Then: The Late First Millennium

 

Death to Mufl   Illustrated short story, published 1968                 Doctor: 2

Written by the World Distributors Annual 1969 crew.

Informed guess Takes place on a planet of non-humanoid bipeds. Mufl’s people are mentioned in Placebo Effect, so some time before 3999 CE. As this appears in the 1969 Annual, the Doctor’s companions, asleep in the TARDIS, are probably Jamie and Victoria, but are unnamed.


Here Be Dragons   Charity short story, published 1999               Doctor: Unbound

featuring the Matter of Britain

Written by Helen Fayle.

Informed guess Takes place in a version of Britain, some decades after the reign of King Arthur.


The Secret History   Audio drama, released 2015            Doctor: 5

Featuring Vicki, Steven, Mortimus

Written by Eddie Robson.

Takes place in Ravenna and Constantinople; self-dated 540 CE.

Ravenna was a city on the northeast coast of Italy. Constantinople was the renamed and largely rebuilt city of Byzantium.


An Ill Wind   Comic story, published 2013                                     Doctor: 11

Featuring Decky Flamboon

Written by James Hill.

Takes place in China; self-dated 620 CE.


War Crimes   Short story, published 1998                                        Doctor: 2

featuring Jamie, Zoe, the Time Lords (informed guess)

Written by Simon Bucher-Jones.

Informed guess Takes place on a planet of sentient quadrapeds. This is between the earliest and latest times from which troops were taken by the Wargamers


The Magician’s Apprentice and The Witch’s Familiar  

TV story, broadcast 2015       Doctor: 12

Featuring the Daleks, UNIT, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, Davros, Clara, Missy

Written by Steven Moffat.

Informed guess The earlier sections take place on Skaro, shortly before I, Davros: Innocence. Other sections take place in London and Essex. 


I, Davros: Innocence   Audio drama, released 2006            Doctor: 0

featuring Davros, and the Daleks (glimpse)

Written by Gary Hopkins.

Takes place on Skaro; before The Academy: First Day.


The Academy: First Day   Charity drabble, published 1993         Doctor: 0

featuring Davros

Written by Mark Morris.

Takes place on Skaro; before I, Davros: Purity.


I, Davros: Purity   Audio drama, released 2006                      Doctor: 0

featuring Davros, and the Daleks (glimpse)

Written by James Parsons and Andrew Stirling-Brown.

Takes place on Skaro; before I, Davros: Corruption.


I, Davros: Corruption   Audio drama, released 2006          Doctor: 0

featuring Davros, and the Daleks (glimpse)

Written by Lance Parkin.

Takes place on Skaro; before I, Davros: Guilt.


The Steward’s Story   Short story, published 2004                       Doctors: 2, 8

Written by Mark Michalowski.

Informed guess Takes place in a sophisticated civilisation in India, some distance in the past.


I, Davros: Guilt   Audio drama, released 2006                        Doctor: 0

featuring Davros, and the Daleks (glimpse)

Written by Scott Alan Woodward.

Takes place on Skaro; before Genesis of the Daleks.


Davros: Genesis   Short story, published 2017                               Doctor: 4 (glimpse)

Featuring the Daleks, Davros

Written by Terrance Dicks.

Takes place on Skaro, ending during Genesis of the Daleks.


Genesis of the Daleks   TV story, broadcast 1975         Doctor: 4

featuring the Daleks, Sarah Jane, Harry, Davros, and the Time Lords (glimpse)

Written by Terry Nation, script edited by Robert Holmes.

informed guess Takes place on Skaro. The Doctor’s actions put back Dalek progress by a thousand years; presumably it takes them this long to re-emerge onto Skaro’s surface. This also allows about fifteen hundred years for the hominid Daleks (presumably natural descendants of mutating Kaleds) and the Thals to have advanced to the level of technology seen in The Dalek Tapes. My reconciliation between this account of the Daleks’ origin and the one in TV21, dated by The Dalek Tapes to 2003 CE, is that the emergent Daleks contact Yarvelling and tell him how to genetically engineer new Dalek mutants and how to construct new travel machines for them to use. Yarvelling is happy to take the credit: I infer that following the Neutron War, the emergent Dalek who meets Yarvelling and Zolfian and persuades them to set up the Dalek production line, is the one who proclaims himself Golden Emperor and gives the new Daleks a somewhat modified version of their history. The Dalek Prime, who John Peel tells us in Doctor Who – The Evil of the Daleks was the first Dalek produced by Davros’s original production line, and the other emergent Daleks remained, I suggest, hidden from the new Daleks and acted as a sort of board of trustees or governors, overseeing the Golden Emperor’s decisions. This, I further suggest, is the nature of the Daleks’ mysterious Brain Machine that first appears in Duel of the Daleks, and to which the Golden Emperor defers: it is his interface with the Prime and the other first-generation Daleks.


