B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (191 page)

[
1245
] Dating “The Stockbridge Child” (
DWM
#403-405) - The Doctor says that it’s the “early twenty-first century”, and “mid-December”. A banner in Stockbridge reads, “Aurelia Winter Festival, ‘08”. In real life, Bonnybridge fancies itself as “the UFO capital” of Scotland.

[
1246
]
The Vengeance of Morbius
; see the dating notes for
Death in Blackpool
.

[
1247
] Dating
Death in Blackpool
(BF BBC7 #4.1) - It’s said to be Christmas Eve, but there’s confusion as to the actual year. The back cover says it’s “Christmas 2009”, which mirrors the intent of the writer, Alan Barnes. However, within the story itself, the Doctor tells Hagoth that it’s “2008”, and nothing in this or any other Lucie Miller story contradicts that assertion.

Additionally,
Death in Blackpool
takes place concurrent to Lucie returning home for six months at the end of
The Vengeance of Morbius
- an audio that saw release in 2008. For anyone listening at the time, it would’ve been reasonable to presume that Lucie had returned to either A) her native year of 2006, or B) the year simultaneous to the story’s release (2008). Certainly, there’s no evidence to make the listener intuitively think that Lucie had gone home in what was, at the time, the future - which makes a dating of 2008 a bit more aesthetically pleasing than that of 2009.

Luckily, as
Death in Blackpool
takes place on Christmas Eve and
Voyage of the Damned
happens on Christmas Day itself, there’s no need to explain why nobody in the audio story is distracted by news coverage of a cruise ship plummeting from space toward Buckingham Palace. Either way, Lucie - who meets the Doctor in 2006 - has done a remarkable job at keeping her family from realising that she’s been gallivanting off in time and space for two or three years.

[
1248
] Dating
Voyage of the Damned
(X4.0) - Wilf spells out that
The Christmas Invasion
happened “Christmas before last”,
The Runaway Bride
occurred “last year”.

[
1249
] As inferred from
The Stolen Earth
.

[
1250
] Dating
Turn Left
(X4.11) - This is the alternative version of
Voyage of the Damned
. In that story, the Doctor believed that all life on Earth would be wiped out when the
Titanic
hit, although it’s not quite as severe here. London is presumably not evacuated in the alternate timeline (as it was in the original) because the Doctor wasn’t around to phone in a warning.

[
1251
] “The Screams of Death”. She puts her lock-picking to use in such stories as
The Beast Below
.

[
1252
] Events in 2009 include the “present day” sequences of
Doctor Who
Series 4; the last two episodes of
Torchwood
Series 2;
Planet of the Dead
; the “interim” (i.e. post-Series 2)
Torchwood
novels, audios and comics featuring Jack, Gwen and Ianto;
Torchwood
Series 3 (a.k.a.
TW: Children of Earth
);
The Sarah Jane Adventures
Series 2; the first half of
The Sarah Jane Adventures
Series 3; the BBC fourth Doctor audio series
Hornets’ Nest
and
The End of Time
(TV).

[
1253
] “Two years” before
SJA: The Curse of Clyde Langer.

[
1254
] “Three months” before
TW: Bay of the Dead.

[
1255
] “Four years” before
Autonomy
.

[
1256
] The year before “The Age of Ice”.

[
1257
] The year before
The Lodger
(TV).

[
1258
]
The Eyeless.
“They’d only just finished rebuilding” Big Ben, so this is after
The Christmas Invasion
.

[
1259
] The background to
The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky
. A car with an ATMOS sticker is seen in
Partners in Crime
, so at least some distribution of ATMOS occurs beforehand.

[
1260
] First mentioned in
Partners in Crime
, explained in
The Stolen Earth
.

[
1261
] Dating
Peri and the Piscon Paradox
(BF CC #5.8) - “It’s definitely Earth, Los Angeles, 2009 AD”, the Doctor says, in agreement with the blurb.

[
1262
] Dating
The Sontaran Games
(
Quick Reads
#4) - This has a contemporary or very near-future setting, although no year is specified.

[
1263
] Dating
TW:
“The Return of the Vostok” (
TW
webcomic #1) - The opening caption says, “Cardiff, March”. The year isn’t specified, but the story was released in February 2009, and - owing to Owen and Tosh’s presence - occurs before the Series 2 finale.

[
1264
] Dating
Partners in Crime
(X4.01) - No month is given here, but in the alternate timeline in
Turn Left
, the Adipose incident takes place in March. An Adipose Industries customer tells Donna that she “started taking the pills on Thursday” and has been doing so for “five days”, meaning the story begins on a Tuesday. It concludes the next day.

