Forum:Is The Infinity Doctors canon?

I move that we rule The Infinity Doctors non-canonical, in the sense that it can't be used as a valid soure for other articles. "He's clearly not the eighth Doctor of mainstream continuity. He does look like Paul McGann."
 * The incarnation of the Doctor is uncertain, with different reviewers saying "it's definitely the Eighth Doctor", "it may be the First Doctor prior to leaving Gallifrey", or it may be a future or alternative timeline version of whom we've never heard elsewhere

- Lance Parkin


 * The time setting is, by the author's admission, intentionally vague. With no clear setting, how can we possibly speak of any of the events with anything like certainty?
 * Reviewers can't seem to agree whether the book even happens in the normal DWU
 * Lance Parkin said in an interview with the old BBCi that it was meant to be book one of a two book series, with the second book containing a "reset button" that would allow the story to return to the "normal" DWU. Without this reset button, the story languishes in a weird nether world
 * Because of the vast narrative uncertainties, it is extremely problematic to allow even basic information from this story into our other pages. Basic factual writing requires that we define the who-what-when-why-and-how of situations, but the novel doesn't allow us to precisely know the who, what or when of almost any statement we'd care to craft.

Obviously, I'm not suggesting that we delete the page The Infinity Doctors, but I think we do need to quarantine it from the rest of our pages. Thoughts? 04:57: Fri 20 Apr 2012


 * I agree. It doesn't make any sense in the context of DWU canon.  Tardis1963   talk  01:02, April 22, 2012 (UTC)


 * I also agree. Just makes pages weird and confusing. OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 12:17, April 22, 2012 (UTC)

I vehemently disagree. If we start picking and choosing what is canon we're no better than the Trek people. If the BBC breaks its longstanding rule and comes out and says it's not canon, then OK. Otherwise what's next - the entire Eighth Doctor Adventures line? "Fear Her"? What about all the comic strips? Don't fall into that trap. Simply police the thing to remove speculation based on facts not in evidence, and restrict the use of events in the book to something like "during an unknown incarnation XYZ happened". Simple. If this licensed book or any other licensed work is declared non-canon just because it's inconvenient or difficult to work with, then delete everything that isn't directly taken from TV, or simply kill this website because it'll be useless. 70.72.223.215talk to me 19:36, April 22, 2012 (UTC)
 * You do have a point there... But I think the problem here is that nearly everything written about the book would have to be either speculation or very careful. But you do have a point. OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 19:59, April 22, 2012 (UTC)
 * Also keep in mind that Telos published 2 novellas with unspecified Doctors too - The Cabinet of Light being one. And that one pegs the entire Time Hunter continuity. So you can see where a domino effect is possible. 70.72.223.215talk to me 20:13, April 22, 2012 (UTC)


 * I think you've missed the point, 70.72, that the author himself does not believe the book to be in continuity. If the author doesn't believe it's the "real" continuity, why should we?


 * I'd point out, too, that the issue isn't that it's an "unspecified" Doctor. It is, rather, that the author has explicitly said that it's "not the eighth Doctor of mainstream continuity".   There's a big difference between an unidentifiable Doctor and a Doctor who's positively identified as being out of mainstream continuity. We also know details about how there was supposed to be a second book, and that the second book was going to show the relationship between the universe in which The Infinity Doctors took place and the genuine DWU.  Because that second book didn't happen, however, there was no "reset button" and The Infinity Doctors was left out on its own island of continuity.


 * Though I understand your concerns about bad precedents being set, you're overreacting. This thread is only talking about the very narrow issue of this one book, where there is significant evidence — just as there is with The Curse of Fatal Death — that the piece is not a part of the normal continuity.


 * That said, thanks for raising the issue of precedents so that I can categorically state that the thread is not setting one.


 * I think, too, you're misapprehending the current usage of the phrase "Is X canon?" on this wiki. We're not trying to stop anyone from believing what they want to about their personal canon.  Nor are we actually trying to define what canon means for DW fandom in general.  What it really means is, "Is X allowable under our canon policy?"   All we're saying is that there must be limits to what this wiki covers.  The flip side of what you're arguing is very much scarier for me.  If we have no limits, then the wiki will become unmanageable.  There must be some metric by which we define our borders, or we'll be pickin' Rose/Dodo lesbian fan fic off the walls.  This is why we have recently introduced the very simple notion that the fiction must be licensed by an appropriate copyright holder and it must not be parodic or obviously intended to be out of continuity.  This arose from a longlived and productive discussion that's ended with formalisation about which specific BBV releases are covered here and which aren't.


