B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (288 page)

[
497
] Three centuries before
Benny: The Vampire Curse
: “The Badblood Diaries”.

[
498
]
Spiral Scratch

[
499
]
The Romance of Crime

[
500
]
The Leisure Hive

[
501
] Many stories feature Earth colonies that supply the home planet and are subject to tyrannical regimes. This is typically treated as a specific era in future history, when space travel and interplanetary communications are limited, and so most of these stories have been placed together just prior to the Earth Empire’s formation. The New and Missing Adventures attempted to weave a more systematic and consistent “future history” for Earth, and many concerned themselves with this period of early colonisation, corporate domination and increasing centralisation.

[
502
]
Theatre of War

[
503
] “Centuries” before
The Dark Flame
, although there’s some confusion about this; see the dating notes for this story. Tranagus was named in
Benny: The Draconian Rage
.

[
504
] Dating
The Prisoner’s Dilemma
(BF CC #3.8) - It’s “generations” after Erratoon is established as a prison planet. The dating here is otherwise a bit arbitrary, but the adventure likely occurs when hyperspace vessels are already in use, as Elysium ore will be used to refine the hyperspace process only “a generation” after this.

The robot wardens of Erratoon subject Ace to memory-wiping, and although the Doctor is confident that he can repair her lost memories using the TARDIS, the idea seems to be that Ace loses her memories of the New Adventures. This move was designed to help reconcile Ace’s status later in the novel range (Spacefleet-trained adventurer with a motorbike that travels through time and space) with the Big Finish version (older sister to Hex, is still travelling with the Doctor). The seeming discrepancies in Ace’s character, however, can be just as easily accounted for by the not-so-terribly controversial idea that people are different in their 20s, 30s and even 40s. Writer Simon Guerrier concedes that he added the memory-wiping angle “more for my own amusement than anything else”, that it’s certain that Ace gets back her memories of the Doctor and the TARDIS, and that the whole incident is a tool that continuity keepers can use or ignore as they wish.

[
505
]
Benny: Dragons’ Wrath

[
506
] “Nearly a quarter of a century” before
Lords of the Storm
.

[
507
] “About a hundred and fifty years” before
The Romance of Crime.

[
508
] About fifty years after 2234, according to
Benny: The Sword of Forever.

[
509
] Dating
Vengeance on Varos
(22.2) - The Governor states that Varos has been a mining colony for “centuries” and it has been stable “for over two hundred years”. Peri tells the Governor that she is from “nearly three centuries before you were born”. The story takes place before
Mindwarp
. Mentors must live longer than humans, as the Mentor Sil appears in both stories (although he changes colour from brown to green between the two). The novelisation set it in “the latter part of the twenty-third century”, as did
The Terrestrial Index
.
The Discontinuity Guide
set a range “between 2285 and 2320”.
Timelink
said “2324”.

[
510
] Dating
Mission to Magnus
(BF LS #1.2) - Sil’s operation on Magnus is a direct consequence of his defeat on Varos, so it’s probably not long after
Vengeance on Varos
. Peri reads off that it’s the “twenty-third century” on one of the TARDIS read-outs as the Ship is pulled through the Vortex. The novelisation of this story, released in 1990, had the Doctor telling Peri that it’s “Midway through the twenty-third century”, but the likely dating of
Vengeance on Varos
suggests it’s a bit later than that. A minor continuity glitch exists in that both here and in
Mindwarp
, Sil implies that he last saw the Doctor and Peri on Varos.

[
511
] Dating
The Leisure Hive
(18.1) - Romana establishes that the war was in “2250”, “forty years” before.

[
512
]
The Highest Science

[
513
] “Seventy years” before
The Infinity Race.

[
514
] “Centuries” before
Benny: Oh No It Isn’t!
.

[
515
] Centuries before
Benny: Dry Pilgrimage.

[
516
] Dating
The Stones of Venice
(BF #18) - The story itself says that it’s the “twenty-third century”, but
Neverland
gives a firm date of 2294.

[
517
] Dating
Whispers of Terror
(BF #3) - No date given, but references to the play
The Good Soldiers
relate to information given in
Theatre of War
. The story is set within a generation of the first performance of the play.

[
518
] Dating “Dreadnought” (
Radio Times
#3775-3784) - No date given, but
Placebo Effect
claims that Stacey’s parents are from the “twenty-third century”.

