B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (26 page)

[
156
]
I, Davros:
“Corruption”. This is a cheeky explanation for why the male Thals so outnumber the females in all three of their TV stories. The Planistavian Age was “a hundred million years” ago according to Davros.

[
157
] Dating “A Glitch in Time” (
DWM
#179) - It’s “the Cretaceous”, so between 145 and 65 million years ago.

[
158
] “Several million years” before
Time Zero.

[
159
] Dating
Benny: The Sword of Forever
(Benny NA #14) - The timeframe is given.

[
160
] Dating
Earthshock
(19.6)
-
The Doctor dates the extinction of the dinosaurs, and confirms that the freighter has travelled to that era, back “sixty-five million years”. In the original TV version, the pattern of prehistoric Earth’s continents are those of modern-day Earth. A correction was attempted for the DVD release, where an effects option allows the viewer to see an updated special effect. However, the correction itself is historically awry, as it features the super-continent Pangea, when the proper configuration should be somewhere between Pangea and the present day.

[
161
]
Benny: Epoch: Judgement Day

[
162
] Dating
Benny: The Adolescence of Time
(Benny audio #9.2) - The blurb says that the story occurs “many years” after the freighter collided with Earth (
Earthshock
) and enough time has passed that only one of the characters involved is old enough to have remembered the impact. The story helps to bridge the freighter impact with the rise of the Silurians; it’s implied that the “psychic forces” released by the collision helped to develop the Silurians’ third eyes, and the relocation of the flying reptiles to the ground presumably unifies the reptile-people into a single society. See the When Did The Silurians Rule The Earth? sidebar.

[
163
] Dating
The Boy That Time Forgot
(BF #110) - Adric claims to be “more than five hundred years old”, so that long (give or take) has passed since
Earthshock
.

[
164
]
SJA: The Lost Boy

[
165
] “Fifty million years” before
The Company of Friends:
“Benny’s Story”.

[
166
]
All Consuming Fire

[
167
]
Doctor Who and the Silurians, The Sea Devils, Benny: The Adolescence of Time.
See the When Did the Silurians Rule the Earth? sidebar.

[
168
] According to the Doctor in
The Hungry Earth
. This line accounts for the physical differences between the Silurians in that story and their previous appearances, and presumably also accounts for the differences between the Silurians in
Doctor Who and the Silurians
and those in
Warriors of the Deep
(and, by extension, the winged race in
Benny: The Adolescence of Time
).

[
169
]
The Scales of Injustice

[
170
]
Doctor Who and the Silurians

[
171
]
Blood Heat

[
172
] According to Eldane in
Cold Blood
.

[
173
]
Warriors of the Deep

[
174
]
The Hungry Earth
. The implication is that Silurians lived in jungle areas, although the next episode,
Cold Blood
, suggests they lived in deserts.

[
175
]
Blood Heat, The Scales of Injustice, Bloodtide.

[
176
]
The Scales of Injustice

[
177
] “The Devil of the Deep”

[
178
]
All-Consuming Fire

[
179
]
The Crystal Bucephalus
, named in
The Taking of Planet 5
. The name was spelled Urgmundasatra in
Benny: Twilight of the Gods.

[
180
] “Final Genesis”

[
181
]
Tomb of Valdemar

[
182
] “Final Genesis”. This is set in a parallel universe, and it’s unclear if Mortakk also lived in ours.

[
183
]
Doctor Who and the Silurians

[
184
]
Bloodtide

[
185
]
The Scales of Injustice

[
186
]
Cold Blood

[
187
]
Doctor Who and the Silurians

[
188
]
The Scales of Injustice

[
189
] Dating “Twilight of the Silurians” (
DWW
#21-22) - It’s “millions of years before history began”. There’s a note to the effect that the Silurians are also known as Eocenes.

[
190
] Dating
Bloodtide
(BF #22) - It’s set at the time the Silurians are going into hibernation, “over a million years ago”, and “ten years” after Earth’s surface has become uninhabitable. In
Doctor Who and the Silurians
and
The Scales of Injustice
, it’s stated that the Silurians don’t revive because Earth’s climate stabilises below the levels the Silurians set. In
Bloodtide
, Tulok claims he prevented the reactivation, and the Doctor finds evidence of his sabotage.

[
191
]
Cold Blood

[
192
]
Doctor Who and the Silurians

[
193
]
Cold Blood
. It’s unclear if Malokeh’s family remained awake the whole time, or periodically woke up to check progress, just as it’s not explained why they didn’t bother waking the other Silurians at any point after they realised the Earth was habitable once more.

