B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (95 page)

[
1071
] Dating
The Gunfighters
(3.8) - The story ends with the Gunfight at the OK Corral. The depiction of events owes more to the popular myths and Hollywood treatment of the story than historical accuracy.

[
1072
] Dating
FP: Erasing Sherlock
(
FP
novel #5) - The story ends with the eruption of Krakatoa on its historical date of 26th August, 1883; many dating notations mark the progression of the story through the year beforehand. Gillian says that the woman whose identity she adopts, “died in early August, just before I arrived” - but Gillian is already ensconced in Holmes’ household when the story opens, and it’s said to be “autumn” on p13, “November” on p27 (how much time passes between the two isn’t immediately clear). While the adventure is based upon the premise that nefarious parties are trying to change Holmes’ timeline, it’s also implied that he regains his moral compass enough to become the same detective seen in Conan Doyle’s stories (and, by extension) in
Doctor Who
.

[
1073
]
Inferno
,
Rose
. The ninth Doctor also visited the scene. Krakatoa erupted in 1883.

[
1074
]
SJA: The Lost Boy

[
1075
] According to the sixth Doctor in “Changes”.
Vincent and the Doctor
doesn’t rule out that van Gogh and the Doctor (in another body) have met before; in fact, that story has van Gogh claim, “My brother’s always sending doctors...”

[
1076
]
The Resurrection of Mars

[
1077
]
Time and the Rani.
Pasteur lived 1822-1895.

[
1078
]
The Room with No Doors

[
1079
]
The Gallifrey Chronicles

[
1080
]
Ghost Light
. It is unclear from the story whether the plateau really existed or was merely a delirious Fenn-Cooper’s rationalisation of his adventures in Gabriel Chase.

[
1081
] Dating
Ghost Light
(26.2) - Set “two years” after 1881, when Mackenzie is sent to investigate the disappearance of Sir George Pritchard, and “a century” before Ace burns down Gabriel Chase in 1983. It’s a time of year when the sun sets at six pm (so either the spring or autumn). The script suggested that a caption slide “Perivale - 1883” might be used over the establishing shot of Gabriel Chase. Queen Victoria was a Hanover, not a Saxe-Coburg, but late in her reign she did acquire the nickname “Mrs Saxe-Coburg”.

[
1082
] “The Time Machination”

[
1083
] Justine is “barely 16” in
FP: Movers
, set circa March 1899. If the word “barely” can be taken at all literally, she was born in 1883.

[
1084
]
Assassin in the Limelight
. This is historical, and remains a secondary tragedy inflicted on those attending Ford’s Theatre with Lincoln. After killing his wife, Rathbone lived in an asylum in Hildesheim, Germany, and died himself in 1911. He was buried alongside Clara in Hildesheim until the authorities deemed their graves as extremely unattended, and had the gravesites destroyed in 1952. Rathbone and Clara’s eldest son served as a U.S. Congressman from Illinois, Lincoln’s home state.

[
1085
]
The Green Death

[
1086
]
The Three Companions
. Stevenson lived 1850-1894.

[
1087
] Dating
SJA: The Ghost House
(
SJA
audiobook #4) - The year is given. Skak’s time manipulator relies upon Zygma energy, which was first mentioned in
The Talons of Weng-Chiang
.

[
1088
] Dating
Peacemaker
(NSA #21) - It’s the “1880s” according to the back cover. Similarly, the Doctor licks his thumb, holds it up to the air, and determines, “This is 1880-something, I reckon. A Monday. Just after breakfast.”
The Time Machine
was published “ten years” after this (in 1895).

[
1089
] Dating
Timelash
(22.5) - The Doctor applies “a time deflection coefficient of 706 years” to the timelash’s original destination of 1179, and concludes that Vena will arrive in “1885... AD”.
The Terrestrial Index
set this in “c1891”, after
The Time Machine
was written.

[
1090
]
The Ghosts of N-Space

[
1091
]
Deadly Reunion

[
1092
]
Christmas on a Rational Planet
. No date given, but Blavatsky lived 1831-1891.

[
1093
]
The Unicorn and the Wasp

[
1094
] Dating
Zygons: The Barnacled Baby
(BBV audio #30) - The story ends with a shapechanging Zygon replacing Queen Victoria, and nothing is said about what happens next. Victoria definitely isn’t killed, as Demeris - as with the TV Zygons - can only assume the body print of a living subject, so it’s easy enough to imagine that the substitution is discovered and the real Victoria rescued. For that matter, it’s easy to retroactively think that the Victoria seen here is a ringer sent by Torchwood to investigate the mysterious and potentially extra-terrestrial “Baby” - would the actual Queen have been allowed to travel to the baby’s bedroom without a single escort? Prince Albert has died (so, the story occurs after 1861), but Barnum is alive (so, it’s before his passing in 1891).

