Now: Two Thousand and Three                                                                 

 

The Quantum Archangel   Novel, published 2001                  Doctor: 6

featuring the Master, the Chronovores, Mel, with the Time Lords, Grace technology, the Eternals (glimpse), and the Daleks, the Vampires, Atlantis, the Cybermen, the Voord, the Quarks, the Krotons, the Nestene Consciousness, C19, the Daemons, the Sontarans, the Rutan, the Osirans, the Nimons (informative mention)

Written by Craig Hinton.

Informed guess Takes place variously, including in London and on the Moon; self-dated 2003 CE.

The Eternals are beings generally outside time, who can enter it in humanoid form. Their powers and motivations remain obscure.

The Krotons are a sentient, spacefaring crystalline species.

The Nimons are a small spacefaring species with large prosthetic bipedal bodies.

Piece of Mind   Audio Drama, released 2019                                        Doctor: 6

Featuring Captain Jack

Written by James Goss.

Informed guess Takes place variously, but pivotally on Earth while Jack is waiting for the Doctor after finding himself on Earth in 1869 CE. Dating this after 2000 CE because Jack’s claim to have got a sonic screwdriver at the Red Dragon Centre in Cardiff is probably erroneous as it doesn’t actually stock them. On the other hand, the little girl in Fragments told Jack he would not meet the Doctor again until the century had turned twice, and that’s probably good enough.

Deadline   Audio Drama, released 2003                                                  Doctor: Unbound

featuring Unbound Susan, Unbound Barbara, Unbound Ian

Written by Robert Shearman.

Informed guess Takes place in an alternative UK; self-dated 2003 CE.

Doctor Tenth   Illustrated short story, published 2018                             Doctor: 10

Featuring the Sontarans, the Ogrons

Written by Adam Hargreaves.

Informed guess Takes place on an unnamed planet, some time before General Staal’s death in The Poison Sky.

Feeding Animals at the Zoo   Short story, published 2021                   Doctor: 0

featuring Lethbridge-Stewart

Written by Peter Lenne.

Takes place in the UK. Conall, born in June 1990 CE, is not yet thirteen.

The Dalek Tapes   Comic story, published 1980                                        Doctor: ?3

featuring the Daleks

Written by ?Paul Neary

Informed guess Takes place on Skaro; self-dated 2003 CE. The Dalek Tapes was the name given to the linking narrative material provided by Doctor Who Weekly in its reprints of the The Daleks comic strip from TV21. It dates the conclusion of Skaro’s catastrophic Neutron War to 2003 CE, which is fine by me.

The Domino Effect   Novel, published 2003                                 Doctor: 8

Featuring the remembered Fitz, Anji, Unbound Sabbath, possibly Unbound Lethbridge-Stewart, Unbound Ace, with Trix (informative mention)

Written by David Bishop.

Takes place in versions of Edinburgh, Manchester, London, France, Germany and the USA; pivotally self-dated April 2003 CE.

This version of Sabbath is a Tellurian born in 1741 CE. (I am taking his being twenty-one in 1732 CE is a mistake, or the result of misaligned calendars). However, the version of Sabbath that the Doctor normally meets may be something a bit different, more in due course.

Patricia Joanne Pullman, known as Trix MacMillan is a Tellurian  born, probably, in the 1970s CE.

The Man From DOCTO(R)   Short story, published 2003                      Doctor: 0

Featuring Harry

Written by Andrew Collins.

Contemporary to publication Takes place in the UK, Switzerland, Mexico City, Rio, Singapore and Belgium.

Rio de Janeiro is a major coastal city of Brazil, a republic on the east coast of South America, southeast of Colombia and east of Peru.

Project:Valhalla Novel, published 2005                                         Doctor: 0

featuring Vampires, the Forge, Lysandra, with Evelyn (informative mention)

Written by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright.

informed guess Takes place in Lapland, shortly after 2002 CE.

Lapland is the northernmost region of Finland, a European republic lying east of Sweden and across from it on the Gulf of Bothnia.

Distance Short story, published 2003                                                        Doctor: 0

Featuring Barbara, Ian

Written by Stephen Cole, as Tara Samms.

Contemporary to publication Takes place in the UK.

Rip Tide   Novella, published 2003                                                          Doctor: 8

Written by Louise Cooper.

Contemporary to publication Takes place on the north Cornish coast; self-dated May.

Prisoner of the Ood   Audio Drama, released 2018                           Doctor: 0

Featuring the Ood, Jenny

Written by John Dorney.

Informed guess Takes place in Waltham Abbey, Essex, self-dated the twenty-first century,

but Jeremy Beadle is mentioned, so presumably before his death in 2008 CE.

