Forum:Temporary forums/An update to T:VS

"Rule 4 by proxy": a necessary update to T:VS
Within hours of Tardis:Temporary forums being activated, it began filling up with suggestions that we redeem all sorts of things from Scream of the Shalka to Vienna from status. Now, any one of these cases might have some hitherto-undocumented aspect which would justify their validity under the current regime of T:VS, and I do not mean to make their potential validation depend upon the following proposal — but it seems to me that there is a common theme to all these proposals, constituting evidence of a systematic disconnect between our validity policies and the intuitions of readers and editors alike. I propose that we tackle the problem at the rule, and examine the possibility of fixing that underlying issue.

As written, Rule 4 of the "four little rules" is currently solely concerned with the authorial intent at time of release. This is very well in the positive sense that a story that was at one point released as being in-continuity stays valid even if someone should change their mind years down the line — that way would lie chaos, not to mention shades of a prescriptive "canon". But there is a mirror scenario which T:VS currently actively prohibits, even though it would be in the Wiki's best interest, and match the intuitions of most readers, to follow it.

To wit: sometimes a story is initially presented or even intended as discontinuous with the DWU, but later "retro-fitted" explicitly into continuity by a valid story by another writer. For example, perhaps Paul Cornell didn't think of Scream of the Shalka as "real" to the Christopher Eccleston-led Who universe in 2003… (I do say perhaps. Let us, for the moment, take that much for granted.) … and perhaps if that were all we had to go on, covering Shalka as completely discontinuous with the mainline DWU would be the fairest way to go. I don't at all mean to say that any old short story should be declared a parallel universe on principle. But let me call your attention to a few valid stories like The Tomorrow Windows and A Brief History of Time Lords, which do construct bridges between the events of the "Shalkaverse" and NuWho continuity, presenting the Richard E. Grant Doctor's world as an alternate "possible future" right alongside Eccleston.

It is Jonathan Morris 's authorial intent in a valid, licensed Who story to present the Shalkaverse as "taking place in the DWU" (broadly defined). Our coverage of valid stories ends up harmed by refusing to take them at their word when they essentially "incorporate" a preexisting text which was, perhaps, not originally meant to be part of the DWU, but is made so "by proxy" through the new source.

Granted, we do not start covering any random fanfiction or non-DW-related work that is referenced in a DWU source; it was very reasonably decided at Forum:Iris Wildthyme: should she stay or should she go? that we wouldn't start covering all of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes books just because All-Consuming Fire brings them into continuity. But my proposal concerns stories which are already given coverage on Tardis due to being licensed. In no sane world should Ninth Doctor (Scream of the Shalka) and Ninth Doctor 4 (The Tomorrow Windows) need to be distinct pages on the same Wiki. As the "Cushing Conundrum" thread of the defunct forums discussed, our page on Peter Cushing's "Dr. Who" doesn't even try, and covers valid references and the invalid movie material on a single page — even though current policy very very clearly disallows this — because… there's just no other remotely sane way to do it. But that just makes a mockery of deeming the films "NOTVALID" in the first place, when we very clearly link to these concepts on valid pages!

Thus, it is my proposal that we accept the retroactive validity of Rule-4-breakers which are later explicitly referenced in valid sources in a manner which seeks to "bring them into continuity" in one way or another. The most common implementation would see us cover 'roads not taken' of Doctor Who 's history as the alternative realities as which later stories sometimes reference them; but the proposal would also cover the way that, for example, Storm in a Tikka simply gives a straightforward place in the Seventh Doctor's timeline to Dimensions in Time and Search Out Space.

After the initial slate of validations on this thread, any further validations on this basis would have to go through their own inclusion debates; but as I said, I believe a lot of the proposed inclusion debates currently engorging Tardis:Temporary forums fall so straightforwardly within this proposal that they could be validated straightaway if consensus around my proposal builds. I will include an explanatory table here. If any of the examples below are controversial in ways not directly related to the heart of my proposal, they will be retracted and left off to their own threads after the proposal is enshrined into policy. (This is also why I've left out stories whose invalidity arguably rests on more than ordinary Rule 4 concerns, like The Skivers.)

