B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (290 page)

[
591
] Dating
Slipback
(Radio 4 drama, unnumbered Target novelisation) - An arbitrary date. The
Vipod Mor
is undertaking a census, perhaps placing it in the same time period as
The Happiness Patrol
. The illegal time travel experiments in this story also fit neatly with the time travel research mentioned in a variety of other adventures set in the twenty-fourth century.

[
592
]
The Leisure Hive

[
593
]
The Well-Mannered War
(p273).

[
594
] She’s from “the twenty-fourth century” according to
Return of the Living Dad
(p41).

[
595
]
The Highest Science
(p203, p235).

[
596
] “Centuries” after
Night Thoughts
.

[
597
] “Many hundreds of years” after
The English Way of Death
, with reference to the group Third Eye (p37).

[
598
] Dating
Infinite Requiem
(NA #36) - The year is quickly established as “2387” (p5). The precise date is given (p273). It is “six years” since
The Dimension Riders
(p15).

[
599
] Dating
The Happiness Patrol
(25.2) - Terra Alpha is an isolated colony, apparently in the same system as Terra Omega. While Trevor Sigma’s casual dismissal of Earth may suggest the story is set far in the future, the Doctor states only that the planet was “settled some centuries” in Ace’s future. Interstellar travel is via “rocket pods”.
Timelink
suggests “2788”.

[
600
] Two hundred years before
Benny: Dry Pilgrimage
.

[
601
]
Benny: Dragons’ Wrath

[
602
]
Benny: Down

[
603
] Two centuries before
Benny: The Doomsday Manuscript.

[
604
]
The Highest Science

[
605
]
The Taking of Planet 5

[
606
] “Twelve years” before
Divided Loyalties.

[
607
] Dating “Planet Bollywood” (
DWM
#424) - No year given. The tone of this story suggests that Bollywood culture has now crept into space, suggesting it’s the future (unless Bollywood culture was, in fact, extra-terrestrial to start with).

[
608
] “The Child of Time” (
DWM
)

[
609
]
The Happiness Patrol

[
610
]
Synthespians™

[
611
]
Year of the Pig

[
612
] “Five hundred” years after
Year of the Pig
, although it’s impossible to know if the conference is real - and of interest to Chardalot’s time-travelling father - or just part of Chardalot’s half-baked imaginings.

[
613
] Dating
The Pit
(NA #12) - Benny states that the Seven Planets were destroyed “Fifty years before my time... 2400” (p9).

[
614
] Dating
LIVE 34
(BF #74) - The isolated, heavily censored colonists believe that Earth was abandoned “centuries ago”, and most facets of this society - the style of LIVE 34’s broadcasts in particular - bring to mind an Earth colony rather than an alien one. Additionally, a LIVE 34 broadcaster doesn’t question the dating system when Ace mentions a 1952 Vincent Black Lightning motorcycle. The dating of this story is somewhat arbitrary, although Colony 34 very much fits the mould of an isolated, oppressed Earth colony akin to Terra Alpha in
The Happiness Patrol
.

[
615
] She was married to Yrcanos for twenty-five years according to
Bad Therapy
(p288).

[
616
] Peri Leaves and Causes Continuity Problems, Two and Three

Peri’s departure was a little confused on television.
The Trial of a Time Lord
first tells us that she died, then that she lived happily ever after with King Yrcanos - a last-minute addition to the script, and a big stretch given what we saw of their on-screen relationship.

However, there’s a bigger problem: taking what we’re told about subsequent events in the comics and novels, and - as
Ahistory
does - assuming that it’s the same continuity, a couple of knotty problems emerge.

The first is exactly what happens to Peri, the problem being that the novel
Bad Therapy
and the comic “The Age of Chaos” contradict each other. In
Bad Therapy
, Peri resents her new life and returns to Earth after twenty-five years. In “The Age of Chaos”, she remains on Krontep and raises a dynasty of children and grandchildren. This conundrum, at least, is easily explained thanks to
Peri and the Piscon Paradox
establishing that owing to the Time Lords’ tinkering, there are at least five Peris active in the universe. Clearly, the Peri from
Bad Therapy
and the one in “The Age of Chaos” number among these variants.

Thankfully, the novelisations don’t “count” for the purposes of this book, because in the
Mindwarp
novelisation, Philip Martin stated that Peri and Yrcanos immediately went to the twentieth century and Yrcanos became a professional wrestler.

