Theory talk:Timeline - Seventh Doctor

Page ignores primary sources
As has been pointed out at Forum:Timeline pages, these timeline pages violate T:SOURCES, are awash with speculation and are, in my opinion, totally worthless. Still, just to put it on the record:

This particular page ignores the primary source of DWMS Winter 1993, which explains the intended timeline of events between the DWM comic stories and the Virgin New Adventures. These deliberately intersected, beginning with TV: Fellow Travellers. This story was intended to follow on directly from the final Timewyrm novel. The two ranges were intertwined thereafter until Uninvited Guest, which preceded PROSE: Theatre of War. Ground Zero was a deliberate break with the Virgin continuity, and then the much later The Last Word was, as the title suggested, both the final DWM Seventh Doctor story, and the final narrative connection between DWM and the NAs.

This article, far from emphasising the producers' intended chronology, obscures and even occasionally contradicts it. Anyone wishing to actually read this era of the Seventh Doctor's timeline in the order intended by its publishers wouldn't be able to use our page to do so.

This is yet another reason why I think these timeline pages should be scrapped. If they can't even show us the chronology intended by the publishers what possible good is it?

For future reference, DWM's chronology goes like this:


 * TV Survival
 * immediately followed by the Timewyrm novels
 * immediately followed by Fellow Travellers
 * COMIC: The Mark of Mandragora (obviously preceded by what we're calling the "separate" stories of the two prequels)
 * COMIC: Under Pressure
 * COMIC: Party Animals
 * COMIC: The Chameleon Factor
 * COMIC: Seaside Rendezvous
 * COMIC: The Good Soldier
 * COMIC: A Glitch in Time
 * COMIC: Evening's Empire
 * COMIC: The Grief
 * ''Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible
 * Cat's Cradle: Warhead (with COMIC: Ravens taking place within Warhead)
 * Cat's Cradle: Witch Mark
 * COMIC: ''Metamorphosis
 * COMIC: Memorial
 * ''Nightshade
 * COMIC: Cat Litter
 * ''Love and War
 * ''Transit
 * COMIC: ''Pureblood
 * COMIC: ''Flashback (comic story)
 * COMIC: ''Emperor of the Daleks!
 * The Highest Science
 * The Pit
 * ''Deceit
 * ''Lucifer Rising
 * COMIC: ''Final Genesis
 * ''White Darkness
 * ''Shadowmind
 * ''Birthright (novel)
 * ''Iceberg (novel)
 * COMIC: Time & Time Again
 * ''Cuckoo (comic story)
 * Blood Heat
 * ''The Dimension Riders
 * ''The Left-Handed Hummingbird
 * ''Conundrum (novel)
 * ''No Future
 * ''Tragedy Day
 * COMIC: ''Uninvited Guest
 * ''Legacy
 * Theatre of War

''The Last Word hadn't been written at the time this list was compiled, since it's from the much later colour era of DWM strips.

But there are a number of interesting things which are pointed out by this list, when comparing it to ours. No doubt the biggest is that we assume — probably because the Doctor Who Reference Guide does — that the Seventh Doctor DWM stories prior to Fellow Travellers happen between Survival and Fellow Travellers.

That is, we've got the whole run between A Cold Day in Hell! and roughly Doctor Conkerer!, including the COMIC stories, happening in publication order. However, DWMS Winter 1993 quite clearly tells us that were wrong. Their non-Ace, non-Benny stories are actually set before the Seventh Doctor's DWM debut in A Cold Day in Hell.

This is a fairly fundamental flaw that makes the current timeline a nonsense, really. This error has an even greater impact, because we've added in various stories that were written after these, meaning that a hell of of this timeline page is completely unreliable.

I'd fix it, but I hate a) timeline pages and b) the Seventh Doctor wayyyyy too much to bother.

20:14: Wed 14 Dec 2011

Placement of Illegal Alien, Matrix and Storm Harvest; 2.2 Updated with new information
I'd like to suggest that the novels "Illegal Alien", "Matrix" and "Storm Harvest" be moved to a place in between "TV: Survival" and "AUDIO: Dust Breeding". My reasoning for this is that there are numerous mentions of the events of "Storm Harvest" in "Dust Breeding" when the Doctor and Ace are talking about the Krill. My reason all three novels here is that all three run together.

