Talk:List of DWU concepts not owned by the BBC

Category vs Page
Would this be better served as a category, and not a page? Najawin ☎  06:57, June 20, 2020 (UTC)
 * Not necessarily vouching for the page, but a category would not work. Licensing and intellectual property rights are out-of-universe attributions, and such a category would be applied to in-universe pages for characters and species. 09:22, June 20, 2020 (UTC)
 * i think that this is a valuable page. no word of a lie, yesterday i was looking for a similar list - although i hoped it would be far more extensive, this list could get there in time. DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎  10:02, June 20, 2020 (UTC)
 * Quite honestly I'm all in favor of something like this. I just have massive reservations of doing it as a page as opposed to a category, for one. But if that's a no go, that's understandable. That said, I think proper sourcing is important for this. Obviously things like Daleks, K9, are well known, and we can infer some others from publishing history. But I really do think if we have this page it's going to be one where we have to be very careful to explain each and every addition to it, unlike some other pages where people tend to be a bit lax with sources. Just for example, I've seen some people say Moffat owns the rights to the Paternoster Gang. My understanding of the BBC policies is that this would not be the case, unless there was specific language in his contract otherwise. So we don't want someone putting them on this page without a very clear source for this fact, and it's a rumor in the fan community that does exist. Najawin ☎  10:13, June 20, 2020 (UTC)
 * Hooray to digging up sources! In the specific Paternoster Gang example, my understanding is that Moffat individuall owns the characters of Vastra, Strax and Jenny, because they were "incidental" characters in a run-of-the-mill script of his, but that he doesn't own the brand of "the Paternoster Gang", and the concept of the trio as protagonists — because when he developed that, it was in his capacity as showrunner, creating a new element of the recurring premise, so the BBC owns that for the same reason it automatically owns new TV companions.


 * At any rate, just enacted a big retool of the page. I think the tables setup is more informative and much clearer to the reader. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  12:10, June 20, 2020 (UTC)

I'll be honest, I think we need to get some very clear statements about how the modern contracts work before I'm comfortable putting any new characters there. Najawin ☎  19:45, June 20, 2020 (UTC)

Debuting in non-BBC-licensed media

 * Iris Wildthyme is listed under Debuting in non-TV BBC-licensed media, but given the fact that Iris originated from a trilogy of non-DWU novels, so wouldn't she be better suited under Debuting in non-BBC-licensed media, even though the wiki doesn't cover her first few stories?
 * Epsilon the Eternal ☎  12:19, June 20, 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, I believe the Wiki's current stance is that Old Flames is essentially a "second beginning" of the character, rebooting her to such an extent that the DWU Iris is best treated as distinct from the Phoenix Court Iris. Which is why all her subsequent appearances are covered on the Wiki, rather than her perpetually being treated as a crossover character on "loan" from the Phoenix Court series. Consequently, the Iris we care about did debut in Old Flames. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  12:28, June 20, 2020 (UTC)

Other characters
so i am not too sure about all the licensing, or where these characters would fit on the list, but i believe Minister of Chance (appearing in Minister of Chance audio series) and Chris Cwej (soon to be featuring in his own anthology series) should be on the list. also Praxis and the Quoth seem to be licensed by Arcbeatle Press as they will appear in the Cwej series. DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎  14:11, June 20, 2020 (UTC)
 * Abslom Daak and Sabbath Dei are other major characters. DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎  14:20, June 20, 2020 (UTC)
 * Be mindful of Tardis:Spoiler policy. You can't mention details from upcoming releases.


 * Yes, Cwej should very much be on the list, and that's true heedless of Cwej: The Series — his jumping-around from the VNAs to Faction Paradox to Big Finish certainly justifies it on its own. Not sure about the Minister. Ditto Abslom and Sabbath. I greatly expanded the lists but I make no claims of exhaustivity; by all means add any ones I forgot.


 * However, since the Wiki doesn't cover the Minister of Chance audio series because it (I think, wrongly) holds that it was in breach of copyright somehow, then per T:BOUND we can't acknowledge it as recurring appearances of a DWU character, albeit invalid ones. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  16:12, June 20, 2020 (UTC)


 * while we cannot include spoilers, surely we can acknowledge certain characters as being owned by Arcbeatle Press due to them creating a future release around them? DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎  17:17, June 20, 2020 (UTC)
 * No — acknowledging the existence of "a future release containing Concept X" already counts as a spoiler. If there were an official statement of "we now have the license for Concept X" that didn't refer to future stories at all, we could use that, but I don't believe any exist. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  17:19, June 20, 2020 (UTC)

Sourcing
So I'm going to move the above discussion with Scrooge to a better heading down here. How do we want to handle sourcing for this? Will a DWU character appearing in nonDWU work immediately qualify them for this list without other sources? Do we want sources to just establish "yeah, that's how contracts worked at the time and this writer was on that type of contract"? Or do we want a very clear "so and so owns the rights to this concept".

