B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (274 page)

Most glaringly of all, the Doctor stresses in
The Graves of Mordane
(p27) that he’s only going to travel in space, not time - and yet the TARDIS moves from Earth’s moon, circa 2012, to a point when humanity’s colony worlds have been burying their dead on Mordane for at least four centuries (p37), without any acknowledgement of the discrepancy.

One glitch that’s unrelated to dating issues, but demonstrates the difficulty in analysing this series: Karagula is named a “cold desolate planet” in Book One (
The Dust of Ages
), but is a hot and arid world with two suns in Book Three (
The Colour of Darkness
).

See the individual entries for more.

[
24
] Dating
The Dust of Ages
,
The Graves of Mordane
,
The Colour of Darkness, The Pictures of Emptiness
and
The Art of War
(
DL
#1-#3, #8, #9) - The back cover of
The Dust of Ages
and the story recap in
The Graves of Mordane
both claim that the Doctor’s involvement with the Eternity Crystal takes place “a few years into our future...” The general impression is that Earth’s corporations are considering exploitation of the moon for the first time - so, more in the relative near future (in
Doctor Who
terms) than, say, hundreds of years hence. All references to UK and London culture are either vague or fictionalised, and of no help in determining the year.

According to the story recap and back cover to
The Art of War
, the Darksmith-Krashok rendezvous (i.e. the opening sequences to
The Art of War,
and by extension most of
The Pictures of Emptiness
, which leads into it) occurs on “present day” Earth. Taken literally alongside
The Dust of Ages
being “a few years in the future”, this would mean that the tenth Doctor is attempting to thwart the meeting and retrieve the Eternity Crystal a few years before his younger self finds it on the moon. It seems fair to assume, however, that the four books
do
follow one another in the same year, as there’s no sign that the stories were intended to be out of sequence - the “present day” references look very much like a mistake and can be treated as such.

[
25
]
The Colour of Darkness
,
The Depths of Despair
,
The Vampire of Paris
,
The Game of Death.

[
26
] Dating
Iris: Enter Wildthyme
(Iris novel #1) - The modern-day component begins in “autumn” (p15, 38, 39), proceeds over some weeks (p165-166) and finishes “Sometime in late November” (p311). A TV screen in Iris’ bus (in a takeoff of
Doctor Who - The Movie
) says that it’s “Darlington - Human Era - Early 21st Century” (p61).

Enter Wildthyme
was published in 2011, but must occur in some other year owing to the need to place
TW: Miracle Day
in autumn 2011. (The meta-fictional nature of the Iris Wildthyme adventures means that Iris fans can probably overlook this continuity conflict, but this chronology doesn’t have that luxury.) It’s been “some years” since Barbra the vending machine arrived from the future (in December 2008, in
Iris: Iris and the Celestial Omnibus
: “The Deadly Flap”), so 2012 or 2013 is perhaps preferable to 2010.

[
27
] Dating
Hunter’s Moon
(NSA #46) - No year given. None of the participants are human, save for three people kidnapped from Earth to serve as prey in the Gorgoror Chase. The London in which the abductees live is very functional and could well be contemporary, but the references (including the Circle Line, the Metropolitan Police, Jobseeker’s Allowance and a man from Romania) fall short of being very definitive. It’s difficult to tell, in relation to the public’s awareness in the new series that aliens exist, if the trio are surprised by the very notion that aliens are
real
, or are instead baffled to learn they personally have been abducted and taken into space on a star-cruiser. With the year being so uncertain, but the month in London being specified as November (p12), it’s perhaps best to avoid the year of
Hunter Moon
’s publication - 2011 - to curtail any further conflict with
TW: Miracle Day
.

Mention is made of a war between Torodon and the Terileptils - the latter’s ability to wage all-out war was presumably diminished after the destruction of their homeworld in
The Dark Path
(set circa 3400), so
Hunter’s Moon
likely occurs before that. An Aggedor beast (
The Curse of Peladon
) is among the wildlife present, but no mention is made of the Federation. One of the hunters in the Chase bears a high-voltage shotgun called the Eradicator (p113), the design of which is similar (coincidentally or otherwise) to the weapon of the same name from
Carnival of Monsters
.

[
28
] Dating
The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe
(X7.0) - It is “two years” since Amy last saw the Doctor (in
The Wedding of River Song
, set in April 2011). At time of writing, it’s a toss-up as to whether Amy is rounding up and means that it’s now Christmas 2012, or she’s rounding down and it’s Christmas 2013.

[
29
]
Relative Dementias
(p40) dates when the Doctor and Ace visit the Countess. Her warning about 14th July is on p17.

[
30
] “The year before”
The Sentinels of the New Dawn
. Tanganyika was an independent state in Africa only from 9th December, 1961 to 26th April, 1964. The area is now part of Tanzania, and in recent times, the name “Tanganyika” has only been used in reference to Lake Tanganyika.

