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 just does and I think we’re compromisng the flow of the narrative in some places by trying to fit stories into gaps and orders that they’re not really 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 angsty, 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 develop and mature properly culminating in her departure at the end of Set Piece. By the time of Happy Endings she’s much closer to her tv characterisation than her Spacefleet one but she's 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 a much more mature character. And throughout the audio adventures 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 and 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 refer 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-wimey manipulations.


 * 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 vague 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 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)

Timeline reconstruction reversion
A valiant effort, but during some clean up edits, I found too many contradictions listed to allow the NVAs to come later, such as the sonic screwdriver and TARDIS interior, but the most damning evidence was Ace not knowing her age in the Audios, but keeping a record of it in the VNA. As for the audio adaptation of Love and War mentioning Liam, I'm afraid that would go in hand with the adaption policy of "if it doesn't affect the original, it's valid", such as the Doctor mentioning Fitz in The Day of the Doctor novelisation of The Night of the Doctor being listed as a separate account.BananaClownMan ☎  08:57, September 4, 2020 (UTC)

You’ve completely ignored the whole proposal. None of it works whatever way you put it, you’ve just decided that your’s does even though it’s just as contradictory. Your’s is the “valiant effort” that doesn’t work. Mine is based on actual evidence from a story which clearly establishes that the timeline is broken. The audios do come before the novels, there’s no if or but about it. They’re never going to fit together well because they’re two completely contradictory accounts, but we’ve got in-universe evidence that Ace’s life is full of contradictory accounts that all still happen. At the end of the day, your way is wrong and there’s no way around that it just is. Mine isn’t much better, but at least it’s truer to how the timeline is actually supposed to look and is based on actual evidence. Conveniently you talk about all the evidence placing the audios after the novels which is already weak as it is, but then you dismiss all the evidence saying the other way around too. If anything my proposal was the perfect compromise in a timeline that doesn’t make sense as long as both mediums are welded together in it. SarahJaneFan ☎  09:41, September 4, 2020 (UTC)

I second what SJF says. As I said on your talk page a few days ago, the goal was never to say the audios go first, it was to use actual evidence to show that the timelines are inherently contradictory and irreconcilable. We have real in-universe evidence that says this is the case, so it makes sense to go with this. Whether we actually "place" the audios or VNAs earlier in the timeline is not the point, and could be a secondary discussion here, if you wish. Danochy ☎  10:19, September 4, 2020 (UTC)


 * I'm sensing some displeasure coming my way. Which is fair. It's easy to be angered when you feel your work is being undone unfairly. Rest assured, I personally have no issue with the Audios coming before or after the VNAs if evidence has been found to place them there. My only gripe was that the evidence for VNAs>Audio was still on the page, and the more you read them, the more a VNAs>Audios over Audios>VNAs comes. For future reference, when moving a timeline subheading, its best to proofread the whole page afterwards so new editors don't get confused. As for the "inherently contradictory", yeah, I get that. But, the Seventh Doctor's timeline as always been inconsistent, onmly now with an in-universe explanation, so I just don't see a new way to comment on that.BananaClownMan ☎  14:29, September 4, 2020 (UTC)

Ace’s TV era out of order
Shouldn’t Ace’s TV era be listed in intended, rather than broadcast, order? Normally this wouldn’t matter but but there is continuity such as Ace’s mention of Gabriel Chase in TV: The Curse of Fenric, which is clearly supposed to take place before they actually go there in TV: Ghost Light, and, of course, Ace already wearing the earring she acquired in TV: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy in TV: Silver Nemesis. The latter of these is even noted on the page, yet they’re still listed in the incorrect order. Why? --NightmareofEden ☎  15:04, November 21, 2020 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I've often thought this as well. I was skeptical about making any change though, as it's possible the novelisations or other stories might provide evidence against such a change. Good of you to bring it up though, as it's certainly worth discussing. Danochy ☎  12:39, 24 November 2020 (UTC)


 * We talked about this on one of the forums a few years back, and I switched sides on both accounts at various points. In the end, the convincing piece of evidence was the novelisation of Survival, where it is mentioned that The Curse of Fenric was the previous week and the last time Ace and the Doctor were on Earth before Survival. I shall leave a link here is I manage to find the forum. BananaClownMan ☎


 * Cheers, I suspected as much. Danochy ☎  21:46, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

The Eight Doctors after Excelis Decays?
in TED, Seven doesn't have the Victorian TARDIS interior, and only decides to finally bring it in at the end of his role in the story. In ED, he's just finished the design. In my view, the former story should come before the latter, rather than the reverse.

Honestly the current iteration of the Timeline is completely broken
I understand that Seven's timeline is completely unmergeable into a single timeline without something giving way and I'm far from suggesting it should be merged that way. But the current version of the timeline is over-segmented to the point where it no longer makes any sense.

