From TARDIS Index File, the free Doctor Who reference.
This page covers events in the Doctor Who universe occuring after the development of modern humans, about 100,000 BC, to the end of the 1300s. Earlier events can be found on the page Distant past; later events can be found on the individual pages for the 15th century and subsequent eras.
Timeline
Prehistory
- Time unknown: A splinter of Scaroth of the Jagaroth lives among primitive man, perhaps Neanderthals, and helps speed up the development of human culture. (DW: City of Death)
- Time unknown: An Ice Warrior spacecraft crashes on Earth and is buried in ice. (DW: The Ice Warriors)
- Time unknown: Light comes to Earth to catalog its life forms and preserves Nimrod. (DW: Ghost Light)
- 100,000 B.C.: The Doctor, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright, and Susan Foreman help the cave-dwelling Tribe of Gum to make fire. (DW: An Unearthly Child) Around the same time, the Dæmons arrive on Earth and begin their experiments with humanity, assisting modern humans in wiping all but a very few Neanderthals. (DW: The Dæmons)
- 55,519 B.C.: Urbanka's ozone layer collapses, and Monarch's ship departs on its first voyage to Earth. (DW: Four to Doomsday)
- Circa 40,000 B.C.: Five Euterpians arrive on Earth in Australia and begin setting up a ley line of beacons on the planet's surface which their mother ship can use as a guide to split the planet apart and harvest its core for fuel. A random solar flare destroys the mother ship, and the Euterpian away team is trapped on Earth until the late 20th century. (MA: Invasion of the Cat-People)
- 35,519 B.C.: Monarch's ship makes its first visit to Earth. Kurkutji and several other aborigines are kidnapped from Australia and converted into androids. (DW: Four to Doomsday)
- 29,185 B.C.: The Doctor, Rose Tyler and Jack Harkness encounter a tribe of Neanderthals. (NSA: Only Human)
- 25,519 B.C.: Monarch's ship returns to Urbanka from its first visit to Earth. (DW: Four to Doomsday)
- Circa 25,000 B.C.: The Tzun venture out from S'Arl in Beta Centauri and fight a war with the Darklings of Yuggoth. (NA: First Frontier)
- Circa 20,000 B.C.: Two Krynoid pods arrived in Antarctica and go into hibernation. (DW: The Seeds of Doom)
- 15,519 B.C.: Monarch's ship makes a second visit to Earth, this time kidnapping Princess Villagra and several other Mayans and converting them into androids. (DW: Four to Doomsday)
- 10,519 B.C.: Monarch's ship returns from its second visit to Earth. (DW: Four to Doomsday)
- Circa 10,000 B.C.:
- The Last Great Ice Age ends, and the Cold goes dormant, to awaken again in early 1963. (TN: Time and Relative)
- A splinter of Scaroth assists humans in developing the wheel. (DW: City of Death)
- A war erupts between the planets Hextacosulous Blue and Hextacosulous Green; it will eventually destroy them both. (ST: The Lampblack Wars)
- The planet of Zolfa-Thura is reduced to a desert in a civil war, leaving only its projector screens. The lone survivor of this conflict, Meglos, goes into hibernation, while the screen's power source, the Dodecahedron, transfers across space to the nearby planet of Tigella. (DW: Meglos)
- 5519 B.C.: Monarch's ship makes its third visit to Earth, this time kidnapping Lin Futu and other natives of China. (DW: Four to Doomsday)
- Circa 5300 B.C.: The inhabitants of Uxarieus test their new Doomsday Weapon, detonating a star which becomes the Crab Nebula, visible to Earth's inhabitants around 1054 A.D. Radiation from the weapon poisons the soil and atmosphere of Uxarieus, causing the collapse of the native civilization and the decline of the Uxarieans to a primitive level. (DW: Colony in Space)
- Circa 5000 B.C.: Horus and his followers track Sutekh and his sister Nephthys across the galaxy to Earth in Egypt where the renegade Osirians are defeated. Sutekh is imprisoned beneath a pyramid, while Nephthys's mind is extracted and placed inside a canopic jar. Egyptian culture from this point is based upon the Osirian pattern, while Wars of the Gods enter many of Earth's mythologies. (DW: Pyramids of Mars, MA: The Sands of Time)
- 3019 B.C.: Monarch's ship returns to Urbanka from its third visit to Earth. (DW: Four to Doomsday)
3rd Millennium B.C.
