[948] Dating Benny: The Diet of Worms (Benny audio #9.4) - The ending leads into Benny: Glory Days - but given the transit time over interstellar distances, the calendar might well change in the interim.
[949] Dating The Company of Friends: “Benny’s Story” (BF #123a) - The story takes place while Benny is freelance, and Peter is with his father. The Company of Friends was released in July 2009, and is presumably concurrent with Benny Series 10, in which Benny and Adrian are reunited after her time away from the Braxiatel Collection. The only oddity would then be why Benny doesn’t enlist the Doctor’s help against the rogue Irving Braxiatel.
[950] Dating Bernice Summerfield Series 10 (Benny: Glory Days, audio #10.1; Benny: The Vampire Curse: “Predating the Predators”, collection #12c; Benny: Absence, audio #10.2; Benny: Venus Mantrap, audio #10.3; Benny: Secret Origins, #10.4; Benny: Secret Histories, collection #13) - As with Series 9, there’s little reason to suppose that Series 10 doesn’t pace itself over the course of a year, mirroring the passage of real time. Per Big Finish’s new policy that the Benny stories happen six hundred years in the future, it must now be 2609.
In Glory Days, Bev comments that she spent “the best part of a year running the Collection”, and also that she’s now spent a year working as a thief. Presuming that she’s rounding down a bit from her departure from the Collection in October 2607, Glory Days probably takes place in early 2609.
[951] Dating Benny: The Vampire Curse: “Predating the Predators” (Benny collection #12c) - The dates are given in journal entries, with the final one (p215) specifying the year as 2609. The “Alukahites” seem to be the Benny equivalent of the Great Vampires (State of Decay).
[952] Dating Benny: Absence (Benny audio #10.2) - Peter is now a “young man”, old enough to be hired to haul things. According to Benny’s diary, the story takes place over fifty-nine days. The Technocult and the detail about the ball bearing were previously mentioned in Benny: Timeless Passages.
[953] Dating Benny: Venus Mantrap (Benny audio #10.3) - The story is a sequel to Beige Planet Mars, a story in which Benny and Jason similarly lose a fortune in royalty payments. The Lunar penal colony is almost certainly the one seen in Frontier in Space.
[954] Benny: Secret Origins
[955] Benny and Robyn’s retroactive undoing of Buenos Aires’ ruination isn’t without its temporal hiccups - the entire story might be paradoxical, in fact. Writer Eddie Robson says that despite Benny and Robyn’s historical intervention, it’s safe to presume that events in this time zone unfolded in a relatively similar fashion, and that Frost is still dead.
[956] The framing sequence to Benny: Secret Histories.
[957] Dating Bernice Summerfield Series 11 (Benny: Dead and Buried, Benny animated short #1; Benny: Resurrecting the Past, audio #11.1; Benny: Present Danger, collection #14; Benny: Escaping the Future, audio #11.2; Benny: Year Zero, audio #11.3; Benny: Dead Man’s Switch, audio #11.4) - Benny ends Series 10 intending to return to the Braxiatel Collection, but has some side adventures (including the framing sequence for Benny: Secret Histories) before doing so. The animated short Benny: Dead and Buried - which leads into Resurrecting the Past - saw release in August 2010, and so seems as good a place to “start” Series 11 (and to roll the calendar forward to 2610) as any. The short story Present Danger: “Six Impossible Things” says that it’s been three years minimum since Benny left the Braxiatel Collection, so the Deindum invasion initiated in Resurrecting the Past almost certainly occurs in 2610. The booklets to Resurrecting the Past and Escaping the Future claim that “It’s the year 2607” - this has to be regarded as a mistake, given the preponderance of evidence saying otherwise.
[958] Dating Benny: Resurrecting the Past (Benny audio #11.1) - Benny is in stasis for “five days”, and at least a few days pass in the course of the story.
[959] According to Benny: Escaping the Future, the Deindum invasion unfolds over some “months”.
[960] Benny: Year Zero and Benny: Dead Man’s Switch. Series 11 ends on the cliffhanger of Benny arriving at “Atlantis”.
[961] Dating Benny: Epoch: Judgement Day (Benny box set #1.4) - A robot attendant supplies the year. Benny comments, “Right... a little bit later than I was expecting, but same basic ballpark”. The Benny: Road Trip and Benny: Legion box sets - released in 2012, too late to be included in this chronology - cover Benny’s efforts to reach Legion as instructed.
