(back to the doctor who bewildering reference guide)
timewyrm: exodus
author:    terrance dicks
isbn:    0 426 20357 7
confusion quotient: 0.568



p.1
25 000 BC: According to dating of the Epic of Gilgamesh this figure is too early by a factor of ten.

p.3
Operation Sealion: The German plan for an invasion of England in late 1940, preceded by a Luftwaffe offensive to gain air superiority over the RAF.  In actuality the weather in spring 1940 was ideal, helping the Dunkirk evacuation between May 26 to June 14 of 338,000 British, French, and Belgian troops.

p.5
Festival of Britain 1951: In actuality a celebration calculated by the Labour government to distract the English from rationing, the Cold War and the Burgess-MacLean scandal with impressive architecture, the National Health Service and nuclear power.

p.6
Skylon: (Text submitted by Richard, or Skywarp McGill) The Skylon was a very tall, 'futuristic' looking construction, a bit like a rocket, that was on display at the 1951 festival, as a kind of blatant imitation of the Trilon, as constructed for the New York World Fair thing in the 30s.
Commander Millington's Office: In the serial "The Curse of Fenric" Commander Millington, a military intelligence officer, had an office identical to a cipher room in Berlin to play out his obsession with the Nazi mindset, an aid in deciphering codes.

p.7
Edward VIII and Queen Wallis: After the death of George V Edward, Prince of Wales was to become king.  He became engaged to Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee, and rather than leave her to become king he abdicated.  He was a Nazi sympathiser and was effectively exiled from the UK before the war.

p.8
Sir Oswald Mosley: (1896-1980)Founder of the British Union of Fascists in 1932 and its leader until his internment for openly supporting Hitler, he held office with the Conservatives and Labour before the war.

p.9
Meddling Monk: One of the Doctor's own people who meddled in time for selfish reasons.  He left their home planet 50 years after the Doctor in an advanced model TARDIS, and was thwarted twice in "The Time Meddler" and "The Daleks' Masterplan".
tanner: 12 pennies in a shilling, 20 shillings in a pound.  Got it?  (The pound sterling was decimalised in 1971.)  A bob is a shilling.

p.10
Ersatz: imitation.

p.11
Dixon of Dock Green: BBC TV drama from the early sixties, one of the first cop shows.  The policeman in Totter's Lane in "An Unearthly Child" is an homage to Sgt. Dixon.

p.12
Wie heissen Sie, Dummkopf?: What's your name, dummy?
Sie still! Sit still! (imperative)
Namen? Names?

p.13
anschnauzen: snorting; a Nazi interrigation technique calculated to disorient.

p.16
Wehrmacht: Defense Force.
Dome of Discovery:

p.21
Arnold the Judas: Judas, the 13th disciple of Jesus, betrayed him to the Romans.  Also, Arnold Rimmer from "Red Dwarf" has a middle name: Judas.

p.23
Neo-Nazi Classical: Albert Speer was a Nazi architect who designed the Nuremburg Stadium, the Chancellery and many other grandiose edifices in this style.
New Berlin: Actually, Hitler wanted to call the new capital Germania.  And since, in this alternate history, the Allies didn't demolish the old one, he had another use for slave labour.
Waterloo Bridge: London landmark on the Thames just downstream of Hungerford train bridge and Westminster Bridge, the one the Daleks crossed in "The Dalek Invasion of Earth".  An explosive Dalek battle scene for "Remembrance of the Daleks" was filmed there, and the Museum of the Moving Image is nearby.
The Strand: London street running from Trafalgar Square to Fleet Street, just west of Waterloo Bridge.
The Savoy: Swanky hotel on the south side of the Strand, opposite Exeter Street.
The Ritz:

p.25
Noughts and Crosses: X's and O's.

p.26
Hesitation, deviation, repetition: hallmarks of the BBC radio panel quiz show "Just a Minute", hosted by Nicholas Parsons with Derek Nimmo, Peter Jones, Kenneth Williams and Clement Freud.  Contestants must speak for 60 seconds on a subject without interruption for hesitation, deviation or.. oh bugger.

