Now: Nineteen Eighty-One                                                                         

 

A Midsummer’s Nightmare  Illustrated short story, published 1980    Doctor: 4

featuring K9 II, Romana

Written by the World Distributors 1981 Annual crew.

Takes place in northern Norway; self-dated January, 1981 CE.


Logopolis   TV story, broadcast 1981                                  Doctors: 4, with 5 (glimpse)

featuring the Master, Adric, Nyssa, Tegan

Written by Christopher H Bidmead.

Takes place by the Barnet Bypass, on the edge of Greater London, on Logopolis and in Sussex; simultaneously with Four to Doomsday. During this story, Nyssa and Tegan both leave linear time, being aboard the TARDIS when it dematerialises.

Adric is non-Tellurian humanoid, not just extra-terrestrial but extra-continual, hailing from Alzarius, in E-Space.


Four to Doomsday   TV story, broadcast 1982                              Doctor: 5

featuring Adric, Nyssa, Tegan, with Australia, Mexico, China, Greece (informative mention)

Written by Terance Dudley, script edited by Anthony Root.

Takes place approaching the Solar System, self-dated February 1981 CE.

 

The 1981 film An American Werewolf in London is broadly compatible with the werewolf lore of Doctor Who narrative. So, for that matter, is The Howling, released in the same year.

 

Inmate 280   Short story, published 2003                                                  Doctors: 7, 8

Written by Cavan Scott.

Informed guess Takes place in and outside Alcatraz Prison, San Francisco, Ca. The prison closed in 1963 CE, Travers, a young officer there, is dying of a cancer that he believes he contracted as a result of events there.

 

Scanners (1981), a film about telepaths and telekinetics, is not I believe incompatible with Doctor Who narrative on the subject to be found in the Psi-powers sequence of New Adventures novels, written in the mid-nineties.

 

The Revisionists   Audio short story, published 2019                               Doctor: 4

Featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, UNIT, Leela

Written by Andy Frankham-Allen.

Takes place in Geneva, the capital city of Switzerland; self-dated July 1981 CE. I am assuming that after this, Lethbridge-Stewart had a psychiatric relapse and returned to teaching at Brendon School (an entirely plausible event in British private education). Equally, this marks the end of the Doctor being UNIT’s scientific advisor.


Graham Dilley Saves the World   Short story, published 2004            Doctor: 5

featuring Tegan, Turlogh, Peri, Erimem

Written by Iain McLaughlin and Claire Bartlett.

Takes place at Hedingley Cricket Ground, in Yorkshire; self-dated July 1981 CE.


Nuclear Time   Novel, published 2010                                             Doctor: 11

Featuring Amy, possibly as a ganger, Rory

Written by Oli Smith.

Takes place variously in the USA; the latest period self-dated August 1981 CE.


Useless Things   Illustrated short story, published 1994                          Doctor: 0

Written by David Carroll.

Informed guess Takes place near the Barnet Bypass, not long after Logopolis.


K9 and Co.: A Girl’s Best Friend   TV story, broadcast 1981        Doctor: 0

featuring Sarah Jane, K9 III

Written by Terence Dudley, script edited by Anthony Root and Eric Saward.

Takes place in southwestern England; self-dated December 1981 CE.

K9 mark III 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 K9s mark I and II. Some considerable time after Sarah Jane stopped travelling with him, he left K9 III in an attic for her, but in 1978 CE, “while” she was “still” regularly travelling with him, but she didn’t discover it until this point. Which was presumably the knowledge he was safe in, as she hadn’t mentioned it between 1978 and 1980. Which only goes to show that once you leave linear time, you can never really go back.


Iterations of I   Audio Drama, released 2014                                        Doctor: 5

Featuring Adric, Nyssa, Tegan

Written by John Dorney.

Takes place on Fleming’s Island and in Ireland, the later section self-dated December 1981 CE.


Blue Box   Novel, published 2003                                                         Doctor: 6

featuring Peri

Written by Kate Orman.

Takes place on the eastern seaboard of the USA; mostly self-dated December 1981 CE.

 

 

 

 

Total Stories Considered               590  

Proportion Written By Women   8%                                          

 

Top Docs

3                 193 stories

4                 75 stories  

2                 33 stories  

7                 24 stories           

1                 22 stories

8                 18 stories           

10               14 stories  

12               14 stories  

11               14 stories

5                 12 stories   Climber!   

6                 12 stories  

Unbound   9 stories             

13               4 stories    

9                 3 stories    

         

         

 

Top Twenty Recurring Elements

 

Alastair and the Lethbridge-Stewart family                                                                                                                                        217 stories

UNIT                                                                    172 stories

London                                                               148 stories

Regional England                                             134 stories         

Jo                                                                         83 stories  

Benton                                                               82 stories  

North America                                                 70 stories

Yates                                                                   61 stories  

The Travers family                                            51 stories  

Liz                                                                        51 stories

The Master                                                       49 stories  

Sarah Jane                                                         46 stories   Climber!

At sea                                                                  44 stories  

The Intrusion Counter-Measures Group        39 stories

Continental Europe                                         37 stories           

Scotland                                                            36 stories

Christmas                                                          29 stories   Climber!    

Iris Wildthyme                                                 27 stories  

The Time Lords                                                27 stories            

Senor 105                                                         19 stories  

 

         

Top Decades

 

The Teens                                                           252 stories

The Seventies                                                    120 stories         

The Noughties                                                    96 stories

The Nineties                                                       51 stories

The Twenties                                                     37 stories  

The Sixties                                                          24 stories  

The Eighties                                                        10 stories

 

And Top Twenty Years

 

2016                                                          46 stories

2015                                                          30 stories  

2017                                                          29 stories  

2013                                                          28 stories  

2018                                                          28 stories  

1970                                                          24 stories

2012                                                          21 stories  

2019                                                          30 stories   Climber!    

1973                                                          20 stories  

2001                                                          20 stories  

2011                                                          19 stories

1972                                                          18 stories

2020                                                          18 stories

2021                                                          18 stories

1974                                                          14 stories  

1976                                                          11 stories =  

1993                                                          11 stories =

2007                                                          11 stories =

2008                                                          11 stories =

2009                                                          11 stories =

2005                                                          11 stories =

2010                                                          11 stories =   New entry!         

 

         

 

Total Writers (including showrunners, script editors, anthology linking material writers)                                                257

Proportion of Female Writers                         13%      

 

Top Twenty Writers

 

Terrance Dicks                                          27 stories  

? John Canning                                         25 stories  

Paul Magrs                                                16 stories  

Anonymous Polystyle Writers               15 stories  

John Dorney                                             13 stories  

Andy Frankham-Allen                            13 stories  

Robert Holmes                                         10 stories  

Malcolm Hulke                                         10 stories  

Mark Wright                                             10 stories  

Eddie Robson                                            9 stories

Simon Guerrier                                        8 stories    

Dennis Hooper                                         8 stories    

Justin Richards                                         8 stories    

1971 Annual crew                                   8 stories    

1973 Annual crew                                   8 stories             

Roger Noel Cook                                      7 stories    

Guy Adams                                               6 stories=            

Matt Fitton                                               6 stories=

David A McIntee                                      6 stories=

Jonathan Morris                                      6 stories=  

John Peel                                                  6 stories=

Cody Schell                                               6 stories=

David Whitaker                                        6 stories=

1974 Annual crew                                   6 stories=

 

 

 

 

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