Forum:Temporary forums/Inclusion debates speedround: Difference between revisions

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=== Part 0 - Should this Speedround have existed? ===
=== Part 0 - Should this Speedround have existed? ===
I don't think this format is ''inherently'' ill-suited to inclusion debates, particularly so long as we are operating with only six slots. [[User:NateBumber]] was seen to wonder if he had set a nasty precedent with the multi-sectioned structure of [[Tardis:Temporary forums/Archive/Subpages 2.0]] — but more than anything else, the precedent here is [[Forum:The original inclusion debates]], the ancestors of them all, which were conducted in a very comparable format. So long as we are discussing stories any ''one'' of whose validation would be a trivial matter<ref>Note that I mean trivial in the vernacular sense, not the epistemological sense [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] is fond of employing.</ref>, the basic consolidation of different inclusion topics into one big three-weeks thread seems like a basically sound instinct.  
I don't think this format is ''inherently'' ill-suited to inclusion debates, particularly so long as we are operating with only six slots. [[User:NateBumber]] was seen to wonder if he had set a nasty precedent with the multi-sectioned structure of [[Tardis:Temporary forums/Archive/Subpages 2.0]] — but more than anything else, the precedent here is [[Forum:The original inclusion debates]], the ancestors of them all, which were conducted in a very comparable format.<ref>[[User:Najawin]] calls me out, I think in hindsight fairly, on this comparison not taking into account that [[Forum:The original inclusion debates]] grew organically over a very long period; so it was quite a different animal from nine topics proposed at once and discussed in parallel within a bounded three-week time-span. He's quite right and I should have thought about this more. Apologies.</ref> So long as we are discussing stories any ''one'' of whose validation would be a trivial matter<ref>Note that I mean trivial in the vernacular sense, not the epistemological sense [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] is fond of employing.</ref>, the basic consolidation of different inclusion topics into one big three-weeks thread seems like a basically sound instinct.  


Nate is speaking to a real concern when he notes:
Nate is speaking to a real concern when he notes:
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It's also the easiest one for me to close: it had pretty clear consensus, and my fellow admin [[User:SOTO]] already put in a pseudo-conclusion.
It's also the easiest one for me to close: it had pretty clear consensus, and my fellow admin [[User:SOTO]] already put in a pseudo-conclusion.
{{quote|I think the Moffat quote, along with the in-text effort to find a place for this minisode within the final narrative (ie. the psychic paper bit), are more than persuasive enough.<br>Against the previous ruling, my stance is that this shouldn't count as a deleted scene, since it was ''already released'' as its own complete narrative.|User:SOTO}}
{{quote|I think the Moffat quote, along with the in-text effort to find a place for this minisode within the final narrative (ie. the psychic paper bit), are more than persuasive enough.<br>Against the previous ruling, my stance is that this shouldn't count as a deleted scene, since it was ''already released'' as its own complete narrative.|User:SOTO}}
To briefly go through this in more detail: this is the ''opposite'' of a deleted scene. This is a narrative short which was filmed ''first'' as its own production; and which Moffat then decided to remake as part of ''[[The Pilot (TV story)|The Pilot]]''. It was not written as a scene from ''The Pilot'', filmed as a screen test, and then reshot with changes; it was created as its ''own'' production, and only later did Moffat decide to rework it into ''The Pilot'', with the explicit purpose of making it "fit" with the narrative arc of [[Series 10 (Doctor Who)|Series 10]].  
To briefly go through this in more detail: this is the ''opposite'' of a deleted scene. This is a narrative short which was filmed ''first'' as its own production; and which Moffat then decided to remake as part of ''[[The Pilot (TV story)|The Pilot]]''. It was not written as a scene from ''The Pilot'', filmed as a screen test, and then reshot with changes; it was created as its ''own'' production, and only later did Moffat decide to rework it into ''The Pilot'', with the explicit purpose of making it "fit" with the narrative arc of [[Series 10 (Doctor Who 2005)|Series 10]].  


If it had not been "remade" in ''The Pilot'', this would have been valid long ago as a [[minisode]]; or if not, it would have been valid weeks ago as a narrative trailer, anyway. Its relationship to ''The Pilot'' is the only thing putting Rule 4 into question — but Moffat's quote clarifies that the entire reason he put it into ''The Pilot'' was ''in order'' to try and "make it fit". And that in the final analysis, even though he only inserted the beginning into the episode, he does view it as giving the whole of the short a place in continuity.
If it had not been "remade" in ''The Pilot'', this would have been valid long ago as a [[minisode]]; or if not, it would have been valid weeks ago as a narrative trailer, anyway. Its relationship to ''The Pilot'' is the only thing putting Rule 4 into question — but Moffat's quote clarifies that the entire reason he put it into ''The Pilot'' was ''in order'' to try and "make it fit". And that in the final analysis, even though he only inserted the beginning into the episode, he does view it as giving the whole of the short a place in continuity.
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=== Part 4: Fourth wall stuff ===
=== Part 4: Fourth wall stuff ===
This was one of the most controversial things in the whole Speedround, and for good reason: "fourth wall breaks" are a very blurrily defined concepts. So I'm goingto try and disentangle the whole mess. But first, let me clarify, as I did with the crossovers, that '''it is not and has never been policy that a fourth-wall break is ''in itself'' a reason for validity'''; rather, it's an extension of [[Tardis:Valid sources#Rule 4|Rule 4]], a piece of circumstantial evidence about authorial intent, albeit, historically, what has been deemed very ''strong'' evidence, perhaps too strong. This is why ''Doctor Who'' TV stories get "special treatment" here without injury to [[T:NPOV]]: it is ''beyond doubt'' that the writers of ''[[The Daleks' Master Plan (TV story)|The Daleks' Master Plan]]'' and ''[[Before the Flood (TV story)|Before the Flood]]'' intended them to be set in the DWU; no amount of in-story evidence could prove otherwise. Whereas things are very different for a narrative trailer or a ''Lockdwon'' webcast or even a charity minisode; those ''are'' sometimes intended to be set outside the DWU, the scenario is not in itself absurd. So it must be examined.  
This was one of the most controversial things in the whole Speedround, and for good reason: "fourth wall breaks" are a very blurrily defined concepts. So I'm goingto try and disentangle the whole mess. But first, let me clarify, as I did with the crossovers, that '''it is not and has never been policy that a fourth-wall break is ''in itself'' a reason for invalidity'''; rather, it's an extension of [[Tardis:Valid sources#Rule 4|Rule 4]], a piece of circumstantial evidence about authorial intent, albeit, historically, what has been deemed very ''strong'' evidence, perhaps too strong. This is why ''Doctor Who'' TV stories get "special treatment" here without injury to [[T:NPOV]]: it is ''beyond doubt'' that the writers of ''[[The Daleks' Master Plan (TV story)|The Daleks' Master Plan]]'' and ''[[Before the Flood (TV story)|Before the Flood]]'' intended them to be set in the DWU; no amount of in-story evidence could prove otherwise. Whereas things are very different for a narrative trailer or a ''Lockdwon'' webcast or even a charity minisode; those ''are'' sometimes intended to be set outside the DWU, the scenario is not in itself absurd. So it must be examined.  


Now, as to the many kinds and varieties…
Now, as to the many kinds and varieties…
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First there is the basic notion of talking generically to the camera/audience interaction. Treating ''that'' as in itself evidence of Rule 4-breaking has led us astray and should not stand as policy. ''[[A Message from the Doctor (webcast)|A Message from the Doctor]]'' clearly ought to be valid, and always should have been. It's an in-universe transmission the Doctor is sending out in the middle of an adventure; the diegesis of the DWU isn't even ''actually'' being pierced here. And this applies to a lot of what OttselSpy refers to as "interactive fiction"/"audience participation". ''[[The Runaway (video game)|The Runaway]]'' or ''[[Attack of the Graske (video game)|Attack of the Graske]]'' aren't doing any fourth-wall-breaking in the sense of acknowledging a metafictional ''Doctor Who''/the Doctor's own fictionality; they're ''just'' framed in such a way that a nondescript "you" is kept "off-screen", inviting the viewer or player to imagine themselves in the diegetic character's shoes. But the Doctor isn't Watsonianly talking to you out of a TV show; there's just someone actually standing there in front of them whom you're standing in for, as in ''The Runaway'' which ''explains'' how "you" came to be in the TARDIS. '''These should be valid by default unless there are other parameters in play.'''<ref>After some reflection I think this includes ''[[Time Is Everything (TV story)|Time Is Everything]]''; the [[Time is Everything (feature)|print tie-ins]] explicitly treat the situation as "the Doctor has been hired to make commercials for Superannuation", so he's genuinely filming commercials in the TV shorts, not just generically talking to camera. And he is introduced there in terms of "he's a real live time-traveller," not "you know him from beloved show ''Doctor Who''", so there isn't really a fourth-wall problem at all. If there are Rule 4 concerns they lie elsewhere, and the presumption should be validity unless prove otherwise, as with everything else.</ref>
First there is the basic notion of talking generically to the camera/audience interaction. Treating ''that'' as in itself evidence of Rule 4-breaking has led us astray and should not stand as policy. ''[[A Message from the Doctor (webcast)|A Message from the Doctor]]'' clearly ought to be valid, and always should have been. It's an in-universe transmission the Doctor is sending out in the middle of an adventure; the diegesis of the DWU isn't even ''actually'' being pierced here. And this applies to a lot of what OttselSpy refers to as "interactive fiction"/"audience participation". ''[[The Runaway (video game)|The Runaway]]'' or ''[[Attack of the Graske (video game)|Attack of the Graske]]'' aren't doing any fourth-wall-breaking in the sense of acknowledging a metafictional ''Doctor Who''/the Doctor's own fictionality; they're ''just'' framed in such a way that a nondescript "you" is kept "off-screen", inviting the viewer or player to imagine themselves in the diegetic character's shoes. But the Doctor isn't Watsonianly talking to you out of a TV show; there's just someone actually standing there in front of them whom you're standing in for, as in ''The Runaway'' which ''explains'' how "you" came to be in the TARDIS. '''These should be valid by default unless there are other parameters in play.'''<ref>After some reflection I think this includes ''[[Time Is Everything (TV story)|Time Is Everything]]''; the [[Time is Everything (feature)|print tie-ins]] explicitly treat the situation as "the Doctor has been hired to make commercials for Superannuation", so he's genuinely filming commercials in the TV shorts, not just generically talking to camera. And he is introduced there in terms of "he's a real live time-traveller," not "you know him from beloved show ''Doctor Who''", so there isn't really a fourth-wall problem at all. If there are Rule 4 concerns they lie elsewhere, and the presumption should be validity unless prove otherwise, as with everything else.</ref>


Then, there are "monologues to camera". These still don't acknowledge the fiction, ''per se'', but the character really is talking "to the camera", not to some in-universe element (whether a live audience or an in-universe camera) that we the real audience aren't allowed to observe directly. In this category we find ''[[Introduction to SJA (webcast)|Introduction to SJA]]''. ''[[Death of the Doctor (trailer)|Death of the Doctor]]'', ''[[Doctor Who and the Ambassadors of Death (trailer)|Doctor Who and the Ambassadors of Death]]''. These are tricky, but on the whole the thing with these is that they're valid, but not as things which actually happen. You have to think of these as similar to theatrical asides. The character non-diegetically turns to the camera and describes, from their own, in-universe perspective, their current situation and feelings. Those feelings are valid; the fact that "the Third Doctor once turned to no one at all and started monologuing about the ongoing crisis while frowning", isn't. This is similar to the current parameters of the validity of ''[[She Said, He Said: A Prequel (webcast)|She Said, He Said]]'', and it can also be compared to prose or audio with a first-person narrator who's not actually intended to have committed these words to paper at any specific point in-universe. Such sources document a ''point of view'', not actual ''events''. '''As a rule, these should also be valid, although it is not uncommon for things of their type to break the fourth wall in other, more concerning ways.''' The thing we're calling ''[[Luckily for me, I have a time machine (TV story)|Luckily for me, I have a time machine]]'' seems to be a similar thing, and an example of one which is ''not'' a trailer. It describes the Doctor's mindset, and should be valid in ''that'' mode, but we shouldn't be saying "at one point the Eleventh Doctor literally walked through a mysterious landscape made of gears".  
Then, there are "monologues to camera". These still don't acknowledge the fiction, ''per se'', but the character really is talking "to the camera", not to some in-universe element (whether a live audience or an in-universe camera) that we the real audience aren't allowed to observe directly. In this category we find ''[[Introduction to SJA (webcast)|Introduction to SJA]]''<ref>Although this one is ''not'' hereby ruled valid because I'm having doubts about how in-character the actors even ''are''. I think this one bears discussing further even if we grant that a monologue-to-camera can be valid in principle.</ref>, ''[[Death of the Doctor (trailer)|Death of the Doctor]]'', ''[[Doctor Who and the Ambassadors of Death (trailer)|Doctor Who and the Ambassadors of Death]]''. These are tricky, but on the whole the thing with these is that they're valid, but not as things which actually happen. You have to think of these as similar to theatrical asides. The character non-diegetically turns to the camera and describes, from their own, in-universe perspective, their current situation and feelings. Those feelings are valid; the fact that "the Third Doctor once turned to no one at all and started monologuing about the ongoing crisis while frowning", isn't. This is similar to the current parameters of the validity of ''[[She Said, He Said: A Prequel (webcast)|She Said, He Said]]'', and it can also be compared to prose or audio with a first-person narrator who's not actually intended to have committed these words to paper at any specific point in-universe. Such sources document a ''point of view'', not actual ''events''. '''As a rule, these should also be valid, although it is not uncommon for things of their type to break the fourth wall in other, more concerning ways.''' The thing we're calling ''[[Luckily for me, I have a time machine (TV story)|Luckily for me, I have a time machine]]'' seems to be a similar thing, and an example of one which is ''not'' a trailer. It describes the Doctor's mindset, and should be valid in ''that'' mode, but we shouldn't be saying "at one point the Eleventh Doctor literally walked through a mysterious landscape made of gears".  


Now we come to the really tricky stuff: "fourth wall breaks" in the sense of actual, material acknowledgement of ''Doctor Who'' as in-universe fiction. Sometimes — and this has been a source of great confusion — this is combined with talking to the camera. ''[[The Trip of a Lifetime (TV story)|The Trip of a Lifetime]]'' is not just talking "to camera", it's directly talking to you-the-viewer, and equivocating playfully between "do you want to be my companion" and "do you want to watch my show". Things like that ''can'' be valid sometimes, but when they are not in a medium like the mainline TV series, we should be mindful of potential Rule 4 concerns. I don't think ''Trip of a Lifetime'' was intended to be read as "real" events by [[Russell T Davies]]; all his efforts to curb the notion of anyone but Rose travelling with the Ninth Doctor in the EU surrounding [[Series 1 (Doctor Who)|Series 1]], and we should take literally the idea that he's here offering a nondescript "you" the same chance? No. It's a meta joke about watching the show, not something that "really happens" to any degree. Regrettably I think ''[[Animal Magic (TV story)|Animal Magic]]'' is ultimately a source of this type. It was half-ad-libbed on the set of a real ''Doctor Who'' story, but that seems rather more like that clearly non-Rule-4-passing ''[[Peter Capaldi and Simon the Shy Cyberman Invite You to Breakfast with 7 Doctors (webcast)|Peter Capaldi and Simon the Shy Cyberman Invite You to Breakfast with 7 Doctors]]'' being shot on the set of ''[[The Doctor Falls (TV story)|The Doctor Falls]]'' than anything else. I keep talking meta cartoons, but it's really like the Doctor-as-living-fictional-characters suddenly freezing the world around him to talk to th audience out of their TV screen. It's fiction, yes, and so's the Capaldi thing. But DWU fiction? No, not really, that I can see. Not at first glance.  
Now we come to the really tricky stuff: "fourth wall breaks" in the sense of actual, material acknowledgement of ''Doctor Who'' as in-universe fiction. Sometimes — and this has been a source of great confusion — this is combined with talking to the camera. ''[[The Trip of a Lifetime (TV story)|The Trip of a Lifetime]]'' is not just talking "to camera", it's directly talking to you-the-viewer, and equivocating playfully between "do you want to be my companion" and "do you want to watch my show". Things like that ''can'' be valid sometimes, but when they are not in a medium like the mainline TV series, we should be mindful of potential Rule 4 concerns. I don't think ''Trip of a Lifetime'' was intended to be read as "real" events by [[Russell T Davies]]; all his efforts to curb the notion of anyone but Rose travelling with the Ninth Doctor in the EU surrounding [[Series 1 (Doctor Who 2005)|Series 1]], and we should take literally the idea that he's here offering a nondescript "you" the same chance? No. It's a meta joke about watching the show, not something that "really happens" to any degree. Regrettably I think ''[[Animal Magic (TV story)|Animal Magic]]'' is ultimately a source of this type. It was half-ad-libbed on the set of a real ''Doctor Who'' story, but that seems rather more like that clearly non-Rule-4-passing ''[[Peter Capaldi and Simon the Shy Cyberman Invite You to Breakfast with 7 Doctors (webcast)|Peter Capaldi and Simon the Shy Cyberman Invite You to Breakfast with 7 Doctors]]'' being shot on the set of ''[[The Doctor Falls (TV story)|The Doctor Falls]]'' than anything else. I keep talking meta cartoons, but it's really like the Doctor-as-living-fictional-characters suddenly freezing the world around him to talk to th audience out of their TV screen. It's fiction, yes, and so's the Capaldi thing. But DWU fiction? No, not really, that I can see. Not at first glance.  


