User:SOTO/Forum Archive/Inclusion debates/@comment-1272640-20161223201024/@comment-4028641-20170126003815

Thefartydoctor wrote: It's about common sense really. No-one with half a brain-cell would allow Dr. Who and the Daleks to be valid in a billion years. I don't need to list any reasons because everyone in this comment thread knows them haha. Let's look at that Paul Cornell thing.

Not really that relevant I guess, but I think Dr. Who and the Daleks isn't the most far something on this site can go from being valid. I would say the most definite invalid stories would be something like A Fix with Sontarans or Tonight's the Night -- where it isn't even a full narrative. Realistically any story with a "different universe" is one Spider-Verse crossover away from being valid on this site.

Anyways, good detective work finding more solid evidence that the Doctor is in his Ninth incarnation. In the past that would have been a definite justification to say that it was invalid, but in the present I think it isn't enough.

But I must strongly clarify that we will not be saying at any point that this Doctor is from "an alternate universe/timeline." That is reserved for stories where we have clear authorial intent for this to be the case -- and furthermore we've only done this in one instance where it's been clear that an unproduced sequel story would have explained it away (I know this has been recently questioned, but in this instance I'm speaking wholly from a point of view of policy and precedent).

It's one thing for Paul Cornell to say -- a very long time after he was finished with the product -- "Yea it's probably an alternate universe I guess." To say that it's an alternate universe, we would seriously need either him saying it was meant to be an alternate universe at the time of production or, again, a Spider-verse crossover comic..

The final question of it is is valid, once again, comes down to the question of authorial intent.

The point of view of many people in this thread is that as the writers meant for it to be valid, it's valid. However, by the time it was released the BBC had disowned it and was working on an official TV series. I would like to see quotes from the BBC about the product by the time of its release to confirm exactly how the BBC presented it.

There is precedent, again, to disown a story because it presented a "pilot" that was then abandoned by further productions. I believe that was the justification for abandoning Death Comes to Time. So changing the stance on this story would have larger consequences outside of just this narrative.

On the other hand, this doesn't exactly shatter the motion that the beliefs of those in the production room might mean more than the BBC executives who changed their minds at the last minute. I'm simply not absolutely sure.