Due to the show's use of time travel as a major plot element, Doctor Who has on many occasions visited a past year which was still the future at the time of the story's writing. For example, various contemporary stories from the original series which were set in their respective decades feature Earth actively involved in interplanetary travel. Later episodes, the new series, and the series Torchwood are written assuming real-life progress in space travel. The UNIT Dating Controversy is an attempt to explain the confused timeline and the technology seen during those episodes.
In the series' revived era, an extra year was created when the program jumped ahead by a year in 2005. By 2007, both Doctor Who and its then-new spin-offs Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures had reestablished present-day in 2007 despite Doctor Who having depicted two successive Christmasses and myriad months of events that remained in-sequence.
Read more about this topic: Floating Timeline, Television, Live Action
Famous quotes related to doctor who:
“It is said, proverbially, that happy is the doctor who is called in when the disease is on its way out.”
—François Rabelais (1494–1553)
“It seems to me that your doctor [Tronchin] is more of a philosopher than a physician. As for me, I much prefer a doctor who is an optimist and who gives me remedies that will improve my health. Philosophical consolations are, after all, useless against real ailments. I know only two kinds of sickness—physical and moral: all the others are purely in the imagination.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)