Theory:Timeline - Doctor Who universe

From Tardis Wiki, the free Doctor Who reference
Index → Timey-wimey detector → Timeline - Doctor Who universe
Spoilers are strongly policed here.
If this thread's title doesn't specify it's spoilery, don't bring any up.


This page lists the order of stories in the Doctor Who Universe timeline from Event One to the far future. This timeline is based upon observations of the Doctor Who universe and the events that occur during each of these stories.

The layout of this timeline is in part based on the observations on Doctor Who - The Complete Adventures, as well as Lance Parkin's AHistory and other sources that allow us to make observations, such as Doctor Who Reviews, Clive Banks databanks, and LegoK9's timeline. None of these sources should be used solely as a source or considered a "true" timeline for stories.


Timeline rules:

  • Only list stories. References to dates that the story does not take place in are to be excluded
  • Stories without any clear indication of an era should be omitted. (e.g. TV: Mummy on the Orient Express)
  • Many stories will contradict each other, so these contradictions should be noted but treated equally. (e.g. TV: The Enemy of the World and other stories set in 2018)
  • Direct quotes indicating the time period the story takes place should be provided. (Quotes sourced from another story should indicate the story it is from.)

Format (list all available):

  • Day Month Year - MEDIUM: Story title
CHARACTER/TEXT/NOTE: Indication of time period

Timeline

BC years

NYSSA: You don't understand the physics of the situation. We're already caught in the field of Event One. It's pulling us in faster and faster.
DOCTOR: Enormous. Biggest explosion of all time. Event One.
KARI: The Big Bang?
DOCTOR: There's going to be a very big bang. Big Bang Two.

Prehistory

DOCTOR: About six billion years ago. It's a Tuesday, I think.
DOCTOR: We've gone back four point six billion years. There's no solar system, not yet. Only dust and rocks and gas. That's the Sun, over there. Brand new. Just beginning to burn.
TANCREDI: Four hundred million years I think is the figure you're looking for.
DOCTOR: Some a hundred and forty million years ago.
DOCTOR: It may be of some small consequence to know we've travelled backwards in time some sixty five million years.
NOTE: 100,000 BC was a working title.
ARCHAEOLOGIST: Unopened for 5,500 years... until now. Pull!
TEXT: The copper axehead that had no business to be copper in 3,300 BC, cut through the branch after only a few blows.

3rd millennium

QUOTE?

2nd millennium

DOCTOR: Yes. Right, Jo, we're about to land back in Cambridge. Just think. It all happened three thousand, five hundred years ago.
NOTE: Indicated in the story synopsis
TEXT: Egypt, 1334 BC
QUOTE?

3rd century

TEXT: 221 BC

AD years

1st century

GRAY: I want you to suffer. I want your life. This is Cardiff, 27 AD.
DOCTOR: Yes. Caesar Nero made it. The rebuilding of Rome. Let me see, where are we now? 64 AD, July. Yes, of course. He sets fire to Rome.
DOCTOR: It's 79 AD, twenty third of August, which makes volcano day tomorrow.
Takes place during the same events as The Fires of Pompeii.
TEXT: Six months later

2nd century

DOCTOR: Just followed the coordinates on the cliff face. Earth. Britain. One oh two am. No, PM. No, AD.
BILL: Aberdeen, Scotland, second century AD.

4th century

DOCTOR: ...the first instance of the name Grayle appearing in the records, in a British context, was right here, on the payroll of this very Roman fort in 305 AD, the year of the two Emperors, Constantius and Galerius.

9th century

ASHILDR (The Woman Who Lived): I've had eight hundred years of adventure, enough to fill a library if you write it down.

11th century

DOCTOR: Ah, one of my favourite times and places. London in the year 1055. The court of King Edward, known as the Confessor.
DOCTOR: Now, if Harold is king, and Edward was laid to rest at the beginning of the year, then it must be 1066! Yes. Judging by the appearance of these leaves, late summer. And a balmy night, a balmy night.

