Board Thread:Inclusion debates/@comment-4028641-20170306172600

So I've noticed recently that there's a trend of calling stories invalid simply because they're connected to stories which are also invalid.

For instance, many stories in Short Trips and Side Steps are treated this way. This book features sequels to stories which are famously goofy and ignored by fans.

Now when it comes to things like The House on Oldark Moor, that's a story set in an entire canon that we haven't seen clarified as an alternate universe. So of course it's invalid. You can't just go around calling some Peter Cushing stories valid for no good reason.

My problem comes about when there are sequels and prequels to stories which were called invalid not because of rule 4, but because of any other rule. Dimensions in Time was declared invalid because it was asserted that it had improper licensing. A Fix With Sontarans meanwhile is invalid because it bleeds into a fourth-wall breaking ending. The Doctor becomes Colin Baker in the middle of the segment with little-to-no warning.

But there is no question of the licensing of Storm in a Tikka or Rescue. Nothing I've seen of Fixing a Hole suggests that it ends a fourth-wall leap, nor does Bill Cosby walk into the story.

At least one of these sequel/prequel stories was marked as invalid in a forum many years ago, but at that time there was no such thing as "validity." The question raised then was "Is this story canon?" And you could argue that if DiT or AFWS isn't "canon," the sequels must also not be canon. The problem is that if you then remove all of the "canons" and replace them with "valids," that reasoning doesn't make any damned sense.

The page for Fixing a Hole aptly states:

"As a sequel to A Fix with Sontarans, this story doesn't fit into the broader Doctor Who continuity..."

This is broadly archaic and irrelevant. No one on this wikia has cared about "continuity" in at-least half-a-decade.

Just wanted to quickly add that this has nothing to do with the Lego Batman thread, it's just a coincidence that two different instances of sequels being deemed invalid for irrelevant attachments have peaked my brow. 