In a lot of ways the Seventh Doctor‘s timeline appears simple (this is until you think about the various twists that tangle it up), though I will no doubt get castigated for ignoring loads of spin-off characters. To set out the sequence I will use the rule of ‘follow the companion’. For the odd story when the Doctor appears without a companion I have to assume that they slot between sequences. This means that (to date [unless I have missed a couple and it is a bit work in progress I’m afraid] - updates October 2012) the main companions are:
- Mel
- Ace
- Ace + Raine (as per the Lost Stories)
- Klein (but see the section marked Tangles below - this is a guess)
- Raine (as per UNIT: Dominion)
- Ace
- Ace + Hex (but see the section marked Tangles below)
- Ace (briefly)
- Ace + Hector Thomas (see More Tangles below)
- Ace
- Ace + Mel
- Ace
- Bernice
- Ace + Bernice
- Bernice
- Bernice, Roz and Chris (from a comment)
- Chris (e.g. Lungbarrow)
- Alone (in The Movie)
Logic
Within what I know this is fairly simple; Mel was there when the Seventh Doctor appeared, Ace was there at the end (from the perspective of the TV). Big Finish add in Hex and there we go, voilà! We know that he is alone right at the end thanks to The Movie (reviewed here).
Tangles (updated August 2012)
All very simplistic, but this does miss our whole swathes of complexity in terms of:
- The Klein Twist
- The Death Twist
- The Black TARDIS Twist
- The White TARDIS Twist.
For me the twists represent different threads in a braid of parallel / divergent history, and they may not all be separate. I do my best to explain now (before I listen to Black and White). As I still haven’t explained this at all well it may help to read this post from AngelPip.
The Klein Twist
In Colditz Klein has the TARDIS. That all unravels as covered in the Klein Trilogy. We also have Klein wandering here, there and everywhen; Klein then appears in UNIT: Dominion and it is all very confusing!
The Death Twist
Who / Which is the Doctor in Death in the Family?
The Black TARDIS Twist
Somewhere after Angel of Scutari the Black TARDIS appears and the Doctor travels fighting Elder Gods with the following help:
- Alone
- Sally Morgan
- Sally + Lysandra Aristedes.
The Black TARDIS is fully explained in Black and White.
The White TARDIS Twist
Losing its shell in Angel of Scutari the TARDIS is white until the events of Black and White.
More Tangles
And of course Big Finish wouldn’t let the Seventh Doctor’s timeline lie and having disposed of Hex in Gods and Monsters he pops up again in Afterlife; or does he? He is now back as a new, more villainous version of himself named Hector Thomas. Stay tuned!
Update October 2014 - you need to listen to Signs and Wonders to find out how that ends!
Update July 2015 - Mel returns
As I noted in After the Glitz… Mel is returning to travel with Ace and the Doctor. Based on no evidence beyond that I imagine this might be post-Hex/Hector so have added Ace + Mel.
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