B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (184 page)

[
1066
]
TW: The Twilight Streets

[
1067
]
TW: Everything Changes

[
1068
] Dating
The Deviant Strain
(NSA #4)
-
The year isn’t given, although there are references to the Cold War ending “twenty years” ago. It would seem to be set in Rose’s home time.

[
1069
] Dating
Only Human
(NSA #5) - The story takes place after
Boom Town
(and
The Deviant Strain
), but - owing to Jack’s presence - before
The Parting of the Ways
.

[
1070
] Jack says that Suzie found the lock-pick “last year” in
TW: Cyberwoman
.

[
1071
] Dating
The Gathering
(BF #87) - The date is given, and reinforced by a radio broadcast citing the birthday of Australian rocker Nick Cave, and discretely mentioning the same for Billie Piper - both were born on 22nd September. In an attempt at symmetry with
The Reaping
, a radio broadcast also mentions an interview with Colin Farrell about the 2006
Miami Vice
movie. However, the broadcast implies the film isn’t out yet - it was actually released in Australia about five weeks prior on 10th August, 2006. Tegan’s mother is still alive.

[
1072
] Dating
The Parting of the Ways
(X1.13) - No specific date is given, but there’s no evidence that much time has passed since Rose and Mickey’s meeting in
Boom Town
. In
The Christmas Invasion
, Jackie’s been going out with Howard for “about a month”, and Rose doesn’t know about their relationship beforehand, so
The Parting of the Ways
is probably set before late November.

[
1073
] The date of the publication was given in the
Remembrance of the Daleks
novelisation, and was confirmed by
Set Piece
. In
Transit
, Yembe Lethbridge-Stewart states that Kadiatu was named after his great-grandmother, the historian. Although in
Set Piece
, Kadiatu claims that her namesake was her “grandmother”, presumably for brevity’s sake.

[
1074
]
Boom Town
. This was due to happen on “the nineteenth” and “next month”.

[
1075
] “About a month” before
The Christmas Invasion
.

[
1076
]
TW: Children of Earth

[
1077
] Dating
Iceberg
(NA #18) - The main action of the book takes place in 2006, from “early November” (p25) to “Friday 22 December” (p1). The epilogue is set on “Wednesday 31 January 2007” (p251).

[
1078
] Dating
The Christmas Invasion
(X2.0) - The story takes place at Christmas, shortly after
The Parting of the Ways
. Subsequent stories establish that this is indeed Christmas 2006. “A third” of the world’s population is two billion people at this time.

When Do the General Public Accept the Existence of Aliens?

It’s was a long-held tradition in classic
Doctor Who
that there are plenty of alien invasions, yet no one in the present day believes in them, or even really notices. Even given the Doctor’s comments in
Remembrance of the Daleks
and
Rose
that humans are blind to what’s going on around them, that most alien attacks are covert or limited to isolated locations, and that the government keeps hushing up the existence of aliens, there are a number of stories set before 2085 (cited in
The Dying Days
as humanity’s first official diplomatic contact with alien races) where the general population really can’t escape the existence of aliens. Such stories include
The Tenth Planet
,
The Dying Days
, and
Aliens of London
. By the end of the last two, people have already started declaring that the aliens are a hoax, and this seems to become the accepted view of what happened.

This has shifted now, though. The new
Doctor Who
occasionally jokes about humanity’s willingness to overlook the blatantly obvious, but by
Last of the Time Lords
, only people as obtuse as Donna Noble can be in much doubt about the existence of extra-terrestrial life. Between 2006 and 2008, humanity is made to witness a spaceship destroying Big Ben and crashing into the Thames (
Aliens of London
); another spaceship arriving over London, and its sonic boom causing a swath of damage - this is accompanied by a third of humanity being compelled to stand on rooftops while strange lights illuminate their heads, the face of the Sycorax leader being transmitted on BBC1, a newscaster’s declaration that it is “absolute proof that alien life exists”, and a super-laser destroying the departing spaceship (
The Christmas Invasion
); the public acceptance of “ghosts”, who manifest as five million Cybermen and capture Earth before they’re pulled through the sky - along with a flying Dalek army - into Canary Wharf (
Army of Ghosts/Doomsday
); the Racnoss spaceship firing bolts of energy against London, and Mr Saxon gaining prominence because the military destroys the ship on his orders (
The Runaway Bride
); a horned demon looming over Cardiff, and its shadow killing droves of pedestrians (
TW: End of Days
); Royal Hope Hospital vanishing, leaving behind only a crater before reappearing some hours later - this coincides with the hospital appearing on the moon, and about a thousand people inside being scanned by space rhinos (
Smith and Jones,
although it’s still possible for Clive Jones’ girlfriend, Annalise, to dismiss the idea of aliens); and - most tellingly of all - the British Prime Minister presenting the Toclafane to the world, a day before one of their number murders the American President during a worldwide broadcast (
The Sound of Drums
). The destruction of the Paradox Machine undoes the Toclafane’s capture of Earth, but explicitly everything up to and including the assassination of the President still happens. And soon after that, the sun turns a cold blue (
SJA: Invasion of the Bane
), an event that is (flimsily) attributed in a cover story to a “temporary reversal of the Earth’s magnetic poles”.

