B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (279 page)

[
144
] Dating
The Time of the Daleks
(BF #32)
-
It is “the mid twenty-first century”.

[
145
] “Twenty years” before
The Moonbase.

[
146
]
Deceit
(p27, p153). It was possibly based on Silurian technology, as the Silurians establish a Gravitron on the moon (in an alternate history) in
Blood Heat
(p196).

[
147
]
The Last Dodo

[
148
]
The Wheel in Space.
The Doctor’s familiarity with the Gravitron in
The Moonbase
, ion rockets in
The Seeds of Death
and Galactic Salvage and Insurance in
Nightmare of Eden
suggests he visited the solar system during this period at least once.

[
149
]
The Room with No Doors
(p48).

[
150
]
Transit

[
151
]
The Waters of Mars

[
152
] Dating
The King of Terror
(PDA #37) - The day that Daniel Clompus visits the Brigadier is given.

[
153
] Dating
The Wedding of River Song
(X6.13) - It’s a “few months” after the Brigadier has passed away, the date of which was established in
The King of Terror
.

[
154
] “Almost a century” before
The Final Sanction
(p175), although it must be a little longer than that, as the Selachians were active in the twenty-first century according to both
The Murder Game
and
Alien Bodies.

[
155
]
The Memory Cheats
. Mention of the Company’s self-defence techniques presumably explains how Zoe can flip the Karkus about the place in
The Mind Robber
. This placement here is roughly in accord with Zoe being “19 or so” in
The Invasion
; Wendy Padbury was 20 when she started playing the part (
The Wheel in Space
).

[
156
]
TW: Asylum

[
157
]
Alien Bodies
(p12).

[
158
]
Vampire Science

[
159
]
Mad Dogs and Englishmen

[
160
]
St Anthony’s Fire

[
161
]
Interference
(p217).
The Indestructible Man
specifies that the UN is the force behind the ban (p13).

[
162
]
The Waters of Mars
. We’re told that the crew have been “gone over two years” before November 2059, and also that it was a “two year journey” to get to Mars, so they left in late 2056/early 2057. It would only take “nine months” to get back, but the outbound trip involved taking all the supplies necessary to build the colony, time refuelling on the moon and possibly time in Martian orbit while drones built the base.

[
163
] Dating
The Waters of Mars
(X4.16) - The historical significance of the date of the destruction of Bowie Base One means the precise day is repeated a number of times. Once again, human beings who you’d think would have been briefed by someone in the know are totally unaware of the Ice Warriors. There’s no evidence that the computer or robots on Bowie Base One have artificial intelligence.

[
164
] Dating
SJA: The Mad Woman in the Attic
(
SJA
3.2) - The date is given in a caption and reiterated by Adam. While no link is made in any of the stories, we might infer some and come to interesting conclusions. Luke may have inherited the house on Sarah Jane’s death (in 2040, according to a possible future seen in
Interference
). This is set after the
K9
series, so we can infer the teenagers from
The Sarah Jane Adventures
were in their fifties and in London during those events. We don’t know the fate of K9 Mk IV, but it’s entirely possible there are at least two versions of K9 around in Britain in 2059 - the Mk I or II model from the
K9
series, and the Mk IV from
The Sarah Jane Adventures
.

[
165
] “Nearly forty years” before
Snowglobe 7
.

[
166
] “Final Sacrifice”. The “weird little planet” could be a reference to Vulcan from
The Power of the Daleks
. The Doctor finds the lost colony circa 21906.

[
167
]
Interference
(p217).

[
168
]
Human Resources
. No date is given, but it has to be at a point in the twenty-first century with both political instability and a human space programme. Karen is apparently the same age as Lucie (late teens) in 2006.

[
169
]
Benny: Another Girl, Another Planet

[
170
]
Nekromanteia

[
171
] “Fifty years in the future” of the present-day component of
The Way Through the Woods
. Although the temporal anomalies that occur in Swallow Woods are undone, the area presumably does still become a lake after Reyn’s spaceship is sent away from Earth.

[
172
] Dating
The Last Dodo
(NSA #13) - The Chinese Three-Striped Box Turtle is a new addition to the collection, and has recently gone extinct, so it’s around 2062.

[
173
]
The Waters of Mars
. They were planning “five years on Mars”, which started in 2058.

[
174
]
Alien Bodies
. See “Are There Two Dalek Histories?”

[
175
] “About twenty years” before
Loups-Garoux
.

