Talk:Legacies (short story)

Licensing
Here's an important question -- does this story hold the proper rights to illustrate characters like The Doctor's TARDIS and Jamie McCrimmon? Does it literally use the words TARDIS and Jamie? If not, we must follow the precedent of stories like AiaPU. OS25 (Talk) 12:18, April 29, 2017 (UTC)


 * Not at all! With regard to the TARDIS, it mentions a blue police box which transforms into a woman with the ability to manipulate time. Jamie isn't actually in it - a "Scottish boy" is merely mentioned. Victoria is in it very briefly, where she's referred to simply as a young girl with a surname to do with "water" and the first name of a famous English queen. All above board as far as I can see. Mythicia77  ☎  16:01, August 13, 2017 (UTC)


 * Yeah the story doesn't mention any character by name, but through very clever description you can clearly tell who each character is in the story. Licensing doesn't really come into it as the words "the Doctor" and "TARDIS" are simply not present in the story. It's identical to PROSE: Toy Story, in that regard. --Revan\Talk 16:27, August 13, 2017 (UTC)


 * Thank you for explaining. This looks like the case of Schrödinger Victoria. When a BBC lawyer looks at the book, she's not there, but when a reader pops their head she appears in all her glory. This frankly cannot stand. As correctly pointed out by OttselSpy25 (whom I sincerely thank for being the first to note the problem), the wiki has long ago developed a way of dealing with these wink-wink characters, which is nicely summarised at Adventures in a Pocket Universe (audio series) We have separate pages for
 * The Mistress (The Choice) who is not Romana II
 * War King who is not the Master
 * The Imperator who is not Morbius
 * Clockworks who are not Time Lords
 * Ecto-Space which is not E-Space
 * Very Fabric of Time and Space which is not Time Vortex
 * etc. etc. etc. As tempting as it might be to take the Faction Paradox (series) situation and apply it here, we cannot for several reasons.
 * Faction Paradox was debated on Panopticon at least 4 times. And the amount of effort NateBumber put into the a) justification of established connections and b) delineation of cases that are less clear is both commendable and mind-boggling. The eventual argument that won the day was not that we accept every license-bending description if the authors said they would like us to. It was nowhere near that simple. The reality of the FP is that authors zig and zag in and out of Doctor Who licensed properties carrying their characters with them. NateBumber has developed an elaborate web of connections that reach some of the descriptions but not all (as the list above shows).
 * And this is a second reason we can't apply the FP treatment to this series. There is no treatment. It's tedious case-by-case analysis, aiming to trace a character or element through licensed properties to the place it was only described.
 * When we have a properly licensed appearance of Victoria, Jamie, etc. referring to the events of this story, then Victoria may be brought back onto this page. For now, the connection should be mentioned on the story notes and the legal situation explained, as is done on many pages provided for comparison above. The page of Girl (Legacies) or whatever you might wanna call her based on the text of the story should mention the intention of her being Victoria Waterfield in the BTS section and explain the reasons. But Victoria Waterfield be she cannot, as Rule 2 of T:VS it violate will. Amorkuz ☎  12:59, August 15, 2017 (UTC)

Over the past few weeks I have read the first six novels in the Lethbridge-Stewart series, in addition to several of the short stories. As you note, the series does not hold the license to use "the Doctor" and "TARDIS" as concepts, like a number of similar spin off series that have popped up over the last few years. The unique situtaion about the Lethbridge-Stewart series is that it has made the effort of obtaining the license to other characters and concepts from the Doctor Who universe in order to truly establish itself as taking place within the same universe.

In regard to the question of "is the Cosmic Hobo the Doctor?". The short answer: of course he is. The Beast of Fang Rock contains several scenes where characters mention "the Do-" or similar, before the "Cosmic Hobo" alias is used, which is explained in-universe as a government alias for the Doctor, who they have noticed popping up several times over the course of the 20th century. While Amorkuz, you may stipulate that this is cannot be the Doctor due to rights reasons, the story (and others) specifically state that the "Cosmic Hobo" was the man whom Travers and Lethbridge-Stewart encountered in the London Underground, and who also appeared at Fang Rock in relation to the Horror of Fang Rock TV story. The series does hold the rights to the concepts and characters from these stories, and leave no shadow of a doubt that the Doctor is the character to whom they are referring.

The sad truth is that while we can go along the argument that "no rights = no appearance", we are doing the factual accuracy of this wiki a sad disservice by doing so. The people at Candy Jar are doing nothing wrong by including references to the Doctor in their stories, by all rights they should, considering that their stories take place within the DWU. The references to the Doctor are all what they should be, merely references, and leave no room for doubt that they are meaning the Doctor, with very clever use of the English language to emphasise this without violating copyright law.

