The date “2030”, which is now commonly associated with the story, first appeared in David Whitaker’s storyline for the novelisation of his story, submitted to WH Allen in October 1979. The document was reprinted in DWM #200, and amongst other things of interest it is the only place to give Salamander a first name: “Ramon”. The novelisation was due to be published in 1980, and was to be set “some fifty years later than our time - the year 2030” according to the storyline, but the book was not completed before Whitaker’s death.
The second edition of The Programme Guide duly gave the date as “2030”. The blurb for the novelisation by Ian Marter, published in 1981 - the same year as The Programme Guide - concurred, although perhaps significantly, the text of the book didn’t specify a date. 2030 was soon adopted wholesale, with The TARDIS Logs and The Terrestrial Index giving the new date. Encyclopedia of the Worlds of Doctor Who is confused: the entry for “Denes” gives the date as “2017”, but that for “Fedorin” states “2030”. The TARDIS Special was less specific than most, claiming the story takes place in an “Unknown Future” setting. The Legend states it’s “c.2017”. About Time hedges its bets a little, saying that “around 2017 - 2030 is the most likely possibility”. Alien Bodies sets the story later, after Warchild and apparently around the 2040s.
It seems clear that David Whitaker intended the story to be set fifty years after it was broadcast, so that date has been adopted here.
Weather Control
In a number of stories set in the twenty-first century, we see a variety of weather control projects. The earliest is in the New Adventure Cat’s Cradle: Warhead, and simply involves “seeding” clouds with chemicals to regulate rainfall (p129). A year before The Enemy of the World, Salamander develops the Sun-Catcher, the first Weather Control system. As its name suggests, the Sun Store satellite collects the rays from the Sun and stores them in concentrated form. It is also capable of influencing tidal and seismic activity.
Each major city has its own Weather Control Bureau by The Seeds of Death, and these are co-ordinated and monitored centrally by computer. The London Bureau is a large complex, manned by a handful of technicians. The Weather Control Unit itself is about the size of a large desk, with separate circuits for each weather condition. With fully functioning Rain Circuits, rainfall over a large area can be arranged quickly.
By 2050, the Gravitron had been set up on Earth’s moon. This is the ultimate form of weather control, working on the simple principle that “the tides control the weather, the Gravitron controls the tides”. Weather control is under the control of the (United Zones?) General Assembly.
It’s clear those last two are different systems, but it’s less clear which is the most advanced. This becomes important when trying to date The Seeds of Death - About Time suggests that the weather control in The Seeds of Death is “far more compact and efficient”, so that’s the later story. But it can certainly be argued that a device in a room in London that makes it rain on special occasions looks primitive compared with a moon-based one that manipulates gravity as part of an international programme to manage the entire world’s weather.
[53] Damaged Goods. Marcie Hatter, a UNIT Corporal here (p262), was the name of the heroine of Russell T Davies’ TV serial Dark Season (1991).
[54] The Last Dodo
[55] Timewyrm: Revelation
[56] “A few decades” after Vampire Science.
[57] Benny remembers the Southport Incident in Just War (p214), but doesn’t specify what or when it was. Zoe, who lacks even rudimentary historical knowledge, recognises the effects of an atomic blast in The Dominators, perhaps suggesting that nuclear weapons are still around (and have been used?) in her time.
[58] Winner Takes All. No date is given, but William is currently second in line to the throne, and will be King at some point in the twenty-first century.
[59] The Long Game
[60] As detailed by Brooke in The Waters of Mars. There’s a fairly consistent narrative in Doctor Who that the first half of the twenty-first century sees environmental and other catastrophes that are overcome in the second half of the century by technology - space exploration in particular - although there are many differences in detail.
[61] Dating The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood (X5.8-5.9) - The year is given in a caption at the beginning of The Hungry Earth.
[62] Or so the Doctor claims in The Hungry Earth, either suggesting that it’s fallen fairly dramatically since 2009, or that he’s just confused.
[63] Dating TimeH: Kitsune (TimeH #4) - Honoré and Emily attend an evening festival in Kyoto on “17 July 2020” (p23). It’s later said that they “left for Tokyo on the Friday morning” (p30) - which presumably denotes the next day, although 17th July, 2020, will be a Friday.
