User:SOTO/Forum Archive/Tales from the Tardis/@comment-188432-20130325173913/@comment-26469787-20160105132513

As further evidence against Richardson's word being definitive narrative stance, but rather rhetoric based on sales and marketing, I refer readers to Talk:Love and War (audio story), which makes explicitly clear that Richardson is not referring to Vienna being outside the DWU, but rather not a part of the story of BF's ongoing Doctor Who ranges. Vienna Salvatori will likely never again be seen in a main range story again, much like Charlotte Pollard, Iris Wildthyme, Bernice Summerfield, the Graceless twins, etc. But she is part of a "side universe", ie a contemporaneous but uninvolved narrative. Much alike Nicholas Briggs with his constant insistence that placement and continuity "doesn't matter" (see initial statements made by him regarding how Raine can be in Dominion and his choice to rid stories of the company's "production codes"), David Richardson is a producer who is marketing his product/s. He doesn't mean "we made Vienna with a whole new universe in mind, and therefore openly contradict the established DWU" a la Faction Paradox, he means "worry not, you need zero knowledge or even interest in the DWU to listen to and enjoy my new series". Other spin-offs are also set in "side universes", but are firmly based in the DWU, rendering them difficult to understand without extensive knowledge of the show. Vienna, even more so than Graceless, is not, being based in a simple sci-fi universe with little reliance on the breadth of the ongoing narrative of Who. This is what Richardson means. Not like Miles on FP, or Freedman on TMoC. Like his past statement with regards to Love and War: I am targeting this at sci-fi/VNA fans, and so I say "it is part of a sci-fi/the VNA universe", and more people but it.