Now: Nineteen Seventy                                                                                                        

 

United in Blood   Short story, published 2017                                                      Doctor: 0

Featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, the Travers family

Written by Mark Jones.

Takes place in Aldbury, Herts.; self-dated early January 1970 CE.


Day of the Moon    TV story, broadcast 2011                                                    Doctor: 11

Featuring River Song, the ganger Amy, Rory, the Silents

Written by Steven Moffat.

Takes place in Utah, New York, Arizona, Florida, Washington DC and on the Moon; ends self-datedly six months after July 1969 CE.

Arizona is a landlocked constituent state of the USA, southeast of California and Nevada, south of Utah, and on the Mexican border.



The Mystery of the Locked Room   Short story, published 2019                      Doctor: 0


Featuring Lethbridge-Stewart


Written by Beau Waddell.


Takes place at Home Army Fifth Operational Corps HQ and in Glasgow, after Bartlett’s

promotion to Major.


The Gulf             Novella, published 2012                                                              Doctor: 0

Featuring Senor 105, with the Cybermen (informative mention)

Written by Cody Schell.

Informed guess Takes place in Mexico; self-dated 1970 CE.


Night of the Intelligence           Novel, published 2017                        Doctor: 0

Featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, the Travers family, the Great Intelligence, with Adrienne Kramer (glimpse)

Written by Andy Frankham Allen.

Takes place variously, including the UK, Tibet and Japan; self-dated January 1970 CE.

Japan was a monarchy occupying an archipelago lying off the east coast of mainland Asia.


Brother, Where Art Thou  Short story, published 2019                                      Doctor: 0

Featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, with the Great Intelligence (informative mention)

Written by Andy Frankham-Allen.

Takes place in the UK, during Night of the Intelligence, and self-dated ten months after March 1969 CE.


The Mystery of the Drowned Bird     Short story, published 2013                   Doctor: 0

Featuring the Manleigh Halt Irregulars

Written by Eddie Robson.

Takes place in the UK; self-dated late winter, 1970 CE.


The Daughters of Earth  Novel, published 2017                                    Doctor: 0

Featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, the Travers family

Written by Sarah Groenewegen.

Takes place in Scotland; self-dated February 1970 CE.


Chicken Fried Banana Republic    Short story, published 2010                        Doctor: 0

Featuring Iris Wildthyme

Written by Jonathan Dennis.

Informed guess Takes place in and above Texas; self-dated “the seventies”. If Junior is George W. Bush, as we may reasonably suppose, it cannot be any later than his departure from Ellington Air Force Base in April 1972 CE.


The Cruel Oil       Short story, published 2018                                           Doctor: 0

Featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, the Travers family

Written by Harry Draper.

Takes place in the UK; self-dated March 1970 CE.


Piece of Mind        Illustrated short story, published 2018                                   Doctor: 0

Featuring Lethbridge-Stewart

Written by James Middleditch.

Takes place in Glastonbury, Somerset; self-dated March 1970 CE.


The Dreamer’s Lament   Novel, published 2017                                    Doctor: 0

Featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, the Travers family, with the Dominators (informative mention)

Written by Benjamin Burford-Jones.

Takes place in Somerset; self-dated March 1970 CE, and after The Daughters of Earth.


Cowpats and Comfort   Short story, published 2018                                  Doctor: 0

Featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, the Travers family

Written by Tim Gambrell.

Takes place in Bledoe, Cornwall; self-dated March 1970 CE, just after The Dreamer’s Lament.


Wherever and Whenever    Charity short story, published 2018                        Doctor: 2

Featuring Senor 105, with the Time Lords (informative mention)

Written by Cody Schell.

Informed guess Takes place in Mexico City, after Elementary, My Dear Sheila.


Project  UFO     Comic story, published 2010                                                         Doctor: 10

Featuring UNIT (Informative mention)

Written by Christopher Cooper.

Informed guess Takes place in and above London; self-dated thirty years after1940 CE.


The Underwater Menace   TV story, broadcast 1967                          Doctor: 2

featuring Atlantis, Polly, Ben, Jamie

Written by Geoffrey Orme, script edited by Gerry Davis.

