Forum:Temporary forums/Inclusion debates speedround

Introduction
As our website is currently set up, T:TF allows for six temporary forum posts at any given time. Threads last three weeks typically, meaning that it's been a priority to put site-changing posts ahead of anything more minor. Because of this, there are several stories which are controversially still invalid, yet remain too obscure and minor to ever have a full slot at T:TF.

My basic idea is that we dedicate one forum post to discussing several of these smaller stories, to get them out of the way. My goal here is to ultimately cover ten topics in this post.

Friend from the Future
TV: Friend from the Future is a 2016 mini-episode which directly ties in to TV: The Pilot. It introduces two important characters: Bill Potts and (retroactively) Heather.

Ages ago, in our Thread:###### system, we had a short debate about this which ended with the story being called NOT-VALID for multiple reasons. As the Thread system has never been archived in any way, I'll now recap the issues I recall either being discussed, or being the deciding factors:

Now, Friend from the Future obviously is a great contender for being revisited, simply because the recently implemented Rule 4 by proxy makes the first thing a complete non-issue.
 * 1) When Steven Moffat first wrote Friend from the Future, he presumed the episode was going to be a promotional mini-episode that did not actually tie-into the plot of series 10. He changed his mind later, and wrote The Pilot to explicitly explain where this story takes place. Because we only recently codified "Rule 4 By Proxy", this meant the story did not pass Rule 4 of T:VS in 2017, as only intent at release mattered then.
 * 2) Friend from the Future could be considered an advertisement, as it was meant to promote series 10.
 * 3) Friend from the Future is a deleted scene, as the entire script for the short was copied directly into The Pilot's script, then deleted for time.

I would like to also say that I disagree with the final two points. Is The Night of the Doctor an advertisement? What about the Tardisode mini-series? Both mainly were created to advertise the TV show, why not?

And to discuss that final point, Friend from the Future can not be a deleted scene in The Pilot because it never was going to BE in The Pilot. The script was going to be entirely copied, but was then only partially mirrored. There was never going to be a single frame from FrtF in The Pilot, because it was a separate production.

The best source on this topic is, of course, Steven Moffat. Here is his entire quote about the episode:

"I wasn’t sure at all [if Friend was going to fit]. Because I’m such a Doctor Who fan and I need everything to fit in continuity and I stay awake at night trying to figure out UNIT dating - that’s an obscure one and I have fixed it – I knew it had to be right at the beginning because of the way she was talking and then we edited the whole [scripted] scene in, and it didn’t work because suddenly you were being introduced to her again. You knew she was like that, the whole point of the scene… so we just had the very beginning of it so you know where it fits and for die hard, slightly strange obsessives, and let’s be honest, there’s at least 7 or 8 of them in the audience of Doctor Who, like myself; that’s where it fits. You can all sleep at night now."

- Steven Moffat, The Fan Show, Apr 15, 2017

I don't think we can get more direct than that with authorial intent. "That's where it fits. You can all sleep at night now." This is a very obvious example of a story that would be valid through Rule 4 by Proxy, as what we have here is literally retroactive intent. OS25🤙☎️ 22:36, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Friend from the Future discussion
As a participant in the original Friend from the Future debate back in 2017, my position now is the same as it was then - I fully support the validity of Friend from the Future. Pluto2 ☎ 19:32, 1 April 2023 (UTC)


 * I do find this story's invalidity to be rather misinformed, so of course it should be valid. 20:12, 1 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Although I haven't seen it myself, from how people have described it, I see no compelling reason for it to be invalid. Thus, I agree with validating it as a source. Cookieboy 2005 ☎  12:20, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Crossover Shenanigans
So in the early days of the Wiki, it was generally thought that "crossovers", especially those played for even the slightest laugh, failed rule 4 by default. Why was that?

Well, the logic was that the Doctor Who universe was clearly defined, being the universe of the Doctor Who TV show. If the Doctor appeared on, say, EastEnders, he categorically was not appearing in his universe. Today, we have changed a lot as a website. Our pages on TV Century 21 stories make it explicit that Thunderbirds and the Daleks comics consistently were said to take place in the same world. We have several webcasts featuring LEGO characters that we consider valid. And even TV: Dimensions in Time is valid as of today. Not to mention Assimilation² and Comic Relief Comic.

So, I wanted to pop-back over to a few stories that featured crossover elements with Doctor Who, and deserve a second glance.

Let's start off with One Born Every Minute. This one is unique as the Doctor isn't just in it, he's the reason it makes sense. In the story, we are presented what resembles One Born Every Minute, an observational documentary series about working in a nursery. A couple is seen entering the hospital, as they are expecting a baby. However, the hospital is seen to be staffed with characters from Call the Midwife, a 1950's drama series also starring nurses.

I have not seen either of these shows. But the joke is basically "1950s group of funny people work in a modern hospital." As things keep getting worse, the Doctor arrives in the TARDIS and exclaims that the couple's baby will grow to be evil. He will grow to be... Jedward! The cast of Call the Midwife beg the Doctor to take them back to 1958.

So this one's interesting, because if you look at the plot slanted, it's implied that the reason the story is happening because of the Doctor's involvement. It's possible to interpret that the Eleventh Doctor took all these 1950s nurses to the future, thus explaining the plot. Either way, I'd say this one is very in-character, and does not at all imply it's "not set in the Doctor's universe."

However, I should quickly clarify that there is also a cheeky fourth wall gag in this one, where the narrator of the segment is briefly responded to by the characters. In 2013, this would have been immediately disqualifying, but today we basically accept this pretty thoroughly. I'll come back to this later in another segment!

Next, let's pop over to Looking for Pudsey. This was a Children in Need mini-sode that featured Eddie Redmayne looking for, get this, Pudsey. Eddie is dressed as his Harry Potter character Newt "Can You Tell They Designed This Role For Matt Smith" Salamander or whatever. But he's out-of-character, dressed as Newt but playing Eddie.

The Doctor, meanwhile, is in-character. Full-force. Twelfth Doctor, in the segment. In fact, a promotional photo taken during this episode has become extremely over-used to represent the character. Peter Capaldi was basically so in-character that a photo of him in this episode has been widely mistaken as a photo of him in ''The Return of Doctor Mysterio.

Also, this isn't really a crossover for the most part. There are 22 actors in this segment, and 20 play themselves. Other than the Doctor, Jenny Agutter plays Sister Julienne, a character who was also in the former skit. Admitting that Call the Midwife seems to be set in the Doctor Who Universe is the biggest fear of this website.

So, yeah, this is perhaps the most in-character appearance of the Doctor outside of the TV show.

Additionally, I think we need to also validate a short list of crossovers with the series 10,000 Dawns, which came out from 2017 to 2020. You can find these on the page for the series, they all featured licensed appearances of DWU characters and concepts. It's a pretty open-and-shut case IMO.

Another point I want to hammer home is that crossovers put content in a weird state of mine, where serious DWU elements are often depicted in the less-serious world of another franchise. For instance, I've seen COMIC: TV Terrors been called a "parody" by one or two people. But the "cartoony" and "stupid" parts are all pre-existing elements of TV Terrors, while the DWU elements are merely presented in their world. Thus I think calling it a "parody" is a complete misunderstanding of how crossovers work.