p.27
Heraus, Schweinhund!  Raus!: Get out, pig-dog!  Out!

p.29
automatic pistol: Automatic pistols, such as the Luger, have a single-action reflex and do not need to be cocked.

p.30
the OK Corral: Site of the gunfight between Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan Earp and Wyatt's friend John "Doc" Holliday and the Clanton gang on Oct.  26, 1881.  Billy Clanton and Tom and Frank McLaury were killed in the space of thirty seconds.  The 1st Doctor assisted in a completely dissimilar gunfight, but at the same place and time, and with some of the same gunfighters.
Nach Festival, bitte.  Schnell!: To the Festival, please.  Quickly!

p.32
The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley: Robert Burns. (Text submitted by Jamal Hannah) quoted by the Doctor in (I think) "Terror of the Zygons". some Tom Baker story, anyway.  Probably 'Terror of the Zygons', since it takes place in Scotland.  Burns is the quintessential Scottish poet, next to Dave McIntee.

p.37
Natürlich, gnädiges Fräulein: Naturally, dear girl.
No one expects the Reichinspektor-General: Shameless in-joke for Monty Python fans.  An episode featured a running gag in which a character would come to say "I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition" upon which the Spanish Inquisition would burst in, say "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition" and attempt unsuccessfulyto torture the actors.

p.39
Johann Schmidt: The Doctor sometimes goes undercover as Doctor John Smith, the first instance in "The Wheel in Space".  This is merely the name's german homonym.

p.44
dogsbody: lackey.

p.46
time path indicator: see "Timewyrm: Genesys".

p.49
Dalek: Augmented alien blob inhabiting a robotic travel machine, of a race which regularly threatens the Doctor.  Its first mention in the New Adventures, unusual because the editors technically didn't have the right to include any in the series.
kedgeree: A dish made of cold fish, boiled rice, eggs and condiments, served hot.

p.50
Kommen Sie!: Come here (third person imperative)

p.51
sehr gut: very good.
Reichsmuseum: Formerly the British Museum which still stands in Bloomsbury, south of Russell Square and north of New Oxford Street.  Marx studied there, and the Rosetta Stone is kept there.
Rubenesque: Similar to the women in the pictures of Flemish baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640); voluptuous, chunky.
Wagnerian: The same only to extreme; add a martial Norse/Teutonic feel to the scene.

p.52
Sachshausen concentration camp: Possibly Sachsenhausen concentration camp, as large as Buchenwald and Dachau.

p.59
two million square metres: Two kilometres long by one kilometre wide.  Very large.
Martin Bormann: Hitler's private secretary.  The circumstances of his death in 1945 are uncertain and he may have escaped to South America, the highest-ranking Nazi suspected to have done so.

p.61
no worse than the playground: Oh yes.
Real History After Dunkirk: Guderian and Rommel were ordered to hold back from cutting off the Allied escape from Dunkirk so that Goering could obliterate them with the Luftwaffe.  He failed and the Allied Expeditionary Force was allowed to escape.  The Luftwaffe were unable to achieve air superiority over the RAF; Hitler decided to bomb civilian targets instead of airfields and radar stations after the English bombed Berlin.  Weather in late summer 1940 was good, no freak storms sunk any number of ships of the Royal Navy, and Operation Sealion was called off.

p.63
.303 rifle with bayonet:  Possibly a Mauser Gewehr '98 K.

p.66
Hermit on top of a mountain: Mystic tutor of the Doctor on Gallifrey.  Possibly K'Anpo Rinpoche ("Planet of the Spiders"), possibly Azmael ("The Twin Dilemma").

p.72
Whitehall: Runs from Trafalgar Square, past the Admiralty, Scotland Yard, the War Office, the Horse Guards, the Ministry of Defence, Downing Street, the Cenotaph and the Foreign Office to Westminster Bridge and the Houses of Parliament.

p.73
black magic: Himmler really was into some freaky stuff.  He took seriously any religious doctrine which could justify his racial ideas.  Pagan, Norse, Greco-Roman, Islamic, anything.

p. 79
Sten gun: hastily and cheaply manufactured by the British at the start of the war and expected to be crap, it was invaluable.  So why do the BFK have them?

