Timelines again

[beccaelizabeth]

I went to bed an hour ago. It didn't take. So I'm fiddling with timelines again in my head. I'm trying to match data from Doctor Who, mostly xmas and end of seasons, and Torchwood 1-08, 1-10, 2-03, 2-04, and 2-12, and... well.

Tommy is revived once per year. Ianto knows him, Gwen doesn't. Gwen has been there less than a year in 2-03. But only slightly less, since in 2-04 Rhys reckons it has been about a year that she's been with Torchwood. So call it the maximum time, say Tommy was revived the week before Gwen started there, and that's 12 months.
In 2-12 we learn Ianto has been there 21 months.
That's a difference of 9 months. Some of it before - Ianto knows thing from before Gwen's arrival, though we don't know how much of that is archives. Some, and we don't know how much, after - the difference between 2-04 and 2-12.

From 1-01 to 2-04 is 1 year.

From 1-01 to 1-08 is 3 months. Jack says so. That's how long it was that Suzie was dead.

1-01 to 1-04 is therefore less than 3 months. Quite a lot less, if you factor in the suspension the BBCA site suggests happened to Ianto. How long was that? Suspension four weeks ago - so that's 4 weeks that happen just before the last scene of Cyberwoman? Or at least between 4 and 5. Which leaves 8 episodes in 2 months. If 4 of them clump up in one week, Ianto could have been hiding Lisa in a basement for 2 months between 1-01 and 1-04, but not more than that. Probably a lot less.

None of this is relevant to figuring out how many of the 9 months were pre series and how many between 2-04 and 2-12.

It can't be all 9 before.

Someone said in a comment Love & Monsters was March, 2007. In Army of Ghosts, Jackie says the ghost shifts have been going on for two months, and since there's none of that in L&M, it's at least May.
1-10 is in December and 1-01 is 3 months plus a bit before that.
That's... December, November, October... Gwen could have joined in September at the latest?

And Ianto could have joined in May at the earliest.

So Lisa was in the basement for May to September plus two months at the longest. Seven months maximum, probably less. Five of them before Gwen's year. Which would make 17 months until 2-04 and... 4 months between 2-04 and 2-12 as a minimum. Or it could be less than 5 months before and 5 or more after.

Between Canary Wharf and Harold Saxon's election day is an unknown length of time. We know now it's less than 21 months. And more than three, plus being the other side of christmas. That, um, doesn't narrow it down much.

We don't know how long Jack was missing. Total lack of relevant timestamps on that. Yes?

To fit everything together with the data from the Torchwood magazine and 2-07, 2-06 had to have happened on or before 13th February 2008. Because Owen was born 14th Feb 1980 according to the magazine, and he died aged 27 according to Martha. But if May 2007 was 21 months ago... Torchwood is set in 2009. And the magazine data is useless. And... we get an even bigger problem in Owen's timeline.

here and here people are poking the maths about Owen.
1-07 says September 2001 he'd only been qualified six months. As in, he was a doctor in March/April 2001.
In 2-06 he was 27.

If 2-06 is set in 2008, then he qualified age barely 21.
If it is actually set in 2009... he qualified age 20.

21 is already edging on impossible. If he started at 16 he could manage it, but starting at 16 isn't likely. But, okay, say he did... and that's when he got kicked out of home, to go to uni.

... budge it back another year, and he's how young?


Okay, math isn't my strong point, I haven't poked this with calendar in hand, I'm sure I'm missing some things, and it's nearly two in the morning.

I'll call this useless and go try sleep again.

Comments

[anaross.livejournal.com]

Well, I appreciate it! I have no mind for this, so I love to read it when someone else figures it out. Thanks--

[anaross.livejournal.com]

Oh, and Doogie Howser was a doctor at 16 or so. I remember, when my mother was in the hospital, my brother kept referring to the interns as "The Doogie Howsers," because they all looked so young.

Owen's pretty smart, so maybe he got into college at 15?

[beccaelizabeth]

Doogie Howser is a fictional character and not a great guide to plausibility.

[jackarono.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah, but it's possible. I know someone who finished law school (in the states, so 4 years college, three years graduate school) at 19. Med school is 4 years? So if he started university at 13 (my acquaintance started at 12, believe it or not), he could qualify at 20 if he accelerated through college.

I don't get any sense, however, that he started so young. But then, I don't get much sense that he's been practicing 7 years either.

[beccaelizabeth]

medical degrees in the UK are a 5 or 6 year undergrad course, followed up by 2 foundation years and various lengths of specialist training. Pass the 5 year plus one foundation and they're a fully qualified doctor, but without MD degree. Owen says he's got one of those so he did that after.

I could buy him starting at 16. Sort of.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I had been pondering a scenario like that - especially since Owen has been referred to as 'a genius'. But if that were the case, I think they'd make more of a point of it.

Owen is a puzzle.