If you were to read the stories for yourself, you would certainly see the way these references are put across. In the past I have been skeptical about how the series can hold its own without a full license to Doctor Who, yet after reading them, their validity is very much there. --Revan\Talk 19:41, August 15, 2017 (UTC)


 * Once again, the validity of these stories is not in question until Cosmic Hobo become The Doctor. At that moment, the stories start violating Rule 2 of T:VS. Let me quote it in full: "A story that isn't commercially licensed by all of the relevant copyright holders doesn't count." Note the emphasis on "commercially" (whether the story is marketed as free or not) and "all". Indeed, there are many spin-offs, and each of them should stay within their legal boundaries. If they want to include explicit references to the Doctor, they should pay for them. Their approach at the moment seems slightly different: as in take a promotional photo from the BBC website and use it to cash in on the general hype of the moment by referencing a character they will never have the rights to and that has yet to appear even in BBC stories. It is certainly up to BBC to pursue or not the legal side of the matter. But "holding its own" this series isn't, sorry.
 * Let me be very clear about the consequences of being lax here: if we allow references to the Doctor from CJB, then the first mention of this BBC character would be by CJB. This shall not happen.
 * I also disagree that we are doing a disservice by upholding the current legal situation and our own validity rules. There are plenty of ways to provide complete information without violating either. Plenty of connections remain behind the validity line: Petronella Osgood and Tom Osgood, The Woman (The End of Time) and the Doctor, all the non-equivalent equivalences above. At the minimum, copious BTS notes would do the trick. At a maximum, the Legacy (video game) approach can be used with a separate wiki focused on the LS series and representing everything as the authors/editors dream in a copyright-free world with extensive linking between the two wikis.
 * But pretending that this is a fully licensed Doctor Who range is false advertisement. The publisher can engage in it at their own risk. But the wiki should not be party to it. They are not the first ones not to have complete license. They should be treated as everyone else. And the quality of their righting (or lack thereof) has absolutely nothing to do with it. Amorkuz ☎  20:07, August 15, 2017 (UTC)

Another perspective, coming purely from a place of Devil's Advocacy: the authors intended the Cosmic Hobo to be the Doctor, and everyone who reads the story understands the Cosmic Hobo to be the Doctor. What good are we as a wiki if we refuse to acknowledge such a basic and obvious element of the story? NateBumber ☎  20:14, August 15, 2017 (UTC)

My point exactly. This story literally is a complete and confusing mess if you remove the Doctor Who elements from it. The story is completely propped up by having knowledge of The Web of Fear. The wiki receives increasingly negative press on forums and social media for our strange rejection of stories based on strange conceptions of validity. The fact that the Cosmic Hobo is clearly intended to be the Doctor is a simple truth of this series, yet we have once again over-examined such a basic notion of storytelling, and made things complicated for our readers as a result. --Revan\Talk 20:56, August 15, 2017 (UTC)


 * With all due respect, I would ask to adhere to T:BOUND. When I saw potential ways of improving our validity rules to improve coverage on this wiki, I went to discuss this on Panopticon. The thread is still open and everyone is welcome to contribute. Any issue with "negative press on forums and social media" can be discussed there, preferably with exact quotes and links rather than in this unsubstantiated and irresponsible manner.


 * Secondly, why is it believed that moving unlicensed elements to story notes and BTS sections equates to their "removal"? This thought keeps reappearing and has absolutely no basis under it. Why is it that the readers of the books are supposed to understand that "Cosmic Hobo" is the Doctor, but those same readers bumping into a faithful description of the story about the Cosmic Hobo would suddenly be horribly confused despite hyperlinks and helpful explanations in the story notes?


 * Thirdly, if there is "a complete and confusing mess" in understanding the stories, it was the choice of the publisher to engage in it. In fact, this is the best confirmation from you that this project does not "hold its own", primarily because they do not own what they need. Let me quote the praise from Revanvolatrelundar: "The unique situtaion about the Lethbridge-Stewart series is that it has made the effort of obtaining the license to other characters and concepts from the Doctor Who universe in order to truly establish itself as taking place within the same universe". So this is considered a good thing. However, by allowing them to get away with not obtaining the license to the most important character, we would encourage them to drop all pretence and use whichever characters they want. That is what you are proposing. This position is absolutely legally indefensible. It will make the wiki accomplices in potential copyright infringement cases. It would be sufficient to prove that wiki coverage improved sales to open up the parent company, Wikia, Inc., to legal damages.


 * But let us look at this situation from the point of view of policy. I can see that allowing BBC to introduce their characters the way they intend strangely did not meet much sympathy (not yet at any rate). Well, in that case imagine that Zygon: When Being You Just Isn't Enough (home video) features a character of the Cosmic Hobo, or the Matchstick Man, or the Grumpy Granddad. Indeed, why not all of them? The more the merrier, for this kind of production. I'll let your imaginations do the rest: human brain is the best CGI. If having a license to one DWU concept entitles you to provide valid facts about the Doctor of your choice via a clever description, then the creators of that movie qualify. And there you go, it's valid, it's in the lead, it's in the infobox. There are categories. Or slightly closer to the source material here. Imagine CJB decides to explore a chapter in the life of the Cosmic Dandy when he agreed with the Brigadier that blowing up things is a potential answer (he did shoot some Ogrons after all). So CJB publishes a whole series of books where the Cosmic Dandy hunts aliens across Earth. People did not like the Sixth Doctor strangling his companion, but that was done by BBC. CJB can do much worse. Unlike BF and Titan, they do not have to run their scripts by BBC for approval. They can take their Cosmic dudes anywhere they like. They are not answerable to anyone and have already showed that they are ready to bend some rules for a quick buck.


 * And that is another reason why we cannot create a precedent. Just because some readers currently like what current writers do with the properties they do not own under the current management, does not mean that other writers in the future working for new management will not take this production to lengths and depths that would make (most of) us weep.


 * We do not need to invent a bicycle. Our validity rules are based on a solid legal and moral ground. It has to be a narrative by the right-ful owner(s), we recognise the author's prerogative to release things the way they want without second-guessing them (or letting third parties share the spotlight), and we respect the author's/publisher's wishes if they want to stay out of DWU. We do not grant validity because we like somebody, or because they're struggling, or because they are in a difficult legal situation.


