Then: The Universe Before the Chronarchy

(approximately ten billion years)

 

Paradox   (Charity drabble, published 1993                                    Doctor: Unbound                      

Written by Stephen Baxter.

An alternative universe has its beginning put back infinitely by time-travelling Tellurians 

Timeless Novel, published 2003                                                  Doctor: 8

Featuring Unbound Time Lords, the remembered Fitz, Anji, Sabbath, Trix

Written by Stephen Cole.

Takes place, pivotally, around several versions of the creation of the universe. Although also, quite a lot in London, a bit in Newhaven on the Sussex coast and a bit in Italy.

Doctor Who – Terminus   Novelisation, published 1983    Doctor: 5

featuring Grace Technology, Nyssa, Tegan, Turlogh

Adapted by Steven Gallagher (writing as John Lydecker) from his own script, edited by Eric Saward. Includes a description of the beginning of the universe, and Terminus’s involvement in it.

Slipback   Audio drama, broadcast 1985                                          Doctor: 6

featuring Peri, and the Time Lords (informative mention)

Written by Eric Saward.

Includes a description of the beginning of the universe, and the Vipod Mor’s involvement in it.

Inside the Spaceship   TV story, broadcast 1964                      Doctor: 1

featuring Susan, Barbara, Ian

Written by David Whitaker.

The TARDIS’s jammed Fast Return switch sends it back to the formation of a star. I’m arbitrarily assuming it’s a star older than our galaxy.

Patient Zero   Audio drama, released 2009                             Doctor: 6

Featuring the Daleks, the Viryans, Charley

Written by Nicholas Briggs.

Informed guess Takes place in the Amethyst Viral Containment Station, before all civilisations.

Castrovalva   TV story, broadcast 1982                                      Doctor: 5

featuring the Master, Adric, Nyssa, Tegan

Written by Christopher H Bidmead, script edited by Eric Saward.

The TARDIS is sent back to the creation of the galaxy, known to us as the Milky Way but to the Time Lords as Mutter’s Spiral, the usage that will be employed in this chronology. This would be only a few million years after the universe’s formation. The beginning of the story takes place in Cambridgeshire.

The Dark Planet   Audio drama, released 2013                      Doctor: 1

Featuring Barbara, Ian, Vicki

Adapted by Matt Fitton from a story by Brian Hayles.

Takes place on Lumia “in the early days of the universe”.

The Destination Wars   Audio drama, released 2017       Doctor: 1

Featuring Susan, the Master, Barbara, Ian, with the Time Lords (informative mention)

Written by Matt Fitton.

Informed guess Takes place on Destination; the Master describes it as the First Segment of Time. The segments of time spoken of in The Ark seem to have been a Tellurian system of chronology: the 57th being in the late first/ early second centiaeon CE, and the first containing the fall of Troy and the Dalek-Tellurian wars. They seem to be about one and a half kilocenturies each, and I see no reason why the Master, a Time Lord who at this point has only just left Gallifrey, would be employing them. I suggest that for a Time Lord, the First Segment of Time begins with the creation of the Universe, and is sufficiently far from the Chronarchy that the Mastrer’s TT capsule encounters technical difficulties as a result of being there.

The Dawn of the Kotturuh   Online short story, posted 2020        Doctor: 0

Featuring the Kotturuh

Written by James Goss.

Takes place on Birinji, in the irrational universe before the Chronarchy.

The Kotturuh are a spacefaring, possibly cyborg species with some tentacular development. They claim to be from a previous universe.

The Guide to the Dark Times   Illustrated short story, published 2020      Doctors: 8, 9, 10, 13

Featuring the Time Lords, the Daleks, the Vampires, the Daemons, the Osirans, the Eternals, the Racnoss, the Ood, River Song, the Kotturuh

Written by Paul Lang.

Takes place in the irrational universe before the Chronarchy, after The Dawn of the Kotturuh.

