It is, of course, very difficult to fully reconcile these accounts. The main problem is rationalising Ace’s death in “Ground Zero” with her other appearances, although one explanation is that her “demise” relates to the Council of Eight’s attempts to eliminate the Doctor’s companions - Sometime Never p154-155 even mentions Ace’s double timeline, and although this was in reference to Loving the Alien, it could also, albeit retroactively, be made to apply to “Ground Zero”. As such, temporally speaking, Ace’s “death” in “Ground Zero” might hold no more weight than the notion that Sarah Jane “dies” in Bullet Time (set in April 1997).
[225] Benny: Beige Planet Mars
[226] Dating The Indestructible Man (PDA #69) - The date is given. This story contradicts many other stories, but only ones that were written after the sixth season in which the novel is set. It’s set after a “global teleportation system” is built and fails (p78), a reference to The Seeds of Death (or possibly Transit); and it’s before Zoe’s time (p283), which puts it before The Wheel in Space. (We’ve chosen to contradict this reference; see the dating notes on The Wheel in Space.)
[227] The Gallifrey Chronicles. These would have to be time-travelling Daleks from the future, as the Daleks of this time period are confined to Skaro.
[228] This is the historical background to Transit. In The Seeds of Death, Zoe has never heard of the Ice Warriors - even though mankind is exploring the solar system in her time - which suggests that her contemporaries are not interested in Mars. We learn in Transit, amongst many other historical snippets, that the Thousand-Day War ended about twenty-five years before (p188) and that the decade following the war saw economic upheaval (p108). In his “Future History Continuity”, Ben Aaronovitch stated that the War took place between 2086-2088, which by his reckoning was straight after The Seeds of Death. Victory Night is mentioned in The Highest Science (p21), and it might celebrate the end of this War. We learn in Infinite Requiem that forests are still planted after a battle (p266).
[229] The Story of Martha: “The Frozen Wastes”
[230] According to the Doctor in The Mutants. As we will see, a number of stories claim to be set on the “first” colony. To explain the apparent contradiction, it’s possible that colonists are either counting different “firsts” (the first plan to colonise, to actually leave Earth, to arrive, to terraform, to settle, to form a local government and so on) or that they simply like to take pride in their pioneering ways and are prepared to exaggerate a little.
[231] In The Sensorites, ship captain Maitland thinks the Doctor’s party is from the twenty-first century. The Waters of Mars establishes the first mission to Proxima Centauri flew at “lightspeed”, but there’s been no firm date set for when mankind first flew faster than light.
[232] Transit (p264).
[233] The Coming of the Terraphiles. It’s unclear what qualifies as “deep space” in the Terraphile era, when ships fly between galaxies and even universes.
[234] The Pit
[235] Benny: The Big Hunt
[236] The Waters of Mars. The Doctor no doubt means that the Brookes were space explorers for many generations, so it’s very difficult to date these events. The Dragon Star might (or might not) be a reference to Draconia.
[237] The Space Pirates. The story states the “whole galaxy” has been explored. Yet based on evidence from many other stories, in which planets and civilisations are discovered long after this time, this must be an exaggeration or the exploration must be fairly rudimentary.
[238] The Doctor watches the prospectus in Paradise Towers and relates Kroagnon’s story. The Chief Caretaker describes Kroagnon as a “being” rather than a “man”, suggesting Kroagnon might be an alien. It’s never specified that the tower block was built on Earth, but this seems to be the implication. The war in question might be the conflict of Warriors of the Deep or the Thousand Day War first referred to in Transit.
[239] Killing Ground
[240] “At least a hundred years” before Wooden Heart.
[241] Shakedown
[242] Vengeance on Varos. The Governor notes that “Varos has been stable for more than two hundred years”.
[243] The Prisoner’s Dilemma
[244] “They’ve come a long way in a hundred years” according to the Doctor in Time of Your Life (p27).
[245] Love and War (p39).
[246] Birthright (p189).
[247] The Also People (p155, p191).
[248] The Face-Eater (p64).
[249] Nightmare of Eden
[250] So Vile a Sin
[251] “The Screams of Death” , “The Child of Time” (DWM).
[252] Dating Snowglobe 7 (NSA #23) - The year is given.
