Then: The Eighteenth Century

 

Phantasmagoria   Audio drama, released 1999                   Doctor: 5

featuring Turlough

Written by Mark Gatiss.

Takes place in London; self-dated March 1702 CE.

The Unknown   Audio drama, released 2016                             Doctor: 7

Featuring River Song

Written by Guy Adams.

For River Song, takes place immediately before Five Twenty-Nine.

Five Twenty-Nine   Audio drama, released 2016                     Doctor: 0

Featuring River Song

Written by John Dorney.

For River Song, takes place immediately before World Enough and Time, on an island in the ocean.

World Enough and Time   Audio drama, released 2016    Doctor: 6

Featuring River Song

Written by James Goss.

For River Song, takes place immediately before The Eye of the Storm.

The Eye of the Storm   Audio drama, released 2016             Doctors: 6, 7

Featuring River Song

Written by Matt Fitton.

Takes place in London; self-dated November 1703 CE.

Creatures From the Deep   Comic story, published 2014           Doctors: 11

Featuring Clara

Written by Simon Guerrier.

Takes place on Florana, well after The Elite but before the Thirtieth century.

 

The earliest narrative compatible with Doctor Who’s vampire narrative is the splendid 1974 Hammer swashbuckler Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter, which is described on the trailer as being set in the eighteenth century CE, in the depths of the European countryside.

 

Doctor Who and the Pirates   Audio drama, released 2003  Doctor: 6

featuring Evelyn

Written by Jacqueline Rayner.

Takes place on the Caribbean Sea and in Sheffield, principally during the reign of Queen Anne.

The Scarlet Shadow   Short story, published 2009                                  Doctor: 0

Featuring Iris Wildthyme, with the Master (informative mention)

Written by Stewart Sheargold.

Informed guess Takes place in Russia; self-dated the eighteenth century CE.

The Rising Night   Audio story, released 2009                             Doctor: 10

Featuring Donna, Wilf (informative mention)

Written by Scott Handcock.

Informed guess Takes place in Yorkshire; self-dated the early eighteenth century CE. The Baobhan Sith sound very much as if they could be a variety of Vampire.

Shark Bait   Comic story, published 2008                                                  Doctor: 10

Featuring Donna

Written by Christopher Cooper.

Informed guess Takes place at sea; from the clothing, during the early to mid-eighteenth century CE.

The Doomwood Curse   Audio drama, released 2008             Doctor: 6

featuring Charley, the Grel

Written by Jacqueline Rayner.

Takes place in regional England; self-dated 1738 CE.

The Flying Dutchman   Audio drama, released 2020                      Doctor: 7

Featuring Ace, Hex

Written by Gemma Arrowsmith.

Takes place on Earth, at sea; self-dated 1742 CE.

The Trappers [Lesser Non-timebound Entities]  

Online fictional document, posted 2018      Doctor: 0

Featuring Doctor Who narrative

Written by Simon Bucher-Jones.

Document dated 1743 CE.

Malthill Way   Comic story, published 2012                                               Doctor: 11

Featuring Amy or an Amy ganger, Rory

Written by Craig Donaghy.

Takes place near York; self-dated 1745 CE.

The Highlanders   TV story, broadcast 1967                                   Doctor: 2

featuring Polly, Ben, Jamie

Written by Elwyn Jones and Gerry Davis.

Takes place in Scotland and at sea; historically, the Battle of Culloden was fought in 1746 CE. Jamie leaves linear time, being aboard the TARDIS when it dematerialises.

The Horror of Hy-Brasil   Audio short story, released 2017                   Doctor: 2

Featuring Jamie, Zoe

Written by Russell McGee.

Informed guess Takes place partly in the North Atlantic off the coast of Ireland; self-dated 1748 CE.

She Doesn’t Exist   Online short story, originally published 2003            Doctor: 0

Featuring Faction Paradox, the Second War in Heaven

Written by Jonathan Dennis.

Takes place partly in the Eleven Day Empire; and thus, self-dated, in a manner of speaking, September 1752 CE.