(Also of note:
 * The Curse of Fatal Death, not currently but which, according to User:Najawin, may have some additional evidence that would force us to invalidate again once examined under current Rule 4 policy. It is notoriously referenced as a possible future in The Tomorrow Windows, and its continuity regarding Tersurus is referenced in The Taking of Planet 5 as a part of the mainstream DWU's history.


 * Vienna, currently not-covered-at-all rather than covered-as-, but which has the profile of an invalid source — that is, it's licensed, it stars something which started in the DWU, but we don't currently consider it a valid source. Despite questionable intent at the series' launch on whether it was in the DWU, Master!, when it brought Vienna Salvatori back to the explicit DWU, directly acknowledged its continuity.

I think both's validity could also be enshrined by this proposal even if they don't quite fit the mould, but again, feel free to tell me otherwise and they can be shunted off to their own threads)

I hope we can come together to finally take decisive action on this matter, which would finally free us of the endless, circular debates trying to peek into the brain of e.g. Milton Subotsky in 1965 when I think we all know that was never the real, principal reason it is felt that the Cushing movies should be valid — and so on, and so forth. Inclusion debates have often been tiresome for all parties involved; perhaps we can make them a little saner today. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 18:04, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

Support

 * Please outline the reasons you support this proposal below.


 * Way back when in the Aughties, I helped write this policy page for the Transformers wiki called Ignore All Standards which boiled down to "In situations where the standards intended to prevent confusion would instead contribute to it, common sense should rule."
 * That was for one-off weird cases. But this is a collection of one-off weird cases, several of which seem to fall under the same broad circumstances.  At that point, if we are seriously looking at creating exceptions (and since several of these idems are currenly half-covered by the wikiand then either not-covered or half-invalid, we clearly are making weird exception judgements) we should probably examine the category as a whole and make some sort of policy judgement; even if that policy is, itself, a policy about exceptions to policy.
 * I'm honestly not sure if I agree with all of the candidates for inclusion but some of them are well past-due. And their inclusion should take place under a coherent framework rather than in a willy-nilly fashion. -Deriksmith  ☎  23:33, 11 January 2023 (UTC)


 * I wholeheartedly support this proposal and would welcome the given examples as valid. Even setting aside opinions on validity, the current way these stories are covered is difficult, confusing, and tedious. Dr. Who-related pages make no sense. I think the concept Deriksmith linked is a good idea to keep in mind sometimes. Perhaps not the only thing we should borrow from the Transformers, yes? Chubby Potato ☎  12:26, 12 January 2023 (UTC)


 * I completely stand by this proposal. We need to change a whole bunch of stuff to be valid, rather than invalid. Shalka for one, if only due to the fact that for a few years, the Shalka Doctor was the continuation of the main Doctor Who timeline, being the rightful successor to Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor, and Dr. Who and the Cushing Doctor for another, due to the fact that in-universe material actually cover him as a valid Doctor somewhere along at least a timeline, plus the fact we keep getting more Cushing Doctor novels and we can’t cover them as a wiki should. —Danniesen ☎  15:31, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Oppose

 * Why do you oppose this proposal?

Neutral

 * Feeling lukewarm about this proposal? Tell us why.

Comments and concerns

 * Do you have specific concerns about this proposal that are getting in the way of you making up your mind? Leave them here for discussion.

So before I complain, let me just note that I would love for this proposal to pass. I really would. My ideal version of the wiki is substantially more lenient and open than the one we currently have, if I was the dictator of the wiki we'd have twice the number of pages we do, almost nothing would be invalid, it would be a very different place. And the proposal as it stands is certainly worth discussing.

But I don't think we should implement it as it currently stands. Why's this? Because the criterion Scrooge has selected for bringing these stories "into validity" is too vague, and, quite frankly, smacks of canon. (/Gasps of outrage/ "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but it's true - those who are feint of heart - avert your eyes!")

We've already resolved the issue of "sequels/prequels to invalid stories", and I'm not sure at a glance how this isn't fundamentally the same discussion. This is one area where it's frustrating that the old forums are still dead, because there are clear overlaps in the two discussions, but it's hard to tell precisely how much of what's being said is a reiteration of that previous discussion, though we can be sure some of it is.

