Then Again: The Early Third Myriad
One Careful Owner Comic story,
published 2009 Doctor:
10
Featuring Heather
Written by Eddie Robson.
Takes place on an unnamed planet in Tellurian space; self-dated the 208th
century CE.
Birthright Novel, published 1993 Doctors: 7, Unbound (glimpse)
featuring
Ace, Benny, and the Daleks (informative mention)
Written by Nigel Robinson.
Takes place in London, Scotland and China, but
pivotally in Africa; the later sections dated “twenty thousand years” after Ace’s
time.
The
Fate Of The Earth
Earth, all but abandoned by Tellurians, is now the
home of the Charrl, who call it Ant’hykhon.
The Hunters and Cliffhanger! Comic story,
published 2007 Doctor: 10
Written by
Trevor Baxendale.
Informed guess Takes place on Hondran, at the noospheric edge of Tellurian space.
Timelash TV
story, broadcast 1985 Doctor: 6
featuring
Peri
Written by Glen McCoy, script edited by Eric Saward.
Takes place on Karfel. In Speed of Flight, the Doctor describes the Karfelon civilisation as
being “twenty thousand years” in the future of the late twentieth century CE.
Time and Again Short story, published 2017 Doctor: 0
Featuring the Travers family, the
Dominators
Written by Robert Mammone.
Takes place on Karfel, after Timelash.
In an appendix, Frank Herbert dates his 1965
novel Dune as taking place over ten thousand years after the Butlerian
Jihad, itself taking place after eleven thousand years of Tellurian space
travel. At first sight, Dune is difficult to reconcile
with Doctor Who narrative, most obviously because there is no evidence of
non-Tellurian intelligent life in its universe, let alone spacefaring
civilisations.
However, if we ignore the prequels and
sequels written after Herbert’s death by Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson –
and having read one, that would be my advice – we are left with the information
that the Corrino/Atreides empire is not located in a single area, but is rather
a series of stellar systems scattered across the universe, between which
Spacing Guild navigators have found traversable routes through Fold space.
Daniel O’Mahoney had the Guild in mind when
creating the Pilots’ Coterie (The Book of the War, Newtons Sleep). They may be the same people, or people
doing much the same thing. What the Guild do in the six Dune novels is navigate
by means of prescience.
We are told that the Butlerian Jihad, which preceded
the formation of the Guild, destroyed all artificial intelligences. What if the
Guild discovered habitable worlds that would become the Corrino/Atreides empire
in locations they presciently knew were far from any interstellar civilisation?
What if these worlds were settled by Tellurians fleeing the knowledge that they
were far from unique in the universe, and they had destroyed their AIs because
the machines would remember that knowledge whereas they could forget it? The
Great Schools – the Guild and the Bene Gesserit – would remember the truth, but
scrupulously keep it from the general population, including the ruling
nobility.
There is one further item of evidence for the
original six novels being part of Doctor Who narrative. As far as I can see,
Herbert offers no explanation for the Face Dancers who first appear in Dune
Messiah (1970): members of the Bene Tleilax who can, in seconds, mimic any
human being down to shape, size, build, skin colour and texture, voice and hair
colour and length (!). The suggestion is that these are simply highly developed
human skills, enhanced by Tleilaxu bioengineering: but in that case, why have
the Bene Gesserit not bred Face Dancers of their own? The BG do a lot of
espionage: even a few Face Dancers would be useful.
I suggest that the xenophobic Tellurians who
settled the worlds of the imperium were taking intelligent aliens with them:
the same shape-shifting aliens who had lived largely undetected amongst
Tellurians since the twenty-first century. I suggest that the Tleilaxu are
Zygons. Again, the Bene Gesserit would know this, but could not denounce them
as nonhuman intelligences in a society where the very possibility of nonhuman
intelligence was a foundational taboo. They attempted to isolate them by
encouraging their ostracism as “the filthy Tleilaxu”, and the Bene Tleilax were
content to pose as a third, disreputable Great School, buying their security
with commodities developed by their unique bioengineering technology:
prosthetic eyes, Twisted Mentats, gholas, that we are told of.