p.81
The Red Slayer:

p.86
Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely: The historian John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton,1834-1902, was one of the greatest spokesmen of English liberalism.  He served in the House of Commons from 1859 to 1865 and was created 1st Baron Acton in 1869.
It was Acton's contention that "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  Great men are almost always bad men."
So maybe it wasn't Thomas Jefferson said that.
Sisterhood salve: The Sisterhood of Karn manufactures a rejuvenating salve useful for traumatic regenerations in Time Lords.  The Doctor had occasion to visit Karn to defeat "The Brain of Morbius".

p.87
broken-down drug-addicted ex-pilot: Riechsmarshall Hermann Goering, leader of the Luftwaffe.
failed chicken farmer: Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler, leader of the SS and the Gestapo.
unsuccessful snob of a champagne salesman with a fake title: Joachim von Ribbentrop, Foreign Minister.
ratty little lecher embittered by a club foot: Joseph Goebbels, Propaganda Minister.
paranoid failed art student: Adolf Hitler.

p.89
washed down the plughole: In the 1st Doctor serial  "Planet of Giants" the TARDIS crew were miniaturised and almost drowned in a sink plughole.
Rochester, Gravesend, Southampton: London satellites dowstream on the Thames.
Nature abhors a vacuum: René Descartes.

p.90
pressure point: In "Survival" the Doctor stunned a man but touching his forehead with one finger.
Venusian nerve pinch: plagiarised from the Vulcan nerve pinch from "Star Trek".  The 3rd Doctor favoured Venusian martial arts.

p.97
Attila the Hun: Commander of the nomadic Huns who harassed the eastern half of the Roman Empire during the 440s and devastated much of the western half of the empire in 451-52.

p.100
Marlene Dietrich: Non-Nazi German sex goddess (1901-1992).  Popularised trousers for women.
O-level Cheetah: Examinations of the  Graduate Certificate of Education (GCE)taken in five to eight subjects at about 16 in the English education system.  Ace was partially turned into a Cheetah in "Survival".

p.102
Laurel and Hardy: Hollywood slapstick duo of the twenties and thirties.  Stan Laurel of Lancashire, England was thin; Oliver Hardy of Georgia, USA was corpulent and bombastic.  Hence the resemblence to Goebbels and Goering.

p.103
Ludendorff: General Erich Ludendorff (1865-1937) commanded the Western Front with Hindenburg in 1917 and 1918.  He participated in the unsuccessful 1923 Nazi Putsch and sat as a National Socialist in the Reichstag from 1924 to 1928.
Odeonplatz:

p.105
Max-Josephsplatz:
yellow Fiat: Wasn't the philosophy  painting cars 'any colour you like, as long as it's black' in the old days?

p.117
keyring: A Stattenheim remote control.  First heard of in "The Mark of the Rani", the Rani had remote control of her TARDIS.  The 2nd Doctor obtained one in "The Two Doctors", something of a mystery as the 6th Doctor didn't have one.  The continuity of "The Two Doctors " is confusing.

p.123
Deutscher Hof:

p.127
Court of St.James: Hall in St. James' Palace on the Mall, down the road from Buckingham Palace.  Ambassadors are accredited there, which would explain Goebbels' visit.

p.129
Karinhall: Goering's hunting estate and palace.

p.140
Professor Higgins: Male lead of "My Fair Lady", a Lerner & Lowe musical based on George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion".  Higgins was a language expert who educated a working-class girl, Eliza Doolittle.
nurse: The Doctor has never had a personal nurse on-screen.

p.145
Hotel Adlon:
Unter den Linden:

p.146
Nazi papers:  Possibly the Volkischer Beobachter, the Nazi Party Organ.
concentration camps for six years:  Between 1933 and 1938 the Nazis oppressed the Jews and opened concentration camps.  On the night of November 9th, 1938 267 synagogues were burned and 20 000 people arrested.

p.147
Tiergarten:

p.151
Kronprinzenstrasse, off Kurfurstendamm:
Chancellery:

p.153
ultimatum: the British ultimatum expired on September 3 at 1100 hours.  Hitler likely had more warning of it than he does in "Exodus".  Chamberlain announced the declaration of war at 1115.

