B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (25 page)

[
107
]
A Death in the Family
. Hex arrives on Pelican in “local year 1871 AC”, and the older Doctor takes the Handivale away in “local year 2192 AC”. Although it isn’t said, “AC” presumably means “After Crash” (of the timeship
Pelican
).

[
108
] Dating
Eternity Weeps
(NA #58) - It is “six billion years ago” (p3).

[
109
] Dating “Time Witch” (
DWW
#35-38) - Brimo was imprisoned “at a time before the Earth was formed” according to the opening caption. She says she was imprisoned for “millions of years”, but even that might be an underestimate - the Doctor’s encounter with her could well take place at any time in this timeline. Her situation inside the black hole is very like Omega’s in
The Three Doctors
(and
The Infinity Doctors
), although there’s no indication she’s trapped there.

[
110
]
Genocide
(p279).

[
111
]
SJA: Prisoner of the Judoon

[
112
]
Inferno

[
113
] “Billions of years” before
The Runaway Bride
.

[
114
]
Peacemaker
. The Racnoss were an ancient race, around before the Earth formed. Even if the Movellans were not the historic foes of the Clades’ creators, the Doctor seems comfortable implying that the Movellans existed many billions of years ago.
A Device of Death
and
War of the Daleks
have different (and also mutually incompatible) accounts of the origins of the Movellans.

[
115
] Dating
The Runaway Bride
(X3.0) - The Doctor and Donna witness the Earth’s formation.

[
116
]
TW: Miracle Day
. Jack says, “The world’s been turning for over four billion years”, in rough approximation with the age of Earth as given in
The Runaway Bride
.

[
117
]
Love and War

[
118
]
FP: The Judgment of Sutekh

[
119
] “Tooth and Claw” (
DWM
). The Curcurbites know of the Time Lords.

[
120
]
TW: Long Time Dead

[
121
]
Logopolis
. It’s unclear when this happened, but there have been “aeons of constraint”, and an aeon is a billion years.

[
122
] “3.9 billion years” (pgs 120, 146) before
Heart of Stone
. The rock must have impacted the moon long before it started orbiting the Earth (
The Silurians
).

[
123
]
White Darkness

[
124
] Dating
Venusian Lullaby
(MA #3) - The Doctor tells Ian and Barbara that they have travelled back “oh, about three billion years I should think”.

[
125
]
Interference

[
126
] “Billions of years” before
The Day of the Troll.

[
127
] “A thousand million years” before
Spearhead from Space.
This date is confirmed in “Plastic Millennium”.

[
128
]
Auton 2: Sentinel

[
129
] “A billion years” before
The Caves of Androzani.

[
130
]
The Impossible Planet

[
131
] “The Stockbridge Horror”

[
132
] “4x10(2d8) yrs” ago, according to
The Gallifrey Chronicles.

[
133
] Dating
City of Death
(17.2) - Scaroth and the Doctor both state that the Jagaroth ship came to Earth “four hundred million years ago”. Contemporary science has a number of estimates of when life on Earth started, but all are far, far earlier than that.
The Terrestrial Index
takes that as a cue to set this story three and a half billion years ago.

Scaroth of the Jagaroth

In
City of Death
, we actually
see
Scarlioni, Tancredi and four other Scaroth splinters: an Egyptian, a Neanderthal (the one some fans think looks like Jesus - the DVD commentary notes that Julian Glover thought the same), a Roman and a Celt (although most reference books, including the earlier versions of this one, describe him as a Crusader), in that order, in the flashback at the start of episode three.

Further examination of this story can account for all twelve Scaroth splinters, assuming that none of them live for more than a century, and that they acquire Scarlioni’s antiques while they are new. One Scaroth version (presumably the Neanderthal that we see) demonstrates “the true use of fire”; a second gives mankind the wheel; a third “caused the pyramids to be built” (we see this one both as a “human” Egyptian Pharaoh and as a Jagaroth on an ancient Egyptian scroll); a fourth caused “the heavens to be mapped”; the fifth is an ancient Greek; the sixth is the Roman that we see (a Senator, or possibly even an Emperor); the seventh is the Celt that we see; the eighth gives mankind the printing press (presumably, this accounts for why Scarlioni has more than one Gutenberg Bible); the ninth is Captain Tancredi; the tenth is an Elizabethan nobleman (who obtains the first draft of
Hamlet
); the eleventh lives at the time of Louis XV (and is presumably the splinter who purchases the Gainsborough that’s just been sold at the start of the story - he’s named as Cardinal Scarlath in
Christmas on a Rational Planet
), and the twelfth is Carlos Scarlioni.

