Talk:Interplanetary Mining Corporation

This is the problem of mixing information from all media

I'm tempted to somehow hold this page up as an example of the imperfect page. This is exactly why mixing together information between all media can be a very bad idea. There is no way that Malcolm Hulke, writer of Colony in Space meant in any way to suggest that his IMC was the same IMC from The Space Pirates, Yet this page implies, by connecting certain dots through novels to create a link where none was intended nor significant to the narrative. The tenuous link provided by The Menagerie should be separated out into its own section so readers can choose what they want to believe. Putting it all together forces them to believe that they're missing something when they compare The Space Pirates to Colony in Space — and they're really not. These are two totally different companies who've been grafted together by some back alley hatchet job decades after their original broadcast. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 17:46, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Er...that's what continuity is. Writers coming along and writing stuff in, especially with Doctor Who, and this wiki considers it call (well more or less) to be canon. If The Menagerie says that the IMC of the Space Pirates became the IMC that appeared in Colony in Space and Love and War then that's what it is. It seems that you're trying to separate out what you think the writer of the day would have thought and what the in-universe page should be. It is an inuniverse page so it has all the information pertaining to this particular subject. If you believe it's that crucial put a behind the scenes statement into the article. But the fact remains this isn't the only thing that's had information added to it by subsequent authors. --Tangerineduel 18:02, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I see. So Sarah Jane Smith met the Sixth Doctor, the Seventh Doctor and Eighth Doctor did she? And Evelyn Smythe met Mel "for the first time" twice? And both accounts of Liz Shaw's departure from UNIT are equally valid? And Davros is the unqualified creator of the Daleks? And John and Gillian are both to be taken "seriously" and yet a dream of the Eighth Doctor? And every utterance of Gary Russell is to be treated as a fact to be worked into the authentic history of something?

While I think it makes our job endlessly more difficult than necessary, the inclusion of material from other media is not something I'm opposed to. I just think that trying to mash it all together without clear proviso and explanation is sometimes ill-advised. Active editors on the site and other rabid original series fans, might very well be able to "read between the lines" of this article and understand that the linkage between the two IMC's is not, in fact, something that could be even reasonably inferred from the televised stories. But the way it's worded, most new series or casual fans will just accept it on face value (to, of course, the extent they ever find this page). And, in truth, the linkage is something done very much in passing; it's hardly important to the narrative of even the spin-off material that a link can be drawn between Space Pirates and Colony.

This would be all much clearer if the article just shifted the stuff in the books to a section of its own. Not "Behind the Scenes", but "Other accounts" of "In other Media" or somesuch. There's nothing which offends the MOS or the BBC stance on canon to give primacy to televised adventures. I think this article is symptomatic of a much larger problem with the site. Of course this one article is easy enough to change, but when you start talking about character biography pages, you enter a scary realm where some clear boundaries on the source of information might make things read more clearly. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 20:04, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't see why the spin-off media shouldn't be used in the way it's intended to. It was made to fill out the Doctor Who universe, make connections between references, explain little mentions. Why is this supposed to be a problem?

As for contradictions, there will always be contradictions. Always. The show contradicts itself, that doesn't mean we should ignore it.

As for this example specifically, I can't see how adding the spin-off material isn't an improvement. If it's not added, then it just seems like the writers didn't do their research, and they accidentally have two organisations with the similar name. If the spin-off material is added, then it seems more like there's an actual universe, where things connect and change. No, this isn't what the original writers intended. They didn't intend for anything after they left. If they weren't intending the series to expand on what they made, they would have ended the series or not write it in the first place. -<Azes13 21:09, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Again, I'm not saying we should ignore spin-off material. I'm not saying it shouldn't be in the article. I'm just looking for a way to include it in such a way that it's absolutely clear that it comes from a source other than TV. I'm arguing, I suppose, that TV material on a subject should get pride of place. You say that the reason the spin-off material was made was to make connections, but that is only partially true. Gary Russell quite clearly believed the novels and the BFAs were happening in different universes. The DWM comics team decided consciously to abort linkages to the NAs during the 7th Doctor's run and to build a continuity that referred back only to television episodes. No matter how much we might want it to be so, much of the spin-off material wasn't written to be part of a whole, but merely to satisfy an audience for that particular media. It was created, in other words, to make money by building up a loyal listener/readership. It's actually, therefore, not meant to be seen as part of a "universal" whole. Trying to impose an order on it by saying, "This is the definitive history of <insert subject>" is antithetical to the spirit in which many of these works were actually created. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 22:11, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

CzechOut, that's a rather cynical attitude.

