B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (88 page)

[
689
] Dating
The Doomwood Curse
(BF #111) - The back cover says it’s “England, 1738”. The story is a little more vague - the Doctor estimates that it’s about “twenty years” after 1720, the date he spies on a tombstone. In real life, as in the
Doctor Who
universe, Turpin was a petty criminal and murderer whose exploits were over-romanticized in the likes of
The Genuine History of the Life of Richard Turpin
(1739),
Black Bess and the Knight of the Road
(1867-68),
Rookwood
and other stories. Historically, as here, Turpin was executed in April 1739.

[
690
] Dating
The Girl in the Fireplace
(X2.4) - Reinette’s age as a young woman isn’t given, although she’s “23” the next time they meet.

[
691
]
The Adventuress of Henrietta Street
, and specified on the back cover of
FP: Sabbath Dei
.

[
692
]
The Witch Hunters

[
693
]
The Many Hands

[
694
]
The Room with No Doors

[
695
] Dating
The Girl in the Fireplace
(X2.4) - It is said that Madame de Chateauroux, the King’s mistress prior to Reinette, is “ill and close to death”. She died on 8th December, 1744. The scene probably occurs a few months beforehand, as Reinette is seen walking across a sunny patch of grass.

[
696
] Dating
The Girl in the Fireplace
(X2.4) - It is the night that Reinette meets the King - historically this occurred in February 1745, after Chateauroux’s death. The Doctor says Reinette is “23”, which she historically would have been at the time. Incidentally,
The Girl in the Fireplace
fails to mention that the real-life Reinette was married at age 19 and later had two children, neither of whom lived beyond age ten.

[
697
]
The War Games

[
698
] Dating
The Highlanders
(4.4) - The provisional title of the story was
Culloden
, and it is set shortly after that battle. Despite references in
The Highlanders
,
The War Games
and other stories, Culloden took place in April 1746, not 1745. This is first explicitly stated in
The Underwater Menace
, (although the draft script again said “1745”). The
Radio Times
specified that
The Highlanders
is set in April. The 1745 date has been perpetuated by the first edition of
The Making of Doctor Who
, and surfaces in a number of books, such as
The Roundheads
.
Birthright
has Jared Khan narrowly miss the TARDIS’ departure after
The Highlanders
, in a scene dated to 1746.

[
699
] Dating
The War Games
(6.7) - Jamie is returned to his native time.

[
700
]
Birthright
. Cagliostro, an occultist in real life, lived from 1743-1795.

[
701
] “Eleven years” before the
The Many Hands
.

[
702
]
White Darkness

[
703
]
The Doomwood Curse.
Brown lived 1716 to 1783.

[
704
]
The Cabinet of Light
(p85).

[
705
]
The Daemons

[
706
]
Interference
,
FP: Sabbath Dei
,
FP: In the Year of the Cat
,
FP:
“Political Animals”,
FP:
“Betes Noires and Dark Horses”.

[
707
]
FP: Coming to Dust

[
708
]
Interference, FP:
“Betes Noires and Dark Horses”.

[
709
]
The Vampires of Venice

[
710
] Dating
The Girl in the Fireplace
(X2.4) - It is “five years” before Reinette is 37. Owing to her 29th December birthday, she would have been that age almost the entirety of 1759, so it’s now 1754.

[
711
]
Smith and Jones.
History records this as happening on 15th June, 1752.

[
712
]
The Stones of Blood

[
713
]
The Also People

[
714
] “Nearly ten” Krillitane generations before
School Reunion
.

[
715
]
Hornets’ Nest: The Circus of Doom

[
716
] “A century” before “The Screams of Death”.

[
717
] Dating
The Girl in the Fireplace
(X2.4) - Rose says the clockwork men will come for Reinette “some time after your thirty-seventh birthday”, which was on 29th December, 1758, so it must now be 1759.

[
718
] Dating
The Many Hands
(NSA #24) - The back cover and a caption before the first part of the book confirm the year.

[
719
] ...
ish
,
Synthespians™, The Gallifrey Chronicles

[
720
]
The Underwater Menace

[
721
] “The Collector”

[
722
]
The Silent Stars Go By.
Chingachgook appeared in the writings of James Fenimore Cooper, in stories set from 1740 to 1793.