So to recap what we'll be discussing here... Alongside validating these 8 stories, do you support codifying in T:VS that no story should ever be invalidated just for being a crossover? Thanks. OS25🤙☎️ 05:13, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Crossover discussions
It's always been rather strange to me that crossovers were disqualified, and the rule isn't even consistently applied. But in any case, I fully support the validity proposal here, starting with the 8 stories mentioned, and setting the precedent that being a crossover does not render a story invalid. Pluto2 ☎ 19:50, 1 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Wait, historically something being a crossover was grounds for invalidity? God damn.
 * I must agree with the slate of stories to be validated here. In fact, I have wanted One Born Every Minute valid for years now, as it was one of the very first thread topics I added to The List. 20:52, 1 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Crossovers are some of my favourite things to cover on this site, so the more of them are valid, the better in my opinion (and it helps the site be a more accurate database of all relevant information). Cookieboy 2005 ☎  12:20, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Dermot and the Doctor
So this is a continuation of the previous point, as now we look at TV: Dermot and the Doctor. This is another crossover, specifically as the Doctor arrives once again at London's EastEnd and notes that he's been there before - a pretty solid Moffat reference to Dimensions in Time.

So, the history of this one dates back to 2011, shortly after this aired, in the story's Talk: page followed by Forum:National Television Awards Sketch 2011: Canon?. Now, I'll just tell you this bias about me out front and center. Whenever an old debate like this dates back to a discussion about canon, I immediately think it deserves another debate. Immediately. Is Dermot and the Doctor canon? Maybe not, but that's not our job and hasn't been in a long time.

So to recap the discussion of why editors in 2011 decided that Dermot and the Doctor wasn't canon, is that on the story's talk page, User:CzechOut asked if anyone had a good reason to call it non-canon, as the only thing he could think of is Dot Cotton knowing who the Doctor is, when she's fictional elsewhere.

Then in the Forum, someone ads that this story should be "un-canon" by proxy, as it's similar to Dimensions in Time. User:Skittles the hog then agrees. In 2020, we officially made it our policy that making something "Un-canon by proxy" isn't a thing on our website, validating several stories which had never done anything wrong.

Next, in the era of the Thread:###### system, User:Epsilon the Eternal made a post asking why the story was still invalid. This has since been lost, but the general belief is that Czech made a new response stating that because the segment featured real-world actors and was a skit at a real-world awards show, it isn't fiction.

I find this especially curious. In the skit, the Doctor takes Dermot to the BBC in the distant future, 2111, where Dermot is shocked to see that Bruce Forsyth is still alive and still works at the BBC.

So... Do we now have to say that it's a real-world fact that Bruce Forsyth is still alive? This piece of non-fiction says that he never died. I guess he's still around.

In short, there are few stories on this website invalidated for less solid reasons. The story was invalidated for featuring fictional versions of real-world actors, for being a crossover with EastEnders, for being in-line with the continuity of Dimensions in Time, for being allegedly un-canon, and for being a fictional segment presented inside of non-fiction. None of these five things would be a solid reason to invalidate this story if it were released today.

And if four people agree with me, then we officially have had more consensus for this story than against it. OS25🤙☎️ 05:52, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Dermot and the Doctor discussion
It's kinda puzzling that this was ever ruled invalid (and the arguments for invalidity aren't particularly convincing, anyway). I support considering this a valid source. Pluto2 ☎ 19:52, 1 April 2023 (UTC)


 * This is also a story I have wanted to be valid for ages. I remember, in that span of time I got The Doctor Drops In and The Doctor Appears, being utterly perplexed at this one being flat out invalid. Nothing more to add, this should be valid. 20:54, 1 April 2023 (UTC)


 * For the same reasons said above, I agree with this story's validity. Cookieboy 2005 ☎  12:20, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Doctor Who and the Bootstrap Paradox
On the 10th of October 2015, Before the Flood premiered on BBC One. The story, one of the strongest of the season, began with a very unique sequence. Interrupting the previous episode's cliffhanger, we see the Twelfth Doctor in the TARDIS. He turns to the camera, and begins directly talking to the audience. He describes the concept of the Bootstrap paradox, and a theoretical story of a Ludwig van Beethoven expert going back in time to meet the musical great... Only to discover that he doesn't exist in history. So, the expert becomes Beethoven.

Initially, the perspective of who the Doctor is talking to is not clear. Some might expect a twist, like Clara standing where the camera was. Maybe the Doctor is in his mind palace again.

But at the end of the episode, when the Doctor has saved the day through a Bootstrap paradox of his own, he turns to the camera, and raises his eyebrows. The Doctor was not talking to Clara in that intro. He was talking to you. There is no ambiguity.

Now, some of you might not have been around for this. But believe it or not... We did have a debate about this scene. I started it. I honestly didn't know what to do.

It's long been policy that breaking the fourth wall is enough to allow us to say that story doesn't take place within the Doctor Who Universe. The logic has always been that fourth-wall-breaking stories take place in our universe, meaning they don't pass Rule 4.

There are countless stubs you can find on the website which are invalid, and if you read the intro the breaking of the fourth wall will usually be listed as the reason.

So basically, if the opening scene of this episode had been a webcast short, it would be invalid today.

The response to my post, as best that I can recall, is that we codified in the fine text of Rule 4 that breaking the fourth wall is okay for a mainline TV story. Another example is TV: "The Feast of Steven". The rule states that TV stories of this merit can not be invalid, and thus are exempt from this rule.

However, and you know that I love to be this guy... Doing this is a clear violation of T:NPOV. We can not, justifiably, give a set of rules to everything but TV stories.

And I think we've long accepted this, because often in these debates we act as if breaking the fourth wall isn't against the rules anymore. I've even seen admins speak about the "no fourth wall breaks" rule in the past-tense. Yet, T:VS makes no statement other than TV stories are allowed to do it, and that things like A Fix with Sontarans aren't valid.

In other words, nowhere on T:VS does it say "Stories are not allowed to have fourth wall breaks." Yet, we still have several stories invalidated for just that reason.

So basically, I think we need to codify that the standards we apply to The Feast of Steven and Before the Flood also apply to all other stories, as matching with T:NPOV.

A big issue that I have with blindly saying that "breaking the fourth wall is bad" is that... the concept of breaking the fourth wall is so vague. The examples we have listed above are all cases of characters recognizing that they are in a piece of fiction. The Doctor knows he's a character in a TV show. Not in every era, but certainly the First, Fourth, and Twelfth Doctor's eras. If this is not controversial for Tom Baker episode of Doctor Who, why is it a problem for a Fourth Doctor comic story?

This is different from what we see in Untitled (Tonight's the Night), where the entire segment is revealed to be taking place in the real world. I understand not covering this story, because it's clearly not set inside the DWU. But we should not act as if this is the same thing as the Thirteenth Doctor talking to the camera in a YouTube video.

This rule is even more perplexing where it's a case of the Doctor appearing as himself inside a show. In TV: The Naked Truth, the Eleventh Doctor hosts a segment for Children in Need. He speaks to the audience because he's speaking to the people watching Children in Need. Comparing this to a story where Jimmy Saville shows up at the end makes no sense, it is simply a completely different style of subversion.

