Now: Nineteen Ninety-Nine                                                            

 

Nameless   Charity short story, published 1999                             Doctors: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

featuring Susan, Jamie

Written by David Bickley.

Takes place in the UK; the latest event is self-dated March 1999 CE.


Flashpoint    Short story, published 2004                                                  Doctor: 5

featuring UNIT, Liz, and Turlogh (glimpse)

Written by Matt Grady.

Takes place in Rome; self-dated April 1999 CE.


The Giving Invasion   Charity short story, published 1999                      Doctor: 4

featuring K9 II

Written by Paul Leonard.

contemporary to publication Takes place in the UK.


Hot Ice   Short story, published 1999                                                              Doctor: 5

featuring Peri

Written by Christopher Bulis.

contemporary to publication Takes place in Surbiton, a district of London.


Safe in the Knowledge   Charity short story, published 1999                  Doctor: 7

Written by Mark Phippen.

Contemporary to publication Takes place in the UK.


Homeland   Audio drama, released 1999                                                   Doctor: 0

Featuring UNIT, the Zygons

Written by Paul Dearing.

Contemporary to publication Takes place in the UK and Columbia.

Colombia was a republic of northwest South America, lying southeast of Panama.


Cause and Effect   Charity short story, published 1999                            Doctor: 8

featuring Sam (informative mention)

Written by Rebecca Dowgiert.

contemporary to publication Takes place in London.


Mysterious Ways   Charity short story, published 1999                      Doctor: Unbound

Featuring the Matter of Britain

Written by Jay Eales.

contemporary to publication Takes place on an alternative Earth, possibly the one in Morgaine’s continuum.


Fangrrl Life   Charity short story, published 1999                                     Doctor: 8

Featuring the Second War in Heaven, with UNIT, Iris Wildthyme, Benny, Grace, Sam, Stacey, Izzy, Fitz or the Remembered Fitz (informative mention).

Written by Philip Pascoe.

Contemporary to publication Takes place in Perth, Western Australia; possibly in the Obverse. The TARDIS is not only anthropomorphised but liberated into Sapphic sensuality. Sadly, it is narratively necessary for her to abandon it from a sense of moral duty and rejoin the Doctor in resolving the Second War in Heaven. Helen Fayle, the co-editor of Perfect Timing 2, has said that if you think the published version was near the knuckle, you should have seen the original submission.


The Suns of Caresh    Novel, published 2002                                            Doctor: 3

featuring the Time Lords, Jo, and UNIT (glimpse)

Written by Paul Saint.

Takes place in the UK and on Caresh; self-dated July 1999 CE.


Dolores Smith and the Birthday Bear  Short story, published 2015               Doctor: 0

Featuring Iris Wildthyme

Written by Kara Dennison.

Takes place in a version of Yorkshire, self-dated early July, 1999 CE. All is not right, even in this relatively straightforward version of Samhain, as it has snowed in July throughout the nineties.


The King of Terror   Novel, published 2000                                             Doctor: 5

featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, UNIT, Control, Tegan, Turlough, and the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Zygons, Benton, Jo (informative mention)

Written by Keith Topping.

Takes place in Sussex, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Las Vegas but principally Los Angeles, Ca, self-dated July 1999 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.

THE HOLLYWOOD SIGN IS DESTROYED BY AN ALIEN SPACESHIP AND THE WORLD SPENDS SOME FOUR DAYS WATCHING A SPACE BATTLE BETWEEN ALIENS IN ORBIT, ACCOMPANIED BY JOLLY PARTIES.                   


The Root of All Evil  Audio drama, released 1999                                         Doctor: 0

Featuring the Krynoids

Written by Lance Parkin.

Contemporary to release Takes place in Yorkshire; sunset is about 21.30 hours, so mid July.


Dominion   Novel, published 1999                                                                  Doctor: 8

Featuring UNIT, C19, Sam, Fitz

Written by Nick Walters.

Takes place in Sweden; self-dated July 1999 CE.

Sweden was a coastal monarchy of Europe, lying to the east of Norway.


Cheeky Things   Charity short story, published 1998                               Doctor: 7, plausibly

featuring Tegan

Written by Erin Tumilty.

informed guess Takes place on Earth, probably Australia; plausibly, shortly before Chain Male.  


Chain Male   Charity short story, published 1998                                                  Doctor: 7

featuring Tegan, with Barbara, Ian, Sarah Jane (informative mention)

Written by Keith Topping.

Takes place in Wiltshire; self-dated 1999, evidently summer. It is not obvious why the son of Barbara and Ian should have grown up in poverty in Newcastle: my guess is left-wing posturing by Barbara.


Totem   Short story, published 1999                                            Doctors: 8, with 7 (glimpse)

Written by Stephen Cole, as Tara Samms.