 

Lawrence Miles established in Christmas On A Rational Planet that the universe would have seemed a chaotic, acausal place to us, until the Time Lords imposed their will on it, simply because our notions of order are, themselves, part of what the Time Lords have enforced on the cosmos. Fair enough, yet there is an ambiguity here. Central to what the Time Lords would want are our ideas of “before” and “after”, conceptually inextricable from “because” and “therefore”. If the first ten aeons of the universe were irrational, how can we suppose that we are tidily “after” them? The Chronarchy’s imposition of its rules might not have happened: isn’t that version of events a part of our universe as an entity? 

  The most obvious way we think about irrationality is magic. The Doctor does not like the concept of magic (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice) and we may assume that he speaks for the Time Lords as a whole, in this at least. So, in his 1924 novel Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley (1922), Lord Dunsany identifies a “golden age” of Spain, vaguely located on the Middle Ages, when magicians went about their business.

  But you can’t really have a little bit of irrationality. Once you’ve got some, nothing rational is securely attached to anything. At the end of The Worm Ouroboros (1922) by E R Eddison, our heroes successfully appeal to supernatural powers (it is implied, the Olympians) to loop time four years back to the beginning of the narrative so that they can enjoy the challenge of their adventures again. (These take place on the planet Mercury, an Earth-like environment inhabited by humanoids who speak Jacobean English with some Latin and Greek, which is all pretty irrational in itself).

  And if time can be changed in a few big ways, it can be changed in a lot of small ways. Peter S Beagle’s The Last Unicorn (1968) subtly M C Eschers its chronology: a cheapskate medieval king and his son wear chain mail that incorporates discarded (and industrially produced, surely) bottletops. A band of forest outlaws are pathetically aware of their essentially modern sentimentality about the legend of Robin Hood.

  Similarly, in The Once and Future King (1958), T H White quite logically maps the Matter of Britain (with which the Doctor’s career intersects occasionally but indisputably) onto the medieval England it somehow colonised in cultural memory, so that Arthur’s father Uther Pendragon initiates the English Middle Ages by conquering England from Normandy in 1066, and before his final battle Arthur knights a young Thomas Mallory, who wrote Le Morte d’Arthur, published as the English Middle Ages were ending in 1485. Indeed, the publishing of a printed book is pretty much the Middle Ages being turned off.

  Mary Gentle takes this fluidity of cause and effect further in her Valentine White Crow series, published in an omnibus edition as White Crow (2003). The story of its protagonist, as she marries and raises a son is taken across a series of mutually incompatible environments, the fluidity of reality an unremarked fact of life. (The most splendidly unimaginable of these environments takes place in the novel Rats and Gargoyles, originally published in 1990, where there are five right-angles in a circle and the Earth has three Poles).

  The idea of reality having no form at all apart from some continuity in subjective experience is surely taken as far as it can go in James Joyce’s novel Finnegans Wake (1939), where the publican and his wife who are its protagonists are variously Adam and Eve, everybody, an unconnected couple called Mr and Mrs Potter and personifications of Dublin and the river Liffey. Daniel O’Mahoney named his Faction Paradox novel Newtons Sleep in direct reference to it, and it is a reality full of everything the Time Lords/Great Houses would abominate: acausal, paradoxical and sweaty with booze and lust. Joyce described it as a narrative of night, and one can imagine the Chronarchy bringing it to what they considered to be a vastly preferrable daybreak. 

  Finally, one can equally imagine The Force as something the Time Lords wouldn’t tolerate, so it may be that the galaxy far away in which the events of Star Wars (1976) and its sequels take place lay long ago in the pre-Chronarchical universe.

One Perfect Twilight   Charity short story, published 1998                     Doctor: 5

featuring Tegan, Turlogh, Kamelion

Written by Craig Hinton.

