Forum:A Fix with Sontarans: Fixing Fix's Validity

Index → Inclusion debates → A Fix with Sontarans: Fixing Fix's Validity

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If this thread's title doesn't specify it's spoilery, don't bring any up.

Opening Post

Savile?

Or Sontarans?

Simple one this: we need to validate the original 1985 version of A Fix with Sontarans. There is a pressing reason and a few procedural reasons. I'll start with the latter.

After the fourth wall amendment to T:VS, fourth wall breaks are clarified as, in of themselves, not sufficient evidence to invalidate sources (although things like the Doctor actually just being the actor in costume or a meta-fictional living fictional character can be strong evidence against validity). However, despite this, no word about A Fix with Sontarans's (in)validity was given, and it has remained invalid despite not really falling into any of the types of fourth wall breaks which may be evidence that its rule four-ness is in question.

In fact, I'd argue despite its rule four break, it is overwhelmingly meant to be set in the DWU, because Gareth Jenkins just asked to meet Colin Baker, but instead an entirely new episode was written.

Historically, this story has been called non-canonical, given it has Gareth's knowledge of how the TARDIS operates being reliant on Doctor Who existing in-universe and the ending being all fourth wall mushy. It was primarily discussed in Forum:Is A Fix With Sontarans Canon?, which I think we can all agree is one of those old forum threads that have very little to do with the modern T:VS so require a long-due re-evaluation. In said thread, it was apparently it was hard fact that Doctor Who does not exist in-universe. Um, no? That's certainly not correct! Also discussed was the ending, which is the main issue.

In fact, it is truly the elephant in the room. It is messy. Undeniably so. It has Jimmy Savile inexplicably enter the TARDIS and then the episode just kinda melts into non-fiction where Savile gives Gareth a medal and a meson gun. Arguably, this isn't even a fourth wall break, as at no point does any character turn to the camera and say "you're watching A Fix with Sontarans!", it's in-universe-ness fades, which is the issue. Six and Tegan don't really break character however, although they also don't really question the inexplicable appearance of Savile either. However, I think it should be said that all of this plausibly could take place in-universe? It would be very strange, but not impossible.

So what we're faced with is a very messy ending that dissolved from otherwise a pretty conventional minisode. It doesn't break T:VS, so even by its own merits it should be valid. (And for the record, Jimmy Savile being in it is not a remotely justifiable reason for its invalidity. We're not gonna invalidate The Mind of Evil for having the Third Doctor being friends with Mao Tse-Tung or invalidate the entirety of Series 1 and 2 because of John Barrowman and Noel Clarke!) It wouldn't even be impossible to just say "according to one account, the Sixth Doctor presented Gareth Jenkins with the Jim'll Fix It medal after Jimmy Savile presented it to him to be placed on Gareth's bonce."

Furthermore, if this isn't good enough reason to validate A Fix with Sontarans, then there is the rule-four-by-proxy angle to validate the minisode from. Fixing a Hole was a short story printed in Short Trips: Past Tense, which serves as a direct sequel to AFwS. Heck, even the title of this story is pun about fixing A Fix with Sontarans's plot holes; quite ingenius if I say so myself. In this short story — which is mostly a character piece — it follows Tegan and Six after Gareth has been returned to Earth. Interestingly, unlike other cases of stories like First Frontier bringing more infamous stories like Dimensions in Time "into continuity" by recontexualising the latter's events (e.g. "it was all a dream"), Fixing a Hole just seems to... ignore the ending of A Fix with Sontarans. No mention of Savile or Jim'll Fix It is ever made, which is contrasted by the rest of AFwS being recapped. Is this enough evidence for rule-four-by-proxy? I'd say so, even if it doesn't provide a satisfying way for us to Wikify the ending of AFwS, which is something I don't believe is necessary for the rule-four-by-proxy approach.

As a minor tangent, the name "meson gun" seemed to have originated from AFwS despite the prop being seen in The Two Doctors, and the novel Lords of the Storm has the Sontarans use a meson cannon, so this may be a very minor reference to AFwS by showing Sontarans use different types of meson weaponry. Although, it wouldn't be unprecedent for the name "meson gun" to have originated in an early draft of TTD's script.