Takes place on and under an island on Earth; I would locate it in the Atlantic rather than in Santorini because a) this is the suggestion implied by the bracelet from Mexico (although we know that was left by Iris Wildthyme by extraterrestrial means), b) this is the assumption that would be made in 1967 before the programme had suggested a connection between Atlantis and the Aegean Sea and c) both the subterranean civilisation and Zaroff’s activities would be more likely to remain undiscovered outside the Mediterranean basin. Much fuss has been made of the fact that there seem to have been three separate Atlantises in Doctor Who continuity, but this seems to me to be entirely plausible. “Rome” for example means the city in Italy, but “Rhoum” meant the Greek-speaking Christians of the Eastern Mediterranean, whose ancestors had been citizens of what is called in Anglophonia the Byzantine Empire, an identity still in use in the early twentieth century; while the Emperor of Rome was from the early middle ages the de facto King of Germany, often holding territories in central Europe and northern Italy. Additionally, the Seljuks of Rum were Turkish settlers in Anatolia who established their sultanate in the old eastern Roman empire: when Mehmet II captured Constantinople, he reasonably 'claimed the title “Kayser-i Rum”, Caesar of Rome, held by his successors until 1922. So, in real life, that’s Rome meaning one more place than Atlantis does in Doctor Who narrative and I could probably find more if I were a historian. Self-dated March, and, it is suggested, 1970 CE.

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.

A SUBTERRANEAN COLONY OF ANCIENT ATLANTIS IS DISCOVERED AND ITS INHABITANTS INTRODUCED TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD.


Kiss of the Ice Maiden   Novel, published 2021                              Doctor: 0


Featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, Anne Travers


Written by Michael Sloan.


Takes place in London, Edinburgh, Vienna and the Aegean Sea, soon after The Daughters of

Earth.



Give Me Five Minutes   Short story, published 2021                                            Doctor: 0


Featuring Lethbridge-Stewart


Written by Mike Warrick.


Takes place at Home Army Fifth Operational Corps HQ, some time after Christmas 1969 CE.


All the King’s Men    Short story, published 2018                                                 Doctor: 0

Featuring Lethbridge-Stewart

Written by Alyson Leeds.

Takes place in the UK; self-dated April 1970 CE.


The Life of Evans     Novella, published 2017                                                   Doctor: 0

Featuring Lethbridge-Stewart (glimpse)

Written by John Peel.

Takes place in the UK, concluding in April 1970 CE.


Jackalope     Short story, published 2011                                                                Doctor: 0

Featuring Senor 105

Written by Cody Schell.

Informed guess Takes place in the Black Hills of South Dakota; self-dated 1970 CE. Linda and Pete are skinny dipping, which they wouldn’t want to be doing in South Dakota before late April.

South Dakota was a landlocked constituent state of the USA.


Iceberg: Prelude      Short story, published 1993                                                  Doctor: 0

featuring Tobias Vaughan, and the Cybermen (informative mention)

Written by David Banks.

informed guess Takes place in London; self-dated Spring, some time before The Invasion.

Tobias Vaughan is a Tellurian born around 1924 CE, going by the age of actor Kevin Stoney when The Invasion was made.


The Grail   Novella, published 2012                                                                     Doctor: 0

Featuring Senor 105

Written by Lawrence Burton.

Informed guess Takes place in Mexico; self-dated 1970 CE, and after The Gulf as published.


The Flaming Soldier  Novella, published 2017                                              Doctor: 0

Featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, the Travers family

Written by Christopher Bryant.

Takes place in Bath, Somerset, the later sections dated April 1970 CE.


Windswept   Comic story, published 2008                                                             Doctor: 10

Featuring Donna

Written by Christopher Cooper.

Takes place in the UK; self-dated 1970 CE. A newspaper reports a general election being

called: Premier Harold Wilson called one in May of that year.

Donna Noble is a Tellurian, born around 1967 CE.


By the Time I Get to Venus     Novella, published 2012                 Doctor: 1 (glimpse)

Featuring the Cybermen, Senor 105, Theo Possible

Written by Blair Bidmead.

Informed guess Takes place on ancient Venus and in Mexico City in 1970 CE and after The Grail as published. 

Theo Possible is a time-travelling humanoid of indeterminate origin. He expresses fierce disapproval of the Time Lords, apparently on Marxist grounds, without as far as one can see doing anything particularly about it, which is historically quite Marxist, in fairness.


The Great Magician and the Spirits of the Vasty Deep   Short story, published 2018   Doctor: 0

Featuring Lethbridge-Stewart

Written by Gareth Madgwick.

Takes place in the UK; self-dated May 1970 CE.


Ice Cap Terror     Comic story, published 1968                                                      Doctor: 2

featuring Jamie

Illustrated ?and written by John Canning.

Takes place in Antarctica; self-dated 1970 CE.

Antarctica was a continent of Earth, lying around the planet’s southern rotational pole. Most of it was covered by year-round ice and it had no indigenous population: Tellurians only went there for specific reasons. It was surrounded by the Antarctic Ocean, and Australia and Africa lay, necessarily, to its north.

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.

ALIENS APPEAR ON GLOBAL TELEVISION, THREATENING TO KNOCK THE EARTH OFF ITS AXIS. SHORTLY AFTERWARDS, THE DOCTOR APPEARS TO REASSURE EVERYBODY THAT HE’S SORTED IT OUT.


