B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (276 page)

[
70
] “Twenty years” after
The Fearmonger.

[
71
]
First
Frontier
(p137).

[
72
] Dating
Emotional Chemistry
(EDA #66) - The date appears in the blurb.

[
73
]
Happy Endings

[
74
] Glauss was born twenty-six years after
Millennial Rites
(p86). A bit confusingly, p70 says her
Cybercrime
text was written “in the early twenty-first century”.

[
75
] Dating
The Feast of Axos
(BF #144) - Axos was stuck in the time loop “fifty years” ago in
The Claws of Axos
, making this story subject to UNIT dating.

[
76
] Dating
The Ring of Steel
(BBC
DW
audiobook #8) - The Doctor tells Amy that they’re “maybe fifteen years into her future”.

[
77
] Dating
Project: Destiny
and
A Death in the Family
(BF #139-140) - The Doctor is initially uncertain as to the date (“We’re in the year 2024, or possibly 2026”) and the back cover says that it’s 2025. It’s said three times within the story, though, that it’s 2026 - once by Nimrod in response to Hex asking about the year, and twice on data files related to the Contaminants. The same data files seem to indicate that
Project: Destiny
begins on “18th of April” and continues the next day - when the Doctor is shot, and later awakens after spending three days in healing coma. So, that adventure ends - and events seem to pick up immediately afterwards in
A Death in the Family
- on the 22nd. The later portion of
A Death in the Family
, which begins in 2027, confirms that London was evacuated “last year”.

[
78
] Dating
A Death in the Family
(#140) - Ace establishes the date of her arrival (24th June, 2027) by checking a newspaper. She dispatches Henry’s account of her to Hex on “Tuesday, 24th of May” (actually a Wednesday in 2028) - evidently the same day that Professor Noone springs into creation and confronts the Word Lord.

[
79
]
The Waters of Mars

[
80
] “Twenty or thirty years” after
The King of Terror.

[
81
]
The Last Dodo

[
82
]
The Left-Handed Hummingbird

[
83
] “Apotheosis”

[
84
] Dating
Warchild
(NA #47) - The book is the sequel to
Warlock
. At the end of the earlier novel, Justine was in the early stages of pregnancy, so her baby would have been born in the spring of the following year. In
Warchild
, her son Ricky is “15”. This book is set in the early autumn, as the long summer ends and the school year is starting in America.

[
85
] Dating
Singularity
(BF #76) - The year is unspecified, but 30th November is a Tuesday; in the twenty-first century - and allowing that the portion of
Singularity
eleven years hence cannot occur before 2090 - that narrows the possibilities to 2010, 2021, 2027, 2032, 2038, 2049, 2055, 2060, 2066 and 2077. As Somnus publicity materials brag about the goal of its members to terraform Mars within “two years”, 2077 doesn’t seem very likely; it would push the later portion of
Singularity
to 2088 and the end of the devastating Thousand-Day War - a year in which Somnus would be rather brazen to make such a claim.

Moscow endures its worst storm “in fifty years”, an event that would be unlikely in the era of weather control witnessed in
The Moonbase
and
The Seeds of Death
. The former story takes place in 2070, ruling out this part of
Singularity
occurring before 2066. One complication is the Doctor’s offhanded comment that mankind is only “a few years” from expanding beyond the solar system, suggesting a later dating as opposed to an earlier one. Nonetheless, given
Ahistory
’s projected dating of
The Seeds of Death
, the best compromise for the early part of
Singularity
seems to be 2032, with the remainder of this adventure occurring in 2043.

[
86
]
The Waters of Mars
. See Dating
The Seeds of Death
.

[
87
]
Cold Fusion
(p216), no date given.

[
88
]
Iris: The Two Irises
. Rossiter lived 1926-1984; Edmonds was born in 1948 and is still alive; the placement here arbitrarily has him living to his mid-eighties, and assumes he didn’t lose his soul while living.

[
89
]
The King of Terror

[
90
] “F.A.Q.”

[
91
]
The Waters of Mars

[
92
] Darius is 15, and Jorjie and Starkey are both 14, in
K9: Regeneration
. Jorjie is still 14 in
K9: Dream-Eaters
and
K9: The Last Oak Tree
.

[
93
] “About ten years” prior to
Hothouse
.

[
94
] Dating
Benny: The Vampire Curse
: “Possum Kingdom” (Benny collection #12b) - It’s “the technologically comfortable early-to-mid twenty-first century” (p111).

[
95
]
The Seeds of Death

[
96
] At some point before
K9: The Sirens of Ceres
.