12th century

TEXT: Essex 1138
Third Crusade.
DOCTOR: No, no. Time of year? What season?
ROBIN: Oh, Dame Autumn has draped her mellow skirts about the forest, Doctor. The time of mists and harvest approaches.
DOCTOR: It's 1190.

13th century

DOCTOR: It's 1207.
DOCTOR: March the fourth, 1215.
SARAH (The Sontaran Experiment): Linx. A Sontaran. Can't be. You were destroyed in the thirteenth century. You were blown to smithereens.
POLO: How long have you been travelling? It is twelve hundred and eighty nine and this is the Plain of Pamir, known to those who travel to Cathay as The Roof of the World.

14th century

DOCTOR: The Black Death, 1348. I meant to warn you.

15th century

ASHILDR: The Battle of Agincourt. My first stint as a man. No-one will ever know that a mere woman helped end the Hundred Years' War.
SUSAN: Well, the Aztecs were Mexicans. We must be on Earth again. I wonder what year it is.
BARBARA: He must have died around 1430, I should think.
DOCTOR: We've landed on Earth. Glass technology indicates Mediterranean area. Late fifteenth century. Not a very pleasant time.
COLUMBUS: The Journal of Admiral Christopher Columbus, the greatest explorer in the world, 12th of October, 1492.

16th century

DOCTOR: The original, I presume? Completed in 1503 and it's now what, 1505, and you're getting the old boy to do you another six, yes, which you then brick up in a cellar in Paris for Scarlioni to find in four hundred and seventy four time.
TEXT: This was in the year 1-Tochtli (1506).
TEXT: It is 1522 A.D., according to the calendar of the western-ocean-devils, but few Europeans are seen on the shores of the East China Sea...
DOCTOR 10: England, 1562.
VIOLA: And on September the nineteenth 1572, at about this time and about half a mile this way, there's the entrance to another mirror.
ANNE: Date, Monsieur? August the twenty-third as
DOCTOR: Yes, yes, yes, I know that. The year, the year, hmm?
ANNE: Fifteen seventy two, Monsieur. But surely you know that?
ROBERT (Tooth and Claw): The story goes back three hundred years. Every full moon, the howling rings through the valley. The next morning, livestock is found ripped apart and devoured.
DOCTOR: Ah, you got to love Venice. So many people did. Byron, Napoleon, Casanova. Ooo, that reminds me. 1580. That's all right. Casanova doesn't get born for a hundred and forty five years. Don't want to run into him. I owe him a chicken.
DOCTOR: Mmm. 1590 local time, or thereabouts. The Elizabethan Age. Now why track the Tardis here?
DOCTOR: I think so. Round about 1599.

17th century

CAPTION: South America in the early 17th century was the gold mine of Spain. But ships found stranger things than gold..
DOCTOR: Well, in strictly linear terms, as the chronometer flies, I've known since November the twenty third, 1638.
DOCTOR: Oh, no, this isn't a visit, I've got a job to do. I'm here looking for an alien object which has no business being here on Earth in 1651.
TEXT: ...in 1651, a dead angel is found in a tree in Lincolnshire and a nymph rises from the waters of Kent...
DOCTOR: Yes, I'm afraid you're going to lose your bet, young man. That gentleman comes from the seventeenth century.
KING CHARLES: Where's the Doctor?
The Great Fire of London.
VILLAGER: It's the year of our lord sixteen hundred and sixty-nine.
TEXT: ...in 1671, Aphra Behn -- she-spy and poetesse -- infiltrates a gathering of alchemists...
AVERY: April the first, 1699.
DOCTOR: Yes. Okay, problem word. Seventeenth century. My ship automatically, er, noticed-ish that your ship was having some bother.