This brings me to a wider point. There has been a lot of confusion caused by people wanting to draw a big red line between "this is set in the DWU" and "this is just the actor in costume". I think that's led both to motions for excessive invalidations ''and'' excessive validations, because as I brushed up on in earlier segments of this closing post, '''there is such a thing as fiction which treats the Doctor as real but is not set in the DWU'''. Usually this takes the form of the "meta" stories typified by ''[[It's Showtime (TV story)|It's Showtime]]'', where the Doctor is treated as a "living fictional character" who can not only speak out of the camera, but interact with the real world; but who's aware of their own fictionality, of ''being a character on the BBC'' (as distinct from "a real person whose life is ''somehow'' also chronicled on an easter-egg in-universe show"; there's a difference). ''It's Showtime'' is set in a world where a whole cast of living fictional characters including the likes of Shrek are all real beings running around a BBC backlot, and need to somehow "perform" their stories live for the BBC Christmas programming to proceed. In no shape or form is this "Matt Smith in costume but not in-character"; it's fiction. But its world is not the world of the ''Doctor Who'' TV show any more than the world of ''Who Framed Roger Rabbit'' is the world of ''Dumbo''. I actually think ''[[United we stand, 2m apart (webcast)|United we stand, 2m apart]]'' is quite probably meant to be "in-character"; Jodie Whittaker is not only in costume, but adopts Thirteen's body language and refers to herself as a Doctor. However, it, alongside ''[[The Naked Truth (TV story)|The Naked Truth]]'', ''[[BAFTA in the TARDIS (TV story)|BAFTA in the TARDIS]]'', ''[[Introduction to the Night (TV story)|Introduction to the Night]]'', ''[[Pugwash Ahoy! (comic story)|Pugwash Ahoy!]]'' and the ''[[Famine Appeal (TV story)|Famine Appeal]]'', all seem to be the case of the Doctor-as-living-fictional-character, not the Doctor-as-real-being, interacting with the audience. All these things are fiction, all these things are stories, there's no need for scare-quotes. It's just not clear they're stories about a "real" Doctor.
This brings me to a wider point. There has been a lot of confusion caused by people wanting to draw a big red line between "this is set in the DWU" and "this is just the actor in costume". I think that's led both to motions for excessive invalidations ''and'' excessive validations, because as I brushed up on in earlier segments of this closing post, '''there is such a thing as fiction which treats the Doctor as real but is not set in the DWU'''. Usually this takes the form of the "meta" stories typified by ''[[It's Showtime (TV story)|It's Showtime]]'', where the Doctor is treated as a "living fictional character" who can not only speak out of the camera, but interact with the real world; but who's aware of their own fictionality, of ''being a character on the BBC'' (as distinct from "a real person whose life is ''somehow'' also chronicled on an easter-egg in-universe show"; there's a difference). ''It's Showtime'' is set in a world where a whole cast of living fictional characters including the likes of Shrek are all real beings running around a BBC backlot, and need to somehow "perform" their stories live for the BBC Christmas programming to proceed. In no shape or form is this "Matt Smith in costume but not in-character"; it's fiction. But its world is not the world of the ''Doctor Who'' TV show any more than the world of ''Who Framed Roger Rabbit'' is the world of ''Dumbo''. I actually think ''[[United we stand, 2m apart (webcast)|United we stand, 2m apart]]'' is quite probably meant to be "in-character"; Jodie Whittaker is not only in costume, but adopts Thirteen's body language and refers to herself as a Doctor. However, it, alongside ''[[The Naked Truth (TV story)|The Naked Truth]]'', ''[[BAFTA in the TARDIS (TV story)|BAFTA in the TARDIS]]'', ''[[Introduction to the Night (TV story)|Introduction to the Night]]'', ''[[Pugwash Ahoy! (comic story)|Pugwash Ahoy!]]'' and the ''[[Famine Appeal (TV story)|Famine Appeal]]'', all seem to be the case of the Doctor-as-living-fictional-character, not the Doctor-as-real-being, interacting with the audience. All these things are fiction, all these things are stories, there's no need for scare-quotes. It's just not clear they're stories about a "real" Doctor.
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=== Part 6: ''Chute!'' ===
=== Part 6: ''Chute!'' ===
Another short one with clear consensus. This is a scripted, non-fourth-wall-breaking crossover, which could probably have been lumped into the "crossover shenanigans" discussion above. The story seems to carefully route ''around'' acknowledging SJA's in-universe fictionality, in a way rather similar to the famous gag in ''[[Remembrance of the Daleks (TV story)|Remembrance of the Daleks]]'' — stopping just short of confronting the characters with a SJA VHS tape. It's a fourth-wall ''gag'', but a gag which relies on the fact that there is a fourth wall to be broken, and that they hammer comes within inches of the wall in question, but then misses.  
Another short one with clear consensus: '''it's valid'''. This is a scripted, non-fourth-wall-breaking crossover, which could probably have been lumped into the "crossover shenanigans" discussion above. The story seems to carefully route ''around'' acknowledging SJA's in-universe fictionality, in a way rather similar to the famous gag in ''[[Remembrance of the Daleks (TV story)|Remembrance of the Daleks]]'' — stopping just short of confronting the characters with a SJA VHS tape. It's a fourth-wall ''gag'', but a gag which relies on the fact that there is a fourth wall to be broken, and that they hammer comes within inches of the wall in question, but then misses.  


A lot of Ottsel's OP was given over to a discussion of the practicalities. He is correct that as per the precedent set by anything from ''[[The Incomplete Death's Head (comic story)|The Incomplete Death's Head]]'' to ''[[The Dalek Tapes (comic story)|The Dalek Tapes]]'' to ''[[Tales from the TARDIS (comic series)|Tales from the TARDIS]]'', the in-universe clips should be covered as part of the story — ''as'' in-universe clips, of course. This no more makes ''[[Potter Puppet Pals]]'' valid than [[Doctor Who (TV story)|the TV Movie]] makes ''[[Frankenstein (film)|Frankenstein]]'' valid.<ref>Note that, unlike the somewhat curious way we have given the individual stories within ''TIDH'' their own pages, we should here go with the ordinary procedure of merely covering them as part of the whole. Any pages about the clips qua clips would have to be in-universe ones. There is no cause for a "valid"-but-as-in-universe-fiction <nowiki>[[The Mysterious Ticking Noise (TV story)]]</nowiki>, that would be all ''kinds'' of confusing.</ref> There is no "slippery slope" situation here, not only because this is rare (as Ottsel notes), but because we've done it before. It's accepted procedure.
A lot of Ottsel's OP was given over to a discussion of the practicalities. He is correct that as per the precedent set by anything from ''[[The Incomplete Death's Head (comic story)|The Incomplete Death's Head]]'' to ''[[The Dalek Tapes (comic story)|The Dalek Tapes]]'' to ''[[Tales from the TARDIS (comic series)|Tales from the TARDIS]]'', the in-universe clips should be covered as part of the story — ''as'' in-universe clips, of course. This no more makes ''[[Potter Puppet Pals]]'' valid than [[Doctor Who (TV story)|the TV Movie]] makes ''[[Frankenstein (film)|Frankenstein]]'' valid.<ref>Note that, unlike the somewhat curious way we have given the individual stories within ''TIDH'' their own pages, we should here go with the ordinary procedure of merely covering them as part of the whole. Any pages about the clips qua clips would have to be in-universe ones. There is no cause for a "valid"-but-as-in-universe-fiction <nowiki>[[The Mysterious Ticking Noise (TV story)]]</nowiki>, that would be all ''kinds'' of confusing.</ref> There is no "slippery slope" situation here, not only because this is rare (as Ottsel notes), but because we've done it before. It's accepted procedure.
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But I think [[User:OttselSpy25]] does a good job of arguing that this story about the Doctor is very much a story about ''the'' Doctor, so to speak. Multiple people in the comments were impressed with the attention to continuity of putting Baker back in his old costume to make sure this fed ''properly'' into ''[[Terror of the Zygons (TV story)|Terror of the Zygons]]'', and the way it "restored the cliffhanger" of ''[[Revenge of the Cybermen (TV story)|Revenge of the Cybermen]]'' in much the same way as ''[[Time Crash (TV story)|Time Crash]]''. You wouldn't catch ''[[It's Showtime (TV story)|It's Showtime]]'' doing a thing like ''that''. And as for his status as a "celebrity" who can be invited to hold a programme like ''Disney Time'', Ottsel makes a good case that it was not intended to scan as a "breach o the rule" for the tiny tots watching at home. The Fourth Doctor grins at the camera, he [[Doctor Who Discovers|writes books]], he [[A Letter from the Doctor (series)|writes letters to ''Doctor Who Weekly'']]; of ''course'' he might host a TV show. Notably enough, ''Doctor Who'' is still treated as "real events" here, not some sort of meta-fiction that the meta-Doctor acts in; hence the cliffhanger to ''Terror of the Zygons''.  
But I think [[User:OttselSpy25]] does a good job of arguing that this story about the Doctor is very much a story about ''the'' Doctor, so to speak. Multiple people in the comments were impressed with the attention to continuity of putting Baker back in his old costume to make sure this fed ''properly'' into ''[[Terror of the Zygons (TV story)|Terror of the Zygons]]'', and the way it "restored the cliffhanger" of ''[[Revenge of the Cybermen (TV story)|Revenge of the Cybermen]]'' in much the same way as ''[[Time Crash (TV story)|Time Crash]]''. You wouldn't catch ''[[It's Showtime (TV story)|It's Showtime]]'' doing a thing like ''that''. And as for his status as a "celebrity" who can be invited to hold a programme like ''Disney Time'', Ottsel makes a good case that it was not intended to scan as a "breach o the rule" for the tiny tots watching at home. The Fourth Doctor grins at the camera, he [[Doctor Who Discovers|writes books]], he [[A Letter from the Doctor (series)|writes letters to ''Doctor Who Weekly'']]; of ''course'' he might host a TV show. Notably enough, ''Doctor Who'' is still treated as "real events" here, not some sort of meta-fiction that the meta-Doctor acts in; hence the cliffhanger to ''Terror of the Zygons''.  


This is a tricky case. It's one that warranted discussion. But there is sufficient evidence here for a consensus to enshrine that as near as we could tell, or default assumption ''should'' be that this was intended to "count" as much as any other non-mainline-TV-series material of the era, ''despite'' the flirting with the fourth wall. File it alongside your merry Christmases and your Beethovens if you must.  
This is a tricky case. It's one that warranted discussion. But there is sufficient evidence here for a consensus to enshrine that as near as we could tell, or default assumption ''should'' be that this was intended to "count" as much as any other non-mainline-TV-series material of the era, ''despite'' the flirting with the fourth wall. '''So it's valid'''. File it alongside your merry Christmases and your Beethovens if you must.  


I am personally unsure about the idea of using screenshots from other releases of the clips shown in the original broadcast. At least, we should be careful about cropping, and not show any margins which the 4:3 broadcast would have cutout. But the consensus seemed to be in favour of the suggestion, so fine. Let's give it a try. Far be it from me to arbitrarily rule against the obvious consensus just because ''I'' don't like it!  
I am personally unsure about the idea of using screenshots from other releases of the clips shown in the original broadcast. At least, we should be careful about cropping, and not show any margins which the 4:3 broadcast would have cutout. But the consensus seemed to be in favour of the suggestion, so fine. Let's give it a try. Far be it from me to arbitrarily rule against the obvious consensus just because ''I'' don't like it!  
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Besides, I have long felt that if we extend the Iris precedent to other cases, there are several other stories we may want to look at before Death's Head. (For just one example, we cover 95% of the [[Cyberon (series)|''Cyberon'' series]] as it is. For another, this seems like the perfect, long-delayed resolution to [[Talk:Bibliophage (short story)]].)
Besides, I have long felt that if we extend the Iris precedent to other cases, there are several other stories we may want to look at before Death's Head. (For just one example, we cover 95% of the [[Cyberon (series)|''Cyberon'' series]] as it is. For another, this seems like the perfect, long-delayed resolution to [[Talk:Bibliophage (short story)]].)


So if we revisit this particular question, that should be as its ''own'', ''non''-Speedround thread.
So if we revisit this particular question, that should be as its ''own'', ''non''-Speedround thread.  
 
As always, thanks, everyone! [[User:Scrooge MacDuck|'''Scrooge MacDuck''']] [[User_talk:Scrooge MacDuck|⊕]] 18:48, 22 April 2023 (UTC)
=== Footnotes ===
=== Footnotes ===
{{reflist}}
{{reflist}}

Latest revision as of 20:38, 25 April 2024

Forums → Archive index → Panopticon archives → Temporary forums/Inclusion debates speedround
This thread has been archived.
Please create a new thread on the new forums if you want to talk about this topic some more.
Please DO NOT add to this discussion.

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, the 2016 mini-episode that introduced the world to Bill Potts.

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:

  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.
TV: The Pilot, the story which purposefully justified FftF's place in the universe, without ever intending to use a single frame from the production.

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.

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)
Fully support validation. Cousin Ettolrahc ☎ 18:41, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
Totally supported. I can almost sort of see why it wasn't, but with how far the wiki has come since the release of this short there's no way it should remain not valid. StevieGLiverpool ☎ 08:17, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
The fact it has the actual Doctor means it's in some DWU. So yeah valid. 81.108.82.15talk to me 00:14, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
I support for the reasons I expressed in the original thread. – n8 (☎) 13:00, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
First post on the temporary forums. Hello! I'd like to say, from the bottom of my heart, it would be a shame to not have this as valid. Not just because it's beautifully shot, some of the best choreography in Who, but because it does not break any of those four little rules. Simply, this is a prime example of why the temporary forums are such a good idea! LilPotato ☎ 02:25, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
I think the Moffat quote, along with the in-text effort to find a place for this minisode within the final narrative (ie. the psychic paper bit), are more than persuasive enough.
Against the previous ruling, my stance is that this shouldn't count as a deleted scene, since it was already released as its own complete narrative.
×   SOTO  contribs ×°/↯/•]   °|💬•| {/-//:\•\ 04:41, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Crossover Shenanigans

INCOMPREHENSIBLE SCREAMING

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)
I (like Epsilon) wasn't even aware crossovers "failed rule 4 by default". In fact, I've just done a quick Ctrl+F on T:VS and can only find 4 mentions of crossovers, and none of them mention crossovers being invalid by default. So, as well as supporting clarifying that this rule should be removed, I'd also like for, if it is concluded that crossovers will remain invalid by default, that an admin makes it clear in T:VS that this is the case. On a similar vein of "if crossovers remain invalid by default", I individually support the validity of the mentioned crossovers. Cousin Ettolrahc ☎ 18:52, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
I support validity most definitely. I would also support validity for all of 10,000 Dawns should it come up at any point as to me it seems that it was the intention that it was part of the the Doctor Who Omniverse right from the beginning even first appearing in a doctor who Charity Anthology, however the validity of all of 10,000 Dawns I do not believe is important here. But the crossovers with 10,000 Dawn and anything else should be made valid. Anastasia Cousins ☎ 13:39, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
Ah, forgot that 10k Dawns was in this thread. Highly against validation at this time, highly against even talking about them, for the obvious reason. We've been told not to. I've asked Czech about it, I've asked Spongebob. Spongebob doesn't really understand the issue, Czech is, well, busy. Let's wait and see. But we were very pointedly told not to discuss this. Najawin ☎ 19:52, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
Coming back to this since I remembered the discussion we had at One Born Every Minute I think I must throw a bit of a wrench in this discussion. From the comments made by Scrooge there:
As to the invalidity or lack thereof of One Born Every Minute… it's an edge case of the kind that would require a proper thread to adjudicate, IMO. No, it's not a parody of Doctor Who, but there are still Rule 4 concerns in the form of that "meta-gag" about the voiceover from the narrator-nurse, that the Call the Midwife characters are suddenly aware of. This is, at first glance, a story that's playing fast-and-loose with its very reality; it's not clear that it's set in the DWU for the simple reason that it doesn't quite seem too sure it takes place in any coherent fictional universe at all.
Because those elements are limited to the non-DW characters, you could argue that (for example) perhaps the Eleventh Doctor is meant to have brought them from the Land of Fiction or something, which would justify the gag while not otherwise infringing on the "solidness" of the DWU. Or you could simply track down a quote from whoever wrote/directed/produced this thing, confirming that it's meant to "happen-"happen to "our" Doctor, even if it likely din't "happen"-happen to the midwives as far as their show's "canon" is concerned.
This hasn't been really addressed in this thread. The link we have on the page for One Born Every Minute even refers to music playing when a character walks, which is itself evidence of this concern. I don't think the reason here this fails rule 4 is because it's a crossover but because of these weird meta issues. Looking for Pudsey is less egregious, but has some of the same problems. (Off hand I can't find the entire sketch on US youtube, but what I can find shows a blurring of the lines between Newt Scamander as a character and Eddie Redmayne as an actor.) Now I'm not really against metafiction. And I'm a pretty staunch advocate of T:NO RW being applied evenly, so I'm perfectly fine with saying that all of these things are just how the characters are and we should accept that. But I think we should actually discuss these issues. I suspect they're more important than the mere notion of being a crossover. Najawin ☎ 14:55, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Just a heads Up that Redmayne is playing himself on set of his terf wizard film but Capaldi is the Doctor. 81.106.187.1talk to me 15:13, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Right. But we also see some terf wizard stuff which you think is from the shooting at the beginning but later in the skit shows up still. As I said, less egregious. But it's still there. Najawin ☎ 15:19, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

