The Doctor tries to atone for his past selves' crimes and come to terms with his new personality by living with a poor Mexican farmwoman and doing hard labour on her homestead. Over the months that he works for her, they become close friends, until one day, while digging, he finds the body of her missing husband and discovers that he was murdered. Although he is unable to find out who killed her husband, at least Senora Panstedas knows what happened to him now, and has some closure. After the funeral, the Doctor departs.

Time-Placement: Eighth Doctor solo, and the theme of the story seems to be his coming to terms with his previous incarnation. Presumably this goes in the three-year Samless gap between The Eight Doctors and Vampire Science.

Continuity Note: A scene is mentioned where Senora Panstedas overhears the Doctor arguing with his previous self, who's possibly from just in between Lungbarrow and the 1996 TV Movie.

The Doctor joins a crew shooting a movie about the Cyberman invasion of London, ostensibly to help make the story more plausible; in fact, his real mission is to obscure the truth and ensure that UNIT remains a secret organisation. His ideas are enthusiastically accepted, but he notices that the producer's young daughter is oddly distant; although it seems that the child is simply not enjoying herself on the hectic movie set, he suspects that other forces are at work. The suggestions he makes are incorporated into the movie, serving to make the invasion more plausible and potentially successful, and eventually he tracks down the culprit responsible for young Kate's odd behaviour, a Cyber-infiltration unit which implanted her with a tracker and was using her to observe the Doctor. It has nearly gathered all of the data it requires for a second invasion attempt, but the Doctor reveals that his suggestions are all beyond the current resources of the Cyber-army. By threatening to expose the infiltration unit's location to UNIT, he forces it to restore Kate's buried memories and leave the Earth.

Time-Placement: Although travelling alone, the Doctor is familiar with the outcome of The Invasion and the Brigadier is described as an old soldier, so this appears to be a Season 6b story.

Detective Inspector Bob Lines greets Mel Bush upon her return to Brighton; after travelling with the Doctor for some time, she's finally come home to stay.

Time-Placement: Non-Doctor story featuring Mel returning home. Although not a part of the Doctor's timeline, it would have to be post-Head Games to fit it in with the rest of the continuity.

See Out of the Darkness

The Doctor and Leela arrive on a planet near the Cyber frontier, where a squadron of incompletely converted Cybermen are seeking a weapon which destroyed the Cybermen when they tried to establish a bridgehead on the planet. The soldiers kill one of the planet's natives, and Leela sets off to contact the other natives and organise a defense. The Doctor, meanwhile, learns that the soldiers have turned to religion to deal with their half-cybernetic status; they now believe themselves to be the perfect balance between humanity and their cybernetic brethren from Mondas. The Doctor realizes that the natives have encoded all of their cultural information in RNA patterns in the local fruit, and only eat it when the knowledge is required. Alerted by Leela, the natives eat the fruit of the trees and regain the knowledge of war, but the Doctor stops them from attacking the soldiers. The leader of the soldiers, upon eating the fruit, has the emotional part of his mind restored to him, and takes his own life in shock when he finally comes to understand the number of people he's killed over the years. The remaining soldiers offer to remain on the planet to protect it from invaders while the natives return to their idyllic existence.

Time-Placement: There is no reference to K9, so presumably this takes place before The Invisible Enemy. The Doctor seems to tolerate Leela's presence more than he did at the beginning of Last Man Running, so this presumably takes place after that story. But it really could go anywhere between The Face of Evil and The Invisible Enemy.

The servants at 64 Carlysle Street are taken aback by the forward behaviour of the new servant, Dorothea or "Dodo", who seems to spend more time observing the master's suffragette daughter Anne Greystone than on her duties. Anne is spending time with the charming Marquis of Rostock, while her father has befriended an intriguing gentleman named the Doctor. Greystone eventually invites the Doctor to his home to meet Rostock, but it soon becomes clear to Greystone that the Doctor and Rostock -- whom the Doctor refers to as Roztoq -- know each other of old. Roztoq is in fact a criminal from Quinnis, a planet in the Fourth Universe, and has arrived on Earth by riding the coat-tails of the Doctor's TARDIS; however, his presence here is damaging the fabric of reality. He refuses to return, and infects Anne's body with the symbiont which controls his own body. The Doctor urges Anne to resist, and she does so, expelling the symbiont. The Doctor's chauffeur, Steven, knocks Roztoq unconscious and carries him out of the house. The Doctor, Steven and Dodo depart to take Roztoq back to where he belongs, leaving the inhabitants of 64 Carlysle Street with an unbelievable tale for the police, which may land them all in a mental hospital.