[253] Dating “Sun Screen” (The Doctor Who Storybook 2008) - It’s “the twenty-first century”. The technological prowess needed to erect the Great Solar Shield is well beyond contemporary levels. The Doctor believes that humanity will find a means of dealing with global warming in “a few years”, but it’s still a problem in Snowglobe 7, set in 2099.
[254] “Ninety-one years” before Killing Ground.
[255] According to the Doctor in Army of Ghosts, although he might just mean they shouldn’t have them at that point in the twenty-first century (2007).
[256] Last of the Gaderene (p246). He also says he has flown a Spitfire in Loups-Garoux.
[257] Heart of TARDIS
[258] “Profits of Doom”
[259] Dating Paradise Towers (24.2) - Paradise Towers has been abandoned for between about fifteen and twenty years, judging by the age of the Kangs. The Doctor’s remark that the building won awards “way back in the twenty-first century” may or may not suggest that the story is set in the twenty-second. Taking the New Adventures into account, the War at Time Start might well be the Thousand-Day War that took place a generation before Transit. In Lucifer Rising, Adjudicator Bishop refers to the “messy consequences of the Kroagnon Affair” (p189), so it is set before then. The Terrestrial Index suggested that the war is the Dalek Invasion of Earth, and therefore set the story around 2164. Timelink sets the story in 2040.
[260] The Master poses as an Adjudicator in Colony in Space, the only time the Adjudicators were referred to or seen on television. They feature a number of times in the New Adventures, and the Doctor’s companions Cwej and Forrester are ex-Adjudicators. Lucifer Rising relates the foundation of the Guild of Adjudicators, and their early successes. “The Macra case” (p189) isn’t necessarily The Macra Terror, and is likely another encounter with that race. Gridlock would suggest that humanity had many encounters with the species.
[261] Lucifer Rising. There’s no indication how long after Paradise Towers this happened.
[262] Dating Iris: The Claws of Santa (Iris audio #2.5) - It’s Christmas Eve, obviously. The story takes place after the melting of the polar ice cap in the late twenty-first century. Also, The Claws of Santa is predicated on Father Christmas not being able to cope with humanity’s expansion beyond the solar system - a flip-over point that roughly dates to 2100. All of this presumes that the planet-sized Cosmo Mart that Iris visits - which seems to be in the same time zone - actually has nothing to do with humanity at all, as it’s far, far too soon for mankind’s space explorers to have the resources and technology for such an undertaking.
[263] This occurs as part of Earth’s “first wave” of colonists, “five hundred years” (p153) before Benny: A Life in Pieces.
[264] “Five hundred years” before Benny: The Goddess Quandary. There’s no reason to think that any of the participants of the Festari war are human.
[265] The End of the World
[266] Excelis Decays
[267] Dating “The Cruel Sea” (DWM #359-362) - It’s “the early twenty-second century”. At one point, the Doctor says Rose is his fifty-seventh companion.
[268] Lucifer Rising (p100, p320).
[269] Timewyrm: Revelation
[270] Transit (p157-158).
[271] Deceit (p2
7-28).
[272] Wetworld
[273] Dating Genocide (EDA #4) - The date is given (p30).
[274] Dating Wetworld (NSA #18) - The year is given (p32).
[275] Dating Iris: The Two Irises (Iris audio #2.3) - The year is given.
[276] Speed of Flight, Genocide.
[277] Memory Lane
[278] Heart of Stone (p79)
[279] Dating Legend of the Cybermen (BF #135) - Zoe is clearly older, in contrast to her fictional self in the Land looking the same age as when she travelled with the Doctor. It seems reasonable to assume that from Zoe’s perspective, the same number of years have passed since The War Games as have occurred since that story’s broadcast in 1969 and the release of Legend of the Cybermen in 2010. The Laird of McCrimmon, an unmade TV story, is here cited as an adventure that Zoe invented in her capacity as the Land’s Mistress.
[280] Dating Echoes of Grey, The Memory Cheats and The Uncertainty Principle (BF CC #5.2, 6.3, 7.2) - In Echoes of Grey, the Doctor tells the Zoe with him that they’ve arrived, “A little into your future, I think”; Ali says that the contemporary Zoe is now a “fifty year old”; and the contemporary Zoe says that she is “forty years older” than when she travelled with the Doctor. As Echoes of Grey saw release after (albeit by just two months) Legend of the Cybermen, it seems fair to assume that it happens next in line.
