2001

Events

 * 6 February - Fitz Kreiner travelled to Belgium and met Anji Kapoor and her boyfriend, Dave Young. They became embroiled in a Kulan plot. (PROSE: Escape Velocity)
 * 8 February - Fitz Kreiner met the Eighth Doctor at the St. Louis Bar and Restaurant in London. (PROSE: Escape Velocity)

Unknown Dates
The following took place before February 6.
 * A highly advanced breed of Cybermen invaded the Earth en masse, but were defeated by the Eighth Doctor and Destrii. (COMIC: The Flood)
 * Samuel Lloyd's parents died in a car crash. (TV: The Mad Woman in the Attic)
 * Fitz Kreiner was dropped in London by Compassion to meet the Eighth Doctor at the St. Louis' Bar and Restaurant in London. (PROSE: Escape Velocity)


 * AUDIO: Last of the Titans was first released as an exclusive CD with Doctor Who Magazine, the first of several DWM-exclusive audio dramas. It was also the first single-episode/short Big Finish Doctor Who story. The CD also included Episode 1 of AUDIO: Storm Warning.
 * AUDIO: Storm Warning was first released. This was the first Big Finish Productions audio drama to feature Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor, beginning a long series of productions picking up where the 1996 TV movie left off. It marked the first appearance of his companion Charley Pollard.
 * BFBS: Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Gods of the Underworld was first published.
 * 7 January - Actor Lorne Cossette died.
 * 8 January - PROSE: Father Time was first published. It introduced Miranda Dawkins, the Doctor's adopted daughter, who subsequently starred in a comic book series.
 * 8 - PROSE: The Quantum Archangel was first published.
 * 8 - BBC Audio released an audio recording of TV: The Myth Makers.
 * 15 - Wikipedia, a free-content online encyclopaedia, was launched, and within a few years became a dominant source for online information, eventaully leading to the creation of the Wikia websites which borrowed Wikipedia's format - one of which was the Tardis Wikia, launched in 2005. By the autumn of 2001, articles on the Doctor Who franchise begin to appear on Wikipedia. Although not officially recognised as an influence by its founders, the concept of Wikipedia was often compared to that of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the repository of all knowledge which was conceived by erstwhile Doctor Who script writer/editor Douglas Adams.
 * 17 - Actor Robert Robertson died.
 * 29 - TV: Spearhead from Space was released to DVD in the UK; discounting the multi-Doctor story The Five Doctors, this was the first Third Doctor story to be released in the format.


 * AUDIO: Sword of Orion was first released.


 * 5 February - PROSE: Escape Velocity was first published, the sixth and final book in the Earth Arc. Fitz Kreiner rejoined as companion, and Anji Kapoor became a new companion.
 * 5 - PROSE: Bunker Soldiers was first published.
 * 7 February - Doctor Who Magazine published its three hundredth issue.
 * 26 - TV: Remembrance of the Daleks was released to DVD in the UK; it was the first Seventh Doctor story to be released in this format.


 * AUDIO: The Stones of Venice was first released.
 * 5 March - PROSE: EarthWorld was first published.
 * 5 - PROSE: Rags was first published.
 * 19 - Actor Norman Mitchell died in, Norfolk, England.


 * AUDIO: Minuet in Hell was first released.
 * BFBS: Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Squire's Crystal was first published.
 * 2 April - PROSE: Vanishing Point was first published.
 * 2 - PROSE: The Shadow in the Glass was first published.
 * 2 - BBC Audio released audio recordings of TV: The Moonbase and TV: The Celestial Toymaker.
 * 17 - Actor Terry Scully died from a stroke in Wiltshire, England.
 * 27 - Tom Baker appeared on the BBC Radio 4 programme Dead Ringers, where he encountered soundalike Jon Culshaw.


 * AUDIO: Loups-Garoux was first released.
 * 7 May - PROSE: Eater of Wasps was first published.
 * 7 - PROSE: Asylum was first published.
 * 11 - Writer and script editor Douglas Adams died.
 * 12 - Incidental music composer Norman Kay died.
 * 22 - Actor Jack Watling died.


 * AUDIO: Dust Breeding was first released.
 * AUDIO: Dalek Empire I: Invasion of the Daleks was first released, launching the first of Big Finish Productions' Dalek Empire spin-off series.
 * 1 June - Film cameraman Peter Sargent died.
 * 4 June - PROSE: The Year of Intelligent Tigers was first published.
 * 4 - PROSE: Superior Beings was first published.
 * 18 - TV: The Caves of Androzani was released to DVD in the UK; discounting the special case of TV: The Five Doctors, this was the first solo Fifth Doctor story to be released in the format.
 * 28 - Actress Joan Sims died.