18th century

CAPTAIN SWAN: ...true loyalties... to Queen Anne herself.
EVELYN: Queen Anne, lasts of the Stuarts, reigned 1702 to 1714.
REINETTE: Of course I can. Seventeen hundred and twenty-seven.
The Battle of Culloden
MARY CULVER - [An invasion] Of 1762. Via Britain.
COMPASSION - I'll explain once you're back here with us. In 1763.
PUBLISHER'S SUMMARY: Naples, 1763. The Great Ape of Posto di Foraggio is on show, an exhibition to amuse jaded foreign tourists
LOUIS: Leaving Versailles for the last time. Only forty-three when she died. Too young. Too young. Illness took her in the end. She always did work too hard. What does she say?
TEXT: 1774. The Heart of Civilisation.
NOTE: Said countless times in text.
ROBESPIERRE: But can I trust them? If this motion gets underway, they will turn against me to save their own necks. Mark my words, LeMaitre. If this plot is successful, tomorrow, the 27th of July 1794, will be a date for history.

19th century

DOCTOR: Not in the year 1806. George the Third is on the throne, William Pitt is Prime Minister, and ladies fight with witticisms and the occasional fan. Not with edged weapons.
DOCTOR: Our London. We're on the Thames. The last great Frost Fair. 1814, February the fourth.
PERI: I could have been stuck in the eighteen hundreds forever.
England, 1842.
BOY: Christmas Eve, sir. Year of our Lord 1851, sir.
TEXT: October 1853, Strines.
TEXT: January 1854, Strines.
DOCTOR: I did it. Give the man a medal. Earth, Naples, December 24th, 1860. ... It's not 1860, it's 1869.
Assuming no time travel was involved.
ISAAC: Them being scared scares me. War only ended five years back. That old violence is still under the surface.
IAN: Really? I haven't seen the joke yet, I must say. One thing I did see, by the way. The name of that ship we were on: The Mary Celeste.
DOCTOR: 1879. Same difference
DOCTOR: Mars. 1881, or thereabouts. According to the Tardis, that's when the message was made.
The historical gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
CAPTION: Deadwood, Dakota Territory. March 1882.
TEXT: London, 1882, was very different from the world in which I grew to maturity.
TEXT: 25 January 1883. 21:10.
DOCTOR: This is Inspector MacKenzie from Scotland Yard. He was sent here in 1881 to investigate the disappearance of the owner, Sir George Pritchard.
ACE: But that was two years ago.
DOCTOR: 1179 AD. Add a time deflection coefficient of seven hundred and six years, that is 1885 AD.
CLEMENCY: It was forty years ago, in the heat of Delhi, late one night. I was alone, and that's when I saw it. I loved him so much, it didn't matter. But he was stolen from me. 1885, the year of the great monsoon.
London, 1888 A.D.
CAPTION: London, 1889.
NOTE: The ending recreates the the Fourth Doctor and Leela's entrance in The Talons of Weng-Chiang.
CASEY: Oh, it says in the paper how it could be jollyJack at work again.
NOTE: Jack the Ripper's 5 canonical killings were between August and November of 1888.
BLACK: Well, in that case, probably somewhere between the first and third of June. 1890. Less than a year before, before he killed himself.
France 1890
26th of June, 1890. The recently opened Savoy Hotel.
Vincent shoots himself.
The date Edvard Munch wrote about seeing the sky turn blood red, as mentioned by characters in the opening.
JENNY: Well, it is nearly Christmas.
JENNY: Merry Christmas!
TOMBSTONE: Clara Oswin Oswald. Remember me, we shall meet again. Born November 23 1866, died December 24, 1892.
DOCTOR: Okay, so. Not London 1893. Yorkshire 1893. Near enough.
London 1893 - prison cell
GIRL: He's coming, the one you're looking for. But the century will turn twice before you find each other again.
JACK: Ooo. Are you for real? You mean I have to wait a hundred years to find him? What'll I do in the meantime?