 * Let me remind you that this whole series of publications was born out of a dispute. This is not my claim: it is literally the first thing that Andy Frankham-Allen replies to the question about the genesis of the series: "Doctor Who has a long history of not crediting the character of Lethbridge-Stewart to his creators (indeed, they’ve only received on screen credit once in forty-seven years, not counting the script in which they introduced him), and it’s a well-documented bone of contention." He then goes on to count the number of times Great Intelligence was credited to its creators and comes out unhappy. Leaving aside how reasonable this complaint is in the first place (I don't believe the creators of the Doctor are normally credited either), it is not the place of the wiki to take sides in this dispute. We should not be helping CJB get back at BBC any more than helping BBC to squash an inconvenient publisher.


 * BBC does not have the license to the Brigadier, CJB obtained this license. We do not take the side of BBC by ignoring CJB production. I don't even believe there was an inclusion debate. No barriers: welcome to the family.


 * By the same token, CJB do not have the license to the Doctor. We do not take their side by letting them play with the Doctor anyways.


 * The policies of the wiki must treat all rights holders equally. If someone likes an underdog, feel free to buy their books. But as an admin, I cannot take sides and I must respect the current legal position of all parties involved. Amorkuz ☎  23:02, August 15, 2017 (UTC)


 * I have to say, the argument that the Wikia might be complicit in a copyright infringement case is pretty funny to me. Unless I'm grievously mistaken, copyright infringement is a civil wrong rather than a criminal wrong, which means there can be no "accomplices"; here is a specific list of criminal wrongs that could come from copyright infringement, and you can see that Wikia would be complicit in none of these claims by covering questionably copyrighted material. (If they were, an interlinked Lethbridge-Stewart Wiki would be just as bad!) As far as legal issues go, Wikia should be far more concerned about super-detailed plot summaries and high quality screenshots than anything having to do with T:VS. NateBumber ☎  23:48, August 15, 2017 (UTC)


 * Thank you, NateBumber for doing research and reminding us that we do not live in a legal vacuum and there are simple and efficient tools against us at the disposal of copyright holders. They do not need a court order to have a deep impact on us here at Tardis. There is a simple procedure for removing our content described here. The matter will not be handled by the local admins: "Upon receipt of a valid takedown notice with all the required elements, Wikia, Inc. will remove the allegedly infringing content. The community where the content was deleted will be notified, via edit and/or deletion summaries (when available), why the content has been deleted."

- Ibid Note that Wikia, Inc. will not make an attempt to determine whether the content is indeed infringing. They will remove the allegedly infringing content and wash their hands. And, just in case you were wondering, copyright holders can even target particular users, due to the following policy: "If a particular user account uploads content that accrues three (3) separate DMCA takedown notices, Wikia, Inc. reserves the right to disable the account, at our discretion, under our repeat infringer policy."

- Ibid


 * So far we've been respecting intellectual property of others and have been left to our own devices in return. Let's keep it that way. Amorkuz ☎  23:25, August 17, 2017 (UTC)


 * That's a super interesting point; thank you for letting me know about that Wikia policy. Though I'm not quite sure why the BBC would file a takedown request at us for ... covering stories about the Cosmic Hobo on the same page as stories about the Doctor? That's outside the scope of the DMCA, as far as my lawyers tell me; or at least, if the Beebs tried that approach, it would be ... a precedent-setting case, to say the least. I mean, if Tardis made the decision that all fanfic is valid (which we obviously wouldn't want to do, but could), as long as we're not copy-pasting books or uploading whole comics, wouldn't we still be in the clear? If not, please let me know, cuz I'd rather the Faction Paradox Wiki not get nuked from orbit for saying the Master is the War King. NateBumber ☎  00:36, August 18, 2017 (UTC)

Anyway, back to the topic at hand, I think it'd be pretty funny if we had pages that said things like, "According to one account, Victoria Waterfield wasn't present at this incident, and instead a woman named after a Queen was present." NateBumber ☎  00:36, August 18, 2017 (UTC)


 * According to one account the Rutan scout that attacked the Fang Rock lighthouse in the 1900s was defeated by the Fourth Doctor. (TV: Horror of Fang Rock) Another account indicated that the Rutan was defeated by the time traveller with a time machine shaped like a police box that the British government knew by the codename "Cosmic Hobo" and that Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart encountered during the London Event. (PROSE: Beast of Fang Rock)


 * The Bellotron Incident [Track 13] - Bernice Summerfield and Bev Tarrant are in a bar contemplating their recent licensed encounter with Rutans
 * BT: ...And then I will tell you a tale of an escape filled with great daring, skill, and cunning. Hmm, the doc would have been proud of me.
 * BS: The doc? Oh my god, you don't know him?
 * BT: Know him? How do you think I got stranded in this godforsaken area of space and time?
 * BS: But how on Earth did you-
 * Ryan: Look, before you two ladies start catching up on old friends... what are you drinking?
 * [this is followed on by a joke relating to the events of the story and then the closing theme]
 * The point being: Lethbridge-Stewart is far from a stand-out case when it comes to the stories covered on this wiki. And as you said Amorkuz, "They should be treated as everyone else." I do not see any difference between Candy Jar alluding to characters they don't have the license to use in the story and Big Finish alluding to characters they don't have a license to use in the story.