Time-Placement: Steven makes specific reference to having been in Tombstone, so it must be set after The Gunfighters. All the stories between The Ark and The Savages are directly connected. There's however a break at the very end of The Gunfighters, so we have to assume this story takes place in the gap.

The TARDIS materializes in a stormy forest, and wild beasts herd the Doctor and Nyssa into a Gothic castle where a telepathic force field prevents them from leaving. Carnon Manor is occupied by six lost souls who believe that the lord of the manor stole them at the moment of their death; whenever the house goes over quota, Death arrives to take one of them away. When a scientist who believes he has been given a second chance to find a cure for cancer is taken, the Doctor realizes that the deaths are random and meaningless; the house has been designed to terrify its occupants for the amusement of Lord Carnon. Carnon reveals himself to the Doctor, identifying himself as a walker in eternity who has struck a deal with Death; he may borrow six souls at the moment of death to amuse himself, and in exchange, he has agreed to deliver the Doctor into Death's hands. Carnon offers to restore his captives to life if they kill the Doctor, but the Doctor is able to overpower some of his attackers, and the others refuse to take his life. Death takes Carnon for failing to keep his bargain, and the house vanishes, the occupants returning to where Carnon found them. The Doctor believes that the house was simply a telepathic construct which crumbled when the Doctor resisted Carnon's mental attacks. At least, that's what he hopes...

Time-Placement: Obviously between Time-Flight and Arc of Infinity.

Sarah spends a holiday in Cornflower Cottage, a picturesque Lake District home. One night she heads for the pub while K9 spellchecks the latest chapter of her novel, but on the way she is accosted by a local witch who gives her a circle of heather. At the pub, she learns that the cottage used to be an inn called "The Sow in Rut", and that its owners were convicted of killing lonely travellers, serving them at table and feeding the remains to their pigs; at their trial, they claimed their pigs told them to do it. Sarah, despite herself, is reminded of the legends of a demon cast into a herd of swine. When she returns to the cottage, she finds that K9 has apparently been possessed by a swinish intelligence determined to kill her. He seems to be repulsed by the heather sprig, and Sarah accidentally electrocutes him, restoring him to normal, when she knocks over a table lamp while trying to flee. Sarah and K9 depart from the cottage, but when Sarah tells Brendan about the incident he reveals that he's been playing computer games on K9; some sort of virus must have caused him to take on the identity of the hog-monsters from the game world. Sarah, disgusted with Brendan and herself, returns home... while back at the cottage, the evil swine-spirit awaits its next chance to possess a machine host and take its revenge upon humanity.

Time-Placement: Theoretically the events of this story could inspire her interest in ghosts which leads to her joining the ghost-busting group, which would place this story before Housewarming; also, there is a brief appearance by Brendan, who wasn't mentioned at all in Housewarming, so evidence would seem to suggest that this goes between A Girl's Best Friend and Housewarming. However, the story mentions the Spice Girls which would definitely place it after Housewarming.

The Doctor and Mel arrive in Pax Lucis, an English village which has been occupied by Nazis in order to test a new weapon. A mysterious barrier has cut off the village from the outside world; there is no light inside, and the temperature is falling. The Doctor is questioned by the mission commander, Luther, and realizes that the Nazis have captured a lightwanderer, a creature which lives in the vacuum of space and feeds on solar radiation. Believing it to be part of a machine designed to set up an impenetrable barrier, the Nazis are feeding it more power than it can handle; the barrier is in fact a side-effect of the resulting disruption of space, and if the Nazis go ahead with their plan to set up a barrier around all of England, they will destroy the entire world. Mel joins forces with a young man named Oliver whose girlfriend Ellen was killed when the barrier went up, and while searching for a way out of town they find explosives stored in the local mines. Luther listens to the Doctor's warnings and accepts that he's telling the truth, but he is shot by his own men when he tries to stop the experiment. Mel and Oliver arrive with their dynamite, and the distraction enables the dying Luther to destroy the "weapon", setting the lightwanderer free. As sunlight returns to the village, the remaining Nazis commit suicide with poison pills. Oliver, pleased by the outcome, tells Mel that he's going to join the army and kill Germans.

Time-Placement: Mel remembers meeting Pex, so this takes place after Paradise Towers. The story is also much darker in tone than the rest of Season 24, so I place it between Delta and the Bannermen and Dragonfire, just before Mel leaves.

