While some might be tempted to invoke the credo of “history can be rewritten, timey-wimey, wibbley-wobbley, it’s after the Last Great Time War, the Cracks in Time affected things”, etc., and say that The Beast Below represents a new history that has superseded the classic Doctor Who one... unfortunately, The Beast Below doesn’t match the continuity of the new series either. Only seven episodes later, Cold Blood has the Doctor setting the Silurians’ alarm clocks to wake them in a thousand years time (so, around 3020), and expressing his hope that humanity of that time period will be more receptive to co-existing with the Silurians. But if the Doctor’s comments in The Beast Below are kept sacrosanct, in actuality the Silurians would be waking up to an uninhabitable burnt cinder of a planet.
We see Liz X again in The Pandorica Opens, guarding the Royal Collection in a sequence after The Beast Below (she says that she “met the Doctor once”) and dated to 5145 (although it’s not established if the Royal Collection is on Starship UK or the planet the British settled on). While we know that Liz X’s body clock had been slowed, that was specifically to keep the Star Whale’s plight secret - by 5145, she’d be at least 2550 years old. It’s possible that the slowing of her body clock was irreversible, but there’s no indication in other stories that mankind discovers the secret of virtual immortality (not even the life-extending Spectrox, as seen in The Caves of Androzani, was this effective). While some sources claim Liz X “looks older” in The Pandorica Opens, neither of the authors of this chronology see it.
Setting the story a decade or two before 5145 is tempting, because it would consistent with “The Keep”, and roughly supported if one presumes that the Doctor meant to say that the solar flares were twenty nine centuries after Amy’s time. However... if the solar flares were in, say, 5010, and Liz X’s mask is three hundred years old, The Beast Below would be well after 5145, i.e. when Liz X claims to have already met the Doctor (The Pandorica Opens). And it doesn’t explain why the computer thinks Amy is 1306 (unless her connection to the Cracks in Time confused it).
Ultimately, the most pragmatic solution is to disavow not the Doctor’s statement that Starship UK left Earth in the twenty-ninth century, but his claim that it happened as a result of the solar flares. Nobody and nothing else in The Beast Below makes this connection, and once that component is removed, everything else neatly slots into place. Earth as seen in The Mutants (circa 2990) is so overcrowded, it might well resort to all sorts of drastic solutions to shed its excess population (especially as the Earth Empire goes into decline). If Starship UK can be construed to house the excess millions of the United Kingdom, just not the whole of the United Kingdom as part of some global disaster, it would actually be in keeping with the “twenty-ninth century” period that the Doctor names. This is an imperfect solution, but it at least keeps intact the on-screen date and the calculation of Amy’s age, plus creates the least amount of contradictions.
[1155] The Beast Below. The banner doesn’t necessarily indicate that Magpie Electricals is still active in this era; it could just be a piece of decor from a previous era.
[1156] The Pyralis Effect
[1157] “Thousands of years” (p243) before The Web in Space.
[1158] “One or two thousand years” before The Web in Space.
[1159] Dust Breeding, “in the thirty-third century”.
[1160] War of the Daleks, “two hundred and seventy-five years” (p213) before the Daleks arrive on Hesperus.
[1161] Dating “Interstellar Overdrive” (DWM #375-376) - It’s “3000 ADish” according to the Doctor. Flip-Flop (also by Jonathan Morris) establishes that Pakafroon Wabster had its first hit single in 3012, and the group has now been around for “three hundred years”. The Tomorrow Windows, however, seems to imply that the band dates to earlier than that.
[1162] “Nearly a hundred years” before Snakedance.
[1163] Dating The Dalek Factor (TEL #15) - In Planet of the Daleks, the Thal space missions against their arch-enemies seem relatively recent. Here, there have been search and destroy missions against the Daleks for “eight centuries” (p17). The lull in Dalek activity ties in with the one noted in The Daleks’ Master Plan. The incarnation of the Doctor featured here isn’t specified.
[1164] Dating Forty-Five: “Order of Simplicity” (BF #115b) - The year is given.
