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"My
theories appall you, my heresies outrage you, I never answer letters,
and you don't like my
tie"
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| Footnotes in the Sands of Time |
Doctor Who, like
any long-running series, has contradicted itself many times. There
have also been occasions when viewers had to fill in the gaps and
provide their own interpretations of events. This page contains
details of my theories, as well as a few from other contributors.
I've tried to provide simple explanations which fit the established
"facts", and to avoid retconning (rewriting continuity) as much as
possible. While reading these entries, please remember that this
work is based on the continuity of the television series, and
doesn't include material from the novels or other spin-offs.
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| Early Adventures |
The Doctor's medical training
The
Doctor has often given contradictory information about his medical
qualifications. In The Rescue he tells Ian Chesterton that he
didn't get a medical degree, while in The Moonbase he tells
Polly that he did. This theory reconciles this discrepancy. I
assume, as do the authors of The Discontinuity Guide,
that his denial of having a degree in The Ark in Space is
because he's traveling with Harry Sullivan, a qualified physician
with more recent training. Incidentally, the Joseph Lister of our
universe was no longer in Edinburgh in 1888 (an example of history
in The Doctor's universe taking a slightly different turn from our own). 
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The TARDIS lands on Gallifrey during the Old
Time
Remembrance of the Daleks and Silver
Nemesis suggest that The Doctor was on Gallifrey during this
period, and was involved in the experiments which provided the Time
Lords with their power. The First Doctor's recognition of Rassilon's
voice in The Five Doctors seems to support his presence in
this era (the fact that none of the later Doctors share this
knowledge suggests that it was either lost when The Doctor
regenerated for the first time, or deliberately removed by Rassilon
at the close of The Five Doctors). Since we know that The
Doctor and The Rani are the same age (Time and The Rani),
it's impossible that he lived through this time, so I've assumed
that he traveled back to it. Admittedly, the suggestion that The
First Doctor's ring was a gift from Rassilon is not supported by
onscreen evidence, but its mysterious powers seem to fit in with the
"artifact" nature of the Hand of Omega and the various items of
Rassilon (Rod, Sash, Coronet, Ring, etc.) seen later in the series.
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| The First Doctor's
Adventures |
The Doctor and companions witness the relief of
Mafeking
The Doctor mentions this to Steven Taylor and
Sara Kingdom in The Daleks' Master Plan. Since he says in
Planet of Giants that he's never been to Africa, the event
must occur between televised adventures, and before Steven's first
appearance in The Chase. Since there's evidence (The
Ark, and others) that the TARDIS sometimes acts on The Doctor's
thoughts and pilots itself, it seems plausible that the ship
interpreted The Doctor's casual remark as a desire to visit Africa.
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The Three Doctors and The Five
Doctors
The Doctor is alone in a garden when first
seen in both of these stories. Since The First Doctor is rarely
alone, and since Paris is a city with many public gardens, this
seems to me the best spot to place both these appearances. The
President in The Three Doctors is probably an agent of the
Celestial Intervention Agency, since The Doctor has no apparent
reason to worry about being returned to Gallifrey. The villain of
The Five Doctors chose to kidnap The Doctor from a time zone
which would already be known rather than search for another point in
his timeline. This has the double benefits of conserving the time
scoop's power and of covering his tracks, since anyone who might be
monitoring The Doctor's timeline would probably assume that the
temporal disturbance was related to The Doctor's first displacement in time.