The most egregious examples I find are.
 * The timeline is divided immediately following Survival into 'Quantum Anvil Timeline', 'Time's Champion Timeline' and 'The Hex Timeline' all implied to be seperate all the way up to the TV Movie. First problem with this is arbitrary segmentation, why is the Genocide Machine in a totally different branch of the timeline from Dust Breeding, the sequel story that features the return of the same version of Bev.
 * Some decisions of which timeline things should land in are counterintutive, like why is 'The Grey Man of the Mountain', a BF main range story, not in the "Hex" timeline. Similarly, why is Earth Aid so many stories ahead of Animal. Ace and Seven promising to come back in a weeks time, only to have supposedly all of Ace/Hex, Ace/Mel, the BF version of the VNAs and TNAoBS inbetween is really weird given moving Earth Aide to directly after Animal changes nothing about the rest of the timeline.
 * Why are the BF VNAs and the actual VNAs even seperate? The timeline is currently effectively 'At Childhood's End timeline', 'VNA timeline' and then 'BF timeline but with the VNAs in it'. Which seems rather superfluous to me.

Ontop of that, in general, this massive segmentation seems like a drastic lack of ability to theorise on a page titled 'Theory: Seventh Doctor'. There's almost no theorising here anymore, contradictions are just chucked into a seperate timeline (nevermind the fact Death Comes to Time isn't even here anymore despite the fact multiple other NOTVALID's still are). Compare the Eighth Doctor timeline which merges DWM, Radio Times, EDAs and BF into one timeline despite Zagreus's insistence that they are separate.

Suggestions (Note, I'm not proposing anything, I've never posted here before and don't have the authority to do that, these are just my thoughts). There are three possible approaches that could be taken to streamline this a little and improve a lot of the issues I have.

Timeline elimination Likely the most controversial version. Eliminate the multiple timelines and go (broadly) either TV -> Ace/Raine -> PDAs -> At Childhood's End -> Timewyrm Mindwipe -> VNAs -> Prisoners Dilemma -> Ace/Hex -> Ace/Mel -> Seven Alone (inc Klein and whatnot) -> TV Movie, or alternatively TV -> Ace/Raine -> PDAs -> Ace/Hex -> Ace/Mel -> Timewyrm Genesys Mindwipe -> VNAs -> TNAoBS -> Prisoners Dilemma -> At Childhood's End -> Seven Alone (inc Klein and whatnot) -> TV Movie.

Obvious cons: Both the VNA -> BF and BF -> VNA placements have things that contradict them, ie Liam in Love and War, Set Piece being in the future after Signs and Wonders, Lungbarrow seeming to lead directly into the movie etc, and I'm sure there are plenty more, hence why this is the most controversial option.

Con 2: Death Comes to Time and Ground Zero remain unplaced though GZ can be placed after any late Ace run (Ace/Mel in the first timeline or as an alternative to At Childhood's End in the second) and then explained away through Sometime Never.

Timeline condensation Probably a better option. Cut the timelines down to two main ones and explain the timeline split as a result of the Quantum Anvil. So you'd have a condensed 'TV -> Ace/Raine -> PDA -> At Childhood's End' timeline which then splits into two (Plus a few other small ones like Death Comes to Time, Ground Zero, the Ace dies in the TARDIS timeline from Signs and Wonders and Ace actually leaving in At Childhood's End).

Timeline One '-> Timewyrm Genesys Mindwipe -> VNAs -> TNAoBS -> Prisoner's Dilemma ->'

Timeline Two '-> Ace/Hex -> Ace/Mel -> Seven Alone up to future Seven's appearance in A Death in the Family ->'

After a Death in the Family, the Seventh Doctor would be reconstituted in Master but with the memories of both timelines though no idea which order they go in (Hence why Seven in Master mentions Benny, Chris and Roz), then the rest of Seven Alone would happen leading into the TV Movie.

Feel free to tell me why these all don't work because I have no doubt most people on here have been doing this far longer than I have. IRegisteredForTimelines ☎  06:04, 28 February 2022 (UTC)


 * Hi, there. First of all I’d like to thank you for taking the time to write all of this out, it’s lovely to see new people taking an interest in these timelines. I do agree with the majority of what you’re saying here and feel as if something needs to change. But to explain why things are the way they are:


 * Back in 2020 as you can see above, not long after At Childhood’s End was released I came to the conclusion that the timeline wasn’t working in the iteration it was then at. Hex was placed after the VNAs and we were canon-welding all of the apocryphal stories like Ground Zero and At Childhood’s End into oblivion. And the more content that was released it felt like we were grasping at straws and the timeline was making less and less sense as we kept doing damage control. I go into this a bit more in the early discussion above.


 * So my suggestion was to move the Hex audios to before the VNAs first and foremost. This was mainly because the structure of BF’s output seems to imply that order. (whereas VNAs really just plug the gap between Survival and the Movie and ofc didn’t anticipate that there would be other companies making content like this in the future) Ofc you’ve mentioned how either placement can make sense due to the mindwipes on either end of the VNAs, but I would argue that having the Hex era first allows the timeline to flow better.


