Forum:Deleted Scenes and Rule 4 By Proxy: Difference between revisions

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+[[Category:Panopticon archives]]
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 == Introduction ==
 {{Quote|Oh, Davros, I am far more than just another Time Lord.|Seventh Doctor, thing he never said.}}
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 Next, let's discuss a case study where we actually have some ''authorial intent'' to cite!
-In [[Series 4 (Doctor Who)|Series 4]]'s finale, ''[[Journey's End (TV story)|Journey's End]]'', the so-called [[Meta-Crisis Doctor]] is left on [[Pete's World]] to live his life with [[Rose Tyler]]. Originally, the sequence was going to show the [[Tenth Doctor]] giving the M-C Doctor a piece of [[TARDIS coral]], with the intention of him growing a second TARDIS for Rose and him to explore the universe with. This was actually filmed! In the recorded scene, the Meta-Crisis Doctor complains that growing a TARDIS takes thousands of years. But Donna explains:
+In [[Series 4 (Doctor Who 2005)|Series 4]]'s finale, ''[[Journey's End (TV story)|Journey's End]]'', the so-called [[Meta-Crisis Doctor]] is left on [[Pete's World]] to live his life with [[Rose Tyler]]. Originally, the sequence was going to show the [[Tenth Doctor]] giving the M-C Doctor a piece of [[TARDIS coral]], with the intention of him growing a second TARDIS for Rose and him to explore the universe with. This was actually filmed! In the recorded scene, the Meta-Crisis Doctor complains that growing a TARDIS takes thousands of years. But Donna explains:
 : '''[[Donna Noble]]''': ''If you shattify the plasmic shell and modify the dimensions stabiliser to [something something something] 6.3... youuuu accelerate the growth power by 59!''
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 ::::But, again, by this metric ''every'' deleted scene "released" ever is an actual new piece of content, because you always add at least some editing to the product and "release" it. So now our prohibition against deleted scenes doesn't invalidate ''anything'', which is clearly not the intent of the actual ruling. Regardless, this is very much [[T:POINT]] on ''P.S.'' in particular. [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] [[User talk:Najawin|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 19:47, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
+:::::By referencing [[T:POINT]], do you mean that there's been no new information brought forward to justify a reconsideration of the status of ''P.S.''? I don't see how that's the case. ''[[Rory's Story (webcast)|Rory's Story]]'' hadn't been released the last time we discussed it, and also the validity rules have changed since then. (You may not like or agree with R4BP, but frankly, no one's ever accused our validity rules of internal logical consistency.) Reconsidering ''P.S.'' in light of these developments seems sufficiently justified. – [[User:NateBumber|n8]] ([[User talk:NateBumber|☎]]) 21:37, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
+== Conclusion ==
+<div class="tech">
+Hello! This note will seem fairly trivial to future readers, but I ''do'' so apologise for the lateness of the present closing post. A huge, controversial thread and a busy time in my life (as well as in those of all the admins who could plausibly have closed it in my stead) make for a dangerous combination.
+=== Background and T:POINT ===
+As [[User:Najawin]] reminded us multiple times in this thread, it is worth remembering that deleted scenes were not initially excluded from the site for any actually proper reason. As he puts it, "in the early days of T:VS the list of exceptions was just that, exceptions, (…) things that people had specifically ‘voted off the island’ through community discussions, and they didn't violate any of the 4 little rules, people just didn't want to cover them". '''This sort of thing is ''thoroughly'' unconscionable under the modern [[T:VS]] paradigm, and modern policy-making paradigm in general'''; it bespeaks an embryonic, often biased era of the site. It suggests that if we were right to rule such things out, it was more in a "stopped clock" way than anything else. I exaggerate — as Najawin himself further notes, discussion of points ''adjacent'' to the 4LR was involved in the old thread, because it just ''makes sense'' to think about these issues; I'm not saying the old users & admins were throwing darts at the wall or anything — but it wasn't done by the book, that's all.
