User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-26469787-20150726050336/@comment-26469787-20160109225113

Bwburke94 wrote: As for the Seventh Doctor ordering that launched this debate:

Within the episodes as aired, there is no evidence either way, but there are hints toward Greatest Show happening before Silver Nemesis.

There are no "hints" whatsoever. If that was what this debate were based on, I would never have started it. The reasoning behind the discussion was never to "restore" stories to their originally intended order, it was to an attempt to point out how in-narrative evidence places a couple of Seventh Doctor serials.

Production errors are production errors: when something was never intended to happen but accidentally did. This, on the other hand, is to do with with broadcast scheduling, marketing and other out of universe factors. Yes, Curse was supposed to open Season 26, but didn't. Yes, Nemesis was supposed to conclude Season 25, but similarly did not. This has got nothing to do with in-universe narrative. However, this is not the case with what I originally attempted to highlight.

In Nemesis, Ace possesses an earring and her rucksack is destroyed. In Greatest Show, she gains that earring and possesses her rucksack. In Ghost Light, Ace visits the house in Perivale which scared her, and finally resolves her feelings about it. In Curse, Ace refers to a haunted house in Perivale that scares her. These aren't hints, these are facts, and they are in the stories as broadcast, final edits rather than earlier versions.

Yes, we could reason away how all of this makes sense if events occur in broadcast order, but that would be pure speculation. Instead, like all visual or dialogue-based references, I argue we should place them accordingly. Nothing to do with production order or originally intended broadcast order, and not even consistent with either. All to do with final edits of stories and the continuity therein. There is no conflict, no additional references which establish broadcast order as the in-universe order. Taking broadcast order as first preference is fine, but using it to contradict in-universe references I can't justify. Yes, technically they are production errors, but that is completely and utterly outside the narrative. All contradictions and mistakes can be construed as such, so I fail to understand you, SOTO, when you say "I do not think there is any indication in-universe, taking production errors into account, for the Seventh Doctor serials you mentioned taking place out of order." Surely then you are suggesting production overrules narrative, and that whenever there are any contradictions between order of release/intended placement and the ongoing narrative into which the stories slot (production errors) we should look to intention rather than use in-universe info to determine where best to place it. But we've never decided that production information trumps the story itself. What would we do when Big Finish released a story them claimed took place before Kinda, but included direct references to the Mara and had no in-universe evidence to place it before the aforementioned serial? If this thread is any indication, I would imagine we would ignore the story and agree with the statements of real-world individuals. Surely that's against everything we say about canon, continuity and RW?