[
176
]
The Beast Below

[
177
] “At least five hundred”, maybe five hundred and fifty years” before
Benny: the Tub Full of Cats
.

[
178
]
The Indestructible Man
. This story seems to contradict a lot of the other stories set around this time, both in broad terms and points of detail.

[
179
] Dating
Alien Bodies
(EDA #6) - The date is given, p68.

[
180
]
TW: Asylum
. Freda seems to hail from 2069, despite Gwen’s suspect math; somehow, she’s able to add Freda’s birthday (30th May, 2053) to her age (17) to determine that she stems from 2069.

[
181
]
Seeing I
(p29). No date given.

[
182
]
Nightmare of Eden
. A monitor readout states that Galactic Salvage and Insurance were formed in “2068”. The Doctor has heard of the company and briefly pretends to be working for them.

[
183
]
The Murder Game
(p9).

[
184
] Dating
The Wheel in Space/The War Games
(5.7, 6.7) - This, along with
The Seeds of Death
, is one of two stories set in the twenty-first century that are trickiest to date. There’s no date given in the story itself.

In
The Moonbase
, base leader Hobson states that “every child knows” about the destruction of Mondas (in
The Tenth Planet
). Yet none of the crew of the Wheel have heard of the Cybermen, and they’re generally sceptical about the existence of alien life. This is a contradiction whether Zoe comes from before, around the same time or after
The Moonbase
. Invoking Zoe’s narrow education doesn’t work if “every child” knows about Mondas’ demise, and surely the only way she wouldn’t know is if it had been deliberately kept from her, which would be a bit bizarre. (Unless it’s felt that telling future astronauts about all the monsters up there would be counter-productive.)

Amongst its other duties, the Wheel gathers information on Earth’s weather, but this needn’t mean that weather control isn’t in use - to control the weather, you surely need the ability to monitor it.

As it’s Zoe’s native time, we get more clues in subsequent stories she’s in: Zoe is “born in the twenty-first” century (
The War Games
), and she is “19 or so” according to the Brigadier in
The Invasion
, so the story must be set somewhere between 2019 and 2119. In
The Mind Robber
, she recognises the Karkus - a comic strip character from the year 2000 - which might suggest she comes from that year. For that reason (presumably), the narration in
The Prison in Space
identifies Zoe as “a pretty astrophysicist from the year 2000”. However, when discussing the Karkus, Zoe asks the Doctor if he’s
been
to the year 2000 - if it’s not a rhetorical question, then
The Wheel in Space
isn’t set in that year. In
The Mind Robber
, we see an image of Zoe’s home city - a highly futuristic metropolis.

It’s never explicitly stated that
The Seeds of Death
takes place before Zoe’s time (see the dating notes on
The Seeds of Death
). In
The Seeds of Death,
Zoe understands the principles behind T-Mat, meaning she possesses knowledge that’s otherwise limited to a few specialists (she may have picked this up on her travels - although she doesn’t in any story we see). Why Zoe doesn’t remember T-Mat or recognise the Martians is a mystery, but it does indicate she was born after T-Mat was abandoned, or she’d recognise it. Then again, Zoe has a narrow education and doesn’t recognise kilts or candles, either, so perhaps T-Mat is seen as a quaint and irrelevant historical detail by her time.

If Zoe’s inability to recognise T-Mat is relevant, it suggests that the earliest date for
The Wheel in Space
is at least “nineteen years or so” (the Brigadier’s estimate of Zoe’s age in
The Invasion
) after
The Seeds of Death
(dated to circa 2040 in this chronology), so it can’t take place before 2059. This doesn’t help narrow the upper limit on when the story can occur, however.

Many subsequent stories establish that the governments of Earth knew about the existence of aliens in the twentieth century, and the new television series (as well as stories in the books and comics) establish that the general public accepts the existence of aliens by the early twenty-first.

The Indestructible Man
places this story after 2096, as it’s set before Zoe was born.
The Harvest
(set in 2021) refers to the Wheel space stations.

The first two editions of
The Programme Guide
placed
The Wheel in Space
between “1990-2000”, but
The Terrestrial Index
suggested a date “c2020” (or “2030” in
The Universal Databank
). “2074” was suggested by “A History of the Cybermen” in
DWM
.
Cybermen
, after some discussion (p61-62), said “2028 AD”. The first edition of
Timelink
said “2020”; the Telos version favoured “2080”.
About Time
says “it looks like the 2030s to us”.