A History of the Whoniverse

With 26 years of the original television series, a one-off TV Movie, a continuing TV series, and literally hundreds of stories in books, audios, and comics Doctor Who and its numerous spin-offs describe a vast fictional universe. This section of the site attempts to put the events seen and mentioned in these stories into some sort of logical order.

This history does not cover the history of the planet Gallifrey. Gallifrey exists in a special relationship with time, and its history cannot be given even an approximate date on the human calendar, although some events in their earliest history do happen within the main timestream. An extensive chronology of Gallifreyan history can be found on our sister site Rassilon, Omega, and that Other Guy.

In any such reference work, you have to lay out the rules.

Which stories count?

We ultimately aim to include every officially licensed story that takes place within normal continuity. Currently we cover the TV Series, the novels, and some of the audios, with ambitions to massively expand the number of stories covered.

How are conflicts handled?

When two stories contradict each other, we first try to find a solution that allows both to be equally true. If we cannot do so, then we consider the source of the information within the fiction. If one version is more reliable within the fiction (e.g. one piece of information is given by a known liar), then it takes priority.

If it is not possible to resolve the contradiction, information within a story overrides information about a story from other stories. The one exception to this is when a set of stories clearly take place in the same timezone with the same set of characters. The two main examples of this are the UNIT stories broadcast duing the early 1970s and the modern day new series, Torchwood, and Sarah Jane Adventures stories set in the present day. In such cases, I adopt a dating scheme that seems to fit the majority of the evidence and adjust it a bit for individual stories.

If none of this solves the problem, then we may attempt to retcon, add speculation as to how events can fit together, or attempt to decide which story takes precedence.

What about stories with two versions?

When there are two versions of a story, we see if the two can co-exist (as with Human Nature). If not, then the original version takes precedence. So we may use details from the Target novelistations, but only ones that do not contradict the original TV version. Additional materials, such as script books, tie-in websites, and the like are treated in the same way. Authorial intent is only ever used to explain the otherwise inexplicable.

Story Titles

Where the title of a story is in dispute, we have tried to use the more familiar title. Thus the first three stories from the classic TV series are referred to by their DVD titles. The trial scenes from season 23 are referred to by the overall title Trial of a Time Lord, whilst the events shown as evidence are referred to by their commonly used alternative titles of The Mysterious Planet, Mindwarp, and Terror of the Vervoids. The 1996 TV Movie is referred to as The TV Movie, though earlier drafts used the semi-official Enemy Within, which may still be used in some places. New series stories are referred to by episode title.

Format

We have used the following conventions: Dates are in bold type. Story titles are in CAPITALS before the description of the events of those stories. Explanation of the dating and other speculation is in [square brackets]. Story names are colour coded to indicate the type of story it is. The colour coding is as follows:

I have used colour coding for the stories, to make it more obvious what source they are from. The coding is as follows:

Note: Because browser set-ups vary, the colour-schemes below may look different on your computer. Each description of a colour is formatted in the colour used for that category in the history.