p.155
old cathedral at one end of Kurfurstendamm:

p.156
thick glasses: these people all have very weak eyes.
French ultimatum: The French ultimatum, like the British one, was delivered on September 1.  The French declared war after 1100 on the 3rd, but before their own ultimatum had expired.
p.158
unsatisfactory advance: This is September 3, two days after German troops entered Poland.  The Poles did not surrender until 27 September.  Hitler did spend time in Poland during the campaign.

p.159
Tell me about your uncle: The thick glasses are mind-control tools.

p.166
Prinz-Albrechtstrasse:

p.167
Borusa and Flavia: Cardinal, later Lord President, Borusa was the Doctor's schoolmaster on Gallifrey.  He appeared in "The Deadly Assassin", "The Invasion of Time", "The Arc of Infinity", and "The Five Doctors", after which he was trapped for eternity in a block of stone.  Chancellor Flavia also appeared in "The Five Doctors".

p.169
repugnant: Himmler became physically ill on the only occasion he visited a concentration camp and witnessed a mass grave being dug and filled.  His aversion to blood explains why he was such a bad chicken farmer.
Holy Grail: The mythical cup which Jesus offered communion from at the Last Supper, and which caught blood from the wound in his side on the cross.  Joseph of Arimathea, the man who donated his tomb to Jesus, is said to have brought the Grail to England, fueling the Arthurian myth.
Golden Dawn: (Text submitted by Jamal Hannah) reference to the grandly named Estoteric Order of the Golden Dawn formed in the 1880's(?) which still exists today. arguably the most influential and important western occult group of the last hundred years. I cannot summarize the group adequately other than to say that it syncretized material from just aobut everywhere, and tended to see themselves as doing good and advancing the spiritual nature of their members and the world. It continues to this day though various groups duke it out as to who has the claim to call themselves the "real" Golden Dawn. Most famous members: William Butler Yeats and Aleister Crowley. IRL the Nazis persecuted members of the Golden Dawn living in Germany. They did not like them at all.
Cosmic Ice: Dream-inspired cosmic theory.  The planets and moons of the solar system, and the milky way, are so much quantities of ice resulting from the collision of a 'water star' and a red giant.
Atlantis: Mythical island whose destruction has been witnessed three times in 'Doctor Who', and each time in a different way.
Secret Masters: (Text submitted by Jamal Hannah) In western syncretic occultism, the Secret Masters are mysterious folk who benevolently shape human affairs. often cited as the guiding force between human enlightenment. They manifest themselves overtly in altered states of consciousness or manipulate from behind the scenes. Remind us of anyone we know?  The 7th Doctor.

p.175
dilly dilly: From the children's folk song "Lavender Blue".

p.177
The War Lords: myopic leather-obsessed humanoid alien race which the Doctor fought in "The War Games".  Assisted by a renegade Time Lord known as the War Chief, the War Lords kidnapped groups of soldiers from major wars from Earth history: the First World War, the Russo-Japanese War, the Boer War, the Crimean War, the American Civil War, the Stuart Rebellion of 1745 and the Roman Wars.  Through a series of battles they intended to cobble together an army of the Earth's best soldiers to take over the galaxy.

p.178
virgin: Fan fiction has been written to suggest that Ace had carnal knowledge long before this point.  The incident is mentioned in "Happy Endings", so it's canon.

p.180
sonic screwdriver: The sonic screwdriver's first appearence was in "Fury from the Deep".  It served the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th Doctors until it was destroyed by a Terileptil in "The Visitation".  However, it's not finished yet.
Gallifreyan Army Knife: Invented exclusively for this passage.
Capitol Guard: Probably the Chancellery Guard seen in "The Deadly Assassin", "The Invasion of Time", "Arc of Infinity", "The Five Doctors" and "The Trial of a Time Lord".
Castellan Spandrell: Commissioner of the Chancellery Guard in "The Deadly Assassin".

