B00DPX9ST8 EBOK

by Parkin, Lance

  [1444] Dating The Impossible Astronaut (X6.1) - River Song gives the year as “2011”. Amy and Rory’s invite instructs them to meet the Doctor on “22/4/2011”; it’s possible they receive the invite before that exact day, allowing time for them to travel by conventional means from Leadworth to Utah. The specific date of the Doctor’s death is also given as 22/4/2011 in Let’s Kill Hitler, Night Terrors, Closing Time and The Wedding of River Song, and is doubtless meant to roughly parallel the broadcast of The Impossible Astronaut on 23rd April of that year.

  [1445] Closing Time

  [1446] Dating The Wedding of River Song (X6.13) - The bulk of the action of this story takes place in one instant: 5.02.57pm on 22nd April, 2011.

  [1447] Between A Good Man Goes to War and Let’s Kill Hitler. Amy and Rory have not yet experienced events in The Wedding of River Song.

  [1448] Serpent Crest: The Hexford Invasion. Easter was on 24th April in 2011.

  [1449] “Almost a year” and, later, “over a year” earlier than The Shadows of Avalon.

  [1450] Dating Serpent Crest: The Hexford Invasion (BBC fourth Doctor audio #3.4) - Mrs Wibbsey’s narration says that the story begins on “a Thursday in August”, “nearly nine months” after the Doctor returned her to Hexford in Serpent Crest: Aladdin Time. The faux second Doctor putters about Hexford for “just over a fortnight” before the fourth Doctor returns “on Friday afternoon”. The Hexford residents spend three months in their personal timeline in the far future, but Hexford presumably returns to Earth the moment after it left - Captain Yates swears the townsfolk to secrecy about everything they’ve witnessed, and that would be a great deal harder, given the inevitable media attention, had Hexford vanished overnight only to return three months later.

  [1451] Serpent Crest: Survivors in Space

  [1452] Dating Let’s Kill Hitler (X6.8) - The Doctor has had “all summer” to look for baby Melody.

  [1453] Dating Night Terrors (X6.9) - Alex, while admittedly not knowing his son’s true origins, believes that George was born “a couple of weeks” after “24/12/2002” (the time-stamp on a photograph), and that George “just turned eight” in January. So, it’s now 2011. Alex’s landlord says that Bergerac (1981-1991) is “thirty years old”. There’s a day planner on the wall of George’s bedroom, but nothing helpful can be discerned from it.

  [1454] Dating Touched by an Angel (NSA #47) - The exact days are given (pgs 13, 235). The Doctor and Amy make an initial visit to 1994, thinking they’ll return the moment they left, but instead come back a week later (p43). In the interim, Rory stays in Mark’s flat, and pops up to Leadworth to collect the post (p44).

  [1455] Dating The Way Through the Woods (NSA #45) - The book was released in 2011, and keeps making reference to “England, now” - which appears to be simultaneous to “late October” (p10).

  [1456] Dating TW: Miracle Day (TW 4.1-4.10) - No year, day, month or time of year is expressly stated.

  The incidental evidence suggests that the year is 2011, the same as the story’s broadcast. Events in 1928 are variously generalised as having occurred “eighty years” and “nine decades” ago; evidence pertaining to a murder in 1927 has been archived for “almost ninety years”. The back of the Overflow Camp Heath Care Provider Framework: Standards and Guidelines folder that Gwen is given (in episode five) says “Copyright 2011”. Oswald Danes says (episode two) he spent “six years” in solitary confinement - he was convicted in 2006, but it’s very likely, for a crime of his magnitude, that he was held without bond for some time beforehand. An investigative report on Jack that Esther pulls from sealed CIA archive boxes (episode one) is dated 21st December, 2010. The CIA’s intelligence (episode one) says that there’s been “no sightings” of Gwen “for the last twelve months” - which isn’t to say that Gwen didn’t go underground some time before that (after TW: Children of Earth). Each episode begins with a rising population counter that starts at 6,928,198,000(ish) - in the real world, the Population Division of the United Nations declared the “Day of 7 Billion” (the day designated as Earth’s population achieving that amount) as 31st October, 2011, although the Miracle might have made the population crest over the seven billion mark somewhat sooner. In The End of Time (TV), set prior to the Miracle at Christmas 2010, the population of Earth was given as 6,727,949,388.