+So in terms of whether this thread passed [[T:POINT]], forget the R4BP question — '''reviewing the coverage status of anything which was ruled out in discussions that predate the modern, impartial, universalised form of T:VS is warranted by default'''. We should be extremely, extremely careful about invalidating anything; we should be downright neurotically cautious about ruling anything ''non-covered'', and by and large this is what has been done with deleted scenes.
+(I do not believe the current T:VS contradicts the modern paradigm in saying that the 4 Little Rules "help you understand what works of fiction 'count' on this wiki well over 90% of the time [while] he rest of this document is concerned with the other 10% — the marginal cases that are a little less clear": by "a little less clear", it is meant that ''although'' there is a robust sense in which our coverage of these marginal cases flow from the 4LR, the rationale is not ''obvious'' at first glance and bears spelling out.)
+And I think a similar logic also justifies reviewing ''[[P.S. (webcast)|P.S.]]''. From what I've seen of the previous discussion, and indeed the controversies we've seen here, I just don't think we had a robust definition of what a "deleted scene" was at the time. ''P.S.'' is the storyboard workprint of a ''whole'' short; it's not a "scene" that was "deleted" from anything. Things get even crazier when we're asked to think of ''shooting scripts'' as "deleted scenes" — we might think of specific bits in the scripts as deleted scenes, but validating a script ''in gestalt'' would not by any sane use of language constitute "validating a deleted scene". Come on now. Our discourse on all of this is hopelessly confused if this is the sort of conclusion it's outputting.
+All this being said — stopped clocks ''are'' sometimes right, with proverbial frequency. '''It ''would'' be completely crazy to validate every deleted scene ever; or indeed every deleted scene that got an official release.''' So let's move on to analysing these things through the lens of the modern Four Little Rules, and see what that leaves us with, if anything.
+=== Rule 1 ===
+I am shocked at how little discussion there was of this. I believe a lot of the intuitions that had people (including ''me'', in the 2020 redraft) pointing helplessly at Rule ''3'', are actually about Rule ''1''. And when we consider this, it starts to make a lot more sense that a bunch of deleted scenes lack pages altogether. Stuff which breaks Rule ''1'' goes un-covered ''all the time''.
+Partially-quoted script extras — bloopers and other unused shooting clips — those things all fail Rule ''1'' before you move on to any of the others. They're not complete works of fiction, any more than musings on in-universe questions partway through a "letter from the showrunner" in DWM are.
+The slightly problematic thing is of course that "completeness" is, sometimes, more of a state of mind than a fact. A slideshow of still images might be [[Real Time (webcast)|an artistic choice]]; we can't start judging BBV and Reeltime productions "unfinished" if they lacked proper colour-grading. ''[[Doctor Who and the Time War (short story)|Doctor Who and the Time War]]'' passes Rule 1, while an ''actual'' snippet of an unfinished novelisation draft wouldn't. (This is, of course, why ''[[How The Monk Got His Habit (short story)|How The Monk Got His Habit]]'' was so controversial in its day.) Nor can you retreat to "completed to the standard that was ''initially'' aimed for" — some of the VFX work in ''[[Orphan 55 (TV story)|Orphan 55]]''-as-broadcast was infamously rushed or unfinished relative to the original plan.
+Still, when something is released as "Deleted Scene #22" on a DVD, I think we can reasonably conclude that there is no ''intent'' to release it as a coherent, bounded work of fiction. Ditto unnamed script extracts quoted in ''The Writer's Tale'', a piece of concept art printed in DWM, or whatever else. '''To a first approximation, if its purported "official release" is untitled, it's out.''' There could be imaginable exceptions, but I don't know of any at the moment, and they can be discussed in individual threads.
