Tardis talk:Canon policy

Radical rewrite
This page underwent a major repurposing today. It is no longer the home of the actual list of allowed stories. Rather, it now serves as the basic explanation for how the BBC's lack of definition of canon affects the wiki. Importantly, it divorces discussion of canon from the actual list of allowed stories, which now can be found at tardis:valid sources.

The lengthy talk page that used to be here can now be found by clicking on the archive at right, and it has also been moved to forum:The original inclusion debates, so that it can easily be found in the forum archives. 00:27: Wed 06 Jun 2012


 * I fully approve of this rewrite effort, and some of my reasons can be found at Forum:Inclusion debate: Death Comes to Time. In fact, I think it might be good to include some of the background there (talking about Sherlock Holmes fans' "Great Game", and so forth) in this article. CzechOut, would you mind if I brought some of that here? I'd just do it anyway on the old "be bold" principle, but I don't want to step on your toes while you're doing such a major revision. —Josiah Rowe talk to me 03:31, June 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * I've added this, somewhat belatedly. Feel free to edit mercilessly. —Josiah Rowe talk to me 02:34, June 23, 2012 (UTC)

Canon. Says who?
I posted along ramble earlier which has now been archived. The gist of it was "If the BBC has never stated its position on what is/isn't canon, then how can people editing a fan website make such a declaration"? Someone here makes a point to the effect of "since the BBC hasn't, we must!" Which really smacks of arrogance and/or fanwankery. There are some key points here:

1)Contrary to what some people like tot think the current production team does have a policy. Without going into anal detail, they have clearly decided that the VNA don't fit into their continuity(looms, Human Nature etc etc etc). And, likewise that the PDA don't fit into their continuity(whither PDA #64). Sarah's comment about "Ace" also seems to disregard the DWM comics pre-2005. And then there's the Two Time Wars. Thus it can clearly(yes it can) be established that the current team's idea is that the tv show 1963-89, J9 and company and the 1996 movie ARE canon. As is everything from Rose onwards in all media. Anything else is safe to be contradicted.

2)But if we accept the PDA and EDA as canon, we are contradicting the canon of the present show. And again, very important one of the PDA is "Scream of the Shalka". Either all the PDA including this are canon, or none of the PDA or canon. However, in the EDA "Gallifrey Chronicles" it is mentioned that the Doctor has three possible Ninth incarnations. This does allow the Shalka, and thus the pDA and EDA to be canon, but in a parallel universe to the New Series and its spin-offs.

3)We thus are faced with clear choices. a)only the tv show is canon. b)The canon policy that is used by the current production team(mentioned above) is used. c)Using the BBC novels, BOTH Richard E. grant and Christopher Eccleston are the Ninth Doctor, just in alternate realities. d)Everything is canon, including Cushing, Grant, the annuals, the merchandise "histories" etc. Since the BBC hasn'y stated their canon policy, who are some internet fans to decide on it for them, and then use that as a rigid rule?

Personally, I'd suggest the articles be structured that only the tv information is in the main body. And then underneath ALL relevant information be listed, whatever medium, but with notes indicating where they are contradictory. And, importantly, NO official proclamation that one medium is somehow superior to another(like the idiots who claim that No Future somehow decanonises the FASA game. How is one "superior" to the other??).


 * Well, as you can see the Canon policy page has recently been rewritten. The wiki now makes no claims, by policy, about what is or isn't canonical Doctor Who, or that one medium is superior to another. There may be some stray remarks here and there which need to be edited or removed to fit this policy; if you come upon them, as they say on Wikipedia,.


 * You are of course, right that the current production team treats licensed material such as the novels and comics differently than it treats television stories, but I'm not sure that the difference amounts to an actual "canon policy" on the part of the production team. First of all, they'd never use that word. Second, they're just as willing to contradict a past TV story as a past book — otherwise we'd never have gotten from "You can't rewrite history! Not one line!" to "Time can be rewritten!" The difference is that when they're contradicting past TV stories, they usually use a throwaway line to patch up the discontinuity, something they don't bother to do when contradicting the books.


 * Now, you can say that by abandoning the word "canon" and shifting to a valid sources policy, we're trying to have it both ways: we don't make canonical claims, but we still get to draw lines about what does and doesn't "count". But that's just an inevitable part of the game we're playing here, trying to make a single coherent fictional universe out of nearly 50 years of stories by hundreds of different writers. When we list valid sources here, we're not making any claim about Doctor Who as a whole. You can still say that the Master and the Monk were the same person if you like. We're just saying which sources we're going to use here.


 * If you'd prefer to play the game by different rules, you can either try to convince the rest of the editors here in the Panopticon (though I doubt you'll get very far), or you can start up your own Doctor Who wiki using different rules (TV only or whatever you please). But here, the most active editors have mostly agreed on what we're going to count in our version of the "game". We have no objection to other people playing with different rules, but these are the rules we've decided on here, and it'll take a lot of effort to convince enough editors to make the change you're suggesting.


 * We've been discussing that "game" here, if you'd care to join us. But if you do, please sign your posts by typing four tildes, like so: ~ . That'll produce a signature and timestamp. Thanks! —Josiah Rowe talk to me 19:01, June 27, 2012 (UTC)