Board Thread:Inclusion debates/@comment-86.178.203.198-20140629173408/@comment-188432-20140701160755

That's really only if it's a story, though, Revan. I don't see a narrative in the pages that are made available to read on Amazon. I see, as the title suggests, a "notebook" — a journal of early drafts of other works. Again, I haven't read the full text because it's not out yet where I live, but from what I can tell, it's probably non-narrative and therefore an invalid source for writing articles.

After all, in-universe does not mean narrative. T:VS specifically excludes things that are written in an in-universe fashion but are not themselves stories. Otherwise we'd have to include an absolute tonne of material from annuals, bits of The Making of Doctor Who, bits of Doctor Who DVD Files, and lots of other stuff.

Maybe the best analogue to this situation is Tales from the TARDIS. In those early DWM strips, there was always the framing device of the Fourth Doctor speaking in an apparently in-universe way. This could imply that the events of the comic — which were mostly non-superhero strips written by Stan Lee and company in the 1950s — occurred in the DWU. But of course, we know better than that. We can see an "in-universe" frame for what it is: a gimmick. And, according to the pages I've read on Amazon, that very much seems to be what's going on here. A bit of flimflam papering together what are really just discrete, parodic rewrites of Shakespearian text.

Again, we'll probably have to wait until the book is released globally to have a fully informed discussion about the book. But one thing that seems totally safe to say is that the bulk of the book — the contents of the notebooks, as it were — can't be taken at face value as a true recording of events.

In the real world, we know that Shakespeare's historical plays are in no way accurate, something wholly confirmed by The Shakespeare Code and The Kingmaker and A Groatsworth of Wit. So to take any of this literally would be to assume that Shakespeare tells the truth — which he really doesn't, either in the real world or the DWU.

At best, this is the DWU as seen through Shakespeare's lens. At worst, it's simply parody, and therefore a wholly invalid source for articles.

A particularly vexing verse is found in the bit labeled "Exits and Entrances". Purported to be something from an early version of As You Like It, the fragment gives a rundown of the first seven incarnations of the Doctor, but includes references to stories in which we know Shakespeare never participated. He just wasn't present for the opening stories for the first six Doctors, nor is there a reason given why he should know the word Fenric.

So what does this mean? That Shakespeare was in the TARDIS, or otherwise unseen, in all those stories? Or did the Doctor tell him about all these adventures? Or maybe he got a blast from an info-stamp? How are we to plausibly account for anything in this excerpt? There's probably nothing in the book that tells us the source of his knowledge.

It is certainly much easier to just say, "This is parody" and move on — especially because, if the rest of the book is like the excerpt available on Amazon, there really isn't a story here. It seems to be much more of a pseudo-academic work than a story.

Another point: let's say that we believe that the Macbeth rewrite is actually as "true" as the section's title of "The True Tragedie of Macbeth" purports. That is, let's say that King Macbeth really did interact with the Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe in the DWU. As I've said before, I think that would be ill-advised, because Shakespeare is a liar in the DWU.

But let's pull the trigger on Shakespeare as a reliable source, anyway. Thing is, we don't have a full play here. It's just excerpts of a few scene. Given the page count, that must be true of all this stuff. It's all just fragmentary, and worse, it's not sequential. So it's not even the case of the Virgin NA preludes in DWM, where you have an introduction, or a Moffat era prequel. These are just random scenes, not full narratives. And that means there are any number of contextual errors we could be making if we treat them as gospel. (Which is a dumb idea anyway, because Shakespeare lies.)

On top of all of that, let's not forget that, by and large, the point of the book is to create text that sounds like Shakespeare. That means highly stylised, poetic language which will admit of multiple interpretation. And it also means that sometimes the accuracy of a passage is sacrificed for a good rhyme or suitable style. Now, understand that Revan's quite right to say upthread that this, in itself, does not disqualify the work, but it's just a heads up that — if we do rule this a valid source — this may be an especially challenging source for articles.

Here's a good example of taking the text here at face value.

In the Hamlet bit, the Doctor arrives in Denmark — or is it Finland? Shakespeare doesn't know — and then lets fly with:
 * I am Magician. Do you not know me, for we have met before, Lord Hamlet.

So, taken literally, the Eleventh Doctor calls himself "Magician" and has at some other time met Hamlet. Okayyyy.

Next:
 * I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
 * Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
 * Make thy two eyes, like starts, start from their spheres,
 * Thy knotted and combined bow tie to part,
 * And each particular hand to stand on end
 * Like quills upon Koquillion

Right. So the literal interpretation of that scene is that the Eleventh Doctor mentioned Koquillion to Hamlet. Would that allow someone to add a sentence like this to our article about Koquillion?
 * The Eleventh Doctor once referenced Koquillion when speaking to Hamlet. (PROSE: — oh what do you know, there's another problem, we can't actually use PROSE, cause it's not prose — The Shakespeare Notebooks)

I don't personally think so.

Of course, the real kicker is that the Eleventh Doctor twice tells Hamelet to "revenge" his father's death. Really? The Doctor telling someone revenge is a good idea? We know that's not the Doctor talking. That's Justin Richards or whoever putting the Doctor in the same narrative space as the Ghost from Hamlet, and having the Doctor say another character's lines. We absolutely cannot say something like:


 * The Eleventh Doctor once met Hamlet and advised the young prince to take revenge for his father's murder. (VERSE: The Shakespeare Notebooks)

That's just not what happened in the DWU event, if indeed there is a DWU event that's being recorded here at all. It certainly seems plausible given the explanatory text that this is something that Shakespeare just made up on the fly. In the preceding prose section, Shakespeare is purported to have written does several way in which Hamlet's father's death could have been relayed to him. The notes indicated that he found the notion of a magician appearing to him to be 'most plausible" because "such things are common in the theatre".

So even if we do allow this thing as a valid source, we'll still have to carefully examine how it might be used on the wiki. To be honest, the best use of this material is almost certainly as a behind the scenes note on our pages about Shakespeare plays. Make decent sense to BTS it on Macbeth, but considerably less sense as a part of the in-universe portion of Eleventh Doctor or Jamie McCrimmon.