I don't have a full reply in me right now, but I honestly have to echo what Scrooge brought up in the above quote. One Born Any Minute seems to make no attempt to construct any coherent universe to place its characters within. The comedy rules, not any diegetic concerns.
Pudsey treats it as ridiculous that Redmayne is contacting the TARDIS, but for his part, the Twelfth Doctor responds as he might in a comedic moment in any regular Doctor Who story. Only thing is, right after, with the banana milkshake bit, Mel and Sue, who are acting as switchboard operators, knowing what the TARDIS is. It's a pretty cheeky bit where it's just understood that this would be common pop culture knowledge to the audience. But hey. Maybe they've had dealings before. It doesn't break the diegesis, necessarily. It's just a bit silly.
×   SOTO  contribs ×°/↯/•]   °|💬•| {/-//:\•\ 16:59, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
The closing post for this mammoth-thread is in progress, but not quite due yet. However, I'll just pop in to inform everybody of the announcement I just posted at Tardis:Temporary forums/Admin announcements#10,000 Dawns crossovers. We can finally discuss this — but it will, for obvious reasons, require its own highly-regulated thread after the Speedround. Discussion of the matter here is void. So — not that I think anyone was really going to — don't waste the days of discussion left in this thread on that part of the argument. It'll get its own time in the limelight soon enough, in a proper, official, Fandom-approved way. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 22:24, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Huzzah! Najawin ☎ 22:44, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Popping in to say that I disagree with the suggestion that any kind of fourth wall break, especially one so minor, indicates a story lacks internal logic enough to say that it takes place in a reality. That's just a very silly argument to me, and again is indicative of why we shouldn't consider any "fourth wall break" to be immediately discluding because no one can define what a "fourth wall break" is. To me, it seems there are three kinds: actors breaking character, characters talking to the audience, and characters having moments of lucidity. In all below debates, we've discussed exclusively the middle category, yet now I am supposed to buy that the otherwise inoffensive third category is also discluding? I think that's ridiculous. OS25🤙☎️ 17:01, 20 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)
I'd never heard of this before, but from the reasons outlined above I definitely agree with its validity. Cousin Ettolrahc ☎ 18:54, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
I support the validity of this. StevieGLiverpool ☎ 08:17, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
All crossovers take place in some DWU. So yeah valid. 81.108.82.15talk to me 00:14, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
Skipping the one above this topic because, while there is zero reason to keep 10KD invalid, that's a bear best left unpoked. Swiftly moving along. If this story were to be invalid, we would be taking several important steps back as a database. Going back to the era of pointless edit wars about what's canon. No one wants nor needs that. I wholeheartedly support this being covered. LilPotato ☎ 02:31, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

Hm. The running joke that all these cameo characters/celebrities know the Doctor is certainly ridiculous, but it's not made out like "oh yeah, I know the Doctor from that television series, where he's played by Matt Smith".

The one thing that doesn't seem to have been brought up, though, not present in the NTA's version on YouTube, is that the sketch actually continues past the titles, with Dermot exiting the TARDIS on stage after it materialises. This means we would have to make an editorial decision on when the story ends (for obvious reasons, the whole thing can't be valid).

DWMSE 30 also tells us in the original script, there's a bit where the Doctor does a telephone mime which means "vote for me" in The X Factor before turning to the camera, which might indicate something about intent, but this never made it to screen. The script is described as "extremely fluid" based on actors' availabilities.
×   SOTO  contribs ×°/↯/•]   °|💬•| {/-//:\•\ 05:45, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

This is one where, modulo SOTO's concerns, I'm happy to say that I don't have to be a spoilsport and I think there's a very strong case for validity. Najawin ☎ 19:22, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

I do, and always have supported making this thing valid. And for the record: claiming that Bruce Forsyth was still alive by 2111 is no more ridiculous than claiming that William Hartnell was still around by the 2060s. WaltK ☎ 16:52, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

Doctor Who and the Bootstrap Paradox

DUN DUN DUN DUUUUUUUN

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:

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)

Here's the thing. The Cushing films. I'm pretty certain they were invalid initially as they weren't intended to be set in THE Doctor Who universe. There's your issue. THE Doctor Who universe. They were later validated by rule 4 by proxy as they were mentioned in The Day of the Doctor novelisation. The Cushing films were not intended to be set in THE Doctor Who universe, but they were always intended to be set in A Doctor Who universe.

Point is if we validate fourth wall stuff. We need to tweak rule 4.

Is Looking for Pudsey intended to take place in THE Doctor Who universe, the continuity of Series 10, probably not. Is it intended to be in A Doctor Who universe where the Doctor is at least a character. Yes.

I think this is true of a lot of the fourth wall breaking meta-fictional stuff. They are intended to be set in A universe where the Doctor is a character, but not necessarily THE main universe. So that's what we need top change. THE to A. Is it intended to be set in a Doctor Who universe? The the answer to all of these is yes. 81.108.82.15talk to me 18:43, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

This seems to be a very arbitrary distinction, and it shouldn't really effect validity. OS25🤙☎️ 19:25, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
Oh, I agree. Absolutely. I just think that a lot of these could have avoided being invalid in the first place if rule 4 was “a” Doctor Who universe. 81.108.82.15talk to me 20:14, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
Supporting the validity, or perhaps I should say the lack-of-excluding validity of "fourth wall breaking" sources. There's no planet where The Daleks' Master Plan will be made invalid as a result of it, so we best not pick and choose. StevieGLiverpool ☎ 08:17, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
If the fourth wall breaks are validated so should The Introduction as it’s non parody. 81.108.82.15talk to me 22:12, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
If we do another speedround, I actually intend to cover The Introduction there. I think Culshaw playing the Doctor really needs its own "full" debate round. OS25🤙☎️ 22:44, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
That's fair, especially for CIN 2003 and Dead Ringers, but since the only rule The Introduction breaks is the fourth wall one. If that rule is changed then surely it becomes valid by default as it's no longer breaking a rule. 81.108.82.15talk to me 00:39, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
Also since Blue Peter 2005 is invalid due to the fourth wall breaks that should be valid if this is changed. Just the cutaway scene naturally as per the proms precedent. 81.108.82.15talk to me 00:39, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
Blue Peter 2005 does not break the fourth wall in the first place! That is not why it is invalid. And the comparison to Music of the Spheres is quite different I would say, as we've never even had an official standalone release of the 2005 segment.
Again, I feel that any skit or segment with Jon Culshaw playing his version of the Doctor is controversial enough to be something we can't just validate among a bunch of other things. Even having Culshaw physically as the Doctor opens up a valid question of concert for Rule 4, thus I think we can't just throw this in at the end. I personally also hate the idea of Culshaw being in the tabbed infobox of Fourth Doctor. So I'd rather it be a future discussion. OS25🤙☎️ 01:01, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
I would like to say I support the validity of fourth wall breaks. Anastasia Cousins ☎ 13:41, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
I am strongly against this being valid both on the merits of itself and as a precedential matter for future "stories". I take major issue with this speed round approach --and I say this in regards to ALL of this. Validating things should take some individual thought -- and to that end, individual debate. By placing all of these debates inside of a single thread, not only does it mean that people that aren't engaging with all of the forum threads don't know what's going on inside of them. So in that regard, I'm really not a fan of this approach. Likewise, this change to Fourth Wall breaks is not something that should be placed inside of an "inclusion speedround" --this is a massive change to our validity policies and should be a separate debate in its own right. But, seeing as it's here, I'll tackle it.
My general opinion on fourth wall breaks, as they pertain to Rule 4, is thus:
"Is the author saying that the Doctor exists in our world, or is the author saying that Doctor Who the TV show is in the DWU?" If it's the former, it fails Rule 4. If it's the latter, it passes Rule 4.
I also would generally say that the leading actor appearing "in-character" to host a show or be interviewed for a children's program is not the same as being in the DWU. Yes, it is impressive that they put him in the same costume. But I really don't think that's indicative of a legitimate intent to place it inside of the DWU. Weaponizing the fact that some cheeky writers make jokes about the TV show existing in-universe to say "well obviously he was referencing the in-universe TV show" in order to pass Rule 4 takes a hammer to Rule 4. In Animal Magic, Tom Baker looks to the audience and asks them if they remember the events of the story The Ribos Operation. I get that it makes me a bit of a killjoy, but decisions like this set precedent -- and precedent can easily be warped. I look to something like Peter Capaldi and Simon the Shy Cyberman Invite You to Breakfast with 7 Doctors (webcast), a page that by all rights should not be valid. Our main filter for validity, the narrative rule, is gone. Neutering Rule 4 will let any old page be validated. We can talk in the abstract about how our recent validity policies can be loose because Wiki Editors know better, but we have countless examples that prove that when given an inch, people will take a mile. I'm not going to call out the two pages that come to my mind, but I'm sure those reading will know exactly which pages I'm talking about. And I don't think that's good for the Wiki. I do apologize if some of this is a bit incoherent, but I hadn't realized that this "speedround" had made its way up and I wanted to make my thoughts clear before. NoNotTheMemes ☎ 22:41, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
I somewhat agree. There's just so much here and you're jumping around from section to section that things will fall through the cracks. I missed that there was a proposal to validated 10k Dawns here as a complete sidenote! Given how controversial that was, it clearly shouldn't be an after thought in a thread like this, we need to make sure it's done right, and we shouldn't even be discussing it at present time. In the same way, I just can't comment on some of these, I need to look into specific reasoning used, etc. There's so much here that the only one I feel confident to comment on already I did. Like, I'm not thrilled about the three week time limit already. Compacting 10 threads into 1 just makes the issue worse. I'm not sure Memes is correct here about his R4 concerns, we could discuss that at length, but I think compacting everything into 1 thread is bad precedent and makes for bad policy. Najawin ☎ 22:58, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
I love the speedrounds. I think OttselSpy is a genius for creating them. This is why rule 4 needs changing. It should be is it intended to be set in "a" DWU. Most of these things are trying to tell a story with the Doctor in some form of DWU, some form of continuity of its own, even if it's not the same one. Everything with the Doctor, bar outright spoofs, is intended to be in a universe where the Doctor is a character.
Disney Time is the exception. It goes out of its way to link into the events of Terror of the Zygons. It goes out its way to restore the cliffhanger of Revenge of the Cybermen so Disney Time fits. Just like Time Crash. Tom isn't just in costume, he's portraying the Doctor.
I'm a strong believer in the validity of every non-parodical piece of fiction on this site. I believe "not set in the DWU" is fine for evaluating whether a seemingly semi-licenced spin off with characters from a DWU story, Senor 105, is actually Doctor Who. I genuinely believe that if it has the Doctor, it passes rule 4, it's clearly set in some universe where the Doctor is a being that exists.
Wanting these things to be invalid feels more like wanting them to be "non canon". I want the Spy Master to fail rule 4, alas he won't, I just ignore him. Much love. 81.108.82.15talk to me 23:01, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
Conversely, I think insisting that we think of things as being in "a" DWU is insisting on thinking of things in terms of canon, just the broadest possible one. So perhaps we should refrain from using it as a term of abuse. Even in the exact opposite sense of what Cornell first referred to. Najawin ☎ 23:10, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
Apologies, I didn't mean any abuse. I mean I'd like to see rule 4 changed to "is it intended to be in a multi-verse where the Doctor exists". something like that. Adding multiverse for them Deadline fans81.108.82.15talk to me 23:25, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
Want to address some of the ones on these list because the vast majority of these really shouldn't be validated, regardless. My biggest statement on this, for the inevitable closing post, is that If material breaks the Fourth Wall in a meaningful way (beyond a small easter egg or cameo),there should not be an absolute bar validity, but said breaks should bring in a presumption of invalidity that must be rebutted in some fashion. The reason being that it is the easiest flag that something is not meant to be in the DWU.
The Naked Truth and The Doctor Needs Your Help are calls for charity donations. They're not set in the DWU, they're set in our world. I think there's a big difference between acknowledging the Fourth Wall and stepping out of it. Would really urge these aren't granted validity. I know that they're fun, but we can cover them without making them valid and having some very odd implications. The Doctor's costume being sold for charity only makes sense in terms of the real-world fact of it being a costume, you know? It's not that the actual Time Lord couldn't get up to shenanigans with hologram clothes and offer his clothes to charity but who'd actually let that be a segment on the actual in-universe BBC?
Animal Magic - I've explained my problems with this earlier. I think this is the sort of thing on its own talk page.
BAFTA in the TARDIS is set in OUR universe, not the DWU. The engaging with the BAFTA Presenter is the only means by which it makes sense. Would not be CRIMINAL if it was validated, but I really think it ought to be invalid.
Message from the Doctor is a very fringe case, but I would potentially lean towards validity. I'm more skeptical of United we stand, 2m apart and would probably say it's invalid. I don't know if the latter could be considered "in-character" and it's certainly not placing itself in the DWU.
Introduction to SJA is the actors summarizing the events of the SJA with clips from the show while very vaguely in-character. Wouldn't really describe this as placing itself in the DWU. Actors talking to children "in-character" doesn't really pass the muster for me, if that makes sense --but more over I guarantee you that this was not conceived as happening in-universe. Would be invalid by my estimation.
I have no access to Pugwash Ahoy! and thus cannot make any statements on it.
A New Year's message from the Doctor... - This one isn't even in-character! It literally has Jodie Whittaker saying "Just want to wish everyone a Happy New Year from everyone at Doctor Who and sending love and luck for 2021." This isn't invalid because it's breaking the Fourth Wall, it's invalid because it's not in-character.
Introduction to the Night - Much as OS25 has said, this one is controversial. I really think this goes beyond the pale of what can be considered "intended to be in the DWU" (much as I imagine he is the Curator with an expanded sense of meta-reality). This needs its own debate.
Sorry for the chonker of a response. NoNotTheMemes ☎ 03:25, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
The Naked Truth is written by Steven there is no canon Moffat. It also narratively justifies breaking the fourth wall by having the Doctor be asked to make an appeal. The whole thing when they auctioned off the script for this was that it was a mini Doctor who scene. The fact Smith is the Doctor means it’s in some world where the Doctor exists. Change rule 4 to “a” DWU and this passes with flying colours. Validity is being treated like canon and it shouldn’t be. 81.108.82.15talk to me 08:49, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, if we change Rule 4 to be essentially non-existent you're right, it would pass with flying colors, so it's a good thing Rule 4 doesn't read that way. Nor should it. NoNotTheMemes ☎ 17:20, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
I just wanted to express my view about a silly series, but I feel it’s turned mean-spirited. 81.108.82.15talk to me 10:04, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

So I wanted to come in here and respond to a few things, not much I'll say.

First of all, I want to say I relate to all of you who have wanted these forums to last a little longer. I too have sometimes felt poorly about how little time we tend to spent in these threads, as much as I regret the weeks that sometimes go by where not a peep is uttered. I personally think we should switch to forums lasting four or five weeks, with only one forum opening/closing per week, that way you don't just wake up and find out three debates closed in two days. But at the same time, I know very well that some of the debates I see people complain about "closing too early" spend weeks without a single new edit in the first place. So I'm pro longer-forums, also very conscious of the reality that adding two more weeks of debate just means two more weeks of no one saying anything.

Secondly, I made this forum knowing that some topics would be more divisive and would naturally be less likely to pass due to the format. Indeed, as I've said, anything wholly controversial is still capable of being moved to a full stand-alone debate. However, I must quickly now vocalize that I personally think that the proposed reading of Rule 4 above is absolutely ridiculous. It seems like something designed to have effect on anything with a slightly meta-edge.