 * AUDIO: Bloodtide was first released.
 * 2 July - PROSE: The Slow Empire was first published.
 * 2 - PROSE: Byzantium! was first published.
 * 2 - BBC Audio reissued the 1979 audio version of TV: Genesis of the Daleks and the radio play AUDIO: Exploration Earth on CD.
 * 2 - BBC Audio issued an audio recording of TV: The Abominable Snowmen.
 * 2 - TV: The Robots of Death was released to DVD in Region 4.
 * 3 July - Composer Delia Derbyshire, music arranger for the original Doctor Who title theme, died.
 * 13 - The BBC entered new territory with Doctor Who with the uploading of the very first original made-for-Internet story, the "pilot episode" of WC: Death Comes to Time, featuring the return of Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor and Sophie Aldred as Ace in what was basically a Big Finish Productions-style audio drama with limited animation. The series resumed in February 2002; ultimately thirteen instalments were released.


 * AUDIO: Project: Twilight was first released.
 * AUDIO: Dalek Empire I: The Human Factor was first released.
 * BFBS: Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Infernal Nexus was first published.
 * 6 August - PROSE: Dark Progeny was first published.
 * 6 - PROSE: Bullet Time was first published.
 * 13 - TV: Doctor Who, the 1996 TV movie, was released to DVD in the UK.
 * 18 - Actor Tom Watson died in, Scotland, from cancer.
 * 20 - REF: Doctor Who: Regeneration was published in paperback.


 * AUDIO: The Eye of the Scorpion was first released. A new audio-only companion for the Fifth Doctor, Erimem, was introduced.
 * 1 September - AUDIO: Occam's Razor was first released. This was the first in a series of audio dramas by Magic Bullet Productions in the Kaldor City series, based upon characters from TV: The Robots of Death.
 * 3 September - PROSE: The City of the Dead was first published.
 * 3 - PROSE: Psi-ence Fiction was first published.
 * 9 September - TV: The Five Doctors, The Robots of Death and Spearhead from Space were all released to DVD in Region 1 (North America). These were the first Doctor Who DVD releases in that part of the world, and began an ongoing series of releases by the North American arm of BBC Video (in conjunction with Warner Home Video) that continued into 2012.
 * 11 - The September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States took place. Though never explicitly stated to have occurred in the DWU they may be said to be vaguely implied in a couple of episodes. Donna Noble's reference to "Gitmo", UNIT holding Toshiko Sato without trial and warfare taking place in Iraq obliquely referred to some of the real world consequences of September 11. (TV: The Sontaran Stratagem, TV: To the Last Man, Fragments, TV: Warriors of Kudlak) Nevertheless, these references alone are not enough to confirm that the real life September 11 attacks occurred in the DWU.
 * 26 - Actor Brian Hawksley died.


 * AUDIO: Colditz was first released.
 * 1 October - PROSE: Grimm Reality was first published. This was the fiftieth novel in the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures series.
 * 1 - PROSE: Dying in the Sun was first published.
 * 1 - BBC Audio released an audio recording of TV: The Daleks' Master Plan in a special edition that also included raw recordings of the episodes (without linking narration) and CD-ROM content including the scripts.
 * 15 - TV: Vengeance on Varos was released to DVD in the UK; this was the first Sixth Doctor story released in this format.
 * 18 - REF: Doctor Who: The Scripts 1974/75 was first published by BBC Books. This was an annotated collection of complete scripts from Season 12.
 * 26 - REF: Doctor Who: On Location was first published.
 * 31 - Actress Jenny Laird died.


 * AUDIO: Primeval was first released.
 * AUDIO: Dalek Empire I: "Death to the Daleks!" was first released.
 * REF: I, Who 2 was first published.
 * 5 November - PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street was first published.
 * 5 - PROSE: Instruments of Darkness was first published.
 * 13 - Actress Peggy Mount died.
 * 21 - The first article on Doctor Who was uploaded. Over the remainder of the decade hundreds of articles on the franchise appeared on the user-generated reference website. The establishment of the "Wiki" format popularised by Wikipedia also gave rise to many topic-specific "wiki" websites, including the Doctor Who TARDIS Index File site on Wikia.
 * 23 - PROSE: Time and Relative was first published. This was the first release of a series of hardcover (later including paperback) novellas published by Telos Publishing and licensed by the BBC (which continued to publish full-length novels under its BBC Books line). Telos releases were limited in distribution and most would include deluxe editions with autographs.
 * 23 - Mary Whitehouse, a vehement critic of Doctor Who, died.
 * 29 - Musician George Harrison died from lung cancer in Los Angeles, California.


 * AUDIO: The One Doctor was first released.
 * 10 - TV Century 21 founder Alan Fennell died.
 * 20 - Actor Edward Evans died.
 * 21 - Dalek Operator Kevin Manser died in New South Wales, Australia, from bowel cancer.
 * 28 - This was the twentieth anniversary of the broadcast of TV: A Girl's Best Friend, the pilot for K9 and Company.

Unknown dates

 * Actor Bill McGuirk died.
 * Broadband internet became commercially available in some parts of the world. Broadband was one of the technologies that Henry van Statten claimed to have "created" on the back of scavenged alien technology. However the episode in question, Dalek, made no reference to a specific date, and therefore a real life 2001 date can't be said to exist in the DWU.