But to needle Scrooge a little:

"Come on. You're refusing to take seriously a story that's clearly being referenced in these other ones. It's obvious that they intend the original story to be..."

- Scrooge?

I'm also not sure that the proposal as it stands is even workable. It's going to turn into elaborate games of tea leaf readings, trying to find out if a particular source tries to bring "them into continuity" (imagine me rolling my eyes completely into the back of my head here) or if it's just a fun little easter egg. For instance, I wouldn't consider Tomorrow Windows to do this! Maybe my interpretation is idiosyncratic, but Tomorrow Windows is explicitly showing potential futures.

With that said, I think there's a workable version of this proposal here. But it's weaker than Scrooge and I think others would like, including myself. Let's go back and read T:VS, which we all have, but since we're discussing amending them we need to be clear.

"If a story was intended to be set outside the DWU, then it's probably not allowed. But a community discussion will likely be needed to make a final determination."

- Rule 4

From further down:

"Consequently, extraordinary non-narrative evidence — such as the story's author directly saying that the story wasn't intended to take place in the DWU at all, but merely make use of DWU licenses to tell a very different story — must be presented to the community for a story to be kicked out based on Rule 4"

- T:VS

Now, I'll be honest, in reading the past forum threads when they were up, I don't think I ever saw an example of a story intended not to be in the DWU that was still allowed in. Were this more regularly the case, I don't think we'd be in this predicament.

But in effect, when it comes to rule 4 the burden of proof is on those who wish to invalidate them using statements about authorial intent. I would like to suggest that a clearly workable approach to Scrooge's proposal, one that doesn't get bogged down in tea leaf reading or canon thinking, is to do the reverse! Once a story has been invalidated by the original author's authorial intent, it can be revalidated by the authorial intent of authors of other stories, being held to the same standards of evidence as we hold rule 4 discussions currently.

This approach allows us to "provide a path to citizenship", as it were, to the stories that are the beloved black sheep of the larger DWU franchise. We can bring them in out from the cold, accept them once more back into the family, but in doing so be careful to distinguish between fun references and gags and those authors who genuinely are trying to weld things together. Najawin ☎  13:04, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't think this is redundant with the Sequels to invalid stories thread. That thread simply sought to clarify the status of these sequels/prequels within the paradigm of T:VS; to argue the point of "even if we hold a given story invalid, current policy doesn't actually ask us to deem all its sequels invalid if the author of the sequel actively intends their story to be Rule 4-breaking". It didn't change T:VS at all, merely corrected its application. This proposal, on the other hand, seeks to alter something which in the Sequels thread was an uncontested premise.


 * I'm not sure I entirely grasp the distinction between our proposals; do you mean to say that we would need an explicit BTS quote by the author of the later story? This seems, in the main, unworkable and unnecessary to me. Dalek Survival Guide is very explicit about what it does with the Cushingverse — explicitly talking about "versions of history" — such that I don't see what more a BTS quote would clear up; and given that the book was cowritten by five different people, we would have to go badger these five people in turns, to ask them to rephrase a minor point in a twenty-year-old tie-in book which is already clear as day in the book itself. Were I in their position, I'd be very irritated and I might well hang up the phone. Storm in a Tikka comes with explicit notes about being a sequel to Dimensions in Time and prequel to Search Out Space, and we already agreed that it was valid; I don't see what more Mike Tucker and Robert Perry could tell us that is not already made plain by those two things!


 * If these two scenarios seem fine to you, and you would simply hold off on things like Trading Futures referencing the Canisian invasion without elaborating — alright, that seems fair.