Essentially, I am suggesting we codify a clear description of what a "fourth wall break" is, and when that makes something invalid. We would then naturally validate any stories which resemble the Bootstrap Paradox speech, or indeed the First Doctor toasting the audience.

This would not include the kind of "fourth wall breaks" where the Sixth Doctor goes back to being Colin Baker, or Captain Jack goes back to being John Barrowman (although I should also point out that this sometimes happens for a narrative reason, such as that random scene where The Warrior morphs into Colin Baker in a recording booth for a moment).

We also are not immediately validating stories which have a second reason for being invalid, at least not yet. Examples would be Doctor Who and the micro:bit, which is invalid for having the Twelfth Doctor speak to the audience and being an interactive fiction sorta game.

As far as I can tell, these are the stories which I am arguing for the validity of here:


 * TV: The Naked Truth
 * TV: The Doctor needs YOUR help!
 * TV: Animal Magic (which passes Rule 4 cleanly via being set mid-sequence of a DW story, although the Doctor does reference the TV show if that's a deal-breaker for you)
 * TV: BAFTA in the TARDIS (I think it's fair to cover this one just as a pre-recorded segment, as that's how it's uploaded by the BBC)
 * WC: Message from the Doctor
 * WC: United we stand, 2m apart
 * WC: A New Year's message from the Doctor...
 * WC: Introduction to SJA (I haven't seen this, but the description implies that it's the kids from SJA talking about their lives, with no narrative or justification of the fourth wall)
 * COMIC: Pugwash Ahoy!
 * TV: Introduction to the Night - This will be the most fourth-wall-breaky out of everything on this list. It features an implicit "future Doctor" played by Tom Baker. He reflects on such things as "When I was Paul McGann." However, the story was featured in the valid in-universe TARDIS Cam, giving it a potential claim to Rule 4 by proxy. However, if this one turns out to be as controversial as I suspect it might be, I would probably suggest we simply accept it would need its own debate.

OS25🤙☎️ 02:01, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Fourth Wall discussion
I support this proposal, given the fact that as outlined above, the fourth wall prohibition gets broken quite a few times in valid sources, and there's absolutely a difference between stories listed here and stories like the Tonight's the Night sketch where the story reveals at the end that it's not actually trying to be set in the DWU at all. Pluto2 ☎ 19:55, 1 April 2023 (UTC)


 * What I have never understood with the whole "television can get away with anything" shtick is that is has only ever been applied with bias. A Fix with Sontarans (TV story)... that's a TV story, but not valid. Absolutely reeks of canon to me, giving preferencial treatment to not just television stories, but only ones that people want to be canon valid.
 * As you excellently put, fourth wall breaks have also been treated as a sort of rule five of T:VS, which is BS, in my opinion. I support all of these stories to be validated as well. 21:01, 1 April 2023 (UTC)


 * I would also like to extend validity to the fourth wall breaking advertisements that Scrooge excluded in his closing post at Tardis:Temporary forums/Archive/Trailers. Pluto2 ☎ 02:46, 2 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Indeed, I'd like to clarify that I only didn't include those in my list because my list was created before that debate was closed! OS25🤙☎️ 06:29, 2 April 2023 (UTC)


 * We need COMIC: Pugwash Ahoy! as a valid source, and I am the one who originally proposed this to the forums - thus, I quite clearly agree with validity here. Cookieboy 2005 ☎  12:20, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

TARDIS Yule Logs
While I worked on this post, it occurred to me that so many of these topics originate from the Tenth and Eleventh Doctor's eras, and that it would be a good idea to also cover a few topics that really found their footing in the Jodie Whittaker era.

Now, before we start this, I look at each of these as their own production. So I don't think we have to validate all of them. Specifically, not all Yule Logs are created equally.

So what is the story here? Well, that's just the issue. There is none.

To quote Wikipedia:

"The Yule Log is a television show originating in the United States, which is broadcast traditionally on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning. It originally aired from 1966 to 1989 on New York City television station WPIX (channel 11), which revived the broadcast in 2001. The show, which has run between two and four hours in duration, is a film loop of a yule log burning in a fireplace, with a soundtrack of Christmas music playing in the background; it is broadcast without commercial interruption."

So from 2017 to 2020, the Doctor Who America YouTube channel depicted their own Yule Log. This was, quite simply, an extended video of a log burning with occasional DWU clips. These have always been invalid on this site, because they failed Ye Old Rule 1: Only narratives count. As we have now changed this to Only fiction counts, I'm inclined to think this is a very good topic to revisit.

The first DW Yule log came out in 2017, and can be found at TARDIS Yule Log. In the sequence, made to promote Twice Upon a Time, a little TARDIS sits in a snow globe. Sometimes it dematerializes. At one point it's replaced by the William Hartnell TARDIS, which opens to show the First Doctor. However, I don't think this one makes the effort to be set in the DWU, especially as a trailer for Twice Upon a Time on BBC America plays at one point.

Thing changed, however, with WC: Festive Thirteenth Doctor Yule Log. In this segment, a fire burns, with Police Box decorations and some circular Gallifreyan stockings. However, 43:27 in, the real TARDIS lands. The Thirteenth Doctor emerges, warms her hands in the fire place, and then leaves. There's a few more moments like that. This segment is set within the DWU.

The third special is even better. WC: Christmas on the TARDIS is set onboard the TARDIS itself, meaning it makes even more sense than the previous special. The Doctor indeed appears again, although it's a bit of a mystery what talented cosplayer plays the character in these two anti-mini-episodes. In the old days, I would have tried to argue that there's a slight narrative here hidden in the several-hour show... But now all I have to say is that this is fiction and this is set inside the Doctor's world.

Which means that it's an obvious example of something we should validate, now that Rule 1 has had a well-earned regeneration.

So, to recap: I want to validate the Whittaker Yule Logs, but not the Capaldi one. Be sure to tell me what you think! OS25🤙☎️ 05:25, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

TARDIS Yule Logs discussion
I support the validity of the Thirteenth Doctor era Yule Logs. The primary reason for invalidity before was that they were not really narrative, and now that we've obliterated that artificial distinction from our validity rules, stuff like this being invalid should be overturned "with prejudice", so to speak, in my opinion. Pluto2 ☎ 20:05, 1 April 2023 (UTC)


 * I always felt that these weren't valid becuase they weren't valid, but because they were two-hour long, real time recordings of events. In a sense, they were too narrative too cover. Not sure if this is really truthful to why they were invalidated, but it was the impression I got. I too support validity. 21:06, 1 April 2023 (UTC)


 * We need more stupidly long sources on this site. I heavily support these stories' validity. Cookieboy 2005 ☎  12:20, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Chute!
So this is another example of something that would almost certainly be valid if it came out today, but simply wasn't accepted very well a decade ago. I've chosen this for two reasons: it's an invalid story relating to something other than the Doctor Who revival, and it sets up an important precedent on a previous topic: when a DWU character hosts a non-DWU TV show.

To cite Wikipedia, Chute! was a children's comedy television series broadcast on CBBC that aired between September and December 2007 before being canceled.