  Gwen’s daughter Anwen, born in or near early May 2010, looks much more like a one year old than a two year old. Both Rex’s mobile (episode two) and the phone logs on Charlotte Wills (episode ten) - although not entirely reliable for reasons discussed below - display the year as “2011”. Overall, and barring some new finding coming to light, 2011 seems like a safe bet.

  The biggest challenge with Miracle Day, then, is finding a portion of 2011 in which it can occur without coming into conflict with Doctor Who Series 6 and The Sarah Jane Adventures Series 5 - neither of which make any mention, or display any sign, of either the Miracle or its massive impact upon global society. Three pieces of evidence - all of which must be discounted for continuity reasons - go directly to this question: a) in a scene set a few days after the Miracle begins, Rex’s secondary mobile gives the date as “22-MAR-11” (episode two), b) also a few days following the Miracle’s start, Oprah Winfrey wants Oswald Danes as a guest on her show, which in the real world took a bow on 25th May, 2011 (episode two), and c) a CIA trace on the phone records of Charlotte Wills (in episode ten, so after the two month gap between eps eight and nine) says the last use of her mobile occurred on “2011.09.09”.

  The first two pieces of evidence are fairly easy to set aside... Rex is talking to Esther on what’s presumably his CIA-issue mobile, so perhaps his secondary mobile is a disposable unit he hurriedly picked up for personal use, and the date isn’t set right. Also, if anything could coax Oprah into bringing her show back (presuming that she ever ended it in the Doctor Who universe), the Miracle would be it. Charlotte’s phone records, admittedly, are much more difficult to overlook, as they’re produced by advanced CIA spyware.

  It’s entirely possible that the production team meant for Rex and Charlotte’s mobile dates to denote that six months pass during Miracle Day from start to finish - or it could equally be the case that they weren’t paying attention to such things. (This is the same production team, after all, that allowed an email to Esther in episode two to read as if it were written by a Dadaist poet: “Ballistics wants report on top of the shade. The flower commands ballistics. The curtain outweighs ballistics. How will the welcome quiz ascend below report? Inside ballistics weds deterrent. Should ballistics stem report? The incidental river pops after report. Report rubs ballistics.”) Whatever the intent, however, the phone records cannot be treated with absolute sanctity because...

  While the time that elapses within the ten Miracle Day episodes is reasonably indeterminate, a non-negotiable gap of two months occurs between episodes eight and nine, and the first eight episodes appear to span a few weeks if not more. (The Torchwood team seems to conduct its investigations at a relatively quick pace, and some developments - such as the construction of the concentration camps - were undoubtedly hastened by the Three Families planning so far in advance of the Miracle; “weeks” passing seems to fit the bill better than “months”.) There’s wiggle room, but it must take a bare minimum of three months, roughly speaking, for Miracle Day to play itself out. (One side note: The prediction in episode one that Earth will exhaust its resources in four months probably doesn’t need to be taken literally, as it’s never mentioned again, and - as appalling as it is to point out - the mathematical models would change once the incineration units start reducing the number of Category 1 cases.)

  When, then, do these three months (if not longer) occur in 2011? Some commentators determined from Rex’s mobile date that the Miracle began in March 2011, and made some heroic efforts to explain how and why Amy and Rory might already be experiencing it when the Doctor summons them to Utah on 22nd April (in The Impossible Astronaut). It is simply beyond the pale, however, to t
hink that Amy and Rory would be reunited with their best friend - an adventurer in time and space with a penchant for solving cosmic problems - and not once ask him to address the issue that people can no longer die, that concentration camps are sprouting up all over the place, and that the world governments are feeding civil liberties into a paper shredder. It is doubly beyond the pale, in fact, to think that they would not once express bewilderment as to how the Doctor can be shot dead on the beach in a world without death, or at the very least scream at the grave injustice of it all. Thinking that such statements were made off screen seems like wishful thinking, and once it’s factored in that The Sarah Jane Adventures Series 5 runs throughout spring 2011 without a single hint of the Miracle happening, any scenario in which the Miracle coincides with these episodes becomes nigh-impossible.