Hex's time
I want to enquire as to why Hex's time as a companion is where it is and where it should be placed. We need to remember that there is a "young Ace" and "older Ace," and I understand she is "young" until she leaves in Love and War, but all that time she gives the Doctor credit again and again until she's had enough manipulation and leaves. I suppose it's where it is because Benny's not there, but it just seems odd that Ace would take all that time to finally snap and leave. David Bishop (who wrote Enemy of the Daleks) said he based his Ace on the "paramilitary" version from Virgin. I think that's fine because it shows that as a precursor to how battle-hardened she'll become as she picks up more and more experience. This is kind of a tangent, though; what I'm primarily concerned with is the placement of Cat's Cradle and possibly Nightshade in relation to Hex and my concern is in relation to the end of "young Ace." I think she is young enough to have Cat's Cradle before Hex (also the Doctor has not been to Alaska in Cat's Cradle but will be with Hex in Lurkers at Sunlight's Edge). A few months exist between Nightshade and Love and War and I think Hex spends years in the TARDIS, so he would go before. So...I guess this was just about moving three novels, but it helps in understanding Ace's development. User:Steed 12/21/2013 00:27am.
 * I know it can't be helped because of the nature of it, but it's tricky to order the New Adventures and the audios because (obviously) Ace doesn't mention Hex while at the same time she's still young by Love and War. In Nightshade the Doctor and Ace haven't been anywhere exciting since the TARDIS got repaired, so this can take place after the Black TARDIS story arc, but there can always be unseen adventures. There's a few months between Nightshade and Love and War so Hex's time can't take place between those stories, and so, as stated above, has to take place after Cat's Cradle because of the Alaska bit. The major way we can kind of determine when Hex's time takes place, and incorporate the adult-esque Ace, is to have the audios take place before Timewyrm when the Doctor and Ace's memories are altered. Although this would bring into question why the Doctor would make himself forget Hex. Either he just doesn't mention him or he's really manipulative of Ace. Steed ☎  03:07, August 7, 2014 (UTC)

More
I think Excelis Decays (audio story) comes later in his timeline.

For the pre-Fellow Travellers (comic story) strips, check out pages 36-39 of DWM 168. 197.88.62.248talk to me 16:47, March 19, 2015 (UTC)

Ace and Hex
Before, we had the TV lead into the novels and audios, and then go back to the novels, depending on how old Ace is and whether Benny is present. How did we get Hex's stories taking place after Benny leaving and Ace rejoining for the second time? Steed ☎  00:55, May 12, 2016 (UTC)
 * There's a whole list of reasons that the PDA and Big Finish Ace stuff fits only after the New Adventures. To start with, even ignoring The Lights of Skaro we know that Ace unambiguously travels with the Doctor after Set Piece from The Prisoner's Dilemma, which ends with her losing an unknown amount of her memory. Sophie Aldred has said in BTS segments that she plays Ace as younger in Theatre of War and All-Consuming Fire because they're set earlier than her main Big Finish appearances. In You Are the Doctor and Other Stories we see Ace being taught more and more TARDIS piloting, but in Deceit she's bitter that the Doctor has always refused to show her how to do anything. In Shadowmind Ace is still rigorously keeping track of her age, but by Afterlife she's completely lost track. In Love and War, Ace hasn't had sex since Glitz, which means her extended relationship in A Death in the Family has to be after. In early New Adventures, the Doctor hasn't had a sonic screwdriver since The Visitation, but he has one in The Harvest. In Timewyrm: Exodus, Ace is positively gleeful about killing Nazis, but her character has developed by Colditz and she's really shaken up by Kurtz's death. The list is only likely to get longer as time goes on and Big Finish continues to develop Ace and the Doctor's characters in a general forward direction, instead of aiming for Love and War.Fwhiffahder ☎  17:38, May 12, 2016 (UTC)
 * Ok. I can understand some of those, and why Big Finish would want to develop their own Ace, but what about Signs and Wonders where Ace sees herself wearing a high collar (UNIT: Dominion, The Lights of Skaro) and riding a bike through Paris (Set Piece) in the future? I know the Doctor makes a vague comment about "different universes" but we're trying to create a single timeline. I could understand Prisoner's Dilemma taking place after Hex and the novels with her memory, but that might not be the starting point after she leaves in Set Piece and goes to the Academy. The general consensus seems to be that Timewyrm takes place immediately after Survival, but because of it's very plot device (the Doctor erasing his memory and Ace's by accident) Hex's stories and others could actually take place between the TV series and the New Adventures (at least Love and War) and just not be remembered. Steed ☎  03:01, May 13, 2016 (UTC)
 * The Prisoner's Dilemma doesn't indicate when they got back together, it just makes it irrefutable that they travel together after Set Piece. Signs and Wonders is annoying, but that scene can hardly be considered definitive since it refers to multiple timelines and Ground Zero. Timewyrm: Genesys has to be directly after Survival because of the Cheetah virus, and there's no way the audios could be before Survival. Ace is also a lot older in the audios than in Survival/Timewyrm: Exodus. Fwhiffahder ☎  05:00, May 13, 2016 (UTC)