The plot was that a guy named Ross Lee gets trapped inside of a BBC trash chute with 83,000 video cassettes, along with a few cans of film (clearly alluding to the infamous lost media of the BBC). His goal is to sort through all the tapes and watch what is one them, while he is recorded by another person trapped in the Chute!. This is used as a framing device for a series of variety segments, some of which includes actual archival recordings of BBC content. There were 13 episodes, with each featuring a guest host of some kind who would help "present" the show.

In episode 9, two new guests fall into the Chute: Luke Smith and Clyde Langer. Not Tommy Knight and Daniel Anthony. Luke and Clyde. And there's very little pokery about who they are, the presenter doesn't go "Oh! I've seen you on the telly!" It's all very in-character.

In the story, Luke and Clyde fall down the Chute, and immediately try and call Sarah Jane. Their phones have no reception, and they fear that she won't be able to figure out where they are.

So they end up hanging out with Ross and watching a series of videos with him. A lot of the videos are odd things you could have found on the internet in 2007.

Eventually, Sarah Jane Smith's Sonic lipstick falls down the Chute, and the pair realise that Sarah has thrown it down so they can use it to escape. They run off-screen to do this, meaning that Lee is still stuck in the Chute.

Now, I encourage you to go look into this if you haven't seen this before. I will warn you, this is clearly a show for babies, and it's not a good show for babies. I found this pretty hard to sit through. But! It should clearly be a valid source. Think of it in a parallel sense. If the character Bernice Summerfield appeared in-character in a short story that is otherwise non-DW related, would we cover it? I've never heard anyone say "uuumm... Does Return of the Queen really fit the tone of previous Erimem stories?"

I also want to dispel any idea that this is a "parody". Even if it is a parody of variety shows or the like, T:VS only bans parodies of DWU concepts. This is not a parody of The Sarah Jane Adventures.

It's also not a talk show, it's not live, they're not ad libbing. It's clearly scripted, and carefully set-up to be true to their characters. The humor is derived from the characters being in a setting that is atypical.

So, if this seems so crystal clear, what has stopped coverage from happening? Well, two things in my eyes.

In one scene, Lee finds a VHS labeled "Sarah Jane", and when watched it's a clip from TV: Warriors of Kudlak. This is a pretty minor moment, and all it says is that Lee has a VHS of footage of Luke and Clyde's personal life.

SECONDLY... We have to talk about the realistic nature of covering this.

A lot of times on this website, we like to split off segments so we only cover the DWU portions. For instance, NOTVALID: Doctor Who Farted covers the one-minute cutaway gag, not the entirety of Family Guy season 15 episode 4. I think this is a natural instinct, and works with a lot of minor segments.

BUT... We can't do that in this situation. Because the precedent of The Incomplete Death's Head clearly states that when a series of linking segments is set in the DWU, we also have to cover whatever said linking segments show. So when Lee takes out a tape and shows something to Luke and Clyde, whatever he puts on the TV exists inside the DWU as in-universe media.

So the fact that the page currently doesn't describe what the "cutaways" are and only describes the linking bits is actually an incorrect reading of how we should cover this. We aren't covering a vague 8-minute compilation of relevant clips of this episode. We would be covering the full 27-minute episode.

An example you might find amusing is that Lee actually plays the Potter Puppet Pals episode The Mysterious Ticking Noise, this being the first time it was broadcast on TV. So if we consider Chute! episode 9 valid, we would need to not only cover that clip as existing inside the DWU, we would need to make a page for Neil Cicierega as a (CREDITED!) contributor to this piece of Doctor Who universe media.

I personally do not think this is a problem at all. It's not really a "slipperily slope" situation because there are not a lot of examples of clip shows where DWU characters introduce non-DWU material. But I felt I should be up-front about the reality of covering this. And to clarify, we'd be covering these cutaways as in-universe fiction. So it wouldn't be "Harry Potter was a wizard who was blown up by a pipe bomb (TV: Chute! Episode 9)", it would be "Lee watched a parody of Harry Potter called Potter Puppet Pals (TV: Chute! Episode 9)."

So that's Chute! episode 9, a story we didn't have a page on until 2016, and generally hasn't been revisited because it's so obscure. I think this is an open-and-shut case, but obviously it's all about what you guys think! Please tell me your thoughts! OS25🤙☎️ 04:37, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Chute! discussion
I think that this is a story that pretty cleanly passes our four little rules, and I imagine that the only reason it's considered invalid is just how obscure it is. I, for one, had not even heard of this show until this speedround. I support the validity. Pluto2 ☎ 20:08, 1 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Hate to sound like a broken record, but yeah, I support this story's validity. 21:08, 1 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Yeah I support this Time God Eon ☎  04:47, 2 April 2023 (UTC)


 * I support this, since it would seem from your description that this is a licensed production featuring DWU elements treated as real. Cookieboy 2005 ☎  12:20, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Doctor Who at the Proms
Okay, so this one is a natural consequence of our recently codified Rule 4 By Proxy. We've recently been trying to find the boundaries of this, but the basic idea is that Rule 4 by Proxy allows us to clarify if stories with dubious and contentious Rule 4ness actually do take place in the Doctor Who Universe. For instance, Scream of the Shalka was recently declared valid (partially due to passing Rule 4 itself, according to new context) and also partially due to the many stories which reference it as a potential past or future for the Doctor and the Master.

Anyhoo, so the boundary now lies in how obscure a story or piece of continuity has to be for Rule 4 By Proxy, which was really a heated topic when it came to the PRIME Computer adverts being directly referenced in PROSE: Christmas on a Rational Planet. Well, get ready, because I'm about to discuss a piece of continuity even more contentious and minor.

In 2013, a lot of "mini-sode" cameo appearances were recorded featuring the Eleventh Doctor and Clara Oswald, most set after The Name of the Doctor and before The Day of the Doctor. Many of these segments were featured as framing devices in very real-world shows and documentaries. Examples are BAFTA in the TARDIS, A Night with the Stars, and the start and end of The Ultimate Guide, TV: The History of the Doctor. Some of these are considered valid, but the more meta you get the less likely you are to be valid on this site.

One thing done in 2013 that was common by then but is obscure these days was the third (or fourth, or fifth) Doctor Who at the Proms presentation. Doctor Who at the Proms, for newer fans, was a celebration of the music of the show and specifically Murray Gold. The show would feature a live performance of orchestral tracks from the series, typically with several hosts. Some hosts would be from the real world, and some would be characters from within the DWU.

So, for instance, Russell T Davies would host part of the show. Then he would leave, the lights would go down low, and Davros would appear. When this would happen, it typically was taken very seriously and was not a parody of any kind.

We historically have not covered the Proms due to the real-world and in-universe parts being so heavily mixed, unless we can split segments off into "mini-episodes" such was the case with TV: Music of the Spheres (TV story) (an internet-exclusive edit removed the PROMS footage, and the music incidentally, and this is the version we cover on the page, justifying that it was an entirely different release... Why we don't call the page WC: Music of the Spheres (webcast) I have no idea...) A special part of the Proms in 2013 featured Clara and the Doctor trying to use a Hyperscape Body Swap Ticket to sneak their way into the Proms. They teleport into the event, host it for a bit, joke that the teleportation singed the Doctor's hair short, then head back to the TARDIS.

