Theory talk:Timeline - Fifteenth Doctor
Pre-TCoRR adventures
Just want to voice my disagreement that the events of The World Tree [+]Loading...["The World Tree (audio story)"], Come on TARDIS, let's go party [+]Loading...["Come on TARDIS, let's go party (illustration)"] and Rose [+]Loading...{"ed":"2023 Illustrated Edition","1":"Rose (novelisation)"} can be placed before The Church on Ruby Road [+]Loading...["The Church on Ruby Road (TV story)"]. The argument for that placement relies on the fact that the adventures can be summed up in a single sentence and that we don't see the full diary entry summarising Fifteen's first adventures in First Day of the Doctor [+]Loading...["First Day of the Doctor (short story)"].
This is the transcript of the diary entry, exactly matching the formatting from the annual:
'What the h[...]
here?" are[...]
first word[...]
saying t[...]
Ruby S[...]
other[...]
some[...]
adv[...]
I have attempted to "reconstruct" the diary entry, to show just how short it is:
'What the hell is going on
here?" are some of the
first words I remember
saying to the world.
Ruby Sunday is
otherwise
someone I shared my first
adventure with.
I can't quite figure out the section with Ruby fully, but you get the impression.
So, to refute @BananaClownMan's argument... no, these solo adventures cannot fit between The Giggle [+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"] and The Church on Ruby Road [+]Loading...["The Church on Ruby Road (TV story)"]. The other diary entries seen in FDoTD only contain the respective Doctors' debut stories; it is already internally inconsistent that Fifteen's contains the events of The Giggle and The Church on Ruby Road, and looking at the sentence structure, it condenses the plots of TWT and TCoRR a lot. So, for it to contain information about TWT, CoTlgp and Rose is incredibly unlikely. At the very least, the Fifteen's description of TWT would go "I attempted to help my eleventh incarnation free a woman from a Time Bubble", which already can't fit between the parts about TG and TCoRR. You cannot place this sentence in the diary entry, let alone anything about Come on TARDIS, let's go party and Rose which can only be snippets of larger adventures.
Even though the diary entry is not fully seen, we can work out the approximate length of it using the "what the hell is going on here?" quote in conjunction with the line breaks, and can work out that, as far as The First Day of the Doctor is concerned, there is no gap whatsoever.
@BananaClownMan also stated that @WaltK's rebuttal of The Giggle [+]Loading...["The Giggle (novelisation)"] on Theory talk:Timeline - Fourteenth Doctor ignoring some EU stories can be attributed to the fact that Fourteen was not being fully thorough. But, in this case, it does not apply, as The First Day of the Doctor is pretty damn explicit that the diary entries cover, well, the first day of various incarnations of the Doctor. It makes no sense within the context of the story for Fifteen to have had at least three off-screen adventures by this point.
You could speculate or theorise a reason for this, but what's the point? If you are going against information given in the only story that makes any sort of claim on Fifteen's timeline, to place some ambiguous adventures that can feasibly take place at a later point, forcing them into this gap makes no sense.
I fully expect First Day of the Doctor to be contradicted in the future, but, based upon current information, The Giggle leads directly into The Church on Ruby Road.
21:31, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