[64] Dating House of Blue Fire (BF #152) - Sally tests a colleague’s memory by asking, “I’m guessing you remember what year it is?”, and receives the (evidently correct) reply, “Of course... 2020.”
[65] Dating The Power of the Daleks (4.3) - There is no confirmation of the date in the story itself. Lesterson says the Dalek ship arrived “at least two centuries ago”, “before the colony”, which might suggest the Earthmen have been there for just under two hundred years. However, the generally low-level of technology, the reliance on “rockets” and the fact that there is only one communications link with Earth suggests the colony is fairly new. The colonists don’t recognise the Daleks, suggesting it’s before The Dalek Invasion of Earth.
The contemporary trailer (included on the Lost in Time DVD) announced it was set “in the year 2020”, and press material at the time confirmed that. This date also appeared in the 10th anniversary Radio Times, was used by the second edition of The Making of Doctor Who and the first edition of The Programme Guide.
Nevertheless, Doctor Who fans can see a statement like “I’m from 1980” as problematic and ambiguous, and most fan chronologies have seen 2020 as implausibly early for Earth to have a colony on a planet that’s not in our solar system. Ergo, they often use the fact the date only appeared in a trailer to disallow it. (To be fair, the trailer for The Dalek Invasion of Earth set that story in “2000” - a date to which nobody subscribes.) In DWM, The TARDIS Logs offered a date of “2049”, but “A History of the Daleks” contradicted this and gave the date as “2249”. The American Doctor Who comic offered the date of “2600 AD”, apparently unaware that the Dalek ship has been dormant. The Terrestrial Index came to the elaborate conclusion that the colonists left Earth in 2020 - in spacecraft with suspended animation - and then used the old calendar when they arrived. As a result, while they call the date 2020, the story is really set in “2220”. Timelink opted for “2120”. About Time claims that “internal publicity” gave the date as “2070” (it didn’t, actually - that was for The Moonbase), but concludes the story is set “probably somewhere in the mid-2100s”. Earth could only really have a colony on another world this early if the planet Vulcan was in our solar system. See the article “Vulcan” for how it might be possible to justify the “2020” date.
[66] The Waters of Mars
[67] Dating The Harvest (BF #58) - The date is given on the back cover blurb.
[68] Dating Benny: The Grel Escape (Benny audio #5.1) - The year is given. The “Festival of Piranha” is a parody of the “Festival of Ghana” seen in The Chase.
[69] At the end of Doctor Who and the Silurians, the Reptile People go back into deep freeze for “fifty years”. Alternatively, they might have all perished in the explosions triggered by the Brigadier’s men. There are Silurians working alongside humanity in Eternity Weeps in 2003, but it’s never stated they are from Wenley Moor, and we know there were other shelters. The UNIT audios (set circa 2005) show a failed attempt to reconcile humanity and the Silurians, although a group of Silurians nonetheless help human scientists to cure a lethal virus. The eleventh Doctor indicates in Cold Blood that the Wenley Moor Silurians were killed, not entombed.
[70] “Twenty years” after The
Fearmonger.
[71] First Frontier (p137).
[72] Dating Emotional Chemistry (EDA #66) - The date appears in the blurb.
[73] Happy Endings
[74] Glauss was born twenty-six years after Millennial Rites (p86). A bit confusingly, p70 says her Cybercrime text was written “in the early twenty-first century”.
[75] Dating The Feast of Axos (BF #144) - Axos was stuck in the time loop “fifty years” ago in The Claws of Axos, making this story subject to UNIT dating.
[76] Dating The Ring of Steel (BBC DW audiobook #8) - The Doctor tells Amy that they’re “maybe fifteen years into her future”.
[77] Dating Project: Destiny and A Death in the Family (BF #139-140) - The Doctor is initially uncertain as to the date (“We’re in the year 2024, or possibly 2026”) and the back cover says that it’s 2025. It’s said three times within the story, though, that it’s 2026 - once by Nimrod in response to Hex asking about the year, and twice on data files related to the Contaminants. The same data files seem to indicate that Project: Destiny begins on “18th of April” and continues the next day - when the Doctor is shot, and later awakens after spending three days in healing coma. So, that adventure ends - and events seem to pick up immediately afterwards in A Death in the Family - on the 22nd. The later portion of A Death in the Family, which begins in 2027, confirms that London was evacuated “last year”.