Why is this important? Well, in 2014's Dark Water, in a frantic mental health crisis, Clara lays out post-it notes of everything that's happened to her since she's met the Doctor. Among these notes, quite clearly, is the Hyperscape Body Swap Ticket, which Clara still has. This is a reference to the 2013 Proms and the 2013 Proms alone.

So, obviously this is contentious, especially as we've had a few voice their concerns that "easter eggs" should not be considered continuity. But my thing is... This was written by Steven Moffat. Steven "Here's where it fits, you can sleep at night" Moffat.

I find it hard to believe that this is anything less than confirmation that the 11 and Clara sequence in the 2013 Proms was set inside the Doctor Who Universe and is something that Clara actively remembers happening. And because of that, I think this is a clear example of Rule 4 By Proxy highlighting something we're doing wrong on the wiki.

So basically now, we have three options before us:


 * 1) Ignore this, say it's too obscure or difficult, get real jobs.
 * 2) Validate the entirety of the BROADCAST EDIT of the 2013 Proms, including the "real world" sections, as some sort of meta-fiction (really too much of a hassle, and arguably a violation of Rule 1, only fiction counts)
 * 3) Split this segment of the 2013 Proms into its own subpage, likely Untitled (DWatP2013 TV story) or whatever specific title we can find for this skit (TV story).

I think the third option makes the most sense. But if this is the case... Would it not make the MOST sense to just do this for all the in-universe parts of the 2013 Proms? And once we've accepted that... Why not all three of the Proms?

Basically, the argument would be that Dark Water AND Music of the Spheres clearly set the precedent that the "in-universe" sections of the Proms are really set in the Doctor Who Universe, even if they are neighbors with a segment presented by Billie Piper or Steven Moffat. So, for these three televised specials, the idea would be to split the in-universe segments of each broadcast into their own page, to be covered as valid stories, while the rest of the presentations are covered as "real-world historical music presentations" etc etc.

Basically, we would look at the three broadcast Proms specials as being like a live-action reference book, filled with cheeky in-universe sections. On one page you have REF: Doctor Who: Cybermen, on another we have PROSE: Archive - A History of the Cyber Race.

Many might say, and have said in the past, that "figuring out which parts are in-universe is impossible." But I disagree frankly. These shows are already cut into segments by nature, so we just go through each one specifically. If a segment is hosted by Strax, it's fiction. If a segment is hosted by Noel Clarke and nothing else happens, it's non-fiction. If the Doctor interrupts a segment, it's fiction. Again, it's not different from a reference book that has some parts in the real world, and some parts in the Doctor's.

The idea is basically that we would take any in-universe parts of these shows, and split them from the main page, as we would do with any in-universe part of a reference book or documentary. The Davros segment of the 2008 Proms used the title The Daleks & Davros in the progamme, so I made the page TV: The Daleks & Davros for that story. We keep TV: Music of the Spheres where it is, but make it clear that we now consider all sources valid, even the version that aired on TV.

Then we just have to find titles we justify for the in-universe sections of the 2011 and 2013 Proms, especially the two main segments of the Eleventh Doctor hijacking both, and then probably the Strax moments.

Now, in the past the "precedent" has been that it's actually impossible to split these segments from the real-world broadcast. My honest response to that, after years of precedent, is... I don't know why?

I personally just don't see how covering these segments as valid without covering the entire Proms show is any different from, say, validating TV: The History of the Doctor without validating The Ultimate Guide, or validating WC: Risen without validating the season 17 trailer. Or, if you want another example that is very meta, validating 24 Carat without validating the season 24 trailer.

Whatever we end up doing, it's blatantly clear that we have stories here that do pass Rule 4 by some standard. It's a case where I don't know the solution, so I'd like to hear your thoughts. OS25🤙☎️ 07:50, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Doctor Who at the Proms discussion
I think that this will probably be one of the more contentious proposals, but I support the validity. I'm not sure how we're going to cover some of these, page naming wise, but we definitely should. We should, however, make sure that we're not just making up our own titles for some of them (Cough cough, Bodyswap to the Proms (TV story).) Pluto2 ☎ 20:02, 1 April 2023 (UTC)


 * For the record, I think
 * so the boundary now lies in how obscure a story or piece of continuity has to be for Rule 4 By Proxy, which was really a heated topic when it came to the PRIME Computer adverts being directly referenced in PROSE: Christmas on a Rational Planet.
 * to be an egregious mischaracterization of that discussion. Obscurity had no bearing on the issue. But let's discuss this.
 * But my thing is... This was written by Steven Moffat. Steven "Here's where it fits, you can sleep at night" Moffat.
 * I prefer to think of him as Steven "Canon is a portentous word so I'll avoid it" Moffat, or Steven "It is impossible for a show about a dimension-hopping time traveller to have a canon" Moffat, or Steven "Head Canon is important, because that's where the show really happens: in the hearts and minds of all the people watching" Moffat.


 * Bah, I say, bah! Easter egg! Now, I have no strong feelings on the story being invalid in general or the rulings that made it so. But I think this is a misreading of Moffat's approach. It's not literally "here's where it fits", but "here's where it can fit, if you're so inclined to place it". He gives options, he doesn't actually insist that things are in-universe connected. And I'm fairly confident on this. I just don't think this bit works. I have no strong feelings on the story in general. Najawin ☎  20:39, 1 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Quite recently I found out about this story and I was genuinely going to write a page specifically about the pre-recorded bits, assuming this had genuinely fallen through the cracks. Good thing I saw you document the history of it before I did begin writing anything...
 * But yeah, one ticket for validity please. :) 21:11, 1 April 2023 (UTC)


 * I suppose I'd support this source's validity, although the real world bits would be a bit odd to include, so perhaps with some segmentation where possible. Cookieboy 2005 ☎  12:20, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Disney Time
Since we're getting into a meta-contextual segment in a TV special from the real world hosted by fiction characters, let's get into the ORIGINAL meta-contextual segment in a TV special from the real world hosted by fiction characters. TV: Disney Time 1975.

This is one of those examples where not only is the coverage of this story contentious, even having this page as something invalid has been heavily debated since our wiki started. Our original head admin, User:CzechOut, has often argued that the story is not "the Fourth Doctor hosting a TV program" but rather "Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor hosting a TV program."

I would disagree. I think this is a clear example of the branding that was so common in the Fourth Doctor's era, where he was constantly presented as a real person who interacted with the audience. He wrote Doctor Who Discovers, a book series for his young fans, constantly penned letters introducing the issues of Doctor Who Weekly, and was famous for staring down the lens of the camera and grinning directly to the child watching at home. Disney Time is hosted by the Fourth Doctor, I just won't accept any dispute about it.

The most famous detail about this special is that it ends with a direct lead-in to TV: Terror of the Zygons, as the Doctor gets a message during the show that the Brigadier needs his help. This slightly contradicts the fact that the previous DW story, Revenge of the Cybermen, also ends in this exact same way. Far from a contradiction, one could argue that this actually helps mend the constant expanded universe stories that depict more adventures happening between Revenge and Terror, but that's just speculation of course.

