Board Thread:Inclusion debates/@comment-28349479-20161216221639

On our valid sources page, the Faction Paradox series is listed alongside categories like “charity publications” and “merchandise” as an invalid medium. I’ve read through the inclusion debates on this topic, and I see three main reasons given for concluding that Faction Paradox is set in a different universe and should therefore be excluded: (A) it’s an explicit reaction against The Ancestor Cell; (B) the authorial intent was that it was in a separate universe; and (C) it only “approximates” Doctor Who. However, I have some new, not-previously-mentioned evidence that suggests that these justifications are severely lacking.

For instance, Lawrence Miles did once say something that could be understood to suggest that the Faction Paradox series is in its own universe from Doctor Who, but looking at the quote in context, such a literal interpretation seems silly:

“While I was writing INTERFERENCE, I think I started to realize that I didn't really want to write about the Doctor any more. I was more interested in the universe around him, and as it was my book that meant the little sub-bubble universe I'd built up since ALIEN BODIES. Which isn't really the Doctor Who universe at all, of course, although it does owe a huge debt to Robert Holmes.”

It’s clear that he was talking figuratively about how he felt about the worldbuilding he did in Alien Bodies and Interference, rather than some literal universe around The Book of the War. If we’re to take the word “universe” literally every time it’s used, we must also exclude Graceless, whose director Lisa Bowerman said it’s the characters’ “own universe”, and Jago & Litefoot, since in the S12 extras the cast says they’ve built up a separate universe from Doctor Who. (If made NOTVALID, these stories could still be given plenty of coverage: pages for NOTVALID series have many supplementary articles about each installment, complete with synopses and character descriptions. But even this isn’t good enough for Faction Paradox, which has a brief series page and otherwise gets no other mention.)

More importantly, in the same interview, Miles specifically said that he was already working on his Faction Paradox spinoff – ie, before the release of The Ancestor Cell. He started the project as a direct result of his resignation from BBC Books, which he did simply because, seeing the negative reviews of Interference, he didn’t want to keep inflicting his writing on fans. This was before he even learned the basic premise of TAC, and it seems from the interview that only upon its release did he discover exactly how thoroughly it nullified his Doctor Who work. Miles actually expresses an explicit willingness to match the EDA continuity should TAC incorporate Faction Paradox, saying “I did try asking Stephen what he was going to do, but he wouldn’t tell me.”

Furthermore, after the release of The Ancestor Cell and much closer to the launch of the FP series, Miles stated that his FP spinoff doesn’t take place in a separate universe from TAC, or even a parallel timeline where it didn’t happen (along the lines of Blood Heat and others). Instead, he goes even farther to assert:

"... the destruction of Gallifrey [in The Ancestor Cell] is only caused by ‘late Faction’ agents from the future, changing the accepted version of history and preventing the War and such. Therefore, everything that happens in THE FACTION PARADOX PROTOCOLS... when they eventually turn up... is part of the ‘old’ order."

By specifying that his Faction Paradox series belongs in the “old order” of not an alternate or parallel but an aborted timeline, Miles classifies it in the same category as Alien Bodies, The Name of the Doctor, and Intervention Earth (all of which enjoy full integration into the wiki). In other words, it’s still the Doctor Who universe, just as it was before TAC happened.

Miles reinforced this idea in his Faction Paradox comics and audios, which act as direct prequels to his EDA The Adventuress of Henrietta Street. For instance, the audios are set during the War, but they feature the characters Sabbath and Mary Culver, who appeared or were referenced in Adventuress as well as the FP novel This Town Will Never Let Us Go. The comics form an even more direct link: they're explicitly set in the post-War universe after TAC, and they repeatedly reference Adventuress. For instance, they depict King George III’s woolly mammoth and again feature Sabbath as a secret service agent, in direct accord with his backstory in Adventuress. (There are even deliberate hints that the comics’ Isobel grew up to become Scarlette; this is confirmed in Lance Parkin’s Ahistory.) Altogether, this establishes that the comics, a part of the FP series, are explicitly set in the same post-Ancestor Cell universe as Adventuress and the other EDAs, showing that Miles believed the events of TAC affected both series, with no parallels or alternates involved. And this doesn’t just implicate the comics: many FP short stories don’t even make it clear whether the War is happening, is yet to happen, or is already over, and some (like Newtons Sleep) are explicitly set before the War, at least partially.

If we can declare that the FP series is an explicit reaction against The Ancestor Cell based solely on the unintentional, non-explicit, and completely superficial contradictions between the War in the former and its avoidance in the latter, many other stories must be reevaluated on similar criteria. For instance, Big Finish's Eighth Doctor stories react against the EDAs by completely ignoring them, to the point that Zagreus tries to consign them to an alternate universe; similarly, Ground Zero infamously reacts against the New Adventures. However, these stories are currently considered perfectly valid sources and the contradictions are just ignored.