Jo is kidnapped by a woman named Tuala, who is using a time machine from the defunct Dalek-invasion timeline. The Doctor follows them to a decaying mansion, where he finds a safe containing money and a newspaper reporting the death of financier Bernard Forbes in a car accident. The safe is protected by a temporal force field, and when he removes the money and the newspaper they both vanish. He and the Brigadier investigate and find that Forbes was never in such a car accident, but is losing his mental faculties for no apparent reason. The Doctor manages to track down Jo, who is being held captive by Tuala and her uncle Krashen. Having fled from the Dalek-infested future, Krashen has been using the time machines to earn money by preventing deaths; however, this is causing temporal paradoxes as the people's descendents then see no need to pay him, and Time is beginning to repair the damage. Tuala and Krashen have lured the Doctor in the hope that he can repair their failing time machines, but he is unable to do so, since they are from a future which no longer exists. Krashen tries to blackmail him by transporting him and Jo to an earlier moment when they are in danger of meeting their younger selves; the release of temporal energy would kill them both. Krashen and Tuala vanish as Time finally catches up with them, but their machine lasts just long enough for the Doctor to conduct minor repairs and get himself and Jo to safety before their younger selves arrive.

Time-Placement: The story features elements from Day of the Daleks, thus takes place after that story; and the Doctor is still exiled to Earth, thus it's before The Three Doctors.

See Earth and Beyond

The TARDIS falls over a cliff, and while Ian and Barbara set about trying to right the ship, the Doctor and Vicki set off to find help. They have landed near a Roman villa, where the caretaker Lucius lies dying of wounds inflicted by a rogue lion. The Doctor agrees to care for the villa while Lucius' master fights in the Gallic wars, and while Vicki remains at the villa, the Doctor returns to warn Ian and Barbara about the lion. He is too late, however; the lion has already confronted them, and Ian has been forced to kill it to save Barbara's life. That night, in the villa, he finally admits to himself that he loves Barbara, but he is unable to tell her yet; he is unaware that she knows, and is only seeking the courage to admit to herself that the feeling is mutual.

Time-Placement: As the title suggests, this takes place during Episode 1 of The Romans, just after the TARDIS has fallen off the cliff -- so, between The Rescue and The Romans.

The TARDIS materializes in a suburban housing development, where Romana bets the Doctor five pounds that she can find something unusual. Within moments they've heard an alien scuttling sound from the sewers, and met a pizza delivery boy who claims that the people at 9 Honeysuckle Close have been ordering the meat special four times a night for the past two weeks. The Doctor investigates and discovers that the occupants of the house, the Fordyces, have been possessed by giant spiders from Metebelis 3, who fled the destruction of their colony by travelling along psychic ley-lines to this estate. Their Queen is now living in the Fordyces' attic, and her eggs are about to hatch and spread her progeny across the Earth. The Doctor orders K9 to destroy the attic, but the Queen is able to extinguish the fire; fortunately, firefighters arrive in response to the blaze, and the Doctor is able to use their hosepipes to knock the Queen off the roof to her death. As he, Romana and K9 prepare to set off again, the Doctor refuses to pay Romana, claiming that this wasn't unusual; things like this are always happening to him.

Time-Placement: There is no reference to any recent adventures, but since it's a Gareth Roberts story it might as well go after The English Way of Death.

The Doctor and Peri arrive on Earth to investigate a neutrino pulse which appears to be from a malfunctioning star drive, but while they are searching for the stranded alien it plants a stolen gem in the TARDIS console room. Two Ventrosian priests arrive, accuse the Doctor and Peri of conspiring to steal the sacred Eye of Gaar, and prepare to kill them, but while the priests are distracted the alien thief catches them off guard and kills them both. He then prepares to depart, having lured the Doctor and Peri simply in order to distract his pursuers; however, he is attacked by a burglar who hits him over the head and flees with the gemstone. The alien chooses to pursue him rather than fix his damaged life-support unit, and thus dies when his cooling unit ruptures. The Doctor attempts to track down the burglar, but is too late; the burglar has already smashed open the containment case. The Ventrosians come from a frigid world, and the gemstone was a chunk of frozen ammonia and methane, which boils away in the Earth's atmosphere and kills the burglar in the process.

Time-Placement: Obviously between Planet of Fire and The Caves of Androzani, but before Red Dawn since Peri is unfamiliar with the Ice Warriors.

