Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-121.45.54.78-20130925110520/@comment-33695797-20200602024634

Thinking on your responses that answers the licencing question— I do believe, and it makes sense to me, that we should only say two things are the same (or different) if in-universe evidence corroborates it, not authorial intent. That may seem like a basic rule, to only use in-universe info, but there is some basic degree of inference needed. If we took everything literally, on its face, we might as well say "how do we know that the Third Doctor comes right after the Second Doctor if we never see the regeneration on screen?" Well unless something says otherwise that's obvious— quite like what happened with the War Doctor. It's this basic inference that was confusing me with cases like The Mistress, but I think there is a policy or discussion somewhere that addresses that.