Survival and Timewyrm
Where does the idea of the Timewyrm series taking place "immediately" after Survival come from? The back cover doesn't state "immediately," and the article Interweaving with the New Adventures states the Timewyrm novels "follow on" from Survival. If there can be a gap between the TV story and the novels, this could account for the placement of some stories if the Doctor editing his memory is taken into account. Steed ☎  04:58, May 29, 2016 (UTC)
 * Ace is still recovering from the cheetah virus, so there can't be stuff where she's not affected by it between them. Stories can still be placed between the TV episodes though. Fwhiffahder  ☎  14:24, May 29, 2016 (UTC)
 * But her feeling the Cheetah virus is still referenced later in Cat's Cradle: Witchmark, and it's not like it's referenced in every story inbetween. She even feels it later in First Frontier when she's near the Master. Steed ☎  21:49, May 29, 2016 (UTC)
 * First Frontier is a completely different case, where she's only affected by the proximity of Cheetah-Master and his pet. Here's the passage from Timewyrm: Genesys:
 * they had taken off in the TARDIS from near her home. Perivale, West London. Not much of a home. They had fought the Master (image of a sneering, bearded face, elegant clothing and fangs) on the planet of the Cheetah people (smell of blood, pounding of feet, the thrill of the hunt, the…)
 * So as far as her newly-restored memory is concerned they've just left Survival. There's also a virus-reaction there. Considering Cat's Cradle: Witch Mark I think we can say that there may be time between Survival and Timewyrm: Genesys, but not much and she's now completely forgotten it. Fwhiffahder ☎  16:35, May 30, 2016 (UTC)
 * Granted, but that's my point. The fact that she doesn't remember it means that any amount of time could've passed between the two stories. Of course, this can only go so far before we take Ace's age into account. But it is possible, if needed in the future, for stories to happen between Survival and Timewyrm. Steed ☎  01:50, June 6, 2016 (UTC)
 * No, not any amount of time. Just a small amount. There's her memory, but there are also the physical effects of the virus.Fwhiffahder ☎  19:01, June 6, 2016 (UTC)

Apparently, The Fearmonger is set in-between Nightshade and Love and War
According to Jonathan Blum, he said that The Fearmonger is best placed in-between Nightshade and The Fearmonger.: http://www.doctorwhoreviews.altervista.org/7R.htm
 * It made sense at the time The Fearmonger was written, but not anymore. It's got to be shortly before Colditz, but Colditz starts the "Just McShane" arc, and Ace's characterization during and after The Harvest definitely won't fit before Love and War. Fwhiffahder ☎  16:30, October 7, 2016 (UTC)

Placement of Relative Dementias - Ace's age
The timeline has Relative Dementias significantly too late in the sequence. As the comment on it says, "Ace ... is still under the legal drinking age." Since Ace had reached the legal drinking age by Survival, Relative Dementias has to be before that.


 * For the benefit of Americans (among others), it's worth pointing out that the legal age for buying & consuming alcoholic drink in a pub (bar) in Britain is 18, the same as the age of majority (legal adulthood).

