50
] According to the computer in
The Waters of Mars
. If that’s correct, Brooke would have started her doctorate very young.

[
51
]
Army of Death

[
52
] Dating
The Enemy of the World
(5.4) - One of Salamander’s followers, Swann, holds up a scrap of newspaper with a date on it from the year before, but the photograph is not clear enough to discern the date. (
Timelink
suggests it says 2041, but still dates the story to 2017.) The licence disc on the helicopter expires in 2018.

None of the scripts contain any reference to the year that the story is set in. However, the
Radio Times
in certain regions featured an article on fashion that set
The Enemy of the World
“fifty years in the future”, which would give a date of 2017. The first edition of
The Programme Guide
mistakenly thought that the story had a contemporary setting, and placed it between “1970-75”.

The date “2030”, which is now commonly associated with the story, first appeared in David Whitaker’s storyline for the novelisation of his story, submitted to WH Allen in October 1979. The document was reprinted in
DWM
#200, and amongst other things of interest it is the only place to give Salamander a first name: “Ramon”. The novelisation was due to be published in 1980, and was to be set “some fifty years later than our time - the year 2030” according to the storyline, but the book was not completed before Whitaker’s death.

The second edition of
The Programme Guide
duly gave the date as “2030”. The blurb for the novelisation by Ian Marter, published in 1981 - the same year as
The Programme Guide
- concurred, although perhaps significantly, the text of the book didn’t specify a date. 2030 was soon adopted wholesale, with
The TARDIS Logs
and
The Terrestrial Index
giving the new date.
Encyclopedia of the Worlds of Doctor Who
is confused: the entry for “Denes” gives the date as “2017”, but that for “Fedorin” states “2030”.
The TARDIS Special
was less specific than most, claiming the story takes place in an “Unknown Future” setting.
The Legend
states it’s “c.2017”.
About Time
hedges its bets a little, saying that “around 2017 - 2030 is the most likely possibility”.
Alien Bodies
sets the story later, after
Warchild
and apparently around the 2040s.

It seems clear that David Whitaker intended the story to be set fifty years after it was broadcast, so that date has been adopted here.

Weather Control

In a number of stories set in the twenty-first century, we see a variety of weather control projects. The earliest is in the New Adventure
Cat’s Cradle: Warhead
, and simply involves “seeding” clouds with chemicals to regulate rainfall (p129). A year before
The Enemy of the World
, Salamander develops the Sun-Catcher, the first Weather Control system. As its name suggests, the Sun Store satellite collects the rays from the Sun and stores them in concentrated form. It is also capable of influencing tidal and seismic activity.

Each major city has its own Weather Control Bureau by
The Seeds of Death
, and these are co-ordinated and monitored centrally by computer. The London Bureau is a large complex, manned by a handful of technicians. The Weather Control Unit itself is about the size of a large desk, with separate circuits for each weather condition. With fully functioning Rain Circuits, rainfall over a large area can be arranged quickly.

By 2050, the Gravitron had been set up on Earth’s moon. This is the ultimate form of weather control, working on the simple principle that “the tides control the weather, the Gravitron controls the tides”. Weather control is under the control of the (United Zones?) General Assembly.

It’s clear those last two are different systems, but it’s less clear which is the most advanced. This becomes important when trying to date
The Seeds of Death
-
About Time
suggests that the weather control in
The Seeds of Death
is “far more compact and efficient”, so that’s the later story. But it can certainly be argued that a device in a room in London that makes it rain on special occasions looks primitive compared with a moon-based one that manipulates gravity as part of an international programme to manage the entire world’s weather.

[
53
]
Damaged Goods.
Marcie Hatter, a UNIT Corporal here (p262), was the name of the heroine of Russell T Davies’ TV serial
Dark Season
(1991).

[
54
]
The Last Dodo

[
55
]
Timewyrm: Revelation

[
56
] “A few decades” after
Vampire Science
.

[
57
] Benny remembers the Southport Incident in
Just War
(p214), but doesn’t specify what or when it was. Zoe, who lacks even rudimentary historical knowledge, recognises the effects of an atomic blast in
The Dominators
, perhaps suggesting that nuclear weapons are still around (and have been used?) in her time.