 * As concerns The Tomorrow Windows, I don't understand what we disagree on. Yes, it's showing "possible futures". Possible futures count (note how there's a substantal in-universe page about the concept!). We'll be here all night if we start arguing about whether they're exactly the same kind of thing as a parallel universe or an alternate timeline, and what the differences are; but straightforwarldy, a "possible future" that the prime Doctor can diegetically view through a particular time machine is part of the wider DWU in the same way that any parallel (Unbound?) universe that "our" Doctor can theoretically access is part of the wider DWU. If we had a standalone story with the framing device of the Doctor looking in a magic time-window and observing the adventures of one of his "possible" future selves, that novel "possible" Doctor's existence would I think non-controversially be fodder for a valid page. Back in the real world, what it would imply is coverage along the lines of:


 * Don't you think this makes sense? Why not? Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 13:25, 12 January 2023 (UTC)


 * I would need to see the specific page in the book for Storm in a Tikka, but to me this sounds like a no-brainer.
 * I don't think asking five different people is needed, just one, but for the idea that the book is clear because it gives an explanation for the Cushingverse films, this is precisely what I think we should be wary of. It's canon in another form. It's a very broad version of canon, but validity is not canon. (I again, want to stress, that I would love for the Cushingverse films to be valid, they're a nightmare. But this reasoning isn't something I'm comfortable with.)
 * Let me clarify Tomorrow Windows, I definitely wasn't clear there. It's clearly, to me, showing possible out of universe futures that did not come to pass (or, at least, have not done so yet). Hence Alan Davies, Eddie Izzard, rebooting the series entirely, ever actually regenerating into the Valeyard, Merlin. I don't think we can say that this is clear authorial intent of incorporating Shalka and Curse. It seems more like acknowledgements of "also rans". Najawin ☎  13:54, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Ah, now I see what you mean re: Tomorrow Windows. And yes, this strikes me as idiosyncratic to say the least. I would point out that we have, thus far, had no trouble documenting the Windows visions on the relevant valid pages — The Doctor (Battlefield), The Doctor (The Brain of Morbius), The Valeyard (and, contingent on Curse remaining valid, Ninth Doctor (The Curse of Fatal Death)). If all those visions are recognised as pertaining to the "real" versions, why should we do things differently with the Shalka Doctor, and suddenly turn around and say "well, it's a reference to the Shalka Doctor IRL, but in-universe we just don't know for sure"? Should we not, then, also, purge Tomorrow Windows information from the Valeyard or Muldwych pages, and say in BTS "one of the future Doctors in the Windows resembled this character as a reference to such-and-such ways the real-world franchise might have gone, but these are not necessarily references to them as possible futures in-universe"? Who would this serve?


 * But more importantly, now your opposition seems to be turning into a sort of Catch-22 — we're (allegedly) not sure that Tomorrow Windows is talking about diegetic parallel universes, so no; Survival Guide is indeed talking about diegetic parallel universes, so… also no? What does a successful application look like for you? I understand your concerns about canon-creep, but I deny the charges. What we want to avoid is "Dalek Survival Guide explains how the Cushing movies can be real to the Hartnell version without contradiction, therefore the Cushing movies are now valid". But what I say is going on is more like "Dalek Survival Guide, which itself passes Rule 4 (something for which its referencing the Hartnell version is circumstantial evidence), references the Cushing movies as real to itself, and therefore the Cushing movies should be made valid as a extension of Survival Guide 's own validity".


 * To put it another way, I'm not making points about a broader, shared "prime continuity" that things are in or out of, which would be tantamount to canon; my approach is, so to speak, one of relative dimensions in fiction-space. Validity is not Canon, but it is a sort of endless family tree of Continuity, burgeoning forth from An Unearthly Child. Any given story is valid because it places itself in the same universe as at least one specific prior one that's already considered valid, going all the way back to 1963. That's how we roll. An Unearthly Child begets The Daleks begets Dalek Survival Guide. My suggestion is simply to put a non-linear spin on that logic, and say that we can in exceptional circumstances consider a "pair" the other way round; that we can look at Dr. Who and the Daleks as though it postdated Survival Guide rather than predated it; to look at it as An Unearthly Child-begets-The Daleks-begets-Dalek Survival Guide-begets-Dr. Who and the Daleks.


 * I don't think that's too far afield at all from how we've thought of validity. Mind you, even if it were, that's what a new Forum Thread is for. The current form of T:VS isn't a divine tablet we're bound by. Not that I'm proposing to do such a thing, but a Forum thread with a sufficiently large consensus of the active editors would be perfectly empowered to scrap it altogether and start over from scratch. If everyone thinks my proposal would make for a better Wiki (and you seem to agree there, on a personal level!), we can choose to go forward with that proposal and change T:VS to accommodate it rather than the other way around. We have that power and that right. The policies exist to serve and assist the Wiki and its community; not the other way around.


