Christian Purcell’s body was found by the motorway where he’d jumped. The ghost of Isaac Greatorex sought to return to life and gain great powers, but Liz Shaw oversaw a ritual that banished him.
1996 - The Chase [787]
One of the exhibits at the 1996 Festival of Ghana, “Frankenstein’s House of Horror”, featured roboticFac versions of a number of Gothic characters. For $10, visitors could wander around an animated haunted house, be frightened by mechanical bats and meet Frankenstein’s monster, Dracula and the Grey Lady. The exhibition was cancelled by Peking. The first Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Vicki briefly visited the exhibition while fleeing through time from the Daleks.
Tobias Vaughn claimed he saw the Dalek Time Machine at the “1995 Earth Fair in Ghana”. [788] The robots were programmed by Microsoft, who later faced lawsuits. [789] The Doctor attended the crowded Festival of Ghana. [790]
1996 - The Sands of Time [791]
Nyssa’s awakening drew near, and the agents of Nephthys made ready for her resurrection. Nephthys’ intelligence resided within Nyssa, but her instinct resided in a Nephthys clone named Vanessa Prior. The fifth Doctor tricked the instinct part of Nephthys into thinking its intelligence had dissipated in 1926. The Nephthys-instinct went back in time but failed to reunite with itself. It circled back and forth between 1926 and 1996 until it aged to death. The Doctor removed Nephthys’ intelligence from Nyssa and woke up his companion, then buried the intelligence at Nephthys’ pyramid.
The seventh Doctor, Roz and Chris rested in Sydney in 1996. [792] The same Doctor returned Peri to the late twentieth century. [793]
1996 (19th December) - “End Game” / “Oblivion” (DWM) [794]
The eighth Doctor landed in Stockbridge and was attacked by giant doll-like figures that resembled a butcher, a baker and a candlestick maker. He was rescued by his old friend Maxwell Edison and a fellow UFO spotter named Izzy. They had acquired a strange medallion called the “focus”, but were soon rounded up by humanoid foxes in hunting gear and brought to the Celestial Toymaker - who had created a surreal version of Stockbridge, and stuffed the real one in a snowglobe.
The Toymaker similarly captured the Doctor and Izzy in a snowglobe, and the Doctor was forced to hand over the focus. It was part of the Imagineum - a device built by an ancient race of alchemists - and the Toymaker used it to create an evil doll-like duplicate of the Doctor. However, the two Doctors teamed up and exposed the Toymaker himself to the device. The Toymakers disappeared into the void, in perpetual stalemate, and Izzy joined the Doctor on his adventures.
Eventually, Izzy decided to leave the Doctor’s company and make things right with her parents. He returned her to Stockbridge at the exact moment she left.
1997
The genius Luke Rattigan became a millionaire, age 12, following his invention of the Fountain 6 search engine. [795] Sunnydale, California, refused to reissue permits for tour caravans to park on Main Street anytime after 1997, between the hours of midnight and 4 a.m. [796]
The drug Mandrake, or M, first appeared on the streets in 1997. Its crystalline structure contained an unknown radiation, and UNIT classified it as a Foreign Hazard (meaning alien). [797] The Brigadier helped to oversee the creation of a new Parliament for Scotland. [798] The Doctor was given a sun visor by Ginger Spice. [799]
1997 (April) - Bullet Time [800]
With Britain scheduled to relinquish Hong Kong to China, the Chinese government secretly created the Tao Te Lung, a smuggling and extortion ring, as a means of rooting out Hong Kong’s criminal element beforehand. The seventh Doctor usurped control of the Tao Te Lung, and used its operations to covertly move a group of stranded extra-terrestrials.
A rogue UNIT faction, The Cortez Project, sought to eliminate all extra-terrestrials as a threat to humanity. The Doctor arranged for his old ally, Sarah Jane Smith, to travel to Hong Kong and expose the Cortez members. However, Sarah’s investigations put her in danger from the Tao Te Lung. In order to save Sarah’s life, the Doctor arranged to publicly discredit her as a journalist.
The Doctor’s alien allies reached their sunken spaceship, but a group of Cortez commandos, led by Colonel Tsang, seized control of the USS Westmoreland submarine in an attempt to head them off. The Doctor thwarted the Cortez members and the aliens departed Earth.