[962] K9: The Korven
[963] Singularity
[964] The “Little Mind’s Eye” crystal that the Doctor gets in Snakedance is dated to “eight hundred years ago”.
[965] Benny: A Life in Pieces. Traillor is killed “two years” after the fortieth anniversary of Morton’s death, cited as “23 September 2645” (p150). Mention that no records exist of Benny and company could simply mean that Verum is remote enough that Taillor lacks access to them. Alternatively, it could mean that all records of them have been expunged, somehow, in the wider universe.
[966] Forty-five years after the Braxiatel Collection component of Benny: The Grel Escape.
[967] “More than a century” before “Time Bomb”.
[968] Dating Midnight (X4.10) - No date given, but The Time Travellers’ Almanac sets it in the twenty-seventh century.
[969] Poosh is mentioned in Midnight, and what became of it is revealed in The Stolen Earth.
[970] The Well-Mannered War. The Thargons and Sorsons were originally seen in The Tomorrow People.
[971] Dating Shadowmind (NA #16) - The Doctor tells Ace that “by your calendar the year is 2673” (p29). The events of Frontier in Space in “2540” (p74) were “one hundred and thirty years ago” (p61).
[972] Dating The Sandman (BF #37) - No date is given, but Benny: The Bone of Contention, also written by Simon Forward, features the Clutch and is set in 2603. In that story, it’s said that the Galyari Research Directorate hopes to build weapons against the Sandman. As the Clutch’s weaponry isn’t significantly advanced in The Sandman audio, it probably takes place soon after the Benny adventure.
[973] White Darkness
Star Trek
In the Pocket Books’ range of Star Trek novels (particularly those by Diane Duane), the Romulans call themselves “Rihanssu”, and the race is referred to in White Darkness (p129). A few of the other New and Missing Adventures have included such Star Trek in-jokes. There are many, for example, in Sanctuary, another of David McIntee’s books, and Turlough refers to the Klingon homeworld in The Crystal Bucephalus (p104).
Star Trek and Doctor Who have radically differing versions of the future, and by this point, a wide variety of tie-in stories (The Left-Handed Hummingbird, The Gallifrey Chronicles, Peri and the Piscon Paradox, at least four stories involving the Doctor’s companion Izzy, who is a huge fan of the series, etc.) establish that Star Trek is merely fiction in the Doctor Who universe. On screen, this is confirmed in The Empty Child, Fear Her, The Impossible Astronaut, The God Complex, Closing Time, SJA: Warriors of Kudlak, SJA: The Lost Boy and SJA: Mona Lisa’s Revenge. Maybe, just as Trekkies in the seventies managed to get NASA to name a prototype space shuttle after the USS Enterprise, the Star Trek fans of the future managed to name a lot of planets after ones from their favourite series - Vulcan, as seen in The Power of the Daleks, being one of the first.
[974] The Swampies appear in The Power of Kroll. Slavery exists at the time of Warriors’ Gate and Terminus, and the work camps referred to in The Caves of Androzani are also near-slavery.
[975] Warriors’ Gate. Stephen Gallagher has stated in interviews (see, for example, In-Vision #50) that Rorvik’s crew come from N-Space, and their familiarity with English (such as the graffiti), “sardines” and “custard” suggest they come from Earth. The coin flipped is a “100 Imperial” piece and they use warp drive, both of which suggest an Earth Empire setting, although placing the story details here is arbitrary.
[976] The Robots of Death, as extrapolated from a painting native to Kaldor City (seen in Kaldor City:
Occam’s Razor) that’s two hundred years old. “Crisis on Kaldor” concurs with this, as it seemingly happens around the time of The Robots of Death, and “centuries” after Kaldor was colonised.
[977] Dating The Highest Science (NA #11) - Sheldukher’s ship arrives at Sakkrat in “2680” (p17). It is “two hundred and thirty years” in Benny’s future (p35) [q.v. “Benny’s Birthday”].
[978] Happy Endings
[979] The Well-Mannered War
[980] Dating “Mission of the Viyrans” (BF #102b) - Gralista Social seems to be a human planet; some of those present are named “Chris” and “Lawrence”. The Viyrans say it’s the first time they’ve encountered humanity, but allowing that they can time-travel, it’s unclear if they mean relative to history or their own lifetimes. For lack of other evidence, this dating is very arbitrary. The sixth Doctor again visits Gralista Social in Blue Forgotten Planet.