Kamelion describes Ooolatri coming into existence “a thousand billion years” earlier, which is much older than the universe, or at any rate older than the universe as it now is. It was certainly before the Chronarchy; perhaps the pre-Chronarchical universe had regions of elastic temporality. In any event, it seems that the Ooolatri created Kamelion before the Chronarchy: if the Master collected him from Xeriphas in 140,000,000 BCE, as The King’s Demons implies, then Kamelion’s lifespan is on the same scale as the Face of Boe’s.

The Kamelion Empire   Audio drama, released 2019               Doctor: 5

Featuring Tegan, Turlogh, Kamelion

Written by Jonathan Morris.

Informed guess Takes place on Makalion. If, as seems likely, Kamelion emerged from the chaotic pre-
Chronarchial universe, it may be that the contributions of the Gelsandorans (The Crystal
Bucephalus), the Ooolatri (One Perfect Twilight) and the Kamille (The Kamelion Empire)
to his creation are simply not rationally reconcilable with each other. In any event, the
Kamille describe their civil conflict as ‘the War in Heaven’, and it is surely not impossible
that it was an aspect of the Time Lord’s first War in Heaven, waged to establish their
monopoly of time travel, also known as The Time Wars That Never Happened. This story
takes place ten thousand years after this war concluded in the fall of Kamille civilisation.

The Kairos Ring   Audio story, released 2021                                Doctor: 0

Featuring Romana

Written by Steve Gallagher.

Arbitrary placement Takes place in E-space, though also briefly in the US Civil War. E-space appears to be the smaller of our universe’s space-time continua, the larger of which, our own, is in distinction known as N-space. Travel between the two is difficult even for Time Lords.

Wake   Short story, published 2006                                                                   Doctor: 5        

featuring Nyssa, Tegan

Written by Jake Elliot.

Informed guess Takes place in the Necropolitan, the inner structure of which is made from the bones of huge creatures from the dawn of the universe. This sounds very pre-Chronarchical to me. Time Lords often visit, perhaps like the Eye of Orion.

A Death in the Family   Audio Drama, released 2010                   Doctor: 7

Featuring UNIT, Evelyn, Ace, Hex

Written by Steven Hall.

Informed guess Takes place partly on Pelachann; self-dated “billions of years” before the twenty-first century CE. Also, in early 21^st century London

Eternity Weeps   Novel, published 1997                                                 Doctor: 7

featuring Liz, the Earth Reptiles, Benny, Chris, with UNIT (glimpse)

Written by Jim Mortimore.

Takes place partly on 16 Alpha Leonis One, self-dated six billion years before humanity. It also takes place in western Asia, and on the Moon, in a 2003 CE in which a tenth of the world’s population gets wiped out, messily. Evidently the Doctor (very possibly, given that this is his seventh incarnation) or somebody else adjusted this into non-happening subsequently. Apart from anything else, in this 2003, Iraq was still a functioning, independent state.

The Planet That Went Backwards   Comic story, published 2013            Doctor: 11

Featuring Clara

Written by Moray Laing.

Takes place on Ooharahoo. This business with the Drooloords seems to me very pre-Chronarchical. Strictly speaking, this story should be called The Planet That Goes Backwards as it continues to do so at the story’s conclusion.

The Axis of Insanity   Audio drama, released 2004                         Doctor: 5

featuring the Time Lords, Peri, Erimem

Written by Simon Furman.

Informed guess Takes place in the Axis; its relationship to irrationality and acausality suggests that it is located in the pre-Chronarchical universe.

The Labyrinthine Web   Illustrated short story, published 2017                 Doctor: 0

Featuring the Time Lords, the Racnoss

Written by Richard Dinnick.

Takes place on Trakkiney, some time before Empire of the Racnoss.

Empire of the Racnoss   Audio drama, released 2017                         Doctor: 5

Featuring the Time Lords, Nyssa, the Racnoss

Written by Scott Handcock.

Takes place on the Racnoss Homeworld and Iota 7, during the Racnoss Wars, dated 4,600,000.000 BCE in The Runaway Bride.

