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

A bit of a weird one today. The Curse of Fatal Death has been invalid (or, in the olden days, non-canonical) on the wiki since its article was created in 2005. This is for the simple reason that it is commonly considered a parody or spoof and is listed at Tardis:Valid sources as an example of an "explicitly parodical" story. However, after discovering the wiki notes that Steven Moffat said in DWM 510 that the story could have been seen as a legitimate continuation of the programme, I examined the original forum debate on the subject located at Forum:Is The Curse of Fatal Death canon?. After doing some research and following this advice from the debate:

This statement strangely doesn't seem to have been followed up on and apparently viewed as such an obvious fact that nobody seems to have checked. I have now and I can firmly say I believe the wiki was wrong to deem this a parody because in reality it is nothing of the sort and this opinion is backed up by several sources.

The quality of the original debate
I mean no offence when I say that the quality of analysis in Forum:Is The Curse of Fatal Death canon? was shockingly poor. As one might say, the past is a foreign country.

I should rephrase. The analysis of what was discussed was perfectly satisfactory but the title given to the debate is a bit misleading. The entire debate surrounds whether the apparent references to Curse in PROSE: The Tomorrow Windows and The Gallifrey Chronicles retroactively canonise it. There is absolutely zero discussion of the merits of Curse as its own story nor is there much discussion about authorial intent past people agreeing it's spoof or parody without giving any reasons other than the fact that such is obvious. It seems that this was just taken as given, even by the people in support of its canonisation! Rather amusingly, there is detailed talk about behind-the-scenes intention but in reference to 2003's Scream of the Shalka going along the line of reasoning that If we say Curse is canon then Shalka has to be canon for the same reasons but the production team on Shalka knew their story would be disregarded in canon before it was released. Fairly logical, but we now have several precedents regarding this to prevent this sort of thing from happening. Despite this, the closing statement does not reference its status as a parody saying only this regarding the evidence presented.

I think I've proven my point here. This section is here to illustrate the wiki is overdue in giving Curse a full and proper discussion with our up-to-date validity policies.

The first three rules
The first three of our "four little rules" at T:VS won't really come into play during this debate but I feel it's important to restate them as this is the first debate I can find with any of them.


 * Pass: It is a story of four constituent episodes that has since been released as two-parter and a one-parter.
 * Pass: It was released by the BBC and fully-licensed.
 * Pass: It was broadcast during Comic Relief on 12 March 1999.

Compatibility with the DWU as it exists now
Before moving on to consider if this is valid I think it's important to get the elephant in the room out of it and look at if it could be valid in the Doctor Who universe as it exists now, in 2020.

First, a look at Tardis:Neutral point of view:

In that same vein I'd argue that an especially funny episode of Doctor Who that happened to be broadcast during Comic Relief should not be treated differently from a "real" full-length episode of Doctor Who such as The Curse of Peladon or Gridlock.

I don't think this wiki should judge Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor to be any more valid than Rowan Atkinson's Ninth Doctor but I'm not stupid. Eccleston's incarnation should certainly remain most high profile with Atkinson's keeping the dab term. This is not a violation of policy, merely catering to readers' needs. The two can co-exist but the simple fact of the matter is that Eccleston is a Ninth Doctor but is the one that is most recognisable to casual viewers (and the vast majority of fans).

Additionally, there is no need to use "account" language in the main Doctor articles or the Curse ones because I don't believe there is enough narrative evidence to support that. Yes, Atkinson was described by the media as the Ninth Doctor "(thus following the one played by Paul McGann in the 1996 TV Movie)" but the episode itself only calls Atkinson the Doctor's "ninth body". As I'm sure students of the Master's timeline will tell you, "body" is a different and separate term from "regeneration". The distinction is enough that I don't believe site-wide change to be necessary should we use the exact wording the source gives us.

Before 2013, the lead to the page for "Ninth Doctor (The Curse of Fatal Death)" might have said something like:

''In his ninth body, the Doctor travelled with a companion named Emma who later became his fiancé. (TV: The Curse of Fatal Death) According to another account, the incarnation of the Doctor that travelled with Rose Tyler was his ninth body. (TV: Human Nature, The Lodger et al.)''

