B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (78 page)

Many of the events in
Farewell, Great Macedon
are drawn from historical accounts, but extreme liberties have been taken with the timeframe, and entirely disparate events have been rolled into a single narrative. Cleitus is thought to have died about five years before Alexander (in autumn 328 BC), Calanus about a year and a half beforehand (in late 325 BC), and Hephaestion some months beforehand (in autumn 324 BC) - here, they all perish in a matter of weeks. Calanus and Cleitus died in circumstances similar to those described here, but Hephaestion likely died from typhoid fever, and here succumbs to a snake bite. Antipater is rumoured to have orchestrated Alexander’s death, while the historian Plutarch rejects this idea, and it’s equally likely that Alexander died from natural causes. Either way, Antipater isn’t implicated as having anything to do with Cleitus, Calanus and Hephaestion’s deaths. Nor did Antipater die at Selecus’ hand - he was, in fact, named regent of Alexander’s empire and given control of Greece before dying from an illness, after returning to Macedon in 320 BC.

[
135
] “A thousand years” before
Genesis of the Daleks
.

[
136
]
Marco Polo

[
137
] Or so the artificial version of Huang claims in “The Immortal Emperor”. Huang was born in 246 BC.

[
138
]
Enlightenment

[
139
]
The Nightmare Fair
. Imperial China started in 221 BC; the Toymaker’s involvement could have happened at any point until its end, in 1912 AD.

[
140
] Dating
The Emperor of Eternity
(BF CC #4.8) - The evidence is confusing when weighed against the historical accounts. The Doctor specifies that it’s “210 BC”, within a few days of the Emperor’s death (on September 10th of that year), but the meteor incident that prompted the slaughter of Dongjun is historically dated to 211 BC. It’s possible that the meteor event happened a year later in the
Doctor Who
universe, but it’s equally likely that the Doctor has just gotten the year wrong.

The First Emperor of China

Qin Shi Huang (who ruled under the name “First Emperor” from 221-210 BC) is featured in three
Doctor Who
stories, in three different formats: the novel
The Eleventh Tiger
, the
DWM
comic “The Immortal Emperor” and the audio
The Emperor of Eternity
. All are reasonably reconcilable if one is flexible as to the final fate of the original Emperor. For all that we’re told, the real Huang might, as history claims, have simply died after ingesting a series of “immortality pills” that gave him mercury poisoning - but that his mind was copied (by both Meng Tian and the Mandragora Helix, for entirely different purposes) beforehand. In
The Eleventh Tiger
(p267), the first Doctor concurs with this, saying that the “Emperor” he meets is a duplicate of the original’s memories “in a personality matrix”, and isn’t the genuine article. (That, certainly, would explain why the Emperor is portrayed a lot more ruthlessly in
The Eleventh Tiger
, and seems very intent on obtaining the immortality that he forsakes in
The Emperor of Eternity
.) Similarly, it’s possible that the “Emperor” in “The Immortal Emperor” is nothing more than a robotic construct crafted by Meng Tian, who wants to remain the power behind the throne once the original Huang has died/otherwise become unavailable. The robot might even
think
he’s the genuine article, although it’s admittedly an oversight on Meng Tian’s part to leave out a failsafe that would prevent his faux Qin Shi Huang from becoming outraged and killing him. The only remaining stumbling block is that the tenth Doctor claims (“The Immortal Emperor”) that Huang just disappeared one night and that “no-one knows how he died” - something that isn’t true in real life, as the first Doctor knows (
The Eleventh Tiger
, p267 again).

Whatever the case with Huang, it’s possible that Meng Tian built the terracotta army (found in real life in 1974) as robots that collect dust after Meng Tian’s death until the Mandragora Helix makes use of them in 1884 (in
The Eleventh Tiger
), once the stars align as it requires.

[
141
] “Two thousand years” before
The Eleventh Tiger
.

[
142
] Dating “The Immortal Emperor” (
The Doctor Who Storybook 2009
) - It’s “a couple of centuries BC”, at the end of the First Emperor’s reign.

[
143
] “Two thousand years” before
The King of Terror.

[
144
] “The Collector”

[
145
]
The Quantum Archangel

[
146
] Dating
100
: “100 BC” (BF #100a) - The Doctor attempts to go forward nine months in time from October 101 BC, but appears to instead go backward by the same amount. Julius Caesar’s older sister Julia was indeed born in 101 BC. Nothing is here said about Julius’
other
older sister, who was also named Julia, and is only mentioned in the accounts of the biographer/historian/gossip monger Suetonius.