2nd Millennium B.C.
9th century B.C.
- Circa 800 B.C.: Azal seals himself up within the Devil's Hump, awaiting the day when he shall make his final judgment on humanity. (DW: The Dæmons)
- Date unknown: three members of the Gorgon race are trapped on Earth and subsequently become the subject of ancient Greek legends, particularly Medusa, who would continue to live on earth for the next 3,000 years. (SJA: Eye of the Gorgon)
6th century B.C.
5th century B.C.
4th century B.C.
3rd century B.C.
1st century B.C.
1st century A.D.
- Exact dates debated:
- Lifetime of Earth religious leader Jesus of Nazareth, who is born at the begining of this century in a stable as the Doctor was staying in the last room at the inn. (DW: Voyage of the Damned) In the centuries after his execution by the Romans, it becomes standard practice among many Earth cultures to base their calendar upon the approximate year of his birth, with events before his birth said to occur in the BC or "Before Christ" era and those after taking place in the AD or anno domini era; in more recent years the use of BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era) have come to be used as a non-religious alternative, although their use has yet to become widespread.
- Roman soldiers are taken from this time to fight the War Lords' war games. (DW: The War Games)
- The Doctor claims to have been present at "the original" Easter, but it's unclear whether he literally meant the resurrection of Jesus following his crucifixion (the event which Easter commemorates), or the later establishment of the Easter celebration. (DW: Planet of the Dead)
- Probably circa A.D. 1: A splinter of Scaroth of the Jagaroth lives among the Romans, and helps speed up the development of human culture. (DW: City of Death)
- A.D. 27: John Hart and Jack Harkness arrive from 21st century Cardiff via the Cardiff rift. There, Jack is reunited with his long-lost brother Gray. On Gray's orders, John buries Jack alive. Jack will spend the next 1,874 years undergoing a cycle of death and resurrection until he is finally unburied in 1901. (TW: Exit Wounds)
- A.D. 30: Poppaea is born.
- A.D. 37: Nero is born.
- A.D. 62: Pompeii is hit by an earthquake. This event wakes up a group of Pyroviles that have been sleeping underground for millions of years.
- A.D. 64: The Doctor, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright and Vicki visit Byzantium and Rome, ultimately spending several weeks there. During this time, both Ian and Barbara are sold into slavery, and the Doctor and Vicki join the court of Nero, during which time the Doctor inadvertently inspires Nero to set the fire that destroys Rome. (ST: Romans Cutaway, PDA: Byzantium!, DW: The Romans)
- A.D. 65: Poppaea dies.
- A.D. 68: Nero commits suicide, assisted by his slave.
- A.D. 73: The Doctor, Susan, Barbara, and Ian are present at the siege and fall of Masada. (ST: The Last Days)
- A.D. 75: First settlement of the Cardiff area occurs with the construction of a Roman fort on the site. (historical accounts; TW: Exit Wounds)
- A.D. 79: On 23rd August, the Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble arive in Pompeii. The following day, the Doctor causes Mount Vesuvius to erupt in order to kill all the Pyroviles. The entire population is wiped out bar one family. (DW: The Fires of Pompeii) The Seventh Doctor and Mel are also present at Pompeii. (BFA: The Fires of Vulcan)
2nd century A.D.
3rd century A.D.
4th century A.D.
5th century A.D.
7th century A.D.
