Board Thread:Inclusion debates/@comment-4028641-20170306172600/@comment-4028641-20170504193649

I realise that I have failed to present my opinion in a comprehensible and approachable manor in the past several posts. I apologise to those whom I offended with my carelessness, and allow me to re-present my opinion.

Our four little rules: the most important creation for this website, which details what we use to decide if a story is valid.

Now, as far as I am concerned three stories are being debated here, although a fourth story is important enough to the discussion to bring up later. The three stories up for debate are all short stories: PROSE: Storm in a Tikka, PROSE: Rescue, and PROSE: Fixing a Hole.

Let's go down our rules for these stories, then.

Rule one: All three of these are stories.

Rule two: These are all licensed stories, that use concepts that they are allowed to use.

Rule three: The stories have all been released.

Rule four: (the important one)

All three of these stories were meant to be set within the DWU. No question about it. No question at all.

If you take time to read Fixing a Hole or Storm in a Tikka, you’ll find that they’re both very serious discussions of Doctor Who lore and characters. The long and detailed analysis of the Doctor’s relationship with Tegan or the Seventh Doctor’s encounter with an ancient alien god seem like totally common and in-lore character pieces. Each story only has one frivolous element that has lead to them "not counting".

In the case of Storm in a Tikka, there is only two lines that make it currently invalid.

"I'm rather afraid that we've landed back in Walford... The Rani's TARDIS must have left a residual time trail."

- Seventh Doctor

"Now, you just stand still, Ace. You're going to get paint over everything. K9, have forty winks, then go and fetch a towel. We've just been invited to take part in a quiz show, and we're not exactly looking at our best..."

- Seventh Doctor

The first quote is of course a reference towards the events of Dimensions of Time, and the second is towards Search out Science. Both of these stories are, as per recent and detailed community discussions, invalid.

In the case of Fixing a Hole, the story is meant to represent the “gap” between A Fix with Sontarans and any story where Tegan is not travelling with the Doctor. Again, A Fix with Sontarans has gone down as one of the most assured examples of a story being invalid on this site.

However, this has absolutely no relevance towards us deciding if these stories (connected to others merely by brief references and winks) was meant to be set in the DWU.

The personal view of the canon of the DWU owned by any of our editors has no relevance towards if we should consider if something is valid. If you think that Dimensions is Time isn’t canon, cool. If you think that the John and Gillian comics aren’t canon, good for you. If you think that Lungbarrow isn’t canon, that’s your right. But we shouldn’t use this to make any sort of rule about if a story should be valid or not.

Never forget this: Dimensions in Time isn’t invalid because of its pesky writing or odd continuity. It's not invalid because a bunch of fans decided that it wasn’t canon and their word is law. It’s invalid because no one was payed, and thus none of the production was properly licensed.

A Fix with Sontarans isn’t invalid because we don’t like idea of the TARDIS having a “red button.” It’s not invalid because it’s silly that Gareth Jenkins wears the Doctor’s costume. It’s invalid because halfway-through the Doctor turns into Colin Baker with no transition, and Jimmy Saville walks in as if it’s his show again.

So in both of the above examples, rule 4 is entirely irrelevant. They are eliminated before we even have to talk about a Doctor Who Universe or the concept of a “Canon.” So in other words, as far as we are concerned, DiT was meant to be set inside the DWU. Same for AFwS. Thus, we do not accept their alleged non-canon-ness. So have a story reference or accept them should never automatically make it invalid simply by bringing the stories up.

What you think of a story has no bearing to this debate. What matters is the authorial intent of the authors. And when it comes to titles as clear as "Fixing a Hole", it's pretty obvious what the intent of the authors was meant to be.

Consider something like Spiral Scratch. Much like many other stories in the BBC books range, the book attempts to suggest that each and every different Doctor Who range ever created is set in a completely different universe. In that book, Mel sees a series of different versions of the Doctor from the Multi-verse, including two wearing blue coats and one with a penguin. This is the book’s way of saying “Hey, if this contradicts anything it’s because we’re doing our own thing here.” The book wants you to accept that the BBC novel range is a totally separate universe from the DWM comics and the Big Finish audios featuring the same characters.

Does that make it invalid? No, because even if it isn’t meant to be set in your vision of the Doctor Who universe, it still meets the criteria of rule 4. If a story takes any element of the DWU (weather it be the TV show or a combination of any set of ranges put together), copies it, and then makes a new add-on based on their envisioned take on the universe, then it’s set “within the DWU.” Or at least, the DWU as viewed by the author.

So the fact that one writer said “A Fix with Sontarans is a part of my DWU and I want to write about it” is just about as relevant towards if the writers of the BBC books thought that Frobisher and Real Time were canon in “Their universe.” In other words, in the scope of this wikia, it doesn’t matter at all.

Let’s talk about another story that is a sequel to something so invalid that we don’t even have a proper page for it. AUDIO: Frozen Time is a direct sequel to the Audio Visuals story Endurance, where a figure named Lord Barset accidentally discovers a lost Silurian settlement. In Frozen Time, his grandson attempts to find their lost expedition as well as his noted “Lizard-Men.” At least to books by Gary Russell]] also mention the events of Endurance.

I have yet to see anyone attempt to claim that Frozen Time is outside of our wikia’s scope because we don’t consider its source valid, nor that it has to be invalid because Endurance “isn’t canon”. The difference between this story and the three stories being discussed is obvious: people like Frozen Time. They don’t like the other stories discussed here. That's the sole difference.

Here's another extremely relevant example of the hypocrisy presented here. PROSE: Face Value is a sequel to a play. Said play is The Ultimate Adventure. Said play is invalid, because all plays on this website are invalid and for a good reason. No one has a copy of this play. It stopped existing when it stopped being performed.

And yet, Face Value is totally valid. Sure, since then the play has been adapted into a Big Finish audio, but that has no relevancy to the debate of the short story because it was released after Face Value.

In a world where the play was never adapted, Face Value would still be valid, because it's a stand-alone adventure only loosely connected to the play. So is Rescue. So is Fixing a Hole. So is Storm in a Tikka. So how did these ever become invalid in the first place?

I’ve tried to back-track where these stories started being called invalid, and ignoring threads that use the word “canon” instead of “valid,” the only one I’ve been able to hunt down is Thread:136969, where a user states that PROSE: Rescue should be invalid because Dimensions in Time is a dream in one of the novels. He suggest that it lacking the invalid tag is simply an effect of no one having noticed yet, and that there must be no one out there who would argue that it is valid. He basically asks if anyone disagrees. Czech closes the thread almost immediately with

"Yes."

- User:CzechOut

I agree with the user who started that thread on only one issue: the main problem here is that far too few people actually want to concern themselves with this issue, and thus the question of if these three stories should "Count" has been left up to presumptions rather than actual modern-wikia debate. I can’t force people to care about this, so if you don’t I’m sorry. But I care about policy and consistency, and there is no reason that these three stories can't be valid.