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Unrecorded events during The War
Machines
The Doctor's scientific qualifications aren't
questioned during this story, which indicates that he had some sort
of official status. The explanation in the novelization, that he
forged Ian Chesterton's name on a letter of introduction, isn't
really satisfying. It assumes that Ian was acquainted with some of
Britain's top scientists. Ian returned to Earth in 1965 and the
story is set in 1966. It's doubtful that a former secondary  school teacher, even if he made use of knowledge gained in
his travels with The Doctor, could have risen that quickly in the
scientific community. It's also unlikely that The Doctor would have
waited until his seventh persona to take care of the Hand of Omega
unless he knew that it had already been dealt with. Finally, it's in
character for The Seventh Doctor, the most manipulative Doctor to
date, to have arranged things for his earlier self. The last name
I've given to Harry, the owner of the cafe in Remembrance of the
Daleks, comes from a scene in Planet of the Spiders in
which The Third Doctor tries to remember the last name of a man
named Harry who taught him escape tricks. Before he remembers that
it was Houdini, he mentions three other people named Harry: Hopkins
(an advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt), Hetherington (a
Victorian-era publisher), and Hackenschmidt, a name for which I've
been unable to find any historical reference. Speaking not as a
serious historian, but as a shameless fanboy, the idea that he's
remembering his old friend from 1963 was too good to resist. While
I'm in fanboy mode, I'd also like to suggest that the credentials he
uses in The War Machines refer to him as "Doctor Who", which
explains why WOTAN asked for him by that name.
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| The Second Doctor's Adventures |
The TARDIS lands at Det Sen
monastery
As The Discontinuity Guide
notes, The High Lama has met The Second Doctor at some point before
The Abominable Snowmen, but Jamie hasn't been there before, so the adventure must occur during this period.
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Missions for the Time Lords
There are
few gaps between The Second Doctor's stories, and this seems to me
the best place for these adventures. (I'm ignoring the changed
appearances of The Doctor and Jamie in The Two Doctors and
assuming that the obvious aging of actors Patrick Troughton and
Frazer Hines in this story means no more than the aging of Hartnell,
Troughton and Pertwee does in the other multi-Doctor stories.)
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In The Two Doctors,
The Doctor and Jamie are sent to Space Station J7. In light of The
Doctor's comment that "officially, I'm here quite unofficially",
it's likely that this mission was performed for the CIA rather
than for the High Council. The Doctor seems unable (or unwilling)
to explain Victoria's sudden desire to study graphology to Jamie.
Since we learn in The War Games that the telepathic
abilities of Time Lords allow them to selectively erase memories,
the idea that Victoria's decision was due to a telepathic suggestion seems plausible.
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The Doctor's encounter with
Shakespeare must take place after The Chase, in which The
Doctor and companions see the Bard at Queen Elizabeth's court
while using the Time-Space Visualizer. Had the meeting occurred
before then, it seems certain that The Doctor would have mentioned it.
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The Doctor's various
adventures in China can only happen after Marco Polo, since
The Doctor says in The Power of the Daleks that the
adventure with Polo was his only previous visit to the country.
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The Second Doctor mentions
the Terrible Zodin in The Five Doctors.
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There's no onscreen evidence
to support a meeting with the Daleks on Mars, but since most of
the Dalek defeats which The Fourth Doctor mentions in Genesis
of the Daleks are those of which he has first-hand knowledge,
it seems plausible, at least, that this is no exception.
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The encounter with the
Drogue of Gabrielides mentioned in The Sun Makers seems out
of character for The First Doctor, who rarely interfered on such a grand scale.
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The Master's desire to
destroy The Doctor must date from The Second Doctor's era, since
The First Doctor doesn't recognize his classmate in The Five
Doctors, but by the time of Terror of the Autons
they've become adversaries (and dialogue in The Five
Doctors suggests that The Second Doctor is aware of his old friend's villainy).
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The adventures in which The
Doctor encounters Cleopatra's guard, visits the Pharos lighthouse,
and is wounded at El Alamein, take place in Africa, which The
Doctor doesn't visit for the first time until after Planet of
Giants (see the relief of
Mafeking above). I've placed them here because the
first and third adventures seem out of character for The First
Doctor, and because it's logical to assume that the visit to
Pharos took place at the same time as the meeting with
Cleopatra.
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The Doctor's assistance with
a cure for the space plague fits the idea that The Doctor was
performing missions for the CIA, since without a cure it's unlikely
the Draconians would be strong enough to assist in the Dalek wars
mentioned in several stories.
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The Doctor and Jamie's
encounter with the Cybermen on Planet 14 is an unseen adventure,
since none of their televised meetings with the Cybermen take
place (in the Cybermen's timeline) before The
Invasion.
