Each spin of the Earth - a revolution at an arbitrary rate decided by the vagaries of cosmic history - results in a period known as a day, a twenty-hour slice of time.
When you're time travellers, the concept of a day - from midnight to midnight - can get lost: the Doctor and his companions arrive on different planets in different eras at different times of the day. They can show up during someone's lunch break or when they're asleep, at the breaking of dawn or the coming of night.
Time, it seems, is very much of the essence…
In the early hours of the morning, a rock star gives a one-off comeback performance within a virtual reality dreamscape… Over breakfast, a woman waits for the love of her life to walk through the doors of a café… The afternoon sees vital peace talks between two warring factors… A new UNIT recruit faces a terror at dusk on his first day on the job…
Throughout their adventures, the Doctor and his companions meet many people - security guards on a night shift, mysterious space travellers riding the vortex, mobs of blobby kobolds, a family sitting down to watch TV - but all too often their interaction is brief, a fleeting connection in the web of history.
A Day in the Life features sixteen stories whose total 'running time' adds up to a single twenty-four-hour period: a fictional 'day in the life of the universe' made up of fragments from throughout time and space. Given the temperamental nature of the TARDIS and the round-the-clock events that go on every single day, it is no wonder that the Doctor often arrives at his destinations at differing times. As we leave one story and join the next, we switch location and era - but not the hands on the clock…