Board Thread:Inclusion debates/@comment-5.2.105.85-20170222095120/@comment-4028641-20170307043804

I'm reading through the 1995 Yearbook. As mentioned beforehand, this is the most important source for figuring out authorial intent because it was published closest to the actual story. Any typos in these quotes are on my end, not the original publications.

One thing I've noticed is that everyone talks about this episode like it's any other. Sophie has a few paragraphs where she talks about changing scene elements to better fit her character. She switched out one of the jacket props because it's not the sort of thing that Ace would pick up, etc.

"It was a weird feeling, stepping back in time, and I felt sad that this wasn't the beginning of a new season of Doctor Who."

- Sophie Aldred

"I suddenly realized that I'd left the rings I'd been wearing in Albert Square on my dressing table at home. I had a quiet word with Ken and he produced a box of rings for me to try just in case anyone spotted the continuity error."

- Sophie Aldred

Now hold on. That sounds a lot like a direct statement saying that the people making the episode were worried enough about it being a legitimate episode of Doctor Who that they got buzzed over the continuity of a piece of jewelry.

"We remembered the awful time on Remembrance of the Daleks when I lost my one and only Batman earring and Andrew, the costume assistant, had to go all the way to Covent Garden to track down another one while we cobbled together a fake earring with a lump of metal."

- Sophie Aldred

There's a direct comparison between how seriously they took RotD and this story. RotD is very highly regarded as a classic.

Also they heavily discuss the trouble they put into productions to make the story 3D. I just doubt that they would have done that if the story "didn't matter."

Aldred also discusses good material that was cut due to time. JNT, in a later publication, detailed how the script was changed often. These two things likely explain a lot of the inconsistencies with the story itself.

A quick note is that I've found no images of the story itself in the yearbook, nor have I found any quotes about the licensing in the book.

A quick note about production was that the story was originally much more straight forwards and serious.

"Roden's original draft for a script featured Seventh Doctor, Sylvester McCoy, meeting the Brigadier, Nicholas Courtney, en route to a UNIT reunion – and becoming involved in a battle with a crashed spaceship full of Cybermen. The script was entitled Destination: Holocaust, and featured the Seventh Doctor and Brigadier holed up in a burning church, trying to fight off the advancing hordes of damaged Cybermen."

- Wikipedia

The only reason they vetoed this was because the BBC wanted an Eastenders crossover and it was also likely to be too expensive. But this history does not seem to suggest a tone where it was meant to be taken entirely as a joke.

The fact that Nick Briggs later disowned the story (which he was barely in) and that the Radio Times said "This isn't going to be a pilot for new Doctor Who" has nothing to really do with the authorial intent at time of production.

A lot of the quotes that come out later seem to be entirely fueled by the fact that fans had an outrageously rude reaction to the special. One of the reviews in the Second Doctor Handbook gave it a 0/10. I mean, it's not good... But come on, it's like a 4 at least!

"it was never intended to be a part of the Doctor Who mythos, whatever that means"

- John-Nathan Turner

People act like the first half is the important part. It's not. The second part is.

"...whatever that means." As in, "the idea of a Doctor Who mythos is stupid, and you're stupid for constantly asking me about it."

Translation: Did we want this to be part of a bigger picture Who legacy project? No. Everyone treats it like it needs to be part of a bigger-picture legacy project or it fails on every level. We just wanted to make a thing.

It's exactly how George Lucas talks about the Star Wars prequels. It's not that he hates them or that he didn't want for them to "count," but years of people bothering him over stupid stuff and treating him like a villain has made him cynical of the very basic idea of a "mythos" or a "canon."

If we are going to go around calling stories invalid entirely because people later "disowned" them, then we can get rid of most of the 1960s comics. I can find plenty of quotes calling those "the odd-ones out, non-Doctor-Who-Mythos-adventures."

"...the First Doctor's adventures with John and Gillian were more of the fairytale variety rather than the science-fiction and historical adventure of the TV serials. The Pied Piper of Hamelin, the Ancient Mariner and even Father Christmas all make appearances... This all seems a far cry the TV series."

- Prisoners of Time #1

Now that quote is highly picky and deceptive. But so are most of the quotes from JNT in DWM 249 that are so often published on this site.

