Forum:Is Dimensions in Time canon

 I extracted a few paragraphs from Forum:Doctor Who: Worlds in Time in order to make that thread more readable, but I did want to keep the basic question around. Here then is what User:OttselSpy25 has brought up:


 * Far too often we come up with an excuse [for why something is allowed by our canon policy] rather than a reason. For instance, on the Dimensions in Time page, (Which by the way, I think we're the only fan site to actually state "No, this isn't canon" on the episode. Most sites, like DWR, Wikipedia and the BBC site just not it at confusing or "possibly non-canon") our reasons for it not being canon is:

"For Doctor Who fans, EastEnders is firmly shown to be a television programme in Army of Ghosts, and implied to be so in The Impossible Planet and Night Terrors, making it hard to explain Albert Square's existence as a "real" place in Dimensions."

- Our Dimensions in Time page.


 * This reason is obviously an excuse. The story was considered debatable long before Series 2 aired, and I don't note Mistaken Identity (short story), and I doubt I'll see that Star Trek crossover marked as such either. You see, if we were to all actually sit down and discuss DIT, I don't think we could all think of an actual reason for it not to be canon that wouldn't also make a bunch of other stories non-canon, so we use an excuse. I'm not saying that we SHOULD include DIT, I'm just using it as an example. If we DO use an excuse, it needs to be an efficiently used one. The I'm probably rambling now, so I'll close off...

Well, OS25, we could go through the bother of having another specific up/down vote on whether a particular story is in our canon, but it's hardly necessary. Lopsided votes at Forum:Is The Curse of Fatal Death canon? and Forum:Is A Fix With Sontarans Canon? suggest that we'd easily be able to come to a consensus against Dimensions in Time. I don't know of any fan who doesn't qualify DIT with some kinda freakin' huge asterisk. And, although we haven't argued the case specifically, we have very nearly done so with the somewhat similar Forum:National Television Awards Sketch 2011: Canon?. So there's enough precedent in individual cases to suggest that our community simply wouldn't go for calling it canon.

Moreover, we can see in other, long-archived threads a clear bias against Dimensions. Just go to, I dunno, Forum:More canon questions to see how it's just implied that the question doesn't need to be debated. Nobody on the planet takes Dimensions in Time seriously. We really don't need a discussion on it.

Don't really understand what you're talking about when you say that the current wording on the page is an "excuse" — a word with generally negative connotations. It's the explanation you're looking for but don't, for some reason, want to accept. The reason it's so hard to fit into continuity is that it's a crossover with EastEnders, which the new series has since established is a fictional universe. Moreover, it's totally out of phase with EastEnders' own continuity. It doesn't work for either franchise.

So there are three solid explanations for you:
 * 1) Our community has specifically voted almost everything else like DIT out of its canon policy
 * 2) Its narrative is irreconcilably discontinuous with subseuqent EastEnders' narratives.
 * 3) It's difficult to see how it fits in with Doctor Who continuity, which otherwise consistently treats EE as a fictional universe.