TIMELINK

WHO-OOOPS!!!!

ERRATA & ADDENDA 

 

 

Updated 25 January 2002

 

 

This page contains updates to the second edition of TIMELINK.

 

Errata and Addenda are listed here in page number order. New additions will be highlighted in RED.

 

Please note I have now removed the FIRST EDITION ERRATA and ADDENDA as that information has been incorporated into the text of all Second Edition printings of the book.

 

 

Please EMAIL <mailto:[email protected]> me if you have further additions

 

 

 

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AN ENIGMA CALLED SUSAN

 

Page 92

In my CONCLUSION to Chapter 6, I point out that Susan has not graduated from the Gallifreyan Academy and is therefore not a Time Lord. Charles Mento has questioned this conclusion. Here then is an additional clue that suggests that Susan is not a Time Lord:

         It has struck me as being very odd that if Susan was a highly-educated Time Lord, having graduated from the Academy, why would she insist on attending a ‘primitive’ school in 1963 London? What could she possibly learn at Coal Hill School that she hadn’t already learned on Gallifrey? She doesn’t need that education.

         Is Susan simply attending the school to pass away the time while the Doctor fixes the TARDIS? The five-month-plus stay in Shoreditch 1963 wasn’t planned, so she can’t be at Coal Hill so she could learn more about humans and Earth. The Doctor must have gone to a lot of trouble and effort to get Susan enrolled at the school (such as creating a fake identity and background, etc), so unless he knew they’d be there for more than five months, why bother when in all likelihood the TARDIS could be fixed at any time in the near future and they’d be leaving?

         Susan does say her five months in London were the happiest of her life, but there is really nothing to support this claim on screen. It is clear from the flashback scenes in the very first episode that Susan is frustrated by the education system at the time (a fact borne out by Ian and Barbara’s comments about their unusual pupil), so why does she persist? She can’t have many friends (or certainly she’s never been able to invite any of them to her home), so she has nothing special to stay for.

          In my mind, Susan does need the education on Earth as a substitute for what she is missing on her home planet. Ergo, she is not a Time Lord… (Added 25 January 2002)

 

 

HALF-HUMAN?

 

Page 94

A Calling To Earth: second column, first paragraph. I have noted that the second Doctor twice comments on the fact that the TARDIS keeps landing on Earth, and that it is possible that it is the Time Lords' doing. Another possibility is that it is the TARDIS: perhaps the ship has somehow received (from the Matrix?) the foreknowledge that the Doctor will be put on trial and exiled. To ensure that the Time Lords exile the Doctor on Earth, the TARDIS deliberately keeps landing on the planet - so the Time Lords will note the frequency of the Doctor's landings there, and choose that planet as the place to exile him! 

 

Page 100–101

The Faces of Morbius: There is an additional quotation to add to those on page 100: In episode one of The Brain Of Morbius, when Solon comments on the Doctor's magnificent head, the Doctor replies: "I have had several". This is a curious comment, given that we see all those faces during the mind-bending contest, which only adds to the possible view that the fourth Doctor is unaware that he might have had more than three previous incarnations - or at least not that he would admit to, anyway!

 

 

THE UNIT YEARS

 

 

Page 131

 “1980” --- SOLUTION THREE (added 27/2/01)

A third alternative is that Sarah does come from 1980, or at least the Sarah who is in Pyramids Of Mars does. My theory is that the Sarah in Pyramids Of Mars is not the same Sarah seen in the previous 12 stories and the subsequent 5 stories; she is the same woman, but for this one TV story only she is not from the 1970s.          