[beccaelizabeth]

well he is all 'Doctor Owen Harper' about it... but yeah, him passing up a chance to brag seems odd. Could combine with his 'chucked out at 16' bit and he just doesn't want to go there or invite questions.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

If Owen is fudging his past and defensive about it, that would be an interesting theme to explore - rather than keeping it in the background. I think I might like that.

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

If 2-06 is set in 2008, then he qualified age barely 21.
If it is actually set in 2009... he qualified age 20.

I appreciate you wrote this at 1 in the morning but that bit must surely be wrong?
It seems to me that the simplest solution about Owen's timeline is that Martha got his age wrong.
If Owen is in fact in his thirties, it all hangs together properly, doesn't it?

The only thing I can offer that might be even slightly helpful is that there was an election poster for Saxon in 1.12. Election posters seldom go up more than two or three months before an election, normally less, and that one already looked fairly tatty.

Also is there some useful info from Martha's timeline? We know she qualified between 1.13 and 2.6.

[beccaelizabeth]

If Martha, the magazine, and the website got it wrong, Owen's timeline can make sense. The challenge is making it make sense even with all available data. If he's 27 in 2009 then how old was he in 2001? Not halfway old enough. Challenge. *sigh*

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

I'm comfortable with excluding the magazine from canon (especially because I'm not sure I'll be able to afford it every month!) but I can't make my mind up about the website. The email dates are so clearly contradicting the seasonal spread of the episodes we can see on the show that in one sense it must be wrong, but I am reluctant to just abandon all those juicy extra details.

As you say - challenge.

Incidentally, I just rewatched Fragments. In my professional opinion, judging from the plants in the graveyard, Owen's fiancée died in late September, early October. He said he'd promised her a summer wedding, so that might mean they had brought it forward from the following year when they realised how ill she was.

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

Oh, and unless I am going mad the Doctor's hand was already in the hub when Owen was first shown in. My brain is just completely failing to tell me how that fits in.

[jadekirk.livejournal.com]

It was there.

[beccaelizabeth]

see that so much doesn't fit that I'd be happy calling it continuity error. Like times things are different in closeup and longshot.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

The website did originally say he was born in 1974, then it got edited after someone did the math and realized they called him only 27.

[beccaelizabeth]

yup, which is handy because they can change supplementary canon when we're not looking :eyeroll:

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

Isn't that just sooooo much fun?

[nnwest.livejournal.com]

Someday I'm going to revisit the TW/DW timeline I was keeping. I really should get back to it! This will be incredibly valuable! *adds to memories* Thanks!

Have you seen tw_timeline?

[beccaelizabeth]

yes. that's why there's two links to it in the post.

[nnwest.livejournal.com]

Hey look...! So there are. :D *is lame and doesn't read*

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

Didn't someone calculate how much time had/hadn't passed for the harold saxon thing between 2x12 (first time official election posters were seen) and 2x13/DW 3x11 due to the rules on actual canvassing as opposed to making speeches? Since by law they also have to be taken down when the canvassing period ends, too.

[beccaelizabeth]

yes. But I don't remember it.

[halfspokenwords.livejournal.com]

There's some timeline info in Adrift.

Jonah disappeared seven months ago. And Jack was there.

So either all the time Jack was gone plus most of series 2 (everything since CJH-ish, really) was only seven months or it's been over seven months since 2.01.

At this point, I'm not sure which is more likely. The former would put 2.11 in the second half of 2008. (But that doesn't seem to work with the 21 months later, does it?) The latter... well, that depends on how long Jack has been gone, which is still unknown.

[beccaelizabeth]

good point. I don't think it really works to squish 1-12 through 2-11 into 7 months and manage that 21 months total. So 2-01 to 2-11 is at least 7 months.

[halfspokenwords.livejournal.com]

Which means, I think, that Canary Wharf to 2.01 has to be at most 14 months. Probably 13 and a bit, allowing for time between 2.11 and 2.12 (and of course there had to be time between 2.01 and Jonah's disappearance, too). But. Let's say 14 for now.

That would mean that if Canary Wharf is, let's say May 2007, that 2.01 can't really be any later than July 2008.

(If 2.01 is July, then 2.04 could have easily have been in August/September, so Gwen would have been there a year.)

And July + 7 = ... Dec, Jan... February 2009? Maybe?

And of course we can guess that since 1.10 is Christmas, 1.13 probably isn't much later than February. If 2.01 has to be July... then Jack was gone for 5 months? Is that right? I can't do math. You may have noticed. (July = 7, not 6. That's my problem.)

It's about right, though. If 2.12 and 2.13 are in February. One year has passed since 1.12 and 1.13.

[beccaelizabeth]

*nods*

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Fscinating stuff. Thinking about it too much induces dizziness, dementia and scribbing on napkins.

I am very intersted in the question of "how long was Jack gone", and I am inclined to believe that 7 months have elapsed since "Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang".

Does it make the computation simpler if we take Owen entirely out of the computations? Pretend he isn't there - whatever his age - and see if we can make it all fit together without him. And then fit him in.

