[211] The Devil Goblins from Neptune, The Face of the Enemy.
[212] The Devil Goblins from Neptune
[213] The Face of the Enemy, picking up on a reference in Harry Sullivan’s War.
[214] Dating The Devil Goblins from Neptune (PDA #1) - Between Inferno and Terror of the Autons. Liz has been with UNIT for “thirteen months”. The Brigadier hasn’t been to Geneva for eight months (when, we’re told, he was reporting on the events of Inferno). It is “1970”, with a host of contemporary references to, for example, David Bowie and Brazil winning the World Cup (p109).
[215] Who Killed Kennedy (p117), which specifies the year as “1970”.
[216] Emotional Chemistry
[217] Terror of the Autons
[218] The Death of Art
[219] Terror of the Autons
[220] Blood Heat
[221] The Wages of Sin, Catastrophea.
[222] Verdigris, a reference to The Avengers.
[223] Dating Terror of the Autons (8.1) - It seems to be the near future, and the plastics factory has a videophone.
The Doctor works on his dematerialisation circuit for “three months”, and apparently hadn’t started in Inferno, so this story would seem to start at least three months after Season Seven ends. There is no indication how much time has passed since the previous Auton story, Spearhead from Space. A desk calendar is referred to when the Doctor and Brigadier visit Farrell’s office, but we do not see it.
This is clearly not the Master’s first arrival on Earth at this time - he has managed to research the history of Lew Russell, the circus owner.
Inferno was “a few years” before Terror of the Autons according to The Face of the Enemy (p215). In Genocide, Jo says that she’s been on UNIT’s books since 1971. Who Killed Kennedy prefers April 1970.
[224] Return of the Living Dad
[225] Who Killed Kennedy. It is “four months” since the June 1970 General Election (p119).
[226] The Black Archive was first seen in SJA: Enemy of the Bane. The Doctor’s involvement was established in “Don’t Step on the Grass”. We don’t know precisely when it was built, but it would seem to be after The Scales of Injustice, which features Department C19’s (very similar) Vault. In Terror of the Autons, the Brigadier expresses an interest in the technology of the Master’s grenade but the Doctor defuses it, suggesting they hadn’t a protocol about alien technology at that point. It is not related to the (again, very similar) Vault in SJA: The Vault of Secrets, or the UNIT Vault featured in Tales from the Vault. Army of Ghosts established that Torchwood have a similar archive, “The Age of Ice” includes a UNIT archive in Sydney, Australia, and Dreamland (DW) shows us that the US stores alien technology and aliens at Area 51. By the time of the K9 series, the Department keep aliens and alien technology in the Dauntless facility in the Tower of London.
[227] Dating The Mind of Evil (8.2) - It seems to be the near future - there is a National Power Complex, there is a World Peace Conference in progress in which the Chinese are key players. Gas warfare was banned “years” ago. Mao Tse Tung is referred to in the present tense - he died in 1976, after The Mind of Evil was made.
Inferno was “some time ago”. This story might be set a full year after Terror of the Autons: the Master has been posing as Keller since “nearly a year ago”. However, it’s clear from Terror of the Autons that the Master has been on Earth for at least a little while. It’s possible that the Master set his plan in motion before his apparent arrival on Earth in Terror of the Autons... which would mean he had two entirely distinct plans to take over the Earth running simultaneously. The “year ago” line might well be a remnant from an earlier draft of the script that didn’t include the Master.
According to Who Killed Kennedy, it is October 1970 (p119).
[228] Dating Deadly Reunion (PDA #63) - Terror of the Autons is “recent”, but the Master’s TARDIS works, so this is set after The Mind of Evil.
[229] Who Killed Kennedy. It is “December” (p136) 1970.
[230] Dating “Change of Mind” (DWM #221-223) - The date is given as 1971. Liz has already left UNIT, but there’s no mention of Jo.
[231] Who Killed Kennedy (p162, p157).
[232] Dating The Claws of Axos (8.3) - This story is set in the near future. There are videophones, although normal telephones are also in use. The National Power Complex “provides power for the whole of Britain” according to Sir George Hardiman, the head of the facility. (This needn’t mean that the complex provides all of the country’s power, just that it contributes to the whole of the National Grid rather than one region of it.) The complex has a “light accelerator”. While this story was filmed in January, and the trees are bare, the snow is described as “freak weather conditions”, perhaps suggesting the story is set in the spring or summer. Chinn says of the Brigadier’s actions “that’s the kind of high-handed attitude one has come to expect of the UN lately”.