Similarly, do we extrapolate these "contract conditions" from classic Who to the VNA/EDA era? Or do we think that there's some other reason that Faction Paradox exists and not everything created by a freelancer is instantly their work? And does anyone have the explicit language for various types of contracts on the new series? Again, I'm a fan of this page. But it's a really difficult task we're undertaking here. Najawin ☎  20:07, June 20, 2020 (UTC)

Sontarans
I've heard that the BBC has bought the rights to the Sontarans from the Holmes estate. If this is accurate, the Sontarans should probably be removed from this list. Does anyone know whether this is true or not? --Bio Planet WoO ☎  21:16, June 24, 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't know if this is true, but although, if it is, a note should definitely be made, the fact would remain that they were, for a lengthy period of time, not owned by the BBC, during which time they appeared in several non-BBC-overseen productions. So they absolutely should stay on the list in some capacity. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  21:20, June 24, 2020 (UTC)


 * Just so people know exactly when I heard this from, the author of, "Downtime – The Lost Years of Doctor Who" Dylan Rees mentions the BBC buying the rights at the 51 minute mark during this podcast interview. https://podbay.fm/podcast/517595563/e/1488926118 Bio Planet WoO  ☎  02:07, June 25, 2020 (UTC)
 * I moved it to a new section. Najawin ☎  02:21, June 25, 2020 (UTC)

Crossover characters
Right, so User:DiSoRiEnTeD1 believes that Aesculapius should be on this page. He argues that since the character was always within the loose "sphere" of Doctor Who, and has made several licensed appearances in Doctor Who stories, she qualifies.

However, while in the abstract I wouldn't disagree, this doesn't seem to be in keeping with this Wiki's policies. Never Go On Walks might be a homage to Doctor Who, but it is not legally connected to Doctor Who, nor even directly narratively connected to the DWU. Aesc is only very tenuously a "Doctor Who concept" — she is first and foremost a 10,000 Dawns concept, albeit one inspired by Doctor Who and who later made licensed appearances in DWU media. Yes, in real life, there's obviously a difference between Aesc meeting the Doctor, and Jean-Luc Picard meeting the Doctor, but T:VS has never acknowledged that. Why should this page?

Furthermore, the thing is, Aesc isn't alone — I feel like if we list her, we should also list the likes of Lauren Anderson and the Cyberons. And at this rate, what I'd recommend would be a new section/table for licensed-crossover-characters-with-more-than-one-appearance-in-the-DWU, where we might also document notable cases like Death's Head. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  01:32, July 22, 2020 (UTC)
 * A completely separate article listing the contents of Category:Stories that crossover with non-DWU series with lovely informative tables is another option. --Borisashton ☎  01:35, July 22, 2020 (UTC)


 * So Assimilation² is illustrative. Let's suppose that tomorrow we found a production diary that shows that the Borg were explicitly based off of the Cybermen. Would that be justification for them belonging on this page? I think clearly not. As a character she's not a Doctor Who concept, she belongs to another franchise, another literary universe, it's just one that happens to at times intersect with the Doctor Who Universe from time to time.


 * I agree with the new section/table, but actually think it should be its own page. Just on the principle of it not really being the same sort of thing as what this page is doing, and it's something this wiki should document. Currently we have the "Stories that crossover with non-DWU series" category, but that includes Bad Wolf (TV story) and When Being You Just Isn't Enough which sort of obviously aren't the same thing. Najawin  ☎  01:39, July 22, 2020 (UTC)
 * 'course, the Cyberon/Zygon thing is another issue I've been meaning to bring up in the forums at some point (so watch out for that thread). Cyberon is emphatically set in the DWU, it just doesn't have any preexisting licenses to prove it — it's only a "non-DWU" series on a technicality. I'd argue Assimilation^2, Bad Wolf and Zygon are all very different types of "crossovers". --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  01:45, July 22, 2020 (UTC)
 * This list appears to be, at least under my interpretation, one that contains all recurring characters (and concepts) in Doctor Who media that the BBC does not own. I agree that cross-over characters as a whole should be kept separate - but I view Lady Aesculapius as an exception due to the character's entire existence being tethered to the DWU.
 * The character was first introduced in an unauthorised Doctor Who poetry book, and has since been set up to be the 10,000 Dawns (series) version of a Time Lord. If, and more likely when, she gets another valid appearance - and is thus a recurring character in the DWU - I think she should be readded to the list. DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎  01:49, July 22, 2020 (UTC)
 * I mean, she's already a recurring concept within Doctor Who, though not within the valid DWU. Recurring across several valid stories is a form of recurring…ness, in my book.


 * But as I said, 'TeD, BTS circumstances be damned, that's not really how this Wiki operates. So her first story was printed in a Doctor Who reference book. What then? Again, I see no argument here that doesn't also apply to, at the very least, Lauren Anderson and the Cyberons. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  01:53, July 22, 2020 (UTC)