User:SOTO/Forum Archive/Inclusion debates/@comment-28349479-20161216221639/@comment-1272640-20161217004421

Shambala108 wrote: To quote User:CzechOut from Forum:BBV and canon policy:


 * Dig, for example, this quote from Miles himself:
 * Q: So you don't feel that the Faction's too close to Doctor Who?
 * A: No. I'm too much of a monomaniac, probably. While I was writing INTERFERENCE, I think I started to realize that I didn't really want to write about the Doctor any more. I was more interested in the universe around him, and as it was my book that meant the little sub-bubble universe I'd built up since ALIEN BODIES. Which isn't really the Doctor Who universe at all, of course, although it does owe a huge debt to Robert Holmes. So I feel very very comfortable writing stories set in that universe which don't, for example, contain the word TARDIS. Besides, I think Faction Paradox have done their bit in the novels. It would've been terrible, to keep inflicting them on people who just wanted a Doctor story rather than a time-travelling voodoo-cult story.[1]
 * If the creator of the universe himself is saying, directly, it "isn't really the Dotor Who Universe at all", why are we arguing with him? It just seems easier to believe Miles and go with the BBC-approved timeline than to refer to things that are clearly set in at least an alternate DWU as if they were things that happened in the "real" DWU. It's awfully misleading to slip a FP ref into the middle of an article about a DWU topic, because it won't convey to the average reader the notion that this statement is true if and only if you deem the events of The Ancestor Cell non-canonical. The truth of the matter is that that FP at Mad Norwegian and other companies is absolutely not a part of BBC-approved continuity. It's quite different from the Benny stuff, I think, which is simply the further adventures of an ex-companion. It was Miles saying "screw you" to BBC Books. We can't treat it as just another corner of the DWU. In no way, should (Mad Norwegian and beyond) FP be referenced in DWU articles.

(end of CzechOut's quote from above stated policy)

We don't argue with author intent. In Thread:125464, while discussing the inclusion of the Vienna stories, we had some conflicting author/publisher comments, but ruled that the author's statement of the stories being separate from the DWU would determine our policy. The same thing would apply here. Lawrence Miles says it's not DWU, then it's not DWU.

I'm not going to quote the several statements defending our policy at Forum:BBV and canon policy and Forum:How do we best include Faction Paradox on the wiki?; anyone who hasn't read these policies thoroughly should do so (as the OP did). But Miles has changed his stance multiple times.

And no one's saying The Ancestor Cell is non-canonical. The Faction Paradox series's stance on Ancestor Cell is that all was not as it appeared - that the War wasn't prevented. And if FP contradicts something, how is that different from the wildly contradictory accounts of how the First Doctor left Gallifrey? We don't discard all of them because they don't mesh.