Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-5791028-20150117172224/@comment-188432-20150604175548

Are you really sure about that? The Sherlock Holmes of All-Consuming Fire (referred to hereafter as the ACF Holmes) can't be the Sherlock Holmes that Briggs is playing in Big Finish's Sherlock Holmes range (referred to hereafter as "the BF Holmes"). I mean, the ACF Holmes well predates the existence of the BF Holmes. And the Mycroft Holmes of Diogenes is the brother of the ACF Holmes — as established in dialogue — not the BF Holmes.

So is it your contention that Worlds is using the ACF Sherlock Holmes and his brother Mycroft? That frankly doesn't make much sense, given that the volume is called The Worlds of Big Finish. I would have thought they were using the Sherlock Holmes created by Briggs for Big Finish. — a version of the character that has never previously existed in the DWU. Just because you use the same actor doesn't mean that you intend the same character.

As for Vienna she specifically fails Rule 4 because it is the official line of Big Finish that she exists outside the DWU.

The Dorian case has already been specifically decided at Thread:118228. The wider Dorian series is something that it's writer doesn't feel is a spinoff of DW, so we don't either. Instead, we grant that he exists only as a character within Shades of Gray.

That was a decision arbitrarily taken just to get that multi-year thread finished. At the time, I in no way considered that an additional out-of-copyright character would ever be hurled at the DWU.

So in truth, it's not that Rule 2 is satisfied here. It's that Rule 2 doesn't even apply. Rule 2 is about having a proper license for copyrighted characters. It is not meant to implicitly allow the use of characters so old they have passed out of copyright.

As this case proves, it is impossible to write a good set of rules that works in every single case. Our T:VS rules have stood us in good stead, as they make determination easy in more than 99% of cases.

But there are occasional moments where you have to go beyond the strict letter of the rules and make a decision for the individual case at hand. So, while this discussion isn't over, do be aware that we absolutely can decide to just throw this release out.

At the end of the day, it's important to remember that The Worlds of Big Finish is a stunt that BF are trying. The goal is obviously to see if they can get more traction out of the ranges that are more profitable for them to make.

But we don't have to buy into it and try to make some tenuous connection to Doctor Who. This is not, after all, the Big Finish Wiki. Worlds is of such extremely marginal interest to Doctor Who fans, that its inclusion here doesn't meaningfully improve our encyclopaedia.