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The meeting with Lady
Peinforte is suggested by her statement in Silver Nemesis
that The Doctor is "still little", a description which could only
apply to The Second Doctor. Since that incarnation is almost as
manipulative as The Seventh Doctor, the other events would seem
likely as well.
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Since the dual controls in
the TARDIS aren't seen in later stories, they must have been
removed, and since Jamie hasn't heard of the Time Lords in The
War Games, his memory must have been altered. The Doctor
remembers these missions, although he does forget that he once
owned a Stattenheim remote for the TARDIS. (The Sixth Doctor says
in The Two Doctors that "I've always wanted one of those".)
The memory may have been deliberately erased, or possibly
forgotten, either as a side effect of the memory-altering drug
he's given in The Two Doctors, or as a result of his next
regeneration. Victoria's decision to leave The Doctor in Fury
from the Deep may also be due to a telepathic suggestion by
the Time Lords, but is more likely to be the result of her
frightening experiences during her travels.
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The Three
Doctors
The Second Doctor's appearance in this story
takes place after The Invasion, since he recognizes Benton. I
place it here simply because the brief shot of The Second Doctor we
see before he is lifted from his timeline shows him in a landscape
similar to that seen in The Krotons.
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The Five Doctors
Since I'm assuming
this story's villain is trying to conserve the time scoop's power
and to cover his tracks, this seems a logical point for him to
retrieve  The Second Doctor. He wouldn't have to track him
down, since this is a point in his timeline that is precisely known,
and yet it would also be unlikely to be closely monitored, since The
Doctor is being exiled to Earth, and the Time Lords at this point
seem unable to conceive of a technology which could interfere with
their own. With the almost-magical power of Rassilon's devices,
however, it would be relatively simple to delay The Doctor's
regeneration and control the TARDIS. The fact that The Doctor knows
that Jamie and Zoe's memories were erased, knowledge he could only
have gained during The War Games, seems to support this
theory as well. (The Doctor simplifies his explanation of why he
knows they're phantoms for the Brigadier's benefit.) Finally, The
Third Doctor uses his watch to trace the TARDIS in Spearhead from
Space, but The Second Doctor doesn't wear such a device, so it
could only have been acquired after The War Games.
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| The Third Doctor's Adventures |
Dates of the UNIT stories
The UNIT
stories were regarded by the Pertwee-era production staff as taking
place in the near future, though none of them mentions a specific
date. The Fifth Doctor story Mawdryn Undead establishes that
Lethbridge-Stewart retires from UNIT in 1976, which would place the
UNIT stories firmly in the early 1970s. Since my general approach is
to accept the latest version of events as most accurate, and since
many Pertwee-era stories include details which point to the early
1970s (Jo's wardrobe, her mention of the Age of Aquarius in The
Daemons, the use of pre-decimal currency, the mention of Mao
Zedong as the Chinese leader in The Mind of Evil, vehicle
license plates, and others), I've treated the Earth-based Third
Doctor stories as events which happened in the recent past (that is,
shortly before their broadcast). Three stories in which UNIT doesn't
appear make this approach difficult. The Web of Fear, the
Second Doctor story which introduces Lethbridge-Stewart, is a sequel
to The Abominable Snowmen and establishes the date of that
story as 1935. Professor Travers, seen in both stories, remembers
the first as occurring about 40 years before the second. Travers,
however, seems a bit senile in the later story, though he has
retained many of his faculties. In light of Mawdryn Undead,
I've assumed that, like many who suffer from senility, his memory is
sharp in some areas and lacking in others, and that he's simply
misremembered the date. The other story which causes a problem is
the Fourth Doctor story Pyramids of Mars, in which Sarah Jane
Smith, seen in several UNIT stories, says that she is from 1980. See
the "I'm from 1980" entry below
for details.
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The Doctor learns to play cricket
The
Fourth Doctor shows his skill with a cricket ball in The Ark in
Space and The Hand of Fear. Since the first two Doctors
show no interest in the sport (The First Doctor, in fact, is
completely unfamiliar with cricket in The Daleks' Master
Plan), The Doctor must have learned the game during his third
incarnation.
