Talk:List of DWU concepts not owned by the BBC

Category vs Page
Would this be better served as a category, and not a page? Najawin ☎  06:57, June 20, 2020 (UTC)
 * Not necessarily vouching for the page, but a category would not work. Licensing and intellectual property rights are out-of-universe attributions, and such a category would be applied to in-universe pages for characters and species. 09:22, June 20, 2020 (UTC)
 * i think that this is a valuable page. no word of a lie, yesterday i was looking for a similar list - although i hoped it would be far more extensive, this list could get there in time. DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎  10:02, June 20, 2020 (UTC)
 * Quite honestly I'm all in favor of something like this. I just have massive reservations of doing it as a page as opposed to a category, for one. But if that's a no go, that's understandable. That said, I think proper sourcing is important for this. Obviously things like Daleks, K9, are well known, and we can infer some others from publishing history. But I really do think if we have this page it's going to be one where we have to be very careful to explain each and every addition to it, unlike some other pages where people tend to be a bit lax with sources. Just for example, I've seen some people say Moffat owns the rights to the Paternoster Gang. My understanding of the BBC policies is that this would not be the case, unless there was specific language in his contract otherwise. So we don't want someone putting them on this page without a very clear source for this fact, and it's a rumor in the fan community that does exist. Najawin ☎  10:13, June 20, 2020 (UTC)
 * Hooray to digging up sources! In the specific Paternoster Gang example, my understanding is that Moffat individuall owns the characters of Vastra, Strax and Jenny, because they were "incidental" characters in a run-of-the-mill script of his, but that he doesn't own the brand of "the Paternoster Gang", and the concept of the trio as protagonists — because when he developed that, it was in his capacity as showrunner, creating a new element of the recurring premise, so the BBC owns that for the same reason it automatically owns new TV companions.


 * At any rate, just enacted a big retool of the page. I think the tables setup is more informative and much clearer to the reader. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  12:10, June 20, 2020 (UTC)

I'll be honest, I think we need to get some very clear statements about how the modern contracts work before I'm comfortable putting any new characters there. Najawin ☎  19:45, June 20, 2020 (UTC)

Debuting in non-BBC-licensed media

 * Iris Wildthyme is listed under Debuting in non-TV BBC-licensed media, but given the fact that Iris originated from a trilogy of non-DWU novels, so wouldn't she be better suited under Debuting in non-BBC-licensed media, even though the wiki doesn't cover her first few stories?
 * Epsilon the Eternal ☎  12:19, June 20, 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, I believe the Wiki's current stance is that Old Flames is essentially a "second beginning" of the character, rebooting her to such an extent that the DWU Iris is best treated as distinct from the Phoenix Court Iris. Which is why all her subsequent appearances are covered on the Wiki, rather than her perpetually being treated as a crossover character on "loan" from the Phoenix Court series. Consequently, the Iris we care about did debut in Old Flames. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  12:28, June 20, 2020 (UTC)

Other characters
so i am not too sure about all the licensing, or where these characters would fit on the list, but i believe Minister of Chance (appearing in Minister of Chance audio series) and Chris Cwej (soon to be featuring in his own anthology series) should be on the list. also Praxis and the Quoth seem to be licensed by Arcbeatle Press as they will appear in the Cwej series. DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎  14:11, June 20, 2020 (UTC)
 * Abslom Daak and Sabbath Dei are other major characters. DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎  14:20, June 20, 2020 (UTC)
 * Be mindful of Tardis:Spoiler policy. You can't mention details from upcoming releases.


 * Yes, Cwej should very much be on the list, and that's true heedless of Cwej: The Series — his jumping-around from the VNAs to Faction Paradox to Big Finish certainly justifies it on its own. Not sure about the Minister. Ditto Abslom and Sabbath. I greatly expanded the lists but I make no claims of exhaustivity; by all means add any ones I forgot.


 * However, since the Wiki doesn't cover the Minister of Chance audio series because it (I think, wrongly) holds that it was in breach of copyright somehow, then per T:BOUND we can't acknowledge it as recurring appearances of a DWU character, albeit invalid ones. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  16:12, June 20, 2020 (UTC)


 * while we cannot include spoilers, surely we can acknowledge certain characters as being owned by Arcbeatle Press due to them creating a future release around them? DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎  17:17, June 20, 2020 (UTC)
 * No — acknowledging the existence of "a future release containing Concept X" already counts as a spoiler. If there were an official statement of "we now have the license for Concept X" that didn't refer to future stories at all, we could use that, but I don't believe any exist. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  17:19, June 20, 2020 (UTC)

Sourcing
So I'm going to move the above discussion with Scrooge to a better heading down here. How do we want to handle sourcing for this? Will a DWU character appearing in nonDWU work immediately qualify them for this list without other sources? Do we want sources to just establish "yeah, that's how contracts worked at the time and this writer was on that type of contract"? Or do we want a very clear "so and so owns the rights to this concept".