[981] Dating “Bus Stop!” (DWM #385) - It’s “Mars in the twenty-seventh century”. Environmental suits are here needed on the Martian surface, but Mars seems to still be inhabited (at the very least, it’s got a president), so perhaps the toxicity is localised.
[982] Death and Diplomacy (pgs 71, 203).
[983] The Crystal Buchephalus (p40, p80).
[984] 100: “My Own Private Wolfgang”
[985] “A thousand years” before Interference.
[986] The Dark Path
[987] Four generations after Benny: Timeless Passages.
[988] Dating “By Hook or By Crook” (DWM #256) - The date is given.
[989] “One hundred years” before The Whispering Forest.
[990] Spiral Scratch
[991] “Warlord of the Ogrons”
[992] Dating “Warlord of the Ogrons” (DWW #13-14) - Rostow mentions Federation patrols, but in the framing sequence the Doctor mentions that he met Leofrix in 2723, so it can’t be the Galactic Federation.
[993] “Seven hundred years” before Snakedance.
[994] The war begins “seventy years” before Nocturne.
[995] Twenty-three years after “By Hook or By Crook”.
[996] “A few hundred years” after Scaredy Cat.
[997] Dating “Time Bomb” (DWM #114-116) - “Earthdate 2750” according to the opening caption.
[998] Dating The Sensorites (1.7) - Maitland says “we come from the twenty-eighth century”, which might mean it is later than that. The novelisation suggested the Earth ship set out in the “in the early years of the twenty-eighth century”. An incoherent John says they’ve been at Sense-Sphere either “four years” or “for years”. The Programme Guide set the story in “c.2600” in its first two editions, The Terrestrial Index settled on “about 2750”. The TARDIS Logs gave the date as “2765”. Timelink “2764”.
[999] Dating The End of Time (DL #10) - A case study of the Mind Set by H. James Moore, University of Castillianus V, is dated to 2764 (p17), and which at least provides the general era in which the Space Brain exists. The motives of the Krashoks have shifted slightly - the Doctor claimed in The Art of War (p11-12) that they wanted to animate fallen soldiers so they could prolong wars and further their weapons trade, but here, the Krashoks calibrate the Crystal to only raise their own soldiers from the dead.
[1000] Original Sin (p287).
[1001] Dating The Stealers of Dreams (NSA #6) - It’s “2755 AD”.
[1002] Dating Paradox Lost (NSA #48) - The exact day is given. The Doctor vaguely alludes to the fact that much of old London will be preserved “for another few decades”, possibly in reference to the new series’ dating for The Beast Below, or something else altogether.
[1003] “Twenty years” before Nocturne.
[1004] The Fall of Yquatine, “over two hundred years” earlier than 2992.
[1005] The girls are born, and Elizabethan is rendered comatose, “thirteen years” and about “seven years” respectively before EarthWorld.
[1006] The foiled assassination attempts occur five years before Nocturne. Zeta Reticula is located thirty three light-years from Earth.
[1007] Will happens upon the Ultani texts at least eighteen months before Nocturne.
[1008] Dating Companion Piece (TEL #13) - It is “the twenty-eighth century” (p74), “eight hundred years” after Cat’s time (p78). The seventh Doctor is similarly travelling with a robotic companion in Death Comes to Time.
[1009] Dating Nocturne (BF #92) - The Doctor tells Ace and Hex that they’re “about seven hundred ninety years and three parsecs in that direction” from their native era on Earth. As Ace hails from the late 1980s but Hex originates from 2021, this could support a dating of roughly anywhere between 2777 and 2811.
[1010] Dating EarthWorld (EDA #43) - The date is arbitrary, but New Jupiter wants independence from Earth and the advanced androids are “pretty standard”. It is “the far distant future”.