Even something as non-controversial and long-standing as TV: Music of the Spheres would be invalid based on this reading.

I think the most offensive statement is that any segment pre-recorded for a real world event, no matter how in-universe or in-character or how much it can be read as a stand-alone segment must be invalid simply for having some connection to reality. Based on that reading, everything from The History of the Doctor to Dermot and the Doctor would become or remain invalid, not even for breaking the fourth wall. Probably Death Is the Only Answer too.

The same would likely be true if we ever got a proper professional recording of a stage play, or an "experience" or whatever they'll do for the next Time Lord Victorious. I fundamentally disagree with the idea that audience interaction in any medium other than Hartnell, Baker, and Capaldi TV stories automatically means "this must be set in the real world!"

I'll also note to you that I never mentioned Peter Capaldi and Simon the Shy Cyberman Invite You to Breakfast with 7 Doctors, which was never part of the debate. I personally think that webcast violates my personal Rule 5: Things that make the website actively worse, but primarily because some boastful editors insist that it's set in the middle of TV: The Doctor Falls when that's not even in the skit. I personally would not consider it valid, but only under the very specific and exceptionally context of what it is. I think there's a clear difference between the Twelfth Doctor screaming "DO YOU WANT TO MEET PETER CAPALDI WHO PLAYS ME?" and the Fourth Doctor going on a long character monologue where he says, one single time, "Do you remember the Arc in Space?"

I will hammer home my position that I disagree with any indication that fourth wall breaks (defined in this paragraph as "the Doctor speaks to the screen") should automatically preclude a story from validity. I think specifically decrying Animal Magic as OBVIOUSLY not being meant to be set inside the Doctor Who universe because the Doctor speaks to the audience is ridiculous for an era of the show that was borderline Dora the Explora at times. The Doctor's lucidity to those at home was indeed a defined aspect of the show, and I again simply do not think it's a justified idea that if you cut one of the moments down and re-release it as a bonus feature, it has to be invalid by default. And it is not a frivolous thing in the Capaldi or Tom Baker eras. It is defining. I would go as far as to argue that one of the iconic endings of Tom Baker smiling into the camera should be the infobox image at Fourth Doctor.

I'll say it again. Before the Flood has one minute and 57 seconds straight of the Doctor speaking to the audience unambiguously. Animal Magic has, by my estimation, about three seconds more. If you believe that The Bootstrap Paradox speech, if theoretically released by itself outside of the episode, should be invalid then I simply say that is not an actually realistic policy idea. The Bootstrap Paradox is not an easter egg. The Bootstrap Paradox is not throw-away. The Bootstrap Paradox represents one of the most brilliant themes of the Capaldi era.

I say all this knowing that it doesn't matter, but I've been burned too many times by not immediately responding to something I disagree with only for an admin to say "No one was going to disagree with this anyways..."

As per the Sarah Jane segment, I still can not find it online. If it is an out-of-character segment, i.e. "I play Luke, Liz Sladen plays my Mum" then yeah it should be not only invalid, but behind-the-scenes. But if it's fully in-character monologues, i.e. "I'm Luke! Sarah Jane is my Mum!" it should be valid as a piece of fiction. So if your description is accurate, I agree with you, otherwise I don't.

However, one thing that I do apologize about is the two Jodie segments, (A New Year's message from the Doctor and United We Stand...), which I misinterpreted based on their slightly inaccurate description on the wiki itself. I stand by the original COVID closet message (WC: Message from the Doctor), however. I believe with my full chest that should be valid. It's very easy to read it as a transmission being sent out by the Doctor while she's on some adventure with Sontarans, and not even her saying "Hey you! You watching Doctor Who!"

And I think this is a good example of why "no fourth wall breaks" as a blanket rule of invalidity irks me. I still do not understand how we're defining what a fourth wall break is, and if it includes such things as Attack of the Graske and Music of the Spheres. If it includes Music, why not Graske? So the Doctor speaking to the audience in a video is a fourth wall break, but not the Doctor speaking the audience in a video where you click buttons?

Personally, I think this disagreement stems back to the same arguments this website was having a decade ago. "Oh, the real world and the DWU are always different. There is never any intersection at all, and anything slightly tongue-in-cheek must means it's non-DWU." And I just disagree with that on principle. You might say "Why is this fictional character appearing on another TV show?" And my response to that is... It's still a fictional person on TV! You can't say "this is real life" because it's not. Chute! Episode 9 is not non-fiction!

And it is my opinion, even if you're free to disagree, that when Davros shows up at the Proms, that is set inside the Doctor Who Universe and not the real world. In the same way that The Ultimate Adventure was set in the Doctor Who universe if you saw it live in 1989. If there was an official recording of The Ultimate Adventure and it came out tomorrow, I'd say it should be valid too. Yea, you could have stood up and ran to the parking lot, and Davros would have been gone and the real world would be all that you'd see. But it's still... fiction.

And I furthermore just find it increasingly patronizing that not only are we now assuming that Doctor Who as a show can't exist in-universe, but that the Doctor can never be a public figure. The Doctor can never be someone people recognize or cheer for. Even in eras of the show where aliens are widely known to exist, or in periods of the franchise where the Doctor is usually off-world or not in modern times, or in eras of the EU where the Doctor is a public figure (see: Action in Exile). So not only are meta-moments banned in more obscure media, we don't even allow implied meta-moments.

Everything you've said above is your opinion on what the Doctor Who universe is to you, but it's certainly not mine, and it should never be the site's official policy either. OS25🤙☎️ 09:48, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Beautifully put. 81.108.82.15talk to me 15:14, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
I think that these stories should be valid but failing this, I think that Before the Flood and Feast of Steven shouldn't be as they fail Rule 4. However, I interpreted the beginning of the episode to be 12 talking to O'Donnell and the glasses one, who he was with in the TARDIS at the time. 05:45, 13th April 2023. (GMT+1)

There has been some discussion, and I'd like to clarify which stories discussed here I feel should be valid and which shouldn't:

Valid:

  • The Naked Truth
  • The Doctor needs YOUR help!
  • Animal Magic
  • BAFTA in the TARDIS
  • Message from the Doctor
  • Introduction to SJA
  • Pugwash Ahoy!
  • The Trip of a Lifetime and other fourth wall breaking promotional stories that aren't just "coming soon" stuff

Not valid:

  • United we stand, 2m apart
  • A New Year's message from the Doctor...

Should probably have its own debate:

  • Introduction to the Night

I am not convinced that the second and third "Jodie talking to the camera" videos are even meant to be set in-universe, and aren't just Jodie dressed as the Doctor but not in-character. The first one is definitely in-universe and should be valid, though. Pluto2☎ 17:11, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

I believe that these choices are the best for the site at present. I have no differences of opinion from Pluto's choices for validity / invalidity. Having fourth-wall breaking stories which we have previously disallowed from being valid is a surprising, but very welcome change. I think this speedround format is doing wonders for site productivity. It creates a sort of open, inclusive discussion space which covers just the right amount of ground, and I hope for it to continue going forward. LilPotato ☎ 02:40, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

For me: Valid:

  • The Naked Truth
  • The Doctor needs YOUR help!
  • Animal Magic
  • BAFTA in the TARDIS
  • Message from the Doctor (that's already valid and has been forever)
  • Introduction to SJA
  • Pugwash Ahoy!
  • The Trip of a Lifetime and other fourth wall breaking promotional stories that aren't just "coming soon" stuff
  • United we stand, 2m apart (it's clearly a sequel to message from the doctor)
  • Introduction to the Night (rule 4 by proxy with TARDIS Cam so a discussion would delay the inevitable)

Not valid:

  • A New Year's message from the Doctor... (that is just Jodie as herself and the article reflects that)

81.108.82.15talk to me 17:26, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Strongly agreeing with User:NoNotTheMemes here.
×   SOTO  contribs ×°/↯/•]   °|💬•| {/-//:\•\ 05:53, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
I’m afraid I can’t agree as there seems to be this notion that if it breaks the fourth wall it isn’t in the DWU. If that’s the case we need to invalidate Master Plan and Before the Flood (him talking to Clara is a headcanon and not true) otherwise T:NPOV is out the window. There’s a huge difference between breaking the fourth wall and bleeding into the real world like Tonight’s the Night.

Literally every audiobook ever is us being told the story. That’s them breaking the fourth wall, why when a televised story does it is it not DWU? I fundamentally don’t believe every fourth wall break is intended to be outside the DWU. If The Naked Truth wasn’t DWU they’d have just got Smith to ad lib something vaguely in character. Instead it’s a Moffat scripted scene and the script of it was actually auctioned as “an original Doctor Who story”.

Trying to tell the readers that some fourth wall breaks are okay, mainline stories and audiobooks, but others aren’t, minisodes, then they’ll find the double standard confusing. Right now the majority in this thread support validation. The ruling should reflect that. 81.106.187.1talk to me 11:20, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

In fact the official bbc eBay listing for the doctor’s outfit and the script describes The Naked Truth as a “special episode of Doctor Who“ https://web.archive.org/web/20111124080952/https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Doctor-Whos-outfit-and-signed-script-/230703619118 rule 4 internet right there. 81.106.187.1talk to me 13:49, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
I don't think anyone here has suggested that breaking the fourth wall -> not in the DWU. Memes has listed procedural concerns that I've agreed with, and the went on to detail some stories that he thinks should be valid and shouldn't be based on more than just "well they break the fourth wall". SOTO has said they agree with Memes, but that could be just the procedural issues or the entire list of stories. If you really insist, I think:
  • The Naked Truth
  • The Doctor needs YOUR help!
  • Message from the Doctor

Should be valid. Yes the first two are calls for charity, but that's not disqualifying, the idea that The Doctor is given time on TV isn't absurd in the DWU. (I note that in the first he's auctioning his clothes, not his costume.)

  • BAFTA in the TARDIS
  • United we stand, 2m apart
  • A New Year's message from the Doctor...

Should all be invalid. I can't see how you watch the first and come away thinking it's in the DWU. "It's an award. For acting. [...] Wish me luck. /she leaves/" This isn't a wink at the fourth wall, it's simply disregarding it. The other two aren't meaningfully in character. They feature Whittaker in costume, and that's it. I can't comment on the others. Now can we put to bed the idea that people are objecting to the notion of fourth wall breaks in general? Nobody has done that. This is an imagined opponent. What exists is concerns about the overall procedure here and these specific stories. And the specific stories people are concerned about vary between editors! Najawin ☎ 19:21, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

I think it's fine for you to say that, but you're putting aside that Memes also quite clearly stated that breaking the fourth wall should make something invalid by default proceeding a debate. So, if a webcast comes out tomorrow with a fourth wall wink, based on this precedent we would call it invalid immediately just for using this illegal narrative trick. We'd then, presumably, have to wait something like six months just for us to have room to actually give it a ceremonious trial. In my opinion, in cases where a new piece of media comes out which does something frivolous like talk to the audience, it is your job to convince the rest of us that it isn't DWU. And it should almost certainly be staked in context, quotes from the writers, DWM articles, etc. Not "Uh oh story did bad thing"

I don't particularly mind these individual episodes being put aside for now. I certainly disagree with your takes about a few of them. But the big important thing here is that the argument that breaking the fourth wall or having any audience interaction should immediately prelude a story is insulting. And historically making over-reaching rules like this had lead to a holistic interference with countless other topics and genres, from Choose-Your-Own-Adventure novels to Attack of the Graske to, again, Music of the Spheres. If we're banning audience interaction, why do we allow fiction related to Time Fracture?

Again, I think this comes down to personal definition. If you're Russel T Davies, you think the DWU version of London is like an alternate universe with an alternate history. But to the writers of many other eras, the "present day London" of the DWU was the same as our world. This is why so many stories went out of their way to be set on alien planets or the future by a decade or two.

So, as an example of something that would clearly be hit by a vaguely formed, codified rule like this, any segment in Doctor Who Magazine where the Doctor is writing about his travels and addresses the readers would be instantly defined as "taking place in the real world, and not the world of the Doctor" when that was absolutely not the authorial intent. Even saying there is a distinction in every era is blatant speculation. I just don't agree with it as a foundational rule. OS25🤙☎️ 20:36, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Well said. The burden of proof has always lied with those wishing to prove a claim. This is just part of the rational part of the human brain! The burden of proof would be for someone making the claim that the story breaks the rules, and is thus invalid.
We are not making the claim they break the rules. The presumption should be that all stories are valid unless the rules are broken. It's a reasonable way of doing these things, and yet we're doing the exact opposite and it's come back to bite us during this discussion thread. Two sides that won't budge.
And yet for the vast, vast majority of these stories, barring the aforementioned few, they break zero rules. I think it would be far more of a procedural issue to a) make a rule 5 that ruins the site by rewriting the idea of the burden of proof, or b) automatically default to cherry-picking whatever the general consensus of "what's real" is and making those valid. That's canon.
As a whole, the proposal of presupposing invalidity is like "guilty until proven innocent." Which, I guess, is fine if that's what you wish to do. But it's not benefiting the site. It's sabotaging it. Sorry for going full r/atheism, but the logic here is backwards. LilPotato ☎ 21:13, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
https://doctorwho.tumblr.com/post/37738593040/miranda-hart-is-after-the-doctor-from-bbc Just wanna add that the official account treats It’s Showtime like an event that actually happened to the Eleventh Doctor 81.106.187.1talk to me 15:30, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
By posting a gifset with a very very neutral comment? Does that mean that if they post the most recent red nose day skit we have to consider that valid too? "Valid" != "whatever The BBC wants to promote". (Attaching, once again, the disclaimer that I just think this argument is poor, not that I have strong feelings about the story in question.) Najawin ☎ 16:40, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

TARDIS Yule Logs

File:Festive Thirteenth Doctor Yule Log Doctor Who BBC America 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.Yule Log (TV program)

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)
Totally support validating the second and third Yule logs. I think they are definitely set in the Doctor Who universe. I can just imagine the Thirteenth Doctor's Biography reading:
The Thirteenth Doctor once warmed her hands on a fireplace with Police Box decoratiom and circular Gallifreyan on stockings (WC: Festive Thirteenth Doctor Yule Log)
Cousin Ettolrahc ☎ 19:06, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
I think validate them all, even the 12 era one, as it's a "Doctor Who" yule log. If it's Doctor Who it's DWU. 81.108.82.15talk to me 00:22, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

The point of a story being valid is that we can cite it as a source for information on in-universe pages outside of behind-the-scenes sections or [[/Non-valid sources]] subpages. What kind of information would we want to cite these videos for, and on which pages? – n8 (☎) 13:00, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

They’ve got lovely shots of the fugitive TARDIS interior. Either way these were made invalid due to not being a story, since rule 1 has changed to fiction these should be valid. 81.106.187.1talk to me 13:14, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
I think it's more a topic of what reason do these have not to be valid? They're not exactly in this debate because them being not-valid is ruining the site. It's merely that they don't break the rules, and they are unique webcasts which depict moments in the Thirteenth Doctor's life. OS25🤙☎️ 16:46, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
When I saw this as a topic on the speedround, I laughed. Hard. I thought I would find it utterly preposterous that something like this could have a fictional narrative. Mainly because I didn't watch any of them. This blows my mind to say, but these have all the qualifiers for a valid source. I support this story's coverage. It's such a shock to me that I could be so misinformed on the actual contents of these uploads. Good find! LilPotato ☎ 02:47, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

Chute!

Chute! Episode 9

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)
Like Dermomt and the Doctor, I hadn't heard of this before, but after listening to OS25's points, I agree that it should be validated as passing rule 4. Cousin Ettolrahc ☎ 19:11, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
I support making this valid (P.S. I loved this show as a teen, how very dare you? /jk) WaltK ☎ 18:39, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Huh. Well Chute! We have another valid story in my opinion! Nothing to say. This is such a quaint little story which passes all the rules. LilPotato ☎ 02:50, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

By the way, the Warriors of Kudluk clip should absolutely be covered as an instance of Doctor Who (in-universe) in my opinion. Not only is it a much more straightforward way of doing it, but it's loosely implied by the narrative; when Ross looks for the tape, he initially picks up tapes with similar titles ("The David John Adventures", "The Hector Brian Adventures", etc.) indicating he is looking for a tape called, well, The Sarah Jane Adventures. WaltK ☎ 23:52, 14 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...)

The Doctor, embarrassed that he failed to get tickets to a concert about himself, presents Clara Oswald with his solution: a Hyperscape Body Swap Ticket.
A scene featuring Clara's home in 2014's Dark Water. Notice the prop to the lower right-hand corner. This is the Hyperscape Body Swap Ticket, which Clara has kept.

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.

