Timeline

Timeline: Out-Of-Universe
The Mechanisms started out as Dr Carmilla and The Mechanisms. Maki Yamazaki began performing as Doctor Carmilla in 2008, and later acquired The Mechanisms as her backing band around autumn 2010. The initial lineup of the Mechanisms was Jonathan Sims, Anonymous (Scuzz), Frank Voss, Anonymous (Nastya), Morgan Wilkinson and Ben Below. Jessica Law joined shortly afterwards. A little while after that, Tim Ledsam joined the band, and Maki and the actor playing Scuzz left.

Early gigs featured a variety of songs, including One Eyed Jack's, Gunpowder Tim vs The Moon Kaiser, Cyberian Demons (which was later dropped from the band's repertoire), and the songs that would become Once Upon A Time (In Space). In 2012, the band crowdfunded a studio recording of the OUAT(IS) album on IndieGoGo, and took the set for a three-week run at the Edinburgh Fringe.

In 2012-13, Morgan and the actor playing Nastya went on hiatus from the band, and Rachel L. Hughes and Kofi Young joined to fill the gap. The new lineup wrote, crowdfunded and recorded a new story set, Ulysses Dies at Dawn, which they again took for a three-week run at the Edinburgh Fringe. The UDAD IndieGoGo campaign featured a high-level perk where backers could request a particular topic for a new song. Four such songs were written, and released as part of the Tales to be Told compilation, along with new, polished recordings of One Eyed Jack's and Gunpowder Tim vs The Moon Kaiser.

In 2013-14, Morgan and the actor playing Nastya returned from hiatus, and the full band of nine members worked on the third story set, High Noon over Camelot. As with the previous two, a studio recording was crowdfunded and the set was taken to the Edinburgh Fringe for three weeks. They also added the track Pellinore and the Beast to Tales to be Told.

After 2014, the band became generally less active, performing fewer gigs and putting out less music. In 2015, they performed a three-week run at the Edinburgh Fringe with one story set per week. They also released the mini-set Frankenstein. Also in 2015, Jess went on hiatus, and the actor playing Nastya left the band altogether.

In 2016, the band announced their decision not to attend the Edinburgh Fringe that year in a series of blog posts about their upcoming project, The Bifrost Incident. The Bifrost Incident was crowdfunded and released in early 2017, and taken to the Edinburgh Fringe that summer for a one-week run. As with the UDAD crowdfunding campagin, the TBI Kickstarter featured a high-level song request perk, so in early 2018 TBI was followed by a second compilation album, Tales to be Told, Volume II, featuring eight perk songs alongside two previously unrecorded crew member backstory songs, Lucky Sevens and Lost In The Cosmos.

The band remained relatively inactive from this point, until in 2019 they announced the Death To The Mechanisms gig, which took place in January 2020, and marked the official break-up of the band. A live album of Death to the Mechanisms was released in May 2020.

Timeline: In-Universe
'''Notes: First, the order of joining/leaving the crew is generally assumed to match order of joining/leaving the band. '''

'''Secondly, the timeline presented here is not necessarily canon and should not be viewed as such. It's simply an effort to piece things together as much as possible.'''

It's copied from a Google Doc, which can be found here. I've made some edits and cleaned up the annotations somewhat, but this does mean that there's less specific credits to people for providing information. Thanks to Elliott (on tumblr as @voidfoxstarlight) for creating the original document and several others, including myself, for contributing. Citations are needed.


 * Carmilla’s backstory- in chronological order, it most likely is Rocket Girl first, then Homesick, After The Bomb, Thick as Thieves, Lullaby, and finally Pin Cushion.
 * “One-Eyed Jacks” takes place, Jonny meets Carmilla, gets mechanised
 * “How the Aurora was Won” takes place
 * Cyberian Revolution: Nastya dies, gets mechanised, meets Carmilla and Jonny and joins the crew
 * “Lucky Sevens” takes place, Ashes meets Carmilla, gets mechanised and joins the crew, burns down Malone
 * Ivy gets mechanised, joins the crew
 * Sometime prior to this, Brian crashes into a planet with no memory of his life. He becomes a scientist and learns how to revive the dead. Brian revives a priest on the request of the priest’s daughter, and the priest leads an angry mob to shoot Brian into space.
 * “Lost in the Cosmos” takes place
 * Carmilla mechanises Brian, mostly using his own technology to do so. She installs his morality switch because she finds the “moral ambiguity of the events leading to his supposed demise” amusing. Brian joins the crew.
 * Doctor Carmilla is pushed out an airlock. As the Toy Soldier would not be present, this cannot be the airlock incident that the fiction Who Killed Doctor Carmilla is referring to.
 * Jonny gets arrested, and so the Toy Soldier is bought by the Mechanisms as a backup singer from the Bittersnipes.
 * Lashings takes place, presumably only a few hours after the Toy Soldier joins.
 * Dr. Carmilla and The Mechanisms concert takes place. (We have recordings of Rocket Girl and Homesick from that show.)
 * “Breakup” takes place. Tim is not present, but the Toy Soldier is, so it's safe to assume it's somewhere in this timeframe.
 * “Gunpowder Tim vs The Moon Kaiser” takes place
 * Tim gets mechanised and joins the crew.
 * Shortly thereafter or during, Carmilla leaves again, and Who Killed Doctor Carmilla takes place. (Maki has said that Carmilla wasn't pushed out an airlock, but it is unsure what actually happened.)
 * The Mechanisms find King Cole's war. The events of Once Upon a Time in Space take place. Concurrent things- Eleven takes place at the same time as this as well. The Toy Soldier was in the war at least two times, once before joining the Mechanisms and once afterwards.
 * Sixty years after, Alice takes place.
 * Port Mahon 2011 takes place, with Jonny saying that they’re on the run from Dr. Carmilla and that Tim is their newest member. They perform Once Upon a Time In Space, so they must have written it at that point. It's unknown whether Alice has happened yet or not.
 * Marius and Raphaella join the crew.
 * “The Ignominious Demise of Dr. Pilchard” takes place. Carmilla has left at this point, but she is implied to still be present in the song.
 * Ulysses Dies At Dawn takes place, presumably several years after Once Upon a Time in Space.
 * Cyberian Demons takes place, roughly concurrent to/just before the Mechanisms writing Ulysses Dies at Dawn.
 * The Mechanisms stop at the burned remains of the City to pick up spare parts and decide to write Ulysses Dies At Dawn, thousands of years after the events of the story take place.
 * High Noon Over Camelot takes place. The earliest the actual album could have been written is a century after the events of the story.
 * “Interview Transcript 34/08/7012” takes place (Could take place anytime between the events of High Noon Over Camelot and Death to the Mechanisms)
 * The Mechanisms approach the Yggdrasil system. “Out” takes place, Nastya leaves the crew.
 * The Bifrost Incident takes place.
 * The Mechanisms write The Bifrost Incident
 * Death to the Mechanisms takes place, with the Toy Soldier dying last on their mental timescale and Ashes dying last chronologically as they were jumped forward in time.