Similarly, do we extrapolate these "contract conditions" from classic Who to the VNA/EDA era? Or do we think that there's some other reason that Faction Paradox exists and not everything created by a freelancer is instantly their work? And does anyone have the explicit language for various types of contracts on the new series? Again, I'm a fan of this page. But it's a really difficult task we're undertaking here. Najawin ☎  20:07, June 20, 2020 (UTC)

Sontarans
I've heard that the BBC has bought the rights to the Sontarans from the Holmes estate. If this is accurate, the Sontarans should probably be removed from this list. Does anyone know whether this is true or not? --Bio Planet WoO ☎  21:16, June 24, 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't know if this is true, but although, if it is, a note should definitely be made, the fact would remain that they were, for a lengthy period of time, not owned by the BBC, during which time they appeared in several non-BBC-overseen productions. So they absolutely should stay on the list in some capacity. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  21:20, June 24, 2020 (UTC)


 * Just so people know exactly when I heard this from, the author of, "Downtime – The Lost Years of Doctor Who" Dylan Rees mentions the BBC buying the rights at the 51 minute mark during this podcast interview. https://podbay.fm/podcast/517595563/e/1488926118 Bio Planet WoO  ☎  02:07, June 25, 2020 (UTC)
 * I moved it to a new section. Najawin ☎  02:21, June 25, 2020 (UTC)
 * Is Dylan Rees involved with the Holmes Estate? 01:26, July 23, 2020 (UTC)
 * So the context of the podcast is that it was talking about Downtime – The Lost Years of Doctor Who, which was a work about all the "Doctor Who spinoff media" in the 90s, written by Rees, and why Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans (home video) wasn't released on DVD. So while Rees isn't involved with the Holmes estate, he did do research relevant to our inquiry. Think of him as a secondary or ternary source, depending on how we count things. (IE: He's either a secondary source that the reason Shakedown isn't released is because of fears related to the BBC acquiring the rights, or a ternary source that the BBC actually acquired the rights.) Najawin ☎  01:42, July 23, 2020 (UTC)

Crossover characters
Right, so User:DiSoRiEnTeD1 believes that Aesculapius should be on this page. He argues that since the character was always within the loose "sphere" of Doctor Who, and has made several licensed appearances in Doctor Who stories, she qualifies.

However, while in the abstract I wouldn't disagree, this doesn't seem to be in keeping with this Wiki's policies. Never Go On Walks might be a homage to Doctor Who, but it is not legally connected to Doctor Who, nor even directly narratively connected to the DWU. Aesc is only very tenuously a "Doctor Who concept" — she is first and foremost a 10,000 Dawns concept, albeit one inspired by Doctor Who and who later made licensed appearances in DWU media. Yes, in real life, there's obviously a difference between Aesc meeting the Doctor, and Jean-Luc Picard meeting the Doctor, but T:VS has never acknowledged that. Why should this page?

Furthermore, the thing is, Aesc isn't alone — I feel like if we list her, we should also list the likes of Lauren Anderson and the Cyberons. And at this rate, what I'd recommend would be a new section/table for licensed-crossover-characters-with-more-than-one-appearance-in-the-DWU, where we might also document notable cases like Death's Head. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  01:32, July 22, 2020 (UTC)
 * A completely separate article listing the contents of Category:Stories that crossover with non-DWU series with lovely informative tables is another option. --Borisashton ☎  01:35, July 22, 2020 (UTC)


 * So Assimilation² is illustrative. Let's suppose that tomorrow we found a production diary that shows that the Borg were explicitly based off of the Cybermen. Would that be justification for them belonging on this page? I think clearly not. As a character she's not a Doctor Who concept, she belongs to another franchise, another literary universe, it's just one that happens to at times intersect with the Doctor Who Universe from time to time.


