This is the post for discussing Season 1 and all the stories set within and around this season. How well does this season work? Do all the stories shoehorned in help, hurt or not effect how you view the TV season?
Looking at the timeline on Tardis Wiki (Theory:Timeline - First Doctor - Tardis Wiki), I count four short stories, three comics, five audio stories, and a novel. There’s actually a lot more set between Seasons 1 & 2, than within Season 1. What are your thoughts on the expanded media in this season?
Note: I consider this season starting with An Unearthly Child. Everything set before that, I consider Pre-Season 1 (see Pre-Season 1).
Note: Also see Season 1: An Unearthly Child to The Reign of Terror for a discussion specifically about the TV Stories of this season.
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I am pretty much a newbie for Classic Who since I only started watching it in February. I have been following a timeline of some sort that I’ve found on Facebook created by Craig Brawley who manages the Doctor Who side of things and Connor McHale who manages the Torchwood side of things and other spin-offs. I have been following their timelines for a very very very long time (from February to August), but then in August I found an even better timeline on a Discord server called Extended Who.
The one by Craig and Connor included the TV show and EVERY Big Finish media like Short Trips and all that sort and they had footnotes how and where these releases would fit in the timeline with dates and explanations.
The one I found on Discord is a more simpler one and I think it helps me more because I kinda got a thing with collecting Big Finish physically so I don’t have to go poor every 2 months. Anyways this timeline included the TV show and Big Finish but NOT the Short Trips (however Interludes were included). So this person who made the timeline (I unfortunately don’t know their names) named the seasons as Volumes. So here is how the first season looks like.
Volume 01
[TV 1.1]An Unearthly Child
[TV 1.1]10,000 BC
[TV 1.2]The Daleks
[TV 1.3]The Edge of Destruction
[TV 1.4]Marco Polo
[TV 1.5]The Keys of Marinus
[TV 1.6]The Aztecs
[LS 2.1b]The Fragile Yellow Arc of Fragrance
[TV 1.7]The Sensorities
[CC 3.7]The Transit of Venus
[TV 1.8]The Reign of Terror
I also like to include the first five First Doctor Adventures boxset in between Season 01 and 02.
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@Bencehun_12, I tend to go back and forth between the timelines on Tardis Wiki (Theory:Timeline - First Doctor - Tardis Wiki) and Andrew Kearley’s eyespider timelines (Doctor Who - The Complete Adventures - First Doctor). That said, these two different sources don’t always agree in the placement of various stories.
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There’s surprising a lot more set between Season 1 & 2 than in amongst Season 1. Lots of audios and short stories are placed between the seasons along with two novels. Definitively within Season 1, is the novel The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (set between Marco Polo and The Keys of Marinus) and the audio The Transit of Venus (set between The Sensorites and The Reign of Terror).
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It’s not that surprising really because the first four stories lead directly into each other. There could be a gap between Marinus and Aztecs and they do change clothes between Aztecs and Sensorites. Transit of Venus is kind of wedged into its placement seeing, technically, The Sensorites ends with the Doctor being cross with Ian and Barbara and promising to dump them at the next opportunity and then following through on that in The Reign of Terror.
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Yeah, this is a harder season to stick expanded media stories into just because of the more serielized nature of the season. Later seasons of the show had self-contained stories where you can easily fill gaps. Season 1 is one continuous story in some respects.
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there were a lot of timeline placement differences in those two timelines I’ve seen so far but I guess it also kinda depends on interpretation?
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Yeah. Take the Short Trip A Small Semblence of Home. It’s a good story, but the only TV story mentioned is The Daleks. So the wiki timeline places it just before The Sensorites while Kearley places in the middle of gap between seasons.
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Thing is with the start of The Sensorite, they do that little run down of the previous adventures so it makes sense not to try and squeeze too many other stories in there.
That said, the author has, according to TARDIS wiki, said this:
According to writer Paul Phipps, the story takes place during The Edge of Destruction, in the fade to black transition, just before the Doctor apologises to Barbara.[1]
So both those timelines are wrong!
(I do tend to lean towards Eyespider for all my timeline needs but that’s just because I like the look of his site 
)
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Interesting on the placement, that’s nice to know.
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