Now: Nineteen Sixty Seven
Wonderland Novella, published 2003 Doctor: 2, with 4 (g)
featuring
Polly, Ben
Written
by Mark Chadbourn.
Takes
place in San Francisco, Ca.; self-dated January, 1967 CE.
San Francisco was a city and port on the coast of California, some
560 kilometres northwest of Los Angeles.
The Annotation Autopsy of Agent A Short story,
published 2018 Doctor: 0
Featuring the Second War in Heaven
Written by Simon Bucher-Jones.
dated January 1967 CE. Jennifer Alistoun of the Joseph Conrad-referencing starship
Narcissus, would appear to be an analogue of Ellen Ripley of the Joseph Conrad-
referencing starship Nostromo, implying that the xenomorphs of the Alien sequence of
films are manifestations of the Enemy, and the species whose history they infect are those
featured in the Predator sequence. A reference to the British Rocket Group suggests that
the rocket crew in The Quatermass Experiment are also infected by the Enemy, whose
manifestation is also implicitly featured in the films The Mist and The Thing. The
narrator implies that Kennedy must be retroactively assassinated by the Great Houses/ Time
Lords, suggesting that the Time Lord seen in The Contract, and indeed the Master in Who
Killed Kennedy were not acting in an entirely freelance capacity.
The Second War in Heaven is a conflict pursued by the Time Lords across space and time,
laying in the Doctor’s future up until the point where it forms an oxbow reality intersecting
with his past. It is Schroedinger’s conflict, its inevitability superimposed on its never having
happened. But that’s just his neck of the five-dimensional woods: it is the primary reality
for a lot of the people, a lot of the time. It is waged against The Enemy, a combatant who
can wage war against the Time Lords entirely on their own terms. The Great Houses of the
Time Lords obsessively refuse to identify the Enemy, as the war is fought for the territories
of Cause and Effect, and the Enemy’s identity depends on its outcome. Sometimes the
Enemy’s nature comes partially or even sharply into focus as something it cannot possibly
be at other times, as the battle and its implications ebb and flow. Even more unsettlingly,
the Time Lords’ own identity, which should be the most fixed point of their view of reality,
(or the Spiral Politic as the Great Houses call it) is itself something that moves with the
fortunes of war. The Skull and the Soldier suggests that the Time Lords deliberately mutated
the Second War in Heaven into the The Last Great Time War, a fundamentally different
conflict waged by essentially different Time Lords, and one characterised by despair, as if
the Time Lords found despair a preferable alternative to uncertainty. We can be sure that
the Doctor had nothing to do with this decision, as he or she would always prefer uncertainty to despair. As the Doctor represents a catastrophic sweeping away of, say, Barbara and Ian’s preconceptions, the War represents an analogous sweeping away of those of the Time Lords. Jackie Tyler is afraid that after too long with the Doctor her daughter will no longer be human: after enough exposure to the War, the Great Houses are similarly no longer the Time Lords.
One Wednesday Afternoon Short story, published 2005 Doctor: 5
featuring
Turlough
Written
by Alison Jacobs.
Takes
place in Nottingham; self-dated early spring, 1967 CE.
Vislor
Turlough is a humanoid of
non-Tellurian origin from the planet Trion. Not that much is known about Trion
biology, but on the cautious assumption that it’s not too dissimilar to
Tellurian biology, I would expect him to have been born in the late 1960s CE.
Nottingham was a city in England, its landlocked county,
Nottinghamshire, lying south of Yorkshire.
Things That Doctor Who Writers Who Want To Set Things
In “The Present” Should Find Difficult To Ignore. Though Quite Likely They’ll
Just Pile More Stuff In.
RIVAL
ALIENS SKIRMISH IN NOTTINGHAM.
Operation Volcano
Comic story, published 2018 Doctor: 7
Featuring Ace, the Counter-Measures Group
Written by Andrew Cartmel.
Takes place in Australia; self-dated May 1967 CE. By this stage, the Counter-Measures Group are all officially dead, so this is all clearly very hush-hush.The Monsters from the Past Comic story, published 1967 Doctor: 2
featuring
Gillian, John
Written
by Roger Noel Cook.
contemporary to publication Takes place in New York, NY.
Things That Doctor Who Writers Who Want To Set Things
In “The Present” Should Find Difficult To Ignore. Though Quite Likely They’ll
Just Pile More Stuff In.
NEW
YORK IS OVERRUN BY ANIMATED MODELS OF DINOSAURS, SUPPORTED BY COORDINATED
CARNIVORES FROM THE ZOO.
The Owl Service
by Alan Garner, published in 1967, is set in a Welsh valley, the prosperity of
which depends on three unfortunate young people in every generation acting out
a variation of the legend of Blodeuwedd, the woman made out of flowers, and her
tragic love-triangle with Lieu and Gronw. Faction Paradox operate entirely
through applied ritual, travelling through time and maintaining the Eleven-Day
Empire. It seems quite narratively compatible with this that ritual played out
since, the novel implies, the stone age, should as a matter of practical
engineering maintain the good fortune of a remote settlement. The involvement
of the Faction or another War-Time power is entirely plausible.