Hacked   Comic story, published 2016                                                                Doctor: 9

Featuring Rose, Captain Jack, with the Time Lords, Braxiatel, the Daemons, the Osirians (informative mention)

Written by Cavan Scott.

Informed guess Takes place on The Eye of Orion. I am assuming that the Time Lords can generally assure this place’s serenity as it exists in their past (and that Turlogh’s claim to have been there independently is bullshitting. Although it is not impossible that Trions have access to time travel, I suppose). I am also assuming that Brian Carrios is a time traveller from the far future, which is plausible if he has stolen stuff from the Braxiatel Collection.

Eye of Darkness   Audio drama, released 2015                                         Doctor: 8

Featuring the Daleks, the Eminence, Liv, Molly

Written by Matt Fitton.

Informed guess Takes place on the Eye of Orion.

The Eminence is a spacefaring, and ultimately time-travelling entity engineered by a Tellurian-descended scientist named Markus Schriver, and the Master.

A Tourist Invasion   Illustrated short story, published 1992                         Doctor: 6

featuring Mel

Written by Colin Baker.

Informed guess Ends on the Eye of Orion, before Blind.

Eye of Orion?   Charity short story, published 2018                                      Doctor: ?5

Featuring ?Adric, ?Nyssa, ?Tegan

Written by Jay Eales.

Informed guess Takes place on the Eye of Orion. I am assuming that that “the big yellow man with stripey legs” is the Doctor in his fifth incarnation, and that his companion that admires the flowers is consequently Nyssa and the companions that sulk are Adric and Tegan.

Chase the Night   Audio drama, released 2020                             Doctor: 4

Featuring K9 II, Romana, Adric

Written by Jonathan Morris.

Arbitrary placement Takes place in E-space.

Blind   Charity short story, published 2001                                                 Doctor: 2

featuring Polly, Ben

Written by Witold Tietze.

Informed guess Takes place on the Eye of Orion, which is destroyed, presumably by natural causes.

Old Girl   Comic story, published 2016                                           Doctors: 10, with 4 (glimpse)

Featuring the Osirians, Gabby, Cindy, Noobis

Written by Nick Abadzis.

Takes place partly on prehistoric Gallifrey.

Aimed at the Body   Audio drama, released 2020                                   Doctor: 5

Featuring the Daleks

Written by James Kettle.

Takes place in events cancelled outside the Doctor’s timeline, before Lightspeed. Although ostensibly in Australia.

Lightspeed   Audio drama, released 2020                                                 Doctor: 5

Featuring the Daleks

Written by Jonathan Morris.

Takes place in events cancelled outside the Doctor’s timeline, before The Bookshop At the End of the World.

The Bookshop at the End of the World   Audio drama, released 2020          Doctor: 5

Written by Simon Guerrier.

Takes place in events cancelled outside the Doctor’s timeline, before Interlude.

Interlude   Audio drama, released 2020                                                    Doctor: 5

Featuring the Daleks

Written by Dan Starkey.

Takes place in events cancelled outside the Doctor’s timeline, before Echo Chamber.

Echo Chamber   Audio drama, released 2020                                           Doctor: 5

Written by Jonathan Barnes.

Takes place in events cancelled outside the Doctor’s timeline, before Towards Zero.

Towards Zero   Audio drama, released 2020                                             Doctor: 5

Written by Roland Moore.

Takes place in events cancelled outside the Doctor’s timeline, before Castle Hydra.

Castle Hydra   Audio drama, released 2020                                              Doctor: 5

Written by Lizzie Hopley.

Takes place in events cancelled outside the Doctor’s timeline, before Effect and Cause.

Effect and Cause   Audio drama, released 2020                                       Doctor: 5

Featuring the Daleks, with the Time Lords (informative mention)

Written by John Dorney.

Takes place mostly in events cancelled outside the Doctor’s timeline, but finally, it would appear, on primeval Gallifrey

The Secret of the Timeless Child   Illustrated short story, published 2020     Doctor: 13

Featuring The Time Lords

Written by the Penguin Annual 2021 crew.

