B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (303 page)

[
1025
]
The Taking of Planet 5
(p15).

[
1026
]
So Vile a Sin
(p28).

[
1027
] “Fifteen years” before
Ten Little Aliens
.

[
1028
] Dating
Revenge of the Cybermen
(12.5) - In
The Ark in Space
, the Doctor is unsure at first when the Ark was built (“I can’t quite place the period”), but he quickly concludes that “Judging by the macro slave drive and that modified version of the Bennet Oscillator, I’d say this was built in the early thirtieth century... late twenty-ninth, early thirtieth I feel sure”. Yet the panel he looks at appears to be a feature of the Ark, not the original Nerva Beacon.

Still, in
Revenge of the Cybermen
, when Harry asks whether this is “the time of the solar flares and Earth is evacuated”, the Doctor informs him that it is “thousands of years” before. Mankind has been a spacefaring race for “centuries” before this story when they fought the Cyber War, according to both Stevenson and Vorus. It is clearly established in other stories that the Earth is not abandoned in the twenty-ninth century (but see the dating on
The Beast Below
).
Revenge of the Cybermen
, then, would seem to be the story set in the “late twenty-ninth, early thirtieth century”, not
The Ark in Space
. The Cybermen are apparently without a permanent base of operations, so the story is presumably set after the destruction of their base on Telos in
Attack of the Cybermen
.

One difficulty with this is that the Cybermen in
Earthshock
(set in 2526) watch a clip from this story. It’s here been assumed this is the production team showing us the previous Doctors, rather than trying to date the story (in the same way, in
Mawdryn Undead
, the Brigadier “remembers” scenes he wasn’t actually in). However,
About Time
suggests the Cybermen in
Earthshock
are time-travellers, which explains the otherwise erroneous
Revenge of the Cybermen
clip.

The Programme Guide
set the story in both “c.2400” and “c.2900”, while
The Terrestrial Index
preferred “the tail end of the twenty-fifth century”.
Cybermen
placed the story in “2496”, but admitted the difficulty in doing so (p71-72).
The Discontinuity Guide
offered “c.2875”.
Timelink
suggests “2525”.
About Time
went for “After the late 2800s, but ‘thousands of years’ before the time of the solar flares”. “A History of the Cybermen” (
DWM
#83) suggested the (misprinted?) date “25,514”.

[
1029
] “A few centuries” after
The Resurrection of Mars
.

[
1030
] Dating
The Power of Kroll
(16.5) - The Doctor claims that Kroll manifests “every couple of centuries” , and this is his fourth manifestation, suggesting it is at least eight hundred years since Delta Magna was colonised.
The Terrestrial Index
set the story in the “fifty-second century”,
The TARDIS Logs
“c.3000 AD”.
About Time
favoured it being the
far
future, possibly after the time of the solar flares, or even the same era as
The Sun Makers
.

[
1031
] Dating “Victims” (
DWM
#212-214) - The year isn’t specified, but reference to the human empire seems to place it in the Earth Empire period. The implication is that the Doctor gets his burgundy outfit from Kolpasha following this story. The sixth Doctor says in
Year of the Pig
that his favourite tailor is on Kolpasha, and that his coat is considered the height of fashion there in
Instruments of Darkness. Spiral Scratch
mentions that the sixth Doctor and Mel visited Kolpasha.
Placebo Effect
(set in 3999) names Kolpasha as the “fashion capital” of the Federation.

[
1032
] “Centuries” before
Burning Heart
(p4).

[
1033
] “Many hundreds of years” before
Legacy
.

[
1034
] “At least another century or two” after the future component of
Paradox Lost
.

[
1035
] The
Kaldor City
mini-series as produced by Magic Bullet features a number of the same characters, concepts and actors as appeared in
The Robots of Death
.
Legacy
says that
The Robots of Death
was set in the deserts of Iapetus, the second moon of Saturn, but
Kaldor City
maintains that Kaldor City is removed enough from Earth space that Carnell (and possibly even Kerr Avon; see the
Blake’s 7
essay) view it as a safe haven after fleeing the Federation from
Blake’s 7
. Furthermore, much of the plot of the first audio,
KC: Occam’s Razor
, is predicated on the idea that Kaldor City has no interstellar trade.

In real life, Iapetus isn’t large enough to have a desert the size of the one referred to in
The Robots of Death
. Also, according to Uvanov in the mini-series, the planet on which Kaldor City resides has a 26-hour day; a day on Iapetus is equal to seventy-nine days.

[
1036
] The background to
The Robots of Death.

[
1037
] “Ten years” before
The Robots of Death
.