 * I also suggested that contradictions can be explained by a line in Gallifrey Time War Series 2 that establishes how Brax messed up Ace’s timeline going all the way back to the Doctor. Essentially the idea was instead of bending over backwards to come up with an explanation for every single discrepancy, we would lean into the idea that Ace’s timeline (and by extension the Seventh Doctor’s) doesn’t entirely line up, so there are major aberrations there, but also a narrative reason for them existing. Everything would more or less be placed in some semblance of its intended order and the most major contradictions would be explained by a note pointing towards Braxiatel’s culpability in the matter.


 * So for example it should’ve looked like:
 * TV > pre-VNA DWM > PDAs > At Childhoods End (caused by Brax meddling) > Hex/Mel era > Mindwipe/more Brax meddling > VNAs > Solo/other companions > Ground Zero (Brax meddling note establishing that Ace also didn’t die and had already left) > TVM


 * I feel like the idea ended up misrepresented because the final compromise was the segmented timelines we currently have. I have tried to remove the segments but I guess as I didn’t open another talk page they were reverted. I think the actual order we currently have works quite well and with some tweaking could be even better. But I agree that the timeline segmentation adds nothing, confused the timeline and needs to go. My idea was essentially that it’s one timeline that’s been altered and rewritten so many times that it doesn’t make 100% sense anymore, but not really that they genuinely are separate timelines? Like to me the VNAs may have been the original timeline and then BF stuff was overwritten onto it or something like that. It’s difficult to represent these ideas on a page like this, but I would say that the notes explaining the fluidity of the timeline would work.


 * So the new timeline as I’ve just noticed while writing this completely splits everything up. Which you’ve mentioned already but clearly that didn’t quite compute with me until now. It does make more sense then it did before but it’s also not ideal either? I definitely think a wider conversation needs to be had about this. SarahJaneFan ☎  02:36, 28 February 2022 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the welcome. I mainly became interested because I finished Classic Who a while back and recently finished reading the VNAs and I'd been looking at this page, Eyespider and Bradley's Basement and trying to figure my own hc Seventh Doctor timeline as Seven's is by far the most complicated one (Eight's next IIRC and I'm pretty sure the only major complication with his is Eyespider's jamming of Charley into the Interference gap (Bradley's used to do that too but abandoned it recently)


 * Anyway. I do feel the mindwipes on either side of the VNAs are being underused given how powerful they are in fitting things together. In the case of Hex vs the VNAs, I personally headcanon the VNAs first but my only real justification for that is 'Because they were released first'. Given how the VNAs show effectively one run from Survival to the TV Movie whilst BF is broken up, inserting the VNAs after Hex probably fits better, with only minor contrivances surrounding Lungbarrow's leading directly into the Movie, indeed, the current "Hex" branch of the timeline pretty much already does this with BFs Love and War - Cold Fusion adaptations (including the 7DNA boxset) being placed after Quantum Possibility Engine.


 * Using Gallifrey Time War is also incredibly effective as it can explain most things about Seven or Ace forgetting or contradicting anything prior. With the idea being everything did happen in one timeline, but the timeline was changing around them. Kinda like how its collectively agreed One-Thirteen are one timeline, but One was a human scientist, Four was a Time Lord, Seven was the Other, Eight was Half Human, then Eight was an elemental, Ten was a Time Lord and then Thirteen was the Timeless Child. Whilst these are all in one timeline from the Doctor's experience, their past was changing around them. Similarly Ground Zero can be explained by either Brax or Sometime Never.


 * There's also the idea of sticking At Childhood's End right before the Timewyrm Genesys mindwipe since the story never actually shows Ace leave.


 * Now that I think about it, the double appearance of the VNAs in the current order can be attributed to Brax's meddling in the same way that Benny experiencing two of the same story at different points in the timeline. With the idea being that the timeline went TV -> PDAs -> VNAs -> Prisoners Dilemma -> Ace/Hex -> Ace/Mel but then Brax's meddling swapped Ace/Hex with the VNAs, thus creating the BF versions of the VNAs and allowing both positions to coexist, with a note explaining that the PROSE VNAs were first but then the timeline changed and the PROSE VNAs were overwritten by Ace/Hex, and then the AUDIO VNAs occurred after Ace/Mel.


 * But yeah, those are my thoughts. IRegisteredForTimelines ☎  06:04, 28 February 2022 (UTC)


 * (PS how do I put a signature)

Put four of these "~" at the end of a message. BananaClownMan 05:33, 28 February 2022 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I've retroactively added them, though the times will be off IRegisteredForTimelines ☎  06:04, 28 February 2022 (UTC)


 * I think the fundamental problem is At Childhood's End established the separate timelines (though there is the alternate theory that Ace's desire to leave was removed courtesy of Timewyrm: Genesys memory wipe and Braxiatel later restored said memory when he mucked around with her mind in Soldier Obscura but this feels a bit grasping at straws to keep everything united in spite of the ever-growing divides) but didn't really delineate between them aside from their outcomes. So you end up with questions like where does the divide begin, immediately after Survival as now, or just before Hex joins the scene (which would solve the Dust Breeding sequel problem); do Big Finish's "side steps" into VNA territory go into that timeline or with their own adaptations in their own timeline; do Raine's Lost Stories go with the Hex timeline even though there's no real connection between the two?