The Memory Cheats follows on from Echoes of Grey. Jen pulls records pertaining to the 1919 visit from an archive “one hundred fifty years old”, but this would seem to be the age of the archive, not the duration of time since the Uzbekistan incident. If mention of it being “forty-seven days into cycle” in any way parallels the Gregorian calendar, then it’s 16th February.
The final paragraph of this entry, a quick summary of the (for Zoe) “present day“ scenes in The Uncertainty Principle, is the only material from a 2012-released story included in this edition of Ahistory, and was added for the sake of continuing the narrative of this storyline. A fourth audio in the series is forthcoming.
[281] Dating Transit (NA #10) - The exact date of the story is not specified. The book takes many of its themes from The Seeds of Death, and is set at least a generation after that story. The Transit system has been established for at least the last couple of decades and has revolutionised the world - no television stories seem to be set during this period. It is hinted that the story takes place in the twenty-second century (p134). In his “Future History Continuity”, Transit author Ben Aaronovitch places this story “c2109”. GodEngine, following the Virgin version of Ahistory, dated the story as “2109” (p1). So Vile a Sin gave the date as 2010, which would seem to be a misprint (p140).
[282] GodEngine
[283] Festival of Death, possibly a reference to Transit.
[284] Deceit says that production line warpships are being made by 2112 (p28). Suspended animation is seen in a number of New Adventures set after this time, including Deceit, The Highest Science and Lucifer Rising.
[285] Nightmare of Eden. This happens after Transit, but there’s enough time before Nightmare of Eden to allow Tryst to explore and for Earth to found a colony on (at least) Azure. The starship Empress has left from Station Nine.
[286] Benny: Genius Loci
[287] Cold Fusion. The planet was named as Salomon in the synopsis, but not the book.
[288] The Interstellar Space Corps appears in The Space Pirates, the Marine Space Corps appears in Death to the Daleks and the Space Corps is referred to in Nightmare of Eden.
[289] “Three years” after Transit (p260).
[290] St Anthony’s Fire (p195, p260). Urrozdinee first appeared in a short story of the same name by Mark Gatiss in Marvel’s Doctor Who Yearbook 1994. In that story, the city is a post-apocalyptic feudal state inhabiting the remains of EuroDisney.
[291] Sword of Orion
[292] Centuries before Vanishing Point. Arbitrary date.
[293] Dating Kursaal (EDA #7) - The year isn’t stated, but Gray Corporation is mentioned in Seeing I (p25), establishing - given that the founder of Gray Corp is here killed - something of a lower threshold as to when Kursaal can take place. Interplanetary travel is used to reach Kursaal, and visitors there include an Alpha Centaurian (from The Curse of Peladon) and some Ogrons (Frontier in Space). Not only does this suggest that Saturnia Regna is located near Earth space, but it’s possible that Kursaal is a precursor to the sort of “leisure planet” trend found in such stories as The Leisure Hive (dated to 2290).
[294] The founding fathers of a planet are revered in The Robots of Death, The Caves of Androzani and the New Adventure Parasite. Earth colonies feature in many, many Doctor Who stories. The corporations’ stranglehold over the early colonies is a theme touched on in many New Adventures, especially the “Future History Cycle” which ran from Love and War to Shadowmind.
[295] The Arcadia colony was founded “three hundred and seventy-nine” (Arcadian?) years before the events of Deceit (p115). It was one of the first Spinward Settlements (p16) and the planet (or at least part of it) has been terraformed (p103).
Naming Planets
The planet Arcadia is referred to in “Profits of Doom”, Deceit, Doomsday and Vincent and the Doctor; Arcadian diamonds are mentioned in TW: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. In each case, this could be the same planet, as could the planets called Lucifer referred to in Lucifer Rising and Bad Wolf.
The same can’t be said for “New Earth”, though - there’s a New Earth Frontier in Vanishing Point, a New Earth Republic in Synthespians™, a New Earth system in “Fire and Brimstone”, and planets called New Earth in “Dogs of Doom”, Time of Your Life, The Romance of Crime and, well, New Earth (seen again in Gridlock). From what we see of the planets, what we’re told of their locations and the dates in which they’re settled, these are not the same planets. It’s a natural enough name for a human colony, of course.