 * I agree with the new section/table, but actually think it should be its own page. Just on the principle of it not really being the same sort of thing as what this page is doing, and it's something this wiki should document. Currently we have the "Stories that crossover with non-DWU series" category, but that includes Bad Wolf (TV story) and When Being You Just Isn't Enough which sort of obviously aren't the same thing. Najawin  ☎  01:39, July 22, 2020 (UTC)
 * 'course, the Cyberon/Zygon thing is another issue I've been meaning to bring up in the forums at some point (so watch out for that thread). Cyberon is emphatically set in the DWU, it just doesn't have any preexisting licenses to prove it — it's only a "non-DWU" series on a technicality. I'd argue Assimilation^2, Bad Wolf and Zygon are all very different types of "crossovers". --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  01:45, July 22, 2020 (UTC)
 * This list appears to be, at least under my interpretation, one that contains all recurring characters (and concepts) in Doctor Who media that the BBC does not own. I agree that cross-over characters as a whole should be kept separate - but I view Lady Aesculapius as an exception due to the character's entire existence being tethered to the DWU.
 * The character was first introduced in an unauthorised Doctor Who poetry book, and has since been set up to be the 10,000 Dawns (series) version of a Time Lord. If, and more likely when, she gets another valid appearance - and is thus a recurring character in the DWU - I think she should be readded to the list. DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎  01:49, July 22, 2020 (UTC)
 * I mean, she's already a recurring concept within Doctor Who, though not within the valid DWU. Recurring across several valid stories is a form of recurring…ness, in my book.


 * But as I said, 'TeD, BTS circumstances be damned, that's not really how this Wiki operates. So her first story was printed in a Doctor Who reference book. What then? Again, I see no argument here that doesn't also apply to, at the very least, Lauren Anderson and the Cyberons. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  01:53, July 22, 2020 (UTC)


 * That is why I added her, as she was a recurring concept within the DWU. But I thought @Najawin had a point about her not being recurring within valid stories.


 * I didn't realise that Lauren Anderson and the Cyberons were missing, I thought they were included - but they each only have one valid story too. DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎  01:57, July 22, 2020 (UTC)

I'd be in favour of a separate list of crossovers article to fully detail this, as well as the many other different types of crossover. For example, Dr. Thirteenth is a Doctor Who story featuring elements from a non-DWU series whereas Time Bomb! is a story from a non-DWU series featuring elements from Doctor Who. Then, you have the middle ground with Lauren Anderson and Cyberon / Zygon. All three types can have separate tables fully explained who owns what and where all the characters originate. --Borisashton ☎  02:09, July 22, 2020 (UTC)

Original Mammoths
Okay, so we're going to have to have another discussion it looks like. User:DiSoRiEnTeD1 seems to think that the Original Mammoths have only appeared in the DWU once, and thus do not qualify for a "recurring concepts" list, which was what I used to point out Aesculapius wouldn't qualify under. When User:Scrooge MacDuck originally added them, I too had some concerns, which is why I went to their talk page to ask them about it. Specifically because something very much like what Nate had talked about was first mentioned in Christmas on a Rational Planet, and continued in Political Animals, The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, and to a small extent in Grass (boy is Grass weird). Scrooge seemed to suggest that there's a Yssgaroth/Great Vampire sort of thing going on. Clearly FP was doing something with Mammoths that was just never explained because, well, Lawrence Miles never got around to it. And so Nate recontextualized all the prior mammoth appearances in a certain way. At least that's my understanding of the situation. But does that count as a "recurring concept" for the purposes of this list? Najawin ☎  01:58, July 22, 2020 (UTC)


 * Arguing that they first appeared in Political Animals is pretty redundant when the edit you keep reverting has them down as first appearing in Cobweb and Ivory.


 * The title and concept of the Original Mammoths first appeared in C&I - the writer can link this back to whatever he pleases, as long as he has the rights to do so, but that doesn't mean that the concept existed before its creation. DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎  02:07, July 22, 2020 (UTC)


 * Well so the concept of Mammoths existing in the pre universe and being weird and important predates C&I. More than that (aside from the specific Mammoth owned by King George III), giving specific form, comes in C&I. Similarly Great Vampires being a threat to Time Lords and fighting in a massive war with them comes from before The Pit (novel). We'd still say that they're fundamentally the same concept in some sense, and a radically different concept in another. Najawin ☎  02:14, July 22, 2020 (UTC)


 * The term Original Mammoths is unique to Cobweb and Ivory (short story). This is a term coined by Nate Bumber and, while it may be based on things mentioned in past books, it is distinct enough to give him specific rights and control over this individual name and concept. It does not suddenly give him rights to the stories that he took inspiration from.


