B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (296 page)

However, the sequel to this story -
Benny: The Draconian Rage
, also written by Trevor Baxendale - not only makes references to Krull’s defeat in
The Dark Flame
, it specifies that Krull was born on the human colony planet Tranagus. Given that
The Draconian Rage
occurs in 2602, and given the established timeline of human expansion into space, Krull could at most have lived a few centuries before events in
The Dark Flame
- meaning that all talk about Krull and the Cult going back “a thousand” or “thousands” of years must either be propaganda, or a case of those involved making guesses as to the Cult’s shady past. With that in mind, there’s only a window of some decades for
The Dark Flame
to occur before
The Draconian Rage
.

[
806
] Dating
Shakedown
(NA #45) - There is no date given in the book, the story synopsis or the video version of this story. The novel is set after
Lords of the Storm
(set in 2371). The Rutans assert that the spy disguised as Karne “died long ago” (p66), but there’s some sense that he is still a recent memory.

Benny: Mean Streets
- set in 2594, and also written by Terrance Dicks - is something of a
Shakedown
sequel. It contains a flashback to Roz and Chris’ visit to Megacity, in which they learn about an undertaking named The Project.
Mean Streets
p235 indicates that the Project has been running for no more than two generations.

Some general details about
Mean Streets
suggest that events in
Shakedown
were at most a few decades ago - the augmented Ogron Garshak appears in both books (although it’s possible that he possesses an extended lifespan). According to
Mean Streets
p122, the bar manager Sara is the dancer that Chris ogles on
Shakedown
p78. She’s admittedly a long-lived alien, but isn’t surprised to see Chris again in
Mean Streets
, only that he should look a bit older. The account in
Mean Streets
of a former miner, “old Sam”, also suggests that The Project was initiated within a human lifetime.

It’s said that Chris Cwej - who’s capable of time travel by the time
Mean Streets
occurs - wants to settle “unfinished business” in Megacity, and placing
Shakedown
shortly after
Lords of the Storm
would strangely have him doing so more than two hundred years after the fact. (Then again, it’s also odd that he’d return a couple of decades later.)

[
807
]
Benny: Oh No It Isn’t!

[
808
] Twenty years before
Benny: The Medusa Effect
.

[
809
]
Cold Fusion
(p247).

[
810
]
Benny: Beige Planet Mars
. The 2575 dating concurs with the war winding down in 2573 (
Deceit
).

[
811
] Dating
Benny: The Sword of Forever
(Benny NA #14) - The year is given.

[
812
] Dating
Arrangements for War
(BF #57) - This epilogue occurs five years before the main story.

[
813
] Dating
Human Nature
(NA #38) - No date is given, but Ellerycorp and the Travellers are mentioned, suggesting this is around Benny’s native time.

[
814
] Dating
Rain of Terror
(BBC children’s 2-in-1 #8, released in
Alien Adventures
) - The evidence sits at odds with itself. Professor Willard flew shuttlecraft “during the Cyber War” (p319); he’s now older, indicating that it’s a generation, or two at most, beyond that event. However, humanity’s advancement - particularly the affordability, reliability and speed of space travel - seems well beyond that, more akin to the sort of thing one would expect from the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire (
The Long Game
). Along those lines, the Doctor thinks that the Xirrinda colony was established “in the last year or two” (p226), and yet the colony already has “eight million” colonists (p261). The “Cyber War” reference is very hard to shake, though, and space travel
is
very common in Bernice Summerfield’s era. Perhaps it’s a really nice planet.

No mention is made of either the Earth-Draconian conflict or the Dalek Wars, so the placement here, as much as anything, reflects the likelihood that the story occurs during a (relatively) peaceful period for Earth.

[
815
] Dating
Benny: The Sword of Forever
(Benny NA #14) - The year is given.

[
816
] “Forty years” before
Benny: The Judas Gift

[
817
] “Decades” before
Benny: Resurrecting the Past
. The Dalek Wars might well account for the drop in the moon’s population. The dark side of the moon, at least in our time, never faces the Earth, but is not in permanent darkness.

[
818
] Dating
Benny: The Vampire Curse
: “Possum Kingdom” (Benny collection #12b) - The year is given.

[
819
] Dating
Arrangements for War
(BF #57) - No dating clues exist in this story or its sequel,
Thicker Than Water
, but placement is possible by extrapolating from the Bernice Summerfield range.
Benny: Parallel Lives:
“Hiding Places”, set in 2606, establishes that Adrian Wall fought in the invasion of Vilag, suggesting that - once allowances are made that a Killoran lifespan might differ from that of humans -
Arrangements for War
and
Thicker Than Water
must occur closer to the start of the twenty-seventh century than not.