To those of you who say "Well how can these stories be in-universe if the Doctor sometimes references the show Doctor Who? I invite you to read: Doctor Who (in-universe), Doctor Who Season 24 (in-universe), The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who (in-universe), Tom Baker (in-universe)...

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)
No, Moffat did say that. It's even mentioned at the start of this very thread! He did say "Here's where it fits, you can sleep at night," even if that's a smushed down, summarized version of the actual quote. Are you disagreeing with Moffat on the fact he said the thing he said? That's... a bit odd.
Anyways, this is a very compelling case for validity. That ticket prop caught me off-guard. There was a huge attention to detail to even think to include that. The allusion to The ArcHive Tapes' source material as a way to cover the fiction and separate it from the nonfiction is an incredibly good shout. I think you're onto something here. This should be valid! There's no other way around it for me!
It's just a matter of how we choose to cover it. Does anyone have a DVD or CD copy of the Proms? Perhaps specific chapters / scenes on the discs are given titles. Something to look into! LilPotato ☎ 03:03, 14 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)
Cover the 2010 and 2013 minisode separately and it's called "Doctor Who Proms Film" in the credits. 81.108.82.15talk to me 00:25, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
I am aware that Moffat said the thing he said. I'm disagreeing that the statement can be taken as a general indicator of his approach to these issues, as opposed to a particular instance. He usually approaches the subject as I described. Najawin ☎ 03:54, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
Oh by the way, I was meaning to ask you Najawin: When you said "Bah! Easter egg!" were you referring to this ticket prop being used, or the PRIME commercial? Or both? Because this isn't an easter egg. It's intentional set-dressing.
During his run as showrunner, casual fans often mentioned Moffat's "plot holes" in spaces like Facebook and Twitter. Inconsistencies, things they didn't understand. That sort of thing. I don't think any mistakes or retcons were made, but whatever you say about Moffat's skills, one thing is clear. The people working for his set design team were incredibly talented. They didn't just throw this in for no reason. It was placed there.
They could have gone with any number of things; they went with this ticket. For an era with a lot of complex moving parts... there is no way this wasn't seen as a "puzzle piece" they were holding onto. An easter egg usually denotes something small to spot, which is largely inconsequential. Something silly. This is continuity, which is the most consequential thing for our coverage of stories.
Upon watching a documentary on The Shining, I've gained a great appreciation for directors fiddling with the set in order to tell a more cohesive narrative. This is the best example of that principle that I've seen for TV. LilPotato ☎ 05:36, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
I have previously expressed the sentiment that the PRIME computer reference is an Easter egg, and I would refer to this as well. I don't see any reason to think that it was placed there for no reason, by definition Easter eggs are placed there for a reason! The difference is the intent behind them. But you say
An easter egg usually denotes something small to spot, which is largely inconsequential. Something silly.
I think it's hard to deny that this fits the bill of something small, easy to miss, largely inconsequential, and somewhat silly. Saying that it's about the continuity of a separate story and thus is consequential to that separate story and how we cover it on this wiki doesn't entail that it's consequential within the context of the story in which it appears.
I again stress that I have no strong feelings about the original story and whether we should or shouldn't have validated it originally. I just don't think much of this particular R4bp argument here. Najawin ☎ 06:10, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
The fact that the ticket is in Dark Water isn't a case of "let's make the proms part of the DWU”. It’s a case of. Let’s reference this obscure minisode which is another Doctor Who episode. I don’t be love the proms film was ever meant to not count. 81.108.82.15talk to me 10:26, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
I am a regular reader of these inclusion debates (I find them amusing, and yes, I probably need to get a life), but I do not usually contribute to them, for I feel that, as a user without an account, I am not really entitled to an opinion. However, as many other users using only IP adresses have contributed, I feel that it would not be to impudent of me to add my comments (I sincerely apologise if I am wrong). If I may just interject in this discussion, my point is that I feel that you may be asking the wrong question. If the tickets in Dark Water are Steven Moffat saying that this was intented to be in the literary DWU, then that means that it was always intended to be so. My question here is: Why was it assumed that this was not intended to be set in the DWU. What I am trying to say is, Is this debate about the validity of this minisode through Rule 4, or for Rule 4bp? To clarify, what reason have you for assuming that this does not pass Rule 4? This is coming dangerously close to assuming guilty by default, which is exactly what Tardis:Valid sources tells us not to do. My argument basically is, this minisode should be assumed to pass Rule 4 until proven otherwise, because we simply cannot tell Moffat's intentions. I am sorry for a rather long-winded comment, and also sorry if I have spoken out of turn, or impudently, or incorrectly. Kindest regards, (I do hope the IP adress thing works, this will look awkward if it doesn't) – The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.7.148.216 (talk).
Hey, for future reference, use ~~~~ to sign your posts. No worries. I'm not sure if there was an official decision on the issue. Thread:149786 discussed it, but the archive doesn't have the full text, and it was an IP user that changed the page to say it was "non canon" in 2015. Nobody changed the page back, like Shambala did earlier - just to invalid, so I suspect the thread did conclude it was invalid. But we can't be sure because the forum archives are still dead. Najawin ☎ 21:43, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Ah, sorry about that. Also, as a small but significant aside, I support the validity of everything up for discussion here apart from WC:A New Year's message from the Doctor... (webcast) and WC:Introduction to SJA (webcast), if that does anything helpful. 86.7.148.216talk to me 11:26, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Disney Time

The Fourth Doctor and the TARDIS, seen during the presentation.

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 a scene from Blackbeard's Ghost, played during the special. VHS second-hand copies are our best bet for these parts, and we're likely to get something that either has a timecode, looks awful, or both.

    This is a scene from Blackbeard's Ghost, played during the special. VHS second-hand copies are our best bet for these parts, and we're likely to get something that either has a timecode, looks awful, or both.

  • ... BUT the film which this clip is taken from has been released in high quality. So the concept is that for this one clip, we would allow the use of a higher-quality copy for coverage. This would not mean that we consider Blackbeard's Ghost valid!

    ... BUT the film which this clip is taken from has been released in high quality. So the concept is that for this one clip, we would allow the use of a higher-quality copy for coverage. This would not mean that we consider Blackbeard's Ghost valid!

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 {{Disney}} (and I see no need for this to be invalid). I support this proposal. Cookieboy 2005 ☎ 12:20, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
Tom Baker changing his costume to be in-continuity as the Doctor is enough to convince me that this was intended to be set in the DWU and so passes rule 4 and should be valid. Cousin Ettolrahc ☎ 19:18, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

One thing I wanted ask as a minor but related aside: on our page for the special, the cast list credits all of the actors who appear in the Disney clips under archival footage. Would this inclusion mean that all these actors qualify for pages (i.e. Walt Disney (actor)). WaltK ☎ 17:22, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

I've actually thought about this a lot. I think the active precedent is that actors used through archival footage without credit don't need pages. So we don't have an OOU page for Colin Clive or Boris Karloff in the 1996 TV movie.
So I'm thinking we wouldn't need pages on these actors unless we change policy. However, in the case of Chute! Neil C would get a page because he was actually credited. OS25🤙☎️ 18:27, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
Well, this is a weird one. I'm not its target demographic, but there isn't a rule I know of that it breaks. Valid, but it's just not for me. Not a lot of people make that distinction, and it sounds like it was especially common to equate "canon" with "thing I like" before the validity system. Good thing that's changed! Impartiality is important for these things. LilPotato ☎ 03:15, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

Doctor Who and the Fangs of Time

Sean is reunited with the Doctor after years of having not seen him.

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, the Master 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)

This is the only one I've been unsure of (so far, going down the list), but I think I support it's validity. And if it were to be validated, I would strongly argue for interpretation 3 instead of 2. Cousin Ettolrahc ☎ 19:24, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

The fact that this has the Doctor means it's set in some DWU. The DWU? Probably not. A DWU? Yes. A universe where the Doctor is a character of sorts. Yes. These events probably don't happen to the Fourth Doctor nor are they intended to. But they do happen to a Fourth Doctor that is a vision in a different world. A different continuity. A different DWU. People might see this a small and meaningless difference, but it isn't. Please let this thread be a catalyst that changes rule 4 to "a DWU". 81.108.82.15talk to me 00:14, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
So let's just nip this in the bud before it spreads to other threads. "DWU" refers to the Doctor Who literary Universe. It does not refer to what the wiki terms N-Space. The reason why Daft Dimension, the Cushing Films, and Doctor Who? (etc etc) have heretofore been considered invalid (NOTDWU) is that they've at one point in time thought to be completely separate from this literary universe, not that Czech or Tangerine or Shambala or Amorkuz or someone came along and said they were in a different universe so we had to segregate them off. We don't do that with Unbound. We don't do that with the Infinity Doctors. This is a misunderstanding of how the wiki uses the term and it's a complete mistake to suggest that we should change R4 based on it.
In the same sense, it's simply not the case that having The Doctor as a character makes the work in question part of "a" Doctor Who Literary Universe. The most obvious example being the Simpsons occasionally using the character in ways that aren't obviously parodical for the character for jokes about time travelers or such. Or, you know, Cultural references to the Doctor Who universe for a ton of these. While you may, personally, consider all of these things to be actual factual appearances of The Doctor or what have you, (I know I consider some of them to be connected to Doctor Who in my own headcanon!) they do not constitute part of the Doctor Who Literary Universe. Let's kill this nonsense stone dead here and now. Our rules for validity are not the same as rules for some sort of maximally permissive Doctor Who Free-Association Universe. They are attempting to define a specific scope for what we, as a wiki, can cover. It's important to not confuse the two. Najawin ☎ 05:43, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
I maintain, with respect, that I am misunderstood. No The Simpsons doesn't count it isn't licensed, only licensed things should count, but Fangs of Time is made by the BBC with the Fourth Doctor. Maybe he's not there through conventional means, but he's there somehow. As a character. To exclude it still feels too much like canon. 81.108.82.15talk to me 08:58, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

I have no strong opinion on Fangs of Time, I don't know enough about the specific thread that invalidated it. But you're arguing that we should replace "the DWU" with "a DWU". Appealing to R2 as the delimiter is completely irrelevant. We could imagine a country where even for these cameos you have to get permission from the corporation to do so. This permission wouldn't entail that they're part of "a" DWU, they're something completely different. The character being there is not sufficient to entail that they're part of the DWU. "DWU", as the wiki understands it, refers to a literary universe, not a specific universe or multiverse in some sort of textual metaphysical sense. There is no reference to canon here. Not one. Stop accusing people of being against things because of residual canon thinking. This is precisely the term of abuse we should avoid. Neither Memes nor I are thinking in terms of canon, I assure you. Indeed, it's precisely because of my extreme disinterest in canon that I'm against rephrasing things in the manner you're suggesting. Validity is about what the wiki covers. No more, no less. I'm a "validity positivist", as it were, if Memes can appreciate the joke. Najawin ☎ 09:16, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

I wasn’t accusing anyone in thinking of canon, only that the rule feels like a canon, we'll have to agree to disagree on 4. I maintain it feels like canon, but that's the rule itself, not a specific user. Apologies for the misinterpretation. 81.108.82.15talk to me 15:14, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

You're quite free to disagree with a version of R4 that doesn't exist, but I'm not sure how this is helpful. For instance, I'm doing this off of memory, because, well, it was in the old forums, and I wasn't there for the thread in question, I just saw it ages later. There was a discussion about whether or not The Periodic Adventures of Señor 105 should be covered as valid on this wiki. They're a spinoff of Iris Wildthyme from a DWU publisher, by normal standards they would be. But the author showed up in the thread and stated that he didn't really consider the series to have anything to do with the DWU, it was its own thing. So they're invalid. See also Vienna for when a comment like this was misinterpreted. The wiki has always cared about the DWU as a literary universe. It fundamentally doesn't make sense to suggest that because there's a Doctor present then instantly the story is part of that same literary universe. Nor does it make sense to suggest that we should care about other literary universes that might be "DWLUs" in the simple sense that there's a Doctor in them at all, regardless of that character having any sort of prominence. Lines have to be drawn somewhere. This is where the wiki has chosen to draw them. There's nothing deeper to it than that. Najawin ☎ 21:25, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

I don't think this debate really adds anything to the discussion of Fangs of Time. OS25🤙☎️ 19:52, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
I agree, sorry, I did say that senor 105 is an example I used where rule 4 does work, something with a dwu original character with its own series not dwu, but I've said that if it was the main Doctor and not parody, it's dwu. So Fangs of Time. i agree. DWU. 81.108.82.15talk to me 20:11, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
This one I'm skeptical on. I've read the story, and to me it seems like more a parody akin to Doctor Who?'s brand of dry whit, written more sentimental but retaining the same parodic "vibe." I get it, we shouldn't use a vibe to judge a story's continuity. But even though it is a mainline comic strip, it's a good indicator for invalidity if it reads as a Doctor Who? strip rather than any other mainline strip of that decade. Sorry for being the fun police, I really am! I just think we need more discussion on its authorial intent. LilPotato ☎ 03:12, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
Fangs isn't parody, it's just meta fictional. 81.108.82.15talk to me 00:11, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
As I said, I have read it recently, so the tonal indications are fresh in my mind. This isn't conventional metafiction; it clearly reads as a parody. The "rude drawings" of Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts seem to further this. The subtle jab at Virgin, etc. feels more like using the Doctor as a narrative device in which the author, and the fans reading the comic, can see what the Doctor would say if he were talking to a fan.
This wiki is no stranger to "what if" scenarios. Virtually every story, if looked at from a great distance, is a "what if." But reading the comic felt less story and more "fan writes autobiographical love letter to show, with the main character acting as a foil to both fans and the author's stand-in." That's parody. LilPotato ☎ 05:19, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
Re. Senor 105... funny misconception that I distinctly remember. Cody Schell never ever it wasn't set in the DWU. He said it didn't belong on a Doctor Who Wiki. That is a large distinction everyone glossed over.
For people unfamiliar with the Wiki, you'd be forgiven for misunderstanding the scope of it; yes we cover all Doctor Who material, but we also cover so much more than that. Doctor Who is the veritable tip of the iceberg, and our scope covers as much of it as we can, to the point its connection to Who becomes thin. Cody likely didn't know that we cover a lot of expanded media, and presumed we were trying to cover Señor 105 on a Wiki about the 2005 revival of Who. 03:27, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
I support the validation of this story. If we cover Paul Marg’s autobiographies why not this one?Anastasia Cousins ☎ 09:34, 20 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:

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.

In the past decade, Keepsake's vulture has occasionally had a series of one-panel cameos. I am not suggesting that we need to cover these specifically. (Look closely, I promise you he's in there! (Hint: the panel they copied here is actually further down on this page!))

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)
    1. Issue 1: In a panel where Wiccan views images of the multi-verse, the vulture is seen in one reality.
    2. 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.

The Body in Question.jpg

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.

Keepsake Vulture role.jpg

Spratt and Keepsake's vulture run from Pyra and Big Shot.

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)
I support the validity of the suggested Death's Head sources, and additionally think the detail of the Seventh Doctor manipulating Death's Head is important as it shows how much the comic is intended to be set in the DWU, building on previous concelts. So yeah, validity support. Cousin Ettolrahc ☎ 19:33, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
OttselSpy's proposals are quite sensible and good. I'm unsure about "Kangs for the Memories" -- seems like something which would be fine to simply note, but also seems like it could be of utility simply in giving a full picture. I mainly join the conversation just to point out the rather intriguing fact that the first use of the title "Earth 616" was in The Daredevils 7, a story with Dr Who characters in it! Frankly, all the comic retcon nonsense that has come since obscures the fact that its originally used in a more inter-corporate Alan Moore multiverse sense, but... digression. CoT ? 02:43, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
All this over a bird! Well, I fully support the proposal here. Death's Head is an odd case, but one we cannot and should not overlook. It's an incredibly important time capsule for Marvel's Who work, and the more we can cover this oddity, the more this wiki will feel comprehensive. Which is to say, it's ironic that the wiki will be more complete with coverage of an "Incomplete" series! LilPotato ☎ 03:22, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

Gameplay-based LEGO Dimensions trailers

If I've understood the intent of this thread correctly, in that this is to debate whether something should get any coverage, valid or not, then I'd like to get a debate going for this one.

A little while back, one of our users went and began adding pages for the various LEGO Dimensions trailers out there that consist exclusively of in-game cutscenes and/or gameplay clips.

We already include the various trailers that use specially made footage to form a narrative, stuff like Endless Awesome and New Adventures Await. And that makes sense, in my view, and the rest of you seem to agree.

Now a while back, I was a bit overeager and created a page for the trailer, Sonic the Hedgehog Joins LEGO Dimensions; I was on a LEGO Dimensions inclusion kick, and got right on creating this one because, well, I'm a gigantic Sonic nerd and loved the idea of aspects of Sonic's universe being eligible for coverage, and this one certainly had a decent entry way in (a staged gameplay clip of Sonic and Twelfth Doctor coming face to face!)