For logistical reasons, I find it difficult to think that Owen was 27. Burn Gorman is 35, and looks more like 35 than 27, and the figure of 35 (or something in that ball park) fits better with his life (and death) history as we know it - time to get a medical degree, a fiancée, and a position in a hospital.

that's 4 weeks that happen just before the last scene of Cyberwoman?

My interpretation would be that the last scene of "Cyberwoman" is before the 4-week suspension. But I have no hard evidence.

[beccaelizabeth]

leaving out Owen was what I was doing to start with. Owen's timeline problems could be completely vanished if Martha hadn't said 27. If she'd said 37 it'd be more like. But nooooo.
If he did have all that - medical degree, fiancée, life planned out - it do make things interesting. He was fast track and had it all. Now he's working out of a basement cutting up corpses.

I've wondered if the de-aging was mostly to make him look like less of a prick for his treatment of women in season 1. They started season 2 with him being all 'talk about diminishing returns', and if he's only realising that in his 30s it's a different character than if he tried it for a couple of years in his 20s after a serious loss. Which is among the reasons why I feel sometimes like we've got a whole different character in season 2 than in 1.

They also haven't mentioned Owen/Gwen at all at all, even when Owen had a chance to be a total prick about it.

Actually I feel a little bit like sexual behaviour got pushed back towards dominant norms this season. I mean, only Jack and Ianto had same sex relationships, mostly with each other, with Jack's ex in the background gone horribly wrong. Gwen dumped Owen in season 1 but that tension that was pulling her to him and her dissatisfaction with Rhys seems to be all gone this year. There's still Jack, but they're playing that starcrossed, and he's a different set of desires. The shiny dominant ones that say the hero gets the girl. Owen's more like... sometimes the girl needs a good shag to get her mind off work. Which was interesting. And now it's gone. I think I read in an interview EM reckoning it's because Gwen can't be the conscience of the team while she's having an affair, which strikes me as bizarre - how precisely does who she's shagging have anything to do with professional ethics? Does her saying they should be more human mean she can't be, the squishy fallible hungry bits as well? Saint Gwen would be ungood.

... er, tangent having nothing to do with timeline.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Owen's timeline problems could be completely vanished if Martha hadn't said 27.

I wish I could think of a reason for her to have lied.

He was fast track and had it all. Now he's working out of a basement cutting up corpses.

A fascinating theme. One of the things I loved about "Fragments" - the sense that each of them reached a point of total breakdown, when their previous lives were totally destroyed. Everyone but Gwen. Jack had the Game Station, Tosh had the UNIT prison, Owen lost Katie, Ianto lost Lisa. They've all had to rebuild their lives, emotionally speaking, from scratch.

Which is among the reasons why I feel sometimes like we've got a whole different character in season 2 than in 1.

I'd say, we have a whole different series of characters. In some episodes, he's sidelined - though on the whole he seems more intelligent, practical and calm than he was before. (And consequently, that side of him makes him less interesting than he was, if also less annoying.) But we also have the mirror-universe-Owen of "Adam", the dead/conflicted Owen, the professional-Doctor Owen of "Fragments", the Owen who is protective of Tosh but still defensive with her - I find it hard to put all these Owens into a package as a coherent personality. So yes, while Owen in nicer this series I don't have nearly the same feel I had of his reality. He's a sort of multiple personality now, and a reasonably bland one at that.

They also haven't mentioned Owen/Gwen at all at all, even when Owen had a chance to be a total prick about it.

They don't act like ex-lovers. When we last saw them in series 1, he'd been cruel to her, she'd been hurt, and they were prickly with each other - lots of tension there. By "Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang", they're buds, working together well and professionally, with no trace of friction or emotional residue. Okay, so they came to terms with what happened, and got on with things. But we didn't see that. It feels like a disconnect.

And however you interpret the question of "how long was Jack gone", it's unlikely to be more than about 6 months from the events of "Out of Time" to "Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang". That isn't long in emotional time.

I'm vaguely interested in exploring this in fic - how Gwen puts her affair with Owen behind her and gets over it with her decision to marry Rhys and be faithful to him - but really, I'm much more interested in Jack and his relationships.

Does her saying they should be more human mean she can't be, the squishy fallible hungry bits as well? Saint Gwen would be ungood.

I think the whole notion of Gwen as the 'conscience' of the group is a bad idea. For all his lapses, it's Jack who leads them, Jack who sets the ethics - involving a protective attitude to others and a warm, permissive sexual outlook. Gwen is the contrast, the voice of the 21st century - where everything changes - and the attraction of some of that change, as exemplified by Jack, is a wonderful theme.

Women who are good, faithful wives are a dime a dozen on television. (Maybe not on soap operas, but everywhere else.) I am fascinated to have a female hero who is sexually curious and adventurous, a risk-taker, an innovator - so again, Gwen seems a little more bland than she did.

There's nothing wrong with tangents.