Board Thread:Inclusion debates/@comment-5253713-20150518174430/@comment-188432-20150604151017

You're still kinda missing the point. Allusion to a character or concept that an author doesn't own, or a publishing company doesn't license, does not disqualify that story from inclusion here. What DQs a story is when they directly name a character for which they have no legal rights.

Thus, Time's Champion and Campaign can't be used here because they're charity works, and no rights were secured from anyone to publish with copyrighted characters.

Lemme try to make this clear with two examples from the Pertwee era.

The P.R.O.B.E. series of videos uses Liz Shaw, a character wholly owned by the BBC. BBV Productions formally requested a license for the character, and obtained one. But they don't have a license for the whole of the DWU, nor does that series make any explicit reference to that wider universe. Thus, the series does not offend Rule 2.

Conversely, Richard Franklin wrote a book called "The Killing Stone", featuring Captain Yates and really the whole season 8 gang of regulars by name. He didn't obtain permission from the BBC. The BBC subsequently objected most strenuously, forcing him to rename the characters and remove references to UNIT and other concepts from DW. The resulting, "street-legal" book was in no way, not even by allusion, connected to the DWU. Thus, the original, illegal book and the resulting pale imitation have been excised from this wiki.

Rule 2 revolves solely around whether permission was obtained from the relevant rights holders, and whether the writer actually violates someone else's copyright. Allusion is not violation.

However, when the author directly comes out and says that their stories are not set in the DWU, then Rule 4 kicks in. So Larry Miles' Faction Paradox and Paul Cornell's Bernice Summerfield are two entirely different kettles of fish. Miles has specifically said his FP series is not set in the DWU. Indeed the series was written as an explicit reaction against its usage by BBC Books. Cornell has never made any such statement about Benny — although licensors Big Finish were in a bit of a bind for series 1 — and series 1 only — and Gary Russell did a little song and dance at the launch of that series that was almost immediately reversed. It's been a long, long, long time — 13 years or so — since there's been any cause to doubt that the Benny audios firmly take place in the DWU. And any doubt that might have existed has recently been erased by the obvious joining of the two franchises in the most recent Benny/Seventh Doctor series.

I would also point out that we use a work like AHistory with a particularly large grain of salt. The writers are simply giving their considered opinion about various stories. But there's no reason to believe that they are any more capable of doing good scholarship than we are. Our overriding goal at Tardis is to create a unique reference, not to slavishly conform to the conventional wisdom that is created by "published fans". Indeed, we have a responsibility to carefully examine such essay-masquerading-as-reference-books, because we have a wider reach than AHistory ever could.

Still, it's worth pointing out that none of the text you quote from still exists in the latest edition of AHistory. Indeed, the whole of the essay about different terms in Benny stories just ain't there. Actually, the word terminology doesn't even appear at any point. And the current edition firmly and fully catalogues Benny stories as a part of the DWU. The Benny essay this time out instead revolves around trying to work the Benny Box Sets into the authors' sense of DWU history.

Why was the terminology essay dropped? Maybe because you're simply wrong: Benny stories do not "consistently use alternate names", so therefore that essay was built on an increasing untruth. That essay applies really to a very narrow part of the Benny franchise — mainly only to those novels of the 1990s — something that's far removed from the reality of Benny today. Stories like Death and the Daleks — itself now over 11 years old — immediately dispel that notion. There, it's crystal clear that the Daleks are thoroughly tied into the Fifth Axis — a long-running nemesis of Benny. Hard to ask for a better DWU referent than the Daleks:


 * BENNY:... because I'm talking to the bloody Daleks, who couldn't exterminate their way out of a bloody tomato!
 * DALEK: Silence! Daleks are the superior beings! Daleks are destined to rule the universe and control all other forms of life!
 * BENNY: Struck a nerve, did I? Sooooooo, what's your connection with the Fifth Axis?
 * DALEK: The Fifth Axis serve us. They embrace the philosophy of the Daleks. They conquer in our name, and prepare world for our arrival. They are human-Daleks.
 * from Death and the Daleks, part one

It becomes virtually impossible to argue that Benny stories aren't a part of the DWU when you've got Lisa Bowerman's Benny going toe-to-toe against Nick Briggs's Daleks.

In any case, MoS, you haven't advanced any new arguments to help better define T:VS. As Shambala108 pointed out a long time ago, there have been several conversations to determine precisely how the issue of copyright plays into our acceptance of a story on this wiki. As you've advanced no new arguments, T:POINT would seem to apply.