The piece of evidence most in support of Closing Time literally occurring before 22nd April is a newspaper that Craig reads with the headline “Britain’s Got Torment” - this appears to have been published two days before the story’s end (at the very least, it’s topical, with Nina the local girl being on Britain’s Got Talent), and has the barely visible dateline of “19th April, 2011”. This would mean, however, that the Doctor Who calendar is even more askew than normal... 22nd April was a Friday in 2011, so either the same day in the Doctor Who universe is actually a Monday (given that Closing Time ends on Sunday), or 22nd April is in synch with real life and is a Friday, meaning Tuesday through Thursday (when Sophie is gone) has somehow, someway, been re-designated as “the weekend”. It’s always regrettable to disregard a date blatantly given on screen, but it’s probably fair to ignore it in this case.
Two elements support a dating for Closing Time of later than April 2011... the first is that the Doctor spies Amy and Rory from afar. In their timelines, this must happen after he dropped them off in The God Complex - not because Amy has a previously unmentioned modelling career (for all we’re told, she could already be making a living that way in the two months before The Impossible Astronaut), but because the name of the fragrance she’s advertising, “Petrichor” (meaning the smell of dust after rain), presumably derives from Amy and Rory learning about petrichor in The Doctor’s Wife. Either way, Amy and Rory’s presence helps to rule out Closing Time coming before The Impossible Astronaut.
The Doctor ends Closing Time intending to send Amy and Rory the invite to his death, which is delivered to their Leadworth address (on or prior to 22nd April) in The Impossible Astronaut, but it’s unlikely that he would trust such a vitally important message to the vagaries of Royal Mail. If the time-travelling justice agents deliver the invite with the Doctor’s other invitations (in The Wedding of River Song), Amy and Rory’s invite must be stamped for Overnight Mail just for show.
The tipping point for a later dating for Closing Time, ultimately, is Alfie’s age. Babies typically say their first words at around eleven to fourteen months, so unless the Doctor’s conversations with Alfie boosted his vocabulary, Alfie must be at least a year old if he can say the words “doctor who”. Add on the duration of Sophie’s pregnancy, and it must have been at least two years since Craig and Sophie became a couple in The Lodger (set in 2010).
The Cybermen in this story, as with those in A Good Man Goes to War, don’t bear the Cybus logo and are presumably the ones from our universe, having incorporated the technology of the alternate-reality ones first introduced in Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel.
[5] Dating The Wedding of River Song (X6.13) - No date given for this epilogue, but it’s after the Doctor drops Amy and Rory off at the end of The God Complex.
[6] Turn Left, The Stolen Earth, Journey’s End. The dimension-jumping Rose is glimpsed throughout Series 4, starting with Partners in Crime.
[7] Dating Journey’s End (X4.13) - The placement of these events is accomplished by (a little arbitrarily) adding two years (the same as passed in real life) to Rose parting ways with the Doctor in Doomsday. Jackie was pregnant in Doomsday and has now given birth, so that time-span seems reasonable.
[8] Autonomy
[9] Dating Fear Her (X2.11) - The year is given as “2012”, and the story ends with the opening of the London Olympics, which was scheduled for 27th July, 2012. At present, pop singer Shayne Ward has no Greatest Hits collection.
[10] Dating The Shadows of Avalon (EDA #31) - The story starts in “July 2012” (p1). The Ancestor Cell specifies that Compassion is the first Type 102 TARDIS, and FP: The Book of the War establishes that she’s the only Type 102. That said, we did see another in The Dimension Riders, but it didn’t take the form of a person.
[11] This statement appears odd in the light of the wide array of alien attacks in the new Doctor Who, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures.
[12] Dating Dalek (X1.6) - The Doctor gives the date.
[13] Dating The Long Game (X1.7) - No date is given, but it’s clearly after Dalek. Adam’s mother says she hasn’t seen him for six months.
[14] “Five years” before The Enemy of the World.
[15] The Time of the Daleks. The Doctor restores some wayward history at the end of the story, but it’s clear that the “real” history includes Learman coming to power, and she’s mentioned in Trading Futures.
[16] The Face-Eater (p55). Trading Futures (p68) - there’s a New Kabul in that book, implying the original city was destroyed, so Afghanistan was also a battleground.
[17] Trading Futures
[18] The Taking of Planet 5
[19] Instruments of Darkness. Presumably a reference to Tony Blair’s son and Prince Andrew’s daughter.
[20] Dating Christmas on a Rational Planet (NA #52) - The date is given.
[21] Dating Frozen Time (BF #98) - The year is given. The veiled implication is that Genevieve shares some adventures with the Doctor before returning home.
[22] Dating Martha in the Mirror (NSA #22) - “One hundred years, three months and six days” (p38) before the main part of the story.
[23] Dating The Darksmith Legacy (The Dust of Ages, #1; The Graves of Mordane, #2; The Colour of Darkness, #3; The Depths of Despair, #4; The Vampires of Paris, #5; The Game of Death, #6; The Planet of Oblivion, #7; The Pictures of Emptiness, #8; The Art of War, #9; The End of Time (DL), #10) - This ten-book children’s series entails the tenth Doctor and his one-off companion, the android girl Gisella, racing between different time zones.
