Talk:The Castellan has returned and has brought a message from Gallifrey! (fan work)

possible validity
Why does breaking the fourth wall on its own make this invalid. Off the top of my head; The Feast of Steven, The Invasion of Time, The Caves of Androzani, Death in Heaven, Before the Flood, Torchwood_cascade_CDRIP.tor, Dead Air, The Thief of Sherwood, every single story featuring The Shift, Terror of the Umpty-Ums, In the Forest of the Night, Remembrance of the Daleks, Conundrum, Head Games, Legend of the Cybermen, The Mind Robber (and all other land of fiction stories have inherently meta-premises, just those four openly and specifically do so), any time the Weeping Angels keep still because the camera is looking at them, Adam, many 60s comics, many Faction Paradox stories, Heaven Sent, A Deatu in the Family, any story where the narrator is treated an an actual character but there’s no in-universe reason for them to be recounting the adventure, especially when the narrator is addressed Tom Baker every time the Fourth Doctor is companionless, From Wildthyme with Love, a lot of Wildthyme stories actually, and quite a few short stories and.... you know what I’ll stop now because I can think of an unlistably large number even just off the top of my head. So why should this one breaking the wall make it invalid? Sure, some, like Heaven Sent and Baker, can just be interpreted as the Doctor talking himself, and Nobody No-One claiming that he has become aware that the Doctor’s universe is fictional too could have been a desperate lie to stop the Doctor killing him, which the Doctor and Evelyn speculate on just before she dies, with both admitting they’re not sure either way. I’ll accept that. But examples like Steven, Torchwood, and Wildthyme are very explicit. What else did the Doctor mean by ‘at home’? The Torchwood example - even the title and premise are completely unambiguous fourth wall breaks! And Wildthyme might be biggest break in the show’s history, certainly amongst the ones we call valid, but a lot even more than the ones we don’t -I would say probably including this one- Wildthyme ends up in the Feast of Steven and acknowledges, in those words, that the episodes she’s in has been junked, having its tape wiped. Yes, using the words ‘junked’, ‘episode’ and the phrase ‘well, you can still listen the soundtrack and look at some black and white telsnaps to see what’s going on’. She then acknowledges the fact she’s breaking the fourth wall, sees an old man who they legally can’t call such but it is clearly as even this wiki acknowledges The First Doctor in the aforementioned The Feast of Steven and climbs out through the fourth wall itself, escaping via a shortcut through reality. Throughout the book, Iris and Panda rampage throughout this history of our little show, demoliting all sixteen walls in the process; acknowledging actors, rattling off different historical genres, wondering out loud (well, not out loud actually because it’s an epistolary novel but you catch my drift) if any ‘old footage’ (again, using those exact words) of them has been ‘edited in’ (again... well you get the the idea). The only way this story could heap the fourth wall harder is if the characters ACTUALLY DID climb out of the pages of the book and stab you to death! Also pretty our four little rules don’t mention the fourth wall, nor does any other part of T:VALID. Jusssssst sayin’.NightmareofEden ☎  12:21, April 26, 2020 (UTC)
 * Aaaah… please cut down this unspeakable wall of text! This is nigh-unreadable.


 * Personally I do think the Wiki's policies should be more lenient with this sort of thing, but the relevance of fourth-wall-breaking is Rule 4. We can fairly surmise from some kinds of fourth-wall-breaking that there was no intent for the story to "count" as part of the DWU. With Iris, and most anything Magrs-related, we know full well it's intended to be in the DWU whatever happens, because it's part of the point that Iris is, in-universe, a metafictional being.


 * On the other hand, there is no sign that anyone involved in the production of The Castellan has returned and has brought a message from Gallifrey! had an in-universe explanation/rationalization in mind for the Castellan seemingly reaching out of N-Space and talking to the viewer in our universe. There are many precedents for stories whose method of fourth-wall-breaking is that it implies that you, the reader, are somehow a character in the story, to be invalid on that basis; The Runaway, to take a recent and high-profile example. (And, mind you, one where I personally argued otherwise! But policy is policy.)


 * And you have no authority to rule edge-cases like these valid without an inclusion debate. Stories which look a bit shifty are invalid till proven otherwise in the Forums. I am reapplying the Invalid tag for now and I dearly ask you not to remove it again out of hand. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  12:44, April 26, 2020 (UTC)

So does that mean I could declare anything ‘shifty’ and you’d have to listen? Even An Unearthly Child? I won’t, because that would violate T:POINT, but the fact some person could reflects rather poorly on the wiki. And lack of explanation doesn’t make something invalid. Never explain what the midnight creature was. NightmareofEden ☎  13:10, April 26, 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, look at this way. Generally, when people break the fourth wall egregiously, they don't mean for the story to "count" as part of the fictional universe. This isn't an absolute rule, because sometimes you get a metafictional genius of the Magrs variety; but this is assumed to be the default. Thus, by "shifty", I here meant "anything which breaks the fourth wall in a direct and plot-relevant manner". The Feast of Steven was ruled valid in the end but it wasn't immune to this rule; there was a proper inclusion debate to make sure it was considered valid. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  13:15, April 26, 2020 (UTC)

Was there an equivalent one for each of the The Shift stories and Cascade, which feature beings hijacking the story itself? Or Before the Flood? Or Legend of the Cybermen? Or any of the others I listed? NightmareofEden ☎  13:23, April 26, 2020 (UTC)
 * There was one for Before the Flood, yes. I don't believe there were specific debates about the Shift and Cascade, but as in those cases it is directly stated in-text that they are metafictional beings it must have been felt that such debates weren't necessary, whereas they are necessary when the reader is left to his own devices. Perhaps asking Paul Jerricho who he thinks he's talking to in that video and how could be beneficial. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  13:26, April 26, 2020 (UTC)

