User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-45692830-20200511054726/@comment-6032121-20200514022707

It occurs to me that the way we cover Deadline might be an interesting precedent to support a solution where the "inner story" is treated as valid for the N-Space Doctor, but we're not forced to call the "outer story" invalid, instead sealing it away as an alternative reality which we can treat as essentially an alternate timeline of the meta-fiction universe(s) — again, like we do for the world of Deadline.

In both cases, we were presented, within what is explicitly a Doctor Who story, with what is clearly meant to scan as "an alternative timeline branching from the real world". So it should be possible to say that e.g. William Russell (The Thief of Sherwood) belonged to, I dunno, The Outlaws’s World, or something like that — a reality that's valid but separate from the Doctor's universe just like the meta-fiction universe.

This isn't usually how we would cover such a story, if it wasn't for the fact that there's an inner-story buried within that is clearly DWU and taking placed in N-Space. But I think it might be the sanest way forward.