B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (193 page)

[
1293
] Dating
TW: Risk Assessment
(
TW
novel #13) - It’s “Thursday” (p92), and after the new morning dawns, it’s said that Havisham was revived “two days ago” (so, she awoke on a Wednesday). Gwen goes missing for “two days” after that, so the story concludes on a Sunday.

[
1294
] Dating
The Eternal Summer
(BF #128) - After the bubble’s collapse, Max reappears in Stockbridge on 4th August, 2009 - one of many dates said in a time ripple, and probably representing the furthest point that the time bubble extends into the future. By default, then, that’s when the story takes place. Max also confirms, in a conversation with the Doctor, that it’s now the twenty-first century.
The Eternal Summer
, alas, wasn’t actually released in summer, but came out in November 2009.

[
1295
] Dating
TW: Consequences
: “The Wrong Hands” and “Virus” (
TW
novel #15c, #15d) - The second day of “Virus” falls on the “last Thursday of the month”, so it’s not yet September, as that would conflict with
TW: Children of Earth
.

[
1296
] Dating
The Three Companions
(serialised story; BF #120-129) - The story appears contemporary, and was released April 2009 to February 2010. Tellingly, Polly tells the Brigadier that it’s been “forty-three years” since she last saw the Doctor - presumably referencing the duration of time between
The Faceless Ones
(set in 1966) and the release of
The Three Companions
in 2009.

The Brigadier in return tells Polly that he hasn’t seen the Doctor in “twenty years” - a pretty nonsensical thing to say, whatever one’s views on
Doctor Who
continuity. It’s possible this comment is similarly meant to denote the amount of time that’s passed between the release of
The Three Companions
and the last time the Brig saw the Doctor on TV - in
Battlefield
, broadcast in 1989 - but not only does this ignore the tie-in stories featuring the Brig in that interim (including those made by Big Finish!), it forgets that
Battlefield
wasn’t actually set in 1989, and instead dates to the mid-90s. The oversight becomes even more peculiar when you consider that Marc Platt wrote both
The Three Companions
and the
Battlefield
novelisation.

Brewster’s journal says that the meet-up between him, Polly and the Brigadier - and by extension the end of the story - occurs on “Tuesday the 18th”. In 2009, only August had such a day.

Polly’s first encounter with Lendler is fairly hard to date, as Lendler’s origins are so unknown - whether or not he’s a time traveller, or is even human despite his having the demeanour of one, is entirely unclear - so the “Polly’s Story” component of this adventure has been relegated to None of the Above.

[
1297
] Dating
TW: Ghost Train
(
TW
audiobook #6) - Torchwood seems to deal with other cases during the two-week period in which the future Rhys hides out in Ianto’s apartment and fulfills his own history (hence why Ianto keeps downing minor doses of Retcon, to guarantee that his actions are historically consistent), but as no references are given, deciding
which
stories happen in this gap is something of a tossup.

Curiously, the story’s continuity is a bit awry - Rhys’ co-worker says that it’s “February”, but Rhys himself mentions the ATMOS incident, which has to occur later than that (see the dating notes on
The Sontaran Stratagem
). The blurb says that the story occurs before
TW: Children of Earth
, but doesn't specify that it's after Series 2. No mention is made of Owen or Tosh - while it’s not impossible that they’re still alive (meaning that it’s prior to
TW: Exit Wounds
), one has to wonder why - if that were the case - there's no evidence of their being involved in the waves of crises Torchwood here deals with. With that in mind, it’s probably best to ignore the “February” reference, and place the story in the
Torchwood
Series 2-3 interim, which according to writer James Goss was the intent.

[
1298
] Barrett is a physicist who appears in
The Legend of Hell House
(1973).

[
1299
] Dating
TW: Ghost Train
(
TW
audiobook #6) - To the contemporary Rhys, events begin on a Wednesday and (after he’s thrown back in time and catches up with the present) end on a Friday morning.

[
1300
] Dating
TW: The Devil and Miss Carew
and
TW: Submission
(
TW
audio dramas #5-6) – These two audios were released after
TW: Miracle Day
(as part of the
Torchwood: The Lost Stories
boxset), but take place during the Series 2 to 3 interim.
Submission
occurs fifty years (the duration of Doyle’s memories) after the
Guernica
went missing in August 1959. The dating clues in
The Devil and Miss Carew
are a bit bewildering – Gwen says that Joanna Carew, born in 1930, is now “81”, suggesting that it’s now 2011 (which is clearly isn’t). Also, a radio shipping forecast gives the date as “Wednesday, the 10th of November” – that day was a Wednesday in 2010, but not 2009 or 2011.

[
1301
] “Two months” before
SJA: Secrets of the Stars.

[
1302
] “A few months” before
SJA: The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith
.

