Forum:Canonicity of NA novels

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It seems to me that RTD has gone out of his way to invalidate much of the Virgin NA novels and, to a lesser extent, the BBC EDAs.

Despite the fact that all Gallifreyans (except maybe The Doctor) are birthed fully-grown from looms, The Master and The Doctor knew each other as 8-year-old children.

The Master was instantly driven insane upon viewing the Untempered Schism at the age of 8, he still managed to get into the Prydon Academy along with The Doctor and the rest of The Deca. And, although he was already insane, somehow his obsession with order later drove him insane.

The Doctor was well into his 11th century, and talked about it openly. Now, either he's forgotten, or he habitually lies about it--and he's perfectly consistent in those lies.

The 7th Doctor used a Chameleon Arch to become a human named John Smith and go to a boys school in Farmingham, where he fell in love with a woman named Joan Redfern and helped a troubled student named Timothy while fighting off aliens--and then, decades later, the 10th Doctor used a Chameleon Arch to become a human named John Smith and go to a different boys school in Farmingham a year later, where he fell in love with a different woman named Joan Redfern and helped a different troubled student named Timothy while fighting off similar but different aliens.

Iris Wildthyme really exists (and is a Time Lady, unless the post-BBC works are also canonical), and yet The Doctor never once wonders whether there might be one other survivor of Gallifrey out there, who almost certainly remembers that she's the one who destroyed Gallifrey at the end of the War.

The Doctor destroyed Gallifrey before, and it came back, and that's not even worth mentioning, but then he destroyed it a second time, and that's a soul-shattering event that he can't come to terms with, and he has no hope of things ever being made right.

And so on.

It's hard to argue that RTD and his writers didn't know about the NAs and EDAs considering how any of them wrote for those series. So, unless this is a deliberate attempt to drive the fanboy geeks nuts, the only reasonable explanation is that they've decided that the novels published between the old series and the new are not canonical. --99.170.146.147 09:02, December 28, 2009 (UTC)

Continuity is littered with things that actively contradict and back it up, our canon policy states what we on this wiki consider canon.

Though I would note that the Seventh Doctor didn't use a chameleon arch to transform himself, it was a some nanites and he was transformed back by a pod the size of a cricket ball. (see also Talk:Human Nature (novel) for other differences).

Between then and when the Tenth Doctor does it the Doctor goes through at least one course of memory loss, and who knows what else, including he two instances of Gallifey's destruction.

If Iris Wildthyme exists that validates all the BBC Books which in turn validates the Virgin novels.

The Infinity Doctors, Unnatural History, bits of The Scarlet Empress, and some of Twilight of the Gods suggest that the Doctor has a father and a brother. Unnatural History and The Scarlet Empress also suggest the Doctor's not sure if he was loomed or born (or if he was making up the half-human thing), and numerous other things. --Tangerineduel 13:08, December 28, 2009 (UTC)

Shouldn't there be like a category or some kind of information for them to state they're non-canon to the TV series? You know, to avoid confussion? I personally, and based on knowledge and what I have seen, only regard the TV series and new novels that are published under the same writers as the TV series canon.

Basically:

• Old Who
• New Who (and novels)
• Torchwood (and novels & audio plays)
• Sarah Jane Advetnures
• K9 and Company

I think of that as the propery Whoniverse continuity, but it becomes way out of order when every other story such as comic things, ect., are pulled into the TV series continuity. Shouldn't there be a descission on the wiki as to what is and isn't canonical to the main Whoniverse continuity, then? I don't think Russel T. Davies or any of the writers at that intend to class all the 'other' formated things as canon. When they brought it back, they simple followed on from the old TV series itself, and the movie. Delton Menace 13:27, December 28, 2009 (UTC)

Tardis:Canon policy I seem to keep mentioning it.

When they brought it back they were bringing everything else with it, the novels were licensed by the BBC, other spin-offs are licensed by their license holders (just as K-9 is licensed to SJA and the K-9 TV series for example). --Tangerineduel 13:57, December 28, 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I read the canon policy; my point is that it's... well, "wrong" isn't the right word, because honestly you can pick any canon policy you want, and none of them are wrong. I suppose "unmaintainable" is the word.

The new series writers definitely seem to be interested in preserving the canonicity of the old show, the new show, the two spinoffs, and the new books (as Delton Menace says), but in ignoring or even delibrately screwing up the canonicity of everything else, notably including the Virgin novels and older BBC novels. If they have a de facto canon policy which is wildly different than this wiki's, it will become harder to maintain consistency. The more we learn about Gallifrey, Time Lords, The Master, etc., all of which contracts what we learned in the novels, the more convoluted the qualifications will become (and the more fanwank justifications will have to be accepted as implied canon).