 * Cernunnos may have been revealed to have been the leader of the Original Mammoths in C&I, but that doesn't suddenly make a story (fifteen years before the concept was even thought created) a licensed appearance of said concept. DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎  02:33, July 22, 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't believe I've suggested anything you're responding to here, so I'm confused as to this response. Let's suppose that no mention of the Great Vampires was ever again made after The Pit (novel). Would Yssgaroth still bear mentioning on this page? Note that it has a footnote stating "Penswick owns the name of "the Yssgaroth" and the conception of them as an impersonal force of evil, but the rights to the original Great Vampires as seen in State of Decay continue to lie with the BBC."


 * It's an interesting discussion, because "Vampires fought by the Time Lords", owned in part by the BBC, show up multiple times in this hypothetical, but the specific impersonal force of evil does not. Similarly, weird progenitor mammoths show up multiple times, but fleshing them out past that does not. It's deeply unclear. And to just blanketly say "nope, doesn't belong" is utterly absurd and can't be taken seriously for half a second. Najawin ☎  02:42, July 22, 2020 (UTC)
 * In my opinion, it is beyond reasonable doubt that Penswick and Bumber own something DWU in both cases. The idea of there having been mammoths in the pre-universe predates Cobweb and Ivory, indeed; what Bumber does own is the concept of a species of sapient pre-universe mammoths. Similarly, Penswick does not own the Great Vampires who fought the Great Houses, but rather the term "Yssgaroth" and the concept of the Yssgaroth as an eldritch vampiric force from another universe who fought the Great Houses.


 * Speaking of which, this is the exact example we need — there might be a direct in-universe link between the two in valid sources, but pre-VNA TV stories about the Time Lords aren't sudden licensed appearances of the Great Houses. Pre-The Dark Path stories involving the Master obviously don't involve David A. McIntee's copyright of "Koschei". Etc. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  09:44, July 22, 2020 (UTC)
 * So the issue discussed here isn't "do Bumber (and Penswick in the hypothetical) own something", it's "is what they own (again, considering the hypothetical) recurring enough to merit inclusion onto this list". As they've added something to the concept, but what makes it a recurring concept in the DWU isn't premised on these new features, and comes from places where these features weren't yet fleshed out. Najawin ☎  09:56, July 23, 2020 (UTC)
 * Oh, I disagree strenuously if that is your argument. The Yssgaroth as featured in Faction Paradox under a Penswick license is very much the "impersonal, eldritch force of evil" of Penswick, not the giant bat-people of State of Decay — indeed, FP never bothered to get the license for the giant bat-people in State of Decay, because all the features it wanted to use were the ones introduced by Penswick.


 * (Lawrence Miles is on record as saying that originally he was just going to create his own "crawling chaos at the beginning of Time", until it occurred to him that Penswick had already established one in the DWU with a cool name he could hire; it's not clear that State of Decay was even on his mind when he began plotting out the place of the Yssgaroth in the FP mythos/plotline.)


 * As for the Mammoths, their licensed appearance in White Canvas was similarly predicated on "sentient, magical mammoths who want to unravel the Web of Time as part of the War in Heaven, led by a guy called Cernunnos", which is what Bumber owns. (I'm not sure the sheer concept of "in the time before the Anchoring of the Web of Time, there were, somehow, mammoths" is even copyrightable.)


 * It would be against policy to go into potential future appearances of the Mammoths under that same paradigm, but we don't need to. The concept recurring once under Bumber's license is, I think, enough. If it recurred, it's recurring — and if it did so thanks to a specific non-BBC-involving licensing situation, it belongs on this page. That is my view, anyway.


 * (I similarly think that Kramer before Candy-Jar picked her up, or the Cyberons before A Bright White Crack, already should have been on the page had it existed at the time. "Recurring" shouldn't be taken to mean "has more than 5 appearances" here; what would be the point of that? It's "what DWU characters have been licensed from their authors?" that interests the reader.) --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  10:13, July 23, 2020 (UTC)
 * My thought isn't "more than five appearances", it's "more than once". If a character shows up in a single episode/book/arc/story and then never pops up again, I don't think the wiki reader will care. Do we really care about the rights status of Diana Goddard? I can't imagine we do, it gets into obscure issues with BBC contracts, and that's all that we really learn from analyzing that situation. But with, say, The Mammoths, someone who's curious as to a feature that pops up from time to time, it's legal status, can come here and see what it is. I do think it should have an asterisk, a la Yssgaroth, saying that "primordial mammoth's from the before time might not even be copyrightable, but sentient ones doing xyz are owned by Bumber". Najawin ☎  10:22, July 23, 2020 (UTC)
 * Hm, I see. I find nothing wrong with that. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  10:30, July 23, 2020 (UTC)