[233] Business Unusual
[234] Nuton is destroyed in The Claws of Axos, but mentioned in The Daemons.
[235] Who Killed Kennedy
[236] Colony in Space
[237] The Gallifrey Chronicles
[238] Dating Colony in Space (8.4) - There’s no clear indication of the year. When Jo reaches the future, she is surprised that a colony ship was sent out in 1971 (it wasn’t, of course, it was 2471). Either this story is set before 1971 and Jo is amazed how quickly the space programme has progressed, or it is set afterwards and she finds it difficult to believe that the colony ship was kept secret.
[239] Dating “The Forgotten” (IDW DW mini-series #2) - No date is given. This could take place at any point when Jo is the Doctor’s companion.
[240] The Eight Doctors. In The Daemons, the local squire Winstanley says “there have been a lot of queer goings on the last few weeks”, suggesting that’s how long the Master has been in the area.
[241] Inferred from TimeH: Child of Time (p64).
[242] Dating The Daemons (8.5) - The story is set in the near future, as BBC3 is broadcasting.
Devil’s Hump is opened at “midnight” on “Beltane”, and the story ends with a dance around the May pole. Beltane appears to be a Saturday or Sunday, as Yates and Benton watch a Rugby International and don’t know the result. As Professor Horner’s book is released the next day (and the shops would have to be open), it is almost certainly Sunday. It is “two hundred years” since Devil’s Hump has been of interest, and the first attempt to open it was in 1793.
[243] Who Killed Kennedy
[244] The Eight Doctors
[245] Downtime. It is a little odd that this is named the “Aldbourne Incident” - Aldbourne is the real village where The Daemons, set in the fictional village of Devil’s End, was filmed. (Although an historic “Lord of Aldbourne” is referred to in The Daemons.)
[246] Who Killed Kennedy
[247] Business Unusual
[248] The Hollow Men
[249] The Face of the Enemy
[250] Who Killed Kennedy
[251] The Sea Devils. The name of the island appears on Captain Hart’s map, but isn’t referred to in dialogue.
[252] The Face of the Enemy
[253] Dating “The Man in the Ion Mask” (DWM Winter Special 1991) - The story takes place shortly after The Daemons, in “1976”. The story appeared in DWM’s UNIT Special, which set out a timeline for the UNIT stories running from The Invasion in 1975 to The Seeds of Doom in 1980.
[254] Dating The Sentinels of the New Dawn (BF CC #5.10) - It’s “about a year” after Liz left UNIT, during “summer break” at Cambridge.
[255] No Future, which places it in “1973”, three years earlier. This must have been quite an occasion, as the Doctor also remembers it in Timewyrm: Revelation.
[256] “The UNIT Christmas party last year” according to Verdigris.
[257] Dating The Magician’s Oath (BF CC #3.10) - The story takes place between The Daemons and Day of the Daleks. Mention is made of frosty l
awns being found in mid-July - while it’s possible that the subsequent events take place some weeks later in August, it’s probably best to assume that everything happens in the same month.
[258] Dating The Doll of Death (BF CC #3.3) - Big Finish cites the story as taking place between The Daemons and Day of the Daleks. Jo says she’s already gone out to dinner and a club with Mike Yates; presumably, this is a precursor to their thwarted attempt at “a night out on the town” in The Curse of Peladon.
Jo says she’s 18 in this story, which presumably means that she was 17 when she joined UNIT - which is awfully young for someone to be dashing about with a leading military organisation that investigates the paranormal, high-ranking uncle at the United Nations or no. Katy Manning born in 1949, and so was 21 when she first played Jo.
[259] Dating Who Killed Kennedy (MA, unnumbered) - See Ft. 35 (pg240) for the dates given in this book.
[260] Dating Day of the Daleks (9.1) - This may have a contemporary setting. While the world is on the brink of WW3, a BBC reporter appears as himself.
Jo tells the Controller that she left the twentieth century on “September the 13th”. The Controller notes, rather annoyingly for those trying to pin down the dates of the UNIT stories, that Jo has “already told me the year” she is from.