 * And I'm not just talking about Bernice Summerfield. Let us not forget that The Kingmaker mentions a "Northern chap with big ears", a handful of BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures mention "Grace" (or in the case of Unnatural History, "Dr Holloway"), and loads of Virgin New Adventures use the word "Dalek".


 * I certainly think that the codename Cosmic Hobo deserves its own separate page, but there's an argument to be made that precedent allows for us to acknowledge that it's the Doctor. At the same time, this talk could set precedent. Do we want something like this:

Grace (disambiguation)
 * Grace (The Blue Angel), a woman the Eighth Doctor impulsively kissed in a San Francisco park on New Year's Eve
 * Grace (The Bodysnatchers), a woman that the Eighth Doctor grew close to during his post-regenerative trauma
 * Grace (Genocide), an individual who gave the Eighth Doctor a pair of shoes which he wore for much of his early life
 * Grace (Unnatural History), a friend of the Eighth Doctor who lived in early 2000s San Francisco
 * Because I sure don't want something like that. In my eyes, even if Grace Holloway is owned by Fox Broadcasting Company, having the Eighth Doctor (a character who appeared alongside Grace in a licensed story) mention someone named Grace who has characteristics that greatly correspond with Grace Holloway should be enough for the wiki to just link to Grace Holloway  and not make a new page.


 * Lethbridge-Stewart's allusions are (in general) much more of an "EDAs referencing Grace" situation than a "The Kingmaker referencing the Ninth Doctor" situation. Aside from Legacies showing an alternate timeline in which the Doctor was among those killed in the London Event and that one now infamous two-page bonus short story with the >spoiler<; Lethbridge-Stewart hasn't been saying anything about the "Cosmic Hobo" that isn't also true of the Doctor in Doctor Who, just as the EDAs said very little about Grace which wasn't already in the TV movie. Now that I think about it, both are novel series primarily spun-off of one Doctor Who story which contained characters the publishers did not have a license to use.


 * Now, a whole lot of this discussion seems to be based off of an incredibly short bonus short story written in two days to be released as an extra alongside the regular "free" subscription short story: When Times Change. The fact is that just isn't representative of the series as a whole. The initial 2015 run of LS novels did try their damnedest to tie-in to all corners of televised Dr Who, but it didn't use the words "the Doctor" once. And the whole "let's prove we're in the DWU by having vague references to things we don't own" has really died down since 2015; as far as I'm aware since 2015 the only non-Lincoln/Haisman elements which originate from Doctor Who to appear in the series have been Adrienne Kramer, Karfel, and Grigoriy Bugayev (one of the main characters of Emotional Chemistry). With mostly new original aliens and an established cast of recurring characters, there really isn't really a "need" to reference "Cosmic Hobo" very much anymore. Even in cases where 2015 LS would have alluded to the Doctor, recent LS has refrained; segments of Times Squared are set directly after the events of The Abominable Snowmen and the novel has the restraint to not even have Travers recall "a dark-haired stranger with a large fur coat, a Scottish boy, and a girl named after a queen".


 * Not sure where to go next with this... I'll just end it with two things which aren't really relevant to the wider discussion.


 * The idea that Candy Jar might publish a whole series about the "Cosmic Hobo" is about as sensical as the idea the BBC might give Candy Jar the license to use the Doctor and the TARDIS; they're too concerned about being consistent with televised Doctor Who and the Doctor is usually rather insistent on having people refer to him as "the Doctor".
 * Surprisingly, the one part of this discussion that legit makes me angry has literally nothing to do with Lethbridge-Stewart. The Very Fabric of Time and Space is not an unlicensed Time Vortex and members of the Clockworks are not unlicensed Time Lords! Surely the fact that our articles for both of these things mention the concepts that they are supposedly knocking-off outside of the BTS should be considered some sort of sign. For the record, Mad Dogs and Englishmen has a character that says the Very Fabric isn't the Time Vortex and The Elixir of Doom has Iris saying that she is not a Time Lord, but instead a member of the Clockworks.


 * - CoT    ?  05:35, August 18, 2017 (UTC)


 * I think CoT raised a very important distinction in how characters may appear in stories: some stories merely reference events from properly licensed stories without changing anything about those events or adding anything about those characters. Though in for-profit publishing using real names in such cases is still considered a violation of copyright, if I understand CoT correctly, he suggests that by a careful curation of material it would be ok to relax this rule as too cautious.


 * Whatever anyone thinks about the current implementation of copyright laws, they are based on a reasonable foundation: the creator should have creative control over his/her creations. The way I understand CoT's argument is that this fundamental right is not violated in the preceding references of Grace. As I said before we cannot advocate violating laws because they are inconvenient. But it can be argued that a simple reminder of snippets of a fully licensed story does not affect the author's rights in any way: nothing new is claimed about the characters and no profit is derived. This is a reasonable position I can sympathise with. This approach can be traced in how cultural references are treated in general. For instance, when Gabby Gonzalez asks not to compare her with a certain cartoon mice with the same name, the wiki currently mentions the actual cartoon character by name even though the story doesn't.