Takes place on Gallifrey and in Gallifreyan space. Tecteun is described as the first Gallifreyan to travel into outer space. For reasons I will discuss subsequently, I would place this about eight million years before the emergence of the Chronarchy.

Blind Fury   Illustrated short story, published 2011                        Doctor: 11 (glimpse)

Featuring Amy (informative mention)

Written by Justin Richards.

Takes place on Gallifrey, before the Chronarchy.

Parasite: Prelude   Illustrated short story, published 1994                      Doctor: 0        

featuring the Time Lords

Written by Jim Mortimore.

Takes place on Gallifrey, probably before the Chronarchy, and in the mind of Rassilon (probably).

 

 

 

Total Stories Considered               2153

Proportion Written By Women   12%                                        

 

Top Docs

3                 223 stories

10               161 stories

4                 159 stories

7                 151 stories

11               134 stories         

8                 114 stories

5                 105 stories          Climber!

6                 102 stories

2                 83 stories  

12               72 stories  

1                 59 stories

Unbound   36 stories  

13               32 stories

9                 27 stories                     

War            2 stories    

 

 

Top Twenty Recurring Elements

 

London                                                                583 stories         

Regional England                                               434 stories

UNIT                                                                    357 stories

Alastair, Kate, Kadiatu, Lucy Weston and the Lethbridge-Stewart family                                                                                      349 stories

Wales                                                                  239 stories

Torchwood                                                         228 stories  

North America                                                   226 stories

Captain Jack                                                       178 stories

Sarah Jane                                                          143 stories

Christmas                                                            121 stories

Continental Europe                                           111 stories

The Master, including Missy                           106 stories

The Time Lords                                                  101 stories    Climber! 

Jo                                                                         101 stories

Iris Wildthyme                                                   101 stories         

Ace                                                                      97 stories

Benton                                                                95 stories  

At sea                                                                  86 stories  

Amy and Rory                                                    81 stories  

Yates                                                                   78 stories

 

 

Top Decades

 

The Teens                                                           937 stories

The Noughties                                                   609 stories                   

The Nineties                                                      200 stories

The Twenties                                                     188 stories

The Seventies                                                    121 stories         

The Eighties                                                        62 stories  

The Sixties                                                          36 stories  

 

 

And Top Twenty Years

 

2016                                                          148 stories

2008                                                          127 stories

2018                                                          113 stories

2020                                                          111 stories          Climber!

2017                                                           109 stories

2011                                                          102 stories

2009                                                          99 stories  

2019                                                          96 stories

2015                                                          94 stories  

2010                                                          86 stories  

2013                                                          78 stories  

2021                                                          76 stories  

2007                                                          74 stories

2001                                                          70 stories  

2006                                                          63 stories  

2012                                                          60 stories           

2014                                                          49 stories  

2005                                                          49 stories            

2004                                                          48 stories  

1999                                                          42 stories  

 

 

Total Writers (including showrunners, script editors, anthology linking material writers)                                                667

Proportion of Female Writers                         16%      

 

Top Twenty Writers

 

Russell T Davies                                       86 stories  

Paul Magrs                                                59 stories  

James Goss                                               54 stories  

Terrance Dicks                                          36 stories  

Steven Moffat                                          36 stories  

Justin Richards                                         35 stories  

Eddie Robson                                            33 stories  

Gareth Roberts                                        31 stories  

? John Canning                                         30 stories  

Joseph Lidster                                          30 stories  

Steve Lyons                                               29 stories  

James Hornby                                           28 stories

Jonathan Morris                                      28 stories   Climber!    

Matt Fitton                                                26 stories   Climber!

Guy Adams                                               23 stories           

Andrew Cartmel                                      23 stories            

John Dorney                                             23 stories   Climber!              

Christopher Cooper                                 22 stories

Andy Frankham-Allen                             22 stories

Gary Russell                                              22 stories