[1165] The Curse of Peladon and its various sequels are set at the time of a Galactic Federation. The date of its foundation is given in Legacy (p164); the words are those of Alpha Centauri and the Doctor from The Curse of Peladon. The justice machines named the Megara also follow “The Galactic Charter” in The Stones of Blood, and they are from 2000 BC. Many other stories refer to “Intergalactic Law”, “Intergalactic Distress Signals” and so on - there are clearly certain established standards and conventions that apply across the galaxy, although who sets and enforces them is unclear.
[1166] Dating “Cold-Blooded War!” (IDW DW one-shot #5) - Dating this story is difficult, and the internal evidence seems a little confused. It’s during the time of the Federation. As with Frontier in Space (set in 2540), Earth has a President, Draconia has an empire and Draconian females lack equality. Adjudicators dress as the Master did when he posed as one in Colony in Space (set in 2472). An Alpha Centaurian briefly runs past the Doctor, but it’s unclear if this is the same individual as seen in the Peladon stories, or just a member of the same race.
What muddies the waters is that it’s simultaneously implied that it’s been “five hundred years” since both the First Great Space War (presumably the Earth-Draconia conflict that forms the background of Frontier in Space, around 2520, meaning it’s now around 3020), and since women on Earth were judged to have more important qualifications than “how many words they could type in a minute” (suggesting it’s currently 2540-ish). Tellingly, though, there have been three hundred years of “galactic harmony” preceding this story - meaning it can’t be either 2500 or 3040.
The novels established that the Adjudicators had become the Arbiters by The Dark Path (so this story is set before circa 3400). The novel Legacy (also written by Gary Russell) might provide the key - it establishes when the Federation was founded, that the process took around three hundred years (the “three centuries of galactic harmony” mentioned in this story?), and that Draconia was a founding member. If that’s the case, the Alpha Centauri we see here almost certainly can’t be the same individual from the Peladon stories.
[1167] Dating The Dark Path (MA #32) - There is no exact date, but the Galactic Federation exists (p3) and it is over “three hundred and fifty years” after the turn of the thirty-first century (p175) which was “nearly half a millennium ago” (p178), which all suggests it’s set in the thirty-fifth century. It’s “a thousand years” since the Doctor first visited Draconia, which Paper Cuts helps to date to circa 2040. Terileptus is the homeworld of the Terileptils (The Visitation).
[1168] The Face of the Enemy
[1169] Dating The Demons of Red Lodge and Other Stories: “The Entropy Composition” (BF #142b) - No year is given. Mention is made of swing musician Benny Goodman having died in 1986, so it’s after that. The Terileptus event horizon is said to be “the most magnificent sunset in this part of space-time” - presuming that the event horizon forms after Terileptus’ destruction in The Dark Path, the Concordium sequences must take place after 3400. Even so, this placement is more guesswork than not.
[1170] “Ten years” before Snakedance.
[1171] Dating The Menagerie (MA #10) - It is “centuries” (p67) after Project Mecrim was initiated in 2416. The Doctor suggests that it happened “a millennium or three” (p126) and “hundreds, perhaps thousands of years ago” (p102).
[1172] Dating Snakedance (20.2) - The story has been long held to be undatable due to the lack of concrete dating clues, and partly because it can’t even be established if the Manussans are human or not. The Cradle of the Snake ascribes the end of the Manussan Empire to “Manussan Year 2326”. The Federation’s record
s begin some “six hundred years” after that catastrophe, and as the Federation is now exactly “five hundred years” old, Snakedance must happen a total of eleven hundred years after the Mara’s takeover. So, presuming for the moment that the “Manussan years” mentioned in The Cradle of the Snake are the same as Earth years, Snakedance would occur circa 3426.
