User:Tybort/Sandbox 2

Contemporary Doctor Who and other show stuff

This story/companion's era is considered to be set in the early 21st century, and can very likely be narrowed down to the 2000s; however, there is conflicting narrative evidence as to which year specifically it is set. The writing team for the most part did not place a year in most of [the Doctor Who scripts set on contemporary Earth]/[The Sarah Jane Adventures' scripts]/[Torchwood's scripts], but to at least the contemporary television audience, the visual language shows the era is very clearly intended to be Earth in the present day. There has been conflicting narrative evidence as to which year and exactly how close to the air date the "present day" stories take place.

Rose is noted in several subsequent narratives to have taken place in 2005. Notably, in The End of the World, the Ninth Doctor describes 12005 as ten thousand years into Rose's future. Aliens of London, the first story where Rose returns home after her travels, features missing posters for Rose clearly dated March 2005. In The End of Time, the Tenth Doctor briefly meets Rose on 1 January 2005 before she meets the Ninth Doctor and believes she will have a great year.

Following this, the "contemporary" early 21st century stories relative to Rose Tyler's home era have generally taken place a year after transmission, though few stories explicitly confirm or contradict this. Nonetheless, in the 2006 episode Love & Monsters, Elton Pope directly describes the events of the 2005 episode Rose as "two years ago" and the 2005 Christmas special The Christmas Invasion as "Christmas just gone". In School Reunion, also from 2006, Sarah Jane describes the Sycorax' ship over London from Invasion similarly as "Christmas just gone".

[Doctor Who] The Runaway Bride, featuring Donna Noble, notes the Cyberman invasion in Canary Wharf from Rose's last regular appearance in Army of Ghosts and Doomsday as having taken place, and describes The Christmas Invasion's robot Santas as being from "last year". This would set that story (along with Rose's "present" during series 2) in 2007, and by extension, the Martha Jones era in 2008.

[Torchwood] Several Torchwood episodes are explicitly set in the aftermath of the Battle of Canary Wharf, which was Rose's last regular appearance as a companion. This would mean that up to and including Out of Time, which is set around Christmas (and according to Captain Jack Harkness, has Diane go through the Rift on 24 December), series 1 is set in the year 2007. Combat and Captain Jack Harkness are clearly not set immediately after Time and so the last episodes of series 1 can be safely said to be set in 2008.

In series 2, Meat is said to be a year after Gwen is recruited to Torchwood Three (which happened in the series 1 premiere Everything Changes), while in Exit Wounds, Jack, after being unearthed by Torchwood staff in 1901, asks to be frozen for 107 years. Both of these facts strongly seem to place all of series 2 in 2008.

However, in Fragments (set on the same day as Exit Wounds), Ianto's flashback to his recruitment to Torchwood is displayed in a caption as taking place 21 months, or one year nine months, ago. Based on earlier evidence, including a scene in Love & Monsters set in part in March 2007, and Army of Ghosts and Doomsday (set during the battle where Ianto loses his prior job at Torchwood One) having ghosts appearing for two months being news to the Tenth Doctor and Rose (which means that the Battle of Canary Wharf happened in at least May 2007), and assuming that Ianto joined Torchwood Three immediately after most of Torchwood One is wiped out, the "21 months earlier" flashback would mean that Fragments and Exit Wounds are set, at the very earliest, in February of 2009.

Confusing matters further, according to Gwen Cooper's CIA file in The New World, Gwen joined Torchwood (as seen in Everything Changes) in October 2006.

...

Certainly, we can say that discounting flashbacks, Torchwood is set in the "21st century" where everything changes.

[SJA] Invasion of the Bane is set at least 18 months after Sarah Jane's meeting with the Tenth Doctor and him building a new model of K9 following the destruction of Mark III in School Reunion. The series 2 story The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith also describes the previous season's Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? (of which the season finale The Lost Boy picks up nearly immediately after) as having taken place "last year".

(Note: This isn't thorough per se... Not going through Doctor Who Adventures or Battles in Time issues for this list, nor am I going to really be able to find Cornell's Christmas stories. And the BBC Writer's Comics do not appear to work.)