[78] Dating A Death in the Family (#140) - Ace establishes the date of her arrival (24th June, 2027) by checking a newspaper. She dispatches Henry’s account of her to Hex on “Tuesday, 24th of May” (actually a Wednesday in 2028) - evidently the same day that Professor Noone springs into creation and confronts the Word Lord.
[79] The Waters of Mars
[80] “Twenty or thirty years” after The King of Terror.
[81] The Last Dodo
[82] The Left-Handed Hummingbird
[83] “Apotheosis”
[84] Dating Warchild (NA #47) - The book is the sequel to Warlock. At the end of the earlier novel, Justine was in the early stages of pregnancy, so her baby would have been born in the spring of the following year. In Warchild, her son Ricky is “15”. This book is set in the early autumn, as the long summer ends and the school year is starting in America.
[85] Dating Singularity (BF #76) - The year is unspecified, but 30th November is a Tuesday; in the twenty-first century - and allowing that the portion of Singularity eleven years hence cannot occur before 2090 - that narrows the possibilities to 2010, 2021, 2027, 2032, 2038, 2049, 2055, 2060, 2066 and 2077. As Somnus publicity materials brag about the goal of its members to terraform Mars within “two years”, 2077 doesn’t seem very likely; it would push the later portion of Singularity to 2088 and the end of the devastating Thousand-Day War - a year in which Somnus would be rather brazen to make such a claim.
Moscow endures its worst storm “in fifty years”, an event that would be unlikely in the era of weather control witnessed in The Moonbase and The Seeds of Death. The former story takes place in 2070, ruling out this part of Singularity occurring before 2066. One complication is the Doctor’s offhanded comment that mankind is only “a few years” from expanding beyond the solar system, suggesting a later dating as opposed to an earlier one. Nonetheless, given Ahistory’s projected dating of The Seeds of Death, the best compromise for the early part of Singularity seems to be 2032, with the remainder of this adventure occurring in 2043.
[86] The Waters of Mars. See Dating The Seeds of Death.
[87] Cold Fusion (p216), no date given.
[88] Iris: The Two Irises. Rossiter lived 1926-1984; Edmonds was born in 1948 and is still alive; the placement here arbitrarily has him living to his mid-eighties, and assumes he didn’t lose his soul while living.
[89] The King of Terror
[90] “F.A.Q.”
[91] The Waters of Mars
[92] Darius is 15, and Jorjie and Starkey are both 14, in K9: Regeneration. Jorjie is still 14 in K9: Dream-Eaters and K9: The Last Oak Tree.
[93] “About ten years” prior to Hothouse.
[94] Dating Benny: The Vampire Curse: “Possum Kingdom” (Benny collection #12b) - It’s “the technologically comfortable early-to-mid twenty-first century” (p111).
[95] The Seeds of Death
[96] At some point before K9: The Sirens of Ceres.
[97] “Years” before K9: Robot Gladiators, but presumably after the development of hyperlogarithms.
[98] Alien Bodies. The World Zones Accord was intended as a reference to the establishment of the political system of The Enemy of the World, which most chronologies set earlier than this. We could speculate that the World Zones Accord strengthened an existing World Zones Authority, in the same way successive European treaties have granted more powers to the EEC/EC/EU.
[99] A Death in the Family. It’s not established whether “you” means Great Britain, humanity in general or something else entirely.
[100] The cuttings are stolen “five years” prior to Hothouse. It’s not expressly said that Hazel herself arranged the theft, but it seems likely.
[101] Interference (Book Two, p292, p314), where the If, one of IM Foreman’s incarnations, predicts Sarah’s death. Following the machinations of the Council of Eight, the timeline is altered so that Sam Jones died in 2002.
[102] Dreamstone Moon (p58).
[103] “Five hundred years” before Frontier in Space. The incident is also recounted in Shadowmind.