One account of these events suggested that Sarah Jane killed herself to prevent Tom Ryder, an intelligence agency operative, from holding her hostage to blackmail the Doctor. Other reports failed to corroborate her death.
1997 (May) - The Rapture [801]
The Euphorian Empire had fallen into war with Scordatora. The drafted brothers Jude and Gabriel deserted and fled through the dimensional portal they previously used to reach Earth in 1855. Bar owner Gustavo Riviera helped the brothers found the Rapture nightclub in San Antonio, Izbia.
Gabriel’s mental health deteriorated, and Jude realised that he’d need to take his brother home for medical care. Fearing court-martial and summary execution, Jude decided to entrance the Rapture patrons with PCP and a special mix of Gabriel’s music, then kidnap the humans back to the Empire as an offering of ready-made soldiers. On 15th May, Gustavo disavowed the brothers’ actions and wrestled with Gabriel, causing them to fall to their deaths. A vengeful Jude tried to unleash a music score that would kill anyone who heard it, but the seventh Doctor and Ace - now calling herself Dorothy McShane - thwarted Jude’s plan. Jude fled. Sometime later, a young office worker opened an e-mail attachment that played music from the Rapture nightclub.
At the Rapture, Dorothy encountered her younger brother Liam.
= c 1997 - Battlefield [802]
In a parallel universe, twelve centuries after defeating Arthur, Deathless Morgaine of the Fey had become battle queen of the S’Rax, ruler of thirteen worlds. Her world was scientifically advanced with energy weapons and ornithopters, but the people weren’t reliant on technology and still knew the magic arts. There was still resistance against her rule, as Merlin had promised that Arthur would return in the hour of greatest need. Morgaine’s immortal son Mordred led her troops to victory at Camlaan, forcing an enemy soldier, Ancelyn, to flee the field.
Morgaine had tracked the magical sword Excalibur to our dimension, which Mordred called Avallion. When UNIT discovered that the Doctor was involved in this affair, the Secretary General persuaded Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart to come out of retirement. Morgaine’s extra-dimensional knights fought UNIT as led by Brigadier Winifred Bambera, and Morgaine secured control of a nuclear missile. The seventh Doctor, Ace and the Brigadier put paid to Morgaine’s plans.
Benny attended Bambera and Ancelyn’s wedding. [803]
1997 (Tuesday, 6th May) - The Dying Days [804]
Mars 97, a British mission to the Red Planet, inadvertently trespassed on a Martian tomb. Xznaal, leader of the Argyre clan, used this as a pretext to invade Earth. He was working with the power-hungry Lord Greyhaven, and together they deposed the Queen and took control of the United Kingdom. Xznaal was crowned King of England and began begins transporting slave labour to Mars. When the eighth Doctor was apparently killed, the Brigadier, Benny and UNIT formed a resistance movement that marched on London to dethrone the usurper. The Martians attempted to release “the Red Death”, which would have wiped out all life on Earth. Greyhaven died trying to stop Xznaal, and the Doctor returned to save the day.
Lethbridge-Stewart was promoted to General.
“Since the Gantic Invasion and the Availlon Fiasco, unearthly threats have become a matter of fact.” [805]
1997 - The Many Hands [806]
The tenth Doctor took Martha to Edinburgh in 1997 to show her the Scott Monument, where the Nor’ Loch had been once.
1997 - The Eight Doctors [807]
The eighth Doctor, his memory wiped by the Master, landed in Totter’s Lane, London. He saved the life of schoolgirl Samantha Jones, who was being chased by the drug dealers Baz and Mo. After a series of adventures, the Doctor returned to the junkyard and Sam pe
rsuaded him to take her with him.
1997 - Vampire Science [808]
Carolyn McConnell summoned the eighth Doctor and Sam when she suspected vampires were active in San Francisco. The Doctor arrived and joined up with the American branch of UNIT, run by Brigadier-General Kramer. A generational war was brewing between the vampires, and a group of younger vampires - led by the upstart Slake - wiped out every old vampire except for their leader, Joanna Harris. The Doctor ingested silver nitrate, killing Slake and all the vampires that feasted on his blood. He also arranged for Harris to become human again. Harris and Carolyn joined the staff of UNIT.
