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)

I find nothing unbelievable by Doctor Who standards in Einstein stumbling on a formula that exchanges him through time and space with an Ood or turns him into one. And the "magic gateway" was TARDIS-generated. -- Noneofyourbusiness ^{talk to me} 01:24, October 5, 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)

Capitalization in Title

If anyone needs a reference: wikipedia:MOS:CAPS#Composition_titles. -- Noneofyourbusiness ^{talk to me} 01:19, October 5, 2011 (UTC)

I tend to agree that it should be Death Is the Only Answer, but of course the all-caps style of the titles don't help us. Anyone got a good reason for not capitalising the is? Doug86 has given the reason "because verbs aren't capitalised" in his reversion rationale, but I'm not sure that reason holds any water, or it would be gone with the Wind, The Way We were, fear Her, blink, turn Left, The Pandorica opens, or — most obviously — let's kill Hitler.

Anyone know of any better reason why the "is" here shouldn't be capped?
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  <span style="">06:11: Wed 05 Oct 2011 

For the record, I disapprove of the unilateral action to move this page back to Death Is the Only Answer — even though that's the form I personally prefer. The matter was under discussion here, and I would have liked to have heard from the other side before reverting.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  <span style="">23:32: Wed 05 Oct 2011 

Actually, I only put this item in after reverting, and only to show the reason that capitalization is correct, should anyone wonder. -- Noneofyourbusiness ^{talk to me} 13:38, October 6, 2011 (UTC)

For the record I'm the one who initially moved it from the all-capitalised title to "Death is the Only Answer," but I acknowledge that was a grammatical error on my part and the current title is where it should be. — Rob T Firefly - Δ∇ - 04:23, October 9, 2011 (UTC)

Good, glad that's settled. I realize capitalizing the verb "to be" looks odd, but there it is. I hope you're having a good day. :) -- Noneofyourbusiness ^{talk to me} 15:23, October 9, 2011 (UTC)

Timeline Again

My argument for episode placement is as follows, using only the episode itself as a source: the Doctor has, by his own explicit words, only just gotten his fez back for the first time after its destruction. He wears the fez in A Christmas Carol, so the episode takes place before then. This is straightforward logic and not guesswork. If there are no responses in a week, I will go ahead and correct the timeline (one can't wait forever). -- Noneofyourbusiness ^{talk to me} 22:02, October 5, 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Rob T Firefly above. You proceed from a very shaky logical foundation, Noneofyourbusiness. We don't know that the Doctor's fez only gets destroyed in The Big Bang. Since the Doctor at the end of series 6 is 200+ years older than the one in The Big Bang, there's tons of time for him to have gotten a new fez. More to the point, this could be his old Eighth Doctor fez. We have zero temporal context in this sketch, other than to say "sometime in his eleventh body". It's frankly best to put down time placement uncertain than any other combination of words.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  <span style="">23:40: Wed 05 Oct 2011 

Er, yes we do know that he's referring to The Big Bang, because he says "I can't believe River blew you up." And he's missed it since then. So he's just gotten it back for the first time since then. He wears it in A Christmas Carol, so this is before A Christmas Carol. Putting it anywhere else requires jumping through mental hoops, which is categorically unnecessary. Just put it where it obviously belongs. -- Noneofyourbusiness ^{talk to me} 13:31, October 6, 2011 (UTC)

You are correct in that we know it is after the fez was blown up in The Big Bang, but we do not know it was just after. It's a completely indeterminate point after The Big Bang, and anything at all beyond that is speculation and has no place on this wiki per Tardis:Canon policy. We can't add our own information to the story just to make it fit our wiki layout conventions, we can only report on what was explicitly stated on-screen; in this case, "I can't believe River blew you up" is all we have to report on. — Rob T Firefly - Δ∇ - 04:20, October 9, 2011 (UTC)

That's an onscreen statement that he hasn't seen it since then, placing it explicitly before A Christmas Carol. To put it after would presume an offscreen mishap with the fez; there is no evidence for that and it would be just as unencyclopedic as saying that Amy and Rory in Closing Time could be from before The Impossible Astronaut and Amy was assaulted by memory-eating aliens who made her forget the word "petrichor". Based on what's actually been seen and heard onscreen, the placement is clear. To put this episode before A Christmas Carol is to not speculate; to put it after or to say we can't tell is to speculate. The assumption of offscreen events is a major flaw in the argument you stated. -- Noneofyourbusiness ^{talk to me} 14:29, October 9, 2011 (UTC)

Your argument is assuming that certain things must not have happened off-screen between The Big Bang and this story, which is far more speculative than what we are allowed to do on this wiki. Being more restrictive in our article than the narrative itself was is just as much an act of assuming and speculating as being less restrictive and adding our own ideas to the story would be, we must only stick to the cold hard facts. We only have one such cold hard fact here, as I explained above, and it does not tell us how long it has or hasn't been since The Big Bang to any level we can pin down here. — Rob T Firefly - Δ∇ - 17:38, October 9, 2011 (UTC)

The fact that we'd be assuming something not in evidence is one part. The other part is not about assuming things didn't happen, it's about the fact he would only use that particular sentence "Oh, I've missed you. I can't believe River blew you up!" the first time he got it back. That's the way the language works. I see no sense in pretending we don't know what an onscreen statement means when we in fact do. -- Noneofyourbusiness ^{talk to me} 13:05, October 10, 2011 (UTC)

We don't know anything about whether he "would only use that particular sentence" in such a circumstance. An expression of disbelief at an occurrence does not imply anything about how long it has been or what else has or hasn't happened since that occurrence. For example, I can't believe I once found a live kitten in the trash; that's a true statement, but it has nothing at all to do with how long ago that was or how many other cats I may have owned since that one, and you couldn't make any reasonable assumptions on the matter based on it.

My point remains: we know what the Doctor said - he established River blowing up his fez sometime previous to the story, but he said nothing else about it. We simply cannot make any further assumptions about his statement beyond the literal meaning of his words. That's the way the language works concerning this single sentence. — Rob T Firefly - Δ∇ - 14:55, October 10, 2011 (UTC)

I think that it is the literal meaning and it's intellectually dishonest to pretend we don't know that. However, I realize other people will have to post here in agreement. In the mean time, "This story occurs at an indeterminate point after DW: The Big Bang" is better than the unsightly paragraph that was there before.

To a more important issue: I take it you would have no objections if I went through the various articles that have Timeline sections putting televised episodes between things like novels and comics with no real evidence of their placement other than an attempt to work them into continuity, and I edited those sections to reflect only what we know for certain? -- Noneofyourbusiness ^{talk to me} 13:10, October 11, 2011 (UTC)

You take it correctly. It's not our job here to "work them into continuity;" that would entail coming up with our own theories about such things, and adding information of our own which did not come solely from the stories would constitute fanon which is specifically disallowed by Tardis:Canon policy. We are only able to catalog the given indisputable facts from the narrative, and let the reader make their own judgments and theories about further possibilities based upon those. Other wikis exist to make use of fanon - Doctor Who Fanon and Doctor Who Expanded - but this is not one of them. — Rob T Firefly - Δ∇ - 20:44, October 11, 2011 (UTC)

I think the page looks fine saying it's take place after The Big Bang, which we know it does by onscreen dialogue. As for you wanting to change every other timeline, you should start a forum discussion before hand and see what other Users think, rather than removing and changing the timeline based on what you think it should be. MM/Want to talk? 13:45, October