In Dragonfire, Ace was 16. We don't know whether she was newly 16 or very nearly 17 but we do know (from her own words) that she was 16.

In Battlefield, set in Britain, the Doctor stopped Ace from buying alcoholic drink, because she was then still under the legal drinking age.

In Survival, also set in Britain, the Doctor made no objection to Ace buying alcoholic drink, indicating that he knew she had by then reached the legal drinking age. Ace having turned 18 by Survival is entirely reasonable, given her age during Dragonfire & the number of adventures she'd had in the interval.

Since Relative Dementias refers back to Battlefield (Ace escaping from alien spaceships underwater) & Ace is still under the legal drinking age in the novel, the novel must be somewhere between Battlefield & Survival.

The Curse of Fenric is very obviously Ace's "coming of age" story, suggesting that she turned 18 at about the time of that story, so Relative Dementias probably belongs before that, too.

Any story that has Ace under the British legal drinking age, has to be before Survival. --89.243.193.140talk to me 06:07, July 10, 2017 (UTC)

Placement of the Benny New Adventures and the muddled timeline
Recently I moved the events of the first two New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield boxsets to happening shortly after Lungbarrow and shortly before the bulk of the events depicted in The Prisoner’s Dilemma.

I thought perhaps I should come back and explain my justifications for this move (and also speak about some other issues I have with the timeline, but I’ll get to that) so that it doesn’t cause issues in regards to editing further down the line, it’s probably best to discuss it here.

I believe that the placement I’ve set out is the best one for several reasons:


 * It’s never specified when these sets take place for the Doctor and Ace, other than towards the end of the VNAs and presumably some time after Lungbarrow, so there’s no worry about where it should go in respect to Hex.


 * They open up a gap for Ace to travel with the Doctor indefinitely after the VNAs and after she has initially joined the academy on Gallifrey.


 * We know that Ace eventually returns to the academy, so placing these sets after the Big Finish Monthly Range is a waste of the narrative gap that is opened to us. Placing these sets earlier doesn’t change the context of any stories significantly, especially combined with the mindwipe in The Prisoner’s Dilemma. By placing these sets later, we're just introducing two unexplained exits for Ace when there only need be one.


 * The Prisoner’s Dilemma never explains how Ace ended up back with the Doctor, it just makes it irrefutable that she travelled with the Doctor after Happy Endings and sets up a potential explanation for her reset in the Monthly Range. In addition to this, the brief reference to Benny fits with the ending of the first New Adventures set.


 * Ace is still on Gallifrey at the conclusion of Lungbarrow. Perhaps she did go back to Earth and continue being time’s Vigilante as she intended, or perhaps she changed her mind and remained on Gallifrey?


 * The only reason we have these two narrative gaps after Lungbarrow and before the TV movie is because we work on the assumption that the Hex stories must fit later. So in that respect it doesn’t really matter narratively where the sets go as theyre intended to go in this slot whereas the Monthly Range is far more ambiguous as to when in the Doctor’s timeline it’s set.

I also think that these timelines still rely too much on the observations of the reference guide and I’ve seen many stories, particularly short trips that have an arbitrary placement, as described by the person who compiled the guide himself, put just anywhere in the Timeline without and suitable rationale. And then at times when a rational is given, it’s something nonsensical like “This story is placed here becase Ace has sunglasses”.

I don’t think putting stories in the undated section should be a taboo thing to do, right now the timeline isn’t as coherent as it could be.

SarahJaneFan ☎  11:46, September 16, 2018 (UTC)

Titan Comics
I wrote up the "Reunion with Counter-Measures" section on the Seventh Doctor's page and I feel this timeline should stick to that. While COMIC: The Armageddon Gambit, Operation Volcano, and Crossing the Rubicon do not outright contradict VNA and Big Finish continuities, they do not adhere to them either. The only explicit placement info is post-Survival, so between "Work to do" and "Trouble with the Timewyrm" is the placement I prefer. LegoK9 ☎  20:43, June 24, 2019 (UTC)