[
194
] “Twenty million years, give or take” before
Eternity Weeps
, according to Benny.

[
195
] See The Creation of the Cybermen sidebar.

[
196
]
The Tenth Planet

[
197
]
The Tenth Planet
, and elaborated in
Spare Parts
.

[
198
] According to the sixth Doctor in
Attack of the Cybermen
. The implication seems to be that Mondas left the solar system deliberately and under its own power. However,
Spare Parts
shows the propulsion unit first being used at the far end of Mondas’ journey.

[
199
]
The Quantum Archangel

[
200
] Dating “The Cybermen” (
DWM
#215-238) - “The Cybermen” strip covered the early history of Mondas. It places the creation of the Cybermen in the Age of the Reptile People, which may or may not support the date for the creation of the Cybermen less than five million years ago given in “The World Shapers” (see the When Did the Silurians Rule the Earth? sidebar).

[
201
] “The World Shapers”

[
202
] Dating
The Keys of Marinus
(1.5) - There is no way of dating this story in relation to Earth’s history, but taking the comic strips into account, it has to happen before “The World Shapers”. As it’s set on Mondas, the only place it can fit is after the first fall of the Cyberman civilisation seen in “The Cybermen”.

There’s confusion within the chronology of the story - Arbitan seems to state that Yartek is at least thirteen hundred years old (as the Conscience was built two thousand years ago, and Yartek broke its conditioning after seven centuries). Arbitan has been working to upgrade the Conscience to defeat the Voord, and he and his followers have hidden the micro-keys around the planet, but there’s no indication of how long Arbitan’s been at work. Arbitan is mortal and feeling the effects of old age, and there’s nothing to suggest anyone on Marinus has anything other than a normal human lifespan.

[
203
] Dating “The Cybermen” (
DWM
#215-238) - It’s “three thousand years” after the previous strip.

[
204
] Dating “The World Shapers” (
DWM
#127-129) - The story is set no more than five million years in the past, as the Time Lords calculate that the Cybermen will become a force for peace in that time, and they haven’t even by our far future.

The Doctor mentions the Fishmen of Kandalinga, from the first
Doctor Who Annual,
and the TARDIS initially lands on a platform very like the one seen in the illustrations from that story. However, as the name suggests, that story was set on Kandalinga, not Marinus.

When Were the Cybermen Created?

It’s unclear when Mondas leaves the solar system. In
The Tenth Planet
, the Doctor says it was “millions of years” ago. The Cyberman Krang says it was “aeons”, and an aeon is a billion years. But the Mondasians were “exactly like” humans when Mondas started to drift away. As the land masses of the “twin” planets of Earth and Mondas are identical, it seems logical that life evolved in the same way and at the same rate on both worlds (we have to gloss over the fact that aliens such as the Daemons and Scaroth accelerated human development on Earth, but presumably not on Mondas).

“The World Shapers” sets the origins of the Cybermen within five million years of the present day - the Time Lords, at least, believe the Cybermen will be a force for good five million years after their creation. David Banks, in both his
Cybermen
book and his novel
Iceberg
, dated Mondas’ departure to 10,000 BC.
The Terrestrial Index
concurred. Banks suggested that the “edge of space” was the Oort Cloud surrounding the solar system. The audio
Spare Parts
contradicts that, saying that Mondas reaches the Cherrybowl Nebula, and states that Mondas left orbit because of the moon’s arrival.
Real Time
says Mondas left “millennia” ago. In a story outline for a proposed sixth Doctor story,
Genesis of the Cybermen
, Gerry Davis set the date of the Cybermen’s creation at “several hundred years BC”.
Timelink
notes that as the Fendahl planet was the “fifth” twelve million years ago, Mondas must have already left its orbit by that point.

Over the years, a number of fans - including the first two versions of
Ahistory
- have speculated that the Mondasians and the Silurians were contemporaries, linking the disaster that put the Silurians into hibernation with the one that threw Mondas out of its orbit. There’s little to either support or contradict this in the stories themselves. The Cyberman design seems to echo the Silurian third eye at the top of the head, but the Cybermen clearly aren’t cyborg Silurians. Not only are we told in
The Tenth Planet
that the Cybermen “were exactly like you [humans] once”, the same story shows them with human hands, not reptilian ones. “The Cybermen” strip in
DWM
, though, ingeniously solves that problem by depicting the Cybermen as descendents of apes augmented by the Silurians.