[
1095
] Dating
All-Consuming Fire
(NA #27) - It is “the year eighteen eighty seven” according to both Watson (p5) and Benny (p153). References to
The Talons of Weng-Chiang
(p42, p64) suggest this book is set after that story, but aren’t conclusive.

[
1096
]
Timewyrm: Revelation
. This was before
All-Consuming Fire
. The eighth Doctor also encountered Holmes, according to
The Gallifrey Chronicles
.

[
1097
]
Happy Endings
, elaborating upon details about Ace given in
The Curse of Fenric
novelisation; see the dating notes on
Set Piece
.

[
1098
]
SJA: Children of Steel
. Bloody Sunday occurred on 13th November, 1887.

[
1099
]
The Moonbase.
Surgeon Joseph Lister lived 5th April, 1827, to 10th February, 1912.
Apollo 23
says the Doctor was given an honourary degree in rhetoric and oratory by the University of Ursa Beta. In
The God Complex
, he claims to have a degree in cheese-making.

[
1100
]
Carnival of Monsters

[
1101
]
Synthespians™

[
1102
]
Year of the Pig

[
1103
] Dating
The Ancestor Cell
(EDA #36) - It’s “more than a hundred years” (p282) before 2001, and “one hundred and thirteen years” before in
Escape Velocity
(p184), which would make it 1888.

[
1104
]
Vanishing Point

[
1105
]
The Burning

[
1106
] Dating
The Pit
(NA #12) - Blake sees a newspaper dated “the thirtieth of September, 1888”. There’s some indication this takes place in a parallel timeline, so it’s not “the” Jack the Ripper murders.

[
1107
] Dating “Ripper’s Curse” (IDW
DW
Vol. 2 #2-4) - The opening caption says it’s “30 September 1888. 12:30 a.m”., which matches the real-life murder of Elizabeth Stride, the Ripper’s third canonical victim.

[
1108
] Dating “Ripper’s Curse” (IDW
DW
Vol. 2 #2-4) - Amy confirms that it’s “9th November”, the night of the final Ripper murder.
Matrix
and
A Good Man Goes to War
offer alternate explanations for Jack the Ripper (see the Unfixed Points in Time sidebar). “Ripper’s Curse”, very oddly, seems to ignore some new-series rules pertaining to historical alteration - the Doctor says that the Ripper’s victims are all “static” points in time, but tries to alter the final one anyway (see the Fixed Points in Time sidebar). Moreover, time
is
altered in this story - Mary Warner is “meant” to die, but the timeline is left with Mary Kelly (who died in our history) being killed instead.

It’s arguably an anachronism that a member of the Metropolitan police is so well acquainted with both Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle’s methodology in creating the character - the first Holmes story,
A Study in Scarlet
, was published prior to this in 1887, but the character’s popularity didn’t take off until the first series of short stories emerged in
The Strand
, starting in 1891. However, the Earl of Upper Leadworth is fictional, suggesting that Holmes’ history in the
Doctor Who
universe is a deviation from the real world.

Unfixed Points in Time

Reconciling the three accounts of Jack the Ripper in
Matrix
, “Ripper’s Curse” and on screen in
A Good Man Goes to War
does tend towards absurdity - the Ripper is respectively shown to be the Valeyard, to be a murderous alien, and to be an unnamed party dispatched by Madame Vastra, all in seemingly unrelated adventures.

As a unifying theory about this, though, perhaps there’s a class of events that are destined to remain mysteries. After all, the main historical significance of the Jack the Ripper is that it’s famous
as a mystery
. Perhaps what happened remains unknown and open to question
even after we’ve seen an explanation
. (A whimsical example of this from real life: IDW’s publicity materials proclaimed that “Ripper’s Curse” would be the “first” time that
Doctor Who
had dealt with Jack the Ripper, a statement the company retracted when it was pointed out that actually, it wasn’t.)

This doesn’t rule out
all
mysteries being unsolved - the Doctor seems to conclusively solve the mystery of Agatha Christie’s real-life disappearance in
The Unicorn and the Wasp
, for example. But it might account for why there are historical mysteries with multiple solutions in the
Doctor Who
universe. Candidates might include the beginning of the universe, the extinction of the dinosaurs, the exact origin of man, how and why the Pyramids were built, the purpose of standing stones, the Fall of Atlantis, the Great Fire of London, what happened to the
Mary Celeste
(only if one stacks the short story “Timechase” and the comic “The Mystery of the Marie Celeste” - both of them being outside the remit of this timeline - alongside
The Chase
), what happened at Tunguska, the sinking of the
Titanic
as well as a whole host of Fortean mysteries (the Loch Ness Monster, Yeti, Roswell, flying saucers, etc.). Within the fiction of the
Doctor Who
universe, the exact origins of the Daleks, the start of the Sontaran-Rutan war, the beginnings of the Time Lords and the reason the Doctor left Gallifrey might be “unfixed”.