Well I can’t really argue with the placement specifically because as long as it’s post-Survival it’s otherwise arbitrary. But what I will say is that the Seventh Doctor article shouldn’t have any bearing on this page because they’re two completelt separate things. This isn’t considered a factual article by the wiki and there is no rule that it has to match up to the Seventh Doctor page, if it’s felt so strongly by people that it should match, they should edit the article rather than the timeline. On top of that, what you prefer really doesn’t have Bearing on anything, there’s other people editing the these timelines. I created the Brooke page, but I don’t claim to have a monopoly on all things Brooke. Overall, I’m indifferent to the placement as the comics werent even in my preferred placement before they were moved, but I completely disagree with the reasoning for why they should be moved, so I’ll look forward to seeing what other people think on the matter. SarahJaneFan ☎  21:14, June 24, 2019 (UTC)


 * The Titan comics do not contradict any other story, but are placed lower due to two pieces of subtle evidence: Ace and the TARDIS interior. Ace is depicted as looking much older than in the television series, looking much like she is described in the Hex audio stories, hence being placed shortly before those. Meanwhile, the TARDIS has an interior not unlike the Victorian interior seen in Doctor Who, but is less "gothic" in appearance, implying that it is the interior the TARDIS chose after Lungburrow and the interior that was redecorated in The Settling before the Doctor has to rebuild and redesign it in Excelis Decays after the events of Ground Zero and finally goes for the macabre look after The Eight Doctors, at least in theory.BananaClownMan ☎  23:39, June 24, 2019 (UTC)

At Childhood's End
Spoilers ahead for At Chilhood’s End, so don’t read if you don’t want to get potentially spoiled. Right, so here’s the dilemma.

There is an Interlude in this book featuring the Seventh Doctor and Ace. Of course we’ve already got an entry for it with a few details, but I thought I’d go into it a bit more here as it causes a few issues.

Ace and the Doctor arrive on a barren planet and the date is given as 1990 (I’m assuming it’s supposed to be circa 1990 from Ace’s perspective). There was a war between two species on the planet and one species used a weapon called the quantum anvil (a type of quantum possibility engine) to fracture the other species' timeline into infinite possibilities, leaving them unable to interact with the real world.

Long story short, the Doctor basically pushes Ace into this as part of one of his master plans. Ace then sees visions of her entire life up to that point. Then she sees a vision of herself as she currently is in that moment, which then splits off into multiple visions of possible futures. This includes Spacefleet, Time’s Vigilante, Bernice Summerfield, Gallifrey, and a young man who could be either Hex or Jan, or even someone else entirely. She also sees visions of Fenric’s earth still being a possibility and she decides that the timeline where that doesn’t happen is the only one she wants to live in. It’s difficult to explain but she keeps seeing visions of Earth that clearly there as inspiration for her to set up A Charitable Earth.

Now the issue comes from the fact that after she sees all these potential futures, she finds out the Doctor has intentionally manipulated and endangered her once again. And as you can imagine, she isn’t happy. The Interlude ends with Ace telling the Doctor that she is leaving him.

So At Childhood’s End effectively posits that Ace leaves the Doctor and goes back to Earth to set up A Charitable Earth, while the VNAs, Gallifrey and Ground Zero are still all possible futures for her.

The only way around this I can currently think of, is if we assume she doesn’t actually leave. Perhaps if we place the At Childhood’s End Interlude immediately before Ace’s Timewyrm: Genesys mindwipe, that might explain why she sticks around. Otherwise I can’t think of any logical solution except separating the timeline into separate continuities and I know for a fact that isn’t going to happen.

So I thought I’d just post here to see if anyone has any objections or other ideas in regards to this development. SarahJaneFan ☎  23:39, February 7, 2020 (UTC)


 * That does seem to be the best place to place this placement.BananaClownMan ☎  23:17, February 8, 2020 (UTC)

Introduction
Okay so this is going to be long. Very ridiculously long. Probably the longest bloody thing I’ve ever written on this wiki so do bear with me. If you want to skip ahead, I’ll have a tl;dr at the bottom that will hopefully explain things more succinctly.

So, I’ll start by saying that I’m not really happy with the timeline as it currently is. It feels like we’re constantly doing damage control to make it make sense when it only does and I think we’re compromisng the flow of the narrative in some places by trying to fit stories into gaps ans orders that they’re not really make supposed to go in.