[1011] The Beast Below. This is an arbitrary date - were the current Prince Harry to ascend to the throne (possible, but not likely), he would be Henry IX. Stories such as Revenge of the Judoon (p19) have established the reigns of Charles III and William V (the current Prince of Wales and his son, the Duke of Cambridge). The Beast Below establishes that eight Queen Elizabeths and at least four King Henrys rule after that, and we have to allow that Interference tells us the last King of England abdicated in the 2060s. Legacy of the Daleks says the last British monarch was exterminated in the Dalek Invasion of 2157 (so presumably only a Queen or Queens reigned for a hundred years before that). Clearly, as Liz X demonstrates, the British monarchy is restored at some point.
[1012] “Fifty years” before Three’s a Crowd.
[1013] Dating The Story of Martha: “Star-Crossed” (NSA #28e) - No date is given. We know that old ships with colonists in suspended animation were still being found at the time of The Sensorites, and so this arbitrary placement puts it around that period.
[1014] “Eight hundred years” after “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”. The story is later reduced to being alternate history.
[1015] Dating Festival of Death (PDA #35) - The date is given on p116.
[1016] “Fifty years” before Revenge of the Cybermen.
[1017] Dating The Whispering Forest (BF #137) - Mention is made of Earth Empire Command and the Dravidian (The Brain of Morbius) war zone, and the Doctor says that the Takers are “auto-medics in the twenty-eighth century”. As one hundred years have passed since the hospital ship crashed, it’s presumably now the twenty-ninth century.
[1018] Christmas on a Rational Planet (p189).
[1019] The Ultimate Treasure (p71).
[1020] “Almost a century and a half” before So Vile a Sin.
[1021] Dating Dark Progeny (EDA #48) - The date is given.
[1022] Dating “Time Bomb” (DWM #114-116) - The caption states it’s “Earthdate 2850”.
[1023] Dating The Mind’s Eye (BF #102a) - It’s the time of the Earth Empire, and yet a Federation Drugs Administration (FDA) is in operation. As with Colin Brake’s other fifth Doctor-Peri-Erimem audio, Three’s a Crowd, mention of the Federation might suggest a tie to Corpse Marker, and it seems fair to place the two stories in the same vicinity.
Erimem’s dream-reality entails her ruling a colony planet in the twenty-fifth century - either a reflection of when she thinks the TARDIS has arrived on YT45, or just a tidbit her mind invented. Either way, the twenty-fifth century is too early for the Earth Empire - Brake’s own novel, The Colony of Lies, specifies its creation as 2534.
[1024] Dating Three’s a Crowd (BF #69) - The Doctor estimates it is around the “twenty-eighth, maybe twenty-ninth century” from the space station’s design, which dates back at least fifty years to the colony’s formation. Mention of a Federation suggests this story occurs in the vicinity of Corpse Marker. There’s talk of a “hyperspace transmat link” capable of “beaming” people from star system to star system, but nobody actually uses this device, and it’s possibly part of Auntie’s ruse against the colonists.
[1026] So Vile a Sin (p28).
[1027] “Fifteen years” before Ten Little Aliens.
[1028] Dating Revenge of the Cybermen (12.5) - In The Ark in Space, the Doctor is unsure at first when the Ark was built (“I can’t quite place the period”), but he quickly concludes that “Judging by the macro slave drive and that modified version of the Bennet Oscillator, I’d say this was built in the early thirtieth century... late twenty-ninth, early thirtieth I feel sure”. Yet the panel he looks at appears to be a feature of the Ark, not the original Nerva Beacon.
Still, in Revenge of the Cybermen, when Harry asks whether this is “the time of the solar flares and Earth is evacuated”, the Doctor informs him that it is “thousands of years” before. Mankind has been a spacefaring race for “centuries” before this story when they fought the Cyber War, according to both Stevenson and Vorus. It is clearly established in other stories that the Earth is not abandoned in the twenty-ninth century (but see the dating on The Beast Below). Revenge of the Cybermen, then, would seem to be the story set in the “late twenty-ninth, early thirtieth century”, not The Ark in Space. The Cybermen are apparently without a permanent base of operations, so the story is presumably set after the destruction of their base on Telos in Attack of the Cybermen.
One difficulty with this is that the Cybermen in Earthshock (set in 2526) watch a clip from this story. It’s here been assumed this is the production team showing us the previous Doctors, rather than trying to date the story (in the same way, in Mawdryn Undead, the Brigadier “remembers” scenes he wasn’t actually in). However, About Time suggests the Cybermen in Earthshock are time-travellers, which explains the otherwise erroneous Revenge of the Cybermen clip.
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