[
519
]
Placebo Effect

[
520
] “Fifteen years” before “Space Squid”.

[
521
]
Interference

[
522
] About five years before
Excelis Decays
.

[
523
] “Four hundred years” before
The Sensorites
. There is also a Central City on Earth in the year 4000, according to
The Daleks’ Master Plan.

[
524
] In
The Dimension Riders,
Ace tells Lieutenant Strakk that she comes from Perivale, and he says that the area is a “forest” (p68).

[
525
] “About four hundred years” after the 1909 section of
Birthright.

[
526
]
Synthespians™

[
527
]
The Stone Rose

[
528
]
The Highest Science
(p49).

[
529
] Jake and Madelaine appear in
Goth Opera
, and we learn of their fate in
Managra
(p64).

[
530
]
SLEEPY

[
531
] “Fifteen hundred years” before
A Device of Death.

[
532
]
The Pyralis Effect

[
533
]
The Big Bang
. The date of this is completely unknown, but the name suggests a connection to Earth, and it might be a leisure planet as seen in
The Leisure Hive
.

[
534
] A generation after
The Prisoner’s Dilemma.

[
535
]
The Taking of Planet 5
(p219).

[
536
]
The Twin Dilemma

[
537
] “Almost one hundred years” before
LIVE 34
.

[
538
] “Fifty years” before
The Price of Paradise
, which is set in the late twenty-fourth century. The reference to the Draconians apparently contradicts the timescale established in
Frontier in Space
, although other novels (such as
Love and War
) also suggested that humans and Draconians met before their “official” first contact.

[
539
] Dating
Excelis Decays
(BF
Excelis
series #3) - It is three hundred years before
Benny: The Plague Herds of Excelis
.

[
540
] “Centuries” before
Benny: The Mirror Effect
.

[
541
] Dating
The Slow Empire
(EDA #47) - No date is given, but it’s before
Burning Heart
, because the Piglet People of Glomi IV are mentioned here and extinct there. This date is completely arbitrary. The realm is typically referred to just as “the Empire”, and is here called “the Slow Empire” for clarity.

[
542
] “Hundreds of years” before
Benny: Absence
.

[
543
] “A few years” before “When Worlds Collide”, and in an incarnation before his eleventh.

[
544
] Dating
Graceless: The Sphere
(
Graceless
#1.1) - The trappings of the Sphere - whisky, roulette, hotel-casinos and even the term “Faraday cage” - suggests that the participants are descended from humanity. The fact that Amy and Zara’s time rings don’t function aboard the Sphere either suggests that its technology is incredibly advanced... or that it’s just a fluke. The pirate Kreekpolt has illegal warpships that can travel through time, but there’s no way of establishing that if such technology is native to this era. It would be lying to say this placement is much more than a shot in the dark.

[
545
] Dating
The Mists of Time
(BF promo,
DWM
#411) - The archaeology members seem human. Jo says that it’s “the far future”, then specifies that it’s “centuries and centuries” after her time. Calder agrees that it’s “hundreds of years” since Jo’s native era.

[
546
] Dating
The Twin Dilemma
(21.7) - In his novelisation, Eric Saward places the story around “2310”. This is neither confirmed nor contradicted on screen. The freighter disappears “eight months” before
The Twin Dilemma
, which the novelisation sets in August. A computer monitor says that the “last contact” with the freighter was made on “12-99”. If the twelve stands for the twelfth month, the ninety-nine might stand for the last year of a century.
The Programme Guide
set the story “c2310”,
The Discontinuity Guide
in “2200”,
Timelink
in “2200”,
About Time
seemed comfortable with “2300”.

[
547
] Dating “When Worlds Collide” (IDW
DW
Vol. 2, #6-8) - No date is given. Lisa Everwell is from Basildon, in an era where she can save up and travel to Multiworld. There’s enough interest in Earth’s past to justify Multiworld patterning its zones after periods of it. There are twelve “fantasy” zones - the ones named are the Prehistoric, Old West, World War II, King Arthur, Swinging Sixties, Roman, Arabian Nights and Futuristic. There are four we can infer from the costumes of the duplicates: Samurai-era Japan, a soccer zone, Seventies USA and some sort of hospital-themed one. We might infer that this is the era of the Leisure Planets, which is consistent with the levels of artificial intelligence seen.