User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-45314928-20200610043202/@comment-45692830-20200610051257

Let's note that Thread:275277 does not rule that we actually as a wiki must view the alleged novelization and the short story that was released to be one and the same. Rather, it says that because Harness refers to the alleged novelization as being discarded twice we consider it invalid and that neither Scrooge nor I were able to get around this fact.

Obviously this argument is flawed in its conception. Doctor Who and the Time War (short story) in its official release is referred to as being discarded in some form or fashion arguably two or three times. So then we turn to the next issue, whether Scrooge or I were adequately able to address Harness's comments.

The answer, is, of course, yes. Similar to how Doctor Who and the Time War was conceived of being "a surviving fragment of the Novel That Never Was", it was argued, the alleged novel was also a framing device for the short story released. Now, what evidence do we have for this position?

Harness pitched the original story after 2015, when his Zygon 2 parter aired. Since then there have been three places doing Doctor Who Novelizations. Doctor Who photo novelisations, Target novelisations, and BBC Books novelisations.

Are any of these likely to have picked up Harness's pitch? Or, rather, would Harness have pitched this to any of these?

• I think it's uncontroversial that we can safely discount Doctor Who photo novelisations. This is a set of children's books, the tone, subject matter, and level of literacy are in direct contradiction with this line.

• BBC Books novelisations hasn't done a single NuWho novelization, and in the time period we'd guess Harness would be looking at them every book they'd have written would be by James Goss. This one is also out.

• So that leaves us with Target novelisations. But the issue here is that they've has never once done an unfinished work, not even Shada, and for the New Series touch prominent stories within that season. Harness would know for a fact that if he pitched this he would be rejected, just from simple induction on their past entries.

So it seems highly unlikely that this novelization ever existed. Indeed, if we look at the style of the "first page", it's clearly parodying old novelizations.

"The mysterious time traveler known only as Roger" is an absolutely delightful send up, similar to what Moffat did in World Enough and Time (TV story).

Since none of this was ever addressed in Thread:275277, and instead the closing argument was only that we care that Harness said the extract was discarded, these arguments still stand, unaccounted for. Similarly, the only thing that thread resolved was the validity of the story, not whether an attempted novelization ever existed in the first place. Without addressing these arguments it cannot, in principle, do that.