20th century

See main page: Timeline - 20th century

21st century

See main page: Timeline - 21st century

22nd century

ROSE: One hundred years.
DOCTOR: There you go. Step outside those doors, it's the twenty second century.
DOCTOR: This is Colonel Orson Pink, from about a hundred years in your future.
Orson is seen being returned home.
MORAN: Private journal of Captain Jonathan Moran, 21st November 2119. We have located a craft of unknown origin on the lake floor. Visual scans in situ revealed nothing, so we have brought the craft on board and myself and the crew will now investigate.
MINISTER: I don't believe you, Doctor whoever-you-are. Nor do I believe that anyone in 2134 doesn't know what year it is!
DOCTOR: You're not a monastery, you're a factory. Twenty second century army-owned factory.
DOCTOR: Ah, here, look. At least we know the century, dear boy. Look.
IAN: 2164.
DOCTOR: You may want to lie by the pool doing nothing all day. I intend to explore. Paradise Towers is supposed to be a remarkable architectural achievement, I'm told. Won all sorts of awards way back in the er, twenty first century. Are you ready?

NOTE: Date based on the novel Lucifer Rising

23rd century

PERI: I'm from another time, another century. Nearly three centuries before you were born, I lived in another world. I had an idea you wouldn't believe me.
NARRATOR: A waitressing job in a sleazy, 23rd century casino on New Vegas.
ROMANA: It's the first of the leisure planets. In relative Earth date 2250, there's a hideous war against some reptile people called the Foamasi
BROCK: Argolis is justly proud of tachyonics, but that science, you will admit, remains, after forty years, little more than a curiosity.
DOCTOR: Er, no, it's the twenty third century.
VANSELL (Neverland): Venice, Earth, 2294.

24th century

SIL: After your meddling caused the failure of my Varos project, I was ordered to drum up new business here.
Year based on AUDIO: Daleks Among Us.
Year based on AUDIO: Daleks Among Us.
Indian Space Agency 2367 A.D.
VALEYARD: If we may see from the Doctor's arrival on the planet Thoros Beta. Twenty fourth century, last quarter, fourth year, seventh month, third day.

25th century

CHANDRIS: Are you bonkers? Think what you're proposing. Those things over there have never lived outside the middle ages. Can you imagine the impact on them when they land in the twenty fifth century?
BABE: We've only been settled here for fifty years -- since 2380, old Earth time.
Jane tears off the calendar page for Mon 2 March 2472.
PARRY: Cybermen? A live Cyberman? My dear Viner, they've been dead for the last five hundred years.
VICKI: 2493, of course. My mother had just died and Daddy wanted to get away so he took a job on the planet Astra.

26th century

IKE: Course, this was against the Galactic Charter and that's how the war started. About ... eight years ago now. Nobody's winning. It's a nasty business.
VANSELL (Neverland): And then traced to Deep Space Haulage craft Vanguard, 2503.
ADRIC: The year is 2526 in the time scale you call Anno Domini.
HARDY: Preparing to enter hyperspace at twenty two oh nine seventy two, two thousand, five hundred and forty EST.
DOCTOR: Well, it's just a spaceship, Jo. You know, I reckon we must be somewhere in the twenty sixth century. Well, interstellar travel's pretty routine by now.
Picks up right after Frontier in Space.
DOCTOR: Apparently the year's 2589.

27th century

BENNY: What year?
AI INTERFACE: 2616

28th century

JAMIE: Two seven two four.
DOCTOR: That's the year Jamie.
MAITLAND: Yes, you see, the whole lower half of England is called Central City now. There hasn't been a London for four hundred years. We come from the twenty eighth century.

29th century

DOCTOR: According to the Tardis's instrument readings, we are now in the thirtieth century empire.
DOCTOR: A scheduled flight in the Earth year two thousand nine hundred and eighty six.

32nd century

33rd century

COMPUTER: Name, Amelia Jessica Pond. Age, thirteen hundred and six. (However, the screens read 1308.)