With All Awry   Charity short story, published 2013                      Doctors: 8, Unbound 9, 9

Featuring Iris Wildthyme, Faction Paradox, Kelsey, with Fitz (informative mention)

Written by Blair Bidmead.

Takes place in the Eleven Day Empire.

…and from the Tower She Did Fall   Short story, published 2013        Doctor: 0

Featuring Faction Paradox

Written by Cate Gardner.

Takes place in the Eleven Day Empire; these events are perhaps a foreshadowing of those of The Shadow Play.

T.memeticus: A Morphology   Short story, published 2018                   Doctor: 0

Featuring the Mal’akh, the Earth Reptiles, the Daemons, Faction Paradox, the Second War in Heaven, with Ancient Venus (glimpse) and the Osirians (informative mention)

Written by Philip Purser-Hallard, with a prelude by Simon Bucher-Jones.

Takes place variously, but pivotally in the Eleven Day Empire. I am assuming that Byzo and her gentleman friend are Daemons, unnamed for coyright reasons.

The Eleven Day Empire   Audio drama, released 2001                   Doctor: 0

Featuring the Sontarans, Faction Paradox, the Second War in Heaven

Written by Lawrence Miles.

Takes place in the Eleven Day Empire. Godfather Morlock says the Sontarans have been at war for six million years. So these are very early Sontarans.

The Shadow Play   Audio drama, released 2001                                  Doctor: 0

Featuring the Sontarans, Faction Paradox, the Second War in Heaven

Written by Lawrence Miles.

Takes place mainly in the Eleven Day Empire, immediately after The Eleven Day Empire.

The Courage of My Convictions(B)   Charity short story, published 2001

Doctor: Unbound 2

Featuring Unbound Time Lords

Written by James Potter.

Arbitrary placement Takes place in a timeline where the Time Lords run an interstellar protection racket, presumably on another planet.

The Behemoth   Audio drama, released 2017                                 Doctor: 6

Featuring Flip, Constance

Written by Marc Platt.

Takes place in Bath and Bristol; self-dated 1756 CE.

The Tramp’s Story   Short story, published 2004                                     Doctor: 7

featuring Christmas, with Death (glimpse), and Mortimus (informative mention)

Written by Joseph Lidster.

Takes place variously but pivotally in Salzburg, between the birth of Mozart in 1756 CE and his learning how to talk.

The Many Hands   Novel, published 2008                                    Doctor: 10

Featuring Martha

Written by Dale Smith.

Takes place in Edinburgh; self-dated 1759 CE.

Tick-Tock   Short story, published 2016                                                     Doctor: 0

Featuring Erimem

Written by Ian Farrington.

Takes place in the Atlantic; self-dated May 1761 CE.

The Founding Fathers   Audio drama, released 2015                      Doctor: 1

Featuring Vicki, Steven, with North America (informative mention)

Written by Simon Guerrier.

Takes place in London; self-dated 1762 CE.

Sabbath Dei  Audio drama, released 2003                                            Doctor: 0

Featuring the Peking Homunculus, Faction Paradox, the Second War in Heaven, Compassion, Sabbath

Written by Lawrence Miles.

Takes place in Buckinghamshire and London; self-dated 1762 CE. This is Sabbath’s first appearance in his “native” timeline: we learn that he is not Godfather Sabbath of Faction Paradox, and that performing the ritual of the Supplication of the Anakim makes him temporarily the agent of the Great Houses.

In The Year of the Cat   Audio drama, released 2003                      Doctor: 0

Featuring the Peking Homunculus, Faction Paradox, the Second War in Heaven, Compassion, Sabbath

Takes place mostly in London, immediately after Sabbath Dei.

Coming to Dust   Audio drama, released 2005                                   Doctor: 0

Featuring the Mal’akh, Faction Paradox, with the Osirians (glimpse), the Second War in Heaven (informative mention)

Written by Lawrence Miles.

Takes place near Naples, a port on the west coast of Italy; self-dated 1763 CE.

