Now:
Nineteen Sixty Six
Dead Air Audio Book,
released 2010 Doctor: 10
Written by
James Goss.
informed guess Takes place off the coast of the UK; self-dated 1966 CE.
The Anachronauts Audio Drama,
released 2012 Doctor: 1
Featuring Steven, Sara Kingdom
Written by Simon Guerrier.
informed guess Ostensibly
takes place partly in Berlin; self-dated 1966 CE.
This Sporting Life
Audio short story, released 2016 Doctor: 1
Featuring Steven, Dodo
Written by Una McCormack.
Takes place in London; self-dated March
1966 CE.
Doctor Who and the House on Oldark Moor Short story, published 2000 Doctor: Unbound
featuring
Unbound Susan, Unbound Barbara, Unbound
Ian
Written
by Justin Richards.
informed guess Takes place on Oldark Moor, between Doctor Who and the Daleks and Daleks – Invasion Earth 2150 AD (and
Doctor Who will have been aiming the Tardis at 1965 CE.)
“Is
it a bird?” asked the early Channel Four continuity announcer, rhetorically.
“Is it a plane? Is it 1950s Ministry of Defence footage of the Blue Streak
missile? Well, yes, it is, actually, but it’s also Invasion!” He was
sarkily drawing attention to the low budget of the film he was introducing, the
eponymous 1966 sci-fi drama in which a humanoid extra-terrestrial is injured by
a car late on a foggy country road, and taken to a hospital that is then
besieged by two pursuing aliens. What makes it wonderful is being directed as
intense sixties British TV naturalism, as if it were a Wednesday Play or an
episode of Z-Cars, all overlapping dialogue, irritable pauses and exasperated
smoking. The details of the story are vague and generic enough for it to be
incorporated into Doctor Who narrative, and I’d certainly like to, as the
original story was by the great Robert Holmes, not long before he started
working on the programme itself.
The War Machines TV story, broadcast 1966 Doctor: 1
featuring
Dodo, Polly, Ben
Written
by Ian Stuart Black, script edited by Gerry Davis
Takes
place in London, ending simultaneously with The
Faceless Ones.
Polly Wright
is a Tellurian, born in 1942 CE.
Benjamin
Jackson, known as Ben, is a
Tellurian born in 1942 CE. During this story, Polly and Ben first leave linear
time, being aboard the TARDIS as it dematerialises.
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.
CENTRAL
LONDON IS TAKEN OVER BY THE WAR MACHINES
In
fact you’d think that people warning of an existential threat to humanity posed
by the emergence of Artificial Intelligence would make a bigger deal of the close
shave we had in 1966 with WOTAN. Notoriously, the supercomputer called the
Doctor “Doctor Who”, which we now know is exactly the kind of mistake you would
expect of AI generated speech.
The Rag & Bone Man’s Story Short story, published 2004 Doctor: 1
featuring
Susan
Written
by Colin Brake.
Takes
place in London; the later section dated July 1966 CE, during The War Machines.
The Faceless Ones TV story, broadcast 1967 Doctor: 2
featuring Polly, Ben, Jamie
Written
by David Ellis and Malcolm Hulke, script edited by Gerry Davis.
Takes
place at Gatwick Airport; self-dated July 1966 CE. The enigmatic
extraterrestial humanoids whom the Doctor eventually helps, off camera, are
never given a name apart from “chameleons”, but they have the technology
implied by their ability to traverse interstellar space practically, they
prefer not to draw attention to themselves, and they are subject to lively
political conflict. I suggest they may be Turlough’s mysterious people, the
Trions.
James
McCrimmon, known as Jamie, is a
Tellurian, born in 1724 CE.
Although
Gatwick was an airport serving
London, it was located about forty kilometres south, in Sussex.
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.
MANY
THOUSANDS OF TRAVELLERS FROM GATWICK ARE KIDNAPPED FOR SEVERAL WEEKS
Extra Time Novel,
published 2012 Doctor: 11
Featuring
Amy, Rory
Writen by Richard Dungworth.
Takes place at Wembley Stadium; self-dated
July 1966 CE.
Wembley was the location of London’s principal
sports stadium.
The Love Invasion Comic
story, published 2005 Doctor: 9
Featuring Rose, with Polly, Ben (glimpse)
Written by Gareth Roberts and Clayton
Hickman.
Takes place in London; self-dated July
1966 CE.
Rose Tyler is a Tellurian, born in
approximately 1986 CE.
The Monsters from Earth Illustrated
short story, published 1965 Doctor: 1
Featuring the Sensorites
Written
either by David Whitaker or Dennis Spooner.
Takes
place partly on Earth; self-dated 1966 CE, probably summer. Two Tellurian
children named Barker leave linear time, being aboard the TARDIS when it
dematerialises, accompanied, in a fine
example of nominative determinism, by their dog.
The Sensorites are bipeds inhabiting a planet named The
Sense-Sphere.
The Veiled Leopard Audio Drama,
released 2006 Doctors: 5, 7 (glimpse)
featuring
Peri, Erimem, Ace, Hex
Written
by Iain McLaughlin and Claire Bartlett
informed guess Takes place in Monte Carlo; self-dated 1966 CE.
Perperguillam
Brown, known as Peri, is a Tellurian
born in 1966 CE.
Erimemushinteperem,
known as Erimem, is a Tellurian born
in 1419 BCE.
Thomas
Hector Schofield, known as Hex, is a
Tellurian born in 1998 CE.
