Board Thread:Inclusion debates/@comment-4028641-20150906220006/@comment-6032121-20181208171819

JagoAndLitefoot wrote: I'd say that while it uses a character from "Dimensions in Time", it doesn't actually rely on continuity with it. That is, it can still work as a standalone story even if "Dimensions" didn't exist.

Isn't that kind of besides the point, anyway? Invalid doesn't mean non-canonical. It means that the "story" isn't for our purposes a story; that it may be a licensed Doctor Who product, but holds as much weight as if the writer had just pontificated in an interview to the effect of "the Rani once took a bunch of Doctors out of their timeline and the EastEnders crew got involved".

The key thing is that we do not deny that the events of Dimensions in Time might well have happened, for all we know; we just don't have any narrative evidence to say that they did, but merely an "out-of-universe source", e.g. Dimensions in Time.

What I'm saying is that following the spirit of Tardis's policy, info from DiT is equivalent to info Steven Moffat might have given in an interview, or something that might have appeared The Brilliant Book. It's not presented in a story, and therefore we are not going to use it per se; but we shouldn't even bat an eyelid if that information is later referenced in supplementary works that are in fact narrative.

Bwburke94 wrote: It branches from an invalid source, similar to the various things spawned by Death Comes to Time which are also non-DWU.

Not entirely sure what you're referring to. The Minister of Chance solo-series is indeed non-DWU, but that's because its creators actually went on record stressing that it was no longer connected to Doctor Who, even in DCtT’s funny, “maybe this happened in an alternate timeline, or it might just not have happened at all” kind of way. The decision had, as far as I know, very little to do with Death’s own status.

Again, all "invalid" means is that it's not considered actual narrative information for us, but absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. Maybe the Doctor did indeed fight off an evil Time Lord called Tannis with the Minister of Chance while Ace was trained by Casmus — DCtT isn't telling us that for sure, because as a non-story it doesn't have the authority to tell us that for sure; but for non-Wiki-matters it makes us strongly aware of the possibility, just like the writers telling us so should make us strongly aware of the possibility that Jack Harkness became the Face of Boe — and we shouldn't be surprised if a valid source later references, and thereby "officializes", these facts.