Now: Nineteen Seventy-Five                                                                     

 

Deep Blue   Novel, published 1999                                                     Doctor: 5

featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, UNIT, Benton, Yates, Tegan, Turlogh, and the Moroks, the Zygons (informative mention)

Written by Mark Morris.

Takes place at Tayborough Sands, on the English coast; self-dated six months after The Green Death. Annoyingly, Tegan musing that she planned to visit her grandfather shortly after The Arc of Infinity, and could use the TARDIS to do so no matter how long she left it, suggests that The Awakening should take place little if any time after The Arc of Infinity. I shall assume that the Doctor agreed in general principle, but the technical vagaries of the TARDIS caused it to arrive in Little Hodcombe a year late anyway.

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 BRITISH SEASIDE RESORT IS MOSTLY WIPED OUT, VERY MESSILY. FEW OF THE SURVIVORS CAN REMEMBER THE DETAILS, INCLUDING UNIT PERSONNEL.

The Moroks are spacefaring humanoids of non-Tellurian origin.

Back to the Sun  Comic story, published 1973                                          Doctor: 3

featuring the Earth Inorganics

Written by Dennis Hooper.

informed guess Takes place in Wales; as published.

Smash Hits   Illustrated short story, published 1973                                 Doctor: 3

featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, the Master, UNIT

Written by a writer employed by Polystyle.

informed guess Takes place at Stonehenge, a prehistoric stone circle to be found in Wiltshire; as published.

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.

THREE MILLION BRAINWASHED PEOPLE CONVERGE ON STONEHENGE

 

Dhalgren (1975) by Samuel R Delaney describes a US city in which time is behaving in strange ways following an indescribable disaster. It is plausibly assimilable into the Second War in Heaven as a spill into contemporary Earth, like Fourth Mansions and The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, with an extra bonus that the text dips in and out of an in-story notebook that seems to have been written both before and after it, performing the fluid relationship between reality and literature that frequently occurs on the War's margins.

 

Council of War   Audio Drama, released 2013                                      Doctor: 3

Featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, UNIT, Benton, with Yates (informative mention)

Written by Simon Barnard and Paul Morris.

informed guess Takes place in Kettering, Northants.; after The Green Death.

Secret of the Tower   Comic story, published 1973                                   Doctor: 3

featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, UNIT, with Yates (informative mention)

Written by a writer employed by Polystyle.

informed guess Takes place under London; as published.

Doctor Who and The Time Warrior   Novelisation, published 1978   Doctor: 3

featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, the Sontarans, UNIT, Sarah Jane

Adapted by Terrance Dicks from a script by Robert Holmes.

informed guess Takes place in the UK; as broadcast. Sarah Jane leaves linear time, being aboard the TARDIS when it dematerialises. The Doctor’s meeting with her begins the seventh phase of the Doctor’s stint as UNIT scientific adviser.

Invasion of the Dinosaurs   TV story, broadcast 1974           Doctor: 3

featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, UNIT, Benton, Yates, Sarah Jane

Written by Malcolm Hulke, script edited by Terrance Dicks.

informed guess Takes place in London; as broadcast.

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 IN OVERRUN BY DINOSAURS AND EVACUATED. MANY PUBLIC FIGURES ARE FOOLED INTO BELIEVING THAT THEY WERE ON BOARD A SPACESHIP.

The Cross of Venus   Charity short story, published 2020             Doctor: Unbound

Written by Andrew Hickey.

informed guess Takes place on a version of Venus in a version of 1975 CE. The Doctor’s costume is Stuart but described as Georgian. Of course, in this reality Britain is ruled by a King Charles in 1975, so it is possible – however unlikely – that it might have been ruled by a George in the seventeenth century.

A True Gentleman   Audio short story, released 2010                             Doctor: 3

Written by Jamie Hailstone.

Informed guess Takes place in Scotland, after Doctor Who –The Three Doctors; the Doctor is in Bessie but alone.

Ghost Station    Audio Drama, released 2020                                           Doctor: 5

Written by Steve Lyons.

Informed guess Takes place beneath East Berlin; self-dated 1975 CE.

