User:SOTO/Forum Archive/Help!/@comment-32744161-20181012183405/@comment-6032121-20181013091341

User:SOTO/Forum Archive/Help!/@comment-32744161-20181012183405/@comment-6032121-20181013091341 Naturally. And Tardis does, of course, cover the latter of these two.

But I was making a further distinction between a far-fetched idea that popped into someone's head and really is an "original work" (say, Peter Cushing's pet theory about how his Doctor could fit into the TV series continuity, though that one is notable for another reason, namely that it's Peter Cushing's) and what I'd call an interpretation — a possibility not exactly raised by the relevant work, but more or less as likely as the "suggested" interpretation. Such as, say, "the Master may once have been, or impersonated, Gengis Khan", based on his statements in the TV movie.

It's not a popular theory, but it's a theory that makes sense, y'know — a theory that doesn't require any additional element, just a different interpretation of what's on-screen.

You say yourself that Tardis's way is to cover the phenomenon around a popular speculation more than the speculation itself, and that's not the only way, I think. Though it's a valid way.

By the way, I don't think "the Face of Boe is Jack" and "The Woman is the Doctor's mother" are really fan theories at all. Call them theories if you will, because of Tardis's refusal to consider Word Of God as a valid source, but they're not from fans — they're authorial intent that didn't explicitly make the final cut. A better example of a widespread fan theory would be that the Weeping Angels are corrupted Time Lords (through a combination of the Ring of Immortality's curse in The Five Doctors and the mysterious face-covering Time Lords in The End of Time), or that the Doctor's secret, secret name actually is Doctor Who.