The Ood are a bipedal species of vast, undefined telepathic abilities, to be found on the

Oodsphere.

Jenny is a humanoid synthesised on Messaline from the Doctor’s genetic material in the

early seventh millennium.

Neon Reign   Audio Drama, released 2018                                             Doctor: 0

Featuring Jenny

Written by Christian Brassington.

Takes place on Kamshassa, not long after Prisoner of the Ood.

Zero Space   Audio Drama, released 2018                       Doctor: 10 (informative mention)

Featuring Jenny

Written by Adrian Poynton.

Takes place on The Eye of the Storm, not long after Neon Reign.

Face-Painter    Short story, published 2003                                               Doctor: 2

featuring Jamie, Victoria

Written by Stephen Cole, as Tara Samms.

contemporary to publication Takes place in Los Angeles, Ca; self-dated July.

The Shadow of the Scourge   Audio Drama, released 2000  Doctor: 7

featuring Ace, Benny and the William Shakespeare thing (informative mention)

Written by Paul Cornell.

Takes place in Kent; self-dated August 2003 CE.

William Shakespeare is a Tellurian born in 1564 CE.

Falls the Shadow: Prelude  Illustrated short story, published 1994     Doctor: 4 (glimpse)

featuring Leela or Romana, K9I or K9II, the British Republic

Written by Daniel O’Mahoney.

Takes place partly on Earth, the summer before Falls the Shadow.

Prologue: This Town Will Never Let Us Go   Short story, published 2003    Doctor: 0

featuring Faction Paradox, the War in Heaven

Written by Lawrence Miles.

contemporary to publication Takes place in the UK, a few minutes before This Town Will Never Let Us Go.

This Town Will Never Let Us Go   Novel, published 2003            Doctor: 0

featuring Faction Paradox, the War in Heaven

Written by Lawrence Miles.

contemporary to publication Takes place in the UK. An interpretation, perhaps the primary interpretation of this novel, is that it takes place in a universe where time travel is impossible, Faction Paradox is a fashion statement, and the War in Heaven is a way of talking about the War on Terror. The action takes place two years after the inception of the War; say, summer 2003 CE.

Minuet in Hell   Audio Drama, released 2001                                 Doctor: 8

featuring Lethbridge-Stewart, Charley

Written by Alan W Lear and Gary Russell.

Takes place in a new state of the American Union, Malebolgia, described as “a little sister to Maryland”, though containing mountains. The West Virginia Panhandle, up in the Appalachians, seems a geographically plausible area to secede from the Old Line State, though perhaps Devil-worshippers would want to be closer to Washington DC; dated 2003 CE in Neverland, at the Harvest Moon, which fell in September of that year.

Losing Track of Time   Short story, published 2003                                Doctor: 3        

featuring Jo

Written by Juliet E McKenna.

contemporary to publication Takes place in Oxford; self-dated September.

The Last Resort   Novel, published 2003                                         Doctor: 8

Featuring the remembered Fitz, Anji, Sabbath, Trix, with the Daleks (glimpse)

Informed guess Takes place fluidly, in London, Ohio, Egypt and partly on Mars, but, pivotally, in 2003 CE.

This, the version of Sabbath that the Doctor generally encounters is a humanoid time-traveller, presumably  of Tellurian extraction given his monomaniacal Tellurocentric view of reality. First appears in the late eighteenth century, under circumstances that will be examined when I come to them.

The Death of Me   Short story, published 2003                                        Doctor: 6

Written by Robert Shearman.

Contemporary to publication Takes place in a dimensionally isolated bit of the UK.

The Scream of the Shalka   Webcast, posted 2003                  Doctor: Unbound 9

featuring an Unbound Master

Written by Paul Cornell.

Informed guess Takes place in a version of Lancashire; self-dated 2003 CE. This is potentially a very different reality to the main sequence of Doctor Who narrative, as the explanation for the Fermi Paradox here is that the universe is permeated by the Shalka, otherwise absent from this chronology. The explanation for the Fermi Paradox in mainstream Doctor Who narrative seems to be that interstellar society has Earth under an absent-minded information blackout, by no means an impossible explanation for the Fermi Paradox full stop.

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 OF THE WORLD’S POPULATION IS BRAINWASHED INTO MAKING VOCAL SONIC HOLES IN THE EARTH’S ATMOSPHERE, FLOODING THE WORLD WITH DANGEROUS SOLAR RADIATION.

The Forge Comic story, published 2006                                             Doctor: 0

Featuring the Forge

Written by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright.

Informed guess Takes place in Edinburgh, Whitby and Dartmoor, between Project: Valhalla and Project: Lazarus.    