That Which Went Away   Short story, published 2005                Doctor: 2

featuring Jamie, Zoe

Written by Mark Wright.

Takes place in Scandinavia, not many decades before Scandinavian warriors began Viking. It is possible that the men’s transformation into bears is Mal’akh-related.


The Judgement of Solomon   Short story, published 1997         Doctor: 0

featuring Benny

Written by Lawrence Miles.

Takes place in Baghdad, a city of Mesopotamia; self-dated 177 AH, which would be 792 or 793 CE.


The Lonely Computer   Illustrated Web short story, posted 2008         Doctor: 10

Featuring Donna

Written by Rupert Laight.

Takes place partly in Belgium; self-dated 800 CE.


The Lumiat   Audio drama, released 2020                                Doctor: 0

Featuring Missy

Written by Lisa McMullin.

Takes place variously, but at one point in northern Europe in “Eight Hundredish” CE.


The Wolves of Winter   Comic story, published 2017                  Doctor: 12

Featuring the Ice Warriors, Bill, ?the Mal’akh

Written by Richard Dinnick.

Takes place in the North Atlantic; self-dated the ninth century CE. Ingiger is a haemovore, a vampirical biped who is kept at bay by faith. I think it likely that the Mal’akh – ultimately the Yssgaroth – are responsible for all biophysics of this sort in our universe.


The Nobility of Faith   Short story, published 2007                      Doctor: 4

Written by Jonathan Clements.

Takes place in and near Samarkand, a city of central Asia, in midwinter; sometime in the late first millennium.


The Girl Who Died   TV story, broadcast 2015                       Doctor: 12

Featuring Clara, Ashildr

Written by Jamie Mathieson and Steven Moffat.

Informed guess Takes place in Scandinavia; dated eight hundred years earlier in The Woman Who Lived.


Storyteller   Short story, published 2011                                          Doctor: 0

Featuring Faction Paradox

Written by Matt Kimpton.

Informed guess Takes place in northern Europe. Hrothgar was a Danish king of the fifth century, but the presence of Vikings puts this some time later. It is implied that when an initiate in the faction, in this case Drostan, kills their former self, the victim may survive as a forgotten individual without an identity.


The Destroyer of Delights   Audio drama, released 2009    Doctor: 5

featuring Grace technology

Written by Jonathan Clements.

Takes place in the Sudan, the land on the northeast coast of Africa south of Egypt; self-dated the ninth century CE.


Wrath of the Warrior, The Screaming Prison, Force and Fury and Warriors’ Revenge                              Comic story, published 2007                                                Doctor: 10

Featuring Martha

Written by Stephen Cole.

Takes place variously, including in France; self-dated the ninth century CE.


Doctor Conkerer   Comic story, published 1990                           Doctor: 7

Written by Ian Rimmer.

The Doctor says it is 5th century Britain; but then he meets some Vikings, surely placing it some four centuries later. The Celticness of the natives suggests the north-west coast. Historically, horse chestnut trees were only introduced to Britain in the seventeenth century century CE. I assume that these trees were descended from stock brought to Britain during the Roman occupation, which died out some time later; meaning that the Doctor has not paradoxically caused the game of Conkers, which is a relief.


Woden’s Warriors   Comic story, published 1976                          Doctor: 4

featuring Sarah Jane

Written by an anonymous Polystyle writer.

Historically, Danes, from Denmark, a kingdom occupying a peninsula and archipelago to the north of Germany and lying between the North and Baltic seas, were in conflict with Saxons in England and northern Germany at this time.


Reign of the Stone Monkey   Comic story, published 2008       Doctor: 10

Written by Moray Laing.

Informed guess Takes place in China; self-dated during the Tang dynasty.


The Man Who Wouldn’t Give Up   Short story, published 2004           Doctor: 6

featuring Mel

Written by Nev Fountain.

Takes place principally in Wessex; historically dated the early eighty-eighth decade CE. Also, briefly in Judea in the first century CE.


The Lady of Mercia   Audio drama, released 2013          Doctor: 5

Featuring Nyssa, Tegan, Turlogh

Written by Paul Magrs.

