Board Thread:Inclusion debates/@comment-1272640-20161223201024/@comment-5918438-20161225044353

Fwhiffahder wrote: That logic requires counting Shalka from the date of release, and the BBC Wales show from the date of announcement — an obvious double standard. It doesn't matter what future developments had been announced. Not really, actually. The logic there was perfectly sound. At the time that the story was released, those involved knew full well that their little project couldn't jibe with the new series they now knew would happen. So between commissioning, recording and release, their stance on the story would have changed. So you get comments like this around the time of release:
 * Martin Trickey: "The BBC said it was the ninth Doctor, so that's great. Is it part of the canon? I don't know. There's a big argument raging on the message board. I just hope people enjoy it. That's the main thing. Whether people choose to see it as the official Ninth Doctor or not is really up to them."

So it's clear, even just from that one quote, that by the time that Shalka was officially released, it wasn't really considered to be part of the main Doctor Who continuity. It doesn't matter what the intent was beforehand, any more than it matters that an unreleased story was intended to be valid, or a deleted scene was meant to be part of the DWU. This doesn't at all require "counting" the 2005 series before it was release, in any way--it's quite simply that knowledge of the new series affected the production intent by the time of the webcast's actual release.