Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-27280472-20160606210324/@comment-1272640-20161201023623

Fwhiffahder wrote: Pluto2 wrote: Well, given the open ending, is it really a stretch to say this is in continuity with the TV Movie? What makes it an alternate universe? For all we know, immediately following the end of the webcast's events, the Doctor walks up, takes back his umbrella, and walks off. There's nothing here screaming "not compatible with the main universe". They might have been attempting to make it so the events of the TV Movie never happened, but in the end, that's not what they did. In fact, Freedman said McGann could be a future incarnation - and thus his attempt at ignoring the movie ends up as a story that is basically just an animated serial, albeit one that has a vague ending. In-universe, it would be fine. The reasons for keeping it out are theoretically because real world stuff. Full Fathom Five would also be perfectly acceptable from an in-universe perspective, but it's considered NOTVALID because Big Finish says it's a "What if?" story. But is DCOT a "What if?"

The argument that it wasn't intended to fit in with the TV Movie is rather silly - Ground Zero doesn't fit with the Virgin novels and audio dramas, and was a reaction against such things. Yet we accept Ground Zero as valid, do we not? If we set DCOT outside our fences due to its intention of ignoring the TV Movie, we should do the same for Ground Zero for ignoring the novels and audio dramas.