"My agent, however, thought differently -- he thought I should make it my formal Doctor Who swansong. And that was persuasive."

- John-Nathan Turner

Swansons are not usually thought of as negative. Usually they're epic and exciting.

JNT then talks about picking the writer because he was impressed with some of his other work. He never doubts the legitimacy of the production until it comes to talking about dealing with the fan back-lash.

"If you don't like it, fine; if you do like it, that's equally fine. But if you can honestly say that the 30th anniversary of Doctor Who would have been better without it, without its publicity, without its Radio Times front cover, without its colossal audience figure, without its indiviual effect on the final amount of money raised for such a worthy charity, then I feel sorry for you.

It was never intended to be part of the Doctor Who mythos, whatever that is... Some of the fan flitterati went mad! Some of the most offensive letters dropped on my matt, articles and letters were published... it was all out-of-proportion."

- John-Nathan Turner

Basically, this is directly a quote about how stupid the fan backlash has been... And fans have cut it up to justify all of their fan backlash. It is not a quote about JNT's thoughts on the special, and it should never have been used in such a way.

"I don't care, stop asking me stupid questions all the damned time" is not a legitimate piece of evidence to suggest authorial intent. Keep in mind, most of these quotes came from a time when DiT wasn't just an "oddity from the 90s." Back then, it was either the last episode of Doctor Who (pre-1996) or the last episode of "British" Doctor Who (post-1996). So when people talked about the episode, they weren't talking about the episode. They were talking about the fans, and to the fans, and they were trying to get the fans to stop bothering them with stupid questions about a TV special they made for charity.

Imagine if David Tennant was constantly asked questions about this thing. Every show he did, every press conference, every appearance... "Why did you make that Charity thing that contradicts Parting of the Ways?" He'd be publicly trashing it within a week. That doesn't make it invalid.

Onto the topic of copyright.

DWM 234 discusses -- in less than two sentences -- how the special is unlikely to be aired again or released. But there is no real doubt who owns it.

"The serial -- with both versions of Part Two -- is held by the BBC on D3."

- DWM 324

The BBC. The BBC literally owns it. There is no doubt about that factor.

Alright, that's being a little bit of a cheat. My point is that this quote does not substantiate the claim that the BBC does not own this.

The article itself uses several images from Dimensions. They had no real problem republishing images from the broadcast. If the BBC was going to stop anyone from republishing the work, they'd stop their own affiliates first.

Fair Use is based around using copyrighted material in a transformative manor not found in the original. A key element is giving credit where credit is due as to not disrupt a potential market. But I can think of no real, solid case to be made for this not being owned by the BBC. If anything, we get to worry less about disrupting copyright here -- as you can clearly make the easy case that there isn't even a market for us to disrupt in the first place.

Either DWM is able to use the images through fair use, in which case so can we, or they got the rights from the BBC. In which case, the BBC owns the episode. Cool.

So in closing:

The production of Dimensions of Time may have been hasty and not well-done, but that doesn't mean that it was meant with poor or lack-luster intentions. The writers, producers, and actors at the time meant for it to be taken seriously. There have been few people involved at the time who have directly spoken out against the special, and the significant one was actually talking about the disdain he had for the ant-hype built up by fans. Leave me alone is not a good enough quote to call the story invalid.

It is not a parody (by the actual definition of the word "parody"), it was not "abandoned," and its rarity does not effect weather or not we should include it in articles. Furthermore, the suggested "lack of licensing" has not been a problem for anyone other than us, and there is no proof at all that the story is not or was not owned by the BBC.

I think there's been a heavy "bias" in this discussion in the past, mainly because it was non-canon from the first day that this site was created. If you really strip it all away and look at this story as if it is brand new, there's not a lot of very good reasons to call it invalid.

I want to again specifically ask that this forum not be closed without community discussion: no one admin should be able to decide if we want to talk about this or not.

Anyone wanting to close this forum will first need to counter every single point raised against this story being invalid, and then the community should be able to respond for or against these points.

Dimensions in Time, as far as I can see, has no real reason to be invalid. This forum needs to either end with an actual reason agreed upon by the broader community, or it needs to end with the story being valid for the first time in this site's history. If neither of these things happen, it should not be closed.