Board Thread:Inclusion debates/@comment-26845762-20160212224340/@comment-188432-20170126044716

When we first looked at all these stories, we didn't stop and give details for every single one. But neither were we uncareful.

The thing is, Infedel's Comet doesn't feature any DWU elements. It has a cameo in which the Sontaran doesn't even quite identify himself fully. And that's a world of difference.

The analogue here is No Future for You, a Buffy comic strip that has a panel depicting the Tenth Doctor and Rose. Or, if you prefer, the episode of Young Justice that depicts a/the TARDIS.

I disagree that the findings of the original thread were that if a thing had licensed BBC characters, then that thing was itself a part of the DWU.

There's independent and contemporaneous evidence that:
 * says the Sontaran appearance here is a "cameo"
 * claims "The cast and characters have practically no direct link with Doctor Who -- bar a brief cameo by a Sontaran."
 * calls it "BBV's attempt at original sf"

Even the BBV website as it existed upon the original release of this thing makes no attempt whatsoever to tie it into DW at all.

This was definitely produced and contemporaneously received as an original work. It was part of BBV's broader efforts -- after Big Finish emerged as the winner of the DW audio licence -- to find a new source of audio revenue.

So, no. This thing won't be coming back to the site. The rule is definitely not, "If  makes even a cameo in a story, then the story in which it appears is in the DWU by implication."

Good lord! Do you have any idea how many costumes and set pieces were borrowed from other productions so that DW producers could save money? Just one example: the White Robots were borrowed from an instalment of Out of the Unknown called The Prophet. So does that mean The Prophet is in the DWU? Of course not.

Doctor Who is popular enough that it will occasionally show up in other works. And you don't even need to get permission for brief, oblique inclusions -- such as the one found in this story.
 * Do we include all of Star Trek just because there are Metebelis crystals in the Star Trek novel ?
 * Just because there's a TARDIS in Fallout 2, is the Fallout franchise a part of the DWU?
 * The words Bad Wolf appear as graffiti in an issue of The Spectacular Spider-Man. Does that mean we believe the regular Marvel Universe is a part of the DWU?

No. If we start trying to validate every such instance, we'll bring in things that most of our readers will question as unreasonable inclusions. Indeed, this notion of one writer slyly referencing a whole different universe has been going on for decades if not centuries. It's just a thing writers do.

So validity on this wiki can't be a game of hopscotch. We don't just automatically say, "Because x, therefore y". There is a need, as users like AeD and Thefartydoctor have recently said in other threads, to use some common sense and get our arms around context and practicality.

And the weight of evidence in this case simply is not on the side of thinking Infidel's Comet is a part of the DWU.