[
1303
] Dating
TW: Children of Earth
(
TW
3.01-3.05) - As with Series 2,
Children of Earth
bucks the trend that
Doctor Who
-related episodes in this era are a year ahead of broadcast. Conspicuously, Ianto picks up a newspaper with the dateline, “Wednesday, September 2009” - as the paper is put out for the morning of Day Two, the 456 crisis must begin on a Tuesday and end on a Saturday. It’s twice said that “forty-four years” have passed since 1965 - once in Day Two in reference to how long Clement’s real name has been inactive, and once by Rhys in Day Four.

[
1304
]
TW: Long Time Dead

[
1305
] As we learn in
The End of Time
(TV). Martha was engaged to Tom Milligan as of
The Sontaran Experiment/The Poison Sky
, but the relationship evidently ended off screen.

[
1306
]
TW: Children of Earth

[
1307
] “Don’t Step on the Grass”

[
1308
]
TW:
“Shrouded”. Jack is here seen at Ianto’s funeral; in
TW: The House of the Dead
, he tells Ianto’s ghost that he wasn’t because he “had to leave”.

[
1309
]
TW: Miracle Day.
This occurs prior to
TW: Long Time Dead
(p238).

[
1310
] Dating “Don’t Step on the Grass” (IDW
DW
Vol, 1 #9-12) - Martha is now married and Magambo tells the Doctor that “Torchwood’s gone”, indicating that the story occurs after
TW: Children of Earth
. Denise Riley is cited as Home Secretary and Brian Green is said to be Prime Minister - offices they might well continue with for some time after
Children of Earth
. Martha here accepts the “Sontaran job” on which she and Mickey are working when we next see them in
The End of Time
(TV). Events in “Don’t Step on the Grass” continue in “Old Friend” and “Final Sacrifice”.

[
1311
] “Nine months” before
TW: The Men Who Sold the World
.

[
1312
] Dating
SJA: The Day of the Clown
(
SJA
2.2) - Luke opens the story by reading an email from Maria dated to “9th October”, but as Rani’s mum says that it’s a Monday, he must have received the email a few days prior (9th October was a Friday in 2009), had a busy weekend and wasn’t able to read it until the following Monday.
The
Ealing Echo
reports upon the disappearance “yesterday” of the victim in the opening credits, so the story begins on the 11th and takes place over two days, ending on the 13th. Luke has school records from the “past year”. Park Vale here gains a headmaster, and seems to have been without one since the Slitheen killed Haresh’s predecessor in
SJA: Revenge of the Slitheen
.

[
1313
] According to Clyde in
SJA: The Day of the Clown
. It’s the sort of statement to make a fan chronologer go rushing to his/her notebook, so here goes: 1. the Bane (
SJA: Invasion of the Bane
); 2. the Slitheen (
SJA: Revenge of the Slitheen
); 3. the Gorgon (
SJA: Eye of the Gorgon
); 4. Kudlak (
SJA: Warriors of Kudlak
); 5. the Trickster (
SJA: Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?
); 6. the Keratin (
SJA: The Glittering Storm
); 7. Ravage (
SJA: The Thirteenth Stone
); 8. the Slitheen again (
SJA: The Lost Boy
); and 9. the Sontarans (
SJA: The Last Sontaran
). The Verron soothsayer referred to in
SJA: Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?
and
Journey’s End
might count. We also know from
Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?
that Sarah defeated the Patriarchs of the Tin Vagabond, quite probably after besting the Gorgon (although it’s possible that she did this on her own, without the kids’ help). Sarah and Luke had a role in the defeat of the Daleks (
The Stolen Earth
/
Journey’s End
)... which would make twelve, and not force us to fancifully imagine that Sarah and company were somehow involved the 456 affair in
Torchwood: Children of Earth
.

[
1314
] Dating
SJA: The Nightmare Man
(
SJA
4.1) - We see this in flashback; a caption says that the main events of the story occur set “a year” later. Rani’s inclusion, however, means that it’s after
SJA: The Day of the Clown
(so, it hasn’t actually been a full year; it’s more like eleven months). K9 appears in the flashback, even though he hasn’t yet been released from his black-hole-containment duties (
SJA: The Mad Woman in the Attic
), so he must have briefly been let out to deal with this crisis.

[
1315
] Dating
Forever Autumn
(NSA #16) - No year is given, but the book was released in 2007 and seems contemporary. The story opens on Friday afternoon - the day before Halloween (p9) - and continues to next day, which fits the real-world calendar of 2009 but not any other year (to draw arbitrary boundaries) from 2006 to 2012.

[
1316
] Dating
SJA: The Time Capsule
and
SJA: The Ghost House
(
SJA
audiobooks #3-4) - The audios were released together on 13th November 2008, between the broadcasts of
SJA: The Mark of the Berserker
and
SJA: The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith
. However, Luke is said to be 14 in
The Time Capsule
, so it’s before he “turns 15” in
SJA: Secret of the Stars
(and where
The Time Capsule
goes,
Ghost House
might as well go also). That fits with Sarah Jane’s claim in
The Time Capsule
that the Chandras moved in “so recently” (
SJA: The Day of the Clown
).