2005

History of the Doctor Who Universe

February

• Annual de-frosting of Tommy Brockless, a young soldier first cryogenically frozen in 1918. (TW:To the Last Man.) (Date: WEB:torchwood.co.uk)

March

• Monday March 2005 - Rose Tyler first meets the Doctor (due to the Autons). He then blows up the shop she works in. (DW: Rose)
• Tuesday March 2005 - With the help of his new companion Rose Tyler, the the Doctor stops a third attempt to conquer Earth by the Nestene Consciousness, recently reduced from a marauding race of conquerors to desperate refugees by the Last Great Time War. Rose joins the Doctor on his travels. (DW: Rose)
• Tuesday March 2005 - Clive Finch's website "Who is Doctor Who?", dedicated to uncovering the mystery of a man seen in historical photographs going back more than a century, is left without a webmaster when Clive is killed by Autons. (DW: Rose)
• Wednesday March 2005 - Rose contacts her mother Jackie from the year 5,000,000,000 using the superphone and makes a brief return trip to her own time (DW: The End of the World), but thereafter she disappears until 2006. After this time her boyfriend, Mickey Smith, is initially held as a suspect in her possible murder; Mickey subsequently takes over running the "Who is Doctor Who?" website. (DW: Aliens of London)
• Some time after this, London, cabs are replaced with motorcycles in an attempt to relieve the increasing traffic congestion (NA: Cat's Cradle: Warhead)

June

• Der Speigel magazine gives away a personal organiser with every issue (NA: Transit)

Unknown date

• The FLIPback Project begins at the Snowcap base at Earth's South Pole, at the same time that Cybermen left over from the attack on Earth in 1986 once more become active. (NA: Iceberg)
• London police, including DI Billy Shipton, begin investigating the disappearance of a number of people who visited an old abandoned house called Wester Drumlins. The police begin collecting as evidence the vehicles left abandoned by the disappeared, at one point obtaining a police box from the scene. The case would remain unsolved until 2007. (DW: Blink)

Real World

January

• 29 - Big Finish announce the production of 3 standalone hardback novels as part of their New Worlds range. These are Wildthyme on Top, Project: Valhalla, and The Coming of the Queen. They also announced that they would be producing 2 Single Audio CD featuring Iris Wildthyme
• Publication of EDA:To the Slaughter
• Release of BFA:The Juggernauts
• Sophie Okonedo, who provided the voice of Alison Cheney in the webcast Scream of the Shalka, is nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her role in the 2004 film, Hotel Rwanda. Okonedo becomes, to date, the only actor to have played a Doctor or companion in an official Doctor Who production to have been nominated for an Oscar. She ultimately did not win.

February

• Release of BFA:The Game
• 05 - At the conclusion of a Saturday Night Live sketch on public access television pledge drives, TV celebrity Paris Hilton dons the Fourth Doctor's hat and scarf and makes reference to the Daleks and the TARDIS. The sketch is widely circulated among SF fandom, in part via the recently introduced video-sharing website, YouTube. In the coming years, YouTube would become a major outlet for the distribution of fan-made music videos, clips and other material related to Doctor Who and its spinoffs.
• 10 - Leonard Trolley (Supt. Reynolds in DW:The Faceless Ones) dies in England.
• 16 - The TARDIS Index File Wikia website is launched.

March

• 8 - Big Finish announce they have agreed a deal with Paul Cornell allowing the company to continue its range of Bernice Summerfield books and audio CDs for the next few years
• 22 - Project Who : Bigger on the Inside Airs on BBC Radio 2
• 23 - Billie Piper interviewed on The Chris Moyles Show Airs on BBC Radio 1
• 25 - Christopher Eccleston interviewed on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross
• 26
  • The Doctor Who Story Broadcast on UK Gold
  • DW: Rose first broadcast. Christopher Eccleston debuts as the Ninth Doctor, along with Billie Piper as companion Rose Tyler.
  • In conjunction with the debut of the new series, BBC Three premieres its behind-the-scenes series, Doctor Who Confidential the same night.
• 30 - BBC Announce production to go ahead on a second series and a Christmas Special
  • A publicity branch of the BBC prematurely announces that Christopher Eccleston will not be returning for a second series as the Doctor, citing his desire to not be typecast. This reason is immediately denied by Eccleston and the BBC ultimately retracts it (as of 2009 he has never confirmed his reason for leaving the role). In his 2008 book The Writer's Tale, Russell T Davies confirms that Eccleston's departure was intended to be kept secret until the final moments of The Parting of the Ways.
• Publication of Short Trips: Seven Deadly Sins
• Release of BFA:Dreamtime
• Echoes First Published

April

• 2 - DW:The End of the World first broadcast.
• 9 - DW:The Unquiet Dead first broadcast.
• 16 - David Tennant is officially announced as the Tenth Doctor
  • DW:Aliens of London first broadcast. This episode is significant for reintroducing UNIT (last referenced on television in Battlefield) and for establishing that all modern-day stories in the Doctor Who franchise from this point on (spinoffs included) take place approximately one year ahead of their real-life broadcast date.
• 23 - DW:World War Three first broadcast.
• 30 - DW: Dalek first broadcast. Bruno Langley briefly joins the series as short-term companion Adam Mitchell.
• Release of BFA:Three's a Crowd
• The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Canada begins airing the new series, the first time the CBC has aired Doctor Who since the mid-1960s. For the CBC broadcasts, Christopher Eccleston videotapes special introductions and promotions for a contest sponsored by TV Guide, the first prize being a trip to London to visit the set of Doctor Who. These broadcasts are promoted as the North American debut of the series, as no other broadcaster on the continent had yet picked up the revived series.

