User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Reference Desk/@comment-26353212-20160809185516/@comment-188432-20160810163409

User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Reference Desk/@comment-26353212-20160809185516/@comment-188432-20160810163409 No, because it's not definitive.

While there are obvious cases like Five and Day -- both of which were screened outside of a regular series and heavily hyped as anniversary stories -- there are others where anniversary status is subjective. And there are still others, like the comic that was in DWM 500, where the anniversary is not about Doctor Who but the magazine. And there are several Big Finish releases -- like Circular Time -- of this type. (And neither are really anniversaries, but celebrations of hitting a particular release number.)

In 2013, some users had attempted to add categories around this subject, and discussion reversed and deleted these attempts.

If I remember correctly, there was controversy about what exactly constituted the complete anniversary story. If The Night of the Doctor were to be included, what was the rationale for excluding The Name of the Doctor? And since Name had flashbacks to the entirety of Clara's existence, what was to logically stop someone from including The Snowmen or particularly The Rings of Akhaten, which explained the story of the leaf that was so crucial to the resolution of Name? I think, too, it was pointed out that even The Three Doctors wasn't really the tenth anniversary story, since it actually appeared only weeks after the ninth anniversary. (Tagging Three as the "tenth anniversary" story is even more complicated, but we'll leave that to another time.) And there arose the question of stories that weren't advertised as anniversaries but were only claimed so after the fact, as was the case with at least one comic and novel.