Late Nineteen Sixty-Three   

(from November 23rd to December 31st)                                                                                                                               

 

An Unearthly Child (Pilot Episode)    TV Story, made 1963                                 Doctor: Unbound 1

featuring an unbound Susan, an unbound Barbara, an unbound Ian, Coal Hill School

Written by Anthony Coburn, script editor David Whitaker.

Takes place in Shoreditch, a district of the metropolis of London, simultaneously with the first episode of 100,000 BC in an alternative timeline.

Susan Foreman, also known as Arkytior (Roses) and Larn (Birth of a Renegade), is a Time Lord from Gallifrey, the evidence suggesting that she was born at the birth of the Chronarchy (Lungbarrow), by my estimation some two million years before the Doctor’s native time.

Barbara Wright is a Tellurian born in or near 1936 CE (taking her O levels in 1952 CE). Ian Chesterton is a Tellurian of about Barbara’s age; old enough, in any case to have done his national service during the previous decade. During this story Barbara and Ian first leave linear time, being aboard the TARDIS when it dematerialises.

London, originally a settlement on the Thames downstream from its confluence with the Fleet, at the end of the tide’s reach and a useful inland port, was a city to which the Doctor returns an inordinate number of times. By this time, it was spread across many square kilometres on both banks of the Thames, and was an administrative county of England in its own right. Faction Paradox know there is a deep connection between ritual, narrative and time travel, and London is a city permeated by ritual and narrative: Charles Dickens, Peter Ackroyd, Michael Moorcock, Iain Sinclair, and our own Ben Aaronovitch are just a few of the authors drawn into its web, but it sprawls enigmatically in the dreams of most people who have visited it. For almost a millennium it has been the capital of England, the monarchy that occupies most of the British Isles and houses most of their population.

Coal Hill School, a secondary school, which in the British education system teaches pupils between the ages of twelve and sixteen or eighteen, was a specific location in London to which the Doctor chronically returns.


Playtime   Illustrated short story, published 1992                                                Doctor: None

featuring Sarah Jane

Written by Vanessa Bishop.

Takes place in Shoreditch, a district of London in which Coal Hill School was located, during An Unearthly Child.

Sarah Jane Smith is a Tellurian born in 1951 CE.


Shroud of Sorrow    Original novel, published 2013                                                                                                                                                                        Doctor: 11, with 2, 3, 6, 7, 9 (glimpse)

Featuring Clara, with Lethbridge-Stewart (informative mention)

Written by Tommy Donbavand.

Takes place mainly in Dallas, Tx; self-dated November 23rd 1963 CE.

Clara Oswald is a Tellurian born in 1986 CE.

Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart is a Tellurian born in 1929 CE.

North America was one of the seven continents existing on Earth at the start of the Common Era, lying in the northern hemisphere, and, again, the Doctor shows a marked tendency to return there. At this point about six or seven percent of Tellurians lived there. Texas lay on the Gulf of Mexico, and was a constituent state of the United States of America, the republic occupying the continent’s central band at this time and home to most of its population.


Those Left Behind       Short story, published 2008                                             Doctor: 4

featuring Coal Hill School, with Susan, Barbara, Ian, K9 II (informative mention)

Written by Violet Addison.

Takes place in Shoreditch, immediately after An Unearthly Child.

K9 mark II is a self-propelled artificial intelligence, apparently gendered male for cultural reasons. The Doctor constructed him presumably in the TARDIS, and therefore outside linear time, in imitation of K9 mark I, a Tellurian artefact of the late fifth millennium.


Remembrance of the Daleks   TV story, broadcast 1988                 Doctor: 7

featuring the Daleks, Davros, Ace, the Counter-Measures Group

Written by Ben Aaronovitch, script editor Andrew Cartmel.

Takes place in Shoreditch, a day or two after Barbara and Ian’s departure.

The Daleks are armoured cyborgs originating on the planet Skaro. They have developed time-travel technology, and the Doctor describes these Daleks as having come from a thousand years in the future, though I suggest their original destination is the fourth myriad CE.

Davros is a humanoid Kaled from Skaro, who supervised the genetic engineering that shaped the Daleks’ psychology, and the mechanical engineering that shaped their travel and military technology. I put his birth in the late first millennium CE.