Before this time, Kramer’s branch of UNIT handled a Brieri scouting party.
c 1997 - Genocide [809]
Jo Grant and her husband Cliff had now separated, and had an 11-year-old son named Matthew. The Tractite named Gavril grew a time tree from a seedling, and allied himself with an ecowarrior named Jacob Hynes. Archaeologists Rowenna Michaels and Julie Sands had an offputting encounter with Hynes, who was posing as a UNIT captain, in the Kilgai Gorge in Tanzania. Jo, as Rowenna’s old friend, was summoned to help, but Hynes captured all three of the women. A confusing escape followed, and the time tree took Jo, Rowenna, Julie and Hynes back to 2.5 million BC. The eighth Doctor later returned Jo home, after she had preserved history by wiping out a Tractite colony.
1997 - Auton [810]
Dr Sally Arnold, the head of The Warehouse, conducted experiments that accidentally reactivated a Nestene energy unit. It revived several Autons, and while Arnold and Lockwood - the psychic leader of a UNIT containment team - quelled the situation, a bit of gelatinous Nestene essence escaped.
Jackie Tyler’s father - “Grandad Prentice”, as Rose called him - died of heart failure. [811] Torchwood stripped bare a Jathaa Sun Glider that crashed off the Shetland Islands. They would deploy the ship’s main weapon against the Sycorax in 2006. [812]
Summer, a former attendee at the “Human-Be-In” rock festival in 1967, spent thirty years on the run from the mysterious gray-suited men. She settled in the American Northwest, but the fourth Doctor rescued Summer from the gray men as they arrived to kill her. [813]
c 1997 - The Pit [814]
UNIT were called in to investigate an alien skeleton discovered on Salisbury Plain. The seventh Doctor and William Blake arrived via a space-time tear, and the Doctor feared the skeleton wasn’t entirely dormant. Hunters riding batlike creatures came through the tear and tore apart a passenger airliner just outside Bristol. The Doctor and Blake travelled to the Yssgaroth’s domain, then into the future.
1997 - Infinite Requiem [815]
Twenty-one-year-old Tilusha Meswani died shortly after giving birth to her child Sanjay, who was really the Sensopath named Kelzen - an immensely powerful, psionic being. Kelzen grew rapidly to adulthood and gained empathy with humanity. It agreed to help the seventh Doctor fight another Sensopath on Gadrell Minor in 2387.
Hammerson Plastics PLC came out of nowhere to corner the market in plastics in six months. The success was credited to automation techniques, but the organisation was a front for an Auton production facility. [816]
The Conspiracy Channel broadcast The Last Days of Hitler?, written and directed by Claire Aldwych, on 12th August, 1997. [817] The only Recoronation in British history took place on 23rd November, 1997. Queen Elizabeth II was formally restored to the throne following Xznaal’s usurpation of the crown. [818]
1997 (16th December) - Touched by an Angel [819]
The version of Mark Whitaker that was living through the 1990s a second time arranged for his past self to receive a lottery ticket worth £16,000. Rebecca Coles was now engaged to a man named Anthony.
1998
By 1998, Sarah Jane Smith had married a man called Morley, and was a speaker at the Nobel Academy. [820]
In April 1998, Rebecca Coles split with her fiancé after discovering that he was cheating on her. They had already booked holiday in Rome, and so Mark Whitaker agreed to go with her. He paid for his half from the £16,000 lottery winnings his future self had provided. [821] In 1998, the Japanese set up the Nikkei 5 station in the Antarctic to measure carbon dioxide levels. [822] Margaret Thatcher might have returned to power at some point. [823]
Paul Travers reviewed a Johnny Chess concert in the 18/7/98 NME. [824] A Kulan evaluation team crashed in Norway in 1998, split into two factions and began work supporting two rival space flight enterprises. The pro-invasion group helped entrepreneur Pierre Yves-Dudoin in the construction of his Star Dart shuttle, and the more benign faction sided with the lucrative Arthur Tyler III in building a Planet Hopper. [825]
In 1998, humanity’s average life expectancy was sixty-six years, five months and thirty-three days. The Three Families had located the Blessing in the mid-90s; Angelo Colasanto and his granddaughter Olivia intercepted a message indicating as much in 1998. [826]
The Uvodni-Malakh War ended. [827] The Pharos Para-Science Institute was established to study paranormal phenomena. [828] Members of Drast Speculation Initiative Fourteen - alien specualtors who would manipulate a target planet’s economy and culture until it came under their control - established themselves on Earth. [829]
On 27th June, 1998, Torchwood obtained a corpse belonging to a member of Cell 114. [830]
1998 - System Shock [831]
Virtually every computer on Earth now used the operating system Vorell, developed by I2. The owner of I2, 43-year-old Lionel Stabfield, quickly became the fifth richest man in the world. His company bought the rights to every major work of art, releasing images of them on interactive discs. The new technology allowed flat-panel, interactive television and the recordable CD-ROM to be perfected. Sales of computer equipment rocketed still further.
