5. The Fifth Doctor's Timeline

So I was listening to Circular Time and Renaissance of the Daleks the other day and I’ve picked up on a few things.

For starters, Autumn definitely needs to come after the DWM Comics as the Doctor constantly refers to all the previous times he’s played cricket in Stockbridge and they even have pictures of him up on the walls from when he’s played in past years. But they of course think that it’s a family line rather than just the one man. I suppose you could in theory say that the DWM comics were a later trip but it doesn’t really sit right.

Also, there’s not actually a gap between the Doctor dropping off Nyssa in Rhodes and arriving at the Savoy hotel in Renaissance because General Tillington basically says that they watched the Doctor drop Nyssa off in Rhodes and then go to the hotel. Plus because of the interocitor, the same amount of time has to pass for the Doctor as Nyssa which is pretty much a day, if even that. If the Doctor had gone off on loads of adventures before arriving at the hotel, he would’ve gotten Nyssa’s message about being in trouble long before even arriving at the hotel.

And finally, I relistened to Fallen Angels and i think the line about the trip to Heathrow has been taken a bit out of context because I don’t think it necessarily suggests that the Doctor was there recently. The exchange goes something like this:

Doctor: “The chaps at Heathrow are lovely”
Gabby: “Been there recently?”
Doctor: “1981”
Gabby: “That long ago?” (Shes from 2015)
Doctor: “Not so long for me, but five hundred years in the future (they’re in the sixteenth century) see that’s the thing about time travel.

So it’s less a case of him having been there recently, and more a case of him commenting on the nature of time travel and how 1981 was like 30 years ago for Gabby but the Doctor was in 1981 a lot more recently than 30 years ago, if that makes sense.

Yeah I think Empire of the Racnoss was just put in that comics gap to keep it close to Fallen Angels. Personally I would agree that they both make way more sense sitting in the Amsterdam gap. We know that he gives up trying for Amsterdam for a while from The Burning and Diary of River Song, before trying to get there again and still failing to get there. So I would say that if in doubt solo stories go in the Amsterdam gap.

I would probably go as far to say that the Comics gap shouldn’t be a solo gap in its own right, and I’d rather believe that Nyssa is in the same timezone as the Doctor, she’s just not in Stockbridge and thus not involved in the comics. Maybe she took a train to London and attended a conference while the Doctor spent a few weeks playing cricket. Perhaps this prompted their later lengthy stay in Autumn after Nyssa didn’t get to spend much time in Stockbridge before. It’s certainly a location the pair come back to often.

I didn’t think of the issue with having The Helliax Rift in The Gathering gap. I’ve had it in the Awakening gap before but I’m not a huge fan of that because there isn’t really a gap there other than suggesting he might have gone on an additional solo trip after And You Will Obey Me, which I’d rather not do. But perhaps I’ll have to reconsider. It certainly needs to be at some point in Season 21 due to the costume on the cover, Alan Barnes saying on twitter that he felt like it was a later on story for the Fifth Doctor, and it being set in 1984.

It can go in either or.

He mentions Tegan a couple of times and also references Terileptils and Omega. There’s not much else to go on.

I’m erring towards the Amsterdam gap right now but it could just as easily go in the Time Apart gap if you really wanted it to.

FWIW I threw it after And You Will Obey Me - that story has Tegan and Turlough in 1980s Little Hodcombe and the Doctor in the 2010s, so it's the latest Tegan gap in my opinion.

Amsterdam gap works fine too, though.