 

The 1975 film La Bete is a werewolf story that arguably meshes with the suggestion in Loups-Garoux, or Loop the Loup for that matter, that werewolves are creatures that move from reality to the imagination and back again. I should probably mention that its scenes of sexual activity are gobsmackingly not safe for work.

 

The Vortex   Comic story, published 1973                                                  Doctor: 3

Written by Dennis Hooper.

Informed guess Takes place in and above the UK. As published.

The Unheard Voice   Comic story, published 1973                                               Doctor: 3

Featuring Lethbridge-Stewart (informative mention)

Written by Dick O’Neill.

Informed guess Takes place in Scotland; as published.

Invasion of the Dinosaurs by Sarah Jane Smith Charity short story, published 1999

                                                                                                          Doctor: 3 (informative mention)

featuring UNIT, Sarah Jane

Written by Mike Sivier.

informed guess Takes place at UNIT HQ, not long after Invasion of the Dinosaurs.

The Splintered Man   Audio Drama, released 2017                           Doctor: 0

Featuring the Counter Measures Group

Written by Roland Moore.

informed guess Takes place in Spain, after A Gamble With Time as released.

Spain was a European monarchy, lying on the north-west coast of the Mediterranean Sea, south-west of France.

 

More grubby postwar British naturalism is on display in Vampyres (1975), in which the eponymous undead sapphists haunt a world of unemptied car ashtrays and leafy mud that sticks to your groovy footwear. Much of the film takes place in a caravan, often the sign of a shrewdly budgeted film.

 

The Disintegrator   Comic story, published 1974                                     Doctor: 3

featuring the Daleks

Written by a writer employed by Polystyle.

informed guess Takes place in London and on the Moon; as published.

Is Anyone There?   Comic story, published 1974                                      Doctor: 3

Written by a writer employed by Polystyle.

informed guess Takes place in Australia and on Morrax; as published.

Doctor Who and the Viking   Charity short story, published 2016         Doctor: 12

Featuring Clara, with Lethbridge-Stewart (im)

Written by Kara Dennison.

Informed guess Takes place mostly in Colorado, not long before the launch of the Viking One Mars mission in August 1975 CE.

Colorado was a landlocked constituent state of the USA, east of Utah.

The Paradise of Death   Audio Drama, broadcast 1993             Doctor: 3

featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, UNIT, Sarah Jane, Jeremy

Written by Barry Letts.

informed guess Takes place in the UK and elsewhere; after Invasion of the Dinosaurs by Sarah Jane Smith. I have to assume that Sarah Jane apparently meeting Lethbridge-Stewart for the first time is all a misunderstanding.

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 MAJOR SPACE THEME PARK OPENS UP ON HAMPSTEAD HEATH.

Jeremy Fitzoliver is a Tellurian. If a cub reporter in early 1975 CE, we may assume that he had left university the previous year, so I assume him to have been born about 1953 CE. He leaves linear time in this story, being aboard the TARDIS when it dematerialises.

The Metal-Eaters   Comic story, published 1974                                      Doctor: 3

Written by a writer employed by Polystyle.

informed guess Takes place in Yorkshire, then westwards, across Lancashire to Blackpool, although the Doctor says “eastwards” but he has a lot on his mind. As published.

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.

MUCH METAL IS EATEN.

 

The 1975 novel The Nature of the Beast by Peter Menegas concerns a woman’s involvement with the entity called Cernunnos, who is named in Cobweb and Ivory as leading a power in the irrational pre-Chronarchical universe. He manifests himself as a mammoth, there and implicitly in Political Animals, and is one of the few non-Gallefreyan survivors of the First War in Heaven. The lack of mammoths in this novel notwithstanding, its portrayal of Cernunnos as an ancient supernatural entity who is terrifying but morally ambiguous rather than bad seems spot on.

 

Lords of the Ether   Comic story, published 1974                                     Doctor: 3

Written by a writer employed by Polystyle

informed guess Takes place in the USA and on the Moon; as published.

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.

THERE ARE FATALITES ON SEVERAL MOON MISSIONS.

The Ghosts of N-Space   Novel, published 1995                        Doctor: 3

featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, Sarah Jane, Jeremy

Written by Barry Letts.