As for your specifics: You're right that the 7th Doctor didn't use a chameleon arch--but that's beside the point, which is that, even with his memory loss and psychic trauma, it's absurd to believe he went through almost the same experience twice--and even more ridiculous that nobody at the second school knew nothing about the same thing happening to the other school a year earlier. Iris validating the novels goes both ways--if Iris doesn't exist, the novels (or at least some of them) don't exist, and, the fact that The Doctor never thinks of her (and presumably never will, since she's now part of a totally separate non-licensed continuity) argues that she doesn't. The novels you mentioned try hard to make sense of the fact that Gallifreyans are loomed, don't have human-style families, etc. but The Doctor is different. They mostly deal with it by assuming that The Doctor is special in a number of ways. But the new series gives The Master parents, implies that this is totally normal, shows multiple 8-year-old Time Lords, states that all Time Lords are 8-year-old kids at some point, and so on.

And as for the new K-9 series, doesn't their license forbid them to use any elements of Whoniverse continuity (although not stated in those terms)? --99.170.146.147 02:09, December 29, 2009 (UTC)

There are other methods other than Iris to "validate" the novels (or indeed the audios, comics, short stories etc).

The new series states they're 8 years old, and shows them as kids, and states they're young all three can be true whilst though they don't necessarily need to be compared to a human comparison.

How is it any more ridiculous that no one remembers the Earth being invaded, not just post 2005, but in the 1970s when aliens visited every other week?

It is very possible that the new K-9 series can't use Doctor Who elements, it's possible they're operating under similar licencing of the 1990s video spin-off era, where they can use elements created by that writer Bob Baker in this case with K-9.

As for the convolution involved in the series and its continuity, there are plenty of things that don't make sense, but there are ways to navigate the rough and convoluted patches. --Tangerineduel 12:13, December 29, 2009 (UTC)

I understand that often writers make mistakes, or don't care that much, and leave it up to the fans (or at least the fans who care) to try to stitch things together. What I'm suggesting is that this is qualitatively different--they're deliberately throwing away the novels as canon; they know about Lungbarrow, Human Nature, etc., and have deliberately decided that none of that happened.

If I'm right, the in their version of the whoniverse, there are still plenty of confusing things to deal with (when the UNIT stories happened, why nobody remembers all those previous invasions, what the whole "half-human" thing was about, whether Sarah Jane remembers The Five Doctors--much less Dimensions in Time--and so on). And they actively try to deal with some of them, and make sly references to others to let the fans know they're at least aware of the issues.

But there are no Looms, no Deca, no Iris, no no other school in Farmingham, no first destruction of Gallifrey, etc. So they don't deal with these at all, except occasionally to go out of their way to hint or flat-out tell us that they didn't happen. They treat them the same way they do Shalka. How do you reconcile the Looms with the 8-year-old Time Lords? You don't; there are no Looms.

That's not to say that you can't try. Hell, you could try to fit Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica or Quantum Leap into the whoniverse if you wanted. But if I'm right that the writers have deliberately thrown out the novels, it's really a pointless fool's errand, and gets in the way of establishing the continuity of the whoniverse they're actually writing in. --99.157.75.211 06:28, December 31, 2009 (UTC)

And do you have evidence that the writers are specifically making the other work non-canonical? The only quote for controlling canon I've heard of is Russell Davies quote about being "happy for old and new fans to invent the Complete History of the Doctor in their heads, completely free of the production team's hot and heavy hands." Seems more in favour of not deciding what should be considered canon. -<Azes13 05:35, January 3, 2010 (UTC)

The finale gave a few more arguments for non-canonicity of the novels:

• Rassilon was resurrected. If the non-TV sources are right, he must have been resurrected from the Matrix. Which means that the three destructions of the Matrix didn't happen. Or maybe the one that ended up with a backup in the Doctor's head did happen, and he either helped them recreate the Matrix from the backup or helped them get Rassilon out of his head, but I don't see how you can fit Romana's destruction of the Matrix in at all. If you go by only the smaller list of canon (as suggested by Delton Menace), the Matrix was never destroyed, and Rassilon may have just been imprisoned in the Dark Tower anyway; since he was immortal, all they'd have to do is let him out.
• The new backstory on The Master makes it even harder to fit in all the backstory from other media; you pretty much have to go with the explanation that Rassilon's plan changed The Master's entire history and invalidated everything that we saw or read or heard him doing. Or you need some really convoluted way to explain that some of those stories are invalidated but others happened to turn out the same way. But it doesn't seem to contradict anything from the TV stories, so if you ignore the novels, you can assume that all of those still happened as we saw it on screen. --99.157.75.211 02:31, January 3, 2010 (UTC)

Hardly seems like big issues.

• So, Rassilon wasn't brought back from the Matrix. I haven't read the pertaining material, but I don't think it said that Rassilon's entire existence from all time and space was put in the Matrix. They just copied him from some other point of time (hence the lack of stylish beard). Really, we don't how he was brought back, so we don't know what limitations this method had.
• I don't see the contradiction. Rassilon added the drumming, the Master's mind was unhinged, he entered his mental decay. I don't know much about psychology (especially not for aliens), but all I've heard would suggest that mental illness generally don't have a single issue causing insanity. In any case, the Master never mentioned the drumming before The Sound of Drums in any media. Doesn't make all other meida non-canonical. -<Azes13 05:35, January 3, 2010 (UTC)