35th century

SOURCE?
SOURCE?
DOCTOR: If you must know, we are currently en route to the planet Targos Delta, fourth planet in the Targos system. Financial and industrial hub of the Earth Alliance in the thirty fifth century.

37th century

After AUDIO: Davros.

38th century

DOCTOR: Thirty eighth century. (Tastes his finger again.) Tuesday.

39th century

Era based on PROSE: Legacy.
SOURCE?

40th century

SOURCE?
DOCTOR: Look, it's fifty years now since Peladon joined the Galactic Federation, and what have the miners got to show for it? Harder work for the same rewards.
DOCTOR: I told you it was the fortieth century. The last great oil corporations are sucking the solar system dry to feed demand. Petrol prices have gone through the roof, of course, and the colonies that can't afford to pay are dying.
CHEN [OC]]: Yes. It is my earnest hope that the solar system may continue along this path of peace, this path that was laid by the signing of the non-aggression pact of 3975. Now, in this year of 4000, we can feel justly proud of that pact.

41st century

The Battle of Zaruthstra, 4037 A.D.

42nd century

DOCTOR: Ah, got it. The Ood Sphere, I've been to this solar system before. Years ago. Ages. Close to the planet Sense Sphere. Let's widen out. The year 4126. That is the Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire.
SOURCE?
NOTE: First Bev Tarrant story.
NOTE: Second Bev Tarrant story.

43rd century

JEFFERSON: Captain. Report Officer Scootori Manista PKD, deceased. Forty three K two point one.
NOTE: Despite the Ood being freed a century prior, AUDIO: The Torchwood Archive retroactively establishes the dating system as [century]K[decade].[year]
DOCTOR: Magnificent. Oh, come on, that is splendid. You've achieved all this in how long?
OOD SIGMA: One hundred years.

44th century

Christmas eves with Eleventh Doctor, young Kazran, and Abigail.
DOCTOR: Daddy's been dead for twenty years, but you still can't get comfortable where he can see you. There's a Christmas tree in the painting, but none in this house, on Christmas Eve
Portrait of Elliot Sardick: ELLIOT SARDICK 4302 4378

49th century

DOCTOR: I know it's the 49th century and everyone's off exploring the great unknown, but you don't look like the adventurous type...

50th century

Year based on AUDIO: Neverland.
CLENT: And then the glaciers will move again. Five thousand years of history crushed beneath a moving mountain of ice.
DOCTOR (The Talons of Weng-Chiang): It was made in Peking for the Commissioner of the Icelandic Alliance. It was in the Ice Age, about the year five thousand.
NOTE: A Radio Times article published at the time of initial broadcast placed it in the year 3000. This was the date used in DWM 76, The Doctor Who Programme Guide, The Universal Databank, The Doctor Who File and A History of the Universe, and it was referred to in the novels Legacy and The Dark Path. However, The Making of Doctor Who says that it was set three thousand years after the previous story (so circa 4935).
DOCTOR: Solar system, between Jupiter and Saturn. About five thousand AD. Five thousand AD?

51st century

QUOTE?
Jack's flashback to when he lost his brother Gray as a kid.
"Time Agency ***** Galaxy. Location Redacted. 5067"
NOTE: Flashback to Jack Harnkness and John Hart at the Time Agency.
DOCTOR: Fifty first century. Diagmar Cluster, you're a long way from home, Mickey. Two and a half galaxies.
DOCTOR: Fifty first century. By now you've got holovids, direct to brain downloads, fiction mist, but you need the smell. The smell of books, Donna. Deep breath.
DOCTOR: He's their Bishop, they're his Clerics. It's the fifty first Century. The Church has moved on.

52nd century

The Luna University, 5123
KOVARIAN: So, they made you a Doctor today, did they? Doctor River Song. How clever you are.
Stormcage Containment Facility, The Royal Collection, and The Maldovarium 5145

54th century

Mendorax Dellora (human colony) Christmas Day 5343
DROXIL: Okay, we're putting our guns on the ground. Okay? Happy now? We're stepping away from our guns. Now can we interrogate you? We're from Androzani Major. The year is 5345, and we mean you no harm. Where are you from?