 * (EDIT: Oh, in lighter matters, regarding Storm in a Tikka, it's really just as straightforward as I made it sound. Right between the title and the start of the story is a little note that says, in so many words, "This story takes place between Dimensions in Time and Search out Science".) Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 14:28, 12 January 2023 (UTC)


 * I think you're confusing two parts of the issue here Scrooge. The first is whether or not I think Tomorrow Windows attempts to bring Shalka and CoFD "into continuity", which I mention as an aside. I don't.


 * The second is whether or not I think bringing things "into continuity" is a good standard for how we should approach the issue at all. I also don't.


 * I'm afraid there's no catch-22 here, it's me trying to say that even by the standards you've imposed one of your examples doesn't seem to work, or, at least, doesn't seem to work to me. Which, again, I admit might be idiosyncratic. (Re:Merlin et al, I'd have to go digging through their pages and perhaps other pages to examine all of the details, but it's not immediately obvious that there's an issue here. Checking out The Doctor (Battlefield) we're citing Tomorrow Windows in the "day to come section", along with the DotD novelization, which in no way explicitly references Merlin, simply the idea of a ginger doctor. Perhaps we're mistaken to cite it in the "appearance" section.)


 * You claim not to be attempting to create a "prime continuity", but I honestly don't see a way you avoid doing this. Perhaps the loosest possible one, or very near, but one never the less, since your delimiting factor is continuity. Which is the entire issue! Consider the following. Suppose someone writes what they claim is a sequel to DCtT, but it doesn't even attempt to be a clear reconciliation of DCtT with some other portion of the mainstream DWU. It just flat out contradicts parts of DCtT, but is still billed as a sequel to DCtT. People point out that there are contradictions to the author, but he waves them off, "time can be rewritten", or something, but doesn't even try to explain how or why. Would this make DCtT valid? What if the author didn't respond to the criticism?


 * I don't have an issue with us making our "laws of validity" have time reversal symmetry. But if we do this we should focus still on intent rather than continuity. This is the part that should concern us. Mere continuity is not enough to decipher intent, there's so many instances of DWU writers throwing in fun little Easter eggs from all sorts of different franchises, as well as authors trying hard to give fans the space to decide what they want to accept. (I'm inclined to consider Tikka precisely the statement that would be. But I don't think we should interpret explanations given to fans who want to reconcile two things, as the authors themselves thinking that the other things are part of the DWU.) Najawin ☎  15:17, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
 * A sequel to DCtT alone would not change anything. We already have such a thing, as a matter of fact, in the form of The Minister of Chance. But a story that presented itself both a sequel to DCtT and as, say, a sequel to Timewyrm: Revelation, would indeed lead to DCtT validity under my proposal. It doesn't matter if the author offers up an explanation which is intelligible to us, so long as they convey "for the purpose of this new story, which you'll already consider valid, the earlier invalid story also 'happened' in some shape or form". Do we agree there? I'm genuinely losing track.


 * If we do, our disagreement is, I suppose, on the degree to which in-story clue can be taken as evidence of "manifest intent". I think, at the level of common sense, characters looking in the Parallel Universe Machine and seeing a conspicuous reference to a given "idiosyncratic" story is an example of this. We've been focusing on Tomorrow Windows, but much the same principle applies to the glimpses of parallel realities in Zagreus and palimpsest universes in The Infinity Doctors (which people have been Wikifying on the assumption that they do indeed refer to the stories which are "obviously" being referenced). I don't think there's any real difference between Alan Barnes or Gary Russell saying in an interview "in the DWU as presented in Zagreus, DCtT is a parallel reality coexisting with the Main Range Eighth Doctor's universe", and them writing a script where the Doctor is given a glimpse of the multiverse and gratuitously goes "oh look! over! it's [conspicuous DCtT reference]". Indeed, as I recall, in the absence of robust BTS quotes, in-story implications have been considered in ordinary Rule 4 discussions before. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 15:29, 12 January 2023 (UTC)