Forum:Is The Curse of Fatal Death canon?

Revanvolatrelundar has recently brought my attention to a question that needs resolution. Do the inclusion of possible nods towards The Curse of Fatal Death in EDA: The Tomorrow Windows and The Gallifrey Chronicles make Curse itself canon? This discussion was held about six months ago at Talk:The Curse of Fatal Death. Revan apparently feels that the discussion there was sufficient to establish that Curse is canon. But it's too counter-intuitive a notion to bury on a talk page. Thus, I bring it here for greater, or perhaps just renewed, consideration.

The one thing that the previous discussion failed to do was to examine the actual text. It is tempting to go off of what other fans have said — as at the Discontinuity Guide's entry for The Tomorrow Windows. If you just read that, then you'll be happily convinced that it's sort of a big deal in the novel. It's not, though. It's a few sentences on pages 17 and 18.

The Doctor lifted his chin. "Show me . . . my future."

The fog cleared to reveal a dark chamber, the only light the red of a digital countdown clock. The image was replaced with a concrete world of motorways. A man with powdery skin, his body covered in implants and calipers, revolved in a wheelchair. A flower drifted through space, its petals unfurling towards the auburn sun —

"Yes, yes. Further forward," urged the Doctor. The picture flitted like a fast-forwarded film, the images flickering by so rapidly it was impossible to make out individual scenes.

Abruptly the image changed to a ruined city, the buildings silhouetted against billowing flames. A flying saucer soared overhead, its body revolving around it. Squat machines in gunmetal grey glided through the rubble, their eyestalks scanning from left to right.

The picture changed again. An artist scraped oils on to a canvas, his model smiling enigmatically. Men in skullcaps, robes and large, rounded collars gathered in a cathedral of turquoise. A robot spider, fifty yards tall, advanced upon a medieval castle as flaming arrows streaked through the sky. A figure with the head of a yellow-horned bull emerged from a sphere —

A planet exploded in a silent flash. A listless-looking man sat on a sofa beside a girl in a red dress in an unconvincing medieval dungeon. An aristocrat with a high forehead and devilish, shadow-sunken eyes sucked on an asthma inhaler. A man in a cream suit strolled through Regent's Park, his long hair swept back, his nose bent, his chin held imperiously high. A kindly-faced old gentleman in an astrakhan hat pottered in a junkyard, chuckling. A short, impudent-looking man, his ginger hair in disarray, plucked fluff from the collar of his afghan coat. A stockily-built figure in a crushed velvet suit and eyeliner stared arrogantly into the distance. A scruffy student with unruly, curly hair shrugged and smiled an apologetic, lopsided smile. A stranger stood alone on a sand dune, his hair scraped into a ponytail, his cloak flapping batlike in the wind —

The picture drifted. Sometimes it seemed to settle upon one face and then another. Sometimes the figures merged into a double-exposed photograph. Sometimes other men appeared, each one in pseudo-Edwardian dress —

Then it solidified into one, final figure. a wiry man a gaunt, hawklike face, piercing, pale grey-blue eyes and a thin, prominent nose. His lips were set into an almost cruel, almost arrogant smile. He had an air of determination, as though withholding a righteous fury. As though facing down the most terrible monsters.

Then he turned to the Doctor and his expression softened into a broad, welcoming grin, as if so say, "This is what you've got to look forward to."

— Jonathan Morris, The Tomorrow Windows

I've emphasized the one part of this thing that could at all refer to the Curse of Fatal Death But that's the entire passage of the Eighth Doctor looking into the Tomorrow Window.

What I note by looking at this is the extent of the ambiguity. Clearly, the Tomorrow Window does not just show the Doctor himself, but images from his entire future. He sees a "man with powdery skin", a "ruuined city", an artist working in oil, an artist's model, "men in skullcaps, robes and large, rounded collars", a "robot spider", a "figure with the head of a yellow-horned bull" — just to name the things he sees that are definitely not him. Why should we assume, therefore, that everything which then comes after these "other" images are necessarily him?

I admit, sure, the sentence fragment of a "man sat on a sofa beside a girl in a red dress in an unconvincing medieval dungeon" could be read as something from COFD. But it's not at all clear. Nor is it immediately apparent why a seeming reference to the Hartnell Doctor ("a kindly-faced old gentleman in an astrakhan hat pottered in a junkyard, chuckling") would be in the Eighth Doctor's view of his future. Could it be that the Tomorrow Window is having a problem properly homing in the future of such a comprehensive time traveller as the Doctor. And if this is a reference to the First Doctor, could not the man next to the girl in the red dress be the Third Doctor in The Curse of Peladon? That was an unconvincing medieval dungeon, and Jo was wearing a red dress. Fine, it'd be stretching things to say that there was exactly a "sofa" around — but then Morris hasn't properly described Emma's clothes, either. She isn't even wearing a red dress in COFD. She's wearing a red, sleeveless pullover on top of a black knit dress. So to me it's just as likely that he's describing COP as COFD.

The Gallifrey Chronicles even more vague. There's one sentence — one sentence — that has gotten fansites like the Discontinuity Guide all in a twitter. Although there's really only one line of relevance, I'll back up a bit and give a fuller passage for context. In this scene, Marnal is looking in his bottle universe, trying to make sense of the Eighth Doctor's time-stream. on page 62: ...Look at the rest of the Doctor's time-stream, though. It's meant to be a neat line. The entire history of this incarnation is one of temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations and divergences. How anyone can make head or tail out of all this chaos, I don't know.

Rachel certainly couldn't, not from this.

"As for his future . . . he has three ninth incarnations. I've never seen anything like it."

— Lance Parkin, The Gallifrey Chronicles

And that's it. No description of what these three incarnations look like. Just this one flat statement. And of course, the whole point of the Marnal character is that he's trying to understand the Doctor, to get a history of him. He could be entirely wrong, especially since he admits himself "how anyone can make head or tail out of all this chaos, I don't know". Fans assume that these three Ninth Doctors are the ones played by Rowan Atkinson, Richard E. Grant and Christopher Eccleston — but there's really not one scrap of evidence for that.

So, there we are. The acutal text is there for you to examine. I say we shouldn't be trying to make COFD canonical based on what amounts to a sentence and a fragment. The average reader simply won't wear it. It's so counter-intuitive. Also, as TD points out on the original talk page discussion, if we make Rowan Atkinson's Doctor canonical based on this evidence, we have to make Richard E. Grant's Doctor canonical. And that flies in the face of direct statements by the production crew (namely RTD). The production office may never have really told us what is canonical (yeah, yeah, Adventure Games fans, I saw you roll your eyes), but they have in exceptionally clear language ruled Scream of the Shalka out. It really makes no sense to contravene the clear wishes of the BBC Wales team on the basis of one line that in no way describes what these "three ninth incarnations" look like.

To me, Curse of Fatal Death is so iconically, definitionally non-canon, that Joanna Lumley and Julia Sawalha now adorn the nc template. Maybe an image of Jonathan Pryce wearing Dalek "bumps" would be equally emblematic of "something that doesn't 'count'" — but no image would be more widely identifiable with the concept than Emma and the 13th Doctor. What do you think? 19:58:41 Fri 11 Mar 2011