The Ship of a Billion Years   Audio drama, released 2006            Doctor: 0

Featuring the Mal’akh, the Osirians, Faction Paradox, with the Second War in Heaven (informative mention)

Written by Lawrence Miles.

Takes place partly near Naples, immediately after Coming to Dust.

Old Flames   Short story, published 1998                                                  Doctor: 4

featuring Iris Wildthyme, Sarah Jane

Written by Paul Magrs.

Takes place in regional England; self-dated 1764 CE.

The Girl in the Fireplace: Tardisode   Video story, posted online 2006         Doctor: 0

Written by Gareth Roberts, script supervised by Steven Moffat.

Takes place partly in Versailles, a royal place south of Paris, during The Girl in the Fireplace..

The Girl in the Fireplace   TV story, broadcast 2006                 Doctor: 10

Featuring Rose, Mickey

Written by Steven Moffat, script supervised by Russell T Davies.

Takes place partly in Paris and Versailles. Historically, Madame de Pompadour died in 1764 CE.

A Tragical History   Audio drama, released 2021                         Doctor: 11

Written by Tessa North.

Takes place in London; self-dated 1770 CE.

 

The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) is a British folk-horror film whose elements might well be rationalised as an incursion onto seventeenth century Earth of Enemy genetic material. A sardonic reference to “King Charles the Third” places it after the death of the Old Pretender in 1766: the costumes suggest a considerably earlier date than this, but we may understand that this is a corner of rural England as distant from fashionable society as it is possible to get.

 

The Transit of Venus   Audio drama, released 2009                        Doctor: 1

featuring Susan, Barbara, Ian

Written by Jacqueline Rayner.

Takes place on the Pacific Ocean; self-dated 1770 CE.

Political Animals   Comic story, published 2003                          `           Doctor: 0

Featuring Faction Paradox, with North America, the Second War in Heaven (informative mention)

Written by Lawrence Miles.

Takes place in London; self-dated 1774 CE.

Betes Noires & Dark Horses   Comic story, published 2003                  Doctor: 0

Featuring Faction Paradox, Sabbath, with North America, the Second War in Heaven (informative mention)

Written by Lawrence Miles.

Takes place in London, immediately after Political Animals; self-dated December.

The Sorrows of Vienna   Short story, published 2007                             Doctor: 8

Featuring Charley, C’rizz (informative mention)

Written by Steven Savile.

Takes place in Vienna, not long after the publication of Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther.

Night of the Kraken   Gamebook, published 2016                     Doctor: 12

Written by Jonathan Green.

Ig Takes place on the coast of Cornwall; self-dated the late eighteenth century CE.

The Revolutionaries   Short story, published 2005                                 Doctor: 2

featuring Jamie

Written by John S.Drew.

Takes place near Trenton, New Jersey; self-dated Christmas 1776 CE.

The Knocking in the Mineshaft   Charity short story, published 2020 Doctor: Unbound

Written by Simon Bucher-Jones.

Takes place in Cornwall; ending self-datedly in April 1780 CE.

Catch-1782   Audio drama, released 2005                                           Doctor: 6

featuring Mel

Written by Alison Lawson.

Takes place in Berkshire; principally self-dated June 1782 CE.

Highway Robbery   Comic story, published 2009                                    Doctor: 10

Featuring Heather

Written by Steve Lyons.

Informed guess Takes place in Great Britain, or possibly Ireland; visibly taking place in the mid to late eighteenth century CE.

The Adventuress of Henrietta Street   Novel, published 2001    Doctor: 8

Featuring the Master, the remembered Fitz, Anji, Sabbath

Written by Lawrence Miles.