In the end, the page ended up deleted when, after a few words with a moderator in private, we came to the conclusion that trailers of that kind probably shouldn't qualify.

And then another contributor took it upon themself to make a bunch of pages for exactly those types of trailers. To bring Sonic into this again; one of the pages is Sonic the Hedgehog Official Trailer. It showcases various aspects of the Sonic franchise's addition to the series, such as cutscenes from the Sonic Dimensions story, and gameplay clips of the levels and battle arena, within which we get our Doctor Who connection with the Doctor being used to showcase the gameplay.

Now, I'm not here to debate that these trailers do need coverage. I just need definitive clarification on the matter; should these trailers be included or not? WaltK ☎ 00:03, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Woah woah woah. No no no. Stop stop stop. And other words that go in threes.
This Speedrounds is for discussing the bounded number of topics brought forward by the OP, User:OttselSpy25: not a free-for-all for people to add their own topics. We may do another Speedround later if need be, and you can suggest your own items then ahead of it being officially started, but for now, don't go adding new topics. That's not how this works. If we allow this then, knowing this Wiki, people will suggest many more topics than can reasonably be discussed in three weeks; a dozen or so really is an upper bound on feasibility.
Though as concerns the issue, given the prior deletion of …Joins LEGO Dimensions, marking the newly-created ones for deletion is a straightforward T:BOUND/T:POINT matter, and yes, if need be, I hereby endorse tagging them for summary deletion forthwith. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 00:14, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
Let me just comment down here that, while I may have accidentally set the precedent for this with Tardis:Temporary forums/Archive/Subpages 2.0 or something, I'm not sure this "speedround" format is the best fit for inclusion debates. Setting aside the fact that the consolidation of multiple very different stories may have depressed the number of responses a bit, my larger concern is that it's one thing to validate these stories, and it's another thing entirely to, yknow, actually edit the wiki and cover these stories once they're valid – and in this latter case we're unfortunately rather lacking. There are at least dozens of pages, probably hundreds, which still describe material as invalid because it came from non-narrative sources, and personally I'd like to see the impacts of that sweeping change before worrying about validating a single story like Doctor Who and the Fangs of Time. Maybe it's time to talk about extending the forum length. – n8 (☎) 14:15, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
Well with all due respect, I think the main difference is that validating things like Doctor Who and the Fangs of Time does not involve changing policy, while the topics in Subpages 2.0 in many cases were massive fundamental policy changes, such as allowing Charity stories to be covered in a special subsection. To be honest, as someone who was involved in Subpages 2.0, I completely missed how that specifically was on the docket until after the forum closed.
We have this system now where we have six slots, and there's some expectation that all six should be running at all time. I personally think the best solution isn't to have these debates have an extra two weeks of no-one saying anything, but for us to have some accepted gap between closing one topic and opening another. Changing one rule on a Monday, another on a Tuesday, and a third Tuesday evening will lead us to not being able to handle the repercussions of changing so many rules at once. And thus, spending a little leisurely time to a topic which does not require heavy man-power to change is not actually hurting site policy, it's helping it. So, yes, I would rather be discussing if Chute! Episode 9 should be valid right now than if we should change another site rule that will take us years to implement.
And of course there are smarter ways to go about these things. If we, for instance, accepted that if we close Slot 3 on a Monday, Slot 3 can't be used again until a few days or even a week later, we then at least have a period where we can focus just on implementing whatever Slot 3 was about. Not to mention that even if we wanted to completely ditch doing validity discussions, all good amount of the actual policy proposals still lack OPs.
I do admit that I went a little ham with this one, and if I had known how much trouble one or two of these topics would have been, I wouldn't have thrown them in like this. In the future I think I'll stick to 4-5 topics. But the idea of a speedround does not hurt the wiki, it is actually good that every debate we have doesn't fundamentally rewrite the way we're meant to go about things. OS25🤙☎️
Politely, it's not trivial that you don't have a policy change in here, as Memes has pointed out. I, again, am not sure that he's correct. But it's not trivial. As for the idea of there being things in a thread that people miss, given you slipped in a specific crossover into this proposal that we are not supposed to talk about as an "oh, yeah, let's validate this too", well, glass houses, stones, etc. Najawin ☎ 19:28, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
Okay. That's enough. I can't think of anything that assumes bad faith more than accusing a user of "slipping in" a story. That's such conspiratorial phrasing, which is exactly the reason the 10KD stories are invalid.
A site admin / mod / whatever speaking conspiratorially about publishers and authors paying off wiki editors. Then doxxing a wiki user to "prove" this baseless claim.
There is no need for this revisionism. There's especially no need to open old wounds by repeating history, attacking OttselSpy25's character with such phrasing. This is not helping. This is causing trouble. More trouble than mentioning a crossover in the crossover section of a discussion.
I assume they didn't know about those old threads, because to the best of my knowledge I don't remember them even contributing to that trainwreck of an inclusion debate. I could be wrong, but in any case, I was banned for using the term "spite" in a post. I want to keep these discussions civil to make sure that doesn't happen to others. This starts by assuming good faith by default.
I wanted to keep silent about the 10,000 Dawns crossover stories, even though I have never contributed a story for that series and probably never will. But that took it so far, and was so unnecessarily hostile, that I couldn't leave it alone. Let's just move forward. We'll keep things civil, I hope. Cheers! LilPotato ☎ 01:34, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
My understanding of OS25's comment about Nate, such as it was, wasn't that he was accusing Nate of acting in bad faith and hiding parts of his proposal in an overly long post. It was, rather, that a major decision was treated as auxiliary to another issue within the large post, leading people to perhaps miss it. Since I then compared the two, I was then suggesting the same thing about this discussion here - that a major decision on a subject we're not even supposed to discuss was presented as an afterthought. (Were I accusing OS25 of conspiratorial thinking, surely I must also be suggesting that OS25 was accusing Nate of the same given the analogy, yes? This seems an uncharitable reading of his comment to me.)
I believe that's something people can interpret from the rest of the sentence beyond the simple usage of the word "slipped", but I do understand that I'm not necessarily the best with phrasing. If my choice of wording was offensive in any way to OS25 I do apologize, unreservedly, of course; that was never my intent.
To clarify, not that it should need to be said, I think the 10k crossovers should likely be valid from what I've gathered. Not that I was present in that original set of threads. There has been extensive talk with a FANDOM representative about reopening those discussions started by myself. My comment here was in relation to other procedural complaints that were being discussed, both wrt this thread and others. I've also expressed procedural qualms in many separate forum threads prior to this. I think it was understandable given that context. But, again, I do understand that phrasing is not my strong suit and if I've caused offense I apologize. Najawin ☎ 02:47, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
Oh it's alright. I'm just utterly tired of the whole 10KD discussion, as are most people, after a cursory glance at the talk page. I've sadly been through my fair share of wiki arguments and I may have gotten too heated, thinking that this discussion may cause another one.
As I say, I wish not to cause unnecessary arguments, and to do everything in my power to help calm the situation, but I seem to have made a mistake in not my wording, but my general tone. Maybe I was too anxious, too snappy, which, similarly, I apologize for. I'm glad that you are generally in favor of the validity (once we're allowed by FANDOM staff to have the discussion, which I won't participate in given my close proximity to the series), since that gives you, OS25 and I a lot of common ground. Here's hoping we can continue to make strides without these misunderstandings plaguing our posts. I really do apologize, Najawin. LilPotato ☎ 03:04, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
Najawin, I believe you have been the one to escalate to attacking character here. I never stated that Nate snuck anything into the forums, I merely said a very large policy change was made by the subpages forum and I think it should have been its own debate. I would go as far as to say that allowing people to cover Charity works without a commercial license in the invalid subspace is the largest fundamental policy change this decade and indeed it wasn't "on the can" over the forum post. I think we need another debate, even as I agree with the idea, because we haven't even started to work out the kinks of how this concept actually works.
My point was just that, if you're going to compare Subpages 2.0 to Speedrounds 1, it's not like Speedrounds in inherently filled with more anarchy.
You are the one to accuse me of sneaking things in the discussion, which I take great offense to. I would go as far as to say that I think you've failed to assume my good faith. OS25🤙☎️ 20:46, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

As stated, perhaps "slip" was a poor choice of words, for which I apologize. I explicitly denied that you accused Nate of acting maliciously, and gave my reading of your comment as

that a major decision was treated as auxiliary to another issue within the large post, leading people to perhaps miss it

This is what I said of this post as well. I've been trying to avoid accusing others of failing to assume good faith and simply pointed out that the prior comment was predicated on assuming I was making an uncharitable reading, but, C'mon. I literally said that I didn't think that you accused Nate of this, that such a thing would be uncharitable. I apologize if "slip" caused offense, but I'm simply not going to discuss this further. It can't be constructive. Najawin ☎ 21:25, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Since LilPotato aptly mentioned the "Assume good faith" rule, let's remember that it swings both ways! Najawin explicitly denied that OS25 accused me of acting maliciously in the subpages thread, but as it happens, that actually was my initial reading of OS25's reply. I held off from calling foul only because
  1. T:NPA says, "Personal attacks do not include civil language used to describe an editor's actions when made without involving their personal character"; and
  2. while mulling it over, I thought twice and decided to look for an alternative, good-faith interpretation, as the good-faith rule says we should.
Indeed, I'm glad I took that second step, since I did think of an alternative explanation which, as it happens, did match OS25's actual intention! I recommend extending that same grace to Najawin's comment, the real intended meaning of which, as explained above, certainly constitutes good faith (and was immediately apparent to me, at least). – n8 (☎) 00:02, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

Conclusion

I keep saying this every time, but this was a big one. In fact, I think if there's one thing this thread reached consensus about, it's that this one was too big.[1] So let's address the procedural meta-discussion first.

Part 0 - Should this Speedround have existed?

I don't think this format is inherently ill-suited to inclusion debates, particularly so long as we are operating with only six slots. User:NateBumber was seen to wonder if he had set a nasty precedent with the multi-sectioned structure of Tardis:Temporary forums/Archive/Subpages 2.0 — but more than anything else, the precedent here is Forum:The original inclusion debates, the ancestors of them all, which were conducted in a very comparable format.[2] So long as we are discussing stories any one of whose validation would be a trivial matter[3], the basic consolidation of different inclusion topics into one big three-weeks thread seems like a basically sound instinct.

Nate is speaking to a real concern when he notes:

…it's one thing to validate these stories, and it's another thing entirely to, yknow, actually edit the wiki and cover these stories once they're valid – and in this latter case we're unfortunately rather lacking. There are at least dozens of pages, probably hundreds, which still describe material as invalid because it came from non-narrative sources, and personally I'd like to see the impacts of that sweeping change before worrying about validating a single story like Doctor Who and the Fangs of Time.User:NateBumber

I hear this complaint, I understand it. But I think it can be disregarded as far as the viability of a thread like this is concerned. Firstly, the admin team's decision when the Forums was created was to predicate the rising of OPs to the six slots entirely on votes from the community, give or take the availability of an OP. I am not comfortable with the idea of admins policing what threads do and do not rise to the top, except of course for ones which directly break policy. "It seems like strategically we shouldn't have another inclusion debate so soon to encourage editing" just isn't strong enough to get over that basic procedural objection. If the community feels that it shouldn't have another massive thread so soon, let that consensus manifest as not voting massive threads up the ladder so quickly!

Furthermore, in response to the same problem User:OttselSpy25 proposed a "rest period" for each slot after a given thread is closed. This is noble but, I think, doomed. Sad as it may seem, the Wiki's actual contents not reflecting policy is an inevitability. Yes, we don't have nearly as many /Spoiler subpages as the recent reforms authorise, and they're being created quite sluggishly; but the same is true of Big Finish plot summaries. Just because editors aren't as quick as we'd like about implementation, shouldn't impact policy. We make policy to describe the ideal Wiki; implementation is a separate stage. And a few days' respite would not, I think, do much good. It'd frankly take months to wholly carry through every change to policy we've made.

However, a few common-sense suggestions for any future "Speedround" were discussed and are hereby accepted as, to use a technical term, jolly good ideas:

  • Speedrounds should not have more than 5 topics at most.
  • Users should not be allowed to add additional topics to a Speedround after it has been launched.
  • In the case of an inclusion-debates speedround or other such debate where the diferent topics are only very loosely related to one another, the title of the thread should attempt to list out the main topics, not just remain an opaque "Inclusion Debates Speedround"-type affair. (Listing every story would be impractical even with a five-topic cap, but the idea is to usefully convey to someone scanning Tardis:Temporary forums#Current threads whether they might want to have a look.)

None of these are meant as slights to User:OttselSpy25. Any prototype like this was bound to have kinks to work out. This was on the whole still a remarkable piece of work, and moreover, notwithstanding a few slight issues, the community largely rose to meet it; for all the talk of a free-for-all this has actually been a very responsive, very orderly, very efficient thread. So let no one be too harsh on themselves.

Part 1: Friend from the Future

This is perhaps the archetypal example of a topic for a Speedround like this — discussed to death in the past, a single short film, a special case which was brushed upon in another T:TF thread but dismissed as not quite being on-topic there. More of these, please.

It's also the easiest one for me to close: it had pretty clear consensus, and my fellow admin User:SOTO already put in a pseudo-conclusion.

I think the Moffat quote, along with the in-text effort to find a place for this minisode within the final narrative (ie. the psychic paper bit), are more than persuasive enough.
Against the previous ruling, my stance is that this shouldn't count as a deleted scene, since it was already released as its own complete narrative.User:SOTO

To briefly go through this in more detail: this is the opposite of a deleted scene. This is a narrative short which was filmed first as its own production; and which Moffat then decided to remake as part of The Pilot. It was not written as a scene from The Pilot, filmed as a screen test, and then reshot with changes; it was created as its own production, and only later did Moffat decide to rework it into The Pilot, with the explicit purpose of making it "fit" with the narrative arc of Series 10.

If it had not been "remade" in The Pilot, this would have been valid long ago as a minisode; or if not, it would have been valid weeks ago as a narrative trailer, anyway. Its relationship to The Pilot is the only thing putting Rule 4 into question — but Moffat's quote clarifies that the entire reason he put it into The Pilot was in order to try and "make it fit". And that in the final analysis, even though he only inserted the beginning into the episode, he does view it as giving the whole of the short a place in continuity.

An interesting fact here is that this implies that he may not have fully intended it to be part of continuity when he first wrote it — but then explicitly went back and tried to make it fit after all. Some may know where I'm going with this: arguably, this is our first solid case since the original thread of something being validated through Rule 4 By Proxy, with Steven Moffat's The Pilot as the story explicitly designed to "bring" Friend from the Future into continuity.

One way or another, yes, this is valid now.

Part 2: Crossovers (One Born Every Minute, Looking For Pudsey, TV Terrors, the 10,000 Dawns crossovers)

First off, as discussed at Tardis:Temporary forums/Admin announcements#10,000 Dawns crossovers, the 10,000 Dawns crossover fall outside the remit of this debate. We're finally, finally able to dot that I and cross that T — but after all the strife, it really should be done on its own thread. Time to do it properly.

These notwithstanding, this section actually seems to me to have been slightly misconceived. Multiple people expressed bafflement at the notion that it had ever been policy for crossovers to be invalid-by-default, which is good, because it hasn't. Not explicit policy, at any rate. Are there a number of crossovers which were treated more harshly than they would have been in the absence of the crossover elements? Quite possibly. But the crossoveriness has never been more than circumstantial evidence, not a disqualifying element in itself (even in the days when our coverage thereof was seriously flawed it's always been clear that things like Death's Head should be valid!). And really, that is, in itself, fair enough. A crossover mixes elements from two preexisting universes; it's sensible to stop and check whether the resulting story is still intended to take place in "the DWU Plus" rather than, say, "some mashup universe that's really neither".

Something like Dimensions in Time is one thing — but to pick a clear non-DWU exampke, Who Framed Roger Rabbit is not a valid part of the Dumbo universe. There is a Dumbo in Roger Rabbit, he's even characterised as quite similar to the "canonical" Dumbo, but Roger Rabbit takes place in a world of its own, a strange, magic-realist mashup meta-world where "fictional" characters live together in Fictional Character Town, mere actors in their own stories, who can hang out together in their downtime.

Still, if it needed clarifying, being a crossover (even a comedic one) is not in itself evidence of a Rule 4 breach; at best it's just circumstantial clues which may lead us to look for real evidence. And it's plausible that we may have drawn the lines incorrectly in the past. So let's examine the stories themselves.