[296] Vincent and the Doctor
[297] The Infinity Race
[298] The Highest Science
[299] The Doctor says he visited Androzani Major when “it was becoming rather developed” in The Caves of Androzani. In The Power of Kroll, we see the third moon of Delta Magna. (It is called “Delta III” in the novelisation and Original Sin, p21.)
The Sirius System
In Frontier in Space, the Master poses as a Commissioner from Sirius IV and accuses the third Doctor and Jo of landing a spaceship in an unauthorised area on Sirius III. According to Romana in City of Death, Sirius V is the home of the Academia Stellaris, an art gallery she rates more highly than the Louvre. Max Warp occurs during a time of prosperity for Sirius (probably circa 3999), when the Sirius Exhibition Station plays host to the Inter-G Cruiser Show. In The Caves of Androzani, Morgus is the chairman of the Sirius Conglomerate based on Androzani Major, and spectrox is found on its twin planet Androzani Minor. These two facts make Morgus the “richest man in the Five Planets”. We might infer that these are the five planets of the Sirius system, and that Androzani Major and Minor are Sirius I and II. The Doctor once had a sneg stew in a bistro on Sirius Two, according to Island of Death. By The Children of Seth, Sirius has an empire.
[300] The Space Pirates
[301] Lucifer Rising (p84).
[302] The Highest Science (p102). Bubbleshake is an addictive drink akin to Bubble Shock (SJA: Invasion of the Bane). No overt connection has been made between the two, save that both stories were written by Gareth Roberts.
[303] Dating The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People (X6.4-6.5) - We’re told it’s “the twenty-second century”, but nothing more specific, and the story doesn’t have any explicit links with other adventures. We can probably conclude it is the first half of the century, as the second half entailed Earth being ravaged by the Dalek Invasion. There’s no hint of interstellar travel or mention of space colonies, and the mining workers are listening to Dusty Springfield. All in all, we can probably set it a hundred years after the story was broadcast.
[304] Dating The Gemini Contagion (BBC DW
audiobook #12) - The year is given.
[305] Dating Martha in the Mirror (NSA #22) - No date is given. The only real clue is that the Darksmiths of Karagula (the ten-part Darksmith Legacy) built the Mortal Mirror, meaning that Martha in the Mirror cannot take place more than a century after the Darksmiths are killed. Therefore, this dating reflects the latest that the story can occur.
[306] The Face-Eater (p40).
[307] “Several hundred years” after Charley’s time (the 1930s), according to Sword of Orion.
[308] GodEngine (p73).
[309] Dating Nightmare of Eden (17.4) - Galactic Salvage and Insurance went bankrupt “twenty years ago” according to Captain Rigg, who had just read a monitor giving the date of the bankruptcy as “2096”. In-Vision suggested that Azure is in “West galaxy”, but this could just be a mishearing of Rigg’s (fluffed) line “you’ll never work in this galaxy again”. While others have disagreed with that, there is certainly no on screen justification for The Discontinuity Guide’s “Western galaxy”. The TARDIS Logs gave the date as “c.2100”, The Doctor Who File as “2113”.
[310] The Prisoner’s Dilemma. This is presumably the same galactic recession mentioned in Nightmare of Eden.
[311] Dating The Art of Destruction (NSA #11) - The Doctor says it’s “the eleventh of April 2118”.
[312] The Face-Eater. The dates given in the book seem to contradict a number of other stories set around this time.
[313] Tomb of Valdemar. The Centauri are described as “multi-limbed” and having a “giant eye”, so these are almost certainly the same race as first seen in The Curse of Peladon.
[314] Cold Fusion
[315] The space port has been open a hundred years before The Year of Intelligent Tigers.
[316] Dating Kursaal (EDA #7) - It’s fifteen years after the Doctor and Sam’s first visit.
[317] State of Decay. No date is given. On screen, one computer monitor seems to suggest that the computer was programmed on “12/12/1998”, but the Hydrax is clearly an interstellar craft. The TARDIS Logs suggested a date in “the thirty-sixth century”, The Terrestrial Index placed it “at the beginning of the twenty second”.
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