          On the basis that we are seeing the Doctor’s adventures in strict chronological order, this is not necessarily so of his companions. The sequence of possible events is this: at the conclusion to Planet Of Evil the Doctor and Sarah do successfully return to UNIT’s London HQ, five minutes before they left Loch Ness, as they planned to do at the end of Terror Of The Zygons. The Doctor then takes off in the TARDIS on his own, and travels solo for at least 100 years - during which he encounters the Mordee expedition (see The Face Of Evil) which must happen at this point in the Doctor’s timestream (see THE DOCTOR’S AGE). During this time, the Doctor arrives in 1980 where he meets an older Sarah Jane Smith. (UNIT has relocated again to the country house from The Three Doctors, which explains why UNIT HQ is in London in Zygons but the Doctor and Sarah are bound for the country HQ in Pyramids). The older Sarah accompanies the Doctor in the TARDIS for a time. During his recent solo travels the Doctor has become more and more broody realising that he no longer wishes to be part of UNIT. It is while trying to get back to 1980 to return Sarah home that they are pulled off course and have the Pyramids Of Mars adventure…                             

          The Doctor subsequently returns this Sarah to UNIT HQ in 1980, then travels on his own for a further period of time, eventually returning to 1973 where he is reunited with the ‘younger’ Sarah (from post-Planet Of Evil). They resume their travels in the TARDIS as seen on TV. When they once again head back for 1973 they end up on Oseidon and foil The Android Invasion. A few months later, in early 1974, at the end of The Hand Of Fear, Sarah leaves the Doctor. As she departs the TARDIS control room, the Doctor says “till we meet again, Sarah”, knowing full well that she will meet his earlier-self in seven years’ time. (And much later - from his own perspective - the Doctor delivers K9 Mark 3 to Sarah’s South Croydon residence in 1979, however she doesn’t open K9’s case until December 1981, over a year after her adventure in 1911…)          

          Okay, so the Sarah in Pyramids doesn’t look the same age as the Sarah in K9 And Company but I have noted elsewhere that actors’ ages aren’t always a reliable dating tool…           

          To summarise, Sarah’s TV adventures occur in this order: The Time Warrior, Invasion Of The Dinosaurs, Death To The Daleks, The Monster Of Peladon, Planet Of The Spiders, Robot, The Ark In Space, The Sontaran Experiment, Genesis Of The Daleks, Revenge Of The Cybermen, Terror Of The Zygons, Planet Of Evil, The Android Invasion, The Brain Of Morbius, The Seeds Of Doom, The Masque Of Mandragora, The Hand Of Fear, Pyramids Of Mars, K9 And Company, The Five Doctors. 

 

Page: 132-134

What Others Have Said: my list of BBC novels only included the books I had read at the time of publication of TIMELINK. I will add further titles and dates to this web-page as I read more of the books but only if they warrant mention:

 

Books – Fiction

The Pescatons: in the original 1976 LP version of this story, the date is given simply as "the present day". In the 1991 novelisation, it is "the mid-1970s".

 

Verdigris: is set just prior to The Three Doctors, the date is May 1973.

 

Deep Blue: set six months after The Green Death, and no more than 12 years before Tegan's time (1984), which is circa 1972. 

 

Last of the Gaderene: set before The Green Death, it has been 30 odd years since th Second World War, around 1975. 

 

The King of Terror: Set in 1999, it is mentioned that the events of Battlefield took place over two years previously. The Brigadier, in 2050, recalls the events of Season Seven; these were 80 years ago, eg the 1970s. 

 

Rags: The concert is to take place on Tuesday 10 May [page 40], which makes the year 1977, although there is a reference to Sham ' 79 on page 7. (added 8 July 2001) 

 

 

STORYFILE

 

 

Page 245

Underworld

Story Link: What is the Doctor painting in the inner room? How about the casing for the new Mark Two version of K9!  (added 23 April 2001) 

 

Page 254

Destiny Of The Daleks

Story Link: The number of years between Genesis of the Daleks and Destiny of the Daleks is 109, not 190. (Added 8 July 2001)  

 

 

STORY ORDER

 

Page 321-322: the date for Horror Of Fang Rock should be 1902, and the date for The Enemy of the World should be 2013 (this error has been corrected for subsequent reprints).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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