+So it's here that we must say goodbye to the ''Journey's End'' and ''Remembrance'' deleted scenes, I fear. Especially the latter, which does not seem to have ever had a ''standalone'' release separate from the context of a documentary. It's not about level of completion — if, however ungraded and unscored, the ''Journey's End'' scene was put on YouTube as, I dunno, ''Parting Gift'' or something, and the blurb said "in this exclusive mini-episode, discover one more thing that might have happened before the Doctor left Pete's World for the last time", then sure, we could give that a page; and validate it by R4BP when a later story changes that "might" to a "did". But as things stand it's not coverable as fiction, valid or otherwise.
+This rule isn't symmetrical — the presence of a title of some kind does not ''necessarily'' mean that something passes Rule 1. A blooper that's released on DVD as ''Sylvester Trips and Falls'' is being released as "its own thing", but visibly framed as "look at this accident that happened during filming", not "look at this short work of fiction where the Seventh Doctor hurts his leg". And, of course, a script or workprint of a full episode will presumably bear the title of the finished product for its own!
+==== Scripts ====
+Okay, what ''about'' complete scripts, then?
+Uhm… pass?
+Sorry, sorry. But this question is much too peculiar and wide-ranging in itself for this discussion to resolve it, IMO. There's been too little discussion of Rule 1 ''at all'', let alone in relation to full released scripts, for me to feel comfortable resolving this. '''The de-facto, [[T:BOUND]] view is that "real" scripts written for production ‘are not fiction’''', even when we have pages about them. [[The Masters of Luxor (script)|''The Masters of Luxo'' (script)]] has borne a {{tlx|non-fiction}} tag since 2012 — ''not'' an {{tlx|invalid}} one. To a degree this makes sense — scripts, as a reading experience, are often written from a real-world perspective. They're practical guides to wrangling your actors, not themselves a work of art.
+But then again, writing things in ''in the manner of a script'' is a legitimate way of writing prose — look at something like ''[[The Crikeytown Cancellations (short story)|The Crikeytown Cancellations]]''. And the lines are blurry — many notable literary playwrights from the 19th century wrote primarily for print, not to be performed (my reference for this is very French: Alfred de Musset's concept of the "armchair theatre"), and yet their works are still perceived as "plays", not "novels written in the style of a script" as we would dubiously dab such a thing. And of course, writing "this isn't meant to be performed by actual flesh-and-blood actors" on your script is the surest way to ensure that every up-and-coming director on the planet will try it. It's all terribly blurry.
+And I do think, ''sometimes'', an official release of a full script is done in this spirit — that even if it wasn't initially intended as such, it is being printed here with the intention that it may be enjoyed as a reading experience, as ''a way of experiencing the story'' (i.e. fiction) rather than a historical, BTS document of ''what might have been''. Just look at the foreword of the aforemenetioned script release of ''Masters of Luxor'':
+{{quote|When I first started to read Anthony's rejected script, ''The Masters of Luxor'', it was with a mixture of excitement at experiencing a 'new' first-Doctor adventure and an expectation of it perhaps being, somehow, 'second-rate'. However, within the first couple of pages I was hooked and I did not stop reading until I reached the final page of the last episode. Far from being a weak story, it is one which is not only a gripping read, but which contains at its heart a most fascinating science fiction concept which would work today every bit as well as when it was first written, nearly thirty years ago.|John McElroy}}
+…Okay, Rule 1's wording no longer ''limits'' itself to "stories", but still, it should count for something that McElroy, this book's editor, keeps referring to the script itself as "a story". No?
+Of course, intent to be read as a story does not mean intent to be read as a ''DWU'' story, about which more later. But supposing there had never been a ''[[The Lost Stories|Lost Stories]]'' [[The Masters of Luxor (audio story)|version]] of ''Luxor'', and then somebody wrote a valid ''Return to Luxor'' audio story, sequelising its events with the understanding that this was a story that fans ''had'' experienced, via the scriptbook… well, validating a script on a R4BP basis ''then'' would not, to me, seem unwise or unwarranted.