[
1038
]
The Robots of Death
, with details about Capel’s scheme given in
Kaldor City
.

[
1039
] Dating
The Robots of Death
(14.5) - An arbitrary date.
The Programme Guide
set the story “c.30,000”, but
The Terrestrial Index
preferred “the 51st Century”.
Timelink
set the story in 2777, the same period as it set
The Happiness Patrol
. Previous editions of
Ahistory
picked 2877, while stressing this was a bit of a crapshoot.

While the specific century remains very much in doubt, at least two if not three episodes of the
Kaldor City
mini-series occur in or relatively soon after a year ending in “90”, and it’s said in
Kaldor City
episodes four and five that
The Robots of Death
- and the Company robot augmentations that Taren Capel carried out shortly beforehand - occurred “ten years” ago. Allowing that Capel went into hiding for “six weeks” (
KC: Taren Capel
) after making his modifications to the robot assembly lines, and that the storm mine was “eight months” into its tour (according to both
Taren Capel
and
Corpse Marker
) when events in
The Robots of Death
happened, it’s entirely possible that
Corpse Marker
takes place roughly six years, one month and two weeks after
The Robots of Death
. That said, the “ten years” figure is bantered about with such approximation, it’s a coin toss as to whether
The Robots of Death
itself occurs nine or ten years prior to the end of
Kaldor City
. The final date of 2881 given here was chosen to better synch this story with
Corpse Marker
, although 2880 is also feasible. See the dating notes on
Kaldor City
for more.

[
1040
]
Kaldor City: Taren Capel. Robophobia
confirms that the truth about the storm mine murders wasn’t made public.

[
1041
] Dating “Crisis on Kaldor” (
DWM
#50) - It seems to be around the same time as
The Robots of Death
.

[
1042
] Dating
Corpse Marker
(PDA #27) - This is a sequel to
The Robots of Death
, and according to the back cover blurb occurs “several years later”. The final installment of
Kaldor City
takes place “three years and thirty days” after Uvanov becomes Firstmaster Chairholder - an event that occurs at the end of
Corpse Marker
, when Uvanov leverages the previous chairholder, Dess Pitter, out of office. As ten months elapse within
Kaldor City
itself, this means that the audio series opens approximately two years and three months after
Corpse Marker
.

Blake’s 7

Corpse Marker
and the
Kaldor City
audio series - both sequels to
The Robots of Death -
feature Carnell, a character who first appeared in the
Blake’s 7
episode
Weapon
. Chris Boucher either wrote or was involved with all of these stories. Moreover, it’s very likely that Kaston Iago - the lead character in
Kaldor City
- is Kerr Avon, who somehow survived the shootout at the end of
Blake’s 7
, changed his name and went into hiding in Kaldor City afterwards. Although legal reasons prevented this from being expressly said, Iago is very much like Avon - he’s a ruthless and brilliant killer with a number of programming skills. By the way, it’s probably not coincidence that Iago, like Avon, is played by Paul Darrow. Iago says in
Kaldor City
that he killed “The Butcher of Zercaster” - the name given in the charity audio
The Mark of Kane
to Travis, the
Blake’s 7
villain whom Avon shot dead on screen.
KC: Occam’s Razor
identifies both Carnell and Iago as having fled the Federation.

This opens a can of worms, as it suggests that
Blake’s 7
and
Doctor Who
occur in the same universe, which is just about possible. It’s never established in which century
Blake’s 7
takes place, and the original proposal stated only that it was “the third century of the second calendar”. The only real indication was that the Wanderer spacecraft (in the
Blake’s 7
story
Killer
, written by Robert Holmes) were the first into deep space “seven hundred years” before Blake’s era. In
Doctor Who
terms, that would set
Blake’s 7
in the twenty-eighth or twenty-ninth century.

The future history of
Blake’s 7
is pretty basic - humanity has colonised many planets and most of those are under the control of the fascist Federation. While never stated in the series itself, publicity for the show (and subsequent guides to the series) said that there was a series of atomic wars across the galaxy several hundred years before Blake’s time, and the Federation was founded in the aftermath. By coincidence, this fits quite neatly with the
Doctor Who
timeline, and the atomic war might be the Dalek/Galactic Wars of the twenty-sixth century. As might be expected, not every detail matches perfectly, but the oppressive Earth Empire of
Doctor Who
is not wildly different from the Terran Federation seen in
Blake’s 7
. The symbol worn by the Earth expedition in
Death to the Daleks
(authored by Terry Nation, who created
Blake’s 7
and wrote a fair amount of it) is the symbol of the Federation in
Blake’s 7
, turned ninety degrees.