[261] Return of the Living Dad
[262] No Future
[263] Business Unusual
[264] The Dimension Riders. Rafferty is Professor of Extra-Terrestrial Studies at Oxford and the Doctor’s old friend.
[265] “Death to the Doctor!”, in what looks like an incident from the Doctor’s UNIT days.
[266] International Politics in the UNIT Era
In the UNIT era, there appear to be four superpowers: The US, USSR, China and the United Kingdom. In the nineteen-seventies, the world apparently lurches from a period of detente with the Soviet Union (The Invasion), to the brink of World War Three (The Mind of Evil, Day of the Daleks), but within a few years of Day of the Daleks, the Cold War has ended. Invasion of the Dinosaurs includes the line “back in the Cold War days”. Robot is also set after the Cold War ended. About Time notes that “it’s massively unlikely that the entire Cold War has ended at this point since the stories made/set in the 1980s seem to suggest a world where there’s still a schism between the US and USSR (see especially Time-Flight)”. Alternatively, it’s evidence that Robot is set after Time-Flight (so after 1981), which ties in nicely with the date given in Pyramids of Mars (the 1980 date would be the date of The Time Warrior).
The Soviet system seems to survive - in Battlefield the Russian troops’ uniforms bear the hammer and sickle, but they are operating on British soil under UN command, and the “Soviet Praesidium” is mentioned in The Seeds of Death.
Stories told since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the real world have referred to it: Ace mentions “perestroika” in Timewyrm: Exodus, and the Doctor talks of the collapse of the Soviet Union in Just War.
[267] “A couple of weeks” before The Face of the Enemy.
[268] The Curse of Peladon
[269] Dating The Face of the Enemy (PDA #7) - This runs while the Doctor and Jo are away in The Curse of Peladon, and takes about a fortnight.
[270] Dating The Sea Devils (9.3) - This is probably set in the near future. The prison guards’ vehicles and uniforms are futuristic. Although this is effectively a sequel to two stories, no indication is given how much time has passed since Doctor Who and the Silurians or The Daemons. The Master insists that his second television be in colour, but this doesn’t mean that the story is set just after colour TV was introduced - before the advent of cheap colour portable TVs, a household would commonly have a big colour set and a smaller black and white one. The Master watches an episode of The Clangers, first broadcast in 1971 and repeated many times since.
[271] Dating “Under Pressure” (DWM Yearbook 1992) - It’s the “late twentieth century”. It’s unclear if this is an unseen part of The Sea Devils or a later encounter with the monsters. We’ve assumed the former.
[272] Dating The Eight Doctors (EDA #1) - This happens straight after The Sea Devils.
[273] Dating “Target Practice” (DWM #234) - The story takes place after The Sea Devils, as there’s a Sea Devil target on the range. The Doctor says he hasn’t been to Russia for “several hundred years”, and regardless of whether that’s historically or within his own timeline, that places the story before Wages of Sin and contradicts The Devil Goblins from Neptune.
[274] Dating Tales from the Vault (BF CC 6.1) - Jo names the titular characters from The Sea Devils, so it’s after that. The one thing that initially seems telling but isn’t: Jo records an account of this event over a cassette of Paul McCartney and Wings, but they were active from 1971 to 1981.
[275] The Mutants
[276] The Time Monster
[277] In The Green Death it was “last year”.
[278] Dating The Time Monster (9.5) - There’s nothing to suggest this is the near future. Benton wishes Jo a “Merry Michaelmas”. The TARDIS in this story appears to be fully functional - although this story is broadcast before The Three Doctors, perhaps it takes place afterwards. If not, then all the stories in Season Nine apparently take place between 13th September (Day of the Daleks) and 29th September (The Time Monster) of a given year.
This story is set in “the mid-seventies” according to Falls the Shadow, and “thirty years” before The Quantum Archangel (so 1973).
[279] Falls the Shadow
[280] The Blue Angel. At some unspecified point during the Doctor’s exile.
[281] Dating Rags (PDA #40) - This was the first PDA that didn’t specify on the cover which TV stories it was set between. The Doctor’s exile has not been lifted, yet Jo refers to Daleks and Ogrons, meaning it takes place at some point between Day of the Daleks and The Three Doctors.
