Authors: Lance Parkin,Lars Pearson
[
957
] “About five years” before
SJA: Eye of the Gorgon.
[
958
]
TW: Miracle Day
[
959
] “Seven years” before
Iris: Enter Wildthyme
.
[
960
] Dating
Touched by an Angel
(NSA #47) - The exact days are given (pgs 7, 197, 227).
[
961
] Dating
Eternity Weeps
(NA #58) - The date is given (p1).
Did Liz Shaw Die in 2003?
Until recent years, and for anyone who considers the New Adventures canon, the answer was almost unequivocally, “Yes.” In
Eternity Weeps
(set in 2003), Liz, as Operations Chief for Tranquillity Base on the moon, is infected with a flesh-eating terraforming virus, endures an unspeakable amount of pain, and dies after passing along the formula for an anti-virus to her lover Imorkal - who himself perishes after telepathically planting the information in Chris Cwej’s mind. Cwej’s failure to euthanise Liz despite her pleas is examined in
The Room with No Doors
, and the matter is then considered closed.
Of late, both
The Sarah Jane Adventures
and the Big Finish Companion Chronicles starring Caroline John (reprising her role as Liz) have called Liz’s death into question. In
SJA: Death of the Doctor
, Colonel Karim mentions, with regards associates of the Doctor invited to his funeral, “Miss Shaw can’t make it back from moonbase until Sunday” (not an indicator that there’s a crisis there, and probably just reflecting the infrequency with which shuttles transport personnel back to Earth). The acknowledgement of Liz working on a moonbase, strangely enough, confirms some of
Eternity Weeps
while rejecting another part of it.
With the Companion Chronicles being on audio, it was possible to imagine that Liz was narrating her stories prior to her death in 2003... until she says in
The Sentinels of the New Dawn
that if events in 2014 had not been wiped from history, “That horror would be starting around now...”, i.e. a few years beforehand, concurrent with the audio’s release in 2011.
Balancing these accounts is no easy task. The only leeway lies in the fact that in
Eternity Weeps
, we don’t actually see Liz’s dead body. The virus gives Liz horrific injuries at a United Nations Hazmat base in Turkey, but her actual passing is only confirmed by Imorkal, who tells Chris and Jason Kane, “She is dead”. It becomes the stuff of fan-fiction to imagine events by which Liz recovered enough to be alive and well in 2011 (for instance, Imorkal placed Liz in a prototype Silurian healing chamber after plucking the formula for the anti-viral from her mind), but keeping these stories in a single continuity requires some off-screen explanation, however spurious.
[
962
] Dating
Rip Tide
(TEL #6) - It is “late May” (p13), in “the twenty-first century” (p78). There’s no reason to say the story isn’t set in the year the novella was published.
[
963
]
The Highest Science
. The year is given on p2, and reiterated in
Happy Endings
(p5).
[
964
]
TW: Into the Silence
[
965
] Dating
The Quantum Archangel
(PDA #38) - It’s 2003 according to the blurb and p48, “thirty years” since
The Time Monster
(p39).
[
966
]
The Quantum Archangel
[
967
] Dating
Minuet in Hell
(BF #19) - It’s “the twenty-first century” and humanity has just developed quantum technology, suggesting it’s the near future.
Neverland
gives the firm date of 2003 for this story.
[
968
]
The Taking of Planet 5
(p15).
[
969
]
The Power of the Daleks
Vulcan
The planet Vulcan is only seen in
The Power of the Daleks
, a story that is almost certainly set in 2020. There is no indication that mankind has developed interstellar travel or faster-than-light drives in this or any other story set at this time. This would seem to suggest that Vulcan is within our own solar system.
There is some evidence to support this conjecture: since the nineteenth century, some astronomers (including Le Verrier, who discovered Neptune), speculated that a planet might orbit the sun closer than Mercury. There was new interest in this theory in the mid-nineteen-sixties, which might explain why the home planet of Mr Spock was also called Vulcan around the same time in
Star Trek
. The draft script talked of a “Plutovian Sun”, suggesting Vulcan is far from the Sun, not close.
In 1964,
The Dalek Book
, which, like
The Power of the Daleks
was co-written by David Whitaker, named Vulcan as the innermost planet in our solar system (and Omega as the outermost). This, though, contradicts the story that immediately precedes
The Power of the Daleks
, in which Mondas is referred to as “the Tenth Planet”;
Image of the Fendahl
, where the Fendahleen homeworld is “the Fifth Planet”; and
The Sun Makers
, where Pluto is established as the ninth planet of the solar system. So it seems that Vulcan wasn’t in our solar system in the late nineteen-eighties or the far future.
Taking all this literally and at face value,
Doctor Who
fan Donald Gillikin has suggested that Vulcan arrives in the solar system but later leaves. This might be scientifically implausible - at least in the timescale suggested - but we know of at least three other “rogue planets” that enter our solar system according to the series: Earth’s moon, Mondas and Voga.
