Then Again: The Eighth Millennium

 

Doggerland was the region that connected Albion to continental Europe. This is as far in the future as its submergence beneath the North Sea is in the past.

 

Student Bodies   Short story, published 2018                                           Doctor: 0

Featuring River Song, the Silents

Written by Dave Rudden.

Takes place on the Moon, self-dated Christmas 5124. Alas, in the early sixth millennium, the Earth was uninhabitable due to solar flares and I must assume that the Moon was too, being in practically the same place in relation to the sun. I am therefore assuming that this is an Imperial Space Year, making the time about 7080 CE, and the location the reconstructed Moon. I can see the Lunar University being the sort of institution that would make a fuss about using Earth Imperial Space Years.

Bernice Summerfield and The Criminal Code   Audio drama, released 2010                                                                                                                                       Doctor: 7

Featuring Benny

Written by Eddie Robson.

Informed guess Takes place on Shanquis, far in the future, and plausibly after the Great Catastrophe.

Facades   Comic story, published 2013                                Doctors: 6, with 10 (glimpse)

Featuring the Master, the Nestene Consciousness, Peri, Frobisher

Written by Scott and David Tipton.

Takes place in Antarctica; self-dated 7214 CE.

Doctor Who and the Exile From Hell

Charity short story, published 2018                                           Doctor: Unbound 2

Featuring Unbound Jamie, Unbound Zoe, the Daemons, with the Time Lords, Unbound Victoria

Written by Simon Bucher-Jones.

Informed guess Takes place on Dante’s World; self-dated the seventy-third century CE.

Valhalla   Audio drama, released 2007                                                 Doctor: 7

Written by Marc Platt.

Informed guess Takes place on Callisto; self-dated a month before 9146 CE, or a month before 9/1/46 in an unspecified century. I’m going with the later, as this format for dates is used elsewhere in the story, and because Earth is inhabited and dominating the Solar System, which is hard to reconcile with other information about the tenth millennium.

 

The Bronze Age began with the commercial smelting of copper and tin as an alloy in the cities of Mesopotamia. That was as far in the past as this is in the future.

 

Planet of the Dead   Comic story, published 1988                              Doctor: 7

featuring Frobisher (informative mention)

Written by John Freeman.

Informed guess Takes place on Adeki, some time after the Shaper Wars, which took place in Frobisher’s past. After the Great Catastrophe seems a plausible time for them.

The Dying Light   Audio drama, released 2013                                   Doctor: 2

Featuring the Time Lords, Jamie, Zoe

Written by Nick Wallace.

Informed guess Takes place on an unnamed planet; Stoyn says it is “thousands of years” since The Beginning.

Lepidoptery for Beginners   Short story, published 2008                     Doctor: 2

featuring Jamie, Zoe

Written by John Dorney.

Takes place in Tellurian space; self-dated a hundred years after the seventy-third century.

The Time Vampire   Audio drama, released 2010                              Doctor: 4

Featuring Leela, K9 I

Written by Nigel Fairs.

Informed guess Takes place on Westtropi III; there is a reference to the Great Plague of 7382.

Plastic Soul   Charity drabble, published 1993                                           Doctor: 0

Featuring the Cybermen

Written by David Tulley.

Informed guess Takes place indeterminately, plausibly some centuries before The Crystal Bucephalus .

 

Ursula LeGuin’s 1985 novel Always Coming Home is set in Northern California in an apparently post-apocalyptic future: population, locally at any rate, is sparse and there is a self-maintaining computer network spanning the Solar System. I think it slots pretty well into post Great Catastrophe Earth

 

The Sleeze Brothers File   Comic story, published 1990         Doctor: 0

Written by John Carnell.

Informed guess Takes place mostly in the Big Apple, Earth, in “the not-too-distant future”, when offworld diplomats consider it a “miserable little planet”; plausibly while still recovering from the Great Catastrophe. Toshi Baird’s master-tape is dated 11/7/89. The Big Apple is such an entirely artificial environment that I do not even feel safe placing it in North America. Incidentally, juxtaposing Ursula LeGuin’s Always Coming Home and The Sleeze Brothers File is absolutely the sort of thing I’m here for, only Doctor Who could quite give me a pretext for this.

Follow That TARDIS!   Comic story, published 1989                                 Doctor: 7

featuring Mortimus

Written by John Carnell.

Informed guess Takes place variously, including at sea and in Siberia, but begins and ends in the Big Apple, shortly after The Sleeze Brothers File.

The Sky is Falling   Comic story, published 2012                                     Doctor: 11

Featuring Amy or an Amy ganger, Rory

Written by Craig Donaghy.

Informed guess Takes place on Diobath, apparently in Tellurian space, but temporally not obviously near anything else.