We are not going to be separating all the articles into 'TV' and then 'Other media'. Yes there are problems, and where there are problems with continuity they are addressed and then it moves on. Breaking up the articles into various medias (and how would that work, you'd end up having potentially an article of 6+ different sections).

What Gary Russell thinks or not thinks isn't really of any practical matter (except maybe on his author page).

As to whether it makes the work on this wiki easier or harder, that really depends on how much each user knows and how they can weave together the references. --Tangerineduel 17:18, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Agreed we can hardly have in-universe pages if we start dividing everything up and as for contradictions there are two ways to go about it either reference the one that doesn't fit in the behind the scenes section or do what other wikis do and create a template for conflicting cannon and if there is no way of weaving/adding the accounts that they make sense place the template on the page and divide up the two accounts Dark Lord Xander 00:27, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

It's hardly cynical to note the reality of the environment in which these works were created. If it's valid to consider that the NAs were written as the "official continuation" of the series, it's surely equally valid to note that the late 7th Doctor/8th Doctor comics were written so as to break with the NAs and to treat that as its own continuity. Gary Russell's stance on the novels vs. the audios is of practical importance because it forms the basis of the narratives for which he was responsible. Considering that he was the "showrunner" for BFA for much of its history, that's a hell of a lot of the BF content. There's no other reasonable explanation for the existence of two exits for Evelyn Smythe or the two Sams, just to go back to easy-to-see examples. What has happened to the Doctor Who universe is precisely what has happened to the DC universe. The history of Superman cannot be written unless you break it down into his various eras and media. The parent product wasn't written as a cohesive whole. I know this stands as a threat to the format of the work that's been accomplished so far on this site — and so that's probably why you view it as "cynical" — but the more you look at the actual narrative in all its detail, the harder it is to really argue for a single-narrative reality. Doctor Who is a multiverse, not a universe. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 03:47, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Gary Russell isn't the only author that's tried to cut the Doctor Who universe in half, Mr 'Mad Larry' Lawrence Miles also gave it a go, and was more or less ignored for his troubles (see Dead Romance and its universes in bottles, Interference and The Ancestor Cell also feature them).

There's plenty of continuity problems within the TV series, as working in a little more is hardly an argument for breaking everything apart.

In the case of Evelyn Smythe, yes there are contradictions, but you can take half a dozen examples from just the TV series and claim they are continuity problems also.

Actually I only meant I thought you were being cynical regarding that it was all a money making exercise.

Breaking the universes in half or into 6ths or however really doesn't work because of the interrelatedness of the various universes. The MA and NAs are linked, but Lungbarrow deliberatley leads into the TVM. Romana is president in The Apocalypse Element but only became so because of the events in PROSE: Blood Harvest and (confirmed) in Happy Endings.

How would linking work linking work in this broken apart universe? If you're linking to an object that has appeared in all various universes, does that object need to have 6 separate sections to take into account of its various different appearances?

Dark Lord Xander's suggestion makes more sense, acknowledging that there are continuity issues, and separating them out if needed.

Looking through the Superman entry on the DC database I can't see how this would be applied to our situation, in each incremental development of Superman it came along with a rebuilding and resestablishing of the world and 'universe', more or less a reboot. Doctor Who has always had a continious feel to it.

As for Evelyn Smythe having two exits, is that any more problematic than Sarah saying she's from 1980s, the Brigadier starting teaching before he left UNIT (though we seem to cope with the UNIT dating controversy well enough).

Also what about those space freighters and the Space Defence Service? With fun Ion drive, funny how the British Rocket group is still using satellites in 2008...

Other things makes less sense without the inclusion of the audios, novels, short stories etc.

Ultimately, a lot of the time it isn't a problem (some stories like the webcast/audio of Shada even come with an inbuilt couple of lines of dialogue allowing for both to sort of exist). Also going back to the Sarah argument (I'm paraphrasing here from Lance Parkin's overly detailed AHistory second edition (page 216), the Doctor sent Sarah K9 so she wouldn't forget him, yet Sarah thinks the Doctor forgot her. He says he's regenerated half a dozen times since she last saw him, despite meeting him in his 3rd and 5th incarnations in The Five Doctors... --Tangerineduel 14:41, 21 July 2008 (UTC)