User:SOTO/Forum Archive/Tales from the Tardis/@comment-188432-20130325173913/@comment-188432-20130422004119

ArrowheadVenom wrote: Now that I've read through it, I've formulated the opinion that if the character is obviously meant to be the same one from the DW universe, then it really ought to be covered. The Policy doesn't seem to be terribly specific about this, but I think that I'd have to listen to it to decide whether or not the character is clearly intended to be the same character (not a duplicate, but the same one), then their stories should definitely be covered by the wiki. Well, see, that's still not what policy says. Valid sources policy doesn't have anything to do with continuity, because the related canon policy tells us that there is no canon. Therefore decisions are not based on continuity. As policy states, "a story cannot be ruled invalid simply because it is narratively discontinuous with other stories". The opposite is therefore true: a story cannot be ruled valid because it is continuous.

Continuity has nothing to do with inclusion.

Inclusion is all about authorial intent. Did the writer/copyright holder/producer intend for the story to be set in the normal DWU? If you can present language that throws doubt on this, then the thing is thrown out. Otherwise, it is assumed by the presence of the phrase "© British Broadcasting Corporation" that the story is a valid source on this wiki.

To return to an earlier example, the character of Death's Head is assumed to be the same character in Death's Head (1988) #10 as he was in #8, which featured the Seventh Doctor. But at that point, DH is firmly in the Marvel Universe and so we don't cover him. Equally, DH is to be found in the pages of The Transformers before coming to DWM, where the Doctor shrinks him to a more manageable size. He's obviously narratively continuous with, or the same character as in, his appearances in The Transformers universe. But that's a different franchise, and quite obviously we don't cover it.

I think it's clear that the character in The Shadow Heart is the same as the one in The Memory Box. But it's a different universe, a different franchise. If we choose to cover Vienna, then there's no real reason not to cover The Transformers or the Marvel Universe. Vienna was a guest in the DWU, just like Death's Head before her. Since Big Finish are allowing us the wonderfully clear way out, we should avail ourselves of that option and thereby save ourselves a lot of mental gymnastics.