The Outliers   Audio drama, released 2017                                      Doctor: 2

Featuring Polly, Ben, Jamie

Written by Simon Guerrier.

Takes place on an asteroid in Tellurian space; self-dated 7691 CE.

Sins of the Fathers   Comic story, published 2004                                 Doctor: 8

Featuring Destrii

Written by Scott Gray.

Informed guess Takes place on the Hippocrates Base, far in Earth’s future.

Card Conundrum   Comic story, published 2018                                      Doctor: 2

Featuring Polly, Ben, Jamie

Written by Richard Dinnick.

Arbitrary placement Takes place in an indeterminate environment.

Battleship Anathema   Short story, published 2009                               Doctor: 0

Featuring Iris Wildthyme

Written by Philip Purser-Hallard.

Informed guess Takes place in Tellurian Space; self-dated 7883 CE.

The Evolving Dead   Audio drama, released 2021                       Doctor: 11

Written by Doris V Sutherland.

Informed guess Takes place in Tellurian space.      

Empathy Games   Audio drama, released 2008                                  Doctor: 4

Featuring Leela

Written by Nigel Fairs.

Takes place on Synchronis; dated 7932 CE by Parkin in Ahistory.

Mercy   Charity short story, published 2001                                              Doctor: 6

featuring Peri

Written by Kelly Hale.

Informed guess Takes place in Mercy, millennia after the initial interstellar colonisation from Earth. The demand for new research suggests a time after the Great Catastrophe.

 

 

 

 

Total Stories Considered             5723

Proportion Written By Women 11%                                       

 

Top Docs

4                 486 stories                   

7                 475 stories 

10               401 stories 

11               394 stories  Climber!   

8                 393 stories 

3                 366 stories

5                 350 stories         

6                 343 stories    

1                 330 stories 

2                 300 stories         

12               172 stories

Unbound  125 stories

9                 90 stories  

13               76 stories           

War           48 stories                     

 

 

Top Twenty Recurring Elements

 

London                                                              1153 stories                

Regional England                                            817 stories

The Time Lords                                               522 stories

UNIT                                                                467 stories  

Alastair, Kate, Kadiatu, Lucy Weston and the Lethbridge-Stewart family                                                                            462 stories  

The Daleks and Davros                                  446 stories 

Continental Europe                                         437 stories 

North America                                                 424 stories  

Benny                                                                 308 stories

The Master, including Missy                         284 stories

Sarah Jane                                                        267 stories

Ace                                                                      262 stories 

Wales                                                                  261 stories

Torchwood                                                        254 stories  

The K9s                                                              246 stories 

Amy and Rory                                                  239 stories 

At Sea                                                                 230 stories

Christmas                                                          207 stories 

Captain Jack                                                    206 stories

Peri                                                                     201 stories 

 

 

Top Decades

 

The Teens                                                          2318 stories

The Noughties                                                  1552 stories       

The Nineties                                                      604 stories

The Twenties                                                     463 stories

The Eighties                                                      270 stories

The Seventies                                                    265 stories         

The Sixties                                                         181 stories

(Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Oscar Wilde and William Hope Hodgson)                                                                                       70  stories 

 

 

And Top Twenty Years

 

2016                                                          293 stories

2018                                                          292 stories 

2020                                                          263 stories  

2015                                                          258 stories 

2008                                                          251 stories  

2017                                                           238 stories       

2011                                                          228 stories 

2013                                                          226 stories 

2010                                                          222 stories 

2009                                                          218 stories 

2019                                                          217 stories 

2007                                                          205 stories 

2021                                                          202 stories 

2014                                                          182 stories 

2001                                                          175 stories  

2012                                                          167 stories  

2006                                                          157 stories

2004                                                          147 stories

2005                                                          137 stories

2003                                                          119 stories  

                            

         

 

 

 

Total Writers (including showrunners, script editors, anthology linking material writers)                                     1138

Proportion of Female Writers               17%      

 

Top Twenty Writers

 

Justin Richards                                       148 stories

Terrance Dicks                                       145 stories

James Goss                                              141 stories   

Russell T Davies                                     123 stories  

Jonathan Morris                                    108 stories 

Steven Moffat                                         100 stories

Paul Magrs                                              97 stories  

Eddie Robson                                          95 stories  

Terry Nation                                           89 stories  

Matt Fitton                                              84 stories  

David Whitaker                                      82 stories  

John Dorney                                            80 stories  

Nicholas Briggs                                       72 stories  

Simon Guerrier                                       72 stories   Climber!   

Gareth Roberts                                       68 stories  

Steve Lyons                                             67 stories  

Alan Barnes                                             62 stories  

Guy Adams                                              62 stories  

Gary Russell                                            61 stories  

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle                         60 stories