B00DPX9ST8 EBOK

by Parkin, Lance

  [1448] Zamper

  [1449] “Five hundred ninety-seven” years before Tragedy Day (p97).

  [1450] Dating The Web in Space (BBC children’s 2-in-1 #6, released in Sightseeing in Space) - Earth has colonies on other planets, although “Earth Corp Couriers” might be a brand name, and not service Earth itself. The Daleks are spacefaring at this time. It’s after humanity has encountered the Chelonians, but before the Chelonians go peaceful. Mention of Galaxy 16 suggests intergalactic travel, so we’re guessing to say that this story occurs in the 5300s.

  [1451] Dating The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe (X7.0) - One of the expedition team, Droxil, states that “the year is 5345”. Droxil is “from” Androzani Major, meaning that this is a different planet, although they call the trees “Androzani Trees”.

  [1452] Dating Dalek Empire I (episode one, Invasion of the Daleks; episode two, The Human Factor) - As with the Davros Era, the Dalek Empire mini-series (I-IV) are fairly easy to date in relation to one another, but it’s harder to establish the century they are set. The only tangible dating evidence is the Dalek Emperor’s comment in Dalek Empire I episode four that it’s been “centuries” since the Daleks invaded the Kar-Charrat library in The Genocide Machine, which in this chronology is dated to circa 5256. The war between the Knights of Velyshaa and Earth (mentioned in The Sirens of Time as ending in 3562) is said to have occurred “long ago”.

  [1453] Dating Return of the Daleks (BF subscription promo #4) - The story occurs between Dalek Empire I episodes one (Invasion of the Daleks) and two (The Human Factor).

  The knock-on effect of moving the Dalek Empire stories to the sixth millennium (see The Genocide Machine for how this came about) introduces a contradiction that Ahistory Second Edition had otherwise resolved. In Return of the Daleks, the seventh Doctor guarantees that the Dalek army on Spiridon (from Planet of the Daleks) remains frozen; later on, in “Emperor of the Daleks”, Davros appropriates this army to create his Imperial Daleks. Reconciling the accounts of these stories was based upon the numbers of the Spiridon army... The Thals in Planet of the Daleks believe that “ten thousand Daleks” are buried on Spiridon, but Return of the Daleks says this is faulty information, and the frozen Daleks actually number 1,100,000. “Emperor of the Daleks” has Davros labouring on Spiridon for a year, whereupon he unleashes an army of four million gold-and-white Daleks. So, one could conclude that the third Doctor froze the Dalek army (cited as only ten thousand, but actually numbering 1,100,000) in Planet of the Daleks, that the seventh Doctor prevented their revival in Return of the Daleks, and that Davros later used the Spiridon army to cobble together his force of four million Daleks.

  All well and good... save that moving Return of the Daleks forward in time means that the seventh Doctor is here re-freezing a Dalek army that Davros has already appropriated for use elsewhere. One explanation is that it’s never expressly established that Davros takes each and every last Dalek from Spiridon - perhaps he builds four million Daleks, but leaves one million(ish) behind on Spiridon as reinforcements to call upon should he need them. Or, perhaps he actually constructs five million Daleks, takes four million with him and leaves the extra one million behind. Either way, it’s understandable why the seventh Doctor would want to keep the surplus million Daleks frozen. What this doesn’t explain is how, if Return of the Daleks comes later than “Emperor of the Daleks”, the Spiridons are still invisible in “Emperor” when Return states that they become visible following Planet of the Daleks, and only regain their invisibility owing to the Doctor releasing a virus during Mendes and Kalendorf’s revolution.

  [1454] Dating Brotherhood of the Daleks (BF #114) - Dating clues abound, but no actual year is mentioned. Kyropites previously appeared in The Mind’s Eye, but there’s no other relation given between that story and this one.

  One of the Thals says, “And there are Ganatus knows how many levels like this...”; if this denotes the slain Ganatus from The Daleks, Brotherhood of the Daleks must take place after that. The Thals have now settled on New Davias, on such a scale that it’s quite possibly where they went prior to Skaro’s obliteration in Remembrance of the Daleks.

