Forum:More canon questions

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I'm not trying to re-raise the "what should be canon" discussion, and I'm taking the "video games are secondary" from the other thread as "Word of God".

The issue here is that we now have a pretty solid policy, but it's not accurately described anywhere.

Tardis:Canon policy attempts to give a complete list of what counts as a primary resource, but it's nowhere near complete. For example, Short Trips, the Torchwood novels, and the IDW comics aren't mentioned. Also, it says that, e.g., _all_ BF audio dramas are primary resources, which would include Unbound and even completely non-Whoniverse stories (not that they have any, but BBV has non-Whoniverse videos).

Trying to complete this list isn't just a matter of adding more things. For example, it seems pretty clear that Decalogs 1-3 are valid, but what about Decalog 5?

It also includes "Doctor Who television stories", which links to a list that includes Graske and Spheres--and, even worse, A Fix with Sontarans, Search Out Space, Dimensions in Time, and The Curse of Fatal Death.

The Secondary Resources section has similar problems. For example, it gives a complete list of reference books, leaving out a large number of reference books that are of presumably similar status.

Meanwhile, the whole idea of Secondary Resources is a bit unclear. All that's said is that they "should not be the only resource of an article". So can they be the only resource for a fact within an article?

Also, there's generally a big difference between the kind of information in a Target novelisation or a game like City of the Daleks which is intended to be in-universe (even if we decide maybe it isn't) vs. the Cushing movies or something like Unbound or the later Iris books which are intended to be in another universe vs. a reference book which is intended to be out-of-universe.

In fact, the way things are written, we should have in-universe articles about "other universes", explicitly including things like the Cushing movies and Fatal Death, but there's nothing that can possibly count as primary resources for them.

Novelisations have a specific rule that where they contradict the TV story, they're apocryphal. Does this also apply to other secondary resources?

Also, is the contradiction rule really sufficient? If DWM hadn't contradicted the "Yrcanos as a wrestler" epilogue for Mindwarp, would we really have accepted that story as non-apocryphal?

Given the distinction between primary and secondary resources, describing the reference books with the Wikipedia jargon "primary sources" is potentially very misleading (especially as a justification for why they're secondary resources). --Falcotron 12:07, June 13, 2010 (UTC)

It does need some...updating and re-defining, other parts of the wiki have re-defined things like Curse of the Fatal Death etc, but the Canon policy has been somewhat neglected. I think we've moved beyond Wikipedia style terminology (that and the page's layout is just one of the many left-overs from when this wiki was first formed).

I think we may need to merge some bits of the Secondary Resources section into Tardis:Resources and restructure things a bit.

The Unbound audios are canon, but within their own universe, the same goes for the 1960s Dalek movies and other things, so we should definitely define how those fit in.

I'm still uncertain about the validity of novelisations (I rather dislike having terms like 'possibly apocryphal account' used in articles when applying info from novelisations).

But I think we really need to settle if we should use the info or not (for example the first name of a lot of secondary/minor characters is revealed in the novelisations, but we don't use that name individuals articles (often instead disambigging them, but a note is often added that their first/last name is listed in the novelisations).

The policy regarding novelisations as it stands is a little...messy. 'Until it contradicts the TV story' (I know I wrote it!), but it was a concession to what was discussed on the Tardis Talk:Canon policy#Novelisations. The last comments made by 23skidoo concerning the novelisations' effects on continuity are valid (which is mostly why it has the statement 'until it contradicts the TV story'). I'd like to have a policy that can be applied right across the wiki which isn't so vague with regards to how this information is used. --Tangerineduel 14:07, June 15, 2010 (UTC)

What? Since when are the 1960s movies "canon, but within their own universe"? I've never heard them described like that before. How can they possibly be canon? They're non-canon, full-stop.

As for novelisations, surely they are canon so long as they don't contradict the televised episode. I mean, if a novel gives you the full name of the character, that's not "apocryphal" in any way. If a novel gives you a character that didn't appear on TV, that's also not apocryphal. It's easy enough to assume that the TV record was simply not complete. I would disagree with any move to shunt them, in their entirety, to a "secondary" or "invalid" status. They are primary sources, as far as I'm concerned, up to the point where they absolutely, undeniably contradict other sources. The Mindwarp example given on the Talk page cited above is an interesting one, as it's not necessarily "incorrect". There are in fact many accounts of what happened to Peri after Mindwarp, and none of them are particularly "better" than others. It's simply that there are "varying" accounts, and all of them deserve an airing on her page. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 18:49, June 17, 2010 (UTC)