While it’s admittedly a stretch to think that Manussan years and Earth years are equal (if that’s the case, what purpose does the different terminology serve?), the thirty-fifth century is a reasonably good fit for Snakedance. The Manussans do, to all intents and purposes, appear to be of human descent - the design of their clothing and environs suggests India, Punch and Judy shows are performed, and Earth flowers (including birds of paradise) are on display in the marketplace. Generally speaking, Manussa feels like a human colony cut off from Earth and left to its own devices after humanity’s initial expansion into space (as with, to pick an example, Terra Alpha in The Happiness Patrol). A potential snag is that the twenty-third and twenty-fourth centuries (going by The Cradle of the Snake’s dating) seems a little early for humanity’s descendents to have already established “an empire” - then again, we’ve no idea what actual scale the “Manussan Empire” entails. The grandiosely named “Federation” in Snakedance, after all, seems to consist of only three planets. Reference is made to the “leaders of the colonial worlds” in The Cradle of the Snake, but for all we’re told, there might only be two of those.
About Time suggested that the twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth centuries were “an obvious estimate” for Snakedance, thinking it fair to assume that the Doctor takes Tegan to Manussa after events in Kinda, while concurring that the dating question largely hinged on whether or not the Manussans are human. Timelink presumes that Snakedance follows on immediately from Arc of Infinity, and that as the Doctor was teaching Tegan and Nyssa how to read “starcharts”, meaning no temporal displacement has occurred, and it’s still 1983 (Timelink’s preferred dating for Arc of Infinity) when they arrive on Manussa. Although as Timelink itself admits, it’s a huge coincidence that without benefit of time-travel, the TARDIS has arrived at the five hundredth anniversary celebration of the Mara’s defeat.
[1173] The Cradle of the Snake
[1174] “Fifty years” before “The Company of Thieves”.
[1175] Zygons: Absolution
[1176] Dating Paradise 5 (BF LS #1.5) - It’s “the thirty-fifth century”. The Galactic Federation is getting started around this time, and the Earth Alliance (prominent in the Dalek Empire audios) is presumably a smaller organisation within the larger Federation framework.
[1177] Dating Terminus (20.4) - Once again, an arbitrary date. The date from the Virgin edition of this chronology was adopted by Asylum, which is set in 3488, “six years” later. The Terrestrial Index saw Terminus Inc. as one of the “various corporations” fought by the Doctor in the late “twenty-fifth century”. The FASA Role-playing game gave the date as “4637 AD”. Timelink doesn’t assume that the characters are human and sets it in 1983.
[1178] The Darkening Eye. Nyssa’s life and death “trading” ability - which we don’t actually see put into effect, so she might only suspect she has the talent - stems from events in the main story of this audio, which are undatable. The Dar Traders’ abilities are outlined in The Death Collectors.
[1179] The Five Companions. Nyssa says that she “left the Doctor a very long time ago”, so this could occur at virtually any point in her life after Terminus.
[1180] Zygons: Absolution
[1181] Dating Asylum (PDA #42) - The year is given. It is “six years” since Terminus.
[1182] Dating Circular Time: “Winter” (BF #91) - Nyssa implies that it’s been “a few years” since her stay at Terminus and the Corporation Wars - allowing for Asylum, it’s actually been more like eight or nine.
[1183] Cobwebs, in which Nyssa tells the Doctor that Lazar’s Disease “ended, almost fifteen years ago. Since I developed a vaccine, there hasn’t been a new case for over two decades.” In other words, she developed a vaccine twenty years before she again meets the Doctor, then spent five years dealing with - and curing - all the people who caught the disease before the vaccine was available. This does, however, clash with account in Asylum, which claims that Nyssa developed a vaccine for Lazar’s about six years after Terminus.
[1184] The Cradle of the Snake
[1185] Dating Cobwebs (BF #136) - It’s “forty years, two months, two days” before the latter part of the story, which occurs “about fifty years” after Terminus. “The Company” isn’t necessarily the same unseen corporation mentioned in Terminus, but it seems a reasonably safe bet.