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The Five Doctors
Since he knows Sarah Jane, The Third Doctor's
appearance must date from Jon Pertwee's final season. I've placed it
here since there are direct continuity links between the first four
stories (Invasion of the Dinosaurs has the TARDIS returning
from the Middle Ages, and ends with The Doctor offering to take
Sarah to Florana, a destination they fail to arrive at in the next two stories).
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| The Fourth Doctor's Adventures |
The Doctor programs the
Mordee computer
There's no indication onscreen of when
this occurs. Terrance Dicks, the writer of Robot and author
of most of the Doctor Who novelizations, placed it here in
his adaptation of Chris Boucher's script for The Face of
Evil. The explanation is an almost universally-accepted part of
the show's mythos, and I see no reason to contradict it.
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"I'm from 1980"
When we meet Sarah Jane
Smith, in The Time Warrior, she's a struggling journalist so
desperate for a story that she impersonates her aunt to gain access
to a secret facility, yet by the time of K-9 and Company, set
in 1981, she's successful enough to take time off to write a book.
Nearly all of her Earth-bound adventures with The Doctor would have
been censored by UNIT for security reasons, and her off-planet
adventures wouldn't be suited to serious journalism, so the question
arises of how (and when) she acquired this success. At the end of
Terror of the Zygons she agrees to travel in the TARDIS only
if The Doctor returns her to modern-day London, which he can't do
because of the Morestran distress signal in Planet of Evil.
When they do finally return to modern-day Earth, in The Android
Invasion, she promptly leaves again. Why? Because there's a
break between televised adventures in which Sarah does return
to her own time and resumes her career. Following this, she and The
Doctor pick up where they left off. Their next adventures on
contemporary Earth, The Android Invasion and The Seeds of
Doom, take place within a few months of the other UNIT
adventures (before the Brig's retirement from UNIT in 1976, as
established in Mawdryn Undead). Since another version of
Sarah already exists in this timeline, she cannot stay on Earth, and
she is only returned to her proper timeline in The Hand of
Fear, which takes place in 1980.
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The Brain of Morbius
The unknown
faces seen during the mind-bending contest were intended by the
production team to be pre-Hartnell incarnations of The Doctor, but
this is contradicted by both earlier and later stories. The Three
Doctors specifically says that the Hartnell Doctor is the first,
and other stories, including Mawdryn Undead and The Five
Doctors, support this. The common alternative explanation for
these faces is that they are earlier versions of Morbius, who simply
doesn't realize he's losing the contest, but this seems unlikely
since The Doctor has already collapsed before Morbius's brain case
shorts out. I suggest a third possibility: that the game was rigged.
The Doctor is clearly aware how dangerous Morbius is, and is willing
to kill to stop him (the cyanide gas). I believe that while he
waited to see if the gas worked, The Doctor used the equipment in
the lab to rig up a mind-bending device (there's certainly no reason
for one to have been in the lab already), and briefed Sarah on his
plan to goad Morbius into the contest if necessary (she helps do
this, though she has earlier been quite frightened of the Morbius
creature). The Doctor rigs the device to show other faces, perhaps
those of people he's met during his travels, in an effort to
convince Morbius to prolong the contest, knowing the brain case
would eventually short out. It's a desperate gamble, and one that
nearly costs The Doctor his life, but it seems a more likely
explanation to me than the alternatives.
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The Hand of Fear
The
Doctor's decision not to take Sarah to Gallifrey seems strange in
light of both previous and later stories. The Time Lords themselves
bring Jamie and Zoe there in The War Games, and no objection
is raised when Leela goes (and stays) there in The Invasion of
Time, or when Nyssa arrives in Arc of Infinity. Clearly
there is a reason why Sarah cannot go to Gallifrey, but it cannot be
the result of an official policy. My belief is that The Master, who
sent The Doctor the telepathic summons to Gallifrey, and has ample
cause to regret the interference of The Doctor's companions (as seen
in all his previous appearances), implanted a hypnotic suggestion in
the summons, and The Doctor, under its influence, believed that he
had to leave Sarah behind.
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