[
31
] Dating
Autonomy
(NSA #35) - The year is given. The Doctor says this is the fourth Auton invasion “at least”.

[
32
]
The Glamour Chase
(p128).

[
33
] Dating
The Sentinels of the New Dawn
(BF CC #5.10) - The year is given.

[
34
]
The City of the Dead.
This retcon takes the sting out of one of the nastier bits of
Warlock
.

[
35
] Dating
Warlock
(NA #34) - The novel is the sequel to
Cat’s Cradle: Warhead
. The events of the earlier book are consistently referred to as happening “years” ago (p8, p203, p209, p223). Vincent and Justine, the two young lovers from
Warhead
, bought a car after a “few years” of marriage and have had it a while (p356).

In
Cat’s Cradle: Warhead
, Ace had difficulty guessing how old Justine was, eventually settling on “maybe 16 or 17” (p181). By
Warlock,
Justine has matured into a woman (p203), but she is still only “probably a couple of years older than the medical student” (p301), so she is in her early-to-mid 20s. We suggest, then, that
Warlock
takes place about five years after
Cat’s Cradle: Warhead
. It is late autumn (p279, p334).

[
36
]
Damaged Goods

[
37
] “Six years” before
The Hungry Earth
.

[
38
]
The Great Space Elevator
. This is the first we’ve seen of Victoria since
Downtime
- a story that established that she was 14 when she met the Doctor, and she’s probably not much older than that when she leaves his company circa 1975. If she did restart her life (as an international fugitive or not) in wake of
Downtime
, then she’s in her mid-30s when she starts a family, and the bare minimum of time required for her to be an impending grandmother must mean that the framing sequence for
The Great Space Elevator
occurs circa 2015 at the earliest.

[
39
]
Night Terrors
, extrapolating from George being eight in 2011.

[
40
] Dating
Benny: Present Danger
: “Excalibur of Mars” (Benny collection #14) - Benny says that she’s in “the early twenty-first century, give or take”. Bambera and Ancelyn are said to have been entrusted with Excalibur “decades ago” (at the end of
Battlefield
), but Bambera is still fit enough for active duty, Merlin is here presented as “a scruffy man in a long, raggedy afghan coat... Wearing an eye-patch, barely visible beneath a long, asymmetric fringe of red hair”, loosely in accordance with the
Battlefield
novelisation.

[
41
] Dating “The Lunar Strangers” (
DWM
#215-217) - The date is given at a caption at the end of the story.

[
42
] Dating
The Eight Truths/Worldwide Web
(BF BBC7 #3.7-3.8) - The back cover says it’s “London, 2015”, and a news broadcast claims that the story begins on 21st October. The Doctor then spends “twenty-three days” healing from a dose of radioactive Polonium-210, but awakens to facilitate the story’s end. Terra Nova might be a corollary of the British space program first seen in
The Ambassadors of Death
. The Terra Nova probe dispatched to Mercury is “following up” on the NASA probe sent to Sol’s innermost planet on 3rd August, 2004.

The clear implication is that the Doctor makes the public forget all the events of this story, and (off screen, somehow) erases all media coverage of it. It’s very unclear, however, how the Eightfold Truth could have distributed millions of Metebelis crystals to its members for an 18-year stretch prior to 2015 without anybody involved in the original Metebelis incident (Sarah Jane, Mike Yates, let alone the Doctor, etc.) noticing.

Lucie here appears on TV as an Eightfold Truth spokesperson, but if the Doctor indeed erases all record of this, it needn’t further complicate her media appearance in
Hothouse
circa 2045.

[
43
]
FP: Erasing Sherlock
and its prologue in
FP: Warring States
. The year isn’t specified, but Gillian is from the “twenty-first century”, and stops to wonder how the 2018 embargo is going to affect the course of her academic studies.

[
44
]
Revolution Man
(p23). No date is given.

[
45
]
The Angel of Scutari

[
46
]
LIVE 34

[
47
] Dating
Trading Futures
(EDA #55) - The year is not specified beyond “the early decades of the twenty-first century” on the back cover, but Mather says his encounter with the Doctor in
Father Time
, which occurred in 1989, was “more than twenty years ago”. Malady Chang, a secret agent, seems to place it nearer thirty years, as she thinks the Doctor “would have been about ten at the time”, and he looks like he’s in his “early forties”. People who were teenagers in the nineties are now “pushing pensionable age” (p8) and Anji’s generation are the parents of teenagers. Learman from
The Time of the Daleks
is referred to (p107), as are the Zones from
The Enemy of the World
. It’s not clear whether World War Four has been averted - US and EZ forces are fighting at the end of the book, and it’s only
hoped
that the revelation of Baskerville’s plan will end it.