Product Description

At last, the complete timeline of the Doctor Who universe, from Event One to the universe's final destruction billions of years in the future. This essential reference work reveals the full story of the Daleks, the Cybermen and the Time Lords--as well as a comprehensive history of Earth and humankind, from primitive African tribes to galactic conquest. With dates ranging from the obvious to the obscure, this book is truly an indispensable guide to the world of Doctor Who.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1073526 in Books
• Published on: 1996-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 273 pages

Customer Reviews

Very Informative
Lance Parkin's attempt to piece together a timeline of events in Doctor Who history is very admirable and for the most part successful. Most importantly, A History of The Universe is non-critical. From the creation of the universe (was the Big Bang caused by Terminus?) to its cataclysmic demise billions of years in the future, Mr. Parkin takes events from the television series stories and various spin-offs such as K9 & Company, as well as the New Adventure and Missing Adventure novels to form a timeline that is both informative and easy to follow. Supplementing this book is a myriad of sidebar notes containing background info on the stories and Parkin's reasons for dating a story at a certain point in history, either mentioned within the framework of the story itself, or referenced by another story to be placed at a specific date in time.

For those of us who have never read, nor care to read, the multitude of Doctor Who novels in existence, A History of The Universe can act as sort of Cliff Notes that we used in school when assigned to read a long and tedious novel but had no desire to. The plot of each story is briefly outlined on the timeline at the year in which it takes place. Therefore, we can "cheat" by finding out what happens without actually picking up the book. Parkin makes it simple to determine which events come from television, and which come from the novel by using a differentiating typeface as a distinguishing feature. He uses lightface for tv and boldface for the novels. What can be simpler?

THE UNIT ERA:

This is a bugaboo era for Doctor Who pendantics. It's impossible for the UNIT stories to be pinned down to a definite year. From all accounts, these stories were originally meant to take place in the near future. In a 1969 interview with Jon Pertwee, he reveals that the Doctor would be exiled to earth "in the 1980's". (p. 286, A History of The Universe) Yet this very well could be misinformation. No specific date is ever pinpointed within the third Doctor stories themselves, although Jo comes so tantalizingly close in Day of The Daleks as she explains to the Controller what time she is from. Irritatingly, the Controller stops her after "Sept. 12", as she has already told him the year, (off camera, of course!).

In Pyramids of Mars in what appears to be a throw-away line, Sarah claims she is from 1980, which would suggest a near future setting for previous UNIT tales since Pyramids was produced in 1975. However, in Mawdryn Undead, a very specific date of the Brigadier's retirement is given, 1976. Adding to the confusion, the time zones in which Mawdryn takes place is 1977/83, contradicting all previous attempts to date UNIT stories and throwing that proverbial monkey wrench in the lives of many pendantics.

So take your pick. As Parkin suggests, take the facts you like while ignoring any that contradict your argument. There is no perfect way to assign specific years to UNIT stories. Therefore, Mr. Parkin cops out by listing the UNIT entries on his timeline as 1970s earth, but qualifies this by stating that they likely occur anywhere from the late 60s to the early 80s. A cop-out, but perhaps a wise cop out, as he allows each individual reader to accept or deny facts as that reader so chooses. Personally, I would rather ignore a throw-away line like Sarah's, which if removed from the script would remove absolutely nothing from the premise of the story, than to ignore the Mawdryn time zone which forms the whole basis for a story. Also, a near-future setting can be interpreted with a broad brush stroke. "Near future" literally can mean ten, five or even one year down the road. One month, or even one day, can technically be the near future. Plus, it is much more convenient to think of UNIT as a contemporary early 70s setting, with a possible slight near future variance, because virtually the whole era smacks of early 70s, from the fashions, psychedlia ... and the fact that miles, yards and feet are still used as measurements, Britain not yet switched to the metric system.

Like Lance Parkin, I will not force my opinion on others. I can only suggest that you weigh the contradictory facts of this era against one another and form your own opinion. That is precisely what Parkin is attempting to do by not assigning specific years to the UNIT era. To exert his opinion as the correct one would take away from the non-critical aura of this book.