Takes place on an island of the Mediterranean off the coast of Sicily, itself a large island constituting part of Italy; self-dated May and dated 1975 CE by Parkin in Ahistory.

Crime at the Cinema   Audio short story, released 2020                        Doctor: 3

Featuring UNIT, Sarah Jane

Written by M H Norris.

Informed guess Takes place in Maidenhead, a few weeks after Sarah Jane has begun travelling with the Doctor.

Maidenhead was a town in the landlocked county of Berkshire, which lay south of Buckinghamshire, west of Greater London and east of Wiltshire, its perverse English pronunciation being "Barkshire".

Glorious Goodwood   Audio Driama, recorded in 1974        Doctor: 3 (informative mention)

Featuring the Daleks, Sarah Jane, with Lethbridge-Stewart (informative mention)

Written anonymously.

Informed guess Takes place at Goodwood Motor Circuit in West Sussex, sometime after The Ghosts of N-Space.

Doomcloud   Comic story, published 1974                                                Doctor: 3

featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, UNIT, Sarah Jane

Written by a writer employed by Polystyle

Informed guess Takes place in the UK, after The Ghosts of N-Space.

Cuckoo-Spit Illustrated short story, published 2006                                Doctor: 10

Featuring Rose

Written by Mark Gatiss.

Takes place in the UK; ending self-datedly in July 1975 CE.

Fury From the Deep   TV story, broadcast 1968                          Doctor: 2

featuring Jamie, Victoria

Written by Victor Pemberton, script edited by Derrick Sherwin.

Informed guess Takes place on the North Sea coast of Albion; dated 1975 CE by Parkin in Ahistory.

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.

NORTH SEA GAS INSTALLATIONS ARE OVERRUN BY MIND-CONTROLLING SEAWEED.

Invasion of the Scorpion Men   Comic story, published 2018   Doctors: 3, with 12 (overheard)

Featuring Sarah Jane

Informed guess Takes place in London, after The Ghosts of N-Space.

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.

LONDON IS EVACUATED DUE TO AN INEXPLICABLE INCURSION OF HOMICIDAL NON-HUMANS. AGAIN.

 

Jacob’s Ladder (1990) offers a subjective account of what it might be like to be an N-form, particularly if you used to be a Vietnam GI who had been dosed with experimental mind-altering drugs. It is ostensibly set in 1975.

 

The Devil’s Hoofprints   Audio drama, released 2021           Doctor: 3

Featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, UNIT, Sarah Jane

Written by Robert Valentine.

Takes place in Devon, principally between Doctor Who - The Time Warrior and Planet of the Spiders

Who’s Who   Comic story, published 1974                                                 Doctor: 3

featuring Sarah Jane

Written by a writer employed by Polystyle

Informed guess Takes place in parallel realities; as published.

Island of Death   Novel, published 2005                                         Doctor: 3

featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, UNIT, Benton, Sarah Jane, Jeremy

Written by Barry Letts.

Takes place in the UK, Africa, India and the Indian Ocean; after The Ghosts of N-Space, self-dated September.

Lytton   Comic story, published 2021                                                        Doctor: 0

Featuring the Tereleptils, Lytton

Written by Eric Saward.

Takes place in Saigon and Soho; self-dated early October 1975 CE.

Gustave Lytton is a humanoid, possibly of Tellurian descent, born on Riften 5 in, I suggest, the fourth myriad CE. He has clearly left linear time. He was present in 1984 CE by agency of the Daleks, but if this story antedates this in his personal timeline, as I feel it does, then he had already left linear time, not, it is implied, with Dalek involvement.

 

Gene Wolfe's 1975 novel Peace is another subjective account of what it might be like to be an N-form. I suspect that Wolfe, a Catholic, intends his protagonist to be in purgatory, and that the novel is called Peace because at the end of it he has indeed purged himself of his sins (which may have been considerable). Wolfe is far too allusive a writer to be insistent about it: all that we may be certain of is that the narrator isn't quite aware that he died some considerable time ago.

 

Presence   Short story, published 2005                                                      Doctor: 7

featuring Ace, Hex, with Christmas, London, Tokyo (informative mention)

Written by Peter Anghelides.