It is “the beginning of May” when the Ragman starts his campaign, “Tuesday 10th May” a little later. The year is given as “79” at the beginning of the book (although 10th May wasn’t a Tuesday in 1979). It is after Malcolm Owen of the Ruts died (July 1980, in real life), and The Damned song “I Just Can’t Be Happy Today” was released (November 1979).
[282] Dating Find and Replace (BF CC #4.3) - The younger Jo is currently the Doctor’s assistant, the Doctor thinks about nicking a component from Iris’ bus (so his exile is presumably still in force), UNIT is now based in “an old manor house” (so it’s more likely to be Season 9 than Season 8), and the Master is at liberty. Taking all of that into consideration, Iris and the older Jo must show up at some point between The Sea Devils and The Three Doctors. The story ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, suggesting that Iris and Jo have any number of adventures before returning to 2010.
[283] Dating Verdigris (PDA #30) - The month and year are stated in the book as “1973” and “May”. Jo has known the Doctor “two years” (p143). Paul Magrs playfully made it tricky to place this story precisely... the story leads into The Three Doctors (p241), and yet Jo doesn’t know about Peladon (p192). This is after the eventful UNIT Christmas party (p126).
[284] Dating The Three Doctors (10.1) - The evidence is mixed. Dr Tyler says the Americans have launched a deep space monitor, but he also cites “Cape Kennedy”. (This might suggest that The Three Doctors takes place between 1963 and 1973.) Jo misquotes the words to “I am the Walrus”. According to Transit (and a number of novelisations, such as The Mysterious Planet), the Doctor’s exile lasts “five years”.
[285] The Doctor says at the end of The Three Doctors that he needs to build a new force field generator to replace the one that has been destroyed, and goes on a test flight in Carnival of Monsters.
[286] Relative Dementias
[287] Relative Dementias (p18) mentions when the Doctor encountered the Countess.
[288] Dating The Wages of Sin (PDA #19) - It’s just after The Three Doctors, in “the 1970s” (p34).
[289] Verdigris
[290] “Six months” before Inv
asion of the Dinosaurs.
[291] Original Sin
[292] Carnival of Monsters, in which Jo says that 1926 is “forty years” before her time.
[293] Dating The Suns of Caresh (PDA #56) - It is soon after the Doctor’s exile is lifted (p35), and straight after the TARDIS gets back from Inter Minor (p36).
[294] Dating The Many Deaths of Jo Grant (BF CC #6.4) - The blurb says that the story occurs between Carnival of Monsters and Frontier in Space.
[295] Dancing the Code (p61). These unseen encounters either occur with UNIT, or elsewhere with the Doctor.
[296] Interference (p75).
[297] Dating Dancing the Code (MA #9) - Set between Planet of the Daleks and The Green Death. Watergate appears to be topical (p154).
[298] The Android Invasion. Sarah reported on Crayford’s disappearance “two years” before that story.
[299] Dating Last of the Gaderene (PDA #28) - It is “some thirty years” since WW2 (p241). A constable indicates that it’s the “the middle of July”, which would contradict all four of the calendars in The Green Death.
[300] Dating Speed of Flight (MA #27) - Jo is now thinking about leaving the Doctor (p242).
[301] Timelash. Speed of Flight implies the Karfel visit occurs shortly afterwards.
[302] Original Sin
[303] Dating The Green Death (10.5) - This is the near future. The Prime Minister is called Jeremy. BOSS is an advanced “Biomorphic” artificial intelligence that has been linked to a human brain. There is a Ministry of Ecology. Four calendars appear: the first, in the pithead office, shows the date as “April 5th”. The second, in the security guard’s office, shows the month as February during a leap year. A wall calendar in Elgin’s office suggests that it’s May, but a similar one seen behind Mike Yates in episode four indicates that it’s Monday, 28th April. See the British Politics in the UNIT Era sidebar.
[304] Planet of the Spiders
[305] Dating Deep Blue (PDA #20) - It’s “six months” after The Green Death, and it’s Mike’s first mission since then. The Doctor has spent only a small amount of time on Earth since Jo’s departure, but there’s no mention of Sarah. This is “six months” after The Green Death (p15), “ten or so” years before Tegan’s native 1984 (p20).
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