 * These dangling issues now loom over Seven's timeline, leaving it more open to individual interpretation than ever before (which is saying something given how complex it was already) and that's reflected in the current state of the timeline. I'm not sure what the solution is really, but its definitely something worthy of discussion. SherlockTheII ☎  10:27, 28 February 2022 (UTC)


 * I do think it's worth bringing up in reference to At Childhood's End's timeline split that Zagreus similarly establishes BF and the EDAs as seperate timelines yet Timeline: Eighth Doctor ignores that due to other cross continuity references (Company of Friends, PROSE Day of the Doctor etc). Since we have several later BF stories reference the VNAs (Master), if the timeline does split for the VNAs and Ace/Hex it must rejoin at some point prior to the relevant later Seven stories. IRegisteredForTimelines ☎  11:03, 28 February 2022 (UTC)


 * That's a fair point about Zagreus but to me the At Childhood's End split is somewhat more significant. Firstly, Zagreus is a complete outlier in splitting up Eight. No other account backs this up. By contrast Signs and Wonders had already done similar to At Childhood's End in presenting Ace as having several possible futures, so there's at least two accounts floating this concept now. Secondly, we have an account now in Gallifrey: Time War which provides an in-universe explanation for the divergence in Ace's fates. No such account exists for Eight's travels. Thirdly, we have had years worth of divergent fates for Ace to the point that theorising they are in the same timeline is becoming more convoluted than going with them being separate. Also worth noting Eight's timeline currently does divide right at the end, to accomodate the distinct depiction of his death in Doctor Who and the Time War.


 * Personally I would assume the timelines do reunite around the old man Seven time period, as they all dovetail into the Movie anyway, but there's no way to pinpoint when exactly they do that (just as we currently can't pinpoint when exactly they initially divide). Regarding the VNA mentions in Master, it's worth noting Big Finish have used the Novel Adaptations to present a distinct version of the VNAs that appears to accomodate their timeline. For example the alterations to Damaged Goods disconnecting it from the original psychic arc and adding in Torchwood, the addition of a mention of Ace's brother (introduced in The Rapture) to Love and War. So putting Master in Big Finish's timeline works fine because a version of the VNAs clearly still happened, just with choice changes. SherlockTheII ☎  12:25, 28 February 2022 (UTC)


 * My primary issue with a complete separation is the fact that all of the mediums do link together in some way. Like for example, the PDAs take place after Survival and one of them establishes that the VNAs are still at least a couple of years away. Which would put them in the same timeline. But then the PDAs also intertwine with the beginning of the Big Finish audios. And then of course the comics did interweave with the New Adventures for the longest time.


 * So we’d probably end with a couple of different timelines that actually depict a lot of the same events? With the main difference being any contradictions are removed from that particular timeline. That or we’d end up splitting some of the PDAs into the VNA timeline but not others. We’d have a timeline where Ace leaves in At Childhood’s End after the PDAs despite the fact that Mike Tucker some of the early BD Audios to continue on from and tie into the PDAs. So we’d have two timelines that are identical until just before ACE and then they’d diverge depending on whether Ace leaves in ACE or stays for the BF audios/Hex era. And then at that point I’d wonder do we actually need to list a whole bunch of stories again for that, rather than placing ACE roughly where it’s supposed to go with a note saying because of the timeline shenanigans Ace was also seen to stick around.


 * I know there’s the idea of Ace getting mindwiped instead of leaving in At Childhood’s End (I mean I kinda came up with it) but it doesn’t really work because Ace does refer to that flashback explicitly as being the reason she left the Doctor. So you’d essentially have to have Ace get those memories restored and then believe that was the reason she left. Which to me feels far more complicated than saying that the damage to her timeline by Brax/Time War/Faction Paradox/Council of Eight caused some contradictory life events. SarahJaneFan ☎  14:18, 28 February 2022 (UTC)


 * Yeah that's an issue I have with the current timeline split. The VNAs appear in both the "Time's Champion" and "Hex" timelines only one version is slightly different. And given the issues with the PDAs and whatnot, will we just end up with a multitude of slightly different timelines. IMO, placing stories like ACE or Ground Zero in the place where they should go and noting that they're the result of Brax's Meddling/Sometime Never/War in Heaven/Time War whilst having a single chronology seems much neater than splitting the timeline into multiple branches that share some but not all events with one another.


 * Similarly, the BF Novel adaptations could be dealt with in exactly the same way, noting inconsistencies between them and the novels are a result of Brax's meddling with Ace's timeline or the Time War (Which is explicitly mentioned in the new version of Damaged Goods) or any other such explanations.