Takes place in New York, NY; largely self-dated October 1975 CE.

Tokyo was the capital city of Japan.

In With the Tide   Comic story, published 2013                                        Doctor: 3

Featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, UNIT, Liz, Sarah Jane, with the USA (informative mention)

Written by Scott and David Tipton.

Informed guess Takes place in the UK. The Doctor and Sarah Jane are recalled to Earth by Liz, presumably sequentially for UNIT.

UNRECONCILED UNIT DATING

This is dated 1974, but I can only make it 1975 CE. And Nixon is still president, as he would have been of course without Watergate, so perhaps in Doctor Who narrative it didn’t happen, he was too busy with alien invasions or something. I don’t think anybody has ever suggested that he wouldn’t have won the 1972 election if he hadn’t authorised the break-in, daft sod.

 

 

Total Stories Considered               469  

Proportion Written By Women   6%                                          

 

Top Docs

3                 190 stories

2                 32 stories  

1                 21 stories

7                 18 stories           

8                 12 stories  

4                 11 stories  

10               11 stories   Climber!

11               11 stories  

12               9 stories     Climber!

Unbound   9 stories     Climber!    

6                 8 stories     Climber!    

5                 6 stories             

13               3 stories    

9                 2 stories    

         

         

 

Top Twenty Recurring Elements

 

Alastair and the Lethbridge-Stewart family                                                                                                                                         198 stories

UNIT                                                                    147 stories

London                                                                132 stories

Regional England                                               100 stories         

Jo                                                                         83 stories  

Benton                                                                69 stories  

North America                                                   60 stories

Yates                                                                   57 stories  

The Travers family                                            49 stories

Liz                                                                        48 stories           

The Master                                                         43 stories  

At sea                                                                  36 stories   Climber!

The Intrusion Counter-Measures Group        33 stories

Scotland                                                              29 stories   Climber!    

Continental Europe                                           26 stories           

Christmas                                                            25 stories  

The Time Lords                                                  21 stories

Senor 105                                                             19 stories  

Iris Wildthyme                                                   19 stories   Climber!

Jamie                                                                   17 stories =

Sarah Jane                                                          17 stories = New entry!

 

         

Top Decades

 

The Teens                                                           209 stories

The Seventies                                                    86 stories

The Noughties                                                    73 stories

The Nineties                                                       43 stories

The Twenties                                                     32 stories  

The Sixties                                                          24 stories  

The Eighties                                                        2 stories

 

And Top Twenty Years

 

2016                                                          41 stories

2013                                                          27 stories   Climber!

2015                                                          26 stories  

2018                                                          26 stories

1970                                                          24 stories

2019                                                          22 stories

1973                                                          20 stories   Climber!

2011                                                          19 stories

2017                                                          19 stories   Climber!    

1972                                                          18 stories

2021                                                          16 stories

2001                                                          15 stories           

2020                                                          15 stories   Climber!    

2012                                                          14 stories  

1974                                                          12 stories   New entry!

2007                                                          10 stories   Climber!

1971                                                          9 stories

1993                                                          9 stories     Climber!

2005                                                          9 stories     Climber!

2009                                                          9 stories    

         

 

Total Writers (including showrunners, script editors, anthology linking material writers)                                              212

Proportion of Female Writers                         11%      

 

Top Twenty Writers

 

Terrance Dicks                                          24 stories  

Anonymous Polystyle Writers                 12 stories   New entry!

Andy Frankham-Allen                             11 stories  

? John Canning                                         10 stories  

John Dorney                                             10 stories            

Malcolm Hulke                                         10 stories   Climber!

Paul Magrs                                                10 stories  

Mark Wright                                             10 stories  

Dennis Hooper                                           8 stories     Climber!

Justin Richards                                         8 stories    

Eddie Robson                                            8 stories    

1971 Annual crew                                     8 stories    

1973 Annual crew                                     8 stories     Climber!    

Roger Noel Cook                                      7 stories    

Simon Guerrier                                        6 stories    

David A McIntee                                      6 stories    

John Peel                                                  6 stories

Cody Schell                                              6 stories    

David Whitaker                                       6 stories             

1974 Annual crew                                   6 stories