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It’s clear from this that the Faction Paradox series isn’t a reaction against the EDAs, but the matter of authorial intent remains. Miles’ quotes regarding FP being in an aborted timeline should already cast some doubt on whether he intended FP to exist outside the DWU, but, even if we stick with the original quote and conclude he deemed them separate, it’s important to remember that Miles isn’t the only writer in the FP series: in fact, he hasn’t been involved since the series changed hands to Obverse over half a decade ago. Meanwhile, the current writers, editors, and owners have repeatedly signaled that they view the universes as one and the same.

AHistory isn’t a valid source, but it is a reference guide to Lance Parkin’s opinions, and he includes the entire FP series — most notably including his own novel, Warlords of Utopia — in his timeline of the DWU.

Philip Purser-Hallard — contributor to The Book of the War, author of Of the City of the Saved…, and editor of the Obverse Books City of the Saved anthologies — has written multiple deliberate, fully-licensed crossovers between FP and the DWU. He first mentioned the character Krisztina-Judit Nemeth in his FP novel Of the City of the Saved… before she appeared in “Predating the Predators” from the Bernice Summerfield book The Vampire Curse. She then returned to FP in “A Hundred Words from a Civil War” and “Unification Theory;” Purser-Hallard has indicated on his website that he intended this as a deliberate link between the FP and BS ranges. He similarly linked FP with Iris Wildthyme through the character Rex Halidom from his Iris story “Battleship Anathema,” who appears (alongside Iris herself) in the FP story “A Hundred Words from a Civil War.” Blair Bidmead (author of the upcoming FP novel Weapons Grade Snake Oil) did something similar with his character Theo Possible, who appeared first in Tales of the City before showing up in a story featuring Iris Wildthyme spinoff characters. These crossovers between Faction Paradox and valid DWU series are fully licensed, and they indicate that the writers believe they take place in the same universe.

Similarly, Stuart Douglas, owner of Obverse Books (FP’s current publisher), wrote “Library Pictures” for FP anthology A Romance of Twelve Parts as a direct prequel to “Future Legend” from Iris Wildthyme anthology Iris Wildthyme and the Celestial Omnibus, and his Iris story “The Shape of Things” specifically references Faction Paradox.

Lawrence Burton has written about where his FP novel Against Nature fits into the DWU’s timeline.

Possibly most importantly of all: Stuart Douglas runs Obverse Books. He has explicitly confirmed that Faction Paradox is set in the DWU.

User: Obverse's Faction Paradox is set in the same universe as Doctor Who (before The Ancestor Cell), right? Not from a legal/aesthetic standpoint, but in the stories themselves.

Obverse Books: Essentially, yes. Though the names have changed for obvious reasons :)

In the light of all this, it’s just incorrect to justify the FP ban by citing an authorial intent for the series being in separate universes.

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The last justification for the different-universe conclusion is the way FP “approximates” the DWU. Current policy states, “Because writer Lawrence Miles does not have a license to DWU elements other than the Faction Paradox organisation itself, he must resort to using code names for Gallifrey, the Doctor, TARDISes, the Master and any number of the basic building blocks of the universe.”

However, this assumption is as incorrect as it is misguided. There are many non-subtextual references to the Doctor Who universe in FP that are fully licensed and completely non-oblique. This predictably includes Faction Paradox as well as Lawrence Miles’ other material: the Celestis, the Remote, the Shift, the Enemy, Laura Tobin / Compassion, Sabbath, and Mary Culver. There are also many DWU characters that don't belong to Miles but nonetheless have fully licensed FP appearances: Chris Cwej, Iris Wildthyme, Panda, Krisztina-Judit Nemeth, Rex Halidom, Sutekh, the Osirians in general, the Sontarans, and the Peking Homunculi all appear with those names. These are actual Doctor Who characters and concepts, not analogues or rebrandings.

Now, there are indeed some references that have been reworded for copyright issues, but (contrary to popular belief) there are only a few of those, and they’re far from obscure “code words.” None of them are “find and replace” renamings. Most of them are titles or descriptions rather than chosen names (like “the War King” instead of “the Master”), while others are simply English translations (like “homeworld” instead of “Gallifrey”) or more ambiguous forms of the words (like “time ship” instead of “TARDIS”). In fact, many of these phrases originated in Doctor Who stories: for instance, “Yssgaroth” was first used in The Pit as a scientific name for Great Vampires, and the term “Great House” was established in Lungbarrow to refer to not only physical homes but also family groups of Time Lords. (”Time Lords” refers to them as a group of individuals, whereas “Great Houses” refers to them as a group of collectives.) The commonly-cited description “evil renegade” for the Doctor appears only once, in the perfectly valid Dead Romance! Yes, these “renamings” are partly legally-motivated, but it’s also an important aesthetic element of the series, and is frequently done for fully-licensed characters. Christine Summerfield changes her name to “Cousin Eliza,” Chatelaine Thessalia calls herself “Larissa,” Isobel is “Scarlette,” House Lolita is referred to as “House Lucia.” The FP series uses different names as a way of focusing on different aspects of the same concept, not to indicate that they’re not set in the DWU.