Dorothy McShane, or Gale, known as Ace, is a Tellurian born in 1970 CE.

The Intrusion Counter-Measures Group is a secret agency of the British government formed in the early 1960s CE to investigate and contain threats beyond the realm of known scientific knowledge. It employs scientists and personnel of the Royal Air Force Regiment.


The Slyther of Shoreditch      Illustrated short story, published 2019               Doctor: 7

Featuring the Time Lords, the Daleks, the Counter-Measures Group

Written by Mike Tucker.

Takes place in Shoreditch, during the events of Remembrance of the Daleks. The Time Lords are humanoids of the planet Gallifrey, who have developed time travel technology, over three aeons before the common era (Christmas On a Rational Planet). This technology has become central to their culture, and their culture has become central to the history of the universe, as it has shaped their decisions as to what they prevent from happening and what they permit. The Doctor is one.


1963: The Assassination Games  Audio Drama, released 2013        Doctor: 7

featuring Ace, the Counter-Measures Group

Written by John Dorney.

Takes place in London; self-dated November 1963, after Remembrance of the Daleks.


The Red Lady       Audio Drama, released 2015                                                 Doctor: 8

Featuring Liv, Helen

Written by John Dorney.

(Informed guess) Takes place in London; self-dated 1963 CE.

Liv Chenka is a humanoid of the planet Kaldor, presumably of Tellurian descent; born, by my estimation, in the early fifth millennium CE.

Helen Sinclair is a Tellurian born in around 1933 CE. During this story she first leaves linear time, being aboard the TARDIS when it dematerialises.


Winter for the Adept      Audio Drama, released 2000                          Doctor: 5

featuring Nyssa

Written by Andrew Cartmel.

Takes place in Switzerland; self-dated December, 1963 CE.

Nyssa is a non-Tellurian humanoid of the Traken Union. By my estimation she was born, if that is what happens to Trakenites, a long while before the Common Era, but more of that eventually.

Switzerland was at this time a landlocked republic of Europe, another of the Earth’s seven continents at the start of the Common Era, also in the northern hemisphere, separated from North America by the Atlantic Ocean, to its west. At this point, about thirteen percent of Tellurians lived there. Geographically and geologically, it was more a sub-continental peninsular of Asia, like Arabia or India, but its inhabitants had stumbled into the Industrial Revolution ahead of everyone else and claimed continental status for themselves.

The Doctor suspects he is in the presence of “a genuine haunting”; the unquiet spirits of the deceased were more or less established as a feature of Doctor Who narrative a few years before this in Barry Letts’s novel The Ghosts of N-Space. Perhaps understandably, it has not much been used, but it is there if required.


All I Want for Christmas       Illustrated short story, published 2016                 Doctor: 1

Featuring Barbara, Ian, Vicki

Written by Jacqueline Rayner.

Takes place ostensibly in the UK and self-dated Christmas Eve, 1963 CE.

Vicki Pallister is a Tellurian or humanoid of Tellurian descent, born in the late twenty-fourth century CE.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, often shortened to the UK, was at this time the federal monarchy occupying most of the British Isles, an archipelago off the north-west coast of continental Europe.

 

 

Total Stories Considered     10

Proportion Written By Women 30%

 

Top Docs

7                 4 stories

1                 2 stories

2                 1 story

3                 1 story

4                 1 story

5                 1 story

6                 1 story

8                 1 story

9                 1 story

11               1 story

 

Top Seven Recurring Elements                       

 

London                                                                7 stories

Coal Hill School                                                  3 stories

Barbara and Ian                                                 3 stories

The Intrusion Counter-Measures Group        3 stories

Susan                                                                   2 stories

The Daleks and Davros                                     2 stories

Ace                                                                      2 stories

 

 

Top Decade

 

The Teens                                                           5 stories

 

And Top Year

 

2013                                                                    2 stories

 

Total Writers (including showrunners, script editors, anthology editors)                                                               10

Proportion of Female Writers                         30%

 

Top Writers

 

Andrew Cartmel                                                2 stories

John Dorney                                                       2 stories

 

 

 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog