Whoniverse: A viewing order for all the episodes in the modern Doctor Who, including Torchwood, The Sarah Jane Adventures, Class and Redacted.

TV Readers with long memories will remember that back in 2010, the halcyon days when Dalek and Fear Her were still set in the future, I constructed a viewing list for all of the contemporary episodes of Doctor Who. It was never perfect and ultimately failed because I became very exercised about where Planet of the Dead was supposed to go, something which I still think is the nuWho equivalent of the UNIT dating controversy. Nevertheless, some people apparently found it quite useful for this or that reason.

Well, its 2013, the 50th anniversary of the series and as you will have gathered in the midst of watching my way through all of Doctor Who, hopefully before the special episode is broadcast on 23rd November, usually a whole story a day. Oh yes. I'm half way through The Key To Time season. For quite a while I wondered if I was going to bother with nuWho when it became apparent that of course I should, but what also of the spin-offs? My expectation is that I will if I have the time and with that in mind I decided I needed to put together a watch list for that too which favoured the pre-Moffat intricate contemporary chronology of the show.

And so, armed with AHistory and the TARDIS Datacore, I set about putting together the following. As you can see this wasn't as easy as the original because of the time travel episodes of the mother series, especially in series five, oddly, where the order of the contemporary episodes is all over the place. Narrative sense prevailed with the understanding that a three month shoot backwards or forwards should be treated in the same way as 5 billion years or whatever. Oh and I know the numbering is a bit strange but I think it makes some sense without having to mess about too many decimal points and letter codes.

There are a few other anomalies. I decided to put Children of Earth after The Waters of Mars (flipping the transition order), suggesting that the reason the Doctor's awol is because he's wrapped up in his own issues. Which adds a certain irony to Gwen's speech about the Doctor in episode five. He's not looking down on you. He's nowhere to be seen. There's also the bonkers insanity of mixing Torchwood's s2, SJA's s1 and Doctor Who's 4th in together, which is how AHistory has it, thanks to internal dating and seasons. We'll see how it works when we get around to it.

Also, Torchwood's Miracle Day still doesn't logically fit anywhere but AHistory rather heroically spends about three pages explaining away continuity errors in the show and the vagueness of some of the dates in Doctor Who itself to suggest that it happens between Night Terrors and The God Complex, with the assumption that the Doctor deliberately drops his friends off after the Miracle has ended. Which does mean you have to sit through Miracle Day half way through s6 of Who, but at least you can do so in the knowledge that some half decent episodes are coming up in your future.

If you spot any other problems, do let me know through the usual channels, especially if I've forgotten something really important.  I've ignored prequels in the main, but Night and the Doctor are there even if the placements are complete guesses.  Does Music of the Spheres count?  Does the National Television Awards 2011 sketch? I suppose they do, but well, Gwen's face in Torchwood's End of the Road.  I haven't included any of the other prequels and whatnot, but there's a list of them here.  Also if you want to know what happened before Night of the Doctor, I've also compiled an Eighth Doctor chronology here.

I've made everything available to buy easily on this Amazon page.  Anyway ...


[Key:  DW=Doctor Who, TW=Torchwood, TWR=Torchwood Radio, SJA=Sarah Jane Adventures.]

DW 7.14.2 : Night of the Doctor
DW 7.15 : The Day of the Doctor

[NB: Do not watch now if this is your first viewing of the Ninth Doctor era]

NEW VIEWERS START HERE

DW 1.1 : Rose
DW 1.2 : The End of the World
DW 1.3 : The Unquiet Dead
DW 1.4 : Aliens of London
DW 1.5 : World War Three
DW 1.6 : Dalek
DW 1.7 : The Long Game
DW 1.8 : Father's Day
DW 1.9 : The Empty Child
DW 1.10 : The Doctor Dances
DW 1.11 : Boom Town
DW 1.12 : Bad Wolf
DW 1.13 : The Parting of the Ways
DW 1.14 : Doctor Who: Children in Need
DW 1.15 : The Christmas Invasion
SW 1.15 : Attack of the Graske

DW 2.1 : New Earth
DW 2.2 : Tooth and Claw
DW 2.3 : School Reunion
DW 2.4 : The Girl in the Fireplace
DW 2.5 : Rise of the Cybermen
DW 2.6 : The Age of Steel
DW 2.7 : The Idiot's Lantern
DW 2.8 : The Impossible Planet
DW 2.9 : The Satan Pit
DW 2.10 : Love & Monsters
DW 2.11 : Fear Her
DW 2.12 : Army of Ghosts
DW 2.13 : Doomsday

TW 1.1 : Everything Changes
TW 1.2 : Day One
TW 1.3 : Ghost Machine
TW 1.4 : Cyberwoman
TW 1.5 : Small Worlds
TW 1.6 : Countrycide
TW 1.7 : Greek Bearing Grifts
TW 1.8 : They Keep Killing Suzie
TW 1.9 : Random Shoes
TW 1.10 : Out of Time

DW 2.14 : The Runaway Bride

TW 1.11 : Combat
TW 1.12 : Captain Jack Harkness
TW 1.13 : End of Days

DW 3.1 : Smith and Jones
DW 3.2 : The Shakespeare Code
DW 3.3 : Gridlock
DW 3.4 : Daleks in Manhattan
DW 3.5 : Evolution of the Daleks
DW 3.6 : The Lazarus Experiment
DW 3.7 : 42
DW 3.8 : Human Nature
DW 3.9 : The Family of Blood
DW 3.10 : Blink
DW 3.10.1 : The Infinite Quest
DW 3.11 : Utopia
DW 3.12 : The Sound of Drums
DW 3.13 : Last of the Time Lords

TW 2.1 : Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
TW 2.2 : Sleeper
TW 2.3 : To The Last Man
TW 2.4 : Meat
TW 2.5 : Adam
TW 2.6 : Rest
TW 2.7 : Dead Man Walking
TW 2.8 : A Day In The Death

SJA 1.0 : Invasion of the Bane
SJA 1.1 : Revenge of the Slitheen
SJA 1.2 : Eye of the Gordon
SJA 1.3 : Warriors of Kudlak

TW 2.9 : Something Borrowed
TW 2.10 : From Out of the Rain
TW 2.11 : Adrift

SJA 1.4 : Whatever Happened To Sarah Jane?
SJA 1.5 : The Lost Boy

DW 3.14 : Time Crash
DW 3.15 : Voyage of the Damned

DW 4.1 : Partners in Crime
DW 4.2 : The Fires of Pompeii
DW 4.3 : Planet of the Ood
DW 4.4 : The Sontaran Stratagem
DW 4.5 : The Poison Sky
DW 4.6 : The Doctor's Daughter

TW 2.12 : Fragments
TW 2.13 : Exit Wounds

SJA 2.1 : The Last Sontaran

DW 4.7 : The Unicorn and the Wasp
DW 4.8 : Silence in the Library
DW 4.9 : Forest of the Dead
DW 4.10 : Midnight
DW 4.11 : Turn Left
DW 4.12 : The Stolen Earth
DW 4.13 : Journey's End
DW 4.14 : The Next Doctor

DW 4.14.1 : Dreamland

DW 4.14.2 : Music of the Spheres

DW 4.15 : Planet of the Dead

TWR 1 : Lost Souls
TWR 2 : Asylum
TWR 3 : Golden Age
TWR 4 : The Dead Line
TWR 5 : The Devil and Miss Carew
TWR 6 : Submission

DW 4.16 : The Waters of Mars

TW 3 : Children of Earth

SJA 2.2 : The Day of the Clown
SJA 2.3 : Secrets of the Stars
SJA 2.4 : The Mark of the Berserker
SJA 2.5 : The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith
SJA 2.6 : Enemy of the Bane
SJA 2.7 : From Raxacoricofallpatorius With Love

SJA 3.1 : Prisoner of the Judoon
SJA 3.2 : The Mad Woman in the Attic
SJA 3.3 : The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith

DW 7.15 : The Day of the Doctor
[NB: Do not watch now if this is your first viewing of the Tenth Doctor era.  It's full of spoilers.]