 * As for the At Childhood's End mindwipe, it could technically be both ways. Rather than Brax's meddling causing the whole At Childhood's End flashback, instead, ACE happened, followed immediately by the Timewyrm Genesys mindwipe, but then Brax's meddling erased the mindwipe, resulting in a divergence where Ace does leave. Hence the departure is a result of Brax's meddling, but the flashback itself still slots neatly into the timeline. IRegisteredForTimelines ☎  05:20, 1 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Okay so I feel we’re more or less on the same page with this. But the question is does anyone else agree and want to change things, and if so, then how do we proceed? SarahJaneFan ☎  15:45, 1 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Honestly, I think you should probably just revert it to the last edit before the timelines were segmented and make any tweaks you want from there; because right now this timeline is a complete incomprehensible mess. Also, the user who originally made this edit hasn't chimed in on this conversation once. I feel like someone should probably inform them of how much their edit has kicked the proverbial hornets nest. –Nahald ☎  22:52, 3 March 2022 (UTC)


 * That reversion would probably be a good idea as the older iteration of the timeline would be a more solid base upon which to attempt to fix the timeline.


 * Following a reversion I feel the discussion points that need to be raised are.


 * 1) Divergence or Singular - Do we want to split the VNAs and Big Finish Ace/Hex/Mel into two seperate timelines that then merge back together later or do we want to keep them in a singular timeline.


 * 1a) If Singular timeline, which order should the VNAs and BF Ace/Hex/Mel go in, since both orders are justifiable in some way.


 * 2) What do we do with the problematic or bridging stories (Listed below, feel free to add any I've missed)


 * - Ground Zero
 * - At Childhood's End
 * - Death Comes to Time
 * - Prisoners Dilemma


 * Suggestions for what to do with each are outlined in the preceding conversation.


 * I feel like these are a decent set of conversation/action points personally but feel free to suggest more or any alterations to them. IRegisteredForTimelines ☎  00:50, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

In response to your comment, User:Nahald, the "user who originally made this edit" has had a busy six-day work shift this week that left their editing time severely limited. (Plus, their re-watching old Marvel movies in preparation for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, thus taking attention away from Doctor Who) But, I have been keeping an eye on the discussion, and, if I may present my case, I only took the previous conversation about splitting the divergences that can be seen above to its logical conclusion. In all honesty, though, I never really agreed with it, but got outvoted, hence why I re-started my Sandbox page on this timeline. So, I don't really have an opinion on how this ends, so long as the majority are in agreement of how to solve the puzzle of this most complicated of timeline theories.

Something that might be of interest that recently cropped up on Raine Creevy's talk page is that, according to Vortex 48, the Doctor's perspective on his travels with Raine go; Raine trilogy > Adventures with Hex > Nazi Klein > Solo Raine adventures.BananaClownMan 08:29, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Finding a solution
A thought occurs to me, we know that Ace's timeline was meddled with by Braxiatel, but would the Doctor be completely unaware of this? Could it be that he know about the discrepancies, but just rolled with it to keep time in check, or something? If that is the case, then the Big Finish adaptations of the Virgin New Adventures would be a case of "revisiting old adventures", like how we justiofy the Fourth Doctor's comics that were just reprint of previous Doctors' comics.BananaClownMan 07:24, 21 March 2022 (UTC)


 * We should really avoid listing adventures more than once. There’s really no reason to put the audios after the novels. It doesn’t make sense either which way you put it, there’s mindwipes on either end of the novels and as far as BF are concerned the VNAs occur in the future of their Hex audios. Saying things happen twice is yet again going to be confusing for people and I don’t see how much value there is in it. Especially considering BF is currently the main source of Seventh Doctor content, it would be bizarre to push against their timeline structure when it makes no difference for the VNAs either which way it goes. SarahJaneFan ☎  12:03, 21 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Do you have tangible proof that the New Adventures occur after the Hex audios? A link to an interview or something said in one of the audios not mentioned in the timelines already. If so, it would change everything!BananaClownMan 13:18, 21 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately I cannot give any proof as tangible as an interview or word of god to establish this. If I could then we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation now. Perhaps I was inaccurate in saying that the VNAs are supposed to happen after the audios. It would probably be more correct to say that the audios aren’t intended to take place after the VNAs.


 * As far as those writing the VNAs were concerned, the books began immediately after Survival and ended immediately before the Movie.


 * The PDAs on the other hand began months after Survival. They didn’t make any attempt to line up with the same continuity as the VNAs and do contradict them on things like Ace’s romantic life and the Master's post-Survival fate. But they don’t completely discredit the VNAs as Loving the Alien attempts to reconcile the PDA Ace and VNA Ace as two alternate versions of the character, with the PDA version being “Dorothy Gale” and the VNA version being "Dorothy McShane”. The Algebra of Ice goes as far as to set itself in the VNA continuity, having the Doctor and Ace visiting Smithwood Manor and featuring an epilogue set immediately after Timewyrm: Revelation which establishes that years pass between The Curse of Fenric and the Timewyrm saga.


 * "It's not so much going on as going out," he told her, cryptically. "I've been editing a few of my useless memories, and I seem to have set the field a bit too high. It didn't just erase my brain patterns, but all of yours as well." A lot of that didn't make much sense, but she managed to gather one thing from what he had said. "You mean that you caused me to forget everything?" "I'm afraid so, yes," he apologized. "Purely by accident, of course." She wasn't sure whether she should be furious at this point. Would a person get angry because their memories had been stolen? It seemed reasonable, and she certainly felt annoyed. "You stupid idiot!" she yelled. "What have you done to me?" He hopped nervously from foot to foot. "Well, hopefully, nothing that I can't reverse," he answered. "All your memories must still be in the TARDIS's telepathic circuits, so all I have to do is to -" He smacked the controls, hard, with his clenched fist."