All computers were joined up to the Hubway, a formalised version of the Internet. As Hubway went online, though, chaos broke out: aeroplanes crashed at Heathrow as air traffic control systems failed, the Astra satellite was sent into a new orbit, the Library of Congress catalogue and all its backups were wiped, the computer facilities of the First National Bank of China were obliterated. Instruments at Nunton told technicians that the reactor had gone to meltdown. The head of MI5, Veronica Halliwell, was assassinated. Jonah Cosgrove, former sixties superspy, succeeded her as the head of MI5. [832]
This was all part of the plan of the Voracians, cybernetic reptilians from Vorella. They planned to use the sentient software Voractyll to take control of the Earth. The fourth Doctor, Sarah and Harry helped to defeat them.
c 1998 - Option Lock [833]
President Dering was now in the White House, with Jack Michaels serving as vice-president.
The Khameirian-sponsored brotherhood, founded in the thirteenth century, had many members in positions of power. They sought to trigger a nuclear conflict that would produce the energy needed for the Khameirians to recorporealise. A brotherhood member launched an unauthorised nuclear strike from Krejikistan, which compelled the Americans to reveal the nuke-killing Station Nine as they nullified the threat. The US subsequently turned Station Nine over to the United Nations.
The brotherhood’s leader, Norton Silver, forced the eighth Doctor to relocate the TARDIS to Station Nine to launch a nuclear strike from there. Britain’s Captain Pickering died while destroying Station Nine to prevent this, an act that also killed Silver and the Khameirian core within him. A month later, Sam Jones learned that Silver’s widow was pregnant, and worried the Khameirian taint might have passed to the child.
1998 (11th-12th August) - Touched by an Angel [834]
The older Mark Whitaker had started a consultancy company, and used his foreknowledge of the future to make millions. He was a partial investor in Mama Mia! The eleventh Doctor, Amy and Rory helped the older Mark to lock his younger self and Rebecca out on a balcony for the evening - and the two of them took the opportunity to cement their budding relationship.
Thomas “Hex” Schofield, a companion of the seventh Doctor, was born to Cassandra Schofield on
12th October, 1998. [835] When Rose Tyler was 12, she received a red bicycle for Christmas. [836]
1999
Adelaide Brooke, the woman destined to become the commander of the first Martian colony, was born on 12th May, 1999. [837] A rain of frogs was reported in San Francisco. [838]
w - The Great Houses dispatched Chris Cwej to curtail the activities of Faction Hollywood. Cwej bested Faction Hollywood’s leader, Michael Brookhaven, in combat during the Hollywood Bowl Shooting incident of 1999; Faction Hollywood was not expected to prosper after Brookhaven’s downfall. [839]
In 1999, a division of Phicorp purchased the land in Shanghai containing the Blessing - part of the Three Families’ preparation to destroy the world’s economy and rebuild it under their control. [840] In June 1999, James Lawson of Torchwood Cardiff improved upon a formula supplied by Jack Harkness, and did the early field tests on the amnesia drug Retcon. [841]
c 1999 - FP: Warlords of Utopia [842]
Marcus Americanius Scriptor arrived in the True Earth to track down August Hitler, who had been spirited away from his own parallel universe. The Little Hitler was in South America. Scriptor killed him, then wrote an account of his long life.
1999 - Auton 2: Sentinel / Auton 3: Awakening [843]
The Nestene essence that escaped from The Warehouse two years previous established an Auton contingent on the remote Sentinel Island, home to the best preserved of the ancient Nestene chambers. Lockwood used a psychic seed the Nestene had planted in his mind to absorb the long-dormant Nestene beneath the island, and prevented it from summoning the entire Nestene consciousness to Earth.
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