The final straw for anyone too thick to believe in aliens prior to this is, surely,
The Stolen Earth
/
Journey’s End
- in which Earth is both teleported into a sector of space with twenty six other abducted worlds, incurs massive casualties while being overrun by the Daleks, and is physically hauled through space while being returned to its natural orbit. Clyde Langer’s father later mentions the Daleks by name (
SJA: The Mark of the Berserker
), and it’s an event so hard to ignore, Gwen Cooper can tell someone who has been in cryo-freeze, “These days the whole alien cat is rather out of the bag... The Daleks invaded.” (
TW: Risk Assessment
, p83)

Circa 2009 to 2011, the public also experiences the moon being set on a collision course with Earth (
SJA: The Lost Boy
), astrologer Martin Trueman hijacking every TV broadcast and hypnotising large swathes of the public according to their astrological symbols (
SJA: Secrets of the Stars
), the entire human race (sans Wilf and Donna) turning into Prime Minister Harold Saxon/the Master (
The End of Time
), everyone on Earth being made to think a meteor is hurtling toward them (
SJA: Goodbye, Sarah Jane Smith
), the children of Earth simultaneously speaking words in English (
TW: Children of Earth
) and death being suspended across the globe for a period of at least two months, possibly more (
TW: Miracle Day
).

It remains to be seen if future production teams will “erase” the public’s belief in aliens and credit this change to the Cracks in Time in Series 5, but at time of writing, there’s reason to believe this hasn’t happened (see the Cracks in Time sidebar). The occasional glitch remains (Adam in
Dalek
- set in 2012 - thinks that the existence of aliens isn’t public; Hex, who originates from 2021, believes the same in
Project: Destiny
), but for now, at least, there’s no need to do anything as drastic as put most of Series 1-4, the Tennant specials,
Torchwood
and
The Sarah Jane Adventures
into alternate-universe bubbles.

One story from the non-TV media is worth mentioning: the
DWM
strip “The Mark of Mandragora” establishes that the events of “Invaders of Gantac” and (perhaps a little oddly)
Battlefield
led the general public to the realisation that aliens existed. That was contradicted by
Rose,
but the new TV series swiftly established that - in the words of Captain Jack in
Torchwood
- “the twenty-first century is when everything changes”.

[
1079
]
Love & Monsters

[
1080
]
The Runaway Bride

[
1081
]
TW: Everything Changes
, and confirmed in
Utopia
. The Doctor lost his hand in
The Christmas Invasion
.

[
1082
] “The Widow’s Curse”

[
1083
] “Eighteen months” before
The Sound of Drums
, and by implication very soon after
The Christmas Invasion.
It’s not clear who runs Britain for those eighteen months - possibly it’s a weakened Harriet Jones. As Jones had only recently won by a landslide, it’s easy to infer that the opposition parties are also in disarray. The fact that Saxon’s Cabinet in
The Sound of Drums
is composed of people from various political parties would seem to support that. However, the Prime Minister as seen in a blurry photograph in
TW: Out of Time
(set in late 2007) looks male.

The official “Vote Saxon” website states that Lucy’s father (mentioned, but not named, in
The Sound of Drums
) is called Lord Cole of Tarminster, so it’s likely her maiden name was “Lucy Cole”.

[
1084
]
Love & Monsters

[
1085
] Dating “The Lodger” (
DWM
#368) - This would seem to fit into the gap between
The Christmas Invasion
and
New Earth
. This strip contains a few jokes and story beats later seen the Series 5 episode of the same name (also written by Gareth Roberts), but the two aren’t
so
similar that they become as contradictory as the two versions of
Human Nature
. Any commonalities can, ultimately, be written off as coincidence.

[
1086
] Dating
New Earth
(X2.1) - The Doctor and Rose leave the Powell Estate, some undetermined amount of time after
The Christmas Invasion
. The cheerful note on which that story ends might make one think that they intended on leaving immediately afterwards - except that in
New Earth
, the TARDIS has moved; Jackie, Mickey and Rose are all wearing different clothes; Rose now has luggage with her; and the ash from the Sycorax ship has gone. Also, they still had some Christmas food waiting inside (not to mention that they hadn’t opened any presents). It’s not impossible, though, that they left straight after
The Christmas Invasion
, returned after some unseen adventures, then left once again.