Contemporary to publication Takes place on an island where Spanish is spoken, ending in summer.

 

The film The Sixth Sense (1999) is a ghost story assimilable in Doctor Who narrative, I think, as an examination of N-forms.

 

The Danger Men   Novel, published 2018                                                   Doctor: 0

Featuring Anne Travers, Lethbridge-Stewart, with UNIT, Grace technology (informative

mention)

Written by Nick Walters.

Takes place in Johannesburg, London, Torquay and Austria; self-dated September 1999
CE.

Johannesburg was a city of South Africa, a republic occupying the southernmost region of 
Africa, a peninsula dividing the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.


The Eternity Contract   Short story, published 1999                                           Doctor: 5

featuring Nyssa

Written by Steve Lyons.

informed guess Takes place in the UK, broadly; self-dated 1999 CE.


Warlords of Utopia   Novel, published 2004                                           Doctor: 0

featuring Chris, Faction Paradox, the Second War in Heaven

Written by Lance Parkin.

informed guess Takes place on up to two thousand alternative Earths on the other “side” of the “Great Divide”. We may assume that one of them, possibly Roma D, features in The Iron Legion. They could also include the alternative Earths described in Philip K Dick’s 1962 novel The Man In The High Castle, the 2015-19 TV series adapted from it, Robert Harris’s 1992 novel Fatherland, Len Deighton’s 1978 novel SS-GB, C J Sansom’s 2012 novel Dominion, the 2011 film Resistance and the TV series An Englishman’s Castle (1978) and The Plot Against America (2020). I have no suggestion for the sex-obsessed Roma LXIX (nice). The villa of Scriptor’s family is the island of Manhattan. Concludes in the Amazon Basin; self-dated MMDCCLII ARC, which would be 1999 CE. I am assuming that Herr Abschrifft is an iteration of the Great Houses’ Army of One, i.e. Chris. The malignant abomination that hunts the Great House fugitives says it is not working for The Enemy although it has an evident interest in the course of The War: I suggest it is a manifestation of the Celestis.


Touching Indigo   Charity short story, published 1999                            Doctor: Unbound

Written by Rebecca J Anderson.

Contemporary to publication Takes place in Canada.


Auton 2: Sentinel   Video drama, released 1998                                             Doctor: 0

featuring UNIT, the Nestene Consciousness

Written by Nicholas Briggs.

informed guess Takes place in the UK, two and a half years after Auton.


Return of the Spiders   Short story, published 1999                                           Doctor: 4

featuring the Giant Spiders, K9 II, Romana

Written by Gareth Roberts.

contemporary to publication Takes place in High Wycombe, a town of Buckinghamshire.


Auton 3: Awakening   Video drama, released 1999                                       Doctor: 0

featuring UNIT, the Nestene Consciousness

Written by Arthur Wallis and Paul Ebbs.

informed guess Takes place in the UK, shortly after Auton 2: Sentinel.


The Taking of Planet 5   Novel, published 1999                                   Doctor: 8

Featuring the Second War in Heaven, the remembered Fitz, Compassion, ?Theo Possible, with UNIT, the Earth Reptiles, the Fendahl (informative mention)

Written by Simon Bucher-Jones and Mark Clapham,

Takes place principally in Antarctica; partly self-dated October 1999 CE. At the end of the story, having saved the Universe from catastrophe and annihilated Mictlan, Agent One and the Hermit, two slaves of the Celestis, walk free and apparently out of Doctor Who continuity. We may suppose, however, that they are well-versed in the skills required to travel in the fourth and fifth dimensions, and that they might blame the Time Lords’ complacent misuse of power for their time in, very nearly literally, hell. (The Celestis are an extreme case of the Time Lords). I suggest that one of them goes on to become Theo Possible: ‘Theo’, suggesting divine providence, in acknowledgement of the fraudulent godhead of the Celestis, and ‘possibility’ being what the Celestis stole from him and what he subsequently regained. My money is on Agent One: the hermit was a Time Lord himself, originally. Agent One was bred into servitude and Possible’s bitter class resentment is a better fit.


The Two Brigadiers   Short story, published 2017                                    Doctor: 0

Featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, the Travers family

Written by Jonathan Macho.

Informed guess Takes place in Wales; self-dated three years after Battlefield.


Please Shut the Gate   Short story, published 2000                                Doctor: 2

featuring Jamie, Zoe

Written by Stephen Lock.

Takes place on Mars; self-dated December 1999 CE.


A Cup of Coffee   Charity short story, published 1999                              Doctor: 5

featuring Tegan, Turlogh

Written by Daniel Ben-Zvi.

contemporary to publication Takes place in the UK; self-dated December.