 * All of this still lets in a heck of a lot of stuff, and firmly protects the EDA range, the John and Gillian stuff, and most everything you've mentioned above. In fact, I've probably uploaded more John and Gillian-related stuff to the wiki than anyone!


 * So don't worry, this isn't the first battle the long campaign to turn this into a TV-only DW wiki. Nor is this an effort to actually delete the page. The Infinity Doctors will always be on this wiki.  It's just that it will not be a valid source for the writing of other articles.  This will force all information about The Infinity Doctors to be on that page, which will make that page much better and clearer.   23:56: Mon 23 Apr 2012

I disagree with this suggestion as well, though perhaps not as vehemently as the anon above. I think that the key phrase in the Parkin quote is "of mainstream continuity". The Infinity Doctors exists as a sort of side-step from the main EDA range, but it's not parodic and it's just as authorized.

In terms of continuity, I think it's similar to the situation with the Faction Paradox range. Thanks to The Ancestor Cell, pretty much all of the FP-branded fiction — and indeed some of the previous EDAs touched by the War — take place in an "aborted timeline." But we include information from the FP series, with appropriate caveats. Now, we don't know exactly what the relationship between TID and the rest of the Eighth Doctor stories is, but the possibilities include an alternate timeline for the Eighth Doctor, or a young Doctor prior to An Unearthly Child. It could even be the Eighth Doctor of the regular timeline, between The Gallifrey Chronicles and the Time War. That's sufficiently outside of any established narrative to be apart from mainstream continuity, but it could conceivably still be part of the same timeline.

I think that saying "we don't count this" is too easy. I agree that including it is a challenge, but I don't think it's an insurmountable one. Overall, I think that OS25 has it right when he or she says we have to be "very careful". Rather than excluding TID altogether, we should just decide on a standard phrasing ("according to one account", perhaps?) which allows for TID's ambiguous status, and allows the reader to decide whether and how to fit it in to the larger narrative. —Josiah Rowe talk to me 15:00, April 24, 2012 (UTC)


 * I also agree with the above 70.72 anon.


 * It's not speculation and we can't take what the author says to be a ruling on whether it's canon, it was published by the BBC, it's a narrative published by the BBC, it's got Doctor Who stuff in it. That is how we've worked through the canon policy and how we've worked through the BBV stuff that CzechOut mentions. This novel was published and licensed and approved by the BBC.


 * Authors in the past have declared their Doctor Who fanfic to be canon and we disallowed that. Isn't that just the reverse of this statement? What of the many things Lawrence Miles has said with regard to the Enemy arc and the Faction Paradox related stuff?


 * So the argument is it should be got rid of because it's TOO HARD?! to fit into article??!


 * What of The Dalek Factor which is also ambigious about its Doctor and outcome?


 * I do agree with OS25, we need to be careful with how we use the information in this novel, and refrain from using vague information, but explicit information like any other narrative source should be used. And as Josiah Rowe says we can also fall back to our "one account states" phrasology when conflicting information is present. --Tangerineduel / talk 15:55, April 24, 2012 (UTC)

I think The Infinity Doctors is a legitimate source for descriptions of Gallifrey and Gallifreyan culture, but not necessarily a legitimate source for describing events that happened in the life of the Doctor of "mainstream continuity." The background detail is in accord with other references to Gallifrey, but the particular events of the novel may have taken place in an aborted timeline. For example, one of the founders of Gallifreyan civilization mentioned in The Infinity Doctors was also mentioned in The Ancestor Cell. That said, people are free to disregard the source if they want to in their role as viewer/reader/interpreter. It may be appropriate to warn readers of the wiki that the legitimacy of the novel is in question, but I don't think it's appropriate to "quarantine" the novel entirely. -- Rowan Earthwood talk to me 16:06, April 24, 2012 (UTC)

I sympathize, Rowan, but that's setting the boundaries a bit fine, don't you think? Boblipton talk to me 19:10, April 24, 2012 (UTC)