I don't think there's any need to make it more complicated than that. The source doesn't explicitly say that Paul McGann was Atkinson's predecessor so we don't need to assume it if it just makes things more difficult but we cover our bases by mentioning Eccleston briefly anyway.

Obviously, after the introduction of the War Doctor things have changed slightly but the line of context about the "mainstream" Ninth Doctor could just as easily say ''the incarnation of the Doctor that fought in the majority of the Last Great Time War. (TV: The Day of the Doctor) The recent addition of The Timeless Children'' also complicates matters (and introduces continuity concerns for greater than Atkinson and his crew with it) but it's not too much of a big deal is my point.

You might have noticed that I used 2007's Human Nature and 2010's The Lodger above to source for the Eccleston incarnation. This is because Human Nature marks the first implied connection between McGann and Eccleston (through illustrations in the Journal of Impossible Things) and The Lodger marks the first time a number is used to describe the Doctor's incarnation on television in the BBC Wales version of the programme. This isn't really a point in itself, just the fact that if we had been so strict with in-universe statements that we might have not acknowledged 9 as being 9 five years after he left the role is a bit mind-boggling.

Does it pass rule 4?
And finally we're at the meat of the argument. Was The Curse of Fatal Death "intended to be set outside the DWU"? Let's look at the evidence.

A word from the author
Everybody (including those in the debate on the old forums) has apparently passed this off as a parody but the writer of the piece Steven Moffat has made it very clear on multiple occasions this was not his intent nor the intent of the rest of the crew. This fact is made clear in the articles on Curse in DWM 278, DWM 328 and DWM 510. Issue 278 was the original feature on Curse at the time of its broadcast and issue 328 was an archive on the story. It was very helpfully published in early 2003, giving us an idea of how it was remembered without that memory being corrupted by "more canon" Ninth Doctors in Richard E Grant and Eccleston. We'll be here all day if I give you all the evidence that confirms this but I'll quote a passage from each of the issues to show that Moffat has remained largely consistent.

From issue 278: "Ah, but this isn’t really Doctor Who, is it? It’s just a parody, a spoof, I [ Alan Barnes ] claim. "I’m not sure I would call this a parody or a spoof, I would call this a Doctor Who comedy - taking things from Doctor Who and realising them comedically. [...] That’s not a parody of Doctor Who, really. [...] We don’t break any rules, we don’t have him [The Doctor] do something he can’t normally do. So I wouldn’t call it a parody. The first rule we made was "Absolutely no jokes about shaking sets or wobbly monsters or crap acting’, or any of those things.""

- Steven Moffat and Alan Barnes

From issue 328: "Rather than produce an out-and-out spoof or parody of the show as had been done before, Moffat attempted to make his script as authentic as possible within the bounds of the original format."

- Andrew Pixley's article on the story

From issue 510: "My view at the time, which everyone was very keen on, was "Let’s just make it a funny episode of Doctor Who, rather than a spoof".So it could just about happen in a real episode, it doesn’t break any rules. I remember Jonathan Pryce improvising the line "Doctor and Mrs Who", and although it was funny, I said, "We just can’t, because the rule of the show - more or less, but not as completely as many think - is that he’s never called 'Doctor Who'!" So we had to make it right, and as far as the continuity that existed up to that point, it was all perfectly fine. But it doesn’t fit anymore, obviously."

- Steven Moffat

Apart from the line in the latter example about the story not "fit[ting] anymore" which is clearly a reference to NuWho (and he is right. It doesn't fit perfectly but the rules of the wiki say that we don't consider continuity or the quality of the story when judging stories so this shouldn't really matter. The Doctor was a human for many stories in the 1960s that this wiki considers valid but I doubt many lose sleep over this not fitting with their history as a Time Lord. They simply ignore them, because in the grand scheme of things they (and Curse) are very obscure stories. Anyway, throughout the years and the issues of the magazine) Moffat is clear that Curse was never intended to be a parody or spoof.