[
58
]
Winner Takes All.
No date is given, but William is currently second in line to the throne, and will be King at some point in the twenty-first century.

[
59
]
The Long Game

[
60
] As detailed by Brooke in
The Waters of Mars
. There’s a fairly consistent narrative in
Doctor Who
that the first half of the twenty-first century sees environmental and other catastrophes that are overcome in the second half of the century by technology - space exploration in particular - although there are many differences in detail.

[
61
] Dating
The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood
(X5.8-5.9) - The year is given in a caption at the beginning of
The Hungry Earth
.

[
62
] Or so the Doctor claims in
The Hungry Earth
, either suggesting that it’s fallen fairly dramatically since 2009, or that he’s just confused.

[
63
] Dating
TimeH: Kitsune
(
TimeH
#4) - Honoré and Emily attend an evening festival in Kyoto on “17 July 2020” (p23). It’s later said that they “left for Tokyo on the Friday morning” (p30) - which presumably denotes the next day, although 17th July, 2020, will
be
a Friday.

[
64
] Dating
House of Blue Fire
(BF #152) - Sally tests a colleague’s memory by asking, “I’m guessing you remember what year it is?”, and receives the (evidently correct) reply, “Of course... 2020.”

[
65
] Dating
The Power of the Daleks
(4.3) - There is no confirmation of the date in the story itself. Lesterson says the Dalek ship arrived “at least two centuries ago”, “before the colony”, which might suggest the Earthmen have been there for just under two hundred years. However, the generally low-level of technology, the reliance on “rockets” and the fact that there is only one communications link with Earth suggests the colony is fairly new. The colonists don’t recognise the Daleks, suggesting it’s before
The Dalek Invasion of Earth
.

The contemporary trailer (included on the
Lost in Time
DVD) announced it was set “in the year 2020”, and press material at the time confirmed that. This date also appeared in the 10th anniversary
Radio Times
, was used by the second edition of
The Making of Doctor Who
and the first edition of
The Programme Guide
.

Nevertheless,
Doctor Who
fans can see a statement like “I’m from 1980” as problematic and ambiguous, and most fan chronologies have seen 2020 as implausibly early for Earth to have a colony on a planet that’s not in our solar system. Ergo, they often use the fact the date only appeared in a trailer to disallow it. (To be fair, the trailer for
The Dalek Invasion of Earth
set that story in “2000” - a date to which nobody subscribes.) In
DWM
,
The TARDIS Logs
offered a date of “2049”, but “A History of the Daleks” contradicted this and gave the date as “2249”. The American
Doctor Who
comic offered the date of “2600 AD”, apparently unaware that the Dalek ship has been dormant.
The Terrestrial Index
came to the elaborate conclusion that the colonists left Earth in 2020 - in spacecraft with suspended animation - and then used the old calendar when they arrived. As a result, while they call the date 2020, the story is really set in “2220”.
Timelink
opted for “2120”.
About Time
claims that “internal publicity” gave the date as “2070” (it didn’t, actually - that was for
The Moonbase
), but concludes the story is set “probably somewhere in the mid-2100s”. Earth could only really have a colony on another world this early if the planet Vulcan was in our solar system. See the article “Vulcan” for how it might be possible to justify the “2020” date.

[
66
]
The Waters of Mars

[
67
] Dating
The Harvest
(BF #58) - The date is given on the back cover blurb.

[
68
] Dating
Benny: The Grel Escape
(Benny audio #5.1) - The year is given. The “Festival of Piranha” is a parody of the “Festival of Ghana” seen in
The Chase
.

[
69
] At the end of
Doctor Who and the Silurians
, the Reptile People go back into deep freeze for “fifty years”. Alternatively, they might have all perished in the explosions triggered by the Brigadier’s men. There are Silurians working alongside humanity in
Eternity Weeps
in 2003, but it’s never stated they are from Wenley Moor, and we know there were other shelters. The UNIT audios (set circa 2005) show a failed attempt to reconcile humanity and the Silurians, although a group of Silurians nonetheless help human scientists to cure a lethal virus. The eleventh Doctor indicates in
Cold Blood
that the Wenley Moor Silurians were killed, not entombed.