  Tellingly, the Daleks at present have an empire. Also, one of the Thals is a veteran of “the Mechanoid Wars”, which are likely to have occurred in the third or fourth millennia, as there’s no record of the Mechanoids even being active later than some excavated ones dug up in 4620 (in The Juggernauts). Additionally, Murgat says that the Doctor aided the Thals in driving the Daleks from this sector of the galaxy, but the Doctor says he hasn’t been near Antares in six millennia, and assumes that Murgat refers to events in his personal future. It seems reasonable to take this as a reference to Return of the Daleks, meaning that Brotherhood of the Daleks must occur in close relation to the Dalek Empire series - which is handy, as the Daleks do have an empire at that point.

  At least two of the Daleks present remember meeting Charley in Folkestone in Terror Firma, but allowing that those post-Remembrance Daleks likely have some form of time travel (however crude), it’s not an altogether helpful detail. The term “Thaleks” was used in the Unbound story Auld Mortality.

  [1455] Dating Dalek Empire IV: The Fearless - The story occurs in the years that pass very shortly after the start of Dalek Empire I episode three (“Death to the Daleks!”), but prior to the Daleks overrunning Earth in that installment. Ernst Tanlee, who’s killed at the very end of Dalek Empire I, here appears as head of Earth Alliance security. Like Dalek Empire II but unlike the other Dalek Empire mini-series, Dalek Empire IV has no individual episode titles.

  [1456] Dating Dalek Empire I (episode three, “Death to the Daleks!”; episode four, Project Infinity) - An unspecified number of “years” occur as the Daleks make advances, and Mendes and Kalendorf shore up their master plan. “Eight months” pass after Mendes gives the rebellion signal, and Kalendorf spends five months after that in transit to the Lopra system.

  [1457] Return of the Daleks

  [1458] Dalek Empire II

  [1459] Dating Planet of the Spiders (11.5) - The colony ship that crashes on Metebelis III has intergalactic capability, as Metebelis is in the Acteon galaxy. It made a “time jump”, also suggesting it’s from the far future. The Terrestrial Index claimed that the colony ship was “lost during the early days of the twenty-second century”, dating Planet of the Spiders itself as “c.2530”. The TARDIS Logs suggested “4256”, Timelink “3415”.

  [1460] Dating The Eight Doctors (EDA #1) - This happens at some point in the aftermath of Planet of the Spiders.

  [1461] The Eight Truths/Worldwide Web

  [1462] Dating Dalek Empire II: Dalek War (no individual titles) - Mendes is revived from stasis “five, nearly six” years after instigating her rebellion in Dalek Empire I.

  [1463] Dalek Empire III

  [1464] Dating Dalek Empire II: Dalek War (no individual titles) - Kalendorf’s conflict against the Alliance Daleks is described as a “long, terrible war”, and must run for a number of years. The Great Catastrophe seems to occur shortly after the Alliance Daleks’ withdrawal to their home dimension.

  The Great Catastrophe

  Dalek Empire II ends with all Daleks and Dalek technology in the Milky Way and Seriphia galaxies exploding to such a degree, “countless worlds” (all of them unnamed) are devastated. Some take centuries or millennia to recover, some never do. The big question for Ahistory’s purposes is how much damage Earth itself endures... and, as it happens, this question is never answered. Although Dalek Empire III picks up the threads of the Great Catastrophe some two thousand years later, no mention whatsoever is made of Earth’s status.

  ... which isn’t to say that the homeworld has been especially devastated beyond repair. Although the Daleks do take control of Earth in Dalek Empire II, the “Daleks, Obliterate Yourselves” pulse that brings about The Great Catastrophe wouldn’t mete out damage to the planets under Dalek control equally, and some worlds would surely weather that storm better than ot
hers. Where this is especially relevant is the question of whether the humans on Earth would emerge from the Great Catastrophe with the technological know-how and resources to react as we’re shown to the Solar Flare event (established in The Ark in Space). So little is said about what happens to Earth during The Great Catastrophe, there’s nothing to directly rule out pretty much any scenario to follow.

  [1465] Dalek Empire III

  [1466] Dating The Pyralis Effect (BF CC #4.4) - It’s long enough after the destruction of Pavonis IV that the Doctor is regarded as a mythical hero, but not so long that the planet’s environment has recovered and the survivors have resettled there. Otherwise, this date is arbitrary.

  [1467] The Highest Science

  [1468] Synthespians™

  [1469] The Price of Paradise

  [1470] “Thousands of years” after Asylum. No date given, and this is an arbitrary placing.

  [1471] Spiral Scratch

  [1472] “Five thousand years” before The Crystal Bucephalus (p114).