An important detail I insist on pointing out is that this special was recorded on the 3 August 1975. In other words, this was recorded while Tom Baker was in the middle of recording TV: The Android Invasion. By this point in his filming schedule, Baker was wearing a slightly different costume, specifically with a longer jacket that would set a trend for the rest of the classic era.

But despite this, Baker still wore his pre-Zygon costume for this special, so it could properly lead into the serial. When you watch this, you're looking at Baker weeks before he filmed The Brain of Morbius, but he's dressing up for a completely different era jus to match with continuity. I think this itself suggests a level of attention to detail that speaks strongly for the effort.

The point is that this makes all it very explicit that this Disney Time special was intended to be set inside the Doctor Who Universe, as it set up clear (albeit confused) continuity to the next story.

Small snippets of Disney Time have even been released on DVD, which I think implies a further element to this. The BBC apparently had the foresight to guarantee they kept the rights to this broadcast, although obviously some parts they don't have the rights to (the Disney bits).

The full show has never been released again, but it is far from lost. I have a copy myself, so I will tell you there's a minor caveat we do have to discuss here... That being that the Doctor does actually host Disney Time in this special! What I mean is, the Doctor will typically go on a rant about some personal view of his, before transitioning into showing clips and previews of Disney properties.

Now, there's just no way around it, I have to say this yet again. The precedent of The Incomplete Death's Head states that we have to cover the entire contents of a presentation where the linking segments are set inside the DWU. So if the Doctor introduces a 30 second clip of Escape to Witch Mountain, we have to cover that clip as part of Disney Time 1975. However, this would NOT mean that Escape to Witch Mountain becomes a valid source on the wiki! My point is more generally that we would not "edit" the show, we'd cover the entire 40 minutes as it was broadcast. Just like with Chute! episode 9.

Additionally, the precedent of Assimilation² is that we would allow people to freely cite minor information from the original films. For instance, the full names of the characters in Escape to Witch Mountain is not stated in the clip shown... But we should allow users to call them by their names because it's a "crossover" in a sense, so this is very basic information.

To understand the scope of this, please read my updated page on the story.

To clarify, like with Chute!, we would mostly depict the clips shown as in-universe fiction. In this case, we would almost certainly just say that the Doctor is hosting Disney Time in-universe (this is different from Chute!, where the internal narrative is that Lee is recording a distress signal while trapped, not that he's the host of a TV show).

In addition to all of these things, I would also like to make two requests about this story that are not important to if it's valid, and indeed should be established regardless.

Firstly, I think the title to this story is wrong. At no point was this ever called "Disney Time 1975," even in official home releases. It was also not the only Disney Time in 1975.

The special was titled Disney Time, and as we do not intend to cover any other episode, Disney Time (TV story) works fine as a pagename... That is, unless we want to be especially careful about the 1973 Disney Time special, which was hosted by Jon Pertwee. All evidence I've found has suggested Pertwee wasn't in-character, but he does do cheeky things like tell Herbie the Love Bug "You remind me of my own car, Bessie." So if we presume this might justify a page some day, Disney Time (1975 TV story) will do fine.

Secondly, I think we should not limit ourselves to original recordings of this special. If we're attempting to commit to an HQ fidelity, then it's most appropriate to allow higher quality sources just for the Disney clips shown in the special. For instance:

This is different from The Incomplete Death's Head, where it probably costs $35 to buy the entire comic on eBay. You can't get a good copy of this by nature, so we shouldn't necessitate our users hunt down a 15th generation VHS owned by Ross Lee.

As long as we give strict guidelines on which scenes are appropriate, I think this is the best way to go about covering this special.

So, what does everyone think? OS25🤙☎️ 07:50, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Disney Time Discussion
I think this is an interesting case, in that it's something that's definitely on the more heavily fourth wall pushing aspect. But as discussed elsewhere in the thread, the Fourth Doctor has a looot of stories where he turns to the camera and acknowledges the viewer. The fact that they used the "correct" costume and made it tie into Terror of the Zygons makes me think that yes, this does pass Rule 4. I support the validity proposal, and also support allowing higher quality screenshots to depict clips that are part of the compilation that have since been released in higher quality. Better that than having to deal with timecodes. Pluto2 ☎ 20:13, 1 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Support all the proposals here. 21:11, 1 April 2023 (UTC)


 * As do I Time God Eon ☎  04:47, 2 April 2023 (UTC)


 * We need to expand (and I see no need for this to be invalid). I support this proposal. Cookieboy 2005  ☎  12:20, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Doctor Who and the Fangs of Time
Doctor Who and the Fangs of Time is an especially weird case, and one I also have a particular history with. The story was printed in the one-issue gap between the Seventh and Eighth Doctor eras of Doctor Who Magazine, basically filling the void as the TV Movie made it to screens.

The story is an especially weird case, that when the wiki started didn't have a lot of precedent in coverage. The story begins with the story of Sean, implicitly meant to be Sean Longcroft, documenting his relationship with Doctor Who dating back to his childhood. Eventually, we transition to Sean in the present, now being a cynical writer in his 30s, as he is visited by an old friend: the Fourth Doctor.

Sean is excited to see the Doctor, and says it's been a long time. The Doctor agrees, saying he feared that Sean was avoiding him. He then learns that Sean is writing a story about the Doctor: Doctor Who and the Fangs of Time, which he recognizes as "one of those adventures I've never had" and that he "Saw one of these in W.H. Smiths". (You could arguably read this as part of the implicit beef DWM had with the Virgin novels around this era) He says he's flattered to know people still care, and Sean says he would be shocked how much people care.

During this point, we occasionally see snippets of the story Sean has been writing. We also see more biographical moments from his childhood, and at some points we see both at once. In a scene with a young Sean, replaces his memory of a teacher.

Other scenes are like brief pitches for sequences in TV stories, such as a scene with Jo Grant and Clifford Jones witness their baby being baptized by the Nestene Consciousness.

Sean reflects that as he got older, he did lose his connection with Doctor Who. In the present, the Fourth Doctor tells him that growing up is a natural part of life, and he can't be a child forever... But part of him always will be, and that's alright. Sean reflects that it's odd that the Doctor is always so right, when he was made up by other people. Very rude drawings of Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts appear, pitching random bits of the Doctor's lore.

As they talk further, Sean reflects on the concept of the end of Part one. The Doctor exclaims that the cliffhanger at the end of the first episode is always his favorite part, and how he tried to convince "them" to save that cliffhanger until the end of every story, although no one ever listened.

More scenes from Sean's book play out, and Sean reflects that he really did start avoiding the Doctor as he became an adult. But maybe this needed to happen, because he had to lose touch with the Doctor to find him again and realise how amazing he is. Sean says all his script needs now is an ending, and the Doctor pitches his own: as Sarah Jane comes back to the TARDIS, the Doctor's face falls off, revealing he is merely an android...

So this story was actually considered valid for the first few years of the website, in my opinion mostly for it being so obscure that no one even attempted to cover it. This changed in 2015, when I personally created Thread:179220, where I argued that because the story is simply an autobiography, it's not set inside the DWU. In 2017 this passed, and the story was made invalid.