The Taking of Planet 5
(p15) confirms Gillikin’s theory by stating that Vulcan was discovered in 2003 and had vanished by 2130.
[
970
] Dating
The Hollow Men
(PDA #10) - No year is given, but the drought of ‘02 is mentioned, and five-pound coins are legal tender.
[
971
] Dating “Evening’s Empire” (
Doctor Who Classic Comics Autumn Special 1993
) - There’s a calendar giving the month as June in the first panel in which we see the real Alex. The year is harder to establish, however. The complete story was published in 1993, and in the last part, there’s a newspaper dated “Nov 23 1993”. It’s “fifty” years since the World War II plane crashed, again supporting a date in the early nineties. However, the story falls after “The Mark of Mandragora”, set after 1997, and enough time has passed for Frost to be promoted from Major to Colonel.
[
972
] Muriel Frost
According to John Freeman in his afterword to the collected “Evening’s Empire”,
DWM
originally planned to introduce “a more solid supporting cast” for the seventh Doctor. Muriel Frost of UNIT, a fiery redhead with a complicated personal life, was clearly a big part of those plans. However, publication of “Evening’s Empire” was delayed, and the comic series ended up tying in more closely with the New Adventure novels - meaning the planned storylines were dropped.
Muriel Frost appeared in “The Mark of Mandragora”, “Evening’s Empire” and “Final Genesis” in
DWM
. A Captain Muriel Frost also appeared in the 1980 sequence of
The Fires of Vulcan
. This is clearly meant to be the same character, but it really doesn’t fit with what we know. In the British regular army, it’s possible to spend twenty years as a Captain, but an able candidate could expect to be promoted to Major within four or five years (not to mention the fact that Frost doesn’t look old enough in “The Mark of Mandragora”). Between “The Mark of Mandragora” and “Evening’s Empire”, she’s gone from Major to Colonel - a process that would normally take over ten years.
Even though the intention was that they are the same character, it might be simpler to imagine (and nothing particularly contradicts this idea) that the Frost in
The Fires of Vulcan
is Colonel Frost’s mother. In which case, the young US major who appears and is killed in
Aliens of London
(set in 2006) - the same character who the Doctor called “Muriel Frost” in the draft script, and who has a “Muriel Frost” name badge - must presumably be her American cousin.
[
973
] Dating “Final Genesis” (
DWM
#203-206) - Ace recognises Muriel Frost, so in her terms the story takes place after “Evening’s Empire”.
[
974
] Dating
Zygon: When Being You Isn’t Enough
(BBV independent film) - The story was released in 2008 but filmed years beforehand, hence why a credit card flashed by a minor character, Ray, bears the active/expiration dates of “09/02” to “09/04”. It seems reasonable to assume that the card is still valid, because Anderson goes on a shopping spree upon finding it. A Euronics Centre advertisement establishes that it’s summer.
Somewhat infamously, this film is a canonical
Doctor Who
-related erotic thriller, with full-frontal nudity and two softcore sex scenes - although the back cover, featuring three pictures of naked people on a couch, overstates the amount of film time given to sex acts. That said, in what will doubtless be disappointing news to some, there are no sex scenes involving Zygons in their natural state.
[
975
] Dating
The Shadow of the Scourge
(BF #13) - It is “the fifteenth of August 2003” according to the Doctor.
[
976
] Dating
Jubilee
(BF #40) - The date is given (and it’s the hundredth anniversary of the events of 1903).
[
977
] Dating
Daemons: Daemos Rising
(Reeltime Pictures film #6) - A calendar in Cavendish’s house cites the exact day that Mastho is summoned as 31st October, 2003, and the story begins the night before. This is the first time that Mastho had been summoned from his point of view; from Sodality’s, it’s the second (the first being in 1586, in
TimeH: Child of Time
).
[
978
] Dating
Falls the Shadow
(NA #32) - It is “a crisp November morning”, “five years” after “UN adventurism in the Persian Gulf”. Winterdawn is alive and well in
The Quantum Archangel
, so this book is set after that. Thascales was an alias of the Master in
The Time Monster
. Author Daniel O’Mahony intended it to be set in “the near future”.
[
979
] Dating
Catch-1782
(BF #68) - The date is given.
[
980
]
TW: Miracle Day
, in a cheeky little reference to the ITV show
Mine All Mine
(2004) by Russell T Davies.
[
981
] “Four years” before “The Widow’s Curse”.
[
982
] “Five years” prior to
TW: Consequences
: “The Wrong Hands”.
[
983
]
Unregenerate!
Rausch says he hasn’t seen Louis in “fifty years”, but this could be a rounded sum. A radio broadcast says US and UK forces are “hours” away from Fallujah in Iraq. The main offensive there occurred on 8th November, 2004.
Unregenerate!
was recorded just more than a week later on 16-17 November.
[
984
] “Five years” before
SJA: The Mark of the Berserker.
[
985
]
Night Thoughts