- Timewyrm: Genesys


 * What’s more is that these PDAs tie directly into the ongoing Eighth Doctor Adventures novels and are part of an arc that involves enemies from the Eighth Doctor’s time going back and altering the past to kill off his friends and allies. This results in the death of Mel in Heritage and Dorothy Gale's death in Loving the Alien, which the Doctor avoids by acquiring Dorothy McShane from a nigh identical alternate timeline. So we have this sense that the PDAs are caused by a disruption to the timeline which gives us a new gap of several years between Survival and the VNAs.


 * "‘How long has it been for the two of you?’ ‘I’m not precisely certain. Longer than twenty months.’ ‘Had plenty of jolly adventures?’ ‘No,’ said the Doctor. ‘Interesting, though. This last one, I visited your moon. Also my own mind.’"

- The Algebra of Ice


 * The early Big Finish audios featuring the Seventh Doctor and Ace are set in this continuity. The Genocide Machine is referenced in the novel Prime Time and Dust Breeding is a sequel to Storm Harvest while also maintaining the Master’s post-Survival continuity from Prime Time as opposed to First Frontier in the VNAs.


 * "She had all but forgotten about celebrating her birthdays. Time seemed to rush past so quickly. Coralee was already a distant memory. They had been though so much since then. Daleks on Kar-Charrat. The Venddon war. Voord."

- Prime Time


 * So perhaps the VNAs happen and are the original and natural continuation and conclusion of the Seventh Doctor’s life. Then later during the life of the Eighth Doctor, his enemies interfere with his timeline and this results in the events of the PDAs happening prior to the VNAs now, effectively overwriting part of that continuity. Then the BF audios spin out of that.


 * "As if to make the point more emphatically, he took down another hour- glass. This one was actually two hourglasses fused together, the one seeming to grow out of the other. One upper bowl was broken, and the other lower bowl was blackened and distorted. But somehow the grains of glass still fell from the intact upper bowl to the surviving lower bowl. ‘This is what happens when you try to manipulate a life in one universe without first closing off the others,’ he said. ‘When he is involved we cannot change the timelines too much. Distort them to breaking point, and the universes overlap and break through. That is why we have isolated this one universe. That is why we have Sabbath ensuring that he does not redefine reality to restore free will and the multiverse. That is why,’ he said – as if he had just remembered that I was listening – ‘that is why you are here.’ Now that he seemed to remember his purpose, he replaced the double hourglass in its place. ‘Alas, poor Dorothy,’ he said as he put it back with its fellows. ‘But History must take its course. We can predict, and we can manipulate and control up to a point. But only up to a point, or it will be the end of everything. The end and the beginning.’"

- Sometime Never


 * The BF Hex/Mel era tries it’s best to never refer to the VNAs. In fact the only reference to them in the entire run (beyond potentially minor details that wouldn’t affect continuity) is in Hex’s final story Signs and Wonders. In this story several characters see visions of their future.  Sally sees the birth of her child, the Doctor hears Madame Butterfly which signifies his death in the movie, and Ace sees several futures including her going to Gallifrey (UNIT: Dominion et al), riding a motorbike through Paris (Set Piece), being surrounded by giant ants (Ground Zero) and other things. So Ace sees her VNA departure as being in her personal future. This still lines up with the council of eight timeline interference and the Algebra of Ice “longer than 20 months” gap. And anything else can be reconciled by the Timewyrm: Genesys memory wipe.


 * "DOCTOR: Ace, you’ve a universe of possibilities still ahead of you. Several universes. Did you... see anything? In your future flashes? ACE: Lots of stuff. Me in a big collar and a cloak. Me on a moped. Riding through what looked like nineteenth century Paris. That can’t be right. Then me somewhere else. Surrounded by giant fleas. DOCTOR: Like I said, several universes."

- Signs and Wonders


 * Also earlier in the Hex arc during A Death in the Family, a future version of the Seventh Doctor appears. He’s much older than the one travelling with Ace and Hex, and appears with his TV Movie likeness. From his perspective it’s been a long time since he travelled with Ace. His appearance here leads directly into his involvement with the audio drama “Master”. In Master the Doctor meets Death from the VNAs and references Benny, Chris and Roz. Also in the VNAs the Doctor is seen to age from his tv appearance to his movie appearance.


 * So it feels quite telling that BF establish this long gap between their two chapters in the Seventh Doctor’s life where in one the only reference to the VNAs is to suggest they take place in the future and then in the other   he is now much much older and suddenly makes many VNA references. Almost as though the VNAs are supposed to take place somewhere between these two chapters in his life.


