Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-1317169-20121202170842/@comment-26975268-20140514230513

OttselSpy25 wrote: Continuity: The Doctor says "are you my mummy," a reference to The Empty Child. Funny you should use the word "reference". I do sort of see where you're coming from, but consider this — references to things in the DWU are inherently references to other stories. Even if no other story talks about egg-beaters, a future story might reference that one by having the Doctor repeat this opinion, or maybe have him say the opposite to emphasise how different his new regeneration is.

And "continuity", references to other stories as you put it, are references to things in the DWU. They're not references to stories in a meta-textual fourth-wall-breaking sort of way. The Tenth Doctor saying "Are you my mummy" is him remembering this past adventure, the Fifth Doctor telling Peri about the events of State of Decay in AUDIO: Son of the Dragon is not really substantially different to, say, the Doctor saying he once had an android boyfriend in Time. That's not a reference to any specific story from a real-world perspective, but it's still a reference to something in the DWU, and in fact is almost just like the things you're classifying as "continuity" — a past event in the Doctor's life.

Here's another example. Does the actual appearance of Mrs van Gysegham in The Reaping, and new information drawn from it, go into continuity as a reference to Planet of Fire, where she was first briefly mentioned, or does it go under references, as a "reference to things in the DWU"?