A Very Private Haunting            Novel, published 2018                       Doctor: 0

Featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, the Travers family

Written by Sharon Bidwell.

Takes place in Scotland; self-dated May 1970 CE.


The New Unusual    Novel, published 2018                                               Doctor: 0

Featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, the Travers family

Written by Adrian Sherlock and Andy Frankham-Allen.

Takes place in London and Australia; self-dated June 1970 CE.


The Playing Dead   Short story, published 2016                                                   Doctor: 0

Featuring the Travers family

Written by Adrian Sherlock.

Takes place in Darwin, Australia; self-dated June 1970 CE, and after The New Unusual.


Remnant of a Haunting      Short story, published 2019                             Doctor: 0 

Featuring the Travers family

Written by Sharon Bidwell.

Takes place in Scotland; self-dated early July 1970 CE.


Moonshot      Comic story, published 1965                                                             Doctor: 1

featuring Gillian, John

Illustrated ?and written by Neville Main.

Takes place on the Moon; self dated late July, 1970 CE.

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.

A NON-APOLLO MOONLANDING PROGRAMME PUTS ASTRONAUTS ON THE MOON (IS THIS A BRITISH SPACE PROGRAMME? THIS MIGHT EXPLAIN THE NEWSPAPER’S CHAUVINISM IN IGNORING APOLLO 9 A YEAR EARLIER).


Iris Wildthyme and the Spiders from Magrs   Charity short story, published 2001  Doctor: 0

featuring Iris Wildthyme

Written by Alan Taylor.

informed guess Takes place in the UK in the very early nineteen-seventies CE.


The Man From Yesterday    Novel, published 2018                           Doctor: 0

Featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, the Travers family

Written by Nick Walters.

Informed guess Takes place in Norwich; self-dated August 1970 CE.

Norwich was the county town of Norfolk, a county on the east coast of England, lying north of Suffolk.

 

Performance, released in 1970 although largely made in 1968, centres on the fluidity of identity, helped by hallucinogens, but I’m claiming it for Doctor Who on the grounds of London Occultism. The character Turner, a traumatised rock star, appeared as Terner in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Paint It Black, where we see the cause of his trauma. Lawrence Miles steals at least one cinematographic effect from this film in Dead Romance (to great effect, of course, because it’s Lawrence Miles).

 

Cyber-Mole     Comic story, published 1968                                                          Doctor: 2

featuring the Cybermen, Gillian, John

Written by John Canning (seems to be confirmed as actual writer on this one).

Informed guess Takes place in and beneath London; self-dated 1970 CE.


The Man With the Red Case   Short story, published 2018                            Doctor: 0


featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, with Anne Travers (glimpse)


Written by Richard Ball.


Takes place on a train heading northwards out of London; self-dated “mid-Autumn””at the

dawn of the seventies”. Charmingly, Anne Travers calls Lethbridge-Stewart “Colonel”:

obviously she can’t take all this masculine military rank business seriously.


Dead Romance          Novel, published 1999          Doctor: 7 (informative mention)

Featuring the Time Lords, Chris, with the Daleks, the Vampires, Benny, the Worldsphere, the Grel, (informative mention) and an iteration of Fitz (glimpse)

Takes place mostly in a version of London, concluding in October 1970 CE. We may infer that at some time previous to this in their timeline the Time Lords have rashly allowed the Daleks to acquire time travel. Perhaps they had considered that there was so much evidence of Dalek time travel that they thought it best to be responsible for it themselves in order to exert at least some measure of control over it. I think it very likely that Khiste is a remembered iteration of Chris, and his working as a Great House agent alongside Chris represents the origins of the Great Houses’ Army of One. They have, in any case, by this time convinced Chris that the Doctor is an Evil Renegade.

Bernice Summerfield, known as Benny, was a humanoid of Tellurian descent, born on Beta Caprisis in 2540 CE.

The Worldsphere was a Dyson sphere inhabited by a civilisation of two trillion sentient beings, in a galaxy far from our own.

The Grel were a bipedal space travelling race from Grellor.


Domination Game Novel, published 2020                                               Doctor: 0

Featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, the Travers family, the Dominators, with Liz (glimpse)

Written by Alyson Leeds and Megan Frizell.

Informed guess Takes place in Gloucestershire; dated late 1970 CE in Fear of the Web.

Elizabeth Shaw, known as Liz, is a Tellurian born in 1943 CE.

Gloucestershire, the County of Gloucester, lay at the head of the Bristol Channel on the Severn Estuary, to the northeast of Somerset, the north of Wiltshire and the southeast of Herefordshire.


Tall Tales   Short story, published 2019                                                                  Doctor: 0


Featuring Lethbridge-Stewart


Written by John Peel.