I don't know how clearer it can get to be honest. He says it at the time of broadcast, the sentiment is reflected in DWM's archive of the story and again by Moffat almost two decades on.

More evidence of comedy over parody
The word of the author of a story about their intent is one thing but there is far more evidence of Curse being a comedic rather than parodic in the array of articles on the subject. In DWM 278, a big font proclaimed:

From DWM 328:

All throughout this article is the emphasis on comedy that Moffat put on his Doctor Who work at the time. He writes the material he writes with his vision and asks for the somewhat controversial additions to not be taken too seriously. This certainly reminds me of the many additions to lore Moffat made during his time as showrunner but we wouldn't dare to call Hell Bent invalid.

It's worth noting that the approach of "comedy over parody" also reached much of the crew, also mentioned in DWM 328:

Julia Sawalha
One thing the original forum debate had going for it was this piece of evidence from Julia Sawalha from the behind-the-scenes documentary, Comic Relief Doctor Who Uncovered, that accompanied the story upon its VHS release.

This is juxtaposed by her position in her Doctor Who Magazine interview in issue 278:

The companion she had the opportunity of playing would be revealed to be Ace in a different article, a character who appeared in two full seasons of classic Doctor Who when the budget was at its lowest rather than a single episode that put an emphasis on the comedic aspects of the show. She even refers to the companion role as an "actress graveyard". I would certainly find Sawalha's job much more fun than Sophie Aldred's on the main show.

I'm not saying we should disregard her statement, but the two phrases "spoof version" and "actual programme" do contradict each other and it is easy to see why she might have thought it was a spoof during the three days of recording but the mounting evidence seems to suggest otherwise. Discussion of "real" Doctor Who also leads into the question of...

What defines a "real" episode?
There's no point in not being transparent on a case such as this; there are several statements from Moffat which put the validity of Curse into question.

I don't know exactly what Moffat meant here but all we can do is speculate. I don't think this quote is at all damning evidence. In this context, I would liken the word "real" to "regular". Curse is not a regular episode in the show in that it was broadcast outside of a particular season and does not contribute to the overall story count. Similarly to Time and Space, Curse is of a slightly shorter episode length than normal and because it was broadcast during Comic Relief puts a greater emphasis on certain comedic aspects. That does not, however, mean it is any less valid than The Twin Dilemma or In the Forest of the Night. Time / Space is of equal validity to those two stories and yet we don't have any trouble with covering it. If we have the wibbly lever, why not the Sofa of Reasonable Comfort?

Although I disagree with the notion, I'm perfectly happy to accept that some people only consider the main TV show canon, excluding audios, books and minisodes. And, although it could have been seen as a legitimate continuation, the hope of revival was not riding on this in the same way it was with the 1996 TV Movie just three years prior, hence why Moffat used the qualifier new in conjunction with real. People are entitled to their opinions, but this wiki believes all media has equal weight so our coverage of Curse should reflect that.

Potential sequels
DWM 278 brought up the idea of future material with Rowan Atkinson's Ninth Doctor. Richard Curtis was asked about the prospect:

The implication here is clear: if Atkinson had wanted to do more work as the Doctor he likely would have gotten the job with the distinct likelihood that his Doctor would have been recategorised as mainstream as more stories were released.

Joanna Lumley's Thirteenth Doctor was also used as the "incumbent" Doctor of two proposals to BBC Books after the broadcast of the episode; one by David A. McIntee and The War by Lawrence Miles. The latter would have been set during the War in Heaven from the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures providing a direct continuity link. This premise would have also preserved the ambiguity of, in Miles' words, "whether the Thirteenth Doctor's canonical or not". As a result, even if not promoted to mainstream status after the publication of the book, the Curse Doctors would have certainly been considered canon as characters from an aborted/divergent timeline.