The third volume, Children of Dune (1976),
is set twenty-one years after Dune.
Robot vs Robot Comic story,
published 2014 Doctor: 11
Featuring Clara
Written by Andrew Cartmel.
Arbitrary placement Takes place in an unnamed environment.
Exodus, Revelation and Genesis Comic story,
published 1986 Doctor: 6
featuring
the Cybermen, Peri, Frobisher
Written by Alan McKenzie and John Ridgeway.
Informed guess Takes place on and near Sylvaniar, a long time
after anyone last heard of the Cybermen.
Dreams of Empire Novel,
published 1998 Doctor: 2
featuring
Jamie, Victoria
Written by Justin Richards.
Informed guess Takes place in the Haddron empire. Chess is known
in interstellar culture: I’m not taking the Doctor’s suggestion that it arises
spontaneously seriously.
Consequences Audio drama, released 2013 Doctor:
0
Featuring Grace technology
Written by Simon Guerrier.
Arbitrary placement Takes place on an unnamed planet inhabited by humanoids.
The Undying Truth Audio drama,
released 2020 Doctor: Unbound
Featuring Benny
Written by J A Prentice.
Arbitrary placement Takes place on an unnamed planet.
The Bomb Audio drama,
released 2017 Doctor:
0
Featuring Grace technology
Written by Simon Guerrier.
Arbitrary placement Takes place on the same planet as Consequences, just over three hundred years later.
Total Stories Considered 5851
Proportion Written By Women 11%
Top Docs
4 494 stories
7 487 stories
10 407 stories Climber!
11 407 stories
8 399 stories
3 369 stories
5 358
stories
6 354 stories
1 335 stories
2 311 stories
12 175 stories
Unbound 128 stories
9 90 stories
13 82
stories
War 48
stories
Top Twenty Recurring Elements
London 1166 stories
Regional England 827 stories
The Time Lords 529 stories
The Daleks and Davros 469 stories
UNIT 468
stories
Alastair, Kate, Kadiatu, Lucy Weston and the
Lethbridge-Stewart family 463 stories
Continental Europe 441 stories
North America 433 stories
Benny 311
stories
The Master, including Missy 287
stories
Ace 270
stories Climber!
Sarah Jane 269
stories
Wales 261
stories
Torchwood 254
stories
The K9s 248
stories
Amy and Rory 246
stories
At Sea 230
stories
Christmas 208 stories
Peri 207
stories Climber!
Captain Jack 206
stories
Top Decades
The Teens 2353 stories
The Noughties 1586 stories
The Nineties 611 stories
The Twenties 471
stories
The Eighties 305
stories
The Seventies 269
stories
The Sixties 186 stories
(Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle, Oscar Wilde and William Hope Hodgson) 70
stories
And Top Twenty Years
2018 301 stories
2016 293 stories
2020 270 stories
2015 261
stories
2008 255 stories
2017 240
stories
2011 231 stories
2013 228 stories
2010 224
stories
2009 222
stories
2019 219
stories
2007 209
stories
2021 203
stories
2014 191
stories
2001 180
stories
2012 170 stories
2006 160
stories
2004 155
stories
2005 138 stories
2003 121
stories
Total Writers (including showrunners, script
editors, anthology linking material writers) 1142
Proportion of Female Writers 17%
Top Twenty Writers
Justin Richards 156 stories
Terrance Dicks 146
stories
James Goss 144
stories
Russell T Davies 123 stories
Jonathan Morris 110 stories
Steven
Moffat 102
stories
Paul Magrs 97
stories
Eddie Robson 96 stories
Terry Nation 89
stories
Matt Fitton 85
stories
David Whitaker 82
stories
Nicholas Briggs 81
stories
John Dorney 80 stories
Simon Guerrier 76
stories
Steve Lyons 68
stories
Gareth Roberts 68
stories
Guy Adams 63
stories
Trevor Baxendale 63
stories Climber!
Alan Barnes 62
stories
Gary Russell 61
stories
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