Theory talk:Timeline - Fourteenth Doctor

Story placement

Into/Under Control should really be before The Star Beast, seeing as Fourteen thinks about why he has this face during the PROSE Ten Days of Christmas version. – The preceding unsigned comment was added by Draxed (talk • contribs) .

Can you share a short excerpt of the relevant sentence? But idk, The Giggle very definitively lays out Fourteen's battles up to that point and there is not a hint of the Queen of the Sycorax. I don't believe the original annual versions touch on the familiar face — do they?

But I've a feeling Into/Under Control is going to be a thorn in this timeline's side.

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

01:20, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

File:SPOILER Screenshot 20231215 000424 Kndle.jpg

Sorry for the odd formatting, still getting used to writing on this site 01:32 15 December 2023 (UTC)

That's not a problem.

As for Fourteen's curiosity abour his face, that is compelling evidence. Unless I've missed something in the annual version, it appears that the annual version can take place after The Giggle, but the reprint/adaption cannot. This is rather difficult to place chronologically then.

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

01:44, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

It could be argued the summary of villains in Rhe Giggle's novelisation is not every one of them, but simply the immediate ones that come to Fourteen's mind. User:Draxed/signature 01:50, 15 December 2023

Stories doing these sweeping recaps that seem to discount any and all expanded universe stuff that may have happened during that time isn't anything new. Like how It Takes You Away has Yaz and Ryan talking about the places they've been within series 12 up to that point, in a way that seems to discount stuff like the Titan comics or The Wonderful Doctor of Oz. I think we're just going to have to assume that list of Fourteen's past encounters is not a definitive one. WaltK ☎ 02:23, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

User:WaltK is correct about recaps; unlike this wiki, writers don't abide by the policy of treating every story as equally valid, and thus pick and choose what they consider "canon", usually defaulting to the TV show because it has the largest audience. Hence, characters will usually just recall their television exploits when mentioning what they've been up to. Now that's the Doylist reasoning, but the Watsonian reason can usually be chalked to something as mundane as the characters' prioritising certain adventures, abridging their travels for simplicity or legitimately forgetting on the spot some of their recent exploits, like how the mind can go blank when asked to name a favourite book. A good example is the Eighth Doctor toasting his audio companions at the time in The Night of the Doctor; it doesn't devalue his comic or prose companions, for whatever reason he chose to toast those specific companions (the leading theory is he's remembering their tragic deaths before he faces his own). BananaClownMan ☎ 10:17, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm not entirely convinced as it goes against the clear authorial intent. Well, on a theory subspace page like this one, actually, I think it is completely fine to order the stories as such, but I may have more objections to it on Fourteenth Doctor.

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

10:43, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Crunching the numbers

Now that the novelisation of The Giggle has given us a defined 15 hour slot for the previous releases, it's time to see how much can be fitted between The Power of the Doctor and The Giggle.

• All the entries in the "Born again" subheading are confirmed by Russell T Davies and dialogue to take place in roughly an hour's time, so The Power of the Doctor, A Letter from the Doctor, Liberation of the Daleks and Destination: Skaro make up the first hour of his life all together.
• Doctor Who: The Bedtime Story is only a few minutes long, and there's no telling how long he was about in the photo from Rose, so I'll come back to that in the conclusion.
• The 2023 specials is where some detective work must come in. Wild Blue Yonder appears to happen mostly in real time, so the Doctor and Donna's fight with the Not-things on the spaceship can be chalked up to roughly an hour; at most an hour and a half. Up until the scene with 15 in the TARDIS, The Giggle is also very much linear with the characters, but if we take the helicopter ride and the passage between Wild Blue Yonder and The Giggle, only 2 hours at most might have passed, leaving 4 hours in total when combined with Liberation of the Daleks and Wild Blue Yonder.
• Then there's The Star Beast, where the Doctor arrives in the London Borough of Camden after sunset in November and leaves after sunrise the next day. Given that school children are out near the beginning, it must be before bedtime, plus the November setting leaving an early sunset possible. At the bear minimum, 12 hours at least would have passed between the Doctor's arrival and departure, leaving a current combined total of hours as 16.
• As we can see, the number is only slightly off from the Doctor's statement, but this can be excused as him rounding out the numbers. We can similarly look at him rounding out the events of Liberation of the Daleks to sixty minutes for simplicity. So, keeping this rounding out mentality, the events from "Enjoying a second chance" subheading that only lasted a few minutes can fill in the time he's fudding a bit.
• Under Control and Into Control present a bit of a problem, since we don't know how long the Doctor was moving around the Sycorax ship, but it isn't presented as being that long, maybe roughly half-an-hour passed.

As we can see, the timing isn't perfect, but it is in a 15 hours-ish period, so we can handwave some of the finer details as the Doctor just rounding things up for simplicity. BananaClownMan ☎ 10:49, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

The fact Alfredo ends Under/Into Control going off with Fourteen does clash with the ultra tight time frame. I think the easiest way to resolve the discrepancy might be to theorise the Doctor is literally only totalling up the events he lists off within the Novelisation - Daleks, Meep, the Not-Things and Toymaker - and that he isn't including other stories which would bring up the amount of time. It could be theorised that this is down to the "rupturing of timelines and canon' mentioned in both Destination: Skaro and Double Danger, and his memory is affected by the shifts in reality. Draxed, 13:30, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Without proper context, he can't be sure if Alfredo travelled with the Doctor for long; He could have left in the TARDIS to be returned to Earth. Also, the line about timelines and canon rupturing is always being taken out of context to justify some discrepancy with 14 and that minisode; The Doctor says the line after he realises that he is inspiring the development of the Daleks by saying his future knowledge with Castavillian in earshot writing it down because he fears his presence might result in the timelines and canon rupturing. You can tell the timeline's fine because of the bootstrap paradox of the plunger arm. As for Double Danger, well it's a spot the difference game set during The Giggle, any in-universe shifts can be chalked up to the Toymaker messing around. BananaClownMan ☎ 19:25, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

A fair point, although more broadly I would argue that the Novelisation is based on RTD's original intent that Fourteen only lived for an hour pre 60th that he himself said was relegated to apocrypha in DWM, and that the EU content set after Liberation during Fourteen's tenure implicitly operates on the assumption that a longer pre-Star Beast gap is in play. To look elsewhere, Bafflement and Devotion (short story) establishes that events are retroactively inserted into the Doctor's life, such as Big Finish audios. It's possible this is the case, though I grant it is still plausible enough to fit everything into roughly 15 hours. Draxed, 21:16, 15 December 2023 (UTC)