 * Of course, separating mere references to stories past from retconning those stories or hijacking those characters is harder than separating not using the name from using the name. This requires a lot of attention that has so far been lacking towards LS series here on Tardis, which is why we're having this conversation specifically on this story's page. Returning to NateBumber, I think his question happily provides a perfect litmus test, a way of telling if something new is said about the character. If one perceives a need to put some info about the character derived from his/her/its unlicensed appearance onto the original story's page and/or the character's page, that means the character was taken for a spin without permission. And in this case, morally and legally the connection to the original character should be disallowed. You can call it stealing, cheating, copyright violation. But it's wrong and I am strongly against condoning such behaviour. If, however, it is a mere reference to the original events, then there is nothing to be added about them on the original page. Then there is no "according to another account" because nothing is changed. And I can live with this being linked to the original character as in Cosmic Hobo . Obviously, the page of the story should still use the name the character goes by in the story, but I guess it is ok to link if this is really a harmless reference.


 * Such a distinction is something I can get behind. But it is completely and utterly inapplicable to this story, which happens in an alternate timeline even from the in-universe perspective. It is a "what if" narrative. If the girl and Cosmic Hobo and the Scottish boy were killed here but not in the original story, why can't the girl be called Elizabeth as heavily implied in the story, why can't this be a completely different Cosmic Hobo who might have chosen a different monicker? There is zero reason to equate the characters in-universe or out-of-universe, just like we do not equate Ricky Smith with Mickey Smith, nor Unbound Universe characters with their normal DWU counterparts. And on the very few pages that may reference this story, it is very easy to do: "In an alternate timeline the Brigadier did this and a girl did this and the Cosmic Hobo did that, and all died. The end." Thus, I agree with CoT that Cosmic Hobo should get a page if only to record his fate from this story. And Girl from this timeline should get a page, and the Scottish one. Amorkuz ☎  21:26, August 18, 2017 (UTC)


 * As an aside, I noticed that you've referred a few times to the "moral underpinnings" of copyright law, and I think a few terms might be getting confused. Moral rights are a subset of copyright law regarding attribution, but they're distinct from the idea of morals in the philosophy of ethics, which seems to be the sense in which you're using the word. Especially since the current topic is tangential to the hotly-debated context of intellectual property, I'd be a lot more comfortable if you refrained from making blanket statements about "right" and "wrong", or at least made it more clear that those statements are representative of your personal opinion rather than any objective fact. Thanks, NateBumber ☎  17:31, August 23, 2017 (UTC)

Licensing: New Earth edition
While we have been discussing the Doctor, the TARDIS, Victoria and Jamie and comparing this story to Toy Story, we seemingly have missed the elephant in the room. Fortunately, an eagled-eyed reviewer Nick Mellish for the Doctor Who Appreciation Society, caught the ingression and reported it in Cosmic Masque Issue 3 (December 2016). "The very ending, which explicitly mentions New Earth in a move which surely made the copyright department of BBC Wales raise an eyebrow"

- Cosmic Masque:3, Dec. 2016

For the record, New Earth was introduced in the namesake BBC television episode TV: New Earth, written by Russell T Davies. The name of the planet is used in Legacies without any disguise or copyright obviating description: "Five billion years in the future, in the year 5.5/Apple/26, Ezekiel Spens Lethebridge-Stuart will be the President of the National Trust, and his wife Dorcas Lethebridge-Stuart will be one of the founders of New Earth."

- Legacies

Naturally, this fact has already been recorded on the page New Earth (New Earth). I tracked down the origins of this record to Revanvolatrelundar and, to be quite honest, I am more than a little surprised. In particular, I do not understand how that edit from December 2016 is compatible with the following statements: "The unique situtaion about the Lethbridge-Stewart series is that it has made the effort of obtaining the license to other characters and concepts from the Doctor Who universe in order to truly establish itself as taking place within the same universe."

- Revanvolatrelundar above

The next one is fine on the face of it in that it explicitly mentions the Doctor. But I still feel like crucial information was withheld from this discussion. "The references to the Doctor are all what they should be, merely references, and leave no room for doubt that they are meaning the Doctor, with very clever use of the English language to emphasise this without violating copyright law.

If you were to read the stories for yourself, you would certainly see the way these references are put across. In the past I have been skeptical about how the series can hold its own without a full license to Doctor Who, yet after reading them, their validity is very much there."

- Revanvolatrelundar above

I'm afraid reading the stories did not help me see how these references are "mere references". In this story, in particular, there is a direct mention by name of New Earth, an RTD-era DW concept. It is not a mere reference to a fact established by the right holders either: instead, it supplies a new origin story for New Earth. As mentioned in the DWAS review, this looks like a direct violation of the copyright law. It also violates the moral underpinnings of the law I mentioned above: that the concept of New Earth should remain under the control of its creators: BBC and/or RTD. Amorkuz ☎  22:23, August 22, 2017 (UTC)

