B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (197 page)

[
1386
]
SJA: The Nightmare Man

[
1387
] Or so the Doctor claims in
The Forgotten Army
(p17).

[
1388
] Dating
TW: First Born
(
TW
novel #17) - The year at two points is implied to be 2011: Sebastian 1 (born 3rd March, 1981) is “thirty years old”(p134), and Jenny, one of the oldest Scions following the Juniper Tree being relocated to Rawbone in 1991, is “twenty” (pgs 81, 166). Both pieces of evidence need to be taken as approximations, however, as Anwen’s age mandates that the year is 2010 (Gwen’s family settles in Rawbone “two months”, p9, after Gwen was “seven months” pregnant, p5, and Gwen throughout the story is hampered by lactation issues). The story proceeds over at least ten weeks (Anwen’s stated age on p88) if not longer. The life-cycle of the potatoes that Rhys plants seems a bit strange - he puts them in the ground three weeks after he and Gwen move to Rawbone, but the plants are “just starting to come up” (p248) at story’s end, when they should have emerged within two, maybe three weeks.

The ages of the last natural-born Rawbone children (Sasha, Davydd and Nerys) aren’t of much help in making a determination. The town went sterile in 1987, Nerys is currently in her “early 20s” (p40), Davydd is “mid-20s” (p30) and Sasha is 24 (p112), but could easily have been born in 1986.

There’s a continuity glitch in that Gwen and Rhys covertly take Anwen to meet Gwen’s parents (p128), but
TW: Miracle Day
is presented as their first meeting.

[
1389
] Dating
TW: The Men Who Sold the World
(
TW
novel #18) - No date is given, but it’s been at least “nine months”(p121) since the Department’s salvage team - in an operation that commenced in October 2009, judging by
TW: Long Time Dead
- recovered the Reality Gun from the Hub. So, it’s most likely summer 2010 at present.

[
1390
] Dating “The Age of Ice” (
DWM
#408-411) - The Doctor says that they’ve arrived in “Sydney, Australia, early twenty-first century”, on a “glorious summer’s day”. A UNIT officer says that the Doctor and his allies saved the entire universe from the Daleks “just last year” (in
Journey’s End
, set in 2009). It very much looks as if the story-creators forgot about the “year ahead” rule governing Series 4, meaning that the “last year” reference places “The Age of Ice” in 2010 rather than (as was perhaps intended) 2009, its year of publication. Consequently, for the Doctor and Majenta, this story and “Ghosts of the Northern Line” must chronologically happen out of order.

[
1391
] “Six months” before
The Crimes of Thomas Brewster.

[
1392
] “Spam Filtered”

[
1393
] Dating
The Eleventh Hour
(X5.1) - It’s the night before Amy’s wedding, the exact date of which (“26/6/2010”) is first established in
Flesh and Stone
. Surprisingly given that time of year, the Doctor and Amy’s breath is visible. (Did the recalibrated TARDIS cause a heat exchange upon materialisation?) Rory’s badge to the emergency unit of the Royal Leadworth Hospital, where he works, is something of an anomaly given Rory’s age: it was issued “30/11/1990”.

[
1394
] Dating
Flesh and Stone
/
The Vampires of Venice
(X5.5-5.6) - In
Flesh and Stone
, the clock ticks over to 12 am on 26th June, the date of Rory and Amy’s wedding. Rory says in
The Vampires of Venice
that he’s “getting married tomorrow” - either he hasn’t noticed that it’s past midnight already, or the Doctor nips back in time a little.

[
1395
] Dating
The Pandorica Opens
(X5.12) - River checks the TARDIS instruments and confirms the date as “the 26th of June, 2010”. The alien intruders broke down Amy’s front door, so both they and River presumably go to Amy’s house after the Doctor and Amy stopped there in
Flesh and Stone
. The clock ticked over to 12 am of the morning of the 26th as they left, so the action described in
The Pandorica Opens
probably occurs in the darkened morning hours.

[
1396
] Dating
The Big Bang
(X5.13) - The date of the wedding (“26/6/2010”) is established first in
Flesh and Stone
, and mirrors the broadcast of
The Big Bang
on the same day.

[
1397
] The Doctor speculates in
A Good Man Goes to War
that this happened on Amy and Rory’s wedding night (in
The Big Bang
), but there’s reason to doubt this (see the Cracks in Time sidebar); the conception could have happened while they were travelling together in Series 5, or at any point between
The Big Bang
and the Doctor dropping Amy and Rory on Earth (prior to
The Impossible Astronaut
). Whatever the case, nine months must pass in Amy’s personal timeframe before she starts to give birth at the end of
The Rebel Flesh
.

[
1398
] Dating
SJA: The Nightmare Man
(
SJA
4.1) - A calendar in Luke’s room prominently says “September 2010” and is in accordance with the real-world calendar. The story counts down the four days marked on the calendar, from the 6th (when Luke starts packing) to the 10th (when he departs for Oxford).