+What about things like the shooting scripts — i.e. first drafts of later-released works? I think it is rarer for such things to get official releases presenting them ''as'' works of fiction. Looking at the ones on the BBC website, the framing ''is'' much more along the lines of "get a peek behind the scenes". But I could see a world where the unabridged ''[[The Faction Paradox Protocols]]'' scripts get a release that frames them as "experience the stories ''in full''!", instead of "here is an exclusive BTS look at things which didn't happen". (For all I know BBV's ''Faction Paradox: The Scripts'' books are that, although I haven't bought them so I don't know what, if any, critical apparel they contain.) Maybe that release would itself pass Rule 4, or maybe it would pass Rule 4 By Proxy when someone at Obverse decides to pick up one of the bits of lore in the unrecorded bits, and runs with it. Why then couldn't ''that'' be something that could potentially be validated through a thread? Why ''not''?
+…But again, all of this is hypothetical and will bear discussing in a further thread, which I intend to start myself. '''The above outlines ''how'' treatment of scripts would fit into the paradigm I'm establishing here — but all of this is conditional on a future thread explicitly tossing out the notion that scripts can never be treated as fiction at all'''. In the meantime they remain non-covered.
+=== Rule 2 ===
+Not one we need to worry about very much, I think we're all on the same page and it sort of blends into the "official" bit of "officially released" in Rule 3. Still, it's worth saying explicitly that '''if we're proposing to treat a "deleted scene" as valid fiction, albeit retroactively valid fiction, then its official release needs to be licensed ''as'' fiction'''. A professional-grade, documentary effort like ''[[Vworp Vworp!]]'' might be legally allowed to print, say, the deleted prologue of a novel, which might, perhaps, have a title attached, ''insofar as it is a BTS document'' — even though they are not allowed to release it "as" a new work of fiction featuring the [[Seventh Doctor]]. Such a thing would be a non-starter on validity or even coverage, even ''if'' it is framed in such terms that its exact twin printed in [[DWM]] with the same blurb could be a candidate for coverage as its own released thing.
+=== Rule 3 ===
+As I believe I've outlined by now, most of the so-called "Rule 3-adjacent" concerns really resolve to Rules 1 and 2; a few more will resolve to Rule 4. As concerns the sheer ''question'' of whether a thing like this was "officially released" we should, as has been stated many times, follow common sense. Deleted scenes which have had official DVD releases (or the like) ''have'' been, um, officially released (whereas leaked ones are non-starters for coverage, even if we have reliable sources for their contents). The question is just whether they were released ''as'' clearly-delineated works of fiction, and if so, as works of fiction ''set in the DWU''. But sure, they pass Rule 3 itself. Plenty of thoroughly uncoverable things pass Rule 3 — in many cases that old bugbear, the off-handed interview quote, passes Rule 3! If the interview is printed in DWM or broadcast in ''Confidential'', how could it not?
+=== Rule 4 ===
+So ''when'' "unfinished" or previously-deleted material gets an official release ''presenting it as fiction'', can ''that'' be valid? It's a very narrow case. But yes, I think so. We'll come to R4BP in just a moment, but I believe such things can pass regular Rule 4 just fine. Look at the succinct blurb on ''[[P.S. (webcast)|P.S.]]'':
+{{simplequote|Find out what happened to Rory's dad and the Ponds in this unshot scene by Chris Chibnall.|The Official Doctor Who YouTube Channel}}
+Not only are is this blurb not presenting the video as just a way to find out what a scene-that-might-have-been ''would have been about'', but it's explicitly presenting it as a window into the actual lives of the character, not just a might-have-been or suggestion. Viewers are invited to see the "unshot scene" as a way to "find out what happened to (etc.)". That is how it is framed: as an account of definite events in the Whoniverse.
+(Okay, I can just feel that someone will come along and say that there's linguistic ambiguity here, and the blurb might be saying "''find out [what happened in the unshot scene]''", as opposed to "''find out [what happened] in the unshot scene''". I find this unlikely for a variety of reasons, but if that were true, it would just become a R4BP case, so it doesn't change the bottom line for ''P.S.''; and it doesn't affect the hypothetical point of how we'd treat a release with a blurb that's similar to my redfing, but non-ambiguous.)