- Time unknown, but sometime during the Islamic Caliphates: Ordered on pain of death to entertain the Caliph with a story, a young woman tells him the tale of an old man and his granddaughter living on another world, and the granddaughter's forbidden predictions of how her grandfather will develop a machine that can take them on journeys through time and space. (ST: The Longest Story in the World)
8th century A.D.
9th century A.D.
10th century A.D.
11th century A.D.
- Unknown: The Pact of Chib is signed, stopped the creation of Gelem warrior. (NSA: Ghosts of India)
- 1002: The Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara arrive in Greenland and meet Eric the Red, convincing him to take them to America to obtain the plutonic ore the Doctor needs to refuel the TARDIS's batteries. (DWM 184: "Who Discovered America?")
- 1015: King Hardrada is born. (Known history)
- 1022: Harold II of England is born. (Known history)
- 1028: William the Conqueror is born. (Known history)
- 1066:
- 1087: William the Conqueror dies. (Known history)
12th century A.D.
13th century A.D.
- Exact time unknown: A knight from this time is brought to the late 20th century by the Master's TOMTIT device. (DW: The Time Monster) The Doctor thwarts the plans of the villainous Lord Waldean de Beauvain. (TVC: The Magician)
- 1213: On the 13th day of the 13th year of the 13th century, on the 13th moon of the 13th planet of the 13th galaxy, the Doctor and Rose Tyler freed the Triskaidekaphobes from Bob Kreesus. (DWAM: Triskaidekaphobia)
- 1215
- 1216: Whilst eluding rebel forces, King John of England sends his baggage train across the square-mouthed estuary on the northwest margin of East Anglia, only to have the Crown Jewels it carries accidentally dropped and sunk in its waters. Tegan Jovanka's foreknowledge of this event was summed up in her assessment of John as "the one who lost something in the Wash." (DW: The King's Demons) John dies later this same year. (Known history)
- 1240: The Doctor, Steven and Dodo Chaplet visit Kiev. (PDA: Bunker Soldiers)
- 1242: The Doctor and Bernice Summerfield visit France. (NA: Sanctuary)
- 1254: Marco Polo is born. (Known history)
- Circa 1273: The Third Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith (in her first TARDIS voyage) defeat the Sontaran warrior Linx. (DW: The Time Warrior)
- 1278: The Doctor and Nyssa visit Oxford. (NA: Asylum)
- 1283: A meteorite from the Jeggorabax Cluster lands in the Weserbergland Mountains of Lower Saxony, in what is now Germany. The energy entity housed within feeds off the fear of the local inhabitants, and grows stronger. (SJA:The Day of the Clown)
- 1284 : 26th June - The Pied Piper rids the German town of Hamelin of its rats; and, when the town refuses to pay him, of its children. (SJA: The Day of the Clown) The Doctor later arrives and, after facing the Pied Piper, returns the children to Hamelin. (TVC: Challenge of the Piper) By the 21st century, the story of the Pied Piper and the kidnapped children had faded into folklore.
- 1289: The Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara visit Asia. (DW: Marco Polo)
- 1294: Kublai Khan dies. (Known history)
14th century A.D.
- Exact time unknown: The Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria visit Ireland. (ST: Screamager)
- Exact time unknown: When a "demon" fell from the sky near a convent, a man in a blue box (later called the Sainted Physician) appeared and "smote" the demon. (DW: The End of Time)
- Circa 1325: Marco Polo dies. (Known history)
- 1336: The Ninth Doctor, Rose Tyler, and Captain Jack Harkness visit Kyoto, Japan. (DW: Bad Wolf)
- Between 1381 and 1386: English poet Geoffrey Chaucer composes his epic poem Troilus and Criseyde, based upon the story of Troilus and Cressida. Cressida is, in fact, Vicki, a former companion of the First Doctor. (DW: The Myth Makers) Chaucer's work is acknowledged as an inspiration for William Shakespeare's later tragedy, Troilus and Cressida.
- 1392: Wire-drawing machines are developed around this time. (DW: The Masque of Mandragora)