Forum:Coverage/validity: DWA meta-fiction

Introduction
Doctor Who Adventures was a nifty little all-ages magazine. Apart from their various comic strips - both valid and invalid - it also had an abundance of fun and wacky features, many of which bordered on being in-universe, or at the very least presented themselves as such.

I've been gradually going back and grabbing old issues online and oh boy what a nostalgic treasure trove!

For a couple of periods, each issue opened with a letter written by the Doctor themselves; the letters written by the Twelfth Doctor for all 24 issues of the magazine's 2015 reboot are the most in-depth of these, easily placing within the same level of vality as the A Letter from the Doctor series in my mind; they fully contextualise themselves as letters written for the magazine, often touching upon each issues contents. The ones written by the Eleventh Doctor, which appeared in issues published from 2011 to 2013, are a bit briefer and only occasionally contextualise themselves. You can find information on some of these letters via the pages I made for them: Hello, Time Travellers! and Dear Readers. There maybe other incarnations of this "letter" series I haven't discovered yet - ones written by the Tenth Doctor, perhaps? - I'll wait and see.

Another reoccurring feature that presents itself with a metafictional slant - one which makes it a more problematic thing to cover - is the letters pages. For a long stretch of the Eleventh Doctor's era (at least), the magazine ran a letters page in which readers sent in questions to be answered by the Doctor himself, as well as by Madam Kovarian in her own little column for a while. The only reason I find this one more difficult to approach as "in-universe" is, of course, because of all of the real world names on display. If these were covered as in-universe documents, it would mean making pages for all of these random real world children, and that just feels… creepy, for lack of a better term.

Finally, there are countless one-off features that have elements of meta-fiction. One that I've already made a page for - currently presented as valid, though I'm open to that changing - is We Are 200!

I'll be coming back with more examples in the future, but for now, discuss what I've brought up so far. WaltK ☎  22:38, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Discussion
I'm unsure - if something like this came out today, it may be best to leave it alone, but to me the question is whether everyone from it would be an adult now - if they're over the age of 18, that's a lot less problematic in my mind than documenting them while they're a minor. Not entirely sure, though. Cookieboy 2005 ☎  09:40, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Let's start with one of those one-off's: issue 249's The Doctor's Guide to 2012. It's the Eleventh Doctor doing a month-by-month summery of the then-new year. Like the majority of these features, it's a harmless piece daftness. It would indeed be fun to say it's valid that February smells like blackcurrant, or that Lady Gaga accidentally starts a new fashion trend involving tunafish. WaltK ☎  01:13, 6 August 2023 (UTC)


 * I mean, that one seems fine to me, the only issues I potentially see with other ones are privacy issues with real children's names. Cookieboy 2005 ☎  10:07, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
 * As I go through it, I do start to question whether it should be valid. Reading about a meteor in the exact shape of Dermot O'Leary's face tends to do that to a person. WaltK ☎  21:46, 6 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Without understanding much of this situation, I think they should be covered but invalid. Cousin Ettolrahc ☎  12:24, 8 August 2023 (UTC)