The final reason for AFwS's validity is the pressing one, and also more of a technical one. When Doctor Who: The Collection — Season 22 was released not too long ago, a new version of A Fix with Sontarans was released, with all of the bits with Savile removed for obvious reasons. (Incidentally, this actually is more in continuity with Fixing a Hole than the original...) Now, I created a new, separate page for this recut given that it, in its new form, has absolutely zero reason to be invalid. In passes T:VS with flying colours. To justify this, I treated it like everything in Category:DVD adaptations of television stories, but since then I seem to recall that there have been talk pages (can't remember which) that cite a forum thread that sought to merge these pages into their original broadcast cuts? I dunno the specifics, although I can see the rationale. With the 2022 AFwS, a lot of new OOU info is exclusive to the new page when it would be better served to be covered on one page, and as for in-universe info, the only difference is the ending which can be covered in subsections of the plot summary. It is not even unprecedented for there to exist multiple versions of the same story, such as many of the comics in Category:Stories with unknown or disputed Doctors, e.g. Doomcloud, which much more substantially has either the Third or Fourth Doctor depending on the reprint. Now, it would be simple to just put {{merge}} on A Fix with Sontarans (home video) and have it quickly merged into A Fix with Sontarans (TV story)... if it wasn't for the original cut continuing to be invalid. I don't think it is possible under our current rules to have a source page be both invalid and valid, depending on the version, but at the same time the two pages only exist so one can be valid and is not good for actual coverage of the sources.

So the simple solution? Validate the 1985 version and just have to deal with "according to one account Jimmy Savile entered the TARDIS and gave Gareth Jenkins a medal and the meson gun prop". Not too complicated, is it? If the pages are merged, I do feel it is necessary to keep A Fix with Sontarans (home video) as a redirect for the occasions we want to specifically cite the 2022 recut, as well as allowing "(HOMEVID: A Fix with Sontarans)" to be used alongside "(TV: A Fix with Sontarans)" as co-existing citations. This probably will be even easier to do given the developments at Forum:Cite source, a new citation template!

Oh, and I also created User:Epsilon the Eternal/A Fix with Sontarans to demonstrate what the merge article would look like. I am proud of it, I must admit.

The other solution to the validity of the 1985 version of A Fix with Sontarans is to invalidate the 2022 cut, which I feel is wholly unideal and would result in an unfair invalidation of a source despite it passing T:VS and would also impact a lot of valid pages which cite the 2022 cut, such as Tenth Sontaran Battle Fleet, as the 2022 cut seems to actually conflate the Tenth Sontaran Battle Brigade from AFwS and the Tenth Sontaran Battle Fleet from The Sontaran Stratagem.

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

17:16, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

Yes, there seems to be no reason not to validate the original Fix With Sontarans, much as I detest Saville. The r4 argument doesn't really convince me, but in lieu of Fixing a Hole, I think this ought to be valid. Aquanafrahudy 📢 17:33, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

To clarify, Forum:Is A Fix With Sontarans Canon? seems to be one of those threads that directly impacted the creation of T:VS (albeit one of the later ones). While it's not up to today's standards, well, neither would threads using the term "validity" in 2013 be. It's not as disconnected from T:VS as you might think. Najawin ☎ 18:44, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Of course; I said it deserves re-evaluation, not that the arguments — when the bits about canonicity are ignored — are without merit. I did address the issues regarding Doctor Who existing in-universe and the ending in my OP.

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

19:00, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

It certainly deserves re-evaluation. But not because

[it] is one of those old forum threads that [has] very little to do with the modern T:VS

It has quite a lot to do with it! This was the era where "canon" basically meant "valid".

I'm unsure about R4, but unsure against as well. As for R4bp:

Fixing a Hole just seems to... ignore the ending of A Fix with Sontarans

I mean, my standards for "continuity" are stricter than Scrooge's, but I'd need to understand this. Do they just fail to bring it up, or are they purposefully ignoring the ending? If it's the latter I think you have an issue. (But stay tuned! There's going to be a thread on why R4bp actually means Fixing a Hole should be invalid. ;P)

since then I seem to recall that there have been talk pages (can't remember which) that cite a forum thread that sought to merge these pages into their original broadcast cuts?

Uggggggghhhhh. I'll go looking in the archives later. Do you have any hints on what terms I might want to start with? Najawin ☎ 19:16, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure if the lack of mention of Savile is deliberate or not, but I assume given the story exists to make the 1985 AFwS fit into continuity, it was deliberate. But I'm not sure why this story retconning part of AFwS is less of a instance of continuity than it saying it was in a dream? The story went out of its way to explain why Tegan was in an air hostess uniform and was written in a very "taking itself seriously" sort of way.

