User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-4028641-20151011010956/@comment-26469787-20151014092233

Thefartydoctor wrote: The Doctor's always talking to himself. I haven't got time to read this whole thing but in case it's not been mentioned: Terrance Dicks explained the First Doctor's "Merry Christmas" as him toasting Ian and Barbara who had very recently left the TARDIS. He provided the explanation as part of one of his novels. He's well known as the person who patches up numerous holes - just read The Eight Doctors to see what I mean.

Furthermore, he made it "canon" (or whatever you wish to call it) that things like "A Fix With Sontarans" and the Children in Need EastEnders and Doctor Who mash-up were just nightmares that the Doctor had. Both of these were addressed in official pieces of prose. As I see it, we just accept that he's either talking to Clara, or he's talking to himself. It's no biggy, and it certainly doesn't make it automatically invalid. That's my take on it.

Indeed, Dicks does often "correct" production and continuity errors. What actually occurs is down to personal taste, but novelisations are not relevant to this wiki. Yes, First Frontier can be construed to dismiss DiT, and similar things can be construed same from various references. But errors are errors, and choices are choices, so no retroactive changes are "better" than the original. Everyone can have their own opinion, but this wiki cannot decide that an adaptation can act as a "correction," it can only include new info. And therefore this thread is becoming a little irrelevant.