One Born Every Minute

One Born Every Minute has remained controversial, and my thoughts on it haven't changed much since I posted on that talk page. The crossover is not in itself the problem; the problem is that it seems to be a fourth-wall-breaking spoof. The Call The Midwife characters are characterised as meta parodies of themselves; not real women from the 1950s but living characters, the tropes of whose native stories follow them around. It is in short a Roger Rabbit-style situation for them. I don't mean to say that any fourth-wall break is inherently disqualifying (we'll come back to it), but as much as we mustn't throw out stories because they don't fit a narrow conception of what a DWU story is like, we must also remember not to square-peg-round-hole stories into "making sense". The premise of this minisode is not "the Doctor has transported people from the 1950s to 2010s", it's very tangibly "the Doctor has transported people from one TV show into another".

Would this be disqualifying in itself? I still don't know. There are, to say the least, precedents for Dr. Who interacting with living fictional characters. But what further sways me towards reaffirmed invalidity is that, from what little we see of him, the Eleventh Doctor is also characterised as a self-caricature, not as the real Time Lord in a world of fakes. For pity's sake, he's trying to stop the birth of a terrible abomination… "Jedward". On the whole the semiotics of the short really do treat him as a "meta" character like the others. In Roger Rabbit terms, imagine a Disney promo where Snow White has wandered into Star Wars, causing it to transform into a musical to the confusion of the native characters; and at the end the Genie from Aladdin appears, apologises for zapping Snow White onto the Death Star, and notes that while he's here he ought to take care of the most evil entity in all of outer space… [Insert Hatable Celebrity Of Your Choice Here]. Would anybody, anybody at all, reasonably conclude that this is intended as a canonical part of the Aladdin universe, and the Genie is "real" even if the singing princess and the Jedi aren't? It's not that the Genie physically couldn't do that… but it would seem rather like missing the point.

And granted, there are magic-realist storytellers within Who who do treat the Doctor as by default a living fictional character. It's not inconceivable that someone would write One Born Every Minute the way they did, and intend it to be something that the Doctor can look back on in The Time of the Doctor when he promises to remember everything he did with this face. If Paul Magrs had written it…!… But he didn't, and absent a statement or a body of work to draw from about probable mindset, this just doesn't seem like it's intended to be in the real DWU.

Not because it's a crossover, though.

Looking for Pudsey

Shorter here. Looking for Pudsey, from what I have seen, does treat the Twelfth Doctor as "real". Capaldi plays him straight, and although there are comedic shenanigans happening in the wider story, they aren't a matter of fictional characters crashing into each other. I have watched the full ten-minute thing, and I find no evidence to substantiate the idea that Eddie Redmayne is on any level playing Newt Scamander. From the very first scene, it's clear that what we simply have is the in-universe Redmayne attempting to film a Children in Need appeal while in costume, and being side-tracked by the fact that he can't find Pudsey Bear.

The switchboard operators' way of discussing the TARDIS is actually instructive:

"How on Earth did we manage to patch him through to a transdimensional vessel such as the TARDIS?!"Mel and Sue

That is: we are not in a universe where the Doctor is just a "living fictional character" who's on the BBC's payroll and can be casually contacted for shenanigans like any other celebrity (as is the case in It's Showtime which we'll discuss later). The TARDIS is an actual "transdimensional vessel", and is not meant to be on the phonebook, and Redmayne is only put through to the Doctor by a freak accident, without ever realising that he's talking to an actual space-time-traveller. When he overhears the switchboard operators' line about the TARDIS he's confused and tries to get them to explain, but they brush past him.

(Likewise, when the same improbable mechanical fault in the phone system causes Mel and Sue to put Eddie through to Sister Julienne, he does not recognise her as a known fictional character, or indeed someone from another time-zone; he remains thoroughly oblivious to all the sci-fi goings-on, that's part of the joke.)

The sole arguably-"meta" thing in the whole minisode is that Pudsey himself is very much treated as a living stuffed animal, not just an imaginary mascot. But that's crossovers for you. In a Children in Need short Pudsey is a real being, so in a crossover between that and Doctor Who, Pudsey continues to be presented as a real being. Living stuffed animals are not unknown in the DWU to say the least. It's not a problem when those stories introduce living stuffed animals to the DWU (any more than it's a problem when Doctor Who introduces Santa Claus or Torchwood introduces fairies), so it shouldn't be a problem here.

Indeed, Pudsey appeared as a real being before in what was very much a non-parodical Doctor Who story: Doctor Who Game Maker, where he was outright made a companion . Silly, perhaps, but the story didn't treat it as silly. The Game Maker is not currently a valid source, but, as far as I know, purely for "interactive fiction"/"non-narrative fiction" reasons.

TV Terrors

This is actually currently valid, so I'm not entirely sure what's going on here. I can at least put paid to any notion that it's a parody; it clearly isn't. It simply uses the Doctor's TARDIS as the gimmick-of-the-week for a comedy narrative, but the TARDIS itself isn't the subject of the joke, just the characters' stupidity and recklessness in what they do with it.

Arguably, it might be read as falling within the "Roger Rabbit-esque" category I outlined above. But if it does so, it is in a way completely removed from its crossover nature; the Doctor might kinda sorta be a meta character here, but the TV Terrors characters aren't; they're just ordinary TV-watching folks here. And there's no analogue of the "Jedward" gag to flag the Doctor Who elements as parodies of themselves, despite the meta-ness.

On the whole, there may be an argument for invalidating this on Rule 4 grounds but it has nothing to do with crossovers or parody; and it's a case that could be made, but it's not a case that anyone here actually made. So there are no grounds that I can see to justify invalidating it at present.

Part 3: Dermot and the Doctor

This one flows very naturally from everything discussed above. There is only one factual error in the OP: User:OttselSpy25 claims that "the general belief is that Czech made a new response [in Special:Forum] stating that because the segment featured real-world actors and was a skit at a real-world awards show, it isn't fiction" but that "this has since been lost". Actually, the post was on Talk:The Ultimate Guide (2013 documentary), ironically being cited for evidence that we shouldn't call The History of the Doctor valid — which we do now, and have done for some time. In the same breath Czech also cites Tales from the TARDIS and The Trial of Doctor Who, both things which have since been redeemed as valid sources, as examples of things that are held to be invalid for the same reason. That should make quite a lot of alarm bells ring about Demot…'s invalidity reflecting a wildly outdated ethos of validity.

Says Czech:

Because the "narrative" of that sketch depends on believing the Doctor was somehow involved with the non-fictional awards show itself, we obviously can't include it, because that would logically mean that everyone who was in that awards show was a part of the DWU. In the same way, we'd have to believe that every single interviewer, Tovey's narration, and the actors who played DWU characters were themselves a part of the DWU in order to admit the sketch.User:CzechOut

So it's a Rule 1 thing and a Rule 4 thing. Can the sketch be viewed separately from the real events of the Awards? If not, what are the implications on Rule 4?

But both these worries are misplaced. As regards the first, there was a ruling looong ago that we could call the prerecorded/DVD-release version of Music of the Spheres a valid source without worry; that is, that we could cover only the Doctor's half of the conversation, while plugging our ears on just who he's talking to and taking long pauses to hear back from. If we can divide the prerecorded live-action Who stuff from the real world bits in a case as entangled as this, it makes no sense at all to act like we just can't tell where one ends and the other begins between the prerecorded Dermot sketch, and the real awards show it tied in with.

But even then — "that would logically mean that everyone who was in that awards show was a part of the DWU"… yes, and? I do slightly get the worries about the BTS Who stuff. The Ultimate Guide can't easily exist in the DWU (but then, The History of the Doctor never said it did, hence why it's valid now; and Dermot never says that Steven Moffat will be at the Awards Show or anything like that). Sure. But the people? Of course "everyone in that awards show is a part of the DWU". Doctor Who has always operated as "like reality unless otherwise noted". Any given real person can and should be assumed to exist in the DWU unless proven otherwise. T:NO RW prevents us from using the real world as a source directly, but we shouldn't be surprised at all when fiction proves that yes, people like Graham Norton do in fact exist in-universe.

With regards to the "is the Doctor treated as a meta-character", this passes with flying colours. Not a single person in this story shows any sign of knowing about Doctor Who. Not that it would be a dealbreaker necessarily, but the fact is that the script goes out of its way to show us otherwise. Multiple people see the TARDIS and fail to relate this to any über-notorious pop culture imagery they might have seen around; no, they're just confused at the incongruous police box, just like any celebrity-playing-themselves in any mainline Doctor Who story.

What's that box doing in the studio? I'm trying to present the news!Graham Norton

This pointedly isn't quite the Graham Norton who's had David Tennant and Matt Smith on his talk show. He'd recognise the TARDIS in a heartbeat and go "what's this TARDIS prop doing here, this isn't the Doctor Who panel". But no, they go the "box" route.

Likewise the Eleventh Doctor is given an actual reason to care about getting Dermot O'Leary to the Awards Show on time; he's not just doing it because he's a BBC character and TV personalities gotta stick together, or anything like that. No: it's a "gotta preserve history" thing.

The 26th of January, 2011. It's a temporal tipping point. Millions of people going to be making vital, important decisions. And if they make just one, tiny mistake the entire universe will be destroyed.Dr Who

This isn't a meta thing, and this isn't indistinguishable from the real-world awards show. What's left — is it a spoof? No it isn't. It's a bit silly. Sure. "Invisible handcuffs". But TV stories by Moffat have had holographic clothes and invisible hair. This whole affair is pretty tame as far as the Eleventh Doctor's off-air minisode misadventures go: we've seen him trying to save Queen Elizabeth II from being sold in a pet shop after being turned into a gold fish, we've seen him "…concealing a euphonium. Guiltily. Has that even been attempted before?" in an adventure that also involved "telling Marilyn she'll have to use the biplane". And then there's the opening scenes of The Impossible Astronaut. Eleven gets up to ridiculous shenanigans in-between big TV adventures; that's just what it does. Unlike the "Jedward" thing, the stakes here are justified in meaningful DWU terms, and everything flows from there.

Then, there are two minor concerns brought up by User:SOTO which I must address. The first is that after the sketch, in the "real" awards show, Dermot rocked up in the TARDIS on the actual stage. Okay. But it's very very easy to "make an editorial decision on when the story ends": it ends at the titles and the end of the prerecorded material. Whodathunkitt. We have a very close precedent for this: the 1983 Children in Need special aired after The Five Doctors, and features what is distinctly Peter Davison arriving on the Children in Need set in the TARDIS, with some light banter treating him as having materialised directly here from the final frames of The Five Doctors. But we can and do cover Five Doctors as valid without worrying about that. Same thing here.

As for the fact that…

DWMSE 30 also tells us in the original script, there's a bit where the Doctor does a telephone mime which means "vote for me" in The X Factor before turning to the camera,User:SOTO

as they say, this was pointedly cut from the final version. Besides, quick sideways glances to the camera have happened in all kinds of episodes e.g. Heaven Sent. If we're not bothered about "A merry Christmas to all of you at home" in The Daleks' Master Plan, then in the face of all the other evidence that this is not meant to be a meta thing, I really don't think we should lose any sleep about a blink-and-you'll-miss-it glance at the camera which didn't make it into the finished product.

It is with resolution, and considerable satisfaction, that I rule Dermot and the Doctor a valid source once and for all.

Part 4: Fourth wall stuff

This was one of the most controversial things in the whole Speedround, and for good reason: "fourth wall breaks" are a very blurrily defined concepts. So I'm goingto try and disentangle the whole mess. But first, let me clarify, as I did with the crossovers, that it is not and has never been policy that a fourth-wall break is in itself a reason for invalidity; rather, it's an extension of Rule 4, a piece of circumstantial evidence about authorial intent, albeit, historically, what has been deemed very strong evidence, perhaps too strong. This is why Doctor Who TV stories get "special treatment" here without injury to T:NPOV: it is beyond doubt that the writers of The Daleks' Master Plan and Before the Flood intended them to be set in the DWU; no amount of in-story evidence could prove otherwise. Whereas things are very different for a narrative trailer or a Lockdwon webcast or even a charity minisode; those are sometimes intended to be set outside the DWU, the scenario is not in itself absurd. So it must be examined.

Now, as to the many kinds and varieties…

First there is the basic notion of talking generically to the camera/audience interaction. Treating that as in itself evidence of Rule 4-breaking has led us astray and should not stand as policy. A Message from the Doctor clearly ought to be valid, and always should have been. It's an in-universe transmission the Doctor is sending out in the middle of an adventure; the diegesis of the DWU isn't even actually being pierced here. And this applies to a lot of what OttselSpy refers to as "interactive fiction"/"audience participation". The Runaway or Attack of the Graske aren't doing any fourth-wall-breaking in the sense of acknowledging a metafictional Doctor Who/the Doctor's own fictionality; they're just framed in such a way that a nondescript "you" is kept "off-screen", inviting the viewer or player to imagine themselves in the diegetic character's shoes. But the Doctor isn't Watsonianly talking to you out of a TV show; there's just someone actually standing there in front of them whom you're standing in for, as in The Runaway which explains how "you" came to be in the TARDIS. These should be valid by default unless there are other parameters in play.[4]

Then, there are "monologues to camera". These still don't acknowledge the fiction, per se, but the character really is talking "to the camera", not to some in-universe element (whether a live audience or an in-universe camera) that we the real audience aren't allowed to observe directly. In this category we find Introduction to SJA[5], Death of the Doctor, Doctor Who and the Ambassadors of Death. These are tricky, but on the whole the thing with these is that they're valid, but not as things which actually happen. You have to think of these as similar to theatrical asides. The character non-diegetically turns to the camera and describes, from their own, in-universe perspective, their current situation and feelings. Those feelings are valid; the fact that "the Third Doctor once turned to no one at all and started monologuing about the ongoing crisis while frowning", isn't. This is similar to the current parameters of the validity of She Said, He Said, and it can also be compared to prose or audio with a first-person narrator who's not actually intended to have committed these words to paper at any specific point in-universe. Such sources document a point of view, not actual events. As a rule, these should also be valid, although it is not uncommon for things of their type to break the fourth wall in other, more concerning ways. The thing we're calling Luckily for me, I have a time machine seems to be a similar thing, and an example of one which is not a trailer. It describes the Doctor's mindset, and should be valid in that mode, but we shouldn't be saying "at one point the Eleventh Doctor literally walked through a mysterious landscape made of gears".

Now we come to the really tricky stuff: "fourth wall breaks" in the sense of actual, material acknowledgement of Doctor Who as in-universe fiction. Sometimes — and this has been a source of great confusion — this is combined with talking to the camera. The Trip of a Lifetime is not just talking "to camera", it's directly talking to you-the-viewer, and equivocating playfully between "do you want to be my companion" and "do you want to watch my show". Things like that can be valid sometimes, but when they are not in a medium like the mainline TV series, we should be mindful of potential Rule 4 concerns. I don't think Trip of a Lifetime was intended to be read as "real" events by Russell T Davies; all his efforts to curb the notion of anyone but Rose travelling with the Ninth Doctor in the EU surrounding Series 1, and we should take literally the idea that he's here offering a nondescript "you" the same chance? No. It's a meta joke about watching the show, not something that "really happens" to any degree. Regrettably I think Animal Magic is ultimately a source of this type. It was half-ad-libbed on the set of a real Doctor Who story, but that seems rather more like that clearly non-Rule-4-passing Peter Capaldi and Simon the Shy Cyberman Invite You to Breakfast with 7 Doctors being shot on the set of The Doctor Falls than anything else. I keep talking meta cartoons, but it's really like the Doctor-as-living-fictional-characters suddenly freezing the world around him to talk to th audience out of their TV screen. It's fiction, yes, and so's the Capaldi thing. But DWU fiction? No, not really, that I can see. Not at first glance.

This brings me to a wider point. There has been a lot of confusion caused by people wanting to draw a big red line between "this is set in the DWU" and "this is just the actor in costume". I think that's led both to motions for excessive invalidations and excessive validations, because as I brushed up on in earlier segments of this closing post, there is such a thing as fiction which treats the Doctor as real but is not set in the DWU. Usually this takes the form of the "meta" stories typified by It's Showtime, where the Doctor is treated as a "living fictional character" who can not only speak out of the camera, but interact with the real world; but who's aware of their own fictionality, of being a character on the BBC (as distinct from "a real person whose life is somehow also chronicled on an easter-egg in-universe show"; there's a difference). It's Showtime is set in a world where a whole cast of living fictional characters including the likes of Shrek are all real beings running around a BBC backlot, and need to somehow "perform" their stories live for the BBC Christmas programming to proceed. In no shape or form is this "Matt Smith in costume but not in-character"; it's fiction. But its world is not the world of the Doctor Who TV show any more than the world of Who Framed Roger Rabbit is the world of Dumbo. I actually think United we stand, 2m apart is quite probably meant to be "in-character"; Jodie Whittaker is not only in costume, but adopts Thirteen's body language and refers to herself as a Doctor. However, it, alongside The Naked Truth, BAFTA in the TARDIS, Introduction to the Night, Pugwash Ahoy! and the Famine Appeal, all seem to be the case of the Doctor-as-living-fictional-character, not the Doctor-as-real-being, interacting with the audience. All these things are fiction, all these things are stories, there's no need for scare-quotes. It's just not clear they're stories about a "real" Doctor.