One thing that stands out glaringly to me is that the evidence we have claiming the VNAs go before the audios is pretty weak and not overly convincing.


 * Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible
 * The Doctor claims he has never been to Alaska, whereas he visits Alaska in the company of Ace and Hex in Lurkers At Sunlight's Edge. Logic would dictate that his visit with Ace and Hex comes later. Which would make sense, only we know that the Fifth Doctor visits Alaska with Nyssa in The Land of the Dead, so blatantly he has been there before. With the mindwipe in Timewyrm: Genesys existing and having been implemented to iron out continuity errors such as this one, I don’t think we can really use the Doctor's comment here as a reliable indicator of placement. It’s certainly a helpful and suggestive line but it doesn’t hold much weight in the grand scheme of things.


 * White Darkness
 * Now the claim here is that the Doctor faces one of the Great Old Ones so this story must take place before his truce with the Elder Gods in Signs and Wonders. But the Doctor is facing Great Old Ones all the time so they certainly don’t stop fighting him after Signs and Wonders. Plus it seems to only really apply to the Elder Gods (Who haven’t appeared since Signs and Wonders) specifically rather than all Great Old Ones in general who again turn up constantly in almost every Doctor's era. I’m assuming that Cthulhu isn’t an Elder God because that’s something BF came up so the truce would necessarily apply to him but even so one stray God doesn’t really make much of a difference especially when you consider that the Doctor was being attacked by an Elder God in nearly every story during that arc. So in short, I don’t think this claim has a lot of narrative weight beyond “this happens so it could potentially suggest this”.


 * Enemy of the Daleks
 * Ace has quite a bit of knowledge on how to kill Daleks and Valkyrie attacks and things, which suggests that she’s already spent time with Spacefleet. Likewise David Bishop has allegedly claimed that he based Ace's characterisation in this on Ace's VNA characterisation. It’s a fair shout no doubt, but there’s no actual reference to Spacefleet or anything from the VNAs and sitting alongside Ace’s characterisation in all the other Hex era audios it just doesn’t really fly as being post-Spacefleet. Inspired by that version of Ace maybe but there’s certainly not a lot of unambiguous evidence to say she is that Ace.

Other than these three examples, the only real evidence we’ve apparently got to suggest that the Big Finish Audios come after the Virgin Novels is to do with Ace's development and age tracking.

Ace's VNA development
She starts off as regular TV Ace. She’s not slept with anyone since losing her virginity to Glitz On Ice World and thus Jan Rydd is her first real romantic partner. She’s very much the young immature Ace from TV but leaves the Doctor in anger due to his manipulative nature.

She then returns after a couple of years in Spacefleet. She’s now angst, edgy and hardened with great military skill. But she’s honestly not much more mature than she was when she left in Love and War. Now she’s just angry.

She keeps track of her age and knows for a fact when she leaves the Doctor that she’s 26. She’s resentful that the Doctor never taught her to fly the TARDIS.

However during her travels with Benny she eventually manages to forgive the Doctor and begins to develope Andy mature properly culminating in her departure in Set Piece. By the time of Happy Endings she’s much closer to her tv characterisation than her Spacefleet one but she said also much more mature and grown up.

Ace's Big Finish Development
She once again starts off as regular tv Ace but after going through the events of Colditz she decides its time she grew up. She changes her name to McShane and tries to act more grown up. Hex soon joins and she finds herself acting as an older sister and protector to him, finally finding her place and growing up in a way. She reverts to using the name Ace quite quickly, probably because the decision to change it was a rash and immature one.

For as long as Hex is around, she’s this much more mature character. And throughout the Audios she has several relationships and makes it clear that she doesn’t really think she could leave the Doctor or function without him. She has no idea how old she is anymore but she’s often described as being in her late twenties. In 100 Days of the Doctor Evelyn even notes how Ace and Hex look older than his other companions (having just seen Peri Andy Erimem who were teenagers) and says that Ace looks like Hex’s older sister.

After Hex leaves, Ace sort of breaks down and confesses to the Doctor how much he’s screwed her up and how she can’t function in the real world. She also says that she tried to grow up by changing her name (McShane) and clothes (she stopped wearing the bomber jacket) and claims that Hex was pretty much the only thing keeping her going in her new grown up mindset. After that she pretty much reverts back to a more generic tv like characterisation.

