Board Thread:Inclusion debates/@comment-31010985-20200406230350/@comment-44905785-20200407010030

I agree with this proposal - it seems clear to me that the story passes all four rules required for coverage as valid.

And, while continuity isn't a requirement for coverage as valid, I'd also like to point out that The Timeless Children has recently demonstrated - for anyone who'd like one - a very clear, in-universe mechanism by which entire cycles of Doctors can be granted, live, die, regenerate, and then have their memories completely erased, along with any apparent record throughout the universe of their ever having existed. As such, any lingering idea that Doctors have clear, reliable numeric designations, with the implication that any contradiction must mean invalidity (or at least segregation into alternative universes or parallel timelines), clearly no longer holds any water. I won't go so far as to venture a specific explanation, but I think it's now quite clear that Atkinson, Grant, and Eccleston's characters can easily all be Ninth Doctors, even without recourse to "by another account" hedging. (OK, just for fun: when Atkinson's Doctor is dying, the Master states "This is only his ninth body. He has many, many more!" If this really is, in any sense, a Ninth Doctor, that would mean he has exactly four bodies left - hardly "many, many"! Which rather suggests, going solely by the text of Curse of Fatal Death, that this is a Doctor with substantially more regenerations.)

I don't think this comparison to The Timeless Children is a trivial point: Russell T Davies pretty specifically cited series 12 when explaining his decision to release Doctor Who and the Time War at all. "This chapter only died because it became, continuity-wise, incorrect. But now, the Thirteenth Doctor has shown us Doctors galore, with infinite possibilities. All Doctors exist. All stories are true." It seems to me that now is a good time to reconsider how we cover quite a few texts.