B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (278 page)

[
113
]
The Waters of Mars

[
114
]
K9: The Last Oak Tree

[
115
]
K9: The Korven

[
116
]
K9: Aeolian
and
K9: The Sirens of Ceres
. The Great Cataclysm presumably happens before Gryffen becomes an agoraphobic.
The Waters of Mars
establishes that “unprecedented storms” happen in 2040, and that’s a perfect fit. It’s much more of a stretch to say this was one of the “disastrous decisions” caused by Travel-Mat alluded to in
The Indestructible Man
, but it’s certainly possible that the atmospheric disturbances, flooding and hurricanes caused by the Great Cataclysm might have been what crippled the T-Mat system.

[
117
] Gryffen has “not been out of the house for ten years”, according to Darius in
K9: The Korven
; this was “a few years” before
K9: The Fall of the House of Gryffen
.
K9: The Last Precinct
claims Gryffen’s house was a police station used by human officers until the introduction of robot CCPCs, and as that development only happened two years before that story, Gryffen must have lived in different places since becoming agoraphobic. The mystery of his family’s disappearance was never solved in the series.

[
118
]
K9: Dream-Eaters

[
119
]
The Waters of Mars

[
120
] Dating
Singularity
(BF #76) - The Doctor reads a Somnus Foundation brochure that claims the groups’ brightest minds will terraform Mars “by 2090”, so the story cannot occur after that date.

[
121
]
The Waters of Mars

[
122
] Dating
The Great Space Elevator
(BF CC #3.2) - The back cover blurb only tells us it’s “the future”. Although the link isn’t made in either story, we’re told in
The Waters of Mars
that Ed Gold successfully lobbied to have a space elevator built “off the coast of Western Australia”. Sumatra just about qualifies, and the weather control technology is consistent with that seen in
the Seeds of Death
.

[
123
] Dating
The Architects of History
(BF #132) - The year is repeatedly given.

[
124
]
The Well-Mannered War
(p204).

[
125
]
Alien Bodies
(p9).

[
126
]
Christmas on a Rational Planet
. “Nearly a millennium” before Roz is born (p31).

[
127
] Dating
Hothouse
(BF BBC7 #3.2) - No year is given, but the story can be comfortably dated to the middle of the twenty-first century. It’s said that white rhinos became extinct in “the wild” in “the last five years” - some are presumably still around in captivity, but all rhinos on Earth are extinct by 2051 according to
The Last Dodo
. The environment is in a bad way, and clearly headed for the sort of ecological carnage that occurs circa 2060 according to
Loups-Garoux
. Krynoids and the World Ecology Bureau were first seen in
The Seeds of Doom
. One curiosity is that an undercover Lucie Miller appears on the TV of the future as a raving member of the League of Nature while using her real name. As she was born in 1988, that should give any historian tracking her life something to think about.

[
128
] Dating
Forty-Five:
“The Word Lord” (BF #115d) - The year is given. The “Second Cold War” is presumably a lead-up to the state of affairs seen in
Warriors of the Deep
.

[
129
]
The Waters of Mars

[
130
] CCPCs were introduced “two years” before
K9: The Last Precinct
.

[
131
]
Alien Bodies
, pgs 263-264. This is the origin of the titular characters from
The Krotons
, the obvious implication being that the Krotons were pattered on the servo-robots from
The Wheel in Space
. (They
do
look roughly similar, as it happens.) The placement of the Krotons’ creation in the twentieth century is nonetheless tricky - Lawrence Miles, as outlined in
About Time 2
, envisioned an earlier dating for
The Wheel in Space
(circa 2030) than this chronology, but the central question is when humans and their servo-robots could have feasibly arrived on Krosi-Apsai-Core. Mankind doesn’t venture beyond the Sol system much in the twentieth century, so the Kroton homeworld should be comparatively closer to Earth than not. Either way, the Krotons undergo a startling evolution in just a few decades - by 2068, according to
Alien Bodies
, their war capabilities are fairly formidable.

[
132
] Dating
K9
Series 1 - The stories of the
K9
TV series follow on from each other in relatively short order. No date is ever given on screen, but the prepublicity stated that the year is 2050, and that works as well as any other date. Pre-publicity also stated that the titular character was K9 Mark 1, but the on-screen evidence isn’t nearly so certain about this...

The Four K9s

Four models of K9 appear on television, with all of them making an appearance in at least one tie-in property.

