Board Thread:Inclusion debates/@comment-26285319-20150407171302/@comment-4028641-20150414084029

It was completed and released. If the HOMEVID version of Shada is a deleted scene, then so is the Big Finish version of The Nightmare Fair. It was released by itself, advertising as the story finally brought to light.

We had this discussion before, and I recall some very shady sources being pulled out to justify it not being a story. It takes some extrapolatingly obscure BBC officials to say that the story is not legitimate.

The main consensus the argument against it before was something like this: the BBC itself does not count the Baker version of Shada as a legitimate source, and instead takes the Paul McGann version as the official take. This idea has great holes when you take into account that:
 * The Novelization of Shada that came out (I believe) after that discussion clearly takes to the Tom Baker version and is not seemingly meant to be a non-canon story.
 * Multiple Short Trip stories reference this story happening, making it clear that at least SOMEONE takes the story as legitimate
 * The Special Edition of The Five Doctors features a re-edit so that Shada can still take place.

This clearly shows a straight-coward attempt by the BBC and others to make Shada with Tom Baker a legitimate story. When we say "Tom Baker's Shada isn't canon," what we're essentially saying is "we're passing judgement on an issue of canon in the DWU," and that's something that the site simply should not do, especially considering that we barely can justify it. Let the readers decide which version they consider legitimate, and how they interpret the different versions. Possibly we should consider breaking up the unfinished story of Shada and the Homevideo adaptation of it — but to keep this bizarre and uncharacteristic judgement is beyond logic itself.