[
147
] Dating
100
: “100 BC” (BF #100a) - The month and year are given, and are extrapolated from Caesar’s birth on 13th July, 100 BC. The story title was doubtless intended to tie into Big Finish’s 100th audio release, but is deliberately misleading in that - as the Doctor and Evelyn figure out - they were never in 100 BC.

[
148
]
Empire of Death,
and evidently a separate occasion from
100
: “100”.

[
149
]
The Gallifrey Chronicles

[
150
]
The War Games

[
151
] “The Greatest Gamble”

[
152
]
The Colony of Lies

[
153
]
City of Death.
He’s listed as “Roman Emperor” in the script, but it’s possible he’s a senator or other Roman of rank.

[
154
] The Doctor has already visited Rome on his travels before
The Romans
. He mentions Hannibal (247-182 BC, he crossed the Alps in 219 BC) in
Robot
, and Cleopatra (68-30 BC) in
The Masque of Mandragora
.

[
155
]
The Settling

[
156
]
The Girl in the Fireplace

[
157
]
Ghosts of India

[
158
]
The Wedding of River Song

[
159
]
Loups-Garoux

[
160
]
Iris: Enter Wildthyme
(p83).

[
161
] Dating
State of Change
(MA #5) - The Doctor thinks that it is “the year 10 BC, approximately” (p41). The Cleopatra of this world died around 15 BC (p45). Terra Nova is part of the universe’s timeline by the end of the story, yet despite its prosperity and technological advantage over the proper Earth, it’s never heard of again.

[
162
]
Voyage of the Damned

[
163
]
Relative Dimensions
. The Doctor mentions that this was “right about Zero BC/AD”, although estimates of Christ’s birth year by historians generally range from 6 BC to 6 AD.

[
164
] Dating
TW: Exit Wounds
(
TW
2.13) - The year is given.

[
165
]
Planet of the Dead

[
166
]
Matrix
. The Wandering Jew was a shoemaker or tradesman who mocked Jesus on his way to the Crucifixion, and was reportedly condemned to walk the Earth until the Second Coming of Christ. There is little Biblical evidence for this, but records of the legend go back to the thirteenth century.

[
167
]
The Slow Empire

[
168
]
The Resurrection of Mars
. Caligula ruled 16th March, 37 AD, to 24th January, 41 AD, presuming this meet-up happened during his reign as emperor.

[
169
] Dating
Iris: The Two Irises
(Iris audio #2.3) - It’s during Caligula’s time as Emperor (37-41 AD).

[
170
]
Demon Quest: The Relics of Time

[
171
] Dating
Demon Quest: The Relics of Time
(BBC fourth Doctor audio #2.1) - The Doctor says it’s “nearly two thousand years earlier” than the present day. A Celt says Julius Caesar invaded “almost a century ago”, and it’s referred to a couple of times as “the first century”. Although “Claudius” is actually a shapechanging demon, it would seem to be later in the year that the Doctor knows the real Claudius came to Britain: 43 AD. However, Mrs Wibbsey dates this story to 46 AD in
Demon Quest: Starfall
.

[
172
]
Demon Quest: Sepulchre

[
173
]
Human Nature
(NA)

[
174
]
TW: Small Worlds

[
175
]
The Blue Angel.
Salome lived in the first century AD.

[
176
] “Seventeen years” before
The Fires of Pompeii
.

[
177
] Said to be “over two thousand years” before
The Stolen Earth
, although in truth it’s slightly less than that.

[
178
]
Paradise 5
. Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD), author of
Naturalis Historica
(
Natural History
) wrote about smelling salts.

[
179
]
The Nightmare Fair

[
180
] Dating
The Rescue
(2.3) - This happens right at the end of the story, as a literal cliffhanger. The date is established in
The Romans
, but
Byzantium!
establishes that the TARDIS crew have another adventure first...

[
181
] Dating
Byzantium!
(PDA #44) - This story takes place immediately before
The Romans
.

[
182
] Dating
The Romans
(2.4) - The story culminates in the Great Fire of Rome. The TARDIS crew have spent “a month” at the villa.

[
183
] Archaeologists date the site to “about 70 AD” in
I am a Dalek
(p24).

[
184
] Dating
The Fires of Vulcan
(BF #12) - The story ends with the eruption of Vesuvius.

[
185
]
The Algebra of Ice
(p15).