The Doctor teaches Ace how to fly the TARDIS.

How they fit together
Well the simple answer is, they don’t. Now you can try to say well if a few of her memories are wiped in The Prisoners Dilemma, then you can have the Audios come after the Novels with some of the developments as a reaction to the things that happened in the VNAs, which I guess we currently kind of do. But the problem is that this really isn’t the case and they’re just two separate strands of development that really aren’t supposed to fit together.

However despite this, BF clearly do consider many aspects of the VNAs to be "canonical" (excuse the crude phrasing). But the way they have structured their releases implies a very different order of events to how we have ours set out.

For example, the Ace/Hex/Mel era Audios never fever to anything from the VNAs. The one time this has happened was in Signs and Wonders where Ace had a vision of the VNAs occurring in her future (alongside other things that I’ll get into later).

Then in the audio adaptation of Love And War, Ace mentions Liam McShane, who doesn’t even know exists until The Rapture which would suggest that Love and War (the audio adaptation) comes after that and thus after Hex and Older Mel eras.

Then when you skip forward to the older Seventh Doctor Solo TV Movie era adventures, suddenly there’s VNA references galore and all of this is in the past. Master alone references Death (key character in the VNAs), Benny, Chris and Roz. Then An Alien Werewolf in London has the Doctor visit the House on Allen Road.

Two Doctors appear in A Death in the Family, one travelling with Ace and Hex Who looks as he did on TV and another older version from immediately before the events of Master. He hasn’t seen Ace and Hex in years and is much much more physically older in appearance than the “present” Doctor of the story.

Ace meets Narvin for the first time in The Quantum Possibility Engine which suggests she hasn’t been to Gallifrey yet which is a bit tricky.

So really the situation is more like BF have their own version of VNA continuity which occurs after their Main Range with Ace and Hex/Mel and is much more inline with their own established continuity. Whereas the actual novel VNAs aren’t really taken into account so much.

The Solution
The Seventh Doctor's Timeline has always been tricky and never really made sense, with us trying to patch things together as best as we could but now that Ace’s fate is explored further and deeper than before especially with the release of At Childhood's End, the Timeline is really just falling apart at the seams. Some timelines such as the Master's are only getting more streamlined and making more sense but the Seventh Doctor's is just becoming more tricky to deal with due to the sheer amount of contradictory answers paradoxical content.

However having recently listened to Gallifrey: Time War Volume 2, I believe it might have provided us with a solution that not only simplifies the timeline but also makes some sense of the chaos in-Universe.

In Episode 4 - Assassins, Narvin and Romana share this exchange:

"NARVIN: Braxiatel more than covered his tracks. He’s left multiple false trails, all leading precisely nowhere. I can’t even track Ace's history from her biodata anymore. The time trace is blurred and contradictory all the way back to her departure from the Doctor.

ROMANA: Those are Brax's fingerprints alright."

In the past it’s been suggested that there’s something dodgy going on with Ace's Timeline. Look at the multiple futures she sees in Signs and Wonders, and she also claims that she thinks her history may have changed in Intervention Earth. However this is the first time we’ve had an explicit reference to her timeline being contradictory and basically not making a lot of sense in-Universe and also giving it a direct cause being Braxiatel's meddling which is already well documented. He himself had a blurred and contradictory timeline until the watchmaker resolved things for him. These issues would likely also extend to the Seventh Doctor as he was present as well. Therefore I propose that we lean into the idea that the timeline is contradictory in places and cite the in-Universe source we have to explain why this is not only okay but possibly more accurate than trying to make complete sense of the nonsensical.

Here’s rough idea:

The Proposal

 * Everything up to Survival stays exactly how it was before as it’s not affected by these issues.


 * After Survival we make a note explaining the blurred and contradictory nature of Seven and Ace's timeline. We cite Assassins as evidence that this is also true in-Universe and was caused by the meddling of Braxiatel. We could all add a few other examples and things of timelines being dodgy such as Ace’s claims in Intervention Earth, Benny's multiple experiences of the same story and Brax’s previous timey-wifey behaviour.