A recurring theory in fandom holds that the unnamed bodyguards to the Gallifreyan Imperiatrix Pandora (
Gallifrey: Lies
) were Killorans, and that historical intervention on the part of the Time Lords - who “time-looped” the bodyguards’ homeworld - is responsible for the Killorans transitioning from the primal brutes who attacked Vilag to the more civilised builders seen in the Benny range. A “time loop” would not in itself account for such historical revision, though; moreover, Adrian vividly remembers the Vilag invasion in
Parallel Lives
, so it’s not as if the event was erased from history entirely.

[
820
]
Benny: Parallel Lives
: “Hiding Places”

[
821
] Dating
Thicker Than Water
(BF #73) - A year has passed since the Killoran invasion.

[
822
]
Benny: The Judas Gift

[
823
] Dating
Thicker Than Water
(BF #73) - The blurb says that it’s “Three years after Vilag was all but laid waste by the Killorans.” The Doctor here takes Mel to meet Evelyn for “the first time”, which disputes the claim in
Instruments of Darkness
that they’ve not only met but travelled together for a time, although the contradiction is literally limited to a few lines of dialogue between the Doctor and Mel in an opening scene. Nonetheless, it is there.

[
824
]
A Death in the Family
. Evelyn resides on Pelican for seven years, and remarks at the end of her life that Rossiter died “ten years ago” - so she must live on Vilag for three years after his passing, and an indeterminate amount of time with him after
Thicker Than Water
.

[
825
] “Seven years, three months and eleven days” before
Demontage.

[
826
]
Cold Fusion
. The year of the revolution is given (p230), the science fair was “ten years ago” (p200).

[
827
] Dating
Deimos/The Resurrection of Mars
(BF BBC7 #4.5-4.6) - It’s “centuries” after the destruction of the Martian warfleet in
The Seeds of Death
. Mention is made of the “hippy holiday camp” seen in
Phobos
, set in 2589, suggesting that this story occurs in the same period.

Mars here gains a human-compatible atmosphere (curiously, no mention is made of how the three hundred thousand people living on Mars are currently surviving without one). Mars was terraformed and given a breathable atmosphere in the early twenty-second century - however, the Daleks released a virus during the Dalek Invasion that ate all of the Martian atmosphere’s oxygen and took “years” (according to
Fear Itself
, PDA, p63) if not decades to reverse. It’s entirely possible - although it’s not expressly said - that the same fate befell the planet when the Daleks overran Mars during the Dalek Wars (in 2545, according
Benny: Beige Planet Mars
), which both greatly reduced the number of people living on Mars (cited as three million in 2545 in
Beige Planet Mars
, but only three hundred thousand in
The Resurrection of Mars
) and prompted the Mars Terraforming Project seen here. Either way, Mars has a breathable atmosphere in
Beige Planet Mars
, set in 2595, further encouraging a placement prior to that.

The Earth public thinks that the Ice Warriors are extinct, suggesting that
The Resurrection of Mars
occurs prior to the Federation’s diplomatic contacts with them (
The Curse of Peladon
, etc.), and neatly ties in with the claim in
Legacy
that the “extinct” Martians became of interest during the twenty-sixth century. The re-ionizer technology used on Mars is, clearly, a precursor to the ionizer seen in
The Ice Warriors
(even if the re-ionizer on Mars, if anything, seems more powerful that the model used at Britannicus Base).

[
828
] Dating
The Also People
(NA #44) - The remains of “a sub gas giant that had broken up sixty-two billion years previously” is referred to (p168) and the Doctor said his “diary’s pretty much clear” until “the heat death of the universe” (p186). This led the Virgin edition of this book to conclude that the story was set many billions of years in the future. However, the Bernice Summerfield New Adventures made clear that the story takes place around Benny’s native time.

[
829
]
Happy Endings

[
830
] Dating
TimeH: Child of Time
(
TimeH
#11) - The year is given. Sodality in 2586 appears to be operating from a “potential” timeline - which is very fortunate, as the late twenty-sixth century is the native era of Bernice Summerfield, and it’s impossible to reconcile the heavy amount known about this period with the total lack of a mention concerning the devastated Earth that Sodality has brought about. Sodality is expressly said to hail from a “possible” future in the
Time Hunter
-related film
Daemons: Daemos Rising
, and in
Child of Time
(co-written by David J. Howe, publisher of
Time Hunter
and the writer of
Daemos Rising
), and Honoré innately senses that Sodality’s Earth isn’t part of established history. By extension, this would seem to mean that Emily Blandish herself originates from a potential reality, but then crosses over and takes up residence in the universe’s “main” timeline (similar to Elizabeth Klein; see
Colditz
). Whether or not this means that the Doctor who appears in
The Cabinet of Light
and
TimeH: Child of Time
is from the “proper” timeline or Sodality’s altered history is an open-ended question. The “child of time” that Mastho here covets isn’t to be confused with Chiyoko, the “child of time” seen in the
DWM
comics.