+Thus '''''[[P.S. (webcast)|P.S.]]'' is hereby ruled an example of a valid release primarily composed of previously-discarded material'''. It passes Rules 1, 2, 3 and 4, in a way that the vast majority of "deleted scenes" and other similar material do not.
+This opens the door for at-least-{{tlx|invalid}}, and potentially valid, coverage of other things in the same case — but '''such cases will need individual debates'''. As per Rule 1, everything rides on the spirit in which ''[[The Pilot Episode]]'', 1991 ed., was released — one long outtake, or a live-action narrative they didn't want you to see? And then there's the concerning matter of its multiple cuts. I don't think they're the end of the world (the various Special Editions are a similar puzzle!), but I would feel better validating it if we had a sound theory of coverage here. In short, more research is needed, and it should remain covered on a singular page, as a BTS piece, until that research is performed. Only then would we be able to think about "/Non-valid" coverage, let alone validation by proxy.
+==== Rule 4 By Proxy ====
+Once again we see some fairly heated debate about the boundaries of that humble little clause in [[T:VS]]. Unless one leans on the possible ambiguity in the YouTube blurb, it is irrelevant to the only validation effected by the present thread — ''[[P.S. (webcast)|P.S.]]'' — which is ironic given the title it started from. However, '''the ''principle'' is hereby affirmed that Rule 4 By Proxy can apply to "deleted scenes" that pass Rules 1, 2 and 3 to the standard outlined above'''.
+Furthermore, this time, I think the back-and-forth has generated an opportunity to clarify an important aspect and limitation of R4BP.
+'''R4BP applies when the natural assumption is that the validating story is making a continuity reference ''to'' the validated story'''. Not just when the valid story "coincidentally" has facts in common with the would-be-validated one because they're both drawing from the same source.
+Case in point, it seems wildly unlikely to me that a Missy bio using the name "Carnathon" is doing so with the intent of coming across as ''a continuity reference to the Pilot shooting script''. (To begin with, I don't think the script was publicly out yet when the bio was released.) It is in fact using that name because the name was presumably given to BBC copywriters in relation to the plot of ''Extremis''; the deleted ''Pilot'' line is a call-forward to a factoid which was meant to come into play in ''Extremis''. It was ultimately left out both of ''Extremis'' and ''The Pilot'', but the copywriter wasn't to know. This is analogous to the pretty uncontroversial points made about novelisations: if a noveliser going off the original shooting script includes stuff that's left out of the TV version, they're not R4BP-ing a deleted scene which probably had yet to be released to the public by that point anyway.
+Of course, this is doubly moot in this case: first because of the ruling I made above regarding scripts, and the BBC-website shooting-scripts in particular — but also because… I don't think the redlinked "Missy" thing that's used as a source on [[Carnathon]] is or should be a valid source? I believe it's [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/xCgpqKWg8nj5BS2LJ6DRV0/missy this thing], and I just don't think that passes Rule 1. Notwithstanding Carnathon, it's strictly a restatement of her TV history, with no attempted new spin or extra details or ''anything'' — and at a glance, although this one doesn't explicitly acknowledge "in episode so-and-so…", this seems incidental, as other profiles of the same source, written in the same sort of style, do so freely (the profile for [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/55584DPj9h9RyxV6hXWhcKV/the-master the Master] talks about how "''we'' first encountered [[the Master (Terror of the Autons)|the Master]] during a period when…"). When we hear "Missy was tried on Carnathon", the implication is "in the episode ''Extremis'', Missy was tried on Carnathon"; not "in the space year 6789.ApplesauceDelta, Missy was tried on Carnathon".
+Right, I think that's everything! As always, thanks to everyone who participated, and please do chime in on the talk page with any questions if I've left anything out or been unclear in some way. [[User:Scrooge MacDuck|'''Scrooge MacDuck''']] [[User_talk:Scrooge MacDuck|⊕]] 20:31, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
+</div>