Given all this, I do strongly reject that FaH should be invalid, as it is much of a Short Trip as any other. it wasn't even printed in Short Trips and Side Steps, it was printed in one of the Big Finish anthologies, whose theme was all about the Doctor's companions.

It may ignore the ending of AFwS, but it is still very much a serious sequel to AFwS, as it mentions everything else in the story. It justs retcons the ending.

As for the terms to look for, I think the main point of discussion was The Five Doctors Special Edition (home video), so searching for "the five doctors" should work.

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

19:32, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

I mean, if you're deliberately ignoring parts of a story to make it work I'm not entirely sure I'd call it "bringing it into continuity", whereas saying "it all happened, as a dream", would be. But my view on this is more conservative than others.

(As for FaH potentially being invalid, that's a completely different line of argument and far outside the bounds of this thread. Suffice it to say that it's not because of properties of FaH and AFwS in particular. I plan on a truly massive thread going over this, so just stay tuned.) Najawin ☎ 19:44, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Retconning parts of a story so it fits into continuity... I mean, that is literally a form of continuity as "retcon" is just short for "retroactive continuity". Ignoring a previously established part of a story is just one of many forms of a retcon, but it still involves continuity; we can't pick and choose what sort of continuity is continuity enough to say something is in continuity!

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

19:59, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

@Najawin: I don't know if your purported line or argument is akin to the thing we previously exchanged about on my talk page — but either way, it seems to me to be unshakably clear that if there is some error in the wording of R4BP (or any other policy) which would seem to point to Fixing a Hole coming out invalid, then the error is in the policy and it should be corrected while leaving Fixing a Hole's validity untouched. Especially if it's some systemic issue affecting more stories than just the Fixes, as you imply.

But prima facie I doubt such an error actually exists (unless, again, you mean the "different standards of evidence" thing, but that's not an error; you just personally think it's untidy). But certainly I do not see by what stretch of the imagination R4BP as it stands could have any bearing on Fixing a Hole, being that R4BP is a policy which applies exclusively to stories which appear to fail garden-variety Rule 4, whereas Fixing a Hole is a story which — as far as we know — passes Rule 4 the regular way, that being the entire basis for its original validation. (If you believe FaH doesn't pass regular Rule 4 on its own merits, contra the findings of the old "Sequels to invalid stories" thread, that's all very well but would then be true with or without R4BP.)

If that wider OP is going to take some time yet, I would appreciate your outlining what sort of rationale you're talking about here, or else avoid muddying the waters of what R4BP is about in the minds of casual readers of this thread, because again, short of a very, very clever loophole that's completely eluded me, I do not see how it could possibly have any bearing whatsoever on Fixing a Hole. And I wrote it. (Which within some legal theories would be enough to say that R4BP "doesn't" as a matter of fact mean that, though I'm too much of a Barthesian in lit-crit to entirely put myself behind such a line of argument.) Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 20:01, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

I've thought about this topic myself, and my personal opinion has always been that as soon as Jimmy walks on set, that is the equivalent of cast members taking a bow at the end of the production. I would personally call it part of the OOU credits - not impacting the actual content before it.

But moreover, I would also like to say that we as a wiki should have some process for when one story is released numerous times and only one version or another is valid. It should not be an acceptable standard that we have to have two pages on a story just to make sure everything is separated, it's silly.

As per Najawin's supposed upcoming forum calling Fixing a Hole invalid, I'm going to guess this will be some retroactive reading of my old Thread about sequels to invalid sources not themselves being invalid and especially not in cases where the invalid stories in question fail something other than Rule 4, wherein it was decided that one can not say "Dimensions in Time (supposedly) fails Rule 2, thus a Dimensions in Time sequel must fail Rule 4."

In the closing post, User:SOTO made a passing comment that "a story's relationship to another story does not matter to if that story is valid." Najawin has hinted in the past that he views this to be some massive loophole that unwinds the entire concept of Rule 4 By Proxy - which I think ignores the fundamental fact that SOTO is, currently, still active and in-fact acts as the site's main bureaucrat, calling upon this as evidence seems weird when they were fully active in January. But in this forum, Najawin seems to be implying that he believes in a rubber-band effect, as if Rule 4 by Proxy has unwound this ruling and thus implies the existence of Invalid by Proxy? If so I think this relevant to discuss since it seems to have an immediate bearing on if A Fix With Sontarans is valid or not, and I personally do not agree with this as a conclusion.