Later references
The Curse of Fatal Death has been referenced in other media as late as 2019. In The Bekdel Test, refers to spending time in the sewer systems of Tersurus.

More concretely, however, The Taking of Planet 5 mentioned that the Fendahl Predator consumed the Tersurons and the Delphons' best forms of communication so they had to evolve for the most tenuous forms of communication. This clearly refers to the language of Tersuran being spoken by farting. It also creates an awkward situation on our page for the species which consists of one sentence in the main body and then a behind-the-scenes section full of culture, technology and history subheadings. This is more than just a reference; it builds upon the backstory of the species which creates a direct link between the two.

Canon
Finally, a few words on canon. As defined in Tardis:Canon policy:

Steven Moffat takes a similar approach to the concept of canon in DWM 278. He says:

Yes, I know lots of fans like to think about The Curse of Fatal Death as non-canon. However, we as a wiki rule that there is no canon and the author of the story thinks there is no canon so why are we validating one of his stories over another. If Curse is invalid then why aren't The Day of the Doctor and Heaven Sent invalid too?

News just in!
Unexpectedly, this topic has garnered developments as recently as this week. Doctor Who and the Time War was finally released in March after being shelved in 2013 due to the impending broadcast of The Day of the Doctor. The reason for this: it shows the Eighth Doctor regenerating into a Ninth Doctor instead of the War Doctor as depicted in Day and The Night of the Doctor in an apparent prequel to Rose, which Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor. He clarified he thought of Time War as a "glimpse of parallel events" and also more broadly stated he believed in light of The Timeless Children that "all Doctors exist" and "all stories are true".

Fast forward a couple of weeks and RTD has now "liked" a comment containing the question of "whether the Ninth Doctor here could also be interpreted as the Shalka Doctor or the Rowan Atkinson Doctor for the hat trick of alternative Ninth Doctors". I don't need to say why this is such a major development; we now have confirmation from the writer of the story that a valid reading of the text is that the Ninth Doctor from The Curse of Fatal Death was a product of the Last Great Time War, echoing the previous intent of Lawrence Miles that the Curse Doctors were somehow products of a different time war. The Doctor's testament in Curse that he has grown "weary of all the evil in the cosmos, all the cruelty, all the suffering" and is therefore planning to retire is actually extremely similar to the War Doctor's response to needing to end the conflict ("Too long I have stayed my hand. No more") as well as Eccleston's Ninth Doctor's initial reluctance to involve himself in events. In short, this isn't just an off-the-cuff response; it would fit with Atkinson's character and currently-valid incarnations of the Doctor have been shown to act in a similar way after the effects of the Time War.

Even more intriguingly, the phrase "for the hat trick of alternative Ninth Doctors" shows that RTD likes the idea that the Ninth Doctor from The Curse of Fatal Death and the Ninth Doctor from Scream of the Shalka (who is excluded from this thread) are equally valid alternatives for the title of "ninth incarnation" of the Doctor to his own creation, the Ninth Doctor from Rose.

It is also worth clearly mentioning that the wiki's policies have already required us to take action regarding this ambiguity by moving info about Time War that was on Ninth Doctor over to its own page at Ninth Doctor (Doctor Who and the Time War).

Of course, as out-of-universe statements these things are only to be mentioned in the "Behind the scenes" sections of our articles. The amount of inference we can draw from an Instagram like rather than an explicit "yes" or "no" is limited also. However, RTD even considering this idea coupled with his thoughts on canon that are associated directly with the release of the story he is referring to, as well as a possible new appearance from a Curse Doctor after over twenty years should not be understated or ignored.

Conclusion
That's the proposal: The Curse of Fatal Death should be deemed a valid source. In short, although it is commonly thought of as a parody (including currently at T:VS) the authorial intent has always been perfectly clear that the story was quite the opposite. Additionally, T:NPOV is one of our most vital policies and I vehemently believe that we are violating it by not covering the story.

I look forward to this debate getting underway, especially as RTD's testimony that "all Doctors exist" have provided this thread with a current relevance to editors and visitors of the site alike! 