 * The PDAs


 * The Big Finish Ace and Hex/Mel Audios


 * At Childhood's End: Interlude - This could also go before the BF audios but definitely has to go between the PDAs and the VNAs. We leave a note stating that in this account Ace leaves the Doctor.


 * The VNAs - We also make also notes stating that the BF produced content set in this era may not be entirely consistent with the original virgin content and they take place in slightly differently timelines/realities/things change because of Brax’s interference + Time War so nothing is consistent.


 * Make a note that Ace ends up on Gallifrey with no memory of how and when she got there, suspecting the Doctor’s Intervention.


 * Solo Seven content plus travels with Klein, Raine and Mags. At this point pretty much everything becomes consistent again.


 * Sometime in this era Ground Zero is mentioned. It can just be explained as another potential future that may be a part of Ace’s biodata etc. Maybe even put a note saying in one timeline Ace grew old and died in the TARDIS.


 * The TV Movie

Tl;dr
Basically to sum it up much more quickly. The Seventh Doctor's timeline makes very little sense and currently we arrange it based on vagueness information while ignoring other details and intent to try and make it narratively consistent.

But one of the Big Finish Time War Audios says that Irving Braxiatel meddled with Ace’s timeline making her biodata blurred and contradictory effectively meaning that in universe her timeline makes no sense going as far back at least as her departure from the Doctor.

So instead of trying so hard to make everything fit and coming up with a lot of conjecture to do this, we should lean into the in-Universe claim that the timeline is contradictory and instead of focusing on how the Audios and not Novels fit together we should focus on accurately placing the Audios the way they’re intended to flow.

Please excuse any glaring grammar or spelling mistakes as I’m trying to crack this out as quickly as possible on an iPad. SarahJaneFan ☎  21:28, May 13, 2020 (UTC)

Discussion
Having not read any of the VNAs (yet), I don't really have an awful lot to say about the precise details here, but, for me, having VNA -> The Prisoner's Dilemma mindwipe -> Ace/Hex made the most sense if we were going to combine them both into a single timeline. Before you proposed this it had never occurred to me that a timeline page could go down the 'by one account' route on such a large scale. Obviously this is the view of Ace's timeline that makes the most sense when looking at it as a whole, but it really depends on what we're really trying to achieve with the timeline pages. Do we want to go down the path of a diverging timeline? I'm not against it, but that's one thing to straighten out before preceding.

There are surely a large number of people that would like to construct a Seventh Doctor timeline which works from start to finish. Obviously, as you've (rather commendably) shown, this is problematic, but it'd be good to hear their points of view before progressing with any change. Basically, this is a huge operation, and it'd be good to know we're all in agreement on all its precise details before advancing. Danochy ☎  02:45, May 20, 2020 (UTC)

See to me, it’s not a case of separating it into a path of diverging timelines. It’s actually one timeline, that doesn’t make a lot of narrative sense due to the confirmed in-universe meddling done by Braxiatel.

It’s like how for example, Amy Pond doesn’t have parents in The Eleventh Hour, but then she suddenly has them in The Big Bang. But everything before The Big Bang isn’t an alternate or divergent timeline and Amy also remembers both versions of her life equally. So in that case, the crack in time caused Amy to end up with two contradictory but somehow equally valid histories.

The same would be the case here. Ace and the Seventh Doctor did experience all of this, and it all exists within their biodata but due to Brax’s meddling you can’t follow it in a consistent narrative anymore, but there’s still a general order that it goes in.

Personally, I think it’s inevitable that our order is going to be contradicted even more because it’s not the intended one. We’ve had ample evidence that Ace’s history and biodata has been meddled with and is far from consistent, even Benny has memories of both versions of Just War and Birthright to the point she suspects that the Doctor meddled with history to cause her to experience them again on her own.

So it’s clear that this all does happen to one Seventh Doctor, one Ace and one Benny but I don’t think it’s a straight forward as they just lose their memories. As I say, we’ve had plenty of evidence now to suggest that timeline shenanigans are what have defenestrated continuity when it comes to the Seventh Doctor. SarahJaneFan ☎  12:04, May 22, 2020 (UTC)