Now: Nineteen Eighty-Three                                                                      

 

Anti-Matter with Fries   Illustrated short story, published 1993             Doctor: 7

featuring Omega, Ace

Written by Gareth Roberts.

Takes place in the TARDIS and London, shortly before Arc of Infinity. Wonderfully, the seventh Doctor and Ace are playing what is no doubt ferociously competitive table-tennis, the ideal way to satisfy their neurotic need to be intense and non-committal with each other at the same time.


Arc of Infinity    TV story, broadcast 1983                                         Doctor: 5

featuring the Time Lords, Omega, Nyssa, Tegan

Written by Johnny Byrne, script edited by Eric Saward.

Takes place in Amsterdam and on Gallifrey; dated January 1983 in The Burning Prince.


Boys Don’t Cry   Short story, published 2018                                               Doctor: 0


featuring Lethbridge-Stewart


Written by Sean Alexander.


Takes place at Brendon School. Lethbridge-Stewart has been serving under the “current”

headmaster for three years, so no earlier than 1981; but he still thinks of his move to

Brendon as recent. He has lost his long-held ability to console the bereaved, so I’m placing it

between the traumatic event of 1977 CE and its resolution in 1983 CE, both seen in Mawdryn

Undead.


Doctor Who Quiz Book of Magic   Game Book, published 1983                        Doctor: 5

featuring Nyssa, Tegan, with Venus (glimpse)

Written by Michael Holt.

contemporary to publication Takes place all over.


Night Flight to Nowhere   Illustrated short story, published 1982         Doctor: 5

featuring the Master, Nyssa, Tegan

Written by the World Distributors 1983 Annual crew.

informed guess Takes place in the air; presumably soon after Arc of Infinity.

 

The nexus of body horror and communications in Videodrome, released in February 1983, once again suggests a manifestation of The Enemy. Also, there is conflict centred on it: the Spectacular Optic Corporation could be a front for The Enemy, and Bianca O’Blivion and her father agents of the Great Houses. Or of course, vice versa: these things can be difficult to determine in espionage.

 

Tweaker   Short story, published 2008                                                       Doctor: 5

featuring Nyssa

Written by Dan Abnett.

informed guess Takes place in the UK; New Romanticism is going out of fashion.


Rat Trap   Audio Drama, released 2011                                                    Doctor: 5

Featuring Nyssa, Tegan, Turlogh, with UNIT (informative mention)

Written by Tony Lee.

Takes place beneath Cadogan Castle, which sits on cliffs and was the site of an attempt to liberate France in World War II, which sounds like the Channel coast of England; self-dated June 1983 CE.


Hound of Hell   Illustrated short story, published 1982                            Doctor: 0

featuring Sarah Jane, K9 III

Written by Mike Wilde.

informed guess Takes place in Bodmin Marsh (on/near Bodmin Moor in Cornwall?); self-dated Midsummer. There is a full moon, and from the appearance of Brendan, it is not long after K9 & Co.: A Girl’s Best Friend. The full moon fell on the day after Midsummer in 1983 CE.


Doctor Who - Mawdryn Undead  Novelisation, published 1984 Doctor: 5

featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, Grace technology, Nyssa, Tegan, Turlogh, and the Time Lords, UNIT, Benton (informative mention)

Adapted by Peter Grimwade from his own script, edited by Eric Saward.

Takes place at Brendon School and in space; the later sections self-dated 1983 CE. It is in these sections that Turlogh leaves linear time, being aboard the TARDIS when it dematerialises.


City of Devils   Comic story, published 1992                                             Doctor: 0

featuring the Earth Reptiles, Sarah Jane, K9 III

Written by Gary Russell.

Takes place in and under Egypt; self-dated summer 1983 CE.


Fail Safe   Charity drabble, published 1993                                                  Doctor: 2

Written by Kate Orman.

Takes place on Earth, probably the USA. Anyway, the Doctor averts a nuclear war; self-dated 1983 CE.


The Haunting of Gabriel Chase   Novel, published 2021  Doctor: 0


Featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, Anne Travers, with Ace (glimpse)


Written by Andrew Allen.


Takes place in Perivale, the later sections self-dated 1983 CE, and after Doctor Who –

Mawdryn Undead.


The Stockbridge Horror   Comic story, published 1983                          Doctor: 5

featuring the Time Lords, Shayde

Written by Steve Parkhouse.

contemporary to publication Takes place in Stockbridge, in the TARDIS and on Gallifrey.

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 FOSSIL OF A POLICE BOX IS FOUND IN CAMBRIAN ROCK AND UNACCOUNTABLY DISAPPEARS SHORTLY AFTERWARDS.

 

The Hunger (1983) is a vampire film broadly compatible with Doctor Who narrative.

 

Cold War TV story, broadcast 2013                                                          Doctor: 11

Featuring the Ice Warriors, Clara

Written by Mark Gatiss, script supervised by Steven Moffat.

Takes place in the Arctic Ocean, self-dated 1983 CE.


Fungus   Illustrated short story, published 1983                                         Doctor: 5

Written by the World Distributors 1984 Annual crew.