(I think this is a better framing than "Who in the DWU" vs. "Doctor in the real world", in part for the reasons I outlined earlier where an excessive distinction between "the real world" and "the DWU" in any respect other than the level of fictionality of the Doctor themself is misleading about the nature of the Earth in Doctor Who. Doctor Who takes place in the world outside your door, plus sci-fi; not in a constructed sci-fi world that happens to have a planet called Earth with a lot of broad similarities to ours.)

As User:NoNotTheMemes wittily put it with regards to The Naked Truth:

The Doctor's costume being sold for charity only makes sense in terms of the real-world fact of it being a costume, you know? It's not that the actual Time Lord couldn't get up to shenanigans with hologram clothes and offer his clothes to charity but who'd actually let that be a segment on the actual in-universe BBC?User:NoNotTheMemes

This is not a blanket ban on stories where the Doctor (or any other character) acknowledges their own fictionality to some degree. It's all about context. When an episode of the TV show does it, it goes without saying that it's not evidence intent that the TV show doesn't count as part of its own universe. When Paul Magrs does it, he's Paul Magrs. When the Fourth Doctor does it, we should at least pause and think about what it means. Still, a presumption of invalidity for some fourth-wall-breakers of this type, in the absence of an authorial-intent quote to defuse the worry, is not unreasonable. It is not objectionable to create something like The Naked Truth as invalid, and place the burden of proof on users wanting to argue otherwise. (Although this is not an obligation.)

Part 5: Yule Logs

Pretty clear consensus: the Whittaker Logs (but not the Capaldi ones) were clearly depictions of in-universe stuff, and don't break the fourth wall or nuthink'. They were invalidated because they wren't precisely stories, if I recall correctly; which I never really agreed with, but as many people have pointed out, the question is now moot. They are at any rate clearly fiction, and clearly DWU fiction. Unless whoever made them comes forward and establishes otherwise, sure, they count.

Part 6: Chute!

Another short one with clear consensus: it's valid. This is a scripted, non-fourth-wall-breaking crossover, which could probably have been lumped into the "crossover shenanigans" discussion above. The story seems to carefully route around acknowledging SJA's in-universe fictionality, in a way rather similar to the famous gag in Remembrance of the Daleks — stopping just short of confronting the characters with a SJA VHS tape. It's a fourth-wall gag, but a gag which relies on the fact that there is a fourth wall to be broken, and that they hammer comes within inches of the wall in question, but then misses.

A lot of Ottsel's OP was given over to a discussion of the practicalities. He is correct that as per the precedent set by anything from The Incomplete Death's Head to The Dalek Tapes to Tales from the TARDIS, the in-universe clips should be covered as part of the story — as in-universe clips, of course. This no more makes Potter Puppet Pals valid than the TV Movie makes Frankenstein valid.[6] There is no "slippery slope" situation here, not only because this is rare (as Ottsel notes), but because we've done it before. It's accepted procedure.

Part 7: Doctor Who at the Proms

I feel like dwelling on this too much would mean repeating myself from the Dermot and the Doctor segment. What we have here are relics of the old notion that we can't easily separate the in-universe bits from the out-of-universe bits when the same "overall thing" packages both. But anyone can see that the skits in Proms shows are their own embedded things, above and beyond the thing where some monster stunt performers might stomp around during some of the performances, silent and contextless.

We no longer have a problem with Archive - A History of the Cyber Race. We no longer have a problem with The History of the Doctor or (as of today) with Dermot and the Doctor. Music of the Spheres has been valid from the start. The minisodes embedded within the Proms shows should be considered their own things, given their own pages, and validated, because… that's what they are. Truth is, this entire line of argument has always puzzled me because you know what else is a mixture of BTS bits, DWU fiction bits, and fiction-but-not-Rule-4-passing bits? Any given issue of DWM.

As our anonymous contributor noted towards the end of the discussion, there is simply no evidence that the 2013 Doctor Who Proms Film (as the credits prosasically call it; but hey, it beats Doctor Who (TV story)) wasn't intended to pass Rule 4. It certainly doesn't break the fourth wall.

As is becoming traditional, I am also having to litigate a hypothetical R4BP case for a story which is in fact being validated through regular Rule 4. User:Najawin, once again, has concerns. But these concerns are the same ones he espoused regarding Step Into the 80's!, as he explicitly acknowledges; so I can but direct him to my ruling at Tardis:Temporary forums/Archive/Trailers#A semi-digression on Rule 4 by Proxy and Rule 4. T:BOUND applies; if by his own admission the cases are equivalent, then the Ticker in Dark Water should be considered potential R4BP evidence, because it is current policy that if necessary, the Prime Computer in Christmas on a Rational Planet would be valid R4BP evidence if the shorts weren't already valid on their own terms. I think it's trivial[7] that the Ticker in Dark Water now belongs in the ==Continuity== section of that page, and that fulfills the criterion I outlined there. Stop trying to probe the deepest recesses of Moffat's subconscious, people! I have explained some fairly clear standards that side-step the issue!

Part 8: Disney Time

Another one which is basically just an extension of the fourth-wall ones. Here we have an example of a story which, prima facie, flits with the "meta-Doctor" framing. It's certainly not "Tom Baker in costume" — the opening and closing segments would put such a weird take to rest. And he's hosting a TV show, not just abstractly talking to the screen; so in that sense it's an "in-universe transmission" sort of thing, not a Trip of a Lifetime affair. But there are some Rule 4 concerns on the basis of the Doctor casually hosting a TV show like this, as a celebrity. This is a good example of something which probably shouldn't be valid by default. It would set the kind of dangerous precedent that User:NoNotTheMemes is worried about elsewhere in the thread. A lot of things of this basic "shape" were most likely not intended to fit on any real level with the DWU even if they feature the Doctor rather than the actor.

But I think User:OttselSpy25 does a good job of arguing that this story about the Doctor is very much a story about the Doctor, so to speak. Multiple people in the comments were impressed with the attention to continuity of putting Baker back in his old costume to make sure this fed properly into Terror of the Zygons, and the way it "restored the cliffhanger" of Revenge of the Cybermen in much the same way as Time Crash. You wouldn't catch It's Showtime doing a thing like that. And as for his status as a "celebrity" who can be invited to hold a programme like Disney Time, Ottsel makes a good case that it was not intended to scan as a "breach o the rule" for the tiny tots watching at home. The Fourth Doctor grins at the camera, he writes books, he writes letters to Doctor Who Weekly; of course he might host a TV show. Notably enough, Doctor Who is still treated as "real events" here, not some sort of meta-fiction that the meta-Doctor acts in; hence the cliffhanger to Terror of the Zygons.

This is a tricky case. It's one that warranted discussion. But there is sufficient evidence here for a consensus to enshrine that as near as we could tell, or default assumption should be that this was intended to "count" as much as any other non-mainline-TV-series material of the era, despite the flirting with the fourth wall. So it's valid. File it alongside your merry Christmases and your Beethovens if you must.

I am personally unsure about the idea of using screenshots from other releases of the clips shown in the original broadcast. At least, we should be careful about cropping, and not show any margins which the 4:3 broadcast would have cutout. But the consensus seemed to be in favour of the suggestion, so fine. Let's give it a try. Far be it from me to arbitrarily rule against the obvious consensus just because I don't like it!

(As concerns whether all the cast and crew of the clips will need pages — I defer to precedent here, whatever it may be, which seems to be that credited performers get pages, and non-credited ones do not.[8])

Part 9: Doctor Who and the Fangs of Time

Hello again, meta-Doctor! This is… such a clear example of that. Ottsel is right that the original thread wasn't well-equipped to discuss this story properly, but the notion which I think best explains it in modern terms is not Doctor Who (in-universe) — it's "the Doctor as a magic-realist Roger Rabbit-esque living-fictional-character", as seen in It's Showtime, etc. in various guises and perumutations. The notion that it's an in-universe-Doctor-Who thing, or a case of the N-Space Doctor visiting a meta-fiction universe, flounders in the face of the bit where Sean, standing right in front of the apparently-real Doctor, talks about him having been "made up" by other people.

But that does not mean that our only avenue is saying that the Doctor's presence is just a metaphor. It's a metaphor on some level, yes. But I think it's also, perhaps more importantly, magic realism. This is a story about a grown-up Doctor Who fan meeting his old fictional friend, Dr Who. Not imagining that he's meeting him; somehow, impossibly, genuinely meeting the fictional character, who's aware that he's a fictional character. Just because the story can be read in other ways doesn't mean it should be, and from the evidence of the thread and the story itself I think we'd be doing it a disservice by construing it as somthing else than the comic poetry that it wants to be.

Ottsel argues that…

…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?"User:OttselSpy25

But as before, slippery slopes are only slippery if we're lazy about discussing things on a case-by-case basis. If the Speedrounds have a great virtue, it's letting us make bespoke decisions for all the little oddities like this, without doing anything so rash as "altering policy" on a broad level in a way that could have unintended side-effect. We can just reaffirm this specific story's invalidity here — not as a parody or a "metaphorical autobiography", just as a meta tale whose universe is not, as near as we can tell, the DWU — without invalidating things we don't want to invalidate!

(And as to the why, put simply, it's again about context. Paul Magrs is always a strange magic-realist. It's the same Iris Wildthyme in Bafflement and Devotion and in The Scarlet Empress, and anyone who follows the Iris franchise will testify as much. The meta stuff is a recurring part of how Magrs depicts the DWU as working in general. If such context xisted for Sean Longcroft, this might be a very different matter.)

This is one of those which maybe didn't see as much discussion as they could have done, so if someone has more to say and wants to relitigate it as its own thread — fine. But as far as what came out in this thread, I just don't think there's evidence or a consensus to validate this.

Part 10: Death's Head

I think there is a resounding argument, and a clear consensus, that Keepsake's vulture should henceforth be properly considered a "non-BBC-owned DWU concept" whose appearance in something is grounds for coverage. It is unfortunate that we do not have access to the original thread on this topic, but as I was there, I have some recollection of it; and (as someone who hadn't read the story at that time) I am very surprised by what OttselSpy describes here, and what I found upon tracking down The Body in Question for myself. The old thread dismissed the vulture as, in the end, "basically just a prop".

Never mind that I don't think character vs. prop is the right framing here (we'd cover a licensed appearance of Jack Harkness's vortex manipulator, wouldn't we?), it is now very apparent that that was wrong. It's not the ordinary vulture I'd imagined, to start with, but some kind of sci-fi beastie as illustrated by Ottsel. But also, this vulture's an actual member of the recurring cast; silent, yes, but with personality, vying with Spratt for the job of Death's Head Official Sidekick as a recurring gag. And, of course, that makes the two fo them joint sidekicks. Any story featuring Death's Head and the vulture has a direct narrative connection to Keepsake via Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling!.

I think it is proven beyond doubt that The Body in Question should be covered. As Ottsel said:

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.User:OttselSpy25

But I will go further and extend the same ruling to Synchronicity II (the actual title of the story in Revolutionary War: Death's Head II — that's the name of the publication) and to the irritatingly-named The Bo(d)y in Question (the actual title of the four-part story in the 2019 Death's Head miniseries). Yes, these are minor appearances. But as I just restated, going out of your way to show Keepsake's Vulture in Death's Head past is going out of your way to reference the character's origins being steeped in the DWU. It's like whenever Iris Wildthyme stories go back to Hyspero. It's going out of its way to say "this isn't just the preexisting Magrs-owned Iris we're dealing with here, this is the Iris who adventured with the Eighth Doctor in The Scarlet Empress". And beyond that, as Ottsel said, covering every subsequent licensed appearance of characters who debut in Who stories is…

…the basic fundamentals of what we are supposed to cover according to T:VS.User:OttselSpy25

It doesn't matter if the appearance is minor. There's a slippery slope for you. In the absence of negative evidence I really cannot justify picking and choosing which appearances of this DWM character we go on to cover based on whether they're "minor" or not. Perhaps I would be more hesitant if we had a dozen random Avengers stories to deal with, but both of these stories are Death's-Head-focused, very much steeped in the continuity of stories we already do cover-slash-will now cover such as Body in Question and Incomplete Death's head. And there's only two of them. Let's cut the Gordian knot.

That being said, all this Death's Head stuff remains cases of crossovers moreso than conventional spin-offs, and that has implications for sanity. It is not obvious to me that if there's some recurring character who debuts in Synchronicity II or Bo(d)y, we should by default continue chasing down all of their appearances and treating them as valid-by-default. Let's not put the Marvel Wiki out of a job here. It's conceivable that such a character would warrant coverage, but I am hereby declaring that this would at least need a thread, and it would require a solid argument that the second-order-crossover-spin-off-thing is still very much intended to be read with the old 1980s Who crossovers in mind.

Indeed, I am rejecting the notion that we should cover Kangs of the Memories!! Or Guess Who's Coming To Dinner! because it "depicts Death's Head's theft of the time-cycle that he has in Priceless!". I am very sorry but this continuity here is the wrong way around to be anything of use to us. This would be like saying that we should cover Encounter at Farpoint because it's where Jean-Luc Picard assumes command of the USS Enterprise as he is seen doing in Assimilation². It's perhaps more promising that it "references the events" of Clobberin' Time!, now a story we cover in earnest; but even so, a verbal reference to crossover events isn't much to go on. Now, if the story also had the Vulture in it, or equivalent, then such a reference would help ground it in the explicit continuity of the prior DWU crossovers — but in itself I'm just not sure it's solid enough. If a later Star Trek comic ever referenced the Cybermen-Borg alliance in passing, without naming the Cybermen, I'm not sure we'd want to cover the whole thing just over that small reference. Generally speaking, to qualify for "non-BBC-owned DWU concept" status, something has to be a distinct enough thing that we have, you know, a page about that thing!

…I keep making Star Trek comparisons, but I think a lot of frustration here comes from the fact that there is some sentiment that we should in fact treat Death's Head like Iris Wildthyme: a one-two-of-a-kind "honourary" DWU character, who may have debuted outside the DWU but became so defined by it that we should just make a special decision to bend T:VS, and go the whole hog to cover all his appearances without trying to hide behind vultures and namedrops.

[Kangs for the Memories!] seems like something which would be fine to simply note, but also seems like it could be of utility simply in giving a full picture.User:TheChampionOfTime

And I am, to be sure, sympathetic to this position. Increasingly sympathetic, the more of this tangled web we unravel. But that is much too broad and much too unique a proposal to be handled in a Speedround like this. The Speedround was good for correcting the application of current policy, as in the case of these three further appearances by the vulture. But I really don't think such an afterthought of a discussion should be held in such a format — nor do I think th epeople who brought it up meant for it to be resolved here.

Besides, I have long felt that if we extend the Iris precedent to other cases, there are several other stories we may want to look at before Death's Head. (For just one example, we cover 95% of the Cyberon series as it is. For another, this seems like the perfect, long-delayed resolution to Talk:Bibliophage (short story).)

So if we revisit this particular question, that should be as its own, non-Speedround thread.

As always, thanks, everyone! Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 18:48, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Faced with the prospect of closing the darn thing in a satisfactory manner to all parties, I am rather inclined to agree. And weep.
  2. ↑ User:Najawin calls me out, I think in hindsight fairly, on this comparison not taking into account that Forum:The original inclusion debates grew organically over a very long period; so it was quite a different animal from nine topics proposed at once and discussed in parallel within a bounded three-week time-span. He's quite right and I should have thought about this more. Apologies.
  3. ↑ Note that I mean trivial in the vernacular sense, not the epistemological sense Najawin is fond of employing.
  4. ↑ After some reflection I think this includes Time Is Everything; the print tie-ins explicitly treat the situation as "the Doctor has been hired to make commercials for Superannuation", so he's genuinely filming commercials in the TV shorts, not just generically talking to camera. And he is introduced there in terms of "he's a real live time-traveller," not "you know him from beloved show Doctor Who", so there isn't really a fourth-wall problem at all. If there are Rule 4 concerns they lie elsewhere, and the presumption should be validity unless prove otherwise, as with everything else.
  5. ↑ Although this one is not hereby ruled valid because I'm having doubts about how in-character the actors even are. I think this one bears discussing further even if we grant that a monologue-to-camera can be valid in principle.
  6. ↑ Note that, unlike the somewhat curious way we have given the individual stories within TIDH their own pages, we should here go with the ordinary procedure of merely covering them as part of the whole. Any pages about the clips qua clips would have to be in-universe ones. There is no cause for a "valid"-but-as-in-universe-fiction [[The Mysterious Ticking Noise (TV story)]], that would be all kinds of confusing.
  7. ↑ In the Najawin sense!
  8. ↑ If this causes any issues, they can be discussed at Talk:Disney Time (TV story).
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