Appendix: I do realize that this book is from 1996 and outdated, and it has been recently updated to include events of the new series. However, at the risk of irking fans of that series, to me true Doctor Who ends with the classic series. My personal taste for Doctor Who suffers its cataclysmic demise at the cataclysmic demise of the Colin Baker era, but I can accept events of the McCoy era as well as the novels as part of the Whoniverse. While the new series may be fun and exciting to some, to me it's just not the same. The Whoniverse begins and ends with this version for me.

A true labour of love from Lance Parkin!
The first attempt to chronologize the Doctor's adventures began in Jean-Marc Lofficier's Terrestrial Index. It was a nice starting point, but with the coming of the New Adventures, i.e. the continuing adventures of the Seventh Doctor and Ace, and Missing Adventures, stories of the previous Doctors, well, fans learned a lot more of the Time Lord. Lance Parkin, author of the NA Just War, and the MA Cold Fusion, has superceded Lofficier's chronology into a more expanded and enlightening work.

In addition to incorporating the NAs and MAs, he uses his own conjecture in various places, but those are few. For example, in The Masque Of Mandragora, the Doctor says that it will return to Earth in five hundred years, 1992. He assumes that if it did, it must have been defeated once more. The text for the televised adventures is done in a normal font, the NA and MAs in bold, and his own conjecture in a slightly thicker bold-italic. The footnotes after each event or story is explained in detail on the sides of each page. It's easy for stories that explicitly state the date e.g. Silver Nemesis takes place on 23 November 1988, but what about stories like Delta And The Bannermen, which takes place in ?4287 AD? Parkin gives arbitrary dates, but the interesting thing is, the last two digits are equal to the digits the show came out, 1987. The Caves Of Androzani, which came out in 1984, is given a date of ?2884.

There are seven sections in the book: Prehistory, Known History, Contemporary, the Near Future, which we're in right now, Colonisation, the Earth Empire, and the Far Future. Although a history of the universe, there is clearly an Earth-bias especially in the Earth Empire section. Yes, the Earth follows the model of the British Empire, from rise to collapse, as was mentioned in the TV story The Mutants.

There are explanations of the Great Old Ones, the powerful beings such as Fenric, the Animus, and the Great Intelligence, in the Prehistory section, as well as known astronomical theory such as the Big Bang and Galaxy formation hypothesis, and the variability of races that sprang up.

My favorite part is probably the period we're in right now in the book, with technological gluts, environmental disasters, shifts in the ozone layer, severe overpopulation, goth-apocalypse culture, and civil wars. All this takes place 2001-2009, and I sometimes wonder that given the corporate mindset of industrial countries, if this science-fiction will become reality.

One peeve I have is the dating of the Patrick Troughton/Jon Pertwee era UNIT stories, a sore point between Who fans. I belong to the faction that puts them the year or the year after the story came out on TV. Others put them in the future. Parkin merely dates those stories (1970's UNIT--). I don't know about that.

This last New Adventure covered here is Happy Endings, where Bernice gets married to Jason, and the last Missing Adventure is Sands Of Time, the sequel to Pyramids Of Mars. It's important to note that around the time this book came out, Virgin Publishing's rights were set to expire in May. A handful more of New and Missing Adventures came out, too late to be incorporated into Parkin's book. That also meant there could never be a second edition of the Universe book, also published by Virgin.

What I wonder is, now that BBC books has the rights to new Who stories, will they come out with their own Who universe guide, thereby invalidating Lance Parkin's painstakingly crafted work? It would be a shame if it did. Why not incorporate the New/Missing and the current new adventures in a future book? For now, this will do just nicely.

The Quintessestial Dr. Who Reference book
Wow Lance, you obviously had a lot of time on your hands when putting this masterpiece together. This book puts everything that has happened in the Doctor Who universe from the TV series and Virgin novels into chronological order. A great feat to accomplish especially with all the discontinuity in the series.
This book deserves an award - thanks Lance. RECOMMENDED!!!