There’s another continuity issue connected with Peri’s departure - Frobisher is the companion of the seventh Doctor for one adventure (“A Cold Day in Hell”), and they make reference there to Peri leaving for Krontep with Yrcanos (on television in
Mindwarp
), implying it was very recent. For people reading the
DWM
strip at the time, it was - the story follows straight on from “The World Shapers”, featuring the sixth Doctor, Frobisher and Peri, but this is difficult to fit around the TV series.

Furthermore, in “The Age of Chaos”, the sixth Doctor and Frobisher are
twice
seen visiting Krontep, so it’s odd that Frobisher hasn’t come to terms with Peri leaving. The story also implies that the sixth Doctor has dropped Frobisher off in the Antarctic at some point and is travelling solo. (Strange how Frobisher seems to take sabbaticals from the Doctor’s company, as he also leaves the TARDIS for a time in
The Maltese Penguin
, then returns.)

Any solution also has to explain how Mel - who’s present when the Doctor regenerates (in
Time and the Rani
), but not in “A Cold Day in Hell” or the following story “Redemption” - fits in. Ultimately, unless Frobisher’s hiding in the TARDIS, unmentioned, during the television stories (or Mel is doing the same during “A Cold Day in Hell” and “Redemption”), it’s not easy to come up with a neat solution that fits all the evidence.

[
617
] “About a hundred years” before
Sword of Orion.

[
618
] Dating
Vanishing Point
(EDA #44) - An arbitrary date. The colony has been around for “centuries”.

[
619
] Dating
Divided Loyalties
(PDA #26) - It is “thirty years” after Dymok became isolated in 2378 (p16). The Toymaker next appears in
The Nightmare Fair
.

[
620
]
The Game
. Carlisle’s birth date and details of his early life are given, Disc 1, Track 7.

[
621
] “More than a century” before
Parasite
(p49).

[
622
]
The Menagerie

[
623
] “Pureblood”

[
624
] In the “ten years” leading up to “The Age of Chaos”.

[
625
] Dating “The Age of Chaos” (
DWM Special
, unnumbered) - The story is set after
Mindwarp
, long enough afterwards that Peri’s youngest grandchild is 16 (and her grandsons were young men ten years ago), but no exact date is specified. So, it has to be at least fifty years since Peri left the Doctor. The tenth Doctor claims in “The Forgotten” that he never visited Peri when she was living with Yrcanos, but he’s not exactly in his right mind at the time.

[
626
] Dating “Dogs of Doom” (
DWW
#27-34) - Babe tells Sharon the system has been “settled here for fifty years - since 2380 Old Earth time”. It’s never explained why the Daleks need Werelox to invade the settlements if they’re going to sterilise the planets from orbit.

[
627
] The colonists crashed on Axista Four about a hundred years before
The Colony of Lies
. Kirann mentions meeting the seventh Doctor on p164.

[
628
]
Spiral Scratch

[
629
] Dating
Survival of the Fittest
(BF #130b) - The cliffhanger is resolved in
The Architects of History
. The Doctor finds himself in 2044 in that story, owing to Klein’s historical alterations, but it’s impossible to believe that
Survival of the Fittest
occurs in the same year - it’s much too early for humanity to have spread out this far into the Milky Way. Also, human technology is now at a stage where a team of fortune-seeking humans can venture off into space armed with a fearsome amount of hardware - enough to kill thousands of adult Vrill and take out their hive system. Even so, this date is arbitrary.

[
630
]
The Architects of History

[
631
]
Benny: Tears of the Oracle
. KS-159 is the future home of the Braxiatel Collection.

[
632
] “Decades” before
Judgement of the Judoon.

[
633
]
Benny: Down

[
634
] Dating
Scaredy Cat
(BF #75) - According to the Doctor, the Earth Empire bans Saravin “a few hundred years” after this point.

[
635
] Dating
The Underwater War
(BBC children’s 2-in-1 #7, released in
Alien Adventures
) - Earth’s space technology seems relatively advanced, as two trips between Earth and Hydron are made in the span of two years, minus all the time Fleming spends on Earth in the interim. That said, Earth culture is not so advanced from the present day that Jules Verne has been forgotten, as two submersibles are here named after him. “The Company” is not IMC, the seemingly ubiquitous mining corporation in operation during Earth’s Empire phase (not that it’s ever established that IMC is the
only
mining company of its day), and it seems a stretch, without it being said, to think that it’s the same corporation that runs Terminus (
Terminus
). Ultimately, the story could occur just about anywhere.

[
636
] 2454, according to
Judgement of the Judoon
.