I have said this before and I will say it again - the current site policy as envisioned by the editors and forum-users has more weight and precedence than any older rulings which are barely unarchived and heavily difficult to find in the first place. A forum from 2017 can not and should not be used to overrule a forum from something like six months ago. This is the very foundation of now only the New forums but also T:BOUND. OS25🤙☎️ 20:14, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Surely we can, given that the continuity in question is referring to our wiki notion of continuity, and R4bp is a wiki rule. Remember what the criteria for R4bp is. A story that 'seeks to "bring [invalid stories] into continuity" in one way or another'. Does this happen here if it's deliberately ignoring the ending? I'm unsure.

Scrooge, I very much wanted to leave a teaser and move on, it's very much outside the scope of this discussion. If you prefer the phrasing "the reasoning behind R4bp as enshrined in the thread discussing it and in T:VS entails X" rather than "R4bp entails X" I'm fine with accepting this. But I fundamentally see no daylight, as R4bp is the rule as expressed at T:VS.

I fundamentally disagree with OS25's view of past arguments, and the thread I'm envisioning will be much more in depth, as it will touch on every area that I think R4bp corrodes the rest of our rules, but that will be part of it. I don't think it's necessary for discussion in this thread, as in this thread T:BOUND applies and R4bp is the law of the land. Najawin ☎ 20:17, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

As someone who has read Fixing a Hole and started the original debate about it, from my memory the short story does not, in fact, "ignore the ending," it just doesn't mention the ending. There's a difference.

You're allowed to disagree with me about the present having more weight than the past, but I just think precedent is on my side. Context is important but context does not overrule community. OS25🤙☎️ 20:20, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Although I reckon that the ending was ignored, that doesn't mean that the whole of A Fix with Sontarans is out of continuity with Fixing a Hole — that makes no sense, given the entire story is literally a sequel which aims to not-so-subtly fix the plot holes of AFwS. And a retconning the ending is still continuity, as it is forcefully making AFwS by pretending the bit with Savile just didn't happen.

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

20:25, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

@Epsilon, I do feel compelled to point out that there is a distinction Najawin is correctly gesturing at here, though with wording that is slightly at odds with the language I used in the relevant closing post. For R4BP purposes, continuity is circumstantial evidence of implicit intent to bring something into the DWU via the continuity reference; there can be cases where something is a continuity reference to the invalid source, but other factors prove, or suggest, that in fact, in that instance, those continuity references were not evidence of intent. Ignoring parts of it could certainly be countermanding circumstantial evidence of that kind.

That being said, when it exists, it has been one of the few points we've more or less all agreed upon from the start that a BTS statement of "the present DWU story is a sequel to [X]" is stronger evidence than continuity. Doesn't Fixing a Hole have a little "this is a sequel to A Fix with Sontarans" note at the top? I seem to recall it doing so. If it is understood as a premise that FaH passes Rule 4 on its own merits, this would render all concerns about poring over the text itself moot.

@Najawin: you write:

If you prefer the phrasing "the reasoning behind R4bp as enshrined in the thread discussing it and in T:VS entails X" rather than "R4bp entails X" I'm fine with accepting this. But I fundamentally see no daylight, as R4bp *is* the rule as expressed at T:VS.

No, this still does not satisfy me. You're smuggling in a presupposition which is in fact the crux of our disagreement. Your apparent argument is more accurately summarised, in my view, as:

"the reasoning behind R4bp as enshrined in the thread discussing it and in T:VS, if it were applied to other questions than when to validate stories that seem to fail Regular Rule 4, would then entail X"

But you are the only one here who thinks that is at all a natural leap to make. The reasoning behind R4BP applies to R4BP and does not apply to other questions; your argument essentially cashes out as "if we applied this recipe for scrambled eggs, and its assumptions about the nature of ingredients and how cooking affects them, to the process of making strawberry jam, we'd get absolutely terrible jam, therefore this is a bad recipe for scrambled eggs"!