But revisiting it with a little modern context, I think there's an argument to be made that there's more ambiguity to the story than I gave it credit for. There's basically three ways we could possibly read this story:


 * 1) This story is set in the real world. The sections where the character is visited by the Doctor are totally metaphorical, and do not really happen.
 * 2) This story is set in one of the various "parallel universes" where Doctor Who is a TV show, depicted in stories like TV Action! and The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who. One could assume that the Doctor is visiting this "alternate reality" where his friend Sean lives.
 * 3) This story is simply one of the many to depict Doctor Who as a show that exists inside the Doctor Who universe. Sean's relationship with Doctor Who in the 1970s is depicted as him "being friends with the Doctor" because that was a clear facet of Doctor Who marketing in that era. The Doctor being aware of novels being made about him and the like would not be a contradiction, because this story takes place in a world where both the Doctor and Doctor Who exist.

Our decision in 2017 was basically that because the story isn't explicit about which reading is accurate, we should presume the first has to be what was intended. But I still contend that it's purposefully unclear, and indeed each of these readings could be a totally accurate understanding of the story.

But more broadly, as we now constantly debate how to continue our coverage on pages like Doctor Who (in-universe), Tom Baker (in-universe), and The Doctor (fictional character); I wonder if precedent has not moved against this story not being covered. Consider this: how is a story like this fundamentally different from things such as PROSE: Bafflement and Devotion, or the several other stories like this which we cover today. If we want to pick something with a more established history of coverage, PROSE: The Meeting.

I think in this case, validating another one of THESE stories will naturally be controversial. But it's really less about "Do you want us to cover this," and more "If you don't want us to cover this, how is this story fundamentally different from the countless other meta-branded stories which we do cover?"

Interested to hear your thoughts. OS25🤙☎️ 06:56, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Doctor Who and the Fangs of Time discussion
This is another story where I support its validity, and find it to actually be quite similar to some other valid sources, most of which OS25 mentioned in the OP. I'm not sure how this is different from, say, some of Magrs's more metafictional stories that we cover. Pluto2 ☎ 19:58, 1 April 2023 (UTC)


 * While my heart feels this is more of a metaphorical story, my head tells me that this type... genre... of story is something the Wiki has lots of precedent for and makes sense for coverage as valid, as taking place in the Doctor's own universe. 21:14, 1 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Meta-fiction is a concept which recently has seen a lot of validity (case in point), thus I feel that, if the Doctor is treated as real, then it's no more fourth-wall destroying than several other valid sources. Thusly, I support this. Cookieboy 2005 ☎  12:20, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Requiem for Death's Head
Okay, so when I first started thinking of topics for this speed round, I suddenly recalled that I used to know someone on the wiki who was a fan of the comic AAAGH!, and wanted it to be valid. So I re-read it... And it's terrible. So I'm not doing that one.

So instead, I thought it would be fitting to instead replace that topic with another which has to do with Doctor Who comics. That being: Death's Head.

So Death's Head has a funny history on this website. I'll be over-explaining everything here, just in case someone isn't in the loop.

Death's Head is a character who originated within the Transformers Marvel comics, before becoming just popular enough to be moved into the main Marvel UK cast. Death's Head has ultimately faced a menagerie of good guys and bad guys from Marvel Comics and other franchises, from Galactus to Unicron and Iron Man to Spider-Man. Several times, Death's Head actual met the Seventh Doctor himself.

When Tardis Wiki first started, great pride was taken in the fact that by only covering the stories which directly feature the Doctor (or any other characters who originated in Doctor Who Magazine), the website would not have to admit to any of the "Crossover elements" implicit to the Death's Head series. You can see this evoked in Forum:BBV and canon policy, for instance. Time Bomb! ends with the Doctor leaving Death's Head on the Four Freedoms Plaza.

For a very long time, T:VS stated this about the question of if the Fantastic Four exist inside the DWU:

"The Seventh Doctor lands on top of the Baxter Building [sic] at the conclusion of the Death's Head story Time Bomb. Because we do not wish to allow in the entire Marvel Universe as a result of this story, we simply make a note of the fact on the Time Bomb page, and then proceed as if it never happened."

- Older revision of T:VS

However, literally a decade after the wiki was founded, someone pointed out that there was an entire extra Death's Head comic featuring the Seventh Doctor which we had been neglecting to cover this entire time. This wasn't done out of a vendetta either, it was just so obscure that no one even brought it up for a debate until around 2016-2017. This was, of course, The Incomplete Death's Head mini-series, which reprinted a good amount of Death's Head content through the framing device of Hob from Doctor Who Magazine's comics. Because of this, we now cover a good amount of Death's Head's early works, meaning that we have countless silly pages on She-Hulk and the Fantastic Four.

So why did I feel the need to restate this entire background? Well, I believe that there are some stories that were printed within The Incomplete Death's Head that should have been valid from day one, but were not validated off of the simple fact that this wiki once had an extreme fear of explicit crossovers. This is the reason why the Fantastic Four had, and still has, an entire section on T:VS. Death's Head was seen as a slippery slope, where if one too many comics were called valid, one day we'd have a page on Iron Man or something.

So putting all of these former biases aside, let's review the basic fundamentals of what we are supposed to cover according to T:VS. If a character originates in an explicit Doctor Who universe story, we typically view them as a character relevant to the DWU. One of the most obvious examples of this is Bernice Summerfield. Benny started out in the 1990s Doctor Who novels, then had her own non-Doctor Who PROSE stories, then kickstarted Big Finish in 1998. Thus, we cover all Benny stories without even stopping to think about it. And typically, we also do this for very minor, minor characters.

For instance, the character Keepsake originates from the Doctor Who Magazine comic Keepsake. So when Keepsake appeared in the Death's Head comic Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling!, this became one of the few DH comics we covered pre-TIDH.

But here's the odd thing. In that Doctor Who Magazine comic, we also meet Keepsake's vulture. And basically, the wiki took a single glance at this little bird and muttered to itself... "Nope. He doesn't count."

And why was that? Well, because Keepsake's vulture, a character that originated in Doctor Who Magazine, also appeared in Clobberin' Time!, the infamous Fantastic Four comic that we actively avoided covering at all costs. This bird was not counted as "a character" for entirely political reasons.

So the first order of business is that there are currently three comics which we only consider valid through the reprint in TIDH that I believe we should call valid for every single release. These are:


 * COMIC: Sudden Impact!
 * COMIC: Clobberin' Time!
 * COMIC: The Cast Iron Contract

Again, these are stories that we already consider valid where I believe the first edition releases also have a claim to being covered, instead of just the reprints. Now here comes the controversial part. There are three extra stories which are currently not covered by the scope of this website which feature Keepsake's vulture.


 * 1) Death's Head: The Body in Question, featured in a notable amount of the story
 * 2) Revolutionary War: Death's Head II #1 - Seen for one panel in a collage of people Death's Head has known
 * 3) Death's Head (2019)
 * 4) Issue 1: In a panel where Wiccan views images of the multi-verse, the vulture is seen in one reality.
 * 5) Issue 4: After Death's Head's memory files are repaired, a shattered collage of images shows an old illustration of the vulture, again for a one-panel cameo.