Contemporary to publication Takes place in the UK.


Doctor Who - The Five Doctors   Novelisation, published 1983 

Doctors: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

featuring the Time Lords, Susan, the Master, the Cybermen, Lethbridge-Stewart, Sarah Jane, Tegan, Turlogh, a Raston Warrior Robot, with the Daleks, UNIT, Romana, K9 111 (glimpse)

Adapted by Terrance Dicks from his own script, edited by Eric Saward.

Informed guess Takes place on the Eye of Orion, on Gallifrey and in the UK; dated 1983 CE by Parkin in Ahistory, and as we may suppose, in November.

Raston Warrior Robots are faceless anti-personnel androids of exceptional efficacy, employed by those with access to them for security or entertainment.


Action in Exile   Comic story, published 1969                                           Doctor: 2

Illustrated ?and written by John Canning.

Informed guess Takes place in the UK, partly in London. The Doctor is stranded on Earth without his TARDIS, still on the run from the High Council following his trial in The War Games. I’m guessing that after Doctor Who – The Five Doctors, he accompanies Lethbridge-Stewart to the UNIT reunion and returns to find that the Celestial Intervention Agency, who have kept tabs on him, have taken the TARDIS to give the High Council the opportunity of catching him, as they suppose, by their own efforts. The Doctor’s exile as chronicled in TV Comic I thus have beginning in November 1983 CE.


Return of the Living Dad   Novel, published 1996                  Doctor: 7

featuring Benny, Roz, Chris, the Ogrons, with the Tzun (glimpse), and the Daleks, the Vardans, UNIT, the Nestene Consciousness, the Earth Reptiles, C19, the Osirians, Ace, Death (informative mention)

Takes place mostly in Little Caldwell, Berkshire; self-dated December 1983 CE.

Roslyn Inyathi Forrester, known as Roz, is a Tellurian, although probably born on Io, orbiting Jupiter, in 2935 CE.

The Tzun are a species of spacefaring bipeds, the appearance of one of their allomorphs inspiring the “grays” of UFO mythology.

Death is variously described as an Eternal, a child of drunken gods, a goddess herself, a dream of the Time Lords, or obscurely, the child of Jasmine Hutchings and Ricky McIlveen in the early twenty-first century, but I think it’s probably helpful to think of Death as just, you know, death. In his seventh incarnation, the Doctor has one of his fiercely non-sexual but nonetheless creepily intense relationships with her.

 

 

 

 

Total Stories Considered               624  

Proportion Written By Women   8%                                          

 

Top Docs

3                 194 stories

4                 78 stories  

2                 37 stories  

7                 27 stories           

5                 26 stories   Climber!

1                 24 stories

8                 18 stories           

11               16 stories  

10               14 stories  

12               14 stories  

6                 13 stories  

Unbound   9 stories             

13               4 stories    

9                 3 stories    

         

         

 

Top Twenty Recurring Elements

 

Alastair and the Lethbridge-Stewart family                                                                                                                                        223 stories

UNIT                                                                    177 stories

London                                                                153 stories

Regional England                                               143 stories         

Jo                                                                         83 stories  

Benton                                                                83 stories  

North America                                                   71 stories

Yates                                                                   62 stories  

The Master                                                         53 stories  

The Travers family                                            52 stories  

Sarah Jane                                                          51 stories   Climber!

Liz                                                                        51 stories           

At sea                                                                  46 stories   Climber!    

The Intrusion Counter-Measures Group        39 stories

Continental Europe                                           39 stories   Climber!    

Scotland                                                              38 stories

The Time Lords                                                  34 stories  

Christmas                                                            31 stories           

Iris Wildthyme                                                   27 stories  

The K9s                                                               21 stories  

         

 

         

Top Decades

 

The Teens                                                           261 stories

The Seventies                                                    120 stories         

The Noughties                                                    103 stories

The Nineties                                                       55 stories

The Twenties                                                     38 stories  

The Sixties                                                          25 stories  

The Eighties                                                        22 stories  

 

 

 

And Top Twenty Years

 

2016                                                          46 stories

2015                                                          31 stories  

2017                                                          30 stories  

2013                                                          30 stories  

2019                                                          30 stories

2018                                                          29 stories  

1970                                                          24 stories

2012                                                          22 stories  

2011                                                          21 stories   Climber!

1973                                                          20 stories  

2001                                                          20 stories  

2021                                                          19 stories

1972                                                          18 stories

2020                                                          18 stories

1974                                                          14 stories  

1993                                                           13 stories   Climber!

2008                                                          13 stories   Climber!

2007                                                          12 stories  

2009                                                          12 stories

2010                                                          12 stories

 

         

 

Total Writers (including showrunners, script editors, anthology linking material writers)                                                268

Proportion of Female Writers                         12%      

 

Top Twenty Writers

 

Terrance Dicks                                          28 stories  

? John Canning                                         26 stories  

Paul Magrs                                                18 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  

Simon Guerrier                                        9 stories

Eddie Robson                                            9 stories

Eric Saward                                               9 stories     Climber!

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=

Steve Lyons                                               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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