Takes place in London, Manchester, Cambridge and elsewhere in regional England, Spain, Vienna and the Caribbean; ending self-datedly in February 1783 CE. So, who is Sabbath? With Lawrence Miles, you not only need to examine the clues to solve the puzzle, you need to examine the clues to notice that he has set you a puzzle. Indeed, I think Miles is the closest thing we still have to Gene Wolfe. Sabbath has access to Time Travel, “after”, in five-dimensional terms, the destruction of the Time Lords in The Ancestor Cell. Miles is known to have been unimpressed with The Ancestor Cell, in which he was scarcely alone, but I think it is his nature as a Doctor Who writer to address the loose ends left by other writers in principle. Sabbath is not the Faction Paradox member of that name, and his initiation into the British Secret Service, we learn here, entailed surviving his apparent death by drowning.

  So, how is the Second War in Heaven resolved in The Ancestor Cell? It is prevented from happening. The Great Houses, who may be defined as the Wartime iteration of the Time Lords, never come to exist. This is, de facto, victory for The Enemy, whatever it is, and their leader, whoever they are. The Book of the War explicitly tells us that The Enemy has a leader, and the Great Houses refuse to get bogged down in contemplating his or her nature; but if they are scared of some knowledge, I think it is fair to say that the Doctor is scared of no knowledge. The Book of the War’s Rivera Manuscript appears to describe the Doctor being interrogated by The Enemy’s Leader, whom he describes as the One, or One, “before” the War’s outbreak.

  What, asks the theme song of Custer of the West, does a mighty general do when the war is over, the war is through? (He finds a war to get into.) I suggest that Sabbath is One. With the War successfully concluded, he takes his time-travel technology to Earth, which is clearly of central importance to him, and observes a Secret Service initiate named Sabbath removing himself from history in 1761 CE in order to become a Little Brother of Faction Paradox. He inserts himself into history by assuming his identity and surviving the apparently fatal initiation ceremony. He builds up a power base in late eighteenth century London, and is unsurprised, perhaps a little pleased, to note the arrival the Doctor twenty years later. The Doctor, in any case an amnesiac, doesn’t recognise him but it is reasonable to assume that he recognises the Doctor.

  So, having hypothesized that Sabbath is One, who is One? I shall come to that.

Dead of Winter   Novel, published 2011                                          Doctor: 11

Featuring Amy, Rory

Written by James Goss.

Takes place on the coast of Italy; self-dated December 1783 CE.

Death and the Queen   Audio drama, released 2016                       Doctor: 10

Featuring Donna

Written by James Goss.

Informed guess Takes place in Goritania, a realm, we may assume. In central or eastern Europe; self-dated the 1780s CE.

Clear History   Audio drama, released 2019                                         Doctor: Unbound

Featuring Benny

Written by Doris V Sutherland.

Arbitrary placement Takes place on Civitas G.

What Lurks Down Under   Audio drama, released 2020                       Doctor: 5

Written by Tommy Donbavand.

Takes place on the Indian Ocean; self-dated late 1789 CE.

My Own Private Wolfgang   Audio drama, released 2007                     Doctor: 6

featuring Evelyn

Written by Robert Shearman.

Ends in Vienna; self-dated 1791 CE.

A Requiem for the Doctor   Audio drama, released 2018              Doctor: 5

Featuring Brooke, River Song

Written by Jacqueline Rayner.

Takes place in Vienna; self-dated 1791 CE. It would appear that Mozart’s death is a multiply overwritten event, like the disappearance of the Princes in the Tower.

The Sword of the Chevalier   Audio drama, released 2017           Doctor: 10

Featuring Rose

Written by Guy Adams.

Takes place in Slough; self-dated 1791 CE.

Plight of the Pimpernel   Audio drama, released 2020          Doctor: 6

Featuring Peri

Written by Chris Chapman.

Takes place in Paris and regional England; self-dated 1793 CE.

Fields of Terror   Audio drama, released 2017                                     Doctor: 1

Featuring Vicki, Steven

Written by John Pritchard.

Takes place in the Vendee, a department on the west coast of France. Historically, the War in the Vendee took place in 1793 CE.

The Reign of Terror   TV story, broadcast 1964                         Doctor: 1

featuring Susan, Barbara, Ian

Written by Dennis Spooner, script edited by David Whitaker.

Takes place in Paris and the surrounding area; self-dated July 1794 CE.

