Board Thread:Inclusion debates/@comment-2.26.183.189-20170416191252/@comment-4028641-20170424140747

Not really.

If The Magician's Apprentice used a couple clips from the prequel or showed what the Doctor was doing while Bors was running around fetching water, it would still be valid.

I think it's counter-productive to now argue over the validity of a thing that doesn't exist.

I think you're trying to say that Friend from the Future is the source material and The Pilot is the adaptation.

If that is the case, then what you are looking for is something like COMIC: Planet of the Rain Gods, the original opening scene to TV: The Doctor's Wife. In that case, it was an original story (PotRG) that was adapted into a different story entirely (TDW)

Here's the difference: there's an equivalent scene in The Doctor's Wife that's totally different from the one in Planet of the Rain Gods. The writer has said that the two are not meant to co-exist. It's a deleted scene, and thus it is invalid. Indeed, he didn't say "it fits," nor did Moffat.

Friend from the Future is not a deleted scene, and Moffat has told us that "it fits." The man might have been a bit silly in believing that we would take his word and allow ourselves to get some sleep over the matter...

Here's a better comparison:

Friend from the Future is Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans, the homevideo release.

The Pilot is Shakedown the novel.

Terrance Dicks took the homevideo, and write a beginning and end to it in Shakedown the book. In the same sense, Moffat took Friend from the Future and wrote a beginning and end to it in The Pilot. If the Shakedown VHS never happened, the Shakedown novel doesn't make any sense. If Friend from the Future didn't happen, The Pilot doesn't make any sense.

Let us again remind ourselves that there are plot points in The Pilot that only make sense under the context that Friend from the Future also happened:

TheChampionOfTime wrote: Moffat takes the time to set up the fact that the Psychic Paper will alert the Doctor to anything attacking the vault. This never amounts to anything in The Pilot, but Friend from the Future has the Doctor looking at the paper before announcing that they have to go back to 2017. Furthermore, it is mentioned later on in The Pilot that the Doctor received a false alarm on his psychic paper...

So indeed, it is part of the story and it was meant to "fit in" and "count."