60th century

TEXT: At midday on 5th June 5968, a spaceship popped out of hyperspace nearby and curved down through the clouds.

61st century

CALENDAR: 60120724
DONNA: It's the date. Assuming the first two numbers are some big old space date, then you've got year, month, day. It's the other way round, like it is in America.
NOTE: Before The Ark in Space. Year based on AUDIO: Wirrn Isle.

121st century

DOCTOR: Ten thousand years in the future. Step outside, it's the year 12005, the new Roman Empire.

161st century

HARRY: Well, after ten thousand years, Sarah, he can't be in that much of a hurry.
NOTE: Earth was devastated by solar flares in 6087 according to AUDIO: Wirrn Isle.
Picks up from The Ark in Space.

162nd century

PUBLISHER SUMMARY: The year is 16127. Four decades have passed since the colonists of Nerva Beacon returned to repopulate the once-devastated Earth — and the chosen few are finding the business of survival tough.

171st century

12,000 years later [from the 51st century]

372nd century

SIGN: Egard Lumb died here 7y2 in the year 37,166.

Far future

DOCTOR: So, it's two hundred thousand, and it's a spaceship. No, wait a minute, space station, and er, go and try that gate over there. Off you go
DOCTOR: A hundred years exactly. It's the year two zero zero one zero zero.
DOCTOR: Segment? To use your phrase, sir, what segment are we in now?
COMMANDER: The fifty seventh.
DOCTOR: Good gracious! We must have jumped at least ten million years.
TURLOUGH: Fleeing from the imminence of a catastrophic collision with the sun, a group of refugees from the doomed planet Earth.
DOCTOR: We can't interfere. Colony's too new, one generation at most.
NOTE: Earth's destruction mentioned here lines up with The Ark. The novelisation establishes Frontios is located at the frontier in time, which is dated circa 10,000,000 by The Book of the War.
DOCTOR: Well I'm not sure, dear boy. However, the statue's finished. That means seven hundred years must have passed since we last stood here.
DOCTOR: Other end of the universe. Twenty three million years in the future. Oh, yes, it's a time machine too.
DOCTOR: Oh, a long time after your period. Er, two billion years or more.
Sabalom Glitz era.
Cassandra's Party
CLARA: No, it's not that. Have we just watched the entire life cycle of Earth, birth to death?
DOCTOR: This is the year five point five slash apple slash twenty six. Five billion years in your future, and this is the day. This is the day the Sun expands. Welcome to the end of the world.
DOCTOR (New Earth): So, the year five billion, the sun expands, the Earth gets roasted.
DOCTOR: Professor Helen Clay, University Of New Earth, year five billion and twelve.
DOCTOR: It's the year five billion and twenty three. We're in the galaxy M87, and this? This is New Earth.
DOCTOR: Nah. Where's the fun for me? I don't want to go home. Instead, this is much better. Year five billion and fifty-three, planet New Earth. Second hope of mankind.
WINKLE: How, how long have I been asleep?
DUCK: Approximately sixty billion years.
NOTE: Mesh Cos' flashbacks. Year is given as Mesh's death date in Who's Who in the City of the Saved.
DOCTOR: What? The year one hundred trillion? That's impossible.
GENERAL: Gallifrey is currently positioned at the extreme end of the time continuum, for its own protection. We're at the end of the universe, give or take a star system.
DOCTOR: The end of the road. This is it, the end of everything. The last planet.
DOCTOR: The universe is over! It doesn't have a say any more! We're standing on the last ember, the last fragment of everything that ever was. As of this moment, I'm answerable to no-one!
Retrieved from "https://tardis.wiki/w/index.php?title=Theory:Timeline_-_Doctor_Who_universe&oldid=2570787"