It’s important to note that not all these connections are one-way. I’ve already explained how Lawrence Miles, Philip Purser-Hallard, Blair Bidmead, and Stuart Douglas have incorporated FP elements and references into their DWU works, but Big Finish brings us more examples. The Bernice Summerfield audio The Adventure of the Diogenes Damsel includes not only references to the Faction but also the appearances of multiple Cwejen, who were introduced in The Book of the War and have featured in several FP stories. These Cwejen are identified as being related to the same DWU Cwej that Benny knows, and the Cwejen’s people (Great Houses) are equated with Straxus’s people (Time Lords) without naming either group. This is an explicitly-drawn in-text connection between DWU concepts and their FP designations. More recently, the Bernice Summerfield audio The Eye of Horus directly alluded to FP by naming Hatshepsut’s Osirian spaceship after “The Ship of a Billion Years” from the FP audios. The name is originally inspired by the “Boat of Millions of Years” from Egyptian mythology, but the specific phrase “Ship of a Billion Years” has only been used by Faction Paradox and The Eye of Horus.

Besides, if this were a true rule for validity, we would have to exclude many other series that refer to copyrighted DW concepts equally obliquely, while still featuring other licensed characters from DW stories. For instance, Telos’ Time Hunter series is only connected to Doctor Who through the two licensed main characters and the appearance of villains like the Fendahl. In the TH audiobook release of The Cabinet of Light, the name “the Doctor” is actually replaced with “Dr. Smith,” but TH has never been accused of being set in a separate fictional universe just because its Dr. Smith is unrelated to the Doctor.

Obverse’s Iris Wildthyme stories are similarly even less connected to Doctor Who than FP; not only did the Iris character not originate in Doctor Who, her stories have repeatedly written around copyright concerning the Time Lords (who are replaced with a new species, the “Clockworks”), the Doctor (“el Jefe”), and even the Time Vortex (“the Maelstrom”)! However, those stories are considered valid just because her character appeared in a few DWU stories and her current spinoff still has some licensed (non-BBC) connections to Who (e.g. the Forge and the Naxians). Of course, all those things can be said for Faction Paradox as well. At this point, under Obverse Books, Iris is connected more to FP than Doctor Who!

For another example, look at BBV’s short-lived Adventures in a Pocket Universe series. These stories feature “the Mistress” and “Ecto-Space” in lieu of Romana and E-Space, and their sole link to the DWU is that K9 is licensed (albeit in a different, never-elsewhere-seen incarnation). Faction Paradox features many more licensed DWU characters and renames concepts in ways that can be even more, but it’s still considered nonvalid while Adventures in a Pocket Universe is allowed.

The most comparable scenario is the Bernice Summerfield stories. After losing the Doctor Who license, Virgin Books’ Benny Summerfield novels use no BBC-copyrighted Doctor Who characters or concepts, and they dodge copyright in the exact same ways as FP. The BS novel Dead Romance was even republished as a Faction Paradox story. This FP-style code naming was continued in Big Finish’s BS audios and books. Whenever the Time Lords are mentioned, they’re only called “Cwej’s employers” or “Brax’s lot;” the Ice Warriors are renamed “Neo-Aretians;” Brax’s TARDIS is referred to as a “timeship,” “time machine,” or “time technology;” and the Doctor is referred to obliquely — “our mutual friend.” “Timeship” is the exact same “codename” for TARDIS used in Faction Paradox, yet Fear of Corners is a valid source and FP is not?

(BS’ copyright dodging continued for a decade and a half after Big Finish got the rights to the Doctor, suggesting that BF was deliberately trying to dissociate the BS universe from the DWU. This is supported by the fact that, since they brought Benny back to the Doctor in the 2014 “New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield” series, BFA has conspicuously avoided referencing characters and events from her standalone audios. Yet BS is an installed facet of the DWU, with unquestionable validity, and FP is exiled to its own Wiki.)

Just like in FP, there’s no BS decoder ring to tell us that Brax’s people are the Time Lords, and there’s no TH decoder ring to tell us that Dr. Smith is the Doctor, but there’s no confusion in the interpretation of these stories on the wiki, and it’s not classified as “speculation” to equate them. (Just look at this page, which equates Dr. Smith from The Child of Time with the Doctor who appears in the original, BBC licensed Cabinet of Light.) However, this privilege is denied from Faction Paradox: not only are explicit, in-text connections between the Great Houses and Time Lords completely ignored, so are the licensed appearances of characters like Cwej and Compassion!

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I believe I’ve demonstrated that the previous discussion failed to consider a large amount of evidence, and that none of the reasons used for excluding the series are valid. The series is not a reaction against The Ancestor Cell, it’s worked hard to accommodate it. The authors do not think the series is set in an “FPU,” they agree that it is set in the DWU. The “code names” of concepts do not contradict previous stories, they’re a thematic reinterpretation and use of established alternative terms. I’d really appreciate it if the admins would read this post and address the new evidence brought up.  