Terror In the Taj Mahal   Comic story, published 2013                           Doctor: 11

Featuring Decky Flamboon, and India (informative mention)

Written by Craig Donaghy.

Informed guess Takes place on the Hollow Moon of Artenture, sometime after 1653 CE.

The Man in the Velvet Mask   Novel, published 1996         Doctor: 1

featuring Dodo

Written by Daniel O’Mahony.

Takes place in Paris in an alternative timeline, which is eventually wound back to its point of departure from our own in 1794 CE.

Danse Macabre   Short story, published 2005                                          Doctor: 3

Written by Joff Brown.

Takes place in Naples; self-dated Christmas 1798 CE.

Christmas on a Rational Planet   Novel, published 1996      Doctor: 7

featuring the Time Lords, Roz, Chris, with Jamie, Romana, Faction Paradox (glimpse) and Sarah Jane, Kamelion, France (informative mention)

Written by Lawrence Miles.

Takes place in Woodwicke, New York; principally self-dated Christmas 1799 CE. Jamie, in his seventies, is employed by the US Army, no doubt because of his usefulness to the Shadow Congress. (Jake is short for Jacob, an alternative form of James…but in any case, Jamie is a Jacobite and has probably fled across the Atlantic on that account.) Some time after this, physically and perhaps mentally frailer, he returns to live in the Scottish Highlands, where he is found by the Doctor in The World Shapers.

  The Carnival Queen wonders if Chris would have chosen to trust the Doctor if he knew what destiny history had for him. Highlights include: becoming an agent of the Time Lords (Lungbarrow), having his memories altered and regenerating after an otherwise fatal injury into a new body (Dead Romance) and being engineered into the Great Houses’ Army of One. The Book of the War notes that the original Cwej became a loner and, implicitly, dissatisfied, and that his last known mission ended in the Mount Usu Duel. The Book’s account of this gives us a last glimpse of Chris running down the mountain, that seems to be bursting open, at the behest of what, in its ill-definition and incomprehensibility I take to be a manifestation of The Enemy.

  So, let us turn again to the figure in the Rivera manuscript, whom we may take to be the leader of The Enemy: “the first, the many and the indivisible”, of whom the Doctor (presumably) says “why does it hate us?” I contend that it is Brookhaven’s insane Mujun: The Ghost Kingdom project, dramatizing the fall of the Eleven-Day Empire before it has happened that somehow lets The Enemy into the Spiral Politic, whereupon it immediately captures Cwej (a fact that the House Military understandably conceal from The Book’s authors), and persuades him to become its strategist.

  Cwej is the One of the Army of One: simultaneously its first and its many, indivisible from it and in it. He hates the Great Houses because of what they have done to him and, indeed Earth: although he is not as xenophobic as Roz, he, too, is a child of the Tellurian First Empire, culturally conditioned to anthropocentricity. The cyborgs the Rivera Manuscript describes storming the Homeworld are iterations of the Cwej Magnus, the third stage of the Army of One, of which Dead Romance’s Khiste is, I think, a prototype. He and his recruitment account for the otherwise vague link between The Enemy and Earth: he is why the War King remarks to Compassion that while the Great Houses and the Timeships are threatened by The Enemy, the Tellurian-descended Carmen Yeh might not be.

  Chris, then, becomes One, the leader of The Enemy. With his involvement or not, in The Ancestor Cell the Great Houses are eradicated: the War is over. As already described, he then becomes Sabbath, and here is Lawrence Miles’s clue hiding in plain sight: his description of Sabbath in The Adventuress of Henrietta Street: stocky, white, with dark, receding hair, is the same as Dave Stone’s description of the regenerated Chris in The Mary Sue Extrusion. Compare Jim Calafiore’s illustration of Cwej-Plus in The Book of the War with his pencils on panels depicting Sabbath in Betes Noires and Dark Horses. If Benny and her friends saw Sabbath, I believe they would say “Chris! What are you doing here?” and he would give a sardonic chuckle.

