B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (297 page)

[
831
] A decade before
Benny: Return to the Fractured Planet
.

[
832
] Dating
Return of the Living Dad
(NA #53) - It’s “2587” (p5).

[
833
]
So Vile a Sin

[
834
] Dating
Phobos
(BF BBC7 #1.5) - “Apparently the year is 2589”, the Doctor says.

[
835
] “Three centuries” after
The Leisure Hive.

[
836
] “Ten years” before
Prime Time.

[
837
] Dating
Demontage
(EDA #20) - No date is given, but the art forger Newark Rappare appears in both this and
Benny: Dragon’s Wrath
(set in 2593), and he is “middle aged” in both.

[
838
] Dating
Cold Fusion
(MA #29) - The novel was originally set at the same time as
So Vile a Sin
and tied in quite closely to that book, but it became clear
So Vile a Sin
wouldn’t be released as scheduled. Following that,
Cold Fusion
was reworked to occur just before the Benny New Adventures, and included the first mention of Dellah, the planet Benny was based on for that series. A copyright notice on a wardroid states that this is 2692, but that was a typographical error, and should have read “2592”. It’s “four hundred years” before Chris and Roz’s time (p165). It’s stated that the Adjudicators have been around for “half a millennium” (p247).

[
839
] Patience vanishes mysteriously in
Cold Fusion
, and reappears in
The Infinity Doctors

[
840
]
Interference
(p113).

[
841
] Dating The Bernice Summerfield New Adventures - The twenty-three New Adventures novels featuring Benny start with her joining the staff of St. Oscar’s in 2593 (a year first established in The
Dying Days
) and roughly acknowledge the real-world passage of time during the two and a half years the Benny NAs were in publication. The series ends with
Benny: Twilight of the Gods
, set in 2596. See the individual entries for more.

Terminology in the Benny Books and Audios

The New Adventures books continued after Virgin lost the
Doctor Who
licence in 1996. They were unable to use characters and concepts that originated in
Doctor Who
, but those created for the New Adventures (Benny, Jason Kane, Chris Cwej, Roz Forrester, the People of the Worldsphere from
The Also People
, Irving Braxiatel, etc.) were fair game. For legal reasons, a number of new terms were coined when referencing characters or concepts firmly lodged in
Doctor Who
.

The Dalek Wars that were so influential to Benny’s background were more generically referred to as “the Galactic War”. Braxiatel in both the NAs and the Big Finish audios broadly has “time technology” or “owns a time machine”, although his timeship’s inter-dimensional nature - as prominently seen in
Benny: Tears of the Oracle
and various audios - leaves no doubt that it’s a TARDIS, a notion reinforced by Big Finish’s use of TARDIS-like noises. The Time Lords - who were still involved in the New Adventures, unnamed, as the signatories to the treaty with the People (
Benny: Walking to Babylon
), as Irving Braxiatel’s race and as Chris Cwej’s employers (
Benny: Dead Romance
) were occasionally called “the Watchmakers”. Big Finish was similarly coy about naming the Time Lords, even though the status of “Braxiatel’s people” mirrors developments with the Time Lords in the
Gallifrey
mini-series, and the Time Lord Straxus appears in both the BBC7 audios and
Benny: The Adventure of the Diogenes Damsel
. While the Benny stories frequently refer to the Time Lords as “Braxiatel’s people”,
Ahistory
has used the terms “Time Lords” and Braxiatel’s “TARDIS” for clarity.

The Benny equivalent of the Ice Warriors is less straightforward... in
Benny: Dragons’ Wrath
, writer Justin Richards introduced the recurring character of Commander Skutloid, whose description (p109) leaves no doubt that he’s an Ice Lord in all but name. Richards named Skutloid’s species in
Benny: The Medusa Effect
(p14) as “Neo Arietian” before establishing the more commonly used spelling of “Neo-Aretian” in
Benny: Tears of the Oracle
(p37, 40, etc.). Skutloid hails from “Neo Ares” (
The Medusa Effect
, p19), either an alternate name for “New Mars” (
Legacy
), a.k.a. “Nova Martia” (
GodEngine
) - a “Neo-Aretian” (i.e. “New Martian”) could feasibly hail from either - or, more likely, Neo Ares and Nova Martia are separate Ice Warrior colonies, hence the different nomenclature. Big Finish wound up trying to have this both ways, using the term “Neo-Aretians” in
Benny: A Life of Surprises:
“Might”, before having Benny encounter the actual, licensed Ice Warriors in
Benny: The Dance of the Dead
. In
Benny: A Life Worth Living
, Big Finish settled for calling the Braxiatel Collection gardener, Hass, “a Martian” (even if temporal distortion retroactively turned him into a Yesodi in
Benny: Something Changed
).