Monte Carlo is a monarchy of Europe, enclaved on the
Mediterranean coast of France.
Dance of the Voodoo Valkyries Short story, published 2011 Doctor: 0
Featuring Iris Wildthyme
Written by David A McIntee.
Takes place in Yorkshire; self-dated late summer. Count Dumarest and his associates,who are not that old, served in World War II, and the design of Mrs Heron’s clothingplaces it no later than the nineteen-seventies. It was in 1966 that Carry On Screaming,the Carry On parody of a horror film, was released and, as it happens, Sid James did notappear in it. I mention this because the Count, as described, is pretty much Sid James.Yorkshire, the County of York and the largest in England, was on the North Sea coast of England, east of Lancashire.
Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 AD Film, released 1966 Doctor:Unbound
featuring
Unbound Daleks
Written
by Milton Subotsky and David Whitaker, after a script by Terry Nation.
contemporary to release Begins and ends in the UK.
J G Ballard’s 1966 novel The Crystal World is, like his other early novels, a vision of a world transformed by catastrophe, but here the catastrophe is uniquely vast and strange: reality is crystallising into a state without physical movement, and therefore time or entropy: the novel’s astronomers report that distant galaxies are being absorbed, but the novel concentrates on the jungle of Cameroon, as a number of obsessive Europeans find the temptation to surrender themselves to a glittering immortality/extinction overwhelming. A phenomenon this vast and strange suggests the Second War in Heaven: clearly this apocalypse is not in the Doctor’s timeline, but could represent a mad attempt by, I would guess, the Great Houses to deny the Enemy the universe by simply ending the possibility of change. Happily, we may assume it was negated.
The Sleuth Slayers Short story, published 2005 Doctor: 0
featuring
Iris Wildthyme
Written
by Jake Elliot.
informed guess Takes place in London. It is a pastiche of an episode
of The Avengers: its character of Georgie Price-Jones appeared in an episode in
1966 CE.
For the Man Who Has Everything Short story,
published 2007 Doctor: 8
Featuring UNIT
Written by Dan Abnett.
Takes place in London; self-dated December 1966 CE. However
you date UNIT stories, it seems unlikely that it existed as early as this,
except perhaps as a currently unutilized budget; also, by ‘Home Secretary’, Dan
Abnett appears to mean something like Permanent Under-secretary at the Home
Office rather than a peer or Member of Parliament.
The United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, known as UNIT, was an organisation with a
similar brief to the Intrusions Counter-Measure Group, but under the aegis of
the United Nations Organisation, a sort of trade association for national
governments.
Christmas in Toronto Short
story, published 2008 Doctor: 7
Written by Andrew Cartmel.
Takes place in Toronto; self-dated Christmas 1966
CE.
The Rhino of Twenty-Three Strand Street Illustrated short story, published 2018
Doctor: 13
Featuring the Judoon
Written by Dave Rudden.
Total Stories Considered 66
Proportion Written By Women 9%
Top Docs
1 14 stories
7 7 stories
11 5 stories Climber!
4 4 stories
2 3 stories Climber!
6 3 stories
8 3 stories Climber!
Unbound 3 stories Climber!
5 2 stories Climber!
9 2 stories Climber!
10 2 stories Climber!
3 1 story
12 1 story
13 1 story
Top Twenty Recurring Elements
London 35 stories
The Intrusion Counter-Measures Group 20
stories
Regional England 11 stories Climber!
Barbara and Ian 9 stories
North America 8 stories
Susan 7 stories
Continental Europe 6 stories
Christmas 6 stories
Steven 5 stories Climber!
The Daleks and Davros 4 stories Climber!
Ace 4 stories
Coal Hill School 3 stories
Iris Wildthyme 3 stories New entry!
Polly and Ben 3 stories New entry!
Dodo 3 stories New entry!
The K9s 3 stories
Clara 3 stories
The Time Lords 2 stories =
Mars and the Ice Warriors 2 stories =
Lethbridge-Stewart 2 stories =
Gillian and John 2 stories =
Vicki 2 stories =
Sara 2 stories = New entry!
Romana 2 stories =
Mel 2 stories =
The Judoon 2 stories = New entry!
Amy and Rory 2 stories = New entry!
Dorian Gray 2 stories =
Top Decades
The Teens 36 stories
The Noughties 17 stories
The Sixties 8 stories Climber!
The Nineties 5 stories
The Eighties 1
story
And Top Years
2013 8 stories
2014 6 stories
2015 6 stories
2012 4 stories
1965 3 stories
1966 3 stories New entry!
2000 3 stories
2005 3 stories New entry!
2016 3 stories Climber!
2003 2 stories
2004 2 stories New entry!
2007 2 stories New entry!
2011 2 stories New entry!
2018 2 stories New entry!
Total Writers (including showrunners, script editors, anthology
editors) 53
Proportion of Female Writers 11%
Top Writers
John Dorney 5 stories
Justin Richards 5 stories
Matt Fitton 4 stories
David Whitaker 4 stories Climber!
Andrew Cartmel 3 stories
Ken Bentley 2 stories
Gerry Davis 2 stories New entry!
James Goss 2 stories New entry!
Simon Guerrier 2 stories New entry!
Steve Lyons 2 stories
Jonathon Morris 2 stories
Terry Nation 2 stories New entry!
Eddie Robson 2 stories
Cavan Scott 2 stories
Milton Subotsky 2 stories New entry!
Mark Wright 2 stories
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