Board Thread:Inclusion debates/@comment-4028641-20170306172600/@comment-6032121-20181219203756

To elaborate on that second sentiment, as I've been led to think in more depth about it on another thread: my understanding is that the notion of "invalid" as we've come to understand it, distinct from the notion of "canon" or "continuity" is a matter of whether a story counts as an account of the DWU or not. The corollary just because a work is ruled an invalid source doesn't mean we rule that we know for a fact its events didn't happen.

An invalid TV story is no different from info from the Brilliant Book or an interview with Steven Moffat; in all three cases, the situation "someone said something about the DWU, but they didn't do it in the way we count as a DWU-story, so we can't state it as fact".

Hence we shouldn't be any more surprised when a valid story references fact from an invalid one, any more than we would be surprised if a new TV episode was found to be congruent with a statement in itself invalid made by the showrunner in an interview. Let alone declare anything invalid on that basis.

The best not-continuity-based-per-se argument that I can see for the "invalid by association" idea is reasoning along the lines of "When writing of Fixing a Hole, Samantha Baker had to know that A Fix with Sontarans was an invalid story, therefore knowingly making a sequel to it is inherently a statement that their story breaks Rule 4". But I think that's a very uncharitable way to look at an author's mindset. More realistically, a sequel to an invalid story is to be taken as a tacit statement of "perhaps Dimensions in Time/Search Our Space/whatever wasn't created with the intent of being set in the DWU, or wasn't licensed to say anything definitive about the DWU, or sumthin'; but I choose to believe that events identical to it did happen in the DWU".

This is precisely the situation with any stories that reference the Audio Visuals or other fanmade productions (i.e. Vampire Science being in continuity with the author's earlier fanfilm Time Rift); without questioning the lack validity of said fanmade productions as such, the authors, all while very definitely setting their new licensed work in the DWU, put in nods letting the viewer know that these events or ones close to it did happen in their conception of the Doctor Who universe. I don't see any call to render The Sirens of Time invalid just because it has the AVs’ Temperon, or kick out Vampire Science for including Brigadier-General Kramer.

Yet now, because the invalid stories being referenced are non-DWU licensed productions, rather than fanmade, this changes things? Why?