Talk:The Doctor Who Role Playing Game

I'm starting this page based on the Wikipedia page. As I have a copy of the RPG, I plan to add more information, but please feel free to help clean up and format the page, and make any edits you see fit! Monkey with a Gun 02:12, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Edit: "removed categories and replaced with actual cats"
I was kind of disappointed to see that this edit didn't replace all the Wikipedia content with cute kitten pictures. Oh well, next time. Monkey with a Gun 16:18, 17 October 2008 (UTC)


 * That's my next edit, except it'll be cute kittens being eaten by Dalek mutants. --Tangerineduel 17:05, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Canon, breaking continuity etc.
I realise that whoever runs this wiki has the right to utilise whatever policy they see fit. However, I feel I should at the least state one thing.

Namely, when the FASA Roleplaying Game was released it didn't break any established continuity at all. Rather, it re-enforced the widely-held beliefs of the time. Ina ddition, at the time there was still an active Doctor Who Production Office. John Nathan Turner had taken an interest in the spin-off media and their reliability etc. One can see the improvement in continuity and content(if not actual writing quality) of the Doctor Who Annuals after he took over. In addition the DASA fame was amde during the period when there was no television Who, but JNT was still employed as a fulltime Producer. And following the infamous 'Mawdryn Undead' continuity guff, Doctor Who employed a full-time continuity adviser in the form of superfan Ian Levine. Had FASA been any outright continuity howlers, JNT and/or Levine would have spotted them. We also know that JNT veto'd the 'Lungbarrow' script from being made into a tv serial, and removed the "i'm much more than a Time Lord" and "What are you, Doctor?" lines from made serials. because they would have conflicted with the established storylines/characters.

Compare this to when the VNA first appeared....1991. There was no longer a Doctor Who Production Office. The BBC had no real desire to ever make the show again.There was no continuity adviser, no producer, no script editor, no authority at all. The BBC DID however realise there was MONEY to be made off the NAME "Doctor Who", and were happy to license out the name to anyone willing to produce product. Things like established continuity and the like went out the window. As long as Virgin kept the books coming, and the BBC got their cut of the money, who cares? The screamer is that "this was the direction the show as set to go". In fact, as Ben Aaronovitch has repeatedly stated the 4 stories "Earth Aid", "Ice Time"m "Crime of the Century" and "Alixion" would see the departure of first Ace, and then the regeneration of the Doctor, as well as introducing a new companion in Kate. None of these stories were part of the VNA. Kate never appeared in the VNA. Ace was written out in a totally different manner. And there were 50-odd adventures. Despite the fact that at 4 stories a season, this would have kept Mccoy as The Doctor until at least 2002, the content of the show would never have been aired at Saturday teatime. In addition the complete lack of producer, script editor or continuity adviser allowed the new authors to play fast and loose with the characters and continuity ina way that would NEVER have been possible in the past. People mock the 60's TV Comics Doctor Who, but those have NOTHING on the VNA's in terms of the complete lack of regard for the established Whoniverse. And it was during these VNA's that the FASA continuity was contradicted(not the other way around, as is often rather strangely claimed). Oh yeah, and 'Lungbarrow' became a VNA too!Just because there are MORE VNA's does not make them correct any more than the fact that Avril Lavigne releasing more albums than the Sex Pistols makes her the true definition of what "Punk Rock" is. People then point to the PDA's, but these were largely written by the same people and there was still no authority figure like a producer etc, and the Mcgaan movie had failed to produce a series, but the BBC still wanted to make MONEY off Doctor Who. Thus we have a LOT of cash-in books, which deliberately used new "talent" and had nobody overseeing the direction of them, versus ONE Game which was produced at the time when Doctor Who was often mocked for its strict adherence to its past. Which wins out? It should be clear. it's like one Ian Fleming James Bond novel, versus 100 internet fan fiction Bond adventures.

Sorry, that's a lot more than one thing(or is it?), But stating that "the FASA game contradicts the other media" is strictly inaccurate. At the time the FASA game was released, it didn't contradict anything.(And a 1988 edition of Mastermind actually asked in which Doctor Who serial the character of The Monk first used the name 'The Master'!) If anything, the VNA's and the PDA's were the ones that contradicted the established continuity. Just because there are so many of them doesn't "prove" anything either. Oh yeah, we saw The Master as a SMALL BOY, which means he couldn't have been woven from a loom.