  [1473] “Two hundred and seventy years” before Half-Life.

  [1474] Dating Combat Rock (PDA #55) - There’s no date given, although cigarettes were banned on the colonies “hundreds of years ago”. There are smokers in Resurrection of the Daleks, but of course a smoking ban can be lifted and ignored, so it’s hardly firm evidence that this story is set after that. This date is arbitrary, but it’s linked to the Christian colonists of Espero.

  The date of the Earth-Indoni war is unspecified, but Jenggel’s current political climate seems to stem from its fallout, suggesting a shorter rather than longer span of time since it occurred. The Indoni subjugated the Papul, and the Christian missionaries arrived, some “thirty rainseasons” before the novel takes place.

  [1475] Dating Sick Building (NSA #17) - No dating clues are given, but in Iris: Enter Wildthyme (p240), Barbra says that she’s from “the fifty-ninth century”. The character is named as “Barbara” in Sick Building and Iris: Iris and the Celestial Omnibus: “The Deadly Flap”, but is “Barbra” in Iris: Enter Wildthyme.

  [1476] Iris: Enter Wildthyme

  [1477] Dating The Krotons (6.4) - This has been one of the most persistently undatable TV stories. About Time concedes that the year is “unknown”, and Jon Preddle writes in Timelink, “I have placed The Krotons under ?????” While the story gives virtually no dating clues (it isn’t even established if the Gonds are human or not), evidence from the tie-in media allows for the establishment of some parameters.

  Alien Bodies (p263-264) says that the Krotons were literally patterned after the type of servo-robots seen in The Wheel in Space, meaning the Krotons didn’t exist prior to mankind’s colonial age. The same section of Alien Bodies suggests that (in terms of rudimentary personality, if nothing else) the Krotons as we know them took some “centuries” to develop.

  In Return of the Krotons, a Kroton who went dormant circa 3700 regards dynatropes - relative to when it liquefied - as “an inferior form of craft, with low grade crew specifications. We are more advanced.” So, if dynatropes haven’t been outright discontinued by the thirty-eighth century, it’s unlikely they were used much after. The Krotons featured in The Krotons might be using a dynatrope well past its expiration date, but we nonetheless have a rough approximation of when they landed on the planet of the Gonds.

  The Gond leader Selris says in The Krotons episode one that the Krotons arrived “thousands of years” ago - not the most specific of terms to start with, and one that becomes even vaguer when it’s taken into account that the Gonds have forgotten so much of their history. The Doctor similarly claims in episode three that the Krotons have been lying dormant for “thousands of years”, but he might just be repeating what Selris told the TARDIS crew. Nonetheless, if we presume that the Krotons landed on Gond circa 2895 (the mid-point between man’s colonial age starting about 2090 and dynatropes being deemed “inferior” circa 3700), then arbitrarily add on (say) three thousand years, The Krotons would occur circa 5895. It’s a ballpark figure, to be sure, but it’s better than nothing.

  [1478] Dating Mission: Impractical (PDA #12) - It is “a couple of million years” before The Trial of a Time Lord (p56). Ernie McCartney from Tragedy Day is mentioned (p215), setting this around the same time as that book. This would not appear, from the other stories featuring Glitz, to be his native timezone. We might conclude that he has ended up somehow either acquiring time travel or been brought here by a time traveller.

  [1479] Dating Tragedy Day (NA #24) - There is no indication of the date in the book, although the colony planet Pantorus is mentioned here (p83) and in Zamper (p57), perhaps suggesting they are set around the same time.

  [1480] The Ark in Space

  The Solar Flares

  The solar flares ravage the Earth “thousands of years” after the thirtieth century (Revenge of the Cybermen). Judging by information in the TV series, the last recorded human activity on Earth for millions of years is in the fifty-first century (The Talons of Weng-Chiang, The Invisible Enemy). The books and audios push this forward by about a thousand years, to around 6000. The Solar Flares must occur relatively soon after this time.

  The first edition of The Programme Guide claimed that Earth was only evacuated between “c.2800” and “c.2900”, the second suggested dates between “c.2900” and “c.4300”. The Terrestrial Index attempted to rationalise the statement that the Ark was built in the “thirtieth century”, stating that Nerva was built, but then the Solar Flares “abated”, Nerva was not informed and the population of Nerva went on to recolonise Ravolox “between 15,000 and 20,000” (as seen in The Mysterious Planet). This contradicts the date for The Mysterious Planet established on screen and would represent a rather implausible oversight on behalf of the Earth’s authorities. The book’s supposition that the Solar Flares caused the Ice Age we see in The Ice Warriors (a theory repeated in Legacy) is specifically ruled out by dialogue in The Ice Warriors. For analysis of the solar flares as referenced in the new series, see The Beast Below.

