Authors: Lance Parkin,Lars Pearson
In July 1975, Toshiko Sato of Torchwood was born in London. Her parents were in the RAF, and her grandfather worked at Metchley Park.
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Colonel Geoffrey Redvers coerced Albert Gilroy into building android assassins for the US military on 3rd August, 1975.
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Melissa Moretti, the daughter of Lucia Moretti and Jack Harkness, was born 5th August, 1975. Lucia stopped working for Torchwood in the same year.
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Jack Harkness dated a junior doctor named Stella Courtney for a few weeks in 1975.
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Charles Arthur Cromwell retired from Torchwood in 1975.
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Tegan and Mike Bretherton were high school classmates, and next door neighbours, in Brisbane. They were both inspired by Miss Anderson, who taught physics. When Tegan was 15, Mike carried her books home after she broke her toe during track and field.
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c 1975 - Fury from the Deep
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On the whole, this period was “a good time in Earth’s history to stay in. No wars, great prosperity, a time of plenty.” Gas from the sea now provided energy for the south of England and Wales, as well as mainland Europe. Twenty rigs pumped gas into every home without incident for more than four years.
When scientists registered a regular build-up and fall in pressure in the main pipelines, the supply was cut off for the first time. A mutant species of seaweed was responsible, and it mentally dominated some of the rigs’ crews before being beaten back by amplified sound.
Victoria Waterfield left the second Doctor and Jamie to settle down with the Harris family.
The Doctor met hacker Robert Salmon in 1975. They stopped a US Navy programmer from installing a back door that would’ve granted illicit access to the Navy’s computers.
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Freda Jackson joined the space programme in 1975 - she would later command Moon Village One.
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The Doctor had tickets to opening night of
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
.
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1976
In 1976, a Lalandian safari killed people in Durham. Isaac Summerfield tipped off UNIT to the problem.
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The seventh Doctor and Ace visited London in 1976.
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In 1976, the Order of St Peter chased the last known European vampire from the continent. It escaped to the United States.
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Jack Harkness converted the husk of an alien visitor into a coracle in 1976.
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@ On 28th May, Deborah Gordon and Barry Castle married in Greyfrith. The eighth Doctor was elsewhere, with a widow called Claudia.
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The last British mission to Mars, Mars Probe 13, ended in disaster when the Ice Warriors killed two crewmembers. The British government made a secret deal to stay away from Mars, and they framed the mission’s sole survivor, Lex Christian, for murder. He was sent to Fortress Island, where he remained for more than twenty years.
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The Racht seed disc on Earth infected actress Johanna Bourke. As “Phillip Mungston”, she wrote a horror portmanteau film -
Doctor Demonic’s Tales of Terror
- and incorporated the seed disc into a sacrifice scene, a means of infecting anyone watching with a newborn Racht. The fifth Doctor and Nyssa visited the production in summer of 1976, and destroyed all footage pertaining to the scene. Nyssa appeared in the first
Tales of Terror
installment, “Curse of the Devil’s Whisper”, as “Nyssa Traken”.
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= 1976 - The Forbidden Time
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The Vist were time-walkers with bodies the size of greyhounds, set atop giraffe-like legs. They claimed dominion over a period of eight years, three months and two days - roughly from 2011 to 2019 - across the whole of creation, and sought to “penalise” the life force of any civilisation that entered it without permission. The second Doctor, Polly, Ben and Jamie encountered the Vist on a shadowy “sideways” version of Earth in the 70s, and the Doctor tricked the Vist into venturing back to the start of the universe.
1976 - Vampire Science
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Carolyn McConnell, a pre-med student, met the eighth Doctor and Sam in San Francisco. The Doctor was on the trail of a clutch of vampires, and a scuffle led to the death of his best lead, the vampire Eva. He gave Carolyn a signalling device in case the vampires resurfaced.
1976 (12th July) - Demon Quest: Starfall
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The fourth Doctor, Mike Yates and Mrs Wibbsey arrived in Central Park in Manhattan, looking for the fourth stolen component of the TARDIS’ spatial geometer and using an old comic book from this year as guidance. Buddy Hudson saw a meteorite land in Central Park, but when he and his girlfriend Alice Trefusis - who was helping to write the memoirs of faded actress Mimsy Loyne - investigated the incident, Alice touched the meteor and began crackling with energy. The Doctor and his friends recognised the scene from the comic book - Alice had become the superheroine Miss Starfall. She could fly, and played the part by wearing a superhero costume, rescuing people and putting out fires.
Buddy and Wibbsey found a room full of cultists who were using a ritual - one that featured the last part of the spacial geometer - to drain the Doctor’s lifeforce. Mimsy Loyne was revealled as the aspect-changing Demon in disguise, and abducted Wibbsey while announcing that “the Sepulchre is prepared”. The Doctor and Mike vowed to find their friend, and returned to 2010. Alice’s powers faded, but not before she and Buddy took one last flight around the city.
On 24th September, 1976, the Rift radiated energy that ended the worst drought Wales had seen in three centuries. The head office of the Cardiff and West Building Society, Madoc House, was struck by lightning charged with an electrical virus. This rendered thirteen employees comatose when they answered the phones. They were relocated to a private hospital; Madoc House was closed, its operations moved to Swansea. The virus remained trapped in the disused Madoc House phone system.
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1977
On 14th February, 1977, Lucia Moretti’s application that her daughter Melissa be put into deep cover was approved. Melissa was renamed Alice Sangster, and officially was the child of James and Mary Sangster - place-holder names used for those undercover or in witness relocation.