[104] Paper Cuts. The Doctor who visits Draconia is described as being “old” and “aged”, which sounds like the first Doctor, but The Dark Path establishes it was the second Doctor.
[105] Catastrophea
[106] Return of the Living Dad. According to the Doctor in The Parting of the Ways, the Daleks also refer to him by that title.
[107] “Cold-Blooded War!” The Doctor is familiar with this custom, so it must predate his first visit to Draconia.
[108] Benny: Nobody’s Children. There’s no evidence that the Doctor actually tried to make off with the Empress’ daughter.
[109] Dating The Seeds of Death (6.5) - This story is tricky to pin down a date for, or even to place in relation to other stories.
On screen, the only indication of the date is the Doctor’s identification of the ion rocket designed by Eldred as a product of “the twenty-first century”. As the rocket only exists as a prototype at this stage, the story must take place before 2100. T-Mat is developed at least two generations after space travel, as Eldred’s father designed spacecraft, including a “lunar passenger module”, and Eldred is an old man himself. It’s impossible to infer a firm date from that, particularly as we know from The Tenth Planet that moonshots were unremarkable events by the mid-1980s in the Doctor Who universe. However, “lunar passenger module” suggests an altogether more routine service, and that this story is not set in the late twentieth or very early twenty-first century. It’s never stated how long Travel-Mat has been in operation before The Seeds of Death, but it is a relatively new invention, as the video brochure we hear (transcribed here in full) states. Young Gia Kelly was involved with the development of T-Mat, but it has been around “a good many years” according to Eldred, long enough to make a rocket-travel advocate look eccentric. T-Mat is referred to as having been around for “years”, rather than “decades” or “generations” - all told, it seems reasonable to suggest that T-Mat has been around for about a decade before the story.
It is possible to rule out certain dates by referring to other stories: The Weather Control Bureau is seen, so it must be set after 2016 when Salamander invents weather control; the Bureau is on Earth, which might suggest the story is set before 2050 when the Gravitron is installed on the moon, or that the system is later moved to Earth. Either way, the story can’t be set between 2050 and (at least) 2070, because the Gravitron is in operation from the moon at that time and rockets are in use during that period. By the time of The Seeds of Death, it’s stated that man has not travelled beyond the moon.<
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While About Time claims that the “technology is shown to be in advance of that in The Wheel in Space”, it’s a bit hard to see what that’s based on. We’re explicitly told that Zoe has a more extensive knowledge of spaceflight than Eldred. (He admits as much, and Radnor says the same later - and, despite what About Time says, clearly distinguishes between Zoe’s expertise and Jamie’s lack of it.) Laser weapons have been developed by The Wheel in Space, including compact hand “blasters”, but projectile weapons are still used here. There are quite advanced robots in Zoe’s time, nothing like that seen here. Zoe was trained in a futuristic city, yet the cities we see here look much as they do now. That might be circumstantial evidence, but there’s far more than that - The Seeds of Death is set at a time when man has travelled no “farther than the moon”, whereas The Wheel in Space is set at a time when man’s got at least to the asteroid belt, explicitly has ships in “deep space”, has a “fleet” of manned ships, has at least five permanent space stations, and has been selecting and intensively training people to be astronauts for at least Zoe’s lifetime (nineteen years, according to The Invasion). While no one says it in the story, The Seeds of Death is clearly - and is clearly intended to be - set before The Wheel in Space, case closed.
Deep space interstellar missions with crews in suspended animation were launched in the twenty-first century according to The Sensorites, which would be after the events of this story. The lack of deep space travel would seem to set the story before The Power of the Daleks (whichever year that is).
Evidence in subsequent stories would indicate that it’s not set between 2068 and 2096, as Galactic Salvage and Insurance are covering spacecraft between those dates according to Nightmare of Eden (although if the space programme ended, it might explain why they went bust). If it was just Galactic Insurance, we could say it was just a meaningless brand name - we can buy Mars bars, that’s not evidence we’ve built chocolate factories on Mars. It’s Galactic Salvage and Insurance. The implication seems to be that whatever else they do, they salvage and insure spacecraft.
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