Doctor Who: 25 time periods Thirteen and Team TARDIS should visit
By Lacy Baugher
“Landscape in Egypt” painting by Jean-François Portaels [Public domain]
Earth (2120)
When we talk about Doctor Who visiting specific time periods, it usually falls into one of two categories. There are trips to the past – in which we imagine the Doctor and friends meeting the Knights of the Round Table, touring Versailles with Louis XIV, or saving a life during the Christmas truce of World War I. There are also trips to the future. But when that happens, we usually see Team TARDIS journey far into the future, when things look very different than they do right now. Humanity has often left Earth far behind, to mingle with different races and civilizations. And these stories are all good, and ones we enjoy watching. But given the state of the world today, perhaps a truly interesting tale could be found by going just a bit further into the future, rather than hundreds or thousands of years.
Given that the latest United Nations climate report has issued some dire warnings about what our planet could look like as little as twenty years from now, what about if we went just a hundred years into the future. What would the Doctor and her friends find? Would things be mostly recognizable or would the world have descended into a Mad Max: Fury Road situation?
Historical people we might meet: Many Doctor Who stories work because they’re about average people, trying to live average lives. This seems like a perfect opportunity for that kind of tale, as the reason any kind of story about the changing Earth’s climate will be most impactful in terms of how it affects an everyday person’s life. Is water rationed? Have they had to move to higher ground? Are world governments working together or fighting over scraps? And how does all of that impact a simple family trying to live day to day?
Potential adventures: Occasionally Doctor Who can get a bit preachy when it comes to topical stories, but on this one, I say: Go crazy. Show us a worst case scenario and change time to fix it to encourage us to do it too. Maybe it’s going to take the Doctor to get people concerned about the future of the planet.