 * "I can’t remember when I first came to Gallifrey. I know the Doctor must have sent me, but I can’t remember how, or when or why. Not anymore. Gallifrey is strange like that. Every day, everything changes. Even your own history. You feel like you’ve lived your life over and over again. Sometimes in different ways. Maybe I have. They say the timelines do that, that they flux and wither, waste and wain. Constantly realigning themselves to fit in with the dominant reality, whichever one that might be. Basically, they change. And it’s our job to make sure that we change with them. I know I’m not the same person I once was when I first came to Gallifrey. I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing. Only that it’s different, I’m different."

- Gallifrey: Intervention Earth


 * "Its a long story. How about you give me the abridged version. Okay. Timestorm, milkshake, Time Lord, Daleks, Cheetah People, Spacefleet."

- Gallifrey: Enemy Lines


 * "‘I suppose I must have been. It can get very cluttered up there. Anyway, a long time ago now, gosh, just before I faced the Timewyrm, I accidentally gave Ace one of Mel’s memories.’ ‘And now you’re. . . editing out your memories again. Can’t this wait?’"

- The Gallifrey Chronicles


 * "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."

- Gallifrey: Time War 2 - Assassins


 * "The Doctor rarely interfered with his former companions’ lives once they had moved on. But Ace had always held a special place in his hearts and recently he’d wondered what had become of her. He’d once offered her the chance to visit Gallifrey and become a student at the Academy there, but she’d seemed less than thrilled at that idea. Was she off somewhere living as some kind of outer-space mercenary, freeing the universe from the tyranny of Cybermen or the Lobri? Or maybe she was whooping it up in some nineteenth-century French royal court, enjoying her experiences away from the drudgery of twentieth-century West London, from where she originally came. Like so many of his former associates, being far away from home and family – with whatever bad memories those associations held – made their ultimate destination more attractive. He’d once actually popped back to see her, or at least see what she was up to. ‘Spying’ as someone else had once said to him. He was in fact delighted to see that she had used the wealth of experience and sense of social justice he’d inspired in her to set up a huge worldwide charity, based on London’s South Bank. A Charitable Earth was there to help under-privileged children all over the planet."

- Doctor Who: The TV Movie Target Novelisation (2021)


 * I think we’re all pretty much agreed at this stage that the VNAs and the BF Audios don’t work either way around without some sort of memory wipe or timeline alteration taking place. Thankfully we’ve got memory wipes and timeline retcons coming out of our ears, which theoretically allows us to place the BF Audios and the VNAs either way around with all continuity issues covered. In which case our decision on which way around to place the two arcs would be rooted in the structure and flow of the timeline, how easy it is for a timeline reader to understand, how easy it is for us to edit and also taking into account accommodating for authorial intentions and future proofing. The best way I can think of to consider these things is with a pros and cons list. As I’m personally in favour of placing the BF audios first, I’ll write it from that perspective. SarahJaneFan ☎  01:01, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Pros of Hex before Benny

 * PDAs and BF written to intertwine, so if Hex comes first then this intent is fulfilled and the arcs flow better than if the two are separated.


 * Ace never leaves in the audios so having the VNAs later feels as though it gives her a solid departure and end point.


 * Signs and Wonders says that Set Piece is in Ace’s future. This wouldn’t be contradicted.


 * BF go out of their way to avoid acknowledging the VNAs in their Seven/Ace stories and certainly aren’t writing with the intent that they take place after so putting them before maintains their vision and the implicitly implied structure of their Seventh Doctor timeline.


 * Listing VNAs second and treating that part of the timeline as two overlapping versions of the same timeline is potentially easier to maintain and for readers to navigate and understand than having the two different versions of the timeline sandwiched between the Hex era. SarahJaneFan ☎  01:09, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Cons of Hex before Benny

 * A lot of BF continuity seems like it can be reconciled by placing Hex after the VNAs, although not entirely and some things would still need ironing out with timeline retcon or mindwipe.


 * BF are the newer releases so it would make sense to want them to come later in the timeline rather than earlier so it feels like there’s a more open sandbox to play with.


 * The Prisoner’s Dilemma explicitly gives Ace a damaged and patchy memory whereas the only change to Ace’s memory after Timewyrm: Genesys we know for sure happens is that she gets Mel’s memory of Paradise Towers.


 * Ace’s characterisation in Enemy of the Daleks was based on her characterisation in the VNAs


 * Ace would potentially lose all memory of Hex with no certain or obvious way of getting it back available to us. SarahJaneFan ☎  01:09, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Finding a solution: continued

 * That was a lot, I apologise. But I feel I’ve adequately put my full thoughts across about this. Feel free to add to the pros and cons list if you can think of any additional reasons. I genuinely do think the best way forward would be a timeline structured something along the lines of:


 * Season 24
 * Season 25
 * Season 26
 * The Council of Eight interfere with the Seventh Doctor’s life retroactively from the Eighth Doctor era
 * PDAs
 * The Council of Eight are defeated by the Eighth Doctor and restore free will and multiple timelines to the universe
 * At Childhood’s End (Brax retcon)
 * Hex era
 * Mel returns era
 * Timewyrm Genesys mindwipe
 * VNAs (plus novel adaptations and BF stories that can be attributed to timeline meddling from council of eight/brax/Time War)
 * Older Seventh Doctor era
 * Ground Zero (Brax retcon)
 * TV Movie
 * The Eighth Doctor faces the Council of Eight
 * Ace on Gallifrey with her history being rewritten just by being there (Enemy Lines)
 * Time War breaks out 
 * Brax meddles with Ace’s history further resulting in more and more contradictory accounts of her departure from the Doctor. All in the name of hiding her from the Time Lords. All of this meddling washes back along her timeline resulting in apocryphal adventures such as At Childhood’s End and Ground Zero, and many other contradictions. SarahJaneFan ☎  01:09, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Yeah I agree broadly with this. Whilst in my personal headcanon I like to put the VNAs first (personal preference), the fact Ace hasn't left after the Ace/Mel audios makes TV -> PDA -> Ace/Hex -> Ace/Mel -> VNAs neater than the other way around. And yeah invoking both Brax and the Council of Eight helps iron out the issues with the PDAs and the VNA/BF contradictions (perhaps Brax's meddling can be cited to explain the changes in the BF VNA adaptations).

Though that said, we still have to deal with the placement of Prisoner's Dilemma and TNAoBS which should go after the VNAs but end with Ace actively travelling with the Doctor again with her memories damaged. Perhaps that could be resolved by putting At Childhood's End directly after Prisoner's Dilemma and attributing both to Brax's meddling but I'm open to neater suggestions. IRegisteredForTimelines ☎  22:16, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

The Prisoner's Dilemma is difficult. Especially as Ace loses pretty much all memory of Benny which would mean it probably has to go after NABS. Unless she gets the memories back, but we don’t really know how that happens. If they hadn’t included that reference to Happy Endings, it almost certainly would’ve been placed before Set Piece. That would’ve been interesting because then we could’ve placed the Hex era in one of the couple of gaps during the Ace/Benny era where Benny leaves them for a while to do some archaeological work like at the end of Legacy or before The Dark Flame. Alas it wasn’t to be.

I suppose one way of looking at The Prisoner's Dilemma is that it leads to Ace going to Gallifrey? After Lungbarrow she returns to Paris and continues her work as Time's Vigilante, still meeting with the Doctor every now and again for adventures. One such adventure revolved around dealing with some old business from back when they were travelling with Benny. The Doctor sends Ace to stop Zink and Magda, however as we know, it goes wrong and she loses a vast amount of her memories. The Doctor claims he can restore them, but from her patchy memory in the narration it would seem as though he wasn’t entirely successful. Maybe he was unable to resist dropping her back off on Gallifrey where he knew they could restore her memories but also taking advantage of her memory troubles to enrol her in the academy as he had always wanted. He then carries on his travels for a while until eventually he gets word that she’s disappeared leading into NABS. So Ace returns to travelling for a short while but would eventually return to Gallifrey and start working for the CIA.

I think my problem with putting At Childhood’s End back here would be that the story itself is pretty clear stuff like the VNAs, Gallifrey and Ground Zero being possible futures for her that she chooses to negate in favour of going home. So it doesn’t feel quite right to place the story after those events that are depicted as possible future. Like I don’t feel as though a memory wipe solves that because they wouldn’t be her future anymore, memories or not. That’s just my personal take anyway. SarahJaneFan ☎

Apologies for dropping in late, been tremendously busy with work, family, Marvel and Easter business for the past month. Now, down to business; from the pros and cons list above, I'm dithering more towards the con lists due to the points illustrated there; Ace having her VNA personality as a basis, The Prisoner's Dilemma messing with her memories, and the fact the audios are released later, leaving it open to include more clearer evidence down the line. However, the mention of Ace's brother, an audio exclusive character, in the adaptation of Love and War could be taken as Big Finish giving their intent for the VNAs to come after their Monthly Range; I've just never known the context of how he is mentioned to be sure. If anyone in the know could add a quote to the time, it would be much appreciated. Until that occurs, I'm stuck with the second-hand evidence I've found online, which lingers more towards a TV>VNA>Hex>Movie format.BananaClownMan 06:25, 24 April 2022 (UTC)


 * He is referenced by Ace’s mother in a sequence that takes place inside Ace’s mind. Ace doesn’t even know that Liam existed before The Rapture, that’s when she finds out about and meets her long lost brother Liam. That’s why it’s evidence that the VNAs are later.

You’re also not stuck with anything. There really isn’t any actual evidence that Ace is post-VNAs, just that it diverges in characterisation to them. And most of the stuff you find online is painfully out of context and incorrect which is why we fight all the time. SarahJaneFan ☎  11:49, 24 April 2022 (UTC)


 * I wouldn't use the word "fight", it carries to many hostile undertones; "debates" would be a preferable description. In any event, the "Liam fixture", to coin a phrase is pretty hard evidence towards Big Finish's intentions on a placement of TV>AUDIO>VNA>MOVIE lineup. The only possible counter argument would be that it was said in an adaptation instead of the original, but it would be weak in the face of other adaption evidence already used on these theory forums, such on this page where facts from the Survival novelisation was used to settle on the "Broadcast order" instead of "Production order" in the serials listing. BananaClownMan 23:15, 4 May 2022 (UTC)