Twenty Questions
 * Would you believe me if I said that I legitimately forgot that New Earth was mentioned by name?
 * What makes Legacies giving new information about New Earth any different from The Quantum Archangel giving new information about Oa or Invasion of the Cat-People giving new information about the Kzinti?
 * Is Legacies' mention of New Earth really that different than its allusion to Victoria, the Doctor, and Jamie?
 * Surely the BBC cannot copyright a term so common in science fiction as "New Earth"?
 * Is this story more or less egregious than that one time an entire novel was published which greatly expanded upon the origins of the Movellans with nary a "created by Terry Nation" in sight?
 * Or is that one in the fine because it doesn't use the term "Movellan", but instead introduces a group that add braids to their androids and develop "a force of synthonic robots... that will contribute significantly to the Daleks' final demise"?
 * But then how can the novel mention Daleks if it doesn't have any Terry Nation licensing?
 * How can there be so many '90s and early '00s Doctor Who novels that mention Daleks but don't give credit to Terry Nation?
 * If someone was of the opinion that the Lethbridge-Stewart series is a good example of "a complete and confusing mess if you remove the [unlicensed] elements from it", would they still think that after reading GodEngine?
 * Why does Love and War mention Daleks at least 45 times, but Terry Nation not even once?
 * Could it perhaps be because if a writer wanted to use Daleks they would have to give 1/3 of their fee to the Terry Nation Estate?
 * Or perhaps the Terry Nation Estate was just too picky with what could and couldn't be done with Daleks?
 * Would it be inaccurate to say that John Peel really hit the jackpot by being good friends with Nation?
 * The same logic that dictates Legacies should be deleted also dictates that Love and War should be deleted, yes?
 * And then what about stories such as Birthright, Father Time, and The Tomorrow Windows, which feature unnamed creatures that are described in a very Dalek-like manner?
 * Shouldn't the rules be applied consistently regardless of who's publishing the story?
 * Could this wiki really call itself a wiki for "everything in every media which has to do with DOCTOR WHO" if we didn't cover the myriad of Doctor Who stories which give new information about Daleks in passing but feature no Terry Nation licensing?
 * Wouldn't New Earth (Legacies) be acceptable?
 * "Another perspective, coming purely from a place of Devil's Advocacy: the authors intended New Earth (Legacies) to be New Earth (New Earth), and everyone who reads the story understands New Earth (Legacies) to be New Earth (New Earth). What good are we as a wiki if we refuse to acknowledge such a basic and obvious element of the story?"
 * Was it completely fitting that Belinda was transformed into a giant squid, thrashing her newly granted tentacles as the captain of her ship stormed into the throne room on Valcea?


 * Sorry, I was in the mood for something different. Just throwing these things out there, really. Hopefully to encourage some sort of discussion. CoT     ?  03:48, August 23, 2017 (UTC)

It took me quite some time to do research to answer CoT's questions (thank you for being clear which of them are rhetorical and which are not serious). My answers and thinking have evolved over these past few days based on the information I found in search for answers. In the end, it turned out that many of the questions have the same answer. But first, to question #1 my answer is yes. And question #9 I will leave for Revanvolatrelundar as it was his words originally.
 * UK copyright law does not require that a copyright notice be affixed to works exploiting copyrighted material (see here, p.3, item 2). This effectively means that the wiki does not in most cases have the means to curate whether all proper permissions have been obtained. We can observe the trademarked elements and those copyrighted elements whose authors negotiated a copyright notice for the publication under license. In most other cases, we can at best rely on publicly available information. An action as drastic as deletion from the wiki must, of course, be based on such information. So all the mentions of Grace, Oa, Kzinti, etc. and, yes, even Daleks, should be considered legal unless there is information regarding them suggesting otherwise. Regarding Daleks, one can be especially sure that everything is legal because Terry Nation estate is known for its aggressive enforcement of their rights. Given the lack of objections from them to all the above cases and given the statement of Nation Estate's representative Tim Hancock in 2004: "We wanted the same level of control over the Daleks that we have enjoyed for the last 40 years.", it is clear that no Dalek-related copyright infringement went undetected in 1964-2004.
 * UK copyright law also specifically disallows copyrighting names. So CoT is right that "New Earth" itself cannot be copyrighted. Neither can Victoria, or the Doctor. This applies, for instance, to Oa, which clearly cannot be the same as the DCU Oa. Note, however, that proper names and images can, however, be trademarked, wordmarked, etc. (Daleks and the TARDIS, for example, are trademarks of BBC).
 * So, no, New Earth is not copyrighted as a set phrase, but is likely copyrighted as a particular location in the DWU (see below).
 * What is different about Legacies? The situation is rather special because here we know from the publisher itself what they have a license and, more importantly, what they don't have a license for. They stated that they do not have a Doctor Who license and operate under the license from Haisman. Every time they received a license to additional elements of DWU, they posted the good news with the thanks to the licensor. It would really go beyond the realm of possible that CJB wouldn't boast of receiving a license from Russell T Davies or directly from BBC. Given their established policy of legal transparency, multiple statements of not having a Doctor Who license and lack of an announcement about receiving a license to use New Earth (as they did for the Vault), we can conclude that they did not have a permission to use it.
 * In a nutshell, we cannot use copyright notices to figure out the licensing situation, but we can use self-incriminating statements from the publisher itself (there is little reason for anyone to lie to put yourself in legal jeopardy).
 * Unfortunately, UK does not have an established subset of copyright law regarding copyright for fictional characters and locations. But even in the US, where it is established, there is a lot of vagueness. Not all characters/locations are copyrightable. I found a nice article summarising the main tests used in known court cases. There are two main tests for copyrightability: "distinctive delineation test" (used by a majority of courts) and the "constitutes the story being told". Different courts choose to use one or the other or their combination.
 * "Distinctive delineation test". The first means that the character/location has to be sufficiently fleshed out in the original story, sufficiently distinctive from similar ones. In this case, just a planet to which people moved from Earth would not be copyrightable even if given a more properly proper name. But New Earth has appeared not in one but in two stories. A whole new race was born there. Cat-people live there and interbreed with humans. It suffered from Macra infestation. It's the place of death of the Face of Boe. Distinctive would be an understatement if anything.
 * "Constitutes the story being told" is a tough test to pass and very subjective at that. It asks whether the character/location is so central to the story it appears in that he/she/it basically is the story itself. But in case of New Earth, it is very easy to satisfy the test. The story where New Earth appeared is called "New Earth". It is the titular location of the story. Of course, it is central to the story and is, in a very literal sense, the story itself.
 * The story "New Earth" contributes to the copyright/trademark protections in a way I did not originally anticipated. It makes the situation worse that there is merchandise sold by BBC under this name. In particular, on iTunes, one can buy an episode "New Earth".
 * So the main difference between this story and many others is, in fact, the usual reason used against fanfic: while we rarely can tell anything about the permissions to minor DC/Marvel/Star Trek/etc. properties, it is typically known whether a company holds a license to Doctor Who properties and which ones.
 * Speaking about fanfic, the wiki's T:NO FANFIC policy is the testament that "everything in every media which has to do with DOCTOR WHO" is not an accurate description of what this wiki is (where is it from, by the way?). T:VS provides further exceptions.
 * As for the difference between the New Earth and Victoria/Jamie/Doctor/TARDIS, they are indeed smaller than we believed at first. The name turns out not to be decisive. What matters is how much of a copyrightable character (who must be fleshed out well by definition of copyrightable) went into the derived work. In the case at hand, as you all agreed, the authors clearly intended it to be Victoria, not someone similar to Victoria but Victoria herself. We can recognise her by her screaming. Perhaps, Tessa is an even better example. How many police boxes covered in web stand on an underground platform and have "a trace of consciousness" inside? There are too many easily recognisable features of many unlicensed characters in this story. At the same time, the publisher explicitly and publicly stated in DWM 483 that they can use everything in Haisman's stories "minus the Doctor and companions".
 * Finally, your question 19 explains why we cannot cover this story. Upon reading up on copyright law, I now agree that simply omitting the name does not make it a different character. There were several copyright-related lawsuits where the name of the unlicensed character was different from but similar to the original. It does not give immunity. Here the name is not given (except for the New Earth) but the description is clear. Anyone who watched the Web of Fear immediately recognises Victoria, the web-covered TARDIS, Jamie and the Doctor. There is very little (if at all) that separates the nameless characters here from their originals in the Web of Fear. It is events that are changed not characters (except for Tessa of course).
 * Thus, upon researching to answer CoT's questions, I come to an even stronger conclusion that this story should be deleted as violating the licensing restrictions publicly stated by the publisher. Amorkuz ☎  23:12, August 25, 2017 (UTC)