Takes place partly in Mercia, a kingdom of south-central Albion, lying east of Wales; self-dated 918 CE.


They Think It’s All Over   Comic story, published 2011               Doctor: 11

Featuring Amy, Rory

Written by Tony Lee.

Takes place in Middlesex; self-dated 966 CE.


Methuselah   Short story, published 2008                                     Doctor: 5        

featuring Peri

Written by George Mann.

Takes place partly in Constantinople, dated by the Doctor the late tenth century CE.


The Immortals   Short story, published 2004                                Doctor: 5

featuring Adric, Nyssa, Tegan

Written by Simon Guerrier.

Takes place in eastern Europe; self-dated during the reign of Ethelred the Redeless in England.


The Battle   Audio drama, released 2013                                    Doctor: 0

Featuring Grace technology

Written by Simon Guerrier.

Takes place in Essex; self-dated August, 991 CE.


Excelis Dawns   Audio drama, released 2002                          Doctor: 5

featuring Iris Wildthyme, and Tegan (informative mention)

Written by Paul Magrs.

Takes place on Artaris; self-dated a millennium before Excelis Rising.

 

 

 

Total Stories Considered               3197

Proportion Written By Women   11%                                        

 

Top Docs

4                 294 stories                   

3                 280 stories

7                 248 stories         

8                 222 stories                   

10               219 stories

11               204 stories         

5                 200 stories                   

1                 173 stories         

2                 172 stories           Climber!

6                 172 stories         

12               104 stories

Unbound   83 stories  

9                 56 stories  

13               49 stories           

War            45 stories                     

 

 

Top Twenty Recurring Elements

 

London                                                                644 stories         

Regional England                                               508 stories

UNIT                                                                    403 stories

Alastair, Kate, Kadiatu, Lucy Weston and the Lethbridge-Stewart family                                                                                       394 stories

The Time Lords                                                  394 stories Climber! 

Wales                                                                  245 stories

North America                                                   240 stories   

Torchwood                                                         233 stories  

The Daleks and Davros                                     217 stories   

Sarah Jane                                                          209 stories  

The Master, including Missy                            205 stories   

Continental Europe                                           193 stories Climber!  

Captain Jack                                                       188 stories

The K9s                                                               159 stories  

Romana                                                               153 stories  

Ace                                                                      150 stories  

Jo                                                                         134 stories   

Christmas                                                            131 stories   

Iris Wildthyme                                                   118 stories   

Amy and Rory                                                    117 stories

 

 

Top Decades

 

The Teens                                                           1327 stories

The Noughties                                                    806 stories                   

The Nineties                                                       323 stories

The Twenties                                                     277 stories

The Seventies                                                    199 stories         

The Eighties                                                        192 stories

The Sixties                                                          73 stories  

 

 

And Top Twenty Years

 

2016                                                          194 stories

2018                                                          171 stories 

2017                                                           163 stories

2020                                                          159 stories

2008                                                          155 stories  

2015                                                          147 stories 

2021                                                          137 stories  

2019                                                          134 stories  

2011                                                          129 stories  

2013                                                          125 stories   

2009                                                          117 stories

2010                                                          111 stories

2001                                                          101 stories

2007                                                          96 stories

2006                                                          78 stories  Climber!    

2012                                                          77 stories  

2014                                                          75 stories

1993                                                          75 stories   Climber!    

2005                                                          72 stories           

2004                                                          68 stories     

  

 

         

 

 

Total Writers (including showrunners, script editors, anthology linking material writers)                                  895

Proportion of Female Writers           16%      

 

Top Twenty Writers

 

Terrance Dicks                                          117 stories  

Russell T Davies                                       105 stories

James Goss                                               85 stories           

Paul Magrs                                                71 stories  

Steven Moffat                                          62 stories           

Justin Richards                                         53 stories                     

John Dorney                                             46 stories                     

Robert Holmes                                         46 stories   Climber!             

Matt Fitton                                               44 stories  

Gareth Roberts                                        44 stories  

Eddie Robson                                            43 stories   Climber!             

Eric Saward                                               43 stories  

Gary Russell                                              40 stories  

Jonathan Morris                                      38 stories  

Andrew Cartmel                                      36 stories  

Alan Barnes                                              35 stories  

? John Canning                                         35 stories  

Steve Lyons                                               35 stories           

David Llewellyn                                       34 stories  

Guy Adams                                               33 stories=

David Whitaker                                        33 stories=

         

 

 

 

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