  [1481] Dating Dreamtime (BF #67) - Simon Forward scripted this story with the intent of it occurring during the time of the World Zones Authority in the twenty-first century, but nothing in the story itself supports this. Talk of evacuating the Earth means it fits naturally at the time of the solar flares. If the “past” segments are part of the Dreaming and inherently unreliable, dating becomes even murkier. Forward says that the Galyari Korshal in Dreamtime isn’t the character of the same name in Benny: The Bone of Contention (even if Steffan Rhodri voices both parts); the Galyari are long-lived, but traditionally hand down some names through the generations.

  The Abandonment of Earth

  Earth is completely evacuated six, possibly seven, times that we know of: (1) for “ten thousand years” between the time of the Solar Flares and The Sontaran Experiment (c.5000-c.15,000 AD); (2) for at least three thousand five hundred years before (and an unknown amount of time after) Birthright (c.18,500 AD-?); (3) a line cut from the rehearsal script but retained in the Planet of Evil novelisation reveals that “The Tellurian planet [Earth] has been uninhabited since the Third Era” (significantly before 37,166 AD); (4) for a significant time after the Usurians move the workforce to Pluto before The Sun Makers millions of years in the future; (5) there is a mass evacuation shortly before Earth plunges into the Sun ten million years in the future, seen in The Ark and reported in Frontios; (6) finally, Earth was empty at the time of its final destruction in the year five billion, seen in The End of the World. A wild card is the migration from Earth involving Starship UK, as seen in The Beast Below (possibly, or possibly not, part of the aforementioned Solar Flare incident; see the dating notes on that story). System Wipe (p13) concurs that Earth “gets blasted” half a dozen times at least.

  [1482] The Reaping, The Gathering. The Doctor says that the Gogglebox was created while “humanity was on a day trip away from Earth space” owing to “solar flares or intergalactic war or something”. This placement is arbit
rary.

  [1483] Heritage. Cole’s grandmother fights in it.

  [1484] Dating Zamper (NA #41) - It is “the sixtieth century” (p77). Earth appears to be populated at this time.

  [1485] Dating The Doctor’s Daughter (X4.6) - The dates shown on screen are in a format that gives figures such as “60120724”. Donna works out that it’s “a big old space date” that runs year, month, day. Or, in the more familiar British format, the colonists land on Messaline on 17/07/6012, and events in this story occur on 24/07/6012. While the Doctor claims that said “big old space date” uses the New Byzantine Calendar, setting the story in 6012 AD seems reasonable enough.

  [1486] “Twenty” (p8) and “ten” (p18) years before Heritage.

  [1487] Three years before Heritage (p56).

  [1488] Dating Heritage (PDA #57) - Each chapter in the book has a precise date and time.

  [1489] Dating Half-Life (EDA #68) - This story is set after Heritage, as there are references to that story.

  [1490] Heritage (p227).

  [1491] Heritage (p279).

  [1492] Years after Heritage.

  [1493] The Crystal Bucephalus

  [1494] The Kingmaker. The publisher’s robot is specified as being from the sixty-fourth century, but this isn’t to say the dominating publishing house is located there also, and the Doctor’s comments suggest that the company hails from much further in the future.

  [1495] Dating “Ground Control” (IDW Doctor Who Annual 2010) - Mister K gives the year.

  [1496] Dating Return of the Krotons (BF subscription promo #7) - The solar-flare event described in The Ark in Space occurred some “centuries” ago. The mining technology used is similar to that used in the moon conurbations of the late thirtieth century, so it’s definitely after that time.

  [1497] “Five thousand years” after No Future.

  [1498] Dating Wirrn Dawn (BF BBC7 #3.4) - The story takes place amidst the background detail of the Galsec colonists as seen in The Sontaran Experiment. The migration of the Wirrn swarm into space could be the act that leads to a Wirrn queen invading Nerva Beacon in The Ark in Space. The title of this story seems to tip the scales in favour of spelling “Wirrn” with two r’s, as opposed to the three-r’ed version preferred by The Ark in Space novelisation and Placebo Effect.