  Could, then, the Miracle initiate in early summer 2011, be in play when Amy and Rory reunite with the Doctor in Let’s Kill Hitler, and conclude in accordance with Charlotte’s mobile records in September? Again, this is exceedingly unlikely, even if it does have the benefit of roughly pegging Miracle Day to its weeks of broadcast. As before, it’s asking too much to believe that Amy and Rory would not once direct the Doctor’s attention to the Miracle and the horrific suffering it has inflicted upon millions worldwide. It’s also a little silly that, with all the guns being pointed about in Let’s Kill Hitler, Amy and Rory don’t wonder if the Miracle is still in play on their bodies now that they’ve relocated to another time zone.

  The most likely scenario, then, for Miracle Day - albeit one that requires wilfully ignoring Charlotte’s phone log - is that the Miracle initiates after Amy and Rory leave with the Doctor in Let’s Kill Hitler, plays out in autumn 2011 and concludes before end of year. While hardly a perfect solution, this avoids all major continuity clashes in a world where Doctor Who, The Sarah Jane Adventures and Torchwood manifestly co-exist (the ties between the three shows are simply too strong to think otherwise). Such a solution leaves two Doctor Who novels (Touched by an Angel and The Way Through the Woods) as outliers, as they have material dated to October 2011 that doesn’t acknowledge the Miracle. But it’s impossible to get through this process without a continuity clash somewhere, somehow.

  Incidentally, trying to determine the time of year from the sun being up at 6 am in Kentucky (in the very first Miracle Day scene of all) proved to a fool’s errand - it turns out that the sun is never up that early in Kentucky.

  This chronology has avoided using the titles given to the individual Miracle Day episodes for publicity purposes, as these didn’t appear in the episodes themselves and so aren’t very intuitive. (Besides, with Miracle Day being a single story, using the individual titles rather than “episode one”, etc., just tends to create needless confusion.) For anyone needing to cross-reference, the publicity titles (which also appear on the DVD menus) are: 4.1, The New World; 4.2 Rendition; 4.3, Dead of Night; 4.4, Escape to L.A.; 4.5, The Categories of Life; 4.6, The Middle Men; 4.7, Immortal Sins; 4.8, End of the Road; 4.9, The Gathering; 4.10, The Blood Line.

  [1457] Dating TW: Web of Lies (TW animated serial #1) - A caption says that it’s “the present day”. It’s alternately said that Miles is shot “on Miracle Day”/the day after Miracle Day. While the action of this story only seems to take a day or so to unfold, it’s evidently much longer than that, as mention is made of “people being burned” and the economy being on razor’s edge.

  [1458] Gwen Cooper, TW: Miracle Day.

  [1459] TW: Web of Lies

  Future History

  Alistair Gryffen was born in Canada in 2012. By 2050, he would be perhaps the world’s most brilliant scientist - an expert in robotics, cybernetics, weather control, time travel and alien technology. [1] In 2012, a special pound coin was minted for the London Olympics. [2]

  c 2012 - The God Complex [3]

  Minotaur-like creatures - distant cousins of the Nimon - subsisted on the emotion of faith, and established themselves on various planets as gods. One such Minotaur was imprisoned in a space station that could transform its interior shape, and abducted beings with different belief systems to feed the prisoner.

  The eleventh Doctor, Amy and Rory arrived in the station after it had shifted into the likeness of a 1980s hotel. The Minotaur longed to die, but instinctually kept killing the abductees - a gambler, Joe; a medical student, Rita; and a blogger, Howie, all perished. Amy’s faith in the Doctor attracted the Minotaur, but the Doctor broke her belief in him, which severed the emotional tether and killed the creature.

  The Doctor realised that Amy and Rory’s faith in him was dangerous, and that one or both of them would end up killed if they stayed with him. He set them up in London with a house and car, and took to travelling without them...

  c 2012 (spring) - Closing Time [4]

  Knowing he was about to die at Lake Silencio in Utah, the eleventh Doctor paid a social call on his friend Craig Owens - who now had a baby boy, Alfie, with his partner Sophie. The Doctor noticed electrical anomalies, and got himself a job at a department store where a number of employees had disappeared. They had been teleported to a weakened Cyber-ship that had dispatched Cybermats to beam electricity back to it. From a distance, the Doctor saw Amy and Rory; Amy was currently appearing in an ad for Petrichor perfume, a scent “For the Girl Who’s Tired of Waiting”.

  When the Cybermen attempted to convert Craig into their new Controller, his love for Alfie overloaded the circuits, destroying the Cybermen and their ship. The Doctor repaired the damage to Craig’s house that a Cybermat had caused, and accepted Craig’s gift of a Stetson. He also took some blue envelopes to send invites to his closest friends... and left to confront his fate at Lake Silencio.

  c 2012 - The Wedding of River Song [5]

  River Song visited Amy and Rory at their home, and told them how the Doctor had survived at Lake Silencio.

  = Rose and her allies worked on a dimension cannon that would enable her to return home. The Daleks’ gambit with a reality bomb weakened the dimensional walls, enabling the cannon to work. Rose returned to her native universe, and helped Donna resolve an errant timeline. [6]

  = 2012 - Journey’s End [7]

  Mickey and Jackie also crossed over to their home reality, and aided Rose and the Doctor against the Daleks. Afterward, Rose, Jackie and the duplicate tenth Doctor resumed residence on Pete’s World, and the dimensional walls sealed once more. Jackie had now given birth to a son named Tony.

  Paul Kendrick, an Auton created by the Nestene affiliated with Hyperville, and having no knowledge of his true origins, emerged as the best football player England had offered in the last two decades. In the Euro 2012 semi-final against Spain, Kendrick captained England and scored the winning goal. An injury to Kendrick prevented England from winning the final against Portugal. [8]

  2012 (27th July) - Fear Her [9]

  Adverts were distributed for Shayne Ward: The Greatest Hits. Humans were the only species in the galaxy to have ever bothered with edible ball bearings.

  The Isolus were empathic creatures from the deep realms - it was not unusual for an Isolus family to consist of up to four billion members, or for them to journey for a thousand human lifetimes. During childbirth, an Isolus mother would jettison millions of spores into space, but one Isolus was caught in a solar flare, and its pod crashed to Earth. It empathised with Chloe Webber, age 12, and hosted itself in her. The Isolus could harness ionic power, enabling Chloe to turn people into drawings and vice versa.

  As London geared up for the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, the tenth Doctor and Rose investigated reports of missing persons - actually consigned by Chloe to an ionic holding pen - on Dame Kelly Holmes Close in the city. Chloe also made the eighty thousand people in the Olympic Stadium vanish. The Doctor and Rose restored them, and helped the alien back into space by lighting the Olympic Flame.

  Papua New Guinea went on to surprise everyone in the shot put. At this time, there was an East London police authority and an East London C
ouncil.

  2012 / = 2012 (June - August) - The Shadows of Avalon [10]

  Britain had a King and a female Prime Minister. There had been no major alien attack that required UNIT’s attention since the Martian invasion of 1997. [11]

  The Time Lords detected that one of the eighth Doctor’s companions, Compassion, was evolving into a form of technology they could use, and President Romana dispatched agents Cavis and Gandar to recover her. Still mourning Doris, General Lethbridge-Stewart was on leave. He was called in to investigate the loss of a nuclear warhead, which he discovered had passed through to the parallel universe of Albion.

  = Meanwhile, in Albion, a war was brewing between the Unseelie and the Catuvelauni. The eighth Doctor, Fitz and Compassion arrived in Avalon following the seeming destruction of the TARDIS in a dimensional rift. They prevented war there from escalating. Compassion evolved into a new form of TARDIS. President Romana tried to capture her, but the Doctor and his companions escaped. Lethbridge-Stewart remained in Avalon to advise Queen Mab.

  2012 - Dalek [12]