[
842
]
Benny: Oh No It Isn’t!

[
843
]
Benny: Ship of Fools

[
844
]
Benny: The Mary-Sue Extrusion

[
845
]
Benny: Return to the Fractured Planet

[
846
] Dating
The Dying Days
(NA #61) - The date is given. It’s a bit of an oddity that Wolsey is still in the TARDIS even though the eighth Doctor is now “twelve hundred” years old. As Wolsey was initially the seventh Doctor’s cat, and the seventh Doctor regenerated age 1009 (according to
Vampire Science
), the math would seem to suggest that, somehow, Wolsey has been living in the TARDIS for about two centuries.

[
847
]
Benny: Down

[
848
]
The Well-Mannered War

[
849
] Dating
Benny: Oh No It Isn’t!
(Benny NA #1) - The year was given in
The Dying Days
.

[
850
] Six months before
Benny: Deadfall.

[
851
]
Gallifrey: Disassembled
, in a scene dramatised from
Dragons’ Wrath
.

[
852
]
Benny: Epoch: Judgement Day

[
853
] The art forger Menlove Stokes, also seen in
Demontage
, is here murdered.

[
854
] Dating
Beyond the Sun
(Benny NA #3) - In Benny and Jason’s timeline, eight months have passed since they last saw each other, and got divorced, in
Eternity Weeps
.

[
855
] Cat’s Paw is the same type of Catan-made artificial lifeform as the Stratum Seven agent from
Benny: The Mary-Sue Extrusion
and
Benny: Return to the Fractured Planet
.

[
856
]
Benny: Down

[
857
] Dating
Benny: Down
(Benny NA #5) - It’s now “early 2594” (p8). Benny arrives on Tyler’s Folly no later than “January 14th” (p152), but the action opens at St. Oscar’s some time beforehand. After Benny is apprehended, an interrogation report and an arrest report are respectively dated to ”15/01/94” (p165) and “22/1/94” (p8). Benny is subjected to “the sound of the Young Nazi Male Voice Choir of the year 2594” (p151).

[
858
] Dating
Benny: Deadfall
(Benny NA #6) - It’s said that Benny has now been at St. Oscar’s for “six months”; it’s actually been more like nine, although it’s possible she’s counting from the start of the term. Either way, it’s January 2594 at the latest.

[
859
] This is a sequel to the New Adventures novel
Shakedown
.

[
860
] Dating
Benny: Walking to Babylon
(Benny NA #10) - An extract from Benny’s memoirs (p27) says that it’s still 2594. She’s currently procrastinating on writing
An Eye for Wisdom
, slated for publication in 2595.

[
861
] The
Schirron Dream
crew formerly appeared in
Sky Pirates!
and
Death and Diplomacy
.

[
862
] “Chateau Yquatine” presumably references
The Fall of Yquatine
, also by Nick Walters. Café Vosta, an establishment at the Braxiatel Collection, is also cited as serving it (
Benny: Collected Works
). All of which is very curious, since
The Fall of Yquatine
claims that the Yquatine system won’t be colonized for a couple of centuries yet.

[
863
]
Superior Beings
(p108).

[
864
]
Interference

[
865
] Dating
Benny: The Sword of Forever
(Benny NA #14) - The chapter headings reiterate that it’s 2595.

[
866
]
Benny: Walking to Babylon
. Obviously, publication must occur before St. Oscar’s is ravaged in
Benny: Where Angels Fear
. The Ikkabans were mentioned in
SLEEPY
.

[
867
]
Dust Breeding
ends with the seventh Doctor and Ace giving Bev a lift in the TARDIS, and the idea seems to be that after some unspecified adventures, she left their company “two years” prior to 2597 (according to
Benny: The Judas Gift
), and became a fixture of Benny’s native era.

[
868
] Dating
Benny: Buried Treasures:
“Making Myths” / “Closure” (Benny audio #1.5b) - The
Buried Treasures
CD was released as a bonus for customers who purchased Big Finish’s (apocryphal) CD adaptations of
Walking to Babylon
,
Birthright
and
Just War
. The two stories within
Buried Treasures
are slightly problematic to place within Benny’s lifetime - “Closure” establishes that it’s during Benny’s tenure at St. Oscar’s (so, prior to
Benny: Where Angels Fear
), but the CD was released in August 1999, concurrent to
Benny: Return to the Fractured Planet
. The placement here is arbitrary.

[
869
] Youkali University appeared in
Return of the Living Dad
.