  And, of course, when Sabbath performs the Supplication of Anakim in Sabbath Dei, he reverts to being a Great Houses agent. From their point of view, he is simply one of the many Cwejen they have scattered around the Spiral Politic, rather than a presentiment of their future. And his temporary servitude is no serious problem for him: the moment he leaves the Spriral Politic, which is to say, enters a region of five-dimensional space where the Great Houses never happened, it obviously ends. And he clearly has the technology to do that.

Michael Drake   Short story, published 2015                                 Doctor: 0

Featuring Iris Wildthyme, Unbound Time Lords, Unbound Daleks

Written by Dale Smith.

Takes place in a version of Yorkshire; self-dated New Years Eve 1799 CE.

 

 

Total Stories Considered               3447

Proportion Written By Women   12%                                        

 

Top Docs

4                 316 stories                   

3                 286 stories

7                 263 stories         

10               238 stories    Climber!

8                 234 stories   

5                 224 stories                   

11               223 stories   

1                 205 stories         

6                 193 stories  

2                 187 stories         

12               114 stories

Unbound   91 stories  

9                 62 stories  

13               52 stories           

War            45 stories                     

 

 

Top Twenty Recurring Elements

 

London                                                                686 stories         

Regional England                                               566 stories

UNIT                                                                    404 stories

The Time Lords                                                  402 stories

Alastair, Kate, Kadiatu, Lucy Weston and the Lethbridge-Stewart family                                                                   396 stories

Continental Europe                                           257 stories Climber!  

North America                                                   254 stories

Wales                                                                  245 stories

Torchwood                                                         233 stories  

The Daleks and Davros                                     222 stories   

Sarah Jane                                                          219 stories  

The Master, including Missy                            213 stories   

Captain Jack                                                       192 stories

The K9s                                                               162 stories  

Ace                                                                      156 stories 

Romana                                                               155 stories  

Christmas                                                            140 stories

Jo                                                                         134 stories   

At Sea                                                                  132 stories Re-entry!

Asia                                                                      129 stories

 

 

Top Decades

 

The Teens                                                           1432 stories

The Noughties                                                    890 stories                   

The Nineties                                                       346 stories

The Twenties                                                     294 stories

The Seventies                                                    204 stories         

The Eighties                                                        198 stories

The Sixties                                                          83 stories  

 

 

And Top Twenty Years

 

2016                                                          207 stories

2018                                                          181 stories 

2017                                                           173 stories

2020                                                          172 stories 

2008                                                          168 stories  

2015                                                          161 stories 

2021                                                          141 stories  

2019                                                          139 stories  

2011                                                          137 stories  

2013                                                          134 stories   

2009                                                          133 stories

2010                                                          117 stories

2001                                                          110 stories

2007                                                          103 stories  Climber!

2014                                                          103 stories  

2006                                                          87 stories 

2005                                                          84 stories   Climber!    

1993                                                          81 stories           

2012                                                          79 stories  

2004                                                          75 stories     

  

 

         

 

 

Total Writers (including showrunners, script editors, anthology linking material writers)                                  935

Proportion of Female Writers            17%      

 

Top Twenty Writers

 

Terrance Dicks                                          118 stories  

James Goss                                               109 stories Climber!

Russell T Davies                                       107 stories

Paul Magrs                                                75 stories  

Justin Richards                                         73 stories  

Steven Moffat                                          67 stories           

Jonathan Morris                                      61 stories           

Gareth Roberts                                        49 stories   Climber!

John Dorney                                             48 stories   Climber!    

Robert Holmes                                         48 stories  

Matt Fitton                                               45 stories   Climber!

Eric Saward                                               45 stories            

Eddie Robson                                            44 stories                     

Gary Russell                                              40 stories  

David Llewellyn                                       38 stories  

Steve Lyons                                               38 stories   Climber!    

Alan Barnes                                              37 stories           

Andrew Cartmel                                      37 stories  

David Whitaker                                        37 stories   Climber!

Guy Adams                                               36 stories = Re-entry!

? John Canning                                         36 stories =