Talk:Death Is the Only Answer (TV story)

Canonicity

This episode shouldn't bed considered canon. User:Doctorpenguin 08:00, October 2, 2011 (UTC)

Normally people give evidence for their claims...--Skittles the hog - talk 08:09, October 2, 2011 (UTC)

The fact that a 20th century physicist was capable of creating a green ooze that was able to turn him into an ood (complete with translator orb), only to turn back to normal by stepping through a "magic gateway" pretty much classes this story as non-canon, or at most a dream (a la Dimensions in Time/Search Out Space). This isn't even mentioning the truly cringeworthy lines. TemporalSpleen ^{talk to me} 08:49, October 2, 2011 (UTC)

It's by no means the goofiest thing a human scientist has ever been able to accomplish in Doctor Who. Maybe the ooze is alien in origin and Einstein found it. Maybe it reacted with the time bridge created by the TARDIS accident and his own time machine in some way. But if mildly difficult and underexplained scifi plot points were on their own enough to de-canonise a Doctor Who story, we'd lose at least half of them. — Rob T Firefly - Δ∇ - 17:21, October 2, 2011 (UTC)

Most of the dialogue's okay, but the plot doesn't make any sense at all. Still, if we decided that episodes can be declared non canon because there plots don't make sense, then we'd lose, Ghost Light, The Curse of Fenric, and several other episodes. The only possible reason to declare this non canon would be that it was written by a group of children. Does anybody know if Moffat or the BBC considers this canon, because that is what really matters.Icecreamdif ^{talk to me} 20:44, October 2, 2011 (UTC)

I don't know about the BBC, but Moffat is the one who said that "it's impossible for a show about a dimension-hopping time traveller to have a canon".--MrThermomanPreacher ^{talk to me} 21:08, October 2, 2011 (UTC)

Every bit of BBC publicity about this refers to it as though it's part of the series. It's a "one-off mini episode of Doctor Who," a "bonus episode," a "spin-off," a "Doctor Who mini-adventure," and such [1][2][3] none of which implies the BBC intend for it to be taken as anything but part of Doctor Who. It certainly seems to be within the remit of Tardis:Canon policy, which includes "All Doctor Who television stories;" it's a Doctor Who story, it was broadcast on television, and it's not a The Curse of Fatal Death-type overt spoof or an obvious out-of-universe affair like A Fix with Sontarans. Indeed, there's precedent for winners of childrens' contests being every bit as official as anything else; Susannah Leah's Junk TARDIS console design was featured in the relevant episode and Confidential and even made into a licenced toy. — Rob T Firefly - Δ∇ - 21:36, October 2, 2011 (UTC)

That makes sense. It's not like it really matters whether it canon or not anyway. If it is, then we have to modify the Ood and Einstein pages, and maybe a few others, but the mini-episode doesn't exactly impact the entire show. There isn't really any good reason not to consider it canon, except that it isn't very good.Icecreamdif ^{talk to me} 04:01, October 3, 2011 (UTC)

Timeline

We don't know enough to place this in a specific point in the timeline. The current "Timeline" section in this article represents the best guesses with all the available data, but we can't really pin it down to when it definitely occurs for the Doctor. — Rob T Firefly - Δ∇ - 17:26, October 2, 2011 (UTC)