[
723
] Dating
FP: Sabbath Dei / FP: In the Year of the Cat
(
FP
audios #1.3-1.4) - The narrator says, “In the calendar of the West, this is the winter in the year seventeen hundred and sixty-two”.

[
724
] Dating
FP: The Labyrinth of Histories
(
FP
audio #1.6) - Compassion tells Justine, “I’ll explain once you’re back here with us in 1763”, indicating that the New Year has come and gone.

[
725
] Dating
FP: Coming to Dust / FP: The Ship of a Billion Years
(
FP
audio #2.1-2.2) - The year is given. Corwyn expects his ailing daughter will die “by this summer”, so it’s earlier than that in the year.

[
726
]
FP: Body Politic

[
727
] Dating
FP: Ozymandias
(
FP
audio #2.5) - Marne says that it’s been “more than six months”, since they last saw Justine, but Finton later comments that it was “a year ago”. Either way, it’s most likely 1764 now.

[
728
] Dating
The Girl in the Fireplace
(X2.4) - The final sequence takes place shortly after Reinette’s death. This historically happened on 15th April, 1764 - the same year as is listed on the painting at the end of the story. The King says Reinette was “43” when she died, but historically she was only 42. (Writer Steven Moffat has conceded this as a mistake.)

[
729
] Dating
FP: The Judgment of Sutekh
(
FP
audio #2.6) - The dates are given in Pennerton’s letters.

[
730
]
P.R.O.B.E.: The Devil of Winterborne

[
731
] “Five hundred years” before
The Daleks
.

The Neutronic War on Skaro

The Neutronic War referred to in
The Daleks
is clearly a different conflict from the Thal-Kaled War seen in
Genesis of the Daleks
, given that the Neutronic War in
The Daleks
lasted just “one day”, whereas the Thal-Kaled War lasted “nearly a thousand years”. In the first story, a Dalek tells the Doctor that “We, the Daleks and the Thals” fought the Neutronic War, implying that this was after the Daleks were created (a version of events supported by the
TV Century 21
comic strip). The Thal named Alydon speaks of this as the “final war”, maybe suggesting that there was more than one.

It’s interesting to note that after the Neutronic War, both the Thals and Dals mutated until they resembled the state they’d been in at
Genesis of the Daleks
- the Thals becoming blond humanoids, the Dals becoming green Dalek blobs.

[
732
] This is the opening caption of the first “The Daleks”
TV Century 21
strip.

[
733
] Dating “The Daleks: Genesis of Evil” (
TV21
#1-3,
DWW
#33) - This is the first story in “The Daleks” comic strip printed in
TV Century 21
. As the story starts with the birth of the Daleks, but ends at a time when Earth has spaceships (shortly before
The Dalek Invasion of Earth
, it seems), and “Legacy of Yesteryear” is explicitly “centuries” after “Genesis of Evil”, the strips have been broken into two blocks, with events of each block happening over a relatively short time, but with hundreds of years between the two.

The year this story - and so the rest of its block - is set isn’t given in the strip, but Drenz was killed in 2003 according to both
The Dalek Book
and
The Dalek Pocketbook and Space-Travellers Guide
, both of which are otherwise consistent with the strip. However, this isn’t 2003 AD:
The Dalek Outer Space Book
mentions the “New Skaro Calendar”, with Year Zero being the year the “Thousand Years War” started. It also says the Daleks emerged in the year 1600 and “The Year of the Dalek” lasted until the year 1,000,000 (the original date given in scripts for
The Daleks’ Master Plan
, which may or may not be a coincidence). This would account for a line in “The Dalek World” stating it’s not unusual to find Daleks that are a million years old. See the Are There Two Dalek Histories? sidebar for how this can be reconciled with
Genesis of the Daleks
.

So... the blue-skinned original Daleks appear in 1600, “Genesis of Evil” is set in 2003, and
The Daleks
takes place five hundred years after “Genesis of Evil” (so around 2503). We also know that
Genesis of the Daleks
is set at the end of the Thousand Years War, so in 1000. Making the assumption that a “year” is the same length as a year on Earth (as this chronology does, unless stated otherwise), and using other dates from this chronology, we can work back.
The Daleks
is set in 2263 AD and 2503 according to the New Skaro Calendar, so to calculate an Earth date, you subtract two hundred and forty from the Skaro date. Therefore, “Genesis of Evil” starts in 1763 and
Genesis of the Daleks
is set in 760 AD.