Takes place in rural England, self-dated October 1970 CE, shortly after Domination Game



Fear Frequency   Novel, published 2021                                           Doctor: 0


Featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, Anne Travers, Liz


Written by George Ivanoff.


Takes place in the UK, after Domination Game.



The Grotesque   Short story, published 2021                                                        Doctor: 0


Featuring Lethbridge-Stewart


Written by Tim Beeley.


Takes place principally in Lethbridge-Stewart’s mind, on the day of his marriage.



Warriors of Montu   Novel, published 2021                                    Doctor: 0


Featuring Lethbridge-Stewart


Written by Gareth Madgwick.


Takes place in Egypt, after Fear Frequency. Alastair and Fiona are on honeymoon.



The Overseers   Novel, published 2021                                             Doctor: 0


Featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, Anne Travers


Written by James Middleditch.

Takes place on the south coast of England, after Warriors of Montu.


The Secret Santa    Novella, published 2012                                                    Doctor: 0

Featuring Senor 105

Written by Stuart Douglas.

Takes place in Mexico City; after By the Time I Get To Venus and just before Christmas.


Bite of the Morphuse!   Comic story, published 2012                                          Doctor: 11

Written by Christopher Cooper.

Informed guess Takes place in and above Detroit, Mi; self-dated 1970 CE.

Detroit was a city in Michigan, a landlocked constituent state on the northern border of the USA.

 

 

Total Stories Considered     208  

Proportion Written By Women   11%

 

Top Docs

2                 25 stories  

1                 19 stories

7                 13 stories           

11               9 stories     Climber!

10               8 stories     Climber!

8                 7 stories    

4                 6 stories             

6                 5 stories             

Unbound   5 stories             

5                 3 stories             

3                 2 stories    

9                 2 stories    

13               2 stories    

12               1 story

 

Top Twenty Recurring Elements

 

London                                                                74 stories

Lethbridge-Stewart                                           63 stories  

The Travers family                                            46 stories   Climber!

Regional England                                               36 stories           

North America                                                   35 stories  

The Intrusion Counter-Measures Group        23 stories

Scotland                                                              16 stories   Climber!

Christmas                                                            14 stories  

Iris Wildthyme                                                   13 stories

Jamie                                                                   13 stories           

The Great Intelligence                                      12 stories  

Senor 105                                                           11 stories   Climber!

Barbara and Ian                                                 10 stories

The Time Lords                                                  10 stories Climber!    

Continental Europe                                           10 stories  

Susan                                                                   9 stories

The Cybermen                                                   7 stories = New entry!

The Malakh, the werewolves and the vampires 7 stories =

Gillian and John                                                 7 stories =

The Moon                                                           7 stories = 

Ace                                                                      7 stories =

 

Top Decades

 

The Teens                                                           132 stories

The Noughties                                                    32 stories

The Sixties                                                          20 stories  

The Twenties                                                     12 stories   Climber!    

The Nineties                                                       11 stories

The Eighties                                                        1 story

 

And Top Twenty Years

 

2016                                                          22 stories

2018                                                          20 stories   Climber!

2015                                                          17 stories  

2013                                                          15 stories

2019                                                          14 stories   Climber!

2012                                                          11 stories   Climber!

2011                                                          10 stories

2017                                                          10 stories   Climber!

2021                                                           7 stories     New entry!

1968                                                          6 stories     Climber!

2014                                                          6 stories

2005                                                          5 stories    

2009                                                          5 stories    

2010                                                          5 stories     Climber!

2020                                                          5 stories      

1965                                                          4 stories

1967                                                          4 stories 

1999                                                          4 stories 

2000                                                          4 stories    

2008                                                          4 stories   New entry!

 

                  

Total Writers (including showrunners, script editors, anthology linking material writers)                                                123

Proportion of Female Writers                         14%     

 

Top Twenty Writers

 

Andy Frankham-Allen                             10 stories   New number 1!

Justin Richards                                         7 stories

John Dorney                                             6 stories    

Eddie Robson                                            6 stories     Climber!

Andrew Cartmel                                      5 stories    

Matt Fitton                                               5 stories    

Cody Schell                                               5 stories     New entry!

David Whitaker                                        5 stories    

? John Canning                                         4 stories     New entry!

Christopher Cooper                                 4 stories     New entry!

Jonathon Morris                                      4 stories             

John Peel                                                  4 stories     New entry!

Sharon Bidwell                                         3 stories=   New entry!

Lawrence Burton                                     3 stories=   New entry!

Gerry Davis                                               3 stories=    Re-entry!

Tom Dexter                                              3 stories=  

Simon Guerrier                                        3 stories=  

Alyson Leeds                                            3 stories=   New entry!

Steve Lyons                                               3 stories=           

Paul Magrs                                                3 stories=

David A McIntee                                      3 stories=

Nick Walters                                             3 stories=   New entry!

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