DW 4.17 : The End of Time

TWR 7 : The House of the Dead

SJA 3.4 : The Eternity Trap
SJA 3.5 : Mona Lisa's Revenge
SJA 3.6 : The Gift

DW 5.1 : The Eleventh Hour
DW 5.1.1 Meanwhile In The TARDIS 1
DW 5.2 : The Beast Below
DW 5.3 : Victory of the Daleks
DW 5.4 : The Time of Angels
DW 5.5 : Flesh and Stone
DW 5.5.1 : Meanwhile In The TARDIS 2
DW 5.6 : The Vampires of Venice
DW 5.7 : Amy's Choice
DW 5.8 : The Hungry Earth
DW 5.9 : Cold Blood
DW 5.10 : Vincent and the Doctor
DW 5.11 : The Lodger
DW 5.12 : The Pandorica Opens
DW 5.13 : The Big Bang

DW 5.14 : A Christmas Carol

SJA 4.1 : The Nightmare Man
SJA 4.2 : The Vault of Secrets
SJA 4.3 : Death of the Doctor
SJA 4.4 : The Empty Planet
SJA 4.5 : Lost in Time
SJA 4.6 : Goodbye, Sarah Jane Smith

SJA 5.1 : Sky
SJA 5.2 : The Curse of Clyde Langer
SJA 5.3 : The Man Who Never Was

DW 5.15 : Space
DW 5.16 : Time

DW 6.1 : The Impossible Astronaut
DW 6.2 : Day of the Moon
DW 6.3 : The Curse of the Black Spot
DW 6.4 : The Doctor's Wife
DW 6.5 : The Rebel Flesh
DW 6.6 : The Almost People
DW 6.7 : A Good Man Goes to War
DW 6.8 : Let's Kill Hitler
DW 6.9 : Night Terrors
DW 6.10 : The Girl Who Waited
DW 6.10.1 : Night and the Doctor: Good Night
DW 6.10.2 : Night and the Doctor: Bad Night
DW 6.10.3 : Night and the Doctor: First Night

TW 4 : Miracle Day
TW 4.1 : Miracle Day: Web of Lies

DW 6.11 : The God Complex
DW 6.11 : National Television Awards 2011 sketch
DW 6.12 : Up All Night
DW 6.12.1 : Rain Gods
DW 6.12 : Closing Time
DW 6.13 : The Wedding of River Song

DW 6.14 : The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe
DW 6.15 : Death Is the Only Answer
DW 6.16 : Pond Life
DW 7.1 : Asylum of the Daleks
DW 7.2 : Dinosaurs on a Spaceship
DW 7.2.1 : Good as Gold
DW 7.3 : A Town Called Mercy
DW 7.4 : The Power of Three
DW 7.5 : The Angels Take Manhattan
DW 7.5.1 : P.S.
DW 7.5.2 : The Great Detective
DW 7.6 : The Snowmen
DW 7.6 : Comic Relief Call The Midwife crossover 2013
DW 7.7.0 : The Bells of Saint John: A Prequel.
DW 7.7 : The Bells of Saint John
DW 7.8 : The Rings of Akhaten
DW 7.9 : Cold War
DW 7.10 : Hide
DW 7.11 : Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS
DW 7.12 : The Crimson Horror
DW 7.13 : Nightmare in Silver
DW 7.13.1 : He Said, She Said
DW 7.13.2 : Clarence and the Whisper Men
DW 7.13.3 : Strax Field Reports
DW 7.14 : The Name of the Doctor

DW 7.14.1 : The Last Day
DW 7.14.2 : Night of the Doctor
DW 7.15 : The Day of the Doctor
DW 7.15.1 : The Ultimate Guide
DW 7.15.2 : The Science of Doctor Who
DW 7.16 : Time of the Doctor

DW 8.1 : Deep Breath
DW 8.2 : Into the Dalek
DW 8.3 : Robot of Sherwood
DW 8.4 : Listen
DW 8.5 : Time Heist
DW 8.6 : The Caretaker
DW 8.7 : Kill the Moon
DW 8.8 : Mummy on the Orient Express
DW 8.9 : Flatline
DW 8.10 : In the Forest of the Night
DW 8.11 : Dark Water
DW 8.12 : Death in Heaven

DW 8.13 : Last Christmas

DW 9.0 : The Prologue
DW 9.11 : The Doctor's Meditation
DW 9.1 : The Magician's Apprentice
DW 9.2 : The Witch's Familiar
DW 9.3 : Under the Lake
DW 9.4 : Before the Flood
DW 9.5 : The Girl Who Died
DW 9.6 : The Woman Who Lived
DW 9.7 : The Zygon Invasion
DW 9.8 : The Zygon Inversion
DW 9.9 : Sleep No More
DW 9.10 : Face the Raven
DW 9.11 : Heaven Sent
DW 9.12 : Hell Bent
DW 9.13 : The Husbands of River Song

DW 9.14 : BBC Children in Need 2016: Fantastic Beasts Special

CLASS 1.1 : For Tonight We Might Die
CLASS 1.2 : The Coach with the Dragon Tattoo
CLASS 1.3 : Nightvisiting
CLASS 1.4 : Co-Owner of a Lonely Heart
CLASS 1.5 : Brave-ish Heart
CLASS 1.6 : Detained
CLASS 1.7 : The Metaphysical Engine, Or What Quill Did
CLASS 1.8 : The Lost

DW 10.0 : The Return of Doctor Mysterio

DW 10.1 : The Pilot
DW 10.2 : Smile
DW 10.3 : Thin Ice
DW 10.4 : Knock Knock
DW 10.5 : Oxygen
DW 10.6 : Extremis
DW 10.7 : The Pyramid at the End of the World
DW 10.8 : The Lie of the Land
DW 10.9 : Empress of Mars
DW 10.10: : The Eaters of Light
DW 10.11 : World Enough and Time
DW 10.12 : The Doctor Falls

DW 10.13 : Twice Upon A Time

DW 11.1 : The Woman Who Fell To Earth
DW 11.2.: The Ghost Monument
DW 11.3 : Rosa
DW 11.4 : Arachnids In The UK
DW 11.5 : The Tsuranga Conundrum
DW 11.6 : Demons Of The Punjab
DW 11.7 : Kerblam!
DW 11.8 : The Witchfinders
DW 11.9 : It Takes You Away
DW 11.10 : The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos

DW 11.11 : Resolution

DW 12.1 : Spyfall, Part 1
DW 12.2 : Spyfall, Part 2
DW 12.3 : Orphan 55
DW 12.4 : Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror
DW 12.5 : Fugitive of the Judoon
DW 12.6 : Praxeus
DW 12.7 : Can You Hear Me?
DW 12.8 : The Haunting of Villa Diodati
DW 12.9 : Ascension of the Cybermen
DW 12.10 : The Timeless Children

DW 12.11 : Revolution of the Daleks

DW 13.1 : The Halloween Apocalypse

DW 13.2 : War of the Sontarans

DW 13.3 : Once, Upon Time

DW 13.4 : Village of the Angels

DW 13.5 : Survivors of the Flux

DW 13.6 : The Vanquishers

DW 13.7 : Eve of the Daleks

RED 1.0: Introducing Doctor Who: Redacted

RED 1.1: SOS

RED 1.2: Hysteria

RED 1.3: Lost

RED 1.4: Angels

RED 1.5: Interrogation

RED 1.6: Recruits

RED 1.7: Requiem

RED 1.8: Ghosts

RED 1.9: Rescue

RED 1.10: Salvation

DW 13.8 : Legend of the Sea Devils

DW 13.9 : The Power of the Doctor

RED 2.1: Regrets

RED 2.2: Apex

RED 2.3: Underground

RED 2.4: Spaceman

RED 2.5: Reboot

RED 2.6: Redemption

DW 14.1: The Star Beast

DW 14.2: Wild Blue Yonder

DW 14.3: The Giggle

DW 15.1:  The Church on Ruby Road

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Having done of all this, part of me now misses the period when Doctor Who truly did rule television, the salad days of the late 00s when it had three shows on at the same time, of Christmas 2006 which brought The Runaway Bride, two episodes of Torchwood and the first episode of SJA nearly on concurrent days.  Now, we're lucky to get thirteen episodes in a year and thanks to the vagaries of television production, only two episodes have been made in the show's 50th year.  Something's got to be wrong if I was wishing there was another series of Torchwood on, hasn't it?

Updated  25/09/2013  In watching all of Who I've been following this viewing order and notices some glitches a plenty thanks to Turn Left.  The first is that Sarah Jane, Luke, Clyde and Maria lose their lives when saving the hospital on the Moon but according the AHistory's placement of SJA's first chunk of episodes (and so this list), they don't meet until way afterwards.  The other one is that only Jack, Gwen and Ianto are mentioned as losing their lives / being transported in the Sontaran incident which on this timeline is before Tosh and Owen die.  AHistory does nothing with this, still tucking the Sontaran incident in the "Turn Left" universe as above.  In production/broadcast order, such things were less of a problem or less noticable, but the internal dating makes it so.