Licensing: general edition
First things first, “everything in every media which has to do with DOCTOR WHO" is something taken from the little blurb that pops up when you search for Tardis Wiki on Google. The sentence in full is “We cover everything in every media that has to do with DOCTOR WHO, TORCHWOOD, THE SARAH JANE ADVENTURES and K9 — the whole DOCTOR WHO universe”. A bit biased towards TV (I mean - K9, really?), but what can you do? I really doubt that the average reader would interpret that literally and expect us to cover run-of-the-mill fanfiction.

In the early 2000s, when The Quantum Archangel was made, the rights to publish material relating to concepts copyright DC Comics lay with and and, two American companies which had absolutely no connection to BBC Books. To suggest without evidence that the BBC would obtain the rights to publish stories involving DC Comics planets just so Craig Hinton (remember that name, it’ll come into play again) could name one planet once in a Dr Who novel… it seems a tad far-fetched. That’s because it is. Everyone and their auntie can include a line where a character says “I went to Solos this one time” in their novel. Anyone can have the Doctor cameo in their novel! Just as long as your story isn’t actually about the Doctor or that one time a character visited Solos. Just as long as you don't give too much detail.

De minimis non curat lex. The law does not concern itself with trifles. For example, it would be a waste of legal resources for the BBC (and Bob Baker & Dave Martin) to sue Virgin for briefly including unnamed characters clearly recognisable as the Fourth Doctor, Romana II, and K9 in a novel which did not have the license to use them.

Now, as mentioned near the top of this page, we already have established precedent for situations like Legacies. If this story should be deleted, then it follows that the same fate should befall Adventures in a Pocket Universe. In an interview dug up for Downtime – The Lost Years of Doctor Who, John Ainsworth - who was involved in the creation of the stories - described the stories featuring the mistress to be “the obviously Doctor Who thing of K9 and Romana and their adventures in E-Space after the Doctor left them at the end of Warriors’ Gate”. K9’s mistress was so obviously intended to be Romana that they even got Lalla Ward to return from her seven-year acting retirement! However, Mr Bill Baggs made it crystal clear that BBV didn’t have the rights to use Romana.

This goes far beyond just Adventures. Deleting Legacies would set a precedent which could invalidate every other story on this wiki which even briefly features cameos from characters the publishers had not the rights to use. For a small sample:


 * The Coming of the Queen - published by Big Finish Productions and still sold on their website to this day - has an epilogue set during Erimem’s time with the Fifth Doctor and Peri Brown. The Doctor and Peri appear unnamed, but are physically described in a manner which makes it clear who they are: clear enough that you’ll find them in the article’s character list and The Coming of the Queen on their lists of appearances. You’ve heard this before, but “in what way is this wiki made a better database by having Fair-haired man (The Coming of the Queen) and Dark-haired woman (The Coming of the Queen)?” In case you were unaware, Big Finish no longer has a license to publish Dr Who prose.


 * Hass from the Bernice Summerfield series.