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The Electro in Cardiff had a final screening - Terry Gilliam’s
Jabberwocky
- then survived for another eighteen months as a bingo hall before closing.
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Peri’s mother divorced and remarried when Peri was ten.
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When Toshiko Sato was two, her family moved to Osaka, Japan.
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Count Carlos Scarlioni, one of the richest men on Earth, married his Countess in 1977.
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In 1977, the sixth Doctor and Frobisher attended the opening of
Star Wars
at Mann’s Chinese Theatre, Los Angeles.
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The eleventh Doctor told Richard Nixon to say hello to David Frost for him.
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Albert Gilroy, working from a Utah military research base, successfully transferred the AI Isley into an android body on 27th May, 1977.
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1977 - Mawdryn Undead
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The Brigadier had retired from UNIT, and was now teaching mathematics at Brendan Public School. The TARDIS arrived with Tegan and Nyssa on board - the Ship had been thrown back to 1977 thanks to a warp eclipse from Mawdryn’s spaceship. Mawdryn himself arrived in a transmat capsule, but the journey left him gravely injured. Tegan and Nyssa mistook him for the Doctor, and agreed to take him back to the spaceship. The Brigadier insisted on accompanying them.
On Mawdryn’s ship, the Brigadier came into contact with his older self and triggered the Blinovitch Limitation Effect. This left the younger Brigadier with some memory loss - the fifth Doctor and his companions left him on Earth to continue teaching.
c 1977 (30th-31st July) - Image of the Fendahl
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The fourth Doctor and Leela encountered the Fendahl at Fetchborough, a village on the edge of a time fissure. A team of scientists under Professor Fendelman were attempting to probe the far past using a time scanner, but this had only succeeded in activating the dormant Fendahl skull. Fetch Priory was destroyed in an implosion. The Doctor defeated the Fendahl, and took the skull with the intent of throwing it into a supernova.
In 1977, the seventh Doctor landed in Lewisham in an attempt to track the Timewyrm.
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On Trion, the dictator Rehctaht emerged as the most tyrannical ruler in the planet’s history. She would rule for seven years, and butcher the Clansmen. She founded the colony of New Trion primarily as a slave labour force, but conflict between Trion colonies in the East and the West diverted her attention. New Trion functioned independently, if inefficiently.
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1977 - “The Nightmare Game”
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The eighth Doctor discovered that the alien Shakespeare Brothers were behind Delchester United’s recent bad run.
1978
On 21st February, 1978, electrical workers uncovered the sacrificial stone at the base of the Great Temple in Mexico City.
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The eighth Doctor, Samson and Gemma visited Studio 54.
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Panda arranged to have Iris scraped off the floor of Studio 54.
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From the Carter-Brezhnev era, it became standard policy to lodge missile command codes into the hearts of people beloved to the persons authorised to launch nuclear strikes. It was hoped - as approving a missile strike would now necessitate the loved one’s death - that those entrusted with such weaponry would consider and re-consider the humanity and consequences of their actions.
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Iris Wildthyme stopped working for the South Kensington branch
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of The Ministry of Incursions and Other Alien Wonders (MIAOW), thinking them too nefarious.
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The romance novelist Barbara Cartland bought extra-terrestrial stationery from a seemingly ordinary shop near Charing Cross: McZygon of the Strand.
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c 1978 - The Pirate Planet
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Zanak’s career as the Pirate Planet - a hollowed out world that teleported around other planets and mined out their riches - was brought to an abrupt end when the fourth Doctor, Romana and K9 helped to bring about the destruction of its engines and the death of its Captain and Queen Xanxia. Zanak settled in a peaceful area of space.
c 1978 - The Stones of Blood
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The fourth Doctor, Romana and K9 helped defeat Cessair of Diplos, who had escaped from her prison ship in hyperspace and been hiding on Earth for four thousand years. She was found guilty by two justice machines - the Megara - of impersonating a deity, theft and misuse of the Seal of Diplos, murder, and removing silicon lifeforms from the planet Ogros in contravention of article 7594 of the Galactic Charter. She was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment.
Around this time, the Time Lord Drax spent ten years in Brixton Prison.
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Chris Parsons graduated in 1978.
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Work was done on the sewers under Fleet Street.
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1978 - Mad Dogs and Englishmen
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The eighth Doctor dropped Anji off in Hollywood, where she met embittered special effects man Ron von Arnim. The Doctor went to 1942 and returned with Noel Coward - and the news that von Arnim was being manipulated to create a movie about poodles by director John Fuchas. The Doctor tied Fuchas to a chair, headed off to Dogworld, and forgot to go back, so Fuchas died. This prevented the movie being made, and saved the day.
Gwen Cooper of Torchwood was born in Swansea on 16th August, 1978, to Mary and Geraint Wyn Cooper.
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The Tulkan Empire failed to annex the Annarene homeworld. In response, the Annarene erased the deposed Tulk War Council’s memories. An Annarene named Sooal, dying from a genetic disease, spirited the amnesiac council away in a spaceship. Sooal hoped to restore the Council’s memories and gain the command codes needed to open a Tulk stasis chamber, which contained a metabolic stabiliser. He established the Graystairs elderly care facility in Muirbridge, Scotland, to conduct genetics research. On Annarene, the ruling Protectorate favoured pacifism, but a hawk-like faction desired a return to warfare.
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