Board Thread:Inclusion debates/@comment-30970988-20170118180633/@comment-1272640-20170119211051

NateBumber wrote: Okay! Well here is an archive of ministerofchance.com, where author/director/whatever Dan Freeman says:

A lot of people ask me if The Minister Of Chance is actually part of the Doctor Who universe. Well, as I understand it even the mighty Daleks are arguably not part of the Doctor Who universe (they're in the copyright of the estate of Terry Nation, not the BBC) and neither is the K9 character (which is in the copyright of that character's creators, Bob Baker and Dave Martin).

Every time the Daleks show up, the BBC have to pay for them to appear. Likewise K9, and likewise an absolute avalanche of beloved characters from Doctor Who's 48+ years - characters that are considered to be part of the 'Whoniverse', but are not owned by the BBC. This kind of fracturing of rights occurs in numerous long-running serials where more than one writer contributes characters and ideas.

The character of the Minister Of Chance is my creation, and first appeared in the BBC serial Death Comes To Time. He was then, and still is, a Time Lord from Gallifrey - the planet of origin for the Time Lord race.

He never answers "yes" or "no" to the starting question, but he does say (and this is made much clearer in the later paragraphs at the link) that the Minister of Chance is no more and no less "part of the Doctor Who universe" as the Daleks and K9. The same site also repeatedly describes the Minister as a "defrocked Time Lord". I think that's pretty damn conclusive, and could even be used as evidence for a Death Comes to Time inclusion debate (since the last one didn't even mention that the Doctor isn't confirmed dead at the end). I previously mentioned it in the debate over whether to classify it as an alternate universe. My personal opinion is that Death Comes to Time should be valid, and very little suggests the Doctor is actually dead. If anything, it's very ambiguous.