Board Thread:Tales from the Tardis/@comment-188432-20130325173913/@comment-188432-20130408152003

I'm sorry, but that's not a reasonable read of his statement. He does not mean it's the same universe. He explicitly says "it's a locked off little side-universe that the Doctor has once appeared in." Equally, the Seventh Doctor also appeared in the Marvel Universe, which could equally be described as a "locked off little side universe".

And we don't deal in what could theoretically happen around here. The series will never involve the Doctor, because that goes completely contrary to what Spragg says above.

At any rate, the "real world" language is particularly clear. The phrase, "It's not a Doctor Who spin-off" has been said twice by Richardson and Spragg. That's four times they've collectively said 'not a spin-off".

Big Finish do not mean for listeners to think of this as a part of Doctor Who. Read again: "David wanted Vienna to stand on its own so it helped to separate it from Doctor Who. We didn't want to call it a spin-off and have it saddled with the need to know Who, listen to The Shadow Heart and all the other stuff that comes with that."

That is a clear statement of authorial intent. Now, why do they then go and use the word spin-off on their website? I have no freakin' idea. Nor does it matter. The intent of the people in charge of project was that it not be a spin-off. That the webmaster screwed up has no relevance to this discussion.

Remember, there are elements of the Faction Paradox series which do occur in Eighth Doctor novels, and those elements are not hidden behind changed names in the FPU. Hell, the Sontarans and Osirians appear in the FPU. The reason we don't include FP here is because the intent of Lawrence Miles was to crete a different universe. And that is what's happening here. They are creating the "Vienna universe".