[
97
] “Years” before
K9: Robot Gladiators
, but presumably after the development of hyperlogarithms.

[
98
]
Alien Bodies
. The World Zones Accord was intended as a reference to the establishment of the political system of
The Enemy of the World
, which most chronologies set earlier than this. We could speculate that the World Zones Accord strengthened an existing World Zones Authority, in the same way successive European treaties have granted more powers to the EEC/EC/EU.

[
99
]
A Death in the Family
. It’s not established whether “you” means Great Britain, humanity in general or something else entirely.

[
100
] The cuttings are stolen “five years” prior to
Hothouse
. It’s not expressly said that Hazel herself arranged the theft, but it seems likely.

[
101
]
Interference
(
Book Two,
p292, p314), where the If, one of IM Foreman’s incarnations, predicts Sarah’s death. Following the machinations of the Council of Eight, the timeline is altered so that Sam Jones died in 2002.

[
102
]
Dreamstone Moon
(p58).

[
103
] “Five hundred years” before
Frontier in Space
. The incident is also recounted in
Shadowmind
.

[
104
]
Paper Cuts
. The Doctor who visits Draconia is described as being “old” and “aged”, which sounds like the first Doctor, but
The Dark Path
establishes it was the second Doctor.

[
105
]
Catastrophea

[
106
]
Return of the Living Dad
. According to the Doctor in
The Parting of the Ways
, the Daleks also refer to him by that title.

[
107
] “Cold-Blooded War!” The Doctor is familiar with this custom, so it must predate his first visit to Draconia.

[
108
]
Benny: Nobody’s Children
. There’s no evidence that the Doctor actually tried to make off with the Empress’ daughter.

[
109
] Dating
The Seeds of Death
(6.5) - This story is tricky to pin down a date for, or even to place in relation to other stories.

On screen, the only indication of the date is the Doctor’s identification of the ion rocket designed by Eldred as a product of “the twenty-first century”. As the rocket only exists as a prototype at this stage, the story must take place before 2100. T-Mat is developed at least two generations after space travel, as Eldred’s father designed spacecraft, including a “lunar passenger module”, and Eldred is an old man himself. It’s impossible to infer a firm date from that, particularly as we know from
The Tenth Planet
that moonshots were unremarkable events by the mid-1980s in the
Doctor Who
universe. However, “lunar passenger module” suggests an altogether more routine service, and that this story is not set in the late twentieth or very early twenty-first century. It’s never stated how long Travel-Mat has been in operation before
The Seeds of Death
, but it is a relatively new invention, as the video brochure we hear (transcribed here in full) states. Young Gia Kelly was involved with the development of T-Mat, but it has been around “a good many years” according to Eldred, long enough to make a rocket-travel advocate look eccentric. T-Mat is referred to as having been around for “years”, rather than “decades” or “generations” - all told, it seems reasonable to suggest that T-Mat has been around for about a decade before the story.

It is possible to rule out certain dates by referring to other stories: The Weather Control Bureau is seen, so it must be set after 2016 when Salamander invents weather control; the Bureau is on Earth, which might suggest the story is set before 2050 when the Gravitron is installed on the moon, or that the system is later moved to Earth. Either way, the story can’t be set between 2050 and (at least) 2070, because the Gravitron is in operation from the moon at that time and rockets are in use during that period. By the time of
The Seeds of Death
, it’s stated that man has not travelled beyond the moon.

While
About Time
claims that the “technology is shown to be in advance of that in
The Wheel in Space
”, it’s a bit hard to see what that’s based on. We’re explicitly told that Zoe has a more extensive knowledge of spaceflight than Eldred. (He admits as much, and Radnor says the same later - and, despite what
About Time
says, clearly distinguishes between Zoe’s expertise and Jamie’s lack of it.) Laser weapons have been developed by
The Wheel in Space
, including compact hand “blasters”, but projectile weapons are still used here. There are quite advanced robots in Zoe’s time, nothing like that seen here. Zoe was trained in a futuristic city, yet the cities we see here look much as they do now. That might be circumstantial evidence, but there’s far more than that -
The Seeds of Death
is set at a time when man has travelled no “farther than the moon”, whereas
The Wheel in Space
is set at a time when man’s got at least to the asteroid belt, explicitly has ships in “deep space”, has a “fleet” of manned ships, has at least five permanent space stations, and has been selecting and intensively training people to be astronauts for at least Zoe’s lifetime (nineteen years, according to
The Invasion
). While no one says it in the story,
The Seeds of Death
is clearly - and is clearly intended to be - set before
The Wheel in Space
, case closed.