DiSoRiEnTeD1, have you anything to add? Or should we just add them back with the asterisk? Najawin ☎  04:31, July 28, 2020 (UTC)
 * The concept has appeared a single time so is not recurring. Add Cernunnos by all means, but I will continue to challenge OM’s inclusion here. DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎  05:37, July 28, 2020 (UTC)
 * So would the Sontarans not be recurring as of The Sontaran Experiment? (Note this argument that Linx is a subtly different concept than we see later on.) Najawin ☎  05:46, July 28, 2020 (UTC)
 * This is an out-of-universe thread talking about copyright in the real world. The Original Mammoths was created as a concept for Cobweb and Ivory and, while it may have been linked to stuff mentioned earlier, this remains the concepts first and only appearance.
 * What are you proposing exactly? Continue having Cobweb and Ivory listed as their first appearance - and created by Nate Bumber? Despite trying to say that they made appearances (a whole decade) before that?... DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎  05:55, July 28, 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm just trying to understand your position. You have a very weird view on some things, as seen in Thread:279761, and it doesn't seem like it's what the wiki is doing. Generally we care about a continuous concept. Concepts that as someone with a math background I might call "homotopic" (or "homotopically equivalent", if I was going to try and be a bit more robust for a layman). If there's a continual narrative transformation between two concepts, then they're the same. The continuous concept of the Original Mammoths has appeared prior to Cobweb and Ivory, but it only became distinct enough to be copyrightable in said story. Najawin ☎  06:10, July 28, 2020 (UTC)
 * Then you’re admitting that Nate Bumber only owns the copyright for the concept he created (which you say “only became distinct enough to be copyrightable in said story”) and which has only appeared once since in valid media. Why would you then try to add the speculative content that he is somehow the creator and licensee of the original pre-historic mammoth concept that came long before him too? DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎  06:17, July 28, 2020 (UTC)

Hmm? Bumber owns the copyright for the part of the concept he created, similar to how Platt owns part of the Homeworld concept, or Penswick part of the Yssgaroth concept. The entire continuous concept has appeared in media before the story Bumber wrote. Indeed, if you read the discussion Scrooge and I had, you would note that we both came to the conclusion that an asterisk noting that Bumber did not come up with the "weird mammoths in the pre-universe" part of the concept, similar to the Penswick example. So to say that we would add the speculative content you're suggesting is just factually incorrect. Najawin ☎  06:26, July 28, 2020 (UTC)
 * This seems to be exactly the same as the Gallifrey situation. The then-unnamed planet of the Doctor was referenced multiple times (and even seen on the occasion) before it was given the name Gallifrey in The Time Warrior. I believe that both of these concepts have always been owned by the BBC but, talking hypothetically, if they were created by individual copyright holders then there would be separate copyrights for the planet as a whole and for the name Gallifrey.


 * This is the exact same situation as the Original Mammoths. The concept of pre-historic mammoths has been referenced several times (and even seen on occasion) before it was given the name Original Mammoths in Cobweb and Ivory. This doesn’t suddenly give Nate Bumber the rights to the entire concept, seen decades before his contribution, but the name that he created.


 * So, how can you then go on to add to the page that the Original Mammoths are a recurring concept when that concept has only appeared in a single story? DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎  06:29, July 28, 2020 (UTC)


 * I mean, there's just a flat out contradiction between "The concept of pre-historic mammoths has been referenced several times (and even seen on occasion) before it was given the name Original Mammoths in Cobweb and Ivory." and "the Original Mammoths are a recurring concept when that concept has only appeared in a single story?" You yourself admitted that they've appeared in multiple stories, they've just only been named and given a slight change in form in that particular story. But I agree, this is deeply similar to Thread:279761. Would you agree to have that thread resolve this issue as well? Najawin ☎  06:37, July 28, 2020 (UTC)
 * There’s literally no contradiction there. In-universe they can be documented as the same thing; but out-of-universe (which this page is for) the concept of the Original Mammoths has appeared a single time.


 * Your suggestion of an asterisks noting that Bumber didn’t create the original concept is a noble one, and can be applied once the concept for the Original Mammoths has made more than one appearance. DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎  06:41, July 28, 2020 (UTC)


 * The concept has appeared multiple times, the issue of legal rights (which this page is about) is a more nuanced one. Now would you answer the question about Thread:279761? We both agree it's similar, and it seems like it would satisfy both of us. Najawin ☎  07:05, July 28, 2020 (UTC)