A time-travelling salesman attempts to sell the Second Doctor and his companions double-glazing, but the Doctor isn't interested -- until the salesman reveals that the uPVC windows come not only with a lifetime guarantee, but with a view of the customer's choice. Much, much later, the Seventh Doctor finds Ace trying to break into a padlocked room in the TARDIS, in which he has hidden the windows. The view he had chosen looks out upon Gallifrey as it was when the Doctor was a child; but he is no longer a child, and the view is a reminder of what he can never have again. He sends Ace away and sets off to find a way to seal the doors to the window room forever.

Time-Placement: Zoe seems to have settled in and been travelling with the Doctor for a while, so I place it between The Invasion and The Krotons. In the Seventh Doctor and Ace segment, Ace tells the Doctor that she thought they didn't keep secrets from each other, which suggests that she really hasn't been travelling with him for very long. So I put it between Remembrance of the Daleks and The Happiness Patrol.

While returning from her husband's funeral in Exeter, the elderly Tegan Haybourne meets a man named Doctor Smith, who reminds her of the imaginary Doctor she'd invented during her nervous breakdown in her twenties, and who gives her a brooch to apologise for stepping on her foot. Tegan has missed her connection, and Smith's housekeeper Anna offers to let her spend the night in Smith's house in London. Anna and Tegan attend a performance of an absurdist play by the Sigrarnon Troupe, and are invited to drinks by the actors afterwards; however, they are unnerved by the actors' intensity, and as they depart, Anna seems convinced that the actors are following them home. Back at Smith's house, Tegan notices that Anna seems to be wearing the brooch Smith gave her earlier, but when she storms off to bed after their argument, she finds her own brooch lying in the guest room and realizes that Anna's was a different one. When she attempts to find Anna to apologise, she sees the Sigrarnon actors break into the house and attack Anna; before they can consume her, however, Anna's and Tegan's brooches begin to glow, and the Sigrarnons vanish as Tegan's brooch explodes. She passes out and awakens the next morning, believing that it has all been a dream. Smith returns to his home and shows Tegan to her train, but strangely, she runs into him again on the train and he doesn't recognise her -- at least not from the previous night. At his urging, she tells him all about her odd dream, but then she falls asleep on the train, and when she awakens Smith has gone -- and taken the brooch with him. The next time she's in London, she finds that Smith's entire house has also disappeared. Elsewhere in time and space, Anna confronts the Doctor, having found a book containing the story Tegan wrote about her experience; she now understands that the Doctor had first met Tegan on the train after all this had happened, and manipulated her and Anna into disposing of the alien Sigrarnons for him, using the resonance between the two brooches -- actually the same brooch at different points in its timeline -- to banish them. The Doctor claims that he'd had no idea Tegan had suffered as much as she had from her time with him and assures Anna that he would never abandon her, but Anna is no longer so sure.

Time-Placement: A future incarnation of the Doctor; which one isn't known, but he has red hair and travels with a companion named Anna.

Continuity Note: The Doctor portrayed here appears again in the short story Revenants, when he and his companion Guin investigate a temporal anomaly.

Mel muses on the fate of a message in a bottle, written and thrown into the Universe to seek out the Doctor, wherever he may be.

Time-Placement: Brief mood piece featuring Mel, which goes after Missing, Part One.

Iris Wildthyme, notorious rewriter of the Doctor's life, visits Andy Warhol's Factory to relax and settle in following her turbulent regeneration on the planet Hyspero. Sam asks the Doctor to take her to the Factory so she can visit the notorious Warhol, and they arrive just as Iris' new friend Valerie prepares to confront Warhol about the play which she's written and which he has refused to film. Valerie is too earnest and uncool to be permitted in the Factory any longer. Elsetimes, the Doctor and Mrs Jones, suave secret agents working for the British government, are ordered to investigate a book which purports to chronicle their top-secret adventures in science-fiction format, and the Doctor realizes that he must rewrite this "Iris Wildthyme"'s fictions to cover up the truth. Valerie, who has written a manifesto stating that all men should be replaced with clones for breeding purposes, shoots Warhol, while at the same time she's in Paris writing a book. The Doctor and Sam attempt to prevent the shooting, but fail, as it's part of history. Following the publication of Iris' book, the Doctor and Mrs Jones, who are too dangerous to be left at large, are gassed and awaken in an unidentified Village.

Time-Placement: This being a Paul Magrs story, it's difficult to tell just how much of it took place as written. Assuming that at least some of it did, since there's no sign of Fitz and Sam claims that she saw Iris' video of her regeneration from Hyspero four months ago, this probably takes place between The Face-Eater and The Taint.