[
1399
] Dating
SJA: Wraith World
(
SJA
audiobook #7) - The story effectively begins on the day of Wilkinson’s bookstore signing, on “Monday, 13th September” (an actual Monday in 2010) and events pick up “two days later”. Unfortunately, that doesn’t sit well with the established continuity of
The Sarah Jane Adventures
Series 4. Luke left for Oxford (in
SJA: The Nightmare Man
) the week prior to 13th September, so it’s strange that he’d suddenly be back at home, without explanation, the very next Monday - and also a month later, in this story’s epilogue - given how little he otherwise visits Sarah in the TV show. But, Rani’s inclusion means that
Wraith World
cannot be bumped back to the previous year, as she didn’t meet Sarah and friends until early October 2009 - which, again, would conflict with the 13th September dating. Whatever the case, Sarah’s comment that she was “just like [Rani] when I was 15” has to be taken as a generalisation, as Rani should be 16 if this story occurs in 2009, 17 if it’s 2010.

[
1400
] The month prior to
SJA: Defending Bannerman Road
.

[
1401
] Dating
SJA: The Vault of Secrets
(
SJA
4.2) - No specific date is given, although it’s said to be “almost forty years” since 1972. The “ancient and deadly civilisation” is likely the Osirians, as a pyramid a la
Pyramids of Mars
is briefly glimpsed on Mars on Mr Smith’s monitor. The Alliance of Shades was introduced in
Dreamland
(
DW
).

[
1402
]
Demon Quest: The Relics of Time

[
1403
] Dating
SJA: Death of the Doctor
(
SJA
4.3) - No specific date is given, although Sarah comments that the Doctor “came back” about four years ago. (This is presumably a reference to his coming back into her life in
School Reunion
, although it’s only been three years since that story. In a pinch, if one squints really hard, by “came back” Sarah might mean the Doctor’s greater involvement in human affairs per Series 1.) The Doctor says it’s been “forty years” since Jo left UNIT. Santiago mentions that he hasn’t seen his mother in “six months”, and hasn’t gotten together with all of his family “since about February” - but since he might have seen his mother after that, it can’t automatically be said that it’s now August.

Sarah here recalls her final meeting with the tenth Doctor in
The End of Time
(TV). The Doctor has left Amy and Rory on a honeymoon planet, so this is almost certainly set between
The Big Bang
and
A Christmas Carol
in his timeline.

Aside from Jo, the fates of the companions as given in this story broadly match (or, at least, don’t grievously contradict) what has been established in the tie-in series. The non-televised stories seem, at the very least, to inform this story. A number of the books established that Ian and Barbara married and became professors (eg:
Goth Opera
). The rumours that Sarah mentions - that Ian and Barbara have “never aged since the 60s” - might indeed just be rumours, as the Big Finish audios (
The Five Companions
especially) have consistently rendered Ian as an older man, roughly concurrent with William Russell’s real age.

Sarah here implies (but doesn’t outright say) that Harry Sullivan has died - he’s cited as being alive in
UNIT: The Wasting
(likely set in spring 2005), and Sarah tries to have her annual meet-up with Harry (although he fails to show) in
SJS: Buried Secrets
, set in the same year. He’s also said to be alive in 2015 in
Damaged Goods
(also by Russell T Davies). This being
Doctor Who
, it’s possible that there’s an extended stretch where Sarah thinks that Harry is dead, but he’s actually been kidnapped by (say) space weasels, and that he later returns home. (Either way, this would explain why Harry never visits Sarah in her own series.) Liz Shaw apparently died in
Eternity Weeps
, set in 2003... but in that book, as with
Death of the Doctor
, she was working on a moonbase. (See the Did Liz Shaw Die in 2003? sidebar.)

The “Dorothy” that Sarah mentions might be Dodo, but the initials of Dorothy’s charity imply otherwise. Ace’s fate is convoluted, to say the least, but if we want to invoke the books, it’s possible she saw the dystopian near-future of
Cat’s Cradle: Warhead
and decided to try to avert it. Or, it’s possible that her leading A Charitable Earth owes to her being undercover/on assignment for the Doctor, and is only temporary.

The biggest contradiction is Jo’s fate (married mother of seven, grandmother of twleve), which is far more cheerful here than her status in
Genocide
(divorced mother of just one child). While it’s easy enough to imagine that she and Cliff later remarried, there is, with the best of will, no good way to reconcile the differing accounts of their children.

[
1404
] Dating
SJA: Return of the Krulius/SJA: Defending Bannerman Road
(
SJA
webcomic #2-3) - The action seems to take place after Luke departs for Oxford, as he’s absent save for a highly posed group shot in the very last panel. The Krulius has a picture of Sarah standing next to the Matt Smith Doctor, implying it’s after
SJA: Death of the Doctor
.

[
1405
] Dating
SJA: The Empty Planet
(
SJA
4.4) - No specific date is given, although it’s said to be a school night. Clyde and Rani were “grounded” in
SJA: Prisoner of the Judoon
.

[
1406
] Dating
SJA: Deadly Download
(
SJA
audiobook #8) - The audio was made available for download on 4th November, 2010, between the broadcasts of
SJA: The Empty Planet
and
SJA: Lost in Time
. (The CD was released 15th November, 2010.) Sarah opens the story with, “It all began one cold November afternoon”, and plays some Christmas songs, albeit “a bit prematurely”.