The Perpetual Bond Audio Drama, released 2011 Doctor: 1
Featuring
Steven, Oliver
Written
by Simon Guerrier.
Takes
place in London, self-dated the sixties. A snatch of All You Need Is Love places it after July 1967 CE.
Oliver Harper
is a Tellurian born in approximately 1938 CE, from the age of Tom Allen, the
actor portraying him, at the time of this recording. During this story he first
leaves linear time, being aboard the TARDIS when it dematerialises.
The Secret Keeper Charity
short story, published 2016 Doctor: 2
Featuring the Great Intelligence, Lethbridge-Stewart
Written by Nick Campbell.
Informed guess Takes place in Somerset; self-dated “the
1960s” CE.
easily; in fact its elaborate strategies suggest that it doesn’t find anything in this universe
easy, supporting the Doctor’s opinion that it comes from the universe before this one, and
that all the ingenuity it displayed as Yog-Sothoth, the chief strategist of the Great Old Ones
(All Consuming Fire), is necessary for it to operate in a reality with a fundamentally different
nature to the one in which it was bred.
Somerset is a county of southwest England, lying
on the Bristol Channel.
Party Fears Two Short story, published 2013 Doctor: 0
Featuring Iris Wildthyne, with Senor 105, Faction Paradox, and the Manleigh Halt
Irregulars (glimpse)
Written by Stuart Douglas.
Informed guess Takes place in Las Vegas, Na; self-dated
1967 CE.
Senor 105 is a Tellurian born in the 1910s CE.
Shadow of the
Vaipid Comic story, published 2009 Doctor: 10
Featuring Heather, Wolfie
Written by
Christopher Cooper.
Informed guess Takes place in and above London; self-dated 1967 CE.
Wolfgang Ryter, known as Wolfie,
is a Tellurian born in 1993 CE.
Thin Ice Audio Drama, released 2011 Doctor: 7
Featuring
the Time Lords, the Ice Warriors, Ace,
with Raine (glimpse)
Written
by Marc Platt, from a story by Andrew Cartmel.
Takes
place in London and Moscow; self-dated November 1967 CE.
Raine Creevy
is a Tellurian born in 1967 CE, in fact delivered by the Doctor in the course
of this story.
Moscow
was a European city, at this time the capital of Earth’s largest nation, the
Union of Soviet Socialistic Republics, often known as the USSR, which occupied
the far east of Europe and the entire north of Asia.
Total Stories Considered 76
Proportion Written By Women 9%
Top Docs
1 15 stories
7 9 stories
2 6 stories Climber!
4 5 stories Climber!
11 5 stories
5 3 stories Climber!
6 3 stories
8 3 stories
10 3 stories Climber!
Unbound 3 stories
9 2 stories Climber!
3 1 story
12 1 story
13 1 story
Top Twenty Recurring Elements
London 38 stories
The Intrusion Counter-Measures Group 21
stories
Regional England 13 stories
North America 12 stories Climber!
Barbara and Ian 9 stories
Susan 7 stories
Continental Europe 7 stories
Christmas 6 stories
Steven 6 stories
Ace 6 stories Climber!
The Daleks and Davros 4 stories
Iris Wildthyme 4 stories Climber!
Polly and Ben 4 stories Climber!
Coal Hill School 3 stories =
The Time Lords 3 stories = Climber!
Lethbridge-Stewart 3 stories = Climber!
Gillian and John 3 stories = Climber!
Mars and the Ice Warriors 3 stories = Climber!
Dodo 3 stories =
The K9s 3 stories =
Clara 3 stories =
Top Decades
The Teens 42 stories
The Noughties 20 stories
The Sixties 9 stories
The Nineties 5 stories
The Eighties 1
story
And Top Years
2013 9 stories
2012 6 stories Climber!
2014 6 stories
2015 6 stories
2005 3 stories Climber!
2011 4 stories Climber!
2016 4 stories Climber!
2018 4 stories Climber!
1965 3 stories
1966 3 stories
2000 3 stories
2003 3 stories
1967 2 stories New entry!
2004 2 stories
2007 2 stories
2009 2
stories New entry!
Total Writers (including showrunners, script editors, anthology
editors) 53
Proportion of Female Writers 13%
Top Writers
John Dorney 5 stories
Justin Richards 5 stories
Andrew Cartmel 5 stories Climber!
Matt Fitton 4 stories
David Whitaker 4 stories
Simon Guerrier 3 stories Climber!
Ken Bentley 2 stories
Gerry Davis 2 stories
James Goss 2 stories
Steve Lyons 2 stories
Jonathon Morris 2 stories
Terry Nation 2 stories
Eddie Robson 2 stories
Cavan Scott 2 stories
Milton Subotsky 2 stories
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