Two of these are fairly easy to place: most of The Art of War occurs in medieval times, and The Vampires of Paris happens in “1895”. Four more (The Dust of Ages, the opening sequences of The Graves of Mordane, The Pictures of Emptiness and the opening sequences of The Art of War) occur together relatively close to the books’ publication in 2009. Another three (The Depths of Despair, The Planet of Oblivion and most of The Graves of Mordane) contain references to humans in space, and so must be placed in the future.
The intent of those making The Darksmith Legacy was that the Darksmiths themselves were contemporaneous with the first book, The Dust of Ages, and so originated from circa 2012. Said intent has been reflected in this chronology, even though many of the details in the series are vague, absent or maddeningly contradictory. Brother Varlos must have access to time technology (that he presumably nicked from the Darksmiths) for the plot to function, but this isn’t explicitly stated. The Darksmiths use up “every last item of temporal engineering” at their disposal in creating their Agent (The Dust of Ages), and yet they can still dispatch an entire Dreadnought through into the future after the Doctor (The Depths of Despair), and travel to the world of Oblivion (The Planet of Oblivion, also in the future).
Most glaringly of all, the Doctor stresses in The Graves of Mordane (p27) that he’s only going to travel in space, not time - and yet the TARDIS moves from Earth’s moon, circa 2012, to a point when humanity’s colony worlds have been burying their dead on Mordane for at least four centuries (p37), without any acknowledgement of the discrepancy.
One glitch that’s unrelated to dating issues, but demonstrates the difficulty in analysing this series: Karagula is named a “cold desolate planet” in Book One (The Dust of Ages), but is a hot and arid world with two suns in Book Three (The Colour of Darkness).
See the individual entries for more.
[24] Dating The Dust of Ages, The Graves of Mordane, The Colour of Darkness, The Pictures of Emptiness and The Art of War (DL #1-#3, #8, #9) - The back cover of The Dust of Ages and the story recap in The Graves of Mordane both claim that the Doctor’s involvement with the Eternity Crystal takes place “a few years into our future...” The general impression is that Earth’s corporations are considering exploitation of the moon for the first time - so, more in the relative near future (in Doctor Who terms) than, say, hundreds of years hence. All references to UK and London culture are either vague or fictionalis
ed, and of no help in determining the year.
According to the story recap and back cover to The Art of War, the Darksmith-Krashok rendezvous (i.e. the opening sequences to The Art of War, and by extension most of The Pictures of Emptiness, which leads into it) occurs on “present day” Earth. Taken literally alongside The Dust of Ages being “a few years in the future”, this would mean that the tenth Doctor is attempting to thwart the meeting and retrieve the Eternity Crystal a few years before his younger self finds it on the moon. It seems fair to assume, however, that the four books do follow one another in the same year, as there’s no sign that the stories were intended to be out of sequence - the “present day” references look very much like a mistake and can be treated as such.
[25] The Colour of Darkness, The Depths of Despair, The Vampire of Paris, The Game of Death.
[26] Dating Iris: Enter Wildthyme (Iris novel #1) - The modern-day component begins in “autumn” (p15, 38, 39), proceeds over some weeks (p165-166) and finishes “Sometime in late November” (p311). A TV screen in Iris’ bus (in a takeoff of Doctor Who - The Movie) says that it’s “Darlington - Human Era - Early 21st Century” (p61).
Enter Wildthyme was published in 2011, but must occur in some other year owing to the need to place TW: Miracle Day in autumn 2011. (The meta-fictional nature of the Iris Wildthyme adventures means that Iris fans can probably overlook this continuity conflict, but this chronology doesn’t have that luxury.) It’s been “some years” since Barbra the vending machine arrived from the future (in December 2008, in Iris: Iris and the Celestial Omnibus: “The Deadly Flap”), so 2012 or 2013 is perhaps preferable to 2010.
[27] Dating Hunter’s Moon (NSA #46) - No year given. None of the participants are human, save for three people kidnapped from Earth to serve as prey in the Gorgoror Chase. The London in which the abductees live is very functional and could well be contemporary, but the references (including the Circle Line, the Metropolitan Police, Jobseeker’s Allowance and a man from Romania) fall short of being very definitive. It’s difficult to tell, in relation to the public’s awareness in the new series that aliens exist, if the trio are surprised by the very notion that aliens are real, or are instead baffled to learn they personally have been abducted and taken into space on a star-cruiser. With the year being so uncertain, but the month in London being specified as November (p12), it’s perhaps best to avoid the year of Hunter Moon’s publication - 2011 - to curtail any further conflict with TW: Miracle Day.
Mention is made of a war between Torodon and the Terileptils - the latter’s ability to wage all-out war was presumably diminished after the destruction of their homeworld in The Dark Path (set circa 3400), so Hunter’s Moon likely occurs before that. An Aggedor beast (The Curse of Peladon) is among the wildlife present, but no mention is made of the Federation. One of the hunters in the Chase bears a high-voltage shotgun called the Eradicator (p113), the design of which is similar (coincidentally or otherwise) to the weapon of the same name from Carnival of Monsters.
[28] Dating The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe (X7.0) - It is “two years” since Amy last saw the Doctor (in The Wedding of River Song, set in April 2011). At time of writing, it’s a toss-up as to whether Amy is rounding up and means that it’s now Christmas 2012, or she’s rounding down and it’s Christmas 2013.
[29] Relative Dementias (p40) dates when the Doctor and Ace visit the Countess. Her warning about 14th July is on p17.
[30] “The year before” The Sentinels of the New Dawn. Tanganyika was an independent state in Africa only from 9th December, 1961 to 26th April, 1964. The area is now part of Tanzania, and in recent times, the name “Tanganyika” has only been used in reference to Lake Tanganyika.
[31] Dating Autonomy (NSA #35) - The year is given. The Doctor says this is the fourth Auton invasion “at least”.
[32] The Glamour Chase (p128).
[33] Dating The Sentinels of the New Dawn (BF CC #5.10) - The year is given.
[34] The City of the Dead. This retcon takes the sting out of one of the nastier bits of Warlock.
[35] Dating Warlock (NA #34) - The novel is the sequel to Cat’s Cradle: Warhead. The events of the earlier book are consistently referred to as happening “years” ago (p8, p203, p209, p223). Vincent and Justine, the two young lovers from Warhead, bought a car after a “few years” of marriage and have had it a while (p356).
In Cat’s Cradle: Warhead, Ace had difficulty guessing how old Justine was, eventually settling on “maybe 16 or 17” (p181). By Warlock, Justine has matured into a woman (p203), but she is still only “probably a couple of years older than the medical student” (p301), so she is in her early-to-mid 20s. We suggest, then, that Warlock takes place about five years after Cat’s Cradle: Warhead. It is late autumn (p279, p334).
[36] Damaged Goods
[37] “Six years” before The Hungry Earth.
[38] The Great Space Elevator. This is the first we’ve seen of Victoria since Downtime - a story that established that she was 14 when she met the Doctor, and she’s probably not much older than that when she leaves his company circa 1975. If she did restart her life (as an international fugitive or not) in wake of Downtime, then she’s in her mid-30s when she starts a family, and the bare minimum of time required for her to be an impending grandmother must mean that the framing sequence for The Great Space Elevator occurs circa 2015 at the earliest.
[39] Night Terrors, extrapolating from George being eight in 2011.
[40] Dating Benny: Present Danger: “Excalibur of Mars” (Benny collection #14) - Benny says that she’s in “the early twenty-first century, give or take”. Bambera and Ancelyn are said to have been entrusted with Excalibur “decades ago” (at the end of Battlefield), but Bambera is still fit enough for active duty, Merlin is here presented as “a scruffy man in a long, raggedy afghan coat... Wearing an eye-patch, barely visible beneath a long, asymmetric fringe of red hair”, loosely in accordance with the Battlefield novelisation.
[41] Dating “The Lunar Strangers” (DWM #215-217) - The date is given at a caption at the end of the story.
[42] Dating The Eight Truths/Worldwide Web (BF BBC7 #3.7-3.8) - The back cover says it’s “London, 2015”, and a news broadcast claims that the story begins on 21st October. The Doctor then spends “twenty-three days” healing from a dose of radioactive Polonium-210, but awakens to facilitate the story’s end. Terra Nova might be a corollary of the British space program first seen in The Ambassadors of Death. The Terra Nova probe dispatched to Mercury is “following up” on the NASA probe sent to Sol’s innermost planet on 3rd August, 2004.
The clear implication is that the Doctor makes the public forget all the events of this story, and (off screen, somehow) erases all media coverage of it. It’s very unclear, however, how the Eightfold Truth could have distributed millions of Metebelis crystals to its members for an 18-year stretch prior to 2015 without anybody involved in the original Metebelis incident (Sarah Jane, Mike Yates, let alone the Doctor, etc.) noticing.
Lucie here appears on TV as an Eightfold Truth spokesperson, but if the Doctor indeed erases all record of this, it needn’t further complicate her media appearance in Hothouse circa 2045.
[43] FP: Erasing Sherlock and its prologue in FP: Warring States. The year isn’t specified, but Gillian is from the “twenty-first century”, and stops to wonder how the 2018 embargo is going to affect the course of her academic studies.
[44] Revolution Man (p23). No date is given.
[45] The Angel of Scutari
[46] LIVE 34
[47] Dating Trading Futures (EDA #55) - The year is not specified beyond “the early decades of the twenty-first century” on the back cover, but Mather says his encounter with the Doctor in Father Time, which occurred in 1989, was “more than twenty years ago”. Malady Chang, a secret agent, seems to place it nearer thirty years, as she thinks the Doctor “would have been about ten at the time”, and he looks like he’s in his “early forties”. People who were teenagers in the
nineties are now “pushing pensionable age” (p8) and Anji’s generation are the parents of teenagers. Learman from The Time of the Daleks is referred to (p107), as are the Zones from The Enemy of the World. It’s not clear whether World War Four has been averted - US and EZ forces are fighting at the end of the book, and it’s only hoped that the revelation of Baskerville’s plan will end it.
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”.
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