[
1265
] Dating
Turn Left
(X4.11) - It’s at least “eight weeks” since the
Titanic
disaster, as the Colasantos family have been living in Leeds that long, and the Nobles are told they face “another three months” stuck where they are unless they relocate to Leeds.

[
1266
] Dating
The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky
(X4.5-4.6) - The month isn’t given, but the dating can be extrapolated from the alternative universe seen in
Turn Left
, and the fact that only “a few days” have passed since Donna left with the Doctor in
Partners in Crime
. Frustratingly, Martha walks past a wall calendar that is too blurry to make out.

The Brigadier also mentions being in Peru in
SJA: Enemy of the Bane
. Russell T Davies has said that UNIT’s name change resulted from the United Nations asking that its name not be associated with the group, although UNIT is said to still receive UN funding.

[
1267
]
The Doctor’s Daughter

[
1268
]
The Taking of Chelsea 426

[
1269
] Dating
Turn Left
(X4.11) - This is the parallel timeline’s version of
The Poison Sky
.

[
1270
] Dating
TW: Fragments
and
TW: Exit Wounds
(
TW
2.12-2.13) - The repeated flashback segments in
TW: Fragments
best align with established
Torchwood
continuity if the final two episodes of Series 2 occur in 2009. Most relevantly, it’s established that Ianto approached Jack for a job “21 months” ago, after the destruction of Torchwood One (in
Doomsday
) in 2007. If
Doomsday
is indeed set in July 2007, then
Fragments
would occur in April 2009. It might seem like a glitch when Jack tells the Torchwood of 1901 to deep-freeze him and set the alarm for “107 years’ time...”, suggesting a target year of 2008, but if he’s unearthed late in 1901, he could easily be rounding down from, “107 years and a few months”.

[
1271
]
TW: Lost Souls

[
1272
] Dating
SJA: The Last Sontaran
(
SJA
2.1) -
The Sontaran Stratagem
/
The Poison Sky
are referenced in detail, so it’s after those stories. No mention is made of events of
The Stolen Earth
, and, notably, both Maria’s mum Chrissie and Professor Skinner’s daughter Lucy become incredulous upon learning that aliens are real. Chrissie isn’t portrayed as the brightest of people, but Lucy - as the daughter of a man whose job is to search for friendly life in outer space - would surely better keep track of this sort of thing. The point is that while it’s a little suspect to think that they haven’t noticed all the very public alien events that have taken place throughout New
Who
,
Torchwood
and
The Sarah Jane Adventures
before now, it’s barking mad to think that they’re still in the dark after events of
The Stolen Earth
/
Journey’s End
. Moreover, this reflects a marked shift within
The Sarah Jane Adventures
Series 2 itself - Clyde’s dad mentions “those Dalek things” (i.e.
The Stolen Earth
/
Journey’s End
) mid-way through the series in
SJA: The Mark of the Berserker
, and by
SJA: Enemy of the Bane
, the last story of Series 2, the Brigadier can bluff his way out of a tight spot by saying that, “as the cat’s out of the bag” with regards aliens, he’s now at liberty to reveal details of his UNIT days in his memoirs.

While it’s very counter-intuitive, the best fit is to place
The Last Sontaran
prior to
The Stolen Earth
(i.e. in spring 2009), and to set the rest of
The Sarah Jane Adventures
Series 2 later in the year. (The alternative would be to set
The Last Sontaran
at least six weeks prior to
SJA: The Day of the Clown
, which would mean that the Park Vale school year has started nearly a month earlier than normal - see
SJA: Revenge of the Slitheen
and
SJA: The Nightmare Man
- for no discernible reason.) It might be relevant that when mention is made of the Doctor, Sarah Jane gives no clue that she’s met him recently in
Journey’s End
, further suggesting that story hasn’t happened yet.

Where Maria is concerned, a pre-
The Stolen Earth
dating makes some sense: if her father gets the job offer in spring, she might be allowed to finish out the school year (during the “six weeks” that pass prior to the epilogue of
The Last Sontaran
), and they move to America at the start of summer. It also works better to assume that not that long has passed since
The Poison Sky
for Kaagh (as opposed to a fall dating for
The Last Sontaran
, which would mean that he’s evidently been sitting around Earth for some months doing nothing). The only real glitch to all of this, then, is that when Luke gets an email dated 9th October from Maria in
The Day of the Clown
, it’s treated as if it’s the first time she’s gotten in touch with her old gang, when one would expect that she might have done so some time prior.