Black Snow   Charity short story, published 1999                                      Doctor: 7

featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, Ace

Written by David Bishop.

Takes place on Exmoor, an unpopulated, hilly area of Devon; self-dated December 23rd 1999 CE.


Darkness, Falling, Distractions and The Mark of Mandragora                                                                                                                 Comic story. Published 1991              Doctor: 7, and 4 (glimpse)

featuring UNIT, the Mandragora Helix, Ace, and Lethbridge-Stewart (glimpse)

Written by Dan Abnett.

informed guess Takes place in London; self-dated at the end of the twentieth century and after Battlefield; plausibly just before Brief Encounters and just after Black Snow.

The Mandragora Helix is a mysterious telekinetic agency to which the Earth becomes vulnerable “when the stars are in the correct alignment”. I suggest this is consistent with its being a particularly Lovecraftian horror, a malign, sentient geometry! In this story it claims to have been old when this universe was created, which I suppose would be true of a geometry.


Brief Encounter   Illustrated short story, published 1991                          Doctor: 7

featuring Ian, with Barbara (glimpse), and Ace (informative mention)

Written by David Bishop.

Takes place in Greenwich, a district of London; self-dated the last day of 1999 CE.


Goodbye/Piccadilly/Hello/Heatdeath   Charity drabble, published 1993      Doctor: 7

featuring Ace

Written by Peter Darvill-Evans.

informed guess Takes place, presumably, in London; plausibly just after Brief Encounter.

 

 

 

 

Total Stories Considered               887  

Proportion Written By Women   8%                                          

 

Top Docs

3                 208 stories

4                 106 stories

7                 88 stories  

2                 60 stories  

5                 55 stories  

6                 47 stories

8                 43 stories  

1                 37 stories

11               25 stories  

Unbound   19 stories  

10               15 stories  

12               15 stories            

9                 6 stories    

13               4 stories    

         

         

 

Top Twenty Recurring Elements

 

Alastair, Kate and the Lethbridge-Stewart family                                                                                                                               257 stories

London                                                                223 stories

Regional England                                               219 stories         

UNIT                                                                    216 stories

North America                                                   105 stories

Jo                                                                         92 stories  

Benton                                                                91 stories           

Sarah Jane                                                          75 stories           

The Master, including Missy                            66 stories

Yates                                                                   65 stories  

Liz                                                                        61 stories  

The Time Lords                                                  58 stories  

Continental Europe                                           58 stories   Climber!

The Travers family                                            58 stories  

Ace                                                                      58 stories   Climber!    

At sea                                                                  55 stories            

Christmas                                                            49 stories  

The K9s                                                               46 stories  

Iris Wildthyme                                                   41 stories  

Scotland                                                              41 stories

 

 

 

         

Top Decades

 

The Teens                                                           316 stories

The Nineties                                                       164 stories

The Noughties                                                   160 stories

The Seventies                                                    120 stories

The Eighties                                                        53 stories  

The Twenties                                                     42 stories  

The Sixties                                                         32 stories  

 

 

 

 

And Top Twenty Years

 

2016                                                          50 stories

2019                                                          40 stories  

2018                                                          38 stories  

2001                                                          36 stories           

2013                                                          36 stories           

2015                                                          36 stories   Climber!

2017                                                          36 stories   Climber!

1999                                                          34 stories   Climber!

1993                                                          31 stories  

2012                                                          29 stories           

2011                                                          28 stories            

1970                                                          24 stories

2021                                                          22 stories

1973                                                          20 stories  

2020                                                          20 stories  

2008                                                           19 stories

1972                                                          18 stories

1992                                                          18 stories                     

1995                                                          15 stories=

1999                                                          15 stories=

2005                                                          15 stories=

2009                                                          15 stories=

 

 

Total Writers (including showrunners, script editors, anthology linking material writers)                                                357

Proportion of Female Writers                         13%      

 

Top Twenty Writers

 

Terrance Dicks                                          32 stories  

? John Canning                                         30 stories  

Paul Magrs                                                25 stories  

Andy Frankham-Allen                             16 stories

Eric Saward                                               16 stories  

Anonymous Polystyle Writers               15 stories  

Eddie Robson                                            15 stories            

John Dorney                                             14 stories  

Andrew Cartmel                                      12 stories  

Justin Richards                                         12 stories           

Paul Cornell                                              11 stories  

Simon Guerrier                                        11 stories

Robert Holmes                                         11 stories  

Gary Russell                                              11 stories  

Malcolm Hulke                                         10 stories  

Steve Lyons                                               10 stories   Climber!

David A McIntee                                      10 stories

Jonathan Morris                                      10 stories  

Mark Wright                                             10 stories  

Roger Noel Cook                                      9 stories    

 

 

 

 

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