Confusingly, Nyssa tells Turlough, “So, you’re travelling with the Doctor now...” as if she remembers meeting him in Mawdryn Undead, but - somehow - doesn’t recall that he joined her, the Doctor and Tegan on their adventures. Nyssa also claims that she doesn’t age at the same rate as humans, which is why Tegan claims that she’s “looking pretty good” for someone who’s about seventy, but this contradicts the Doctor’s comment (Circular Time: “Autumn”) that humans and Trakenites have about the same lifespan (perhaps Trakenites don’t actually live longer than humans, but remain heartier than humans as they age).
[1186] Dating “Ship of Fools” (DWW #23-24) - The story is set after “Throwback”, but no date beyond that is given. The story is set around six hundred and fifty-eight years after human space liners stopped using human pilots, but this isn’t very helpful - it’s possible human pilots were reintroduced (particularly if enough ships piloted by robots like this one were lost). It does mean that it can’t possibly be set before around 2800, however.
The closest period to this seen in a TV story is Terminus, which takes place at a time where ships are piloted automatically, span the galaxy and are threatened by pirates. “Unnatural Born Killers” and “The Company of Thieves” follow this story, but there’s no indication how long it is between stories (and it could be many centuries, given that Kroton is effectively immortal).
[1187] “The Company of Thieves”
[1188] Dating “Unnatural Born Killers” (DWM #277) - see dating notes on “Ship of Fools” (DWW).
[1189] Dating “The Company of Thieves” (DWM #284-286) - No date is given, but it’s after “Unnatural Born Killers” and all previous Kroton stories. The pirates are scared of Cybermen, perhaps suggesting this is still within the period of the Cyber Empire (see “Did the Cybermen Ever Have An Empire?”). Pedants might note that the eighth Doctor doesn’t recognise Kroton even though the fourth Doctor “introduced” his original appearance in a DWW framing sequence.
[1190] “Five hundred years” before The Book of the Still.
[1191] Mission to the Unknown, The Daleks’ Master Plan.
[1192] Sara Kingdom speculates that the clock was built “centuries” before The Guardian of the Solar System - which would match with the claim that all of Mavic Chen’s predecessors were tasked with protecting it.
[1193] Dating Zygons: Absolution (BBV audio #17) - Shaw left the Space Corps in 3487; while it’s not specified how much time has passed since then, he seems to have one of the original colonists, and New Eden is nine years old. “Interplanetary Mining” is presumably the Interplanetary Mining Corps seen in Colony in Space. The New World translation of the complete Bible was introduced in 1961.
[1194] At least “fifty years” before The Chase, according to Steven Taylor. There’s a possibility that Steven is mistaken about the Mechanoids’ origin.
[1195] Dating Sisters of the Flame/The Vengeance of Morbius (BF BBC7 #2.7-2.8) - It’s repeatedly confirmed that it’s been “centuries” since The Brain of Morbius. Morbius’ stellar manipulator is akin to Hand of Omega from Remembrance of the Daleks, although Morbius’ manipulator is as big as a moon (Orbis). The Doctor suggests that the Hand of Omega itself is “long gone”, suggesting that it was either lost or destroyed after returning to Gallifrey in Remembrance. Straxus previously
appeared in Human Resources.
And although it’s not said, the chasm on Karn theoretically contains the body of a Morbius from a closed-off timeline.
[1196] Orbis
[1197] “Ten years” before the latter part of Cobwebs.
[1198] Dating Cobwebs (BF #136) - From Nyssa’s perspective, it’s been “about fifty years” since Terminus. For the Doctor’s group, that story happened two days ago.
[1199] Heroes of Sontar
[1200] Dating The Sirens of Time (BF #1) - The date is given.
[1201] Steven Taylor
We know that Steven hails from an era in which interplanetary travel for Earth is becoming (or already is) commonplace, that Earth has been dispatching the Mechanoids to colonise other worlds, and that Earth “got mixed up in interplanetary wars” - which is why the colonisation of Mechanus wasn’t completed. We also know from The Daleks’ Master Plan that Steven is from at least some “centuries” if not more before the year 4000. Unfortunately, every piece of evidence related to Steven contains some degree of ambiguity, so debates are still being had as to whether he originates anywhere from as early as the twenty-third century to as late as the thirty-sixth century(ish).
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