You believe it is wrong for such a "narrow" policy to exist for one specific purpose. But like it or not, the "law of the land" is specifically that the mechanics of R4BP apply in that one narrow band of cases. This does not "corrode" our other policies, and it certainly does not entail any more than what it is intended to entail. It would corrode and entail etc. etc. if we applied the same standard of evidence to invalidations as we do to validations, which is why we quite simply choose not to. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 20:38, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

I did say if it's the latter I think you have an issue. If they just fail to discuss it I see no problem. And precedent is absolutely not on your side, nor is simple logic. We can't simply elect to ignore damning arguments against our positions, were they to exist, because we don't like them. A community vote doesn't change that. Najawin ☎ 20:42, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Those assumptions aren't discussed in either the thread in question or in T:VS Scrooge. The reasoning present is the reasoning present. You obviously think there's a demarcation here that's trivially clear. I see no such demarcation that's possible. A better analogy would be something like the freshman's dream. Maybe it's getting you the right results in some very specific contexts. But it's going to get you the wrong results elsewhere, and it's best to just use a different process to get those same correct results. But, again, far off topic.

Look. I can probably force through an opening post on the topic that's 80% complete in the next week or two if people really want to discuss it. The last 20% would be me looking through every talk page that existed for any potential evidence which I'd like to do, but it would take months. Does that satisfy everyone? Najawin ☎ 20:54, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

(written before your second post)

I'm not ignoring anything.

As I've said before, I have a very coherent view, rooted in the premise that it is much more serious and undesirable to ever wrongly invalidate something, than to inaccurately validate something; that invalidation should be a last resort deployed only when we are absolutely certain that something has no path to validity, while validity remains the preferred and overwhelming default. Validation-by-proxy existing but not invalidation-by-proxy makes overt sense within that view. "If this reasoning were applied to a different area of policy it would have bad results" is not an argument I'm ignoring, it's an argument which I weighed — as, presumably, did User:Bongolium500, and people who participated in the thread — and ultimately pronounced irrelevant to how we ought to design policy. Different mechanics and standards are appropriate for different things. We are making policies here, not trying to derive some preexisting platonic truth or mathematical system! Judgement calls are involved! And our judgement call in this case is "it is acceptable, and perhaps even desirable, to have a lower threshold for validation than for invalidation".

(Without necessarily endorsing it, I will add that there is also a simpler and more mechanistic view of policy which could suffice to ground Narrow R4BP, and one which echoes points you have made yourself: that ultimately the community decides what it wants to cover as valid or invalid. In this view T:VS becomes descriptive rather than prescriptive: the community decides "arbitrarily" on a grouping of works that it wants to cover as valid, then we try to derive what traits they have in common to be able to decide edge-cases later in a way consistent with that earlier consensus. And so there is nothing wrong with recording "and therefore, the community's demonstrated wish, in having decided to cover Death Comes to Time as valid but not to cover Genesis of Evil as invalid, is to apply proxy logic to validations but not invalidations" as the algorithm which most parsimoniously describes our choices. Not, again, my preferred framing of things, but a perfectly viable one as far as it goes.)

As for "precedent", I wearily refer you to Ottsel's earlier points. More recent threads have the power to overrule old ones' conclusions; that is the bedrock of how the Forums work. If there ever was an earlier consensus against "narrow" policies, it has been overruled; however interesting as a historical artefact, it no longer had bearing on live policy the moment Forum:Temporary forums/An update to T:VS was closed. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 21:06, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

That earlier comment was entirely in response to OS25, not to you. Apologies. The issue is that while threads can overrule earlier ones, they can't ignore them. This is why precedent isn't on the side of OS25. You have to address previous discussions. You can't just refuse to discuss earlier arguments because the people in the thread are no longer on the wiki. Najawin ☎ 21:19, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

AH, my mistake also, then. Sorry. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 21:41, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

As I've said many times in these forums recently, simply because we have a better archive today does not mean that we need to mindlessly redo every discussion we'd had recently simply to dig up as many ghost arguments as possible. "Someone said this seven years ago" is not enough of a discovery to upend recent policy. We can not go around redoing the same debates over-and-over again, and I simply find it frustrating that every single time Rule 4 By Proxy is brought up, we are once again caught in the same arguments. I am just worried that you're going to make this long forum you're touting, consensus will be against it, and after it doesn't pass we'll again find ourselves arguing about R4BP a week after that. T:BOUND exists for a reason. OS25🤙☎️ 23:07, 16 July 2023 (UTC)