May

• 7 - DW:The Long Game First Broadcast. Bruno Langley leaves the series as his character, Adam Mitchell, is evicted.
• 14 - DW: Father's Day first broadcast.
• 21 - DW:The Empty Child first broadcast. John Barrowman makes his first appearance as Jack Harkness.
• It is announced that Billie Piper will depart Doctor Who during the 2006 series.
• 28 - DW:The Doctor Dances first broadcast. Jack Harkness joins the TARDIS.
• Short Trips: A Day in the Life First Published
• Release of BFA:Catch-1782
• Publication of NSA:The Clockwise Man, NSA: The Monsters Inside, and NSA: Winner Takes All, first in the new series of BBC New Series Adventures.

June

• Publication of EDA: The Gallifrey Chronicles, the final release in the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures novel series, as BBC Books prepares to move into publishing novels exclusively based upon the soon-to-debut revived series.
• BFA:Unregenerate! First Released
• Publication of BFBS: The Tree of Life
• The BBC announces that a Christmas story has been scheduled for 2006, as well as a third season for the new Doctor Who series.
• 1 - Geoffrey Toone (Hepesh in DW:The Curse of Peladon; Temmosus in Dr. Who and the Daleks) dies in Northwood, Middlesex, England.
• 4 - DW:Boom Town first broadcast
• 11 - DW: Bad Wolf first broadcast. First reference to Torchwood.
• 18
  • DW:The Parting of the Ways first broadcast, concluding the first season of the revival of Doctor Who. The Ninth Doctor regenerates into the Tenth, introducing David Tennant and marking Christopher Eccleston's final (to date) appearance as the Doctor. John Barrowman also leaves the series with this episode. The broadcast is followed by the final transmission of Doctor Who Confidential's first season.
  • Post-production completed for DW:The Christmas Invasion.

July

• Island of Death First Published
• Release of BFA:Terror Firma
• Peculiar Lives First Published

August

• Future Nostalgia First Published
• Release of BFA:The Council of Nicaea
• 31 - Michael Sheard, who had countless roles in Doctor Who, notably Pyramids of Mars and Remembrance of the Daleks dies of cancer on the Isle of Wight.

September

• Fear Itself First Published. This is the last novel to date to feature the Eighth Doctor and the only time this incarnation was featured in the BBC Past Doctor Adventures line.
• Thicker Than Water First Released
• Live 34 First Released
• Publication of NSA: The Deviant Strain, NSA: Only Human, and NSA: The Stealers of Dreams. To date, these are the last novels featuring the Ninth Doctor.
• 12 - Ronald Leigh-Hunt (Commander Julian Radnor in The Seeds of Death and Commander Stevenson in Revenge of the Cybermen) dies.
• 23 - Roger Brierley (Trevor in The Daleks' Master Plan and voice of Drathro in The Mysterious Planet) dies after suffering a heart attack.

October

• Scaredy Cat First Released
• 18 - John Hollis (Sondergaard in DW:The Mutants) dies from natural causes.
• 24 - Robert Sloman, who along with Barry Letts, wrote The Dæmons, The Time Monster, The Green Death and Planet of the Spiders dies. (The pair were credited as "Guy Leopold" on the first story but for the final three, Sloman took the sole credit.)

November

• Singularity First Released
• 18 - The Children in Need Special is broadcast by the BBC as part of the Children in Need Appeal. This 7-minute mini-episode bridges the events of DW:The Parting of the Ways and DW:The Christmas Invasion and is the first canonical production of this nature (an earlier CiN production, 1993's Dimensions in Time', is not generally considered part of the canon).
• 29 - Joseph Fürst (Professor Zaroff in DW:The Underwater Menace) dies in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

December

• Other Lives First Released
• PDA: Atom Bomb Blues is published. This novel featuring the Seventh Doctor is the final release in the BBC Books Past Doctor Adventures line. After this point, BBC Books publishes only novels based upon the current series of Doctor Who, and also moves away from the paperback format, adopting a hardcover format (with the exception of Quick Reads novellas) hereafter. As of the spring of 2008, Atom Bomb Blues is the last novel to be published featuring a Doctor other than the one currently on TV (this includes novels featuring the Ninth Doctor, the last of which were published in September 2005).
• Deus Le Volt First Published
• 19 - Don McKillop (Bert the Landlord in DW:The Dæmons) dies from natural causes in the UK.
• 25 - DW:The Christmas Invasion is first broadcast. The episode closing credits introduce a modified arrangement of the Doctor Who theme restoring the "middle 8" section not used during the 2005 series. At the behest of star David Tennant, the lead character is once again identified in the closing credits as "The Doctor".
• 26 - DW:The Christmas Invasion airs on the CBC in Canada. For this broadcast, Billie Piper videotapes a special introduction. This marks the last time (to date) that the CBC's broadcasts of the series more-or-less coincide with that of the BBC.

Unknown dates

• Broadcast of the revived series in the United States is delayed when the American Sci-Fi Channel unexpectedly passes on picking up the series. Reasons cited in media and fan forums included the show being considered "too British" and concerns over the quality of the preview episodes seen. Sci-Fi eventually reverses its decision and the series is broadcast at a later date and the network subsequently picks up further seasons in a more timely manner.
• Following the conclusion of the 2005 Doctor Who series, the BBC announces that it has commissioned the franchise's first full spin-off series, Torchwood, to debut in 2006 and star John Barrowman, reprising his role of Jack Harkness.
• Fall: During production of the 2006 series, the media reports that Billie Piper will leave the series at the end of the season.

2004

21st century 2000s

2006