 * Several days ago, I ordered myself a used copy of Bernice Summerfield: The Inside Story. It’ll arrive on or before 15 October. After I make a page for it (7 years after its release date), I’ll thoroughly search through the section detailing the making of A Life Worth Living. If I were to find a statement indicating that they introduced a recurring character who was an Ice Warrior in all but name and that they didn’t have a license to use Ice Warriors, does that mean we delete all of our pages pertaining to a certain portion of Bernice Summerfield?


 * The copyright situation with Virgin Books and the Daleks isn’t as simple as you make it seem. For instance, in an interview about GodEngine, Craig Hinton specifically said that the New Adventures didn’t have the rights to the Daleks, and that his sneaky use of them in GodEngine angered representatives of the Nation Estate. There is, furthermore, zero indication that a story like COMIC: Party Animals had the permission to hide two love-stricken Daleks in the background - something which really quite goes against the Dalek brand.

But is the Legacies’ violation even as blatant a violation as these? I do not believe that any of us doubt that the BBC do own the planet New Earth as seen in at least 5 BBC licensed stories. Or that Candy Jar Books do not have the license to New Earth. The thing is: none of the aspects of New Earth that distinctively delineate it are present in ‘’Legacies’’. It’s just a short mention in one sentence. Nothing about the cat-nurses. Nothing about traffic issues or dying heads. Nothing about the planet’s history of invasions by Vespiforms, Macra, Zygons, Daleks, Clockwork Droids, Sontarans, Judoon, or Ood. (And before you say “apple dating system”, as far as I can tell that’s not actually been directly correlated with New Earth in a Doctor Who story.) It’s like Amorkuz has already said, the BBC don’t own the phrase "New Earth". And "New Earth” is all this story gives that can be seen as a reference to New Earth, Gridlock, or any other story that New Earth appears in.


 * Side note: I’d swear Agent Provocateur indicated that the Catkind did not originate from New Earth.

The BBC own the copyright to the Police Box design, but they do not own the word “police box”. Never once does Legacies describe the police box form of Tessa beyond the detail of it being a police box. In fact, the short story is rather lacking in descriptions of the characters that it cannot fully use. Facts that can be said about the Jamie stand-in: 1) he is scottish 2) he is the boyfriend of the Victoria stand-in 3) he is an associate of “the thief”. Facts that can be said about the Victoria stand-in: 1) she can scream 2) she is an associate of “the thief” 3) she is the Jamie stand-in’s girlfriend 4) she shares a name with a queen 5) she is killed by a yeti. Facts about “the thief”: 1) he was killed because he was a thief 2) he is associated with the unnamed Jamie stand-in and the unnamed Victoria stand-in.

The Second Doctor being referred to as “the thief” is not something that originates from things copyright BBC, but instead from things copyright Lincoln/Haisman. Part one of The Web of Fear has their characters under the impression that the Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria are civilians who have came to the underground for illegal reasons. Purely hypothetical here, but if Big Finish were to publish a non-BBC-licensed short story anthology all about Bernice Summerfield in the Unbound Universe and it gave new information about the Unbound Doctor by simply referring to him as the “ruler of the universe” - a role he filled in BBC licensed stories - wouldn’t we allow it?

But the thief and the scottish boy, they do not actually appear in Legacies. They’re just mentioned in a couple sentences.

And the girl, she’s present for about 3 pages out of 30. The only contribution she actually makes to the story in this time is to stand there while the soldiers do stuff. The 5 facts listed above are basically all that can be gleaned of her. She runs in screaming, is occasionally mentioned as being present for a while, and is then torn apart by a yeti. To say that that is enough to infringe upon the rights of the BBC … I flat out disagree. Flat being the key word. The girl is a cardboard cut-out background character who doesn’t even speak and is only able to scream and die. I’d hope that isn’t how you view Victoria.

Finally, while the character Tessa is certainly meant to be the TARDIS, she is still very much an original character. The BBC have yet to publish stories in which the TARDIS can alter its natural form to become a human-looking blonde woman in a blue dress. In the BBC’s stories, the most the TARDIS can do in times of danger is ring the cloister bell and use the HADS to scarper off to safety. Legacies doesn’t even indicate how people travel through time with Tessa - no “large interior dimensions” or hexagonal control consoles in sight. The contents of the story could even be interpreted to suggest that people do not go inside Tessa; she is shown to have the ability to manipulate time around her. If Norma Ashley was looking to have Tessa as a simple TARDIS stand-in, she did a pretty rum job; Web of Fear could have gone by much quicker if the TARDIS could transform into a person and free anyone of the influence of the Intelligence. The story does have a bit where there’s a rising and falling wheezing sound, but it’s not directly associated with Tessa, instead just with the timelines shifting back into their proper places. I would posit that Tessa - by far the most prominent aspect of Legacies to be based off an element of Web of Fear Candy Jar books don’t have a license to - is unique enough that she is a copyrightable character in her own right. You know, like The Mistress (The Choice).

But. To get down to the meat and potatoes. What right do we have to mark this out as illegal? As you yourself have noted, Amorkuz, there is an awful lot of vagueness in fictional character copyright law. Until a judge declares that Legacies is a violation of copyright, who are we to say that it is? The BBC never took Bill Baggs to court over Adventures in a Pocket Universe, so who are we to make a statement over its legality? Can five people on a fandom wikia talk page consider all of the variables that would be considered in the court of law?

If this short story is so heinous, then why don't we just wait until Candy Jar Books are forced to remove it from their shelves following a BBC lawsuit. CoT    ?  03:03, August 29, 2017 (UTC)