[
134
]
Invasion of the Cat People

[
135
]
TW: Small Worlds.
Jack says the fairies are “from the dawn of time” - it’s possible that he’s speaking metaphorically, although in truth the fairies reside “backwards in time” and might pre-date humanity, even though they hail from it. Mention of the “lost lands” might suggest that they held more of a foothold on Earth until Scaroth’s spaceship sparked humanity’s birth. It might be far simpler, however, to assume that their development coincides with that of mankind.

[
136
]
Loups-Garoux

[
137
]
The Land of the Dead

[
138
]
Doctor Who and the Silurians

Continental Drift

According to scientists, continental drift is a continuing process. In
Doctor Who
, there’s evidence that it was a single event. The Doctor talks of “the great continental drift, two hundred million years ago” in
Doctor Who and the Silurians
. In the broadcast version of
Earthshock
, the Earth of sixty-five million years ago looks like it does today. Continental drift was a reality according to
Invasion of the Cat-People
. In
The Ark
, the Earth of ten million years hence also looks exactly like contemporary Earth, although we saw the continents devastated in
The Parting of the Ways
, and
The End of the World
acknowledges that technology was used to arrest continental drift.

[
139
] Dating “Time Bomb” (
DWM
#114-116) - “Earthdate 200 Million Years BC”, according to the caption.

[
140
]
Transit.
This may be a dream sequence or an allegory.

[
141
] In
Earthshock
, the Doctor states that the dinosaurs existed for “a hundred million years or so” and died out “sixty-five million years ago”, which is in tune with scientific consensus.

[
142
]
The Also People
. No date is given, but the People fight in the Millennium War in
The Quantum Archangel
.

[
143
] “Millions of years” before
The Fall of Yquatine
. The Omnethoth also fight in the Millennium War according to
The Quantum Archangel.

[
144
]
The Quantum Archangel
. The Millenium Wars (consistently misspelled with one “n”) were a feature of the early
Doctor Who Weekly/Monthly
comic strips, but this would appear to be a different conflict.

[
145
] Dating
The Hand of Fear
(14.2)
-
The Doctor identifies the rock in which Eldrad’s hand was discovered, and twice tells Eldrad that he has been away from Kastria for “a hundred and fifty million years”.

[
146
] Dating “Time Bomb” (
DWM
#114-116) - The caption reads “Earthdate 150 Million BC”.

[
147
]
Neverland
. The war is referred to as over by
Time-Flight
. The Vardons are probably not the Vardans seen in
The Invasion of Time
. A Kosnax appears in
Cold Fusion
.

[
148
] Dating
Time-Flight
(19.7) - The Doctor informs the flight crew of the second Concorde that they have landed at Heathrow “one hundred and forty million years ago”. He states, correctly, that this is the “Jurassic” era, but then suggests that they “can’t be far off from the Pleistocene era”, which actually took place a mere 1,800,000 -10,000 years ago.
The Seeds of Doom
gives a more accurate date for the Pleistocene.

[
149
]
Carnival of Monsters
. The Doctor states that the Pleisosaurus “has been extinct for one hundred and thirty million years”. The MiniScope presumably captures its specimens in a Timescoop like those seen in
Invasion of the Dinosaurs
and
The Five Doctors
.

[
150
]
Doctor Who and the Silurians, The Happiness Patrol.

[
151
]
Invasion of the Dinosaurs.
Whitaker tries to take Earth back to a “Golden Age,” but there’s no indication that this is the age of the dinosaurs, which would hardly be an Earthly paradise for humans. He uses dinosaurs to scare people out of London.

[
152
]
The
Mark of the Rani, Time and the Rani.

[
153
] “Cuckoo”

[
154
]
Made of Steel
. The two dinosaurs seen are apato-saurus and tyrannosaurus, from the Upper Cretaceous.

[
155
]
Mission to Magnus
. The Doctor says that Anzor’s TARDIS has been dispatched back to “the beginning of time”, but his subsequent comments about the things Anzor might encounter there suggest he didn’t mean the term literally. The Mesozoic era started 250 million years ago, and ended about 65 million years ago.