p.184
Night of the Long Knives: June 30, 1934.  77 men were summarily executed after an alleged plot against Hitler's régime.  Hitler purged his rival Ernst Roehm of the social revolutionary wing of the Party, the Sturm-Anschluss (storm troopers, SA or Brownshirts) leadership and the Catholic leader Erich Klauserer.  Hitler feared Roehm's desire for a second revolution and the union of the SA with the regular army.  Roehm and the SA were too powerful.
Bendlerstrasse:

p.186
regenerate: Time Lords have a fixed cycle of twelve regenerations ("The Deadly Assassin"), giving them thirteen lives.

p.187
Celestial Intervention Agency: Top-secret Gallifreyan government agency.  Since intervention in Time is officially forbidden to Time Lords, only a covert operations group can keep the Universe safe for Time Lords.  The Doctor became an unwilling deep-cover agent for the CIA after his first trial in "The War Games".

p.194
SIDRATS: inferior TARDISes manufactured by the War Chief for the War Lords.  They could materialise and dematerialise and were dimensionally transcendental, but had a limited lifespan.  The acronym stands for Space and Inter-Dimensional Robot All-purpose Transporter and is pronounced S-eye-drat.
reactor: The first atomic pile was completed on December 2, 1942 in the squash court at the University of Chicago.  This scene is in the Axis countries in September 1939.

p.197
Quasimodo: Protagonist of Victor Hugo's 1833 novel "The Hunchback of Notre Dame".

p.199
Inquisition: Medieval church court instituted to seek out and prosecute heretics.

p.204
armoured column: Armoured columns cannot be thrown together in a matter of days, especially when the armed forces are otherwise occupied in Poland.

p.205
supermen: term coined by Friedrich Nietzche, a 19th-century German philosopher and originator of existentialism and some Nazi philosophy.

p.206
Rommel: Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, who commanded an armored division in the battle of France in 1940, led the Afrika Korps until their defeat in late 1942 at El Alamein, and helped in the defence of France aainst the Allies.  He committed suicide in the summer of 1944 rather than face charges of participation in a plot against Hitler.

p.207
tattoo: a military band concert with marching bands, brass bands and pipe and drum bands usually held on a large parade ground or stadium.
A good soldier doesn't die for his country, he gets the enemy to die for his: General George S. Patton.

p.209
brilliant success:There is evidently a stitch in time here to save the narrative.  Hitler has only just left Berlin to help with the unsatisfactory advances in Poland two days after the invasion started.  The Polish campaign was not an unqualified success; it took a month for the Germans and Russians together to defeat the poorly-armed Poles.

p.216
Pyhhric victory: A ruinous victory.  The term was coined after Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, a brilliant general who won battles at high cost.

p.217
Felsennest:

p.221
Aachen: German city near Belgium and the Netherlands.  It was Charlemagne's northern capital and the center of Carolingian civilization in the 8th Century AD. German kings were crowned there between 936 and 1531.
Rodert:

p.222
Abbeville: French coastal town and the destination of the southern end of the pincer movement which trapped the British Expeditionary Force and other Allies at Dunkirk.
Boulogne and Calais: French coastal towns on the English Channel.
Guderian: Heinz Guderian, a German officer who devised the Blitzkrieg strategy.  Commanded the German armed forces in the offensives of 1938, 39 and 40.  Was less successful on the Eastern Front in 1942.  Chief of the general staff in 1944 and early 1945.

p.225
Stukas: The Junkers Ju-87 Stuka, a German dive bomber usuccessfully used by the Luftwaffe to destroy the British Expeditionary Force on the beach at Dunkirk.  It was much more successful in earlier Blitzkrieg actions where the Germans had air superiority.

p.231
South Bank: The South Bank of the Thames in London.

p.232
hurdy-gurdy: Actually a barrel-piano ed by a street musician.  The hurdy-gurdy was a mechanical violin with a similar action used in French courts until the 18th Century.  Also easily confused with the hurdy-gurdy is the barrel-organ used in English churches after the 18th Century.
Battersea Park: South Bank recreation area just north of Balham and adjoining the now-disused Battersea Power Station and Chelsea Bridge, south of Victoria train station.
 



Copyright  Eric Briggs  1998