Was Morgus (I think it was Morgus, there are lot of scheming villains in Androzani- why it’s such a great story) also a meta fictional being? Or do people habitually look over their own shoulder/spin their chair around to face the wall while talking to themselves? And honestly, the fact we even need a debate on Flood OR Steven proves my point about the wiki as a whole. Some once made an otherwise sound rant (talking purely about their point, my lawyers advised to say that their tone was out of line or whatever) about the (thankful now annulled) deadnaming policy, as well as making other points about our overabundance of rather insignificant pages and other aspects of this wiki I personally disagree with but have learned never to question and would be banned again for going into detail about but one thing I did object to object to was them complaining about the fact we count ‘throwaway joke comic strips as canon’. First of all, we don’t use the word ‘canon’ round these parts, secondly, Doctor Who is allowed to be funny ,and, thirdly, I really don’t think one can really accuse this wiki of being TOO lenient.

NightmareofEden ☎  13:40, April 26, 2020 (UTC)

And I suppose in those (rare but existent) Companion chronicles where they’re neither talking to another person nor recording themselves in-universe they’ve just gone senile? Anyway, as fort those 60s Comics breaking the fourth wall was one of the less silly things they did! Santa should be alright though, he breaks the fourth wall in partially everything he’s a character in, not just Doctor Who! NightmareofEden ☎  13:44, April 26, 2020 (UTC)
 * This discussion seems to be going in quite a few directions, but this Wiki thankfully recognises that soliloquy/a "stream of consciousness" writing POV can be an established narrative technique not meant to necessarily imply that those events are literally taking place, as-is, in the DWU, as opposed to the events thusly being narrated. This is very different from something like The Castellan has returned (…) or The Runaway, in which it is clear that someone is standing there on Gallifrey in front of the Castellan, and that someone is suggested to be "you". --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  13:48, April 26, 2020 (UTC)
 * What was the outcome of the Flood and Steven debates? Is the Doctor somehow more ‘metafictional’ and thus ‘allowed’ to break the wall as the catellan? Or is ‘Merry Christmas to all of you at home’ a soliloquy? Perhaps he’s talking to some Time Lords who are watching him from Gallifrey- his home, you see! Casually letting them know ‘I know you’re watching’. As you do. NightmareofEden ☎  13:54, April 26, 2020 (UTC)
 * In both cases, it was decided that A) the presumed authorial intent that any given "regular" televised Doctor Who episode is set in the DWU somehow trumped any Rule 4 concerns anyway, and that B) there were perfectly in-universe possibilities of who he was talking to anyway (I do believe a novel suggesting Feast of Steven was indeed referring to the Time Lords was brought up, but don't quote me on that). --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  13:56, April 26, 2020 (UTC)
 * If self-parody stories like Voice from the Vortex! or A Mutual Friend (both spoofifying annual short stories of different eras) aren’t seen to be magically declaring themselves invalid, why should ones that just so happen to break the fourth wall be? Doctor Who can be dark and complex at times, but I can also be silly and inconsequential at others, and BOTH ARE DOCTOR WHO! To paraphrase from memory Martin Bannister “the way I see it, if you’re trying to understand it by analysing it and breaking it down, you’ve missed the point entirely”. Well, actually, in context, he’s supposed to be saying that about another show whilst favouring Doctor Who, and also wrong for saying it. I’m cleverly recontextualising it into a situation in which it DOES apply! You see, he was saying ‘don’t analyse Doctor Who Juliet Bravo at all it’s just some dumb kids show it’s SUPPOSED to suck all of it is bad’, which is a mindset I hate, but I just as much the too-far-the-other-way mindset ‘everything MUST fit into the LORE because this is a super serious franchise all the time and I can’t just enjoy stories for what they are I need a canon explanation for why everything looked grey in the first two Doctors’ eras and why some episode are missing and why you can’t see Big Finish and ESPECIALLY why some stories break the fourth wall’. That novel was pretty silly too. He wasn’t taking to anyone but us, the viewers, and if you disagree you take this show too seriously. It should be taken somewhat seriously, it’s my favourite show and most of it is genuinely great! I don’t watch it masochistically, I expect to like it and genuinely so, not in a ‘so bad it’s good’ way. And I’m not fan of saying ‘it’s just a show you should really relax’ to shut down ANY AND ALL critics ever, but THIS is a scenario where ‘it’s just a show you should really relax’ does indeed apply. It’s silly. Very silly. But Doctor Who, quite frankly, is silly. Obviously not all the time but a franchise this big isn’t going to be ANYTHING all the time. I rest my case. What? Oh, no! I thought that was just a figure of speech! Case closed. NightmareofEden  ☎  14:15, April 26, 2020 (UTC)
 * I beg of you, have pity on me! Use paragraph breaks!…


 * As a fan I completely agree with you. However, I am speaking to you not as a fan agreeing or not with the way one constructs one's headcanon, but as a Wiki editor with some experience of Tardis:Valid sources trying to uphold them. Personally I'd just as soon rewrite it entirely, but so long as the policy stands, we must make good-faith efforts to respect it, albeit only to later create a thread in the forum to change the policy. And the policy in this case is, "being a pastiche of an old style of Who story doesn't a priori mean you don't pass Rule 4, but fourth-wall-breaking does". --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  14:22, April 26, 2020 (UTC)