Mark 1 K9: First appears in
The Invisible Enemy
, leaves the TARDIS to stay on Gallifrey with Leela in
The Invasion of Time
, goes on missions for the Time Lords in
The Adventures of K9
book series, loyally serves Leela on Gallifrey in the
Gallifrey
audios and is destroyed in
Gallifrey: Imperiatrix
.

Mark 2 K9: First appears (in a box) at the end of
The Invasion of Time
, and is first seen (out of box) in
The Ribos Operation
. He remains in E-Space with Romana in
Warriors’ Gate
, then returns with her to Gallifrey (as seen in
Lungbarrow
), and so becomes embroiled in the planet’s ambiguous fate. He secretly survives the first destruction of Gallifrey (in
The Ancestor Cell
) and rejoins the eighth Doctor (as revealed in
The Gallifrey Chronicles
), but he’s also present on the Gallifrey seen in the Big Finish audios. At the end of Gallifrey Series 4, he’s left stranded in the Axis.

These two K9s first meet in
Lungbarrow
. There is some uncertainty as to which of these two K9s ends up starring in the
K9
TV series. The prepublicity for the show stated that it was the Mark 1 model. But in the first episode,
K9: Regeneration
, when an old model K9 is destroyed and regenerates into a new form, his reboot menu gives him the options “Mark 1” and “Mark 2”... and he clearly selects “Mark 2”. So, either this is (as stated) the Mark 2 version, or it might be the Mark1 K9 taking an opportunity to upgrade his software. In either event, and somewhat unhelpfully, this K9 has lost its memory. As K9 Mark 1 is apparently destroyed in
Imperiatrix
, and without any other evidence to go on, the
K9
TV series would seem to feature the Mark 2 model - a survivor of the Last Great Time War.

Mark 3 K9: First appears in
K9 and Company: A Girl’s Best Friend
(the 1981 pilot for a
K9
show that didn’t get made). This K9 belongs to Sarah Jane Smith, and they subsequently have a series of adventures as outlined in the
K9 Annual
(not covered in this chronology); he briefly appears in
The Five Doctors
; he’s seen in the comic strip “City of Devils” (
DWM Holiday Special 1992
); in 1996 he’s still working with Sarah Jane (
Interference
), but after this time he falls into disrepair (loosely in accord with the short story “Moving On” from
Decalog 3
); his non-functional form is stolen by Hilda Winters (
SJS: Mirror, Signal. Manoeuvre
) in 2002, but possibly recovered following her death in 2005; he’s repaired by the Doctor and is apparently destroyed in
School Reunion
. For those who wish to count such things as canon, it’s possible that he regenerates and appears again in the
Make Your Own Adventure
book
The Search for the Doctor
.

Mark 4 K9: First appears at the end of
School Reunion
, is sidelined shortly afterwards to tend to a black hole (
SJA: Invasion of the Bane
) and is then released from that duty, joining Sarah Jane on Earth (
SJA: The Mad Woman in the Attic
). In his last appearance to date,
SJA: Goodbye, Sarah Jane Smith
, he’s living with Luke Smith while Luke studies at Oxford.

[
133
] The general background to the
K9
television series, as given in
K9: Regeneration
.

[
134
]
K9: The Korven

[
135
] It’s pounds in
K9: The Bounty Hunter
, the cred in
K9: Oroborus
,
K9: Black Hunger
,
K9: The Custodians
and
K9: Mutant Copper
.

[
136
]
K9: Oroborus
,
K9: Robot Gladiators
.

[
137
]
K9: Black Hunger

[
138
]
K9: Mutant Copper

[
139
] The Mark II CCPCs have been in operation “six months” before
K9: The Last Precinct
.

[
140
]
K9: Hound of the Korven

[
141
]
K9: Aeolian
establishes that Earth’s population in the
K9
series is “six billion”, which is lower than it is in 2010 (in both real life and the
Doctor Who
universe), and this might suggest there has been a catastrophic lost of life - possibly owing to the “Great Catastrophe” described in the
K9
show or some other event.

[
142
] The episode is a clip show, with very little new material.

[
143
]
Iris: The Claws of Santa
outright states that the ice cap melted.
Hothouse
shows that global warming has become a major political issue, and
K9: Sirens of Ceres
says that many top scientists have been assigned to find a solution. It’s very tempting to see the Gravitron from
The Moonbase
, a global weather control system set up in 2050, as a potential solution to the environmental collapse the planet is suffering from in other stories set around that time.