Daemos Rising   Video Drama, released 2004                                     Doctor: 0

Featuring UNIT, the Daemons, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart

Written by David J Howe.

Takes place in the UK; self-dated the end of October 2003 CE.

Daemos Rising   Novelisation, published 2019                                     Doctor: 0

Featuring UNIT, Olive Hawthorne, the Daemons, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart

Written by David J Howe.

An alternative account of the above. It dates The Daemons to 1973 CE, with which I am fine.

Jubilee   Audio Drama, released 2003                                                   Doctor: 6

featuring the Daleks, Evelyn

Written by Robert Shearman.

informed guess Takes place mostly in an alternative London; self-dated 2003 CE.

Missing, Part Two: Message in a Bottle   Short story, published 1999     Doctor: 0

featuring Mel

informed guess Takes place presumably on Earth; implicitly some time after Missing, Part One: Business as Usual.

Falls the Shadow   Novel, published 1994                                      Doctor: 7

featuring Ace, Benny, with the British Republic (informative mention)

Written by Daniel O’Mahony.

Takes place mostly in the UK; dated November 2003 CE by Parkin in Ahistory.

Home Fires   Short story, published 2005                                                  Doctor: 6

Written by Jonathan Blum.

Informed guess Takes place in the Australian Capital Territory; self-dated Christmas: from the bush fires, presumably 2003 CE.

 

 

 

Total Stories Considered               1002

Proportion Written By Women   9%                                          

 

Top Docs

3                 211 stories

4                 117 stories

7                 104 stories

5                 63 stories

2                 63 stories  

8                 62 stories  

6                 58 stories           

1                 37 stories

Unbound   28 stories  

11               26 stories  

10               19 stories  

12               15 stories            

9                 6 stories    

13               4 stories    

         

         

 

Top Twenty Recurring Elements

 

 

Alastair, Kate and the Lethbridge-Stewart family                                                                                                                               270 stories

London                                                                253 stories         

Regional England                                               243 stories         

UNIT                                                                    229 stories

North America                                                   125 stories

Jo                                                                         92 stories  

Benton                                                                91 stories           

Sarah Jane                                                          84 stories           

The Master, including Missy                            71 stories           

Ace                                                                      68 stories   Climber!

Continental Europe                                           66 stories   Climber!    

Yates                                                                   65 stories  

The Time Lords                                                  63 stories  

Liz                                                                        62 stories

At sea                                                                  59 stories  

The Travers family                                            59 stories

The K9s                                                               52 stories           

Scotland                                                              53 stories= Re-entry!

Christmas                                                            50 stories  

Iris Wildthyme                                                   46 stories  

 

 

         

Top Decades

 

The Teens                                                           335 stories

The Noughties                                                    238 stories

The Nineties                                                       177 stories

The Seventies                                                    120 stories         

The Eighties                                                        54 stories  

The Twenties                                                     47 stories

The Sixties                                                          32 stories  

         

 

And Top Twenty Years

 

2001                                                          66 stories  

2016                                                          52 stories

2018                                                          46 stories   Climber!    

2019                                                          42 stories   Climber!

2013                                                          40 stories  

1999                                                          39 stories           

2015                                                          36 stories  

2017                                                          36 stories  

1993                                                          31 stories  

2011                                                          29 stories           

2012                                                          29 stories           

2003                                                          28 stories   Re-entry!

1970                                                          24 stories

2002                                                          24 stories  

2021                                                          24 stories

2000                                                          23 stories  

2020                                                          23 stories  

1973                                                          20 stories  

2008                                                          20 stories

1998                                                          19 stories  

 

 

 

Total Writers (including showrunners, script editors, anthology linking material writers)                                                408

Proportion of Female Writers                         14%      

 

Top Twenty Writers

 

Terrance Dicks                                          34 stories  

? John Canning                                         30 stories  

Paul Magrs                                                25 stories  

Andy Frankham-Allen                             16 stories  

Eric Saward                                               16 stories  

Anonymous Polystyle Writers               15 stories  

John Dorney                                             15 stories   Climber!    

Eddie Robson                                            15 stories            

Justin Richards                                         14 stories                     

Andrew Cartmel                                      13 stories

Paul Cornell                                              13 stories   Climber!

Steve Lyons                                               13 stories           

Simon Guerrier                                        12 stories  

Gary Russell                                              12 stories   Climber!              

Mark Wright                                             12 stories   Climber!    

Robert Holmes                                         11 stories  

David A McIntee                                      11 stories  

Malcolm Hulke                                         10 stories  

Jonathan Morris                                      10 stories  

Stephen Cole                                            9 stories=   New entry!

Roger Noel Cook                                      9 stories=

Kate Orman                                              9 stories=