Rationalisation:  the Turn Left universe is even more different, the events in a different order.  For some reason, Sarah Jane's first bunch of episodes happen earlier -- the Bane jumping in sooner because they see Earth as a softer touch after the Doctor dies etc.  Similar Grey turns up earlier because Jack didn't disappear off to the future with the Doctor and there's no Saxon/Master to contend with.  To an extent, Turn Left is a bit of a product of shared universe syndrome and that's the other thing which shows itself throughout all of this.  Throughout all the major global incidents inflicted on the planet during SJA, part of my brain is wondering what Torchwood has to say about it.  Do they have some way of knowing that someone else is dealing with it?  Or is their invisible hand helping them out?

Updated 06/10/2013  In terms of watching them in this order, despite all the Turn Left business, it holds up pretty well, especially for the gap year.  Post Journey's End, the Doctor travelling alone not wanting to have attachments means The Next Doctor, Dreamland and Planet of the Dead flow well into one another, then the six radio episodes of Torchwood acting as a neat prelude to Children of Earth, interrupted briefly by Waters of Mars to explain why the Doctor's not available to help them out, he's trying to avoid everything.  Compressing the season and a half of SJA in afterwards is strange because of the shared Earth problem, but not as badly as you might expect considering most of them were broadcast long before the preceding episodes and although The Wedding of Sarah Jane does look initially like it should put before The Waters of Mars somehow because the Doctor seems more in character, his final look in the TARDIS when he doesn't look like he knows if he will see Sarah Jane again, plus the foreshadowing from the Trickster about The Gate in The End of Time means its actually in just the right place, the Doctor's bravado throughout masking the pain of the mistake he made in The Waters of Mars and the expectation of his inevitable downfall, assuming you can attribute any kind of pop psychological profiling to a space time event with a personality and mythologically fictional one at that.

Updated  10/03/2014  Finally.  I completely forgot.  Added in the bottom end of Matt Smith's era with the contentious inclusion of The Time of the Doctor which I've bunged in as the prequel to The Day of the Doctor and Rose right at the top because if this is supposed to follow a strict chronology and continuity, the viewer must watch the 50th anniversary three times for each of the different Doctors at different points in their timeline, though I wouldn't recommend it to newbies which is why I've put them italics.  Though it'd be interesting to wonder what someone who'd never seen any of these episodes before would make of them having watched The Day of the Doctor first.  I think this is everything now.

Updated 25/08/2014  Not finally then.  Not everything then.  Might as well keep adding to this as new episodes appear or as is the case now seasons since all of the titles have been splattered about the place.  I'm working from the premise that there can't be much in the way of spoilers here if they've done this.  Teases perhaps.  Given the popularity of this post (and it's by far the most clicked on in the blog's history apart from the one about the coffee (long story) I was thinking about expanding it to include the classic series, but to be honest apart from trying to decide where to put K9 and Company, it's all one unbroken run from 1963 to 1989 and this pretty much does the trick with this covering the McGann era.

Update 14/04/2016  Hello again.  There's a quite big update in the middle of the list.  A commenter pointed out that in SJA's Death of the Doctor he says he's dropped Amy and Rory off at a Honeymoon planet, something he said he intended to do at the end of A Christmas Carol which I've had afterwards for all these years.  But looking at the transcripts, this is correct, so I've put A Christmas Carol before SJA s4 now rather than after.  Going forward, Capaldi episodes are being added as per.  We'll have to see what happens with Class.

Update 28/05/2016  Someone emailed to say that they're watching their way through Who/Torchwood/SJA for the first time in this order and said they were confused by a Matt Smith story turning up in the middle of the Tenth Doctor era.  I bunged The Day of the Doctor in there for strict continuity reasons but it occurs to me that it'd be horrendously damaging to watch it in that placement first time around.  So I've added a note as such in the list.

Updated 20/11/2016 Added Class and the Children in Need skit for 2016 (which is probably canonical since he's clearly in character).

Updated 24/7/2017 Added Doctor Who's Season Ten and the Christmas Special.

Updated 30/12/2018 Belatedly added Doctor Who's Season Eleven and the New Year's Day Special.

Updated 13/11/2022  Updated until Jodie's regeneration and added Redacted.

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