So, the good news is that at the end of the day, we have three one-panel cameos with only one story which features the vulture to some level of importance. In my opinion, the cameo appearances, mostly just showing Keepsake's vulture in DH's memory files, are not notable enough for us to recommend covering these comics (in spite of how the 2019 Death's Head run is awesome).

With that, the only story I'd like to argue for out of these is Death's Head: The Body in Question.

So here's a quick recap of the story.

Death's Head is a freelance peace-keeping agent living in New York City in the future year 2020. There, he makes a living hunting wanted fugitives.

At the start of the story, Death's Head has an identity crisis as he begins to wonder if he has started to love "the hunt" more than "the money" in freelance peace-keeping. Here, he briefly reflects on his story, directly name-dropping the Doctor himself.



We find out he means "here" as in New York, as in Los Angeles we see what Spratt (Death Head's "partner") is currently up to. While at the office, he received a call from a woman asking for her "darling", Death's Head. Spratt's curiosity has got the better of him, and he's agreed to meet the woman despite having no idea where Death's Head has run-off to. Something lunges out at him, and we soon learn that it is none-other than Keepsake's vulture, who is actively competing with Spratt to be the sidekick to Death's Head.

The woman turns out to be an imposing figure named Pyra, who claims to be Death's Head's wife. She intends to kill them, but is interrupted by the bounty hunter Big Shot (who also appeared in the 1988 DH series). Big Shot and Pyra begin fighting, and Spratt and the Vulture use the chance to escape.

Death's Head arrives, and Big Shot fights him. However, Pyra pushes him to the side, announcing she will be the person to kill her husband. Just then, Death's Head is teleported away. He is soon faces with Lupex, who we learn is essentially DH's father.

We learn that Lupex was an evil man who mastered magic and technology. This deteriorated his body, and he soon learned to transfer his essence to others (think Decayed Master). However, each time he stole someone body, the form would survive for less time. Thus, he created a body that he could transfer his essance into that was assured to survive. Death's Head is the body in question.

Pyra, it seems, has been hunting Death's Head under the impression that Lupex' essence was already to his body.

Long story short, we find out Lupex is obsessed with the raw thrill of "the hunt", and he chases his son across his world in an attempt to steal his body. Eventually, Death's Head kills Lupex and is teleported back to where he was before, with Spratt and the vulture.

There, Pyra reveals that she actually doesn't want to kill Death's Head. In fact, it was she who stole him away and programmed him with such a strange personality. She did this as revenge, and to stop the evil of Lupex by creating a successor who could finally defeat him. Spratt and the vulture are freed, Death's Head refuses the chance to kill without payment, and directly refers to Pyra as his mother. The end.

Now, T:VS currently cites Thread:246276 as the last debate we had about this topic. From my memory, I don't think I was here for this. But I've been told that the gist is that an admin ultimately ruled that the story did not put in enough effort to establish that it was set inside the Doctor Who universe.

I find this to be a very strange argument. Firstly, let's take "Doctor Who universe" by its most literal reading.

This is a bit of a hot take, but in my opinion every single Doctor Who comic printed between 1979 and 1999 was intended to be set on Earth-616. Or, if you care to make the distinction, the UK variant of Earth-616. Whenever DWU material appeared in these crossovers, no mention of universe-hopping or anything of the like was made. The reference book which later called the DWU "Earth-5556" was an awkward retcon done in response to the collapse of Marvel UK and the loss of the DW license by Marvel.

This is just a fact, which was itself pointed out by CzechOut in Forum:BBV and canon policy.

Secondly, I understand that to us "Doctor Who universe" is more of a state-of-mind... but I can not think of another instance of anyone trying to argue that a story which features the Doctor being name-dropped does not establish that it takes place within the Doctor's universe to a level of satisfaction.

And thirdly, there's an extra level of importance that I understand hasn't really been understood here. We currently have two series featuring this character that we cover on the website: Death's Head (1988) and The Incomplete Death's Head. Sure, we don't cover first edition copies of the 1988 series, but we do cover every story as DWU regardless.

The latter series actually goes out of its way to contexualise that Death's Head actually has a far more personal relationship with the Doctor than one might think otherwise. The Seventh Doctor actively reveals that it was he who sent Death's Head to the universe of the Transformers. Thus Death's Head, like Ace and many others, is a "project" that the Seventh Doctor has been manipulating.

And the relevant piece of information here is that The Body in Question is the main transitional series that takes us from the 1988 series to The Incomplete Death's Head. The latter series fully references the reveal of TBiQ, with the information being present in Hob's archive, establishing that it does take place inside the Doctor Who Universe.

So, in other words, we have all four rules check-marked here. This is a piece of fiction. It features the extended licensed appearance of a character who originated in Doctor Who Magazine. It was released. And it does have connections to the Doctor Who mythos/universe.

So that's the pitch, we retroactively cover every comic where Keepsake's vulture appears for more than a one-panel cameo. We're adding one comic and solidifying three others. Tell me what you all think. OS25🤙☎️ 16:33, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Death's Head discussion
I fully support the validity of the Death's Head stories whose validity has been proposed here, but I would like to throw in another one - ''Kangs of the Memories!! Or Guess Who's Coming To Dinner!, published in Fantastic Four #338, which depicts Death's Head's theft of the time-cycle that he has in Priceless!, which seems to have only been excluded from The Incomplete Death's Head'' due to being part of a larger story arc that Marvel UK may have found too confusing for readers to understand if they only had a single part of it. Pluto2 ☎ 19:38, 1 April 2023 (UTC)


 * I would also like to point out that both the Fantastic Four and Death's Head directly mention the events of Clobberin' Time! during Kangs of the Memories!! Or Guess Who's Coming To Dinner!. Pluto2 ☎ 19:46, 1 April 2023 (UTC)


 * I have less strong opinions on this story, having never read Death's Head, but I feel I support its validity. I do still have my reservations about what universe all these stories are set in, however, and I feel we should at least have Earth-616 as a page a la The Doctor's reality (The Eight Doctors), etc.; an according to one account, these adventures took place in the Doctor's universe, but according to others, their own universe/timeline/reality. 21:18, 1 April 2023 (UTC)


 * I understand your point, and I encourage we have that debate separately some day. But I simply against saying that the Doctor's adventures did not take place in 616. If we do end up citing the reference books, it should be noted that this widely did not match the content of these stories. OS25🤙☎️ 22:15, 1 April 2023 (UTC)


 * I definitely support the validity of the stories who's validity is proposed. And I do feel like the different universal designations relevant to Death's Head should receive some coverage, seeing as depending on where you look it's either all 616 basically all the time, or DH has bounced around 616, 5556, 120185 (aka Primax 984.20 Gamma in Transformers lore), and 88945 (aka Primax 986.13 Gamma) among others. I don't think they each warrant their own pages or anything, just that it's probably worth acknowledgment. Time God Eon ☎  04:47, 2 April 2023 (UTC)


 * I support this because the Fantastic Four are canon to Dr. Who (and also through the precedent of stuff like the Special Executive's further appearances (which I agree with, for the record)). Cookieboy 2005 ☎  12:20, 2 April 2023 (UTC)