User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-197.86.143.126-20200606192351/@comment-6032121-20200606215628

A fairer assessment is that the FP Wiki isn't as stringent about overlooking authorial intent as we are. The intent behind the hypercube thing was that as far as FP was concerned, the War King was both the War Chief and the Master. But of course, The Book of the War was licensed to use neither, and so should be disregarded; FP Wiki, bless its heart, has its own policies with little bearing on ours, even if they had not decided that this was an issue they didn't care very much about anyway.

So I agree, the FP thing is a no-go, save in demonstrating an ongoing impression in recent Who creators that the War Chief may be the Master, which is of minimal import to this Wiki. Now on to the other objections raised.

Firstly, I take issue with the idea that… Najawin wrote: …this is obviously absurd from a modern viewpoint, these arguments must be also dismissed as well (since it means that Hulke and Dicks thought The Master and The Monk were the same character). Instead we understand that these things are artifacts of a specific era of Doctor Who that has been superseded, and not necessarily binding on our view of the DWU today. …which seems to fly in the face of the spirit of T:NPOV. As documented at "The Doctor's species", the idea that the First Doctor was a human scientist who went about calling himself Dr. Who is, and should be, equally true to anything else.

It is sheer dumb luck that we do not have to deal with "the Monk was an incarnation of the Master" as a valid fact on this Wiki. It is simply that none of the stories & works which include the link happen to pass our own, custom-made, oft-arbitrary validity policies. One 1970 short story — or, to choose a different butterfly, us choosing to write different validity policies, of course — would be all it would have taken.

That is to say, if following the full implications of those quotes means we get to put a note on The Monk's page saying "Some sources suggested that the Doctor had never fought another Time Lord than the Master prior to his showdown with Omega, suggesting the 'Meddling Monk' he'd encountered in Northumbria was in fact an earlier incarnation of the Master"… well, I'd honestly be okay with that. That's all it would entail, a minor implication like this: a quote on the character page, not some big overhaul. Can't we live with that?

But less extremely, as to why the various "only two Time Lords ever…" quotes are more relevant to "The War Chief" than they are to "The Monk"… the thing is that Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon and Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons both acknowledge the events of The War Games in the same breath as they claim the Master and the War Chief are the same person.

When a story which makes no reference to The Time Meddler at all says "The Doctor and the Master were the only Time Lords ever to steal TARDISes and run away", it's hard to say if it's saying "for the purposes of this story, the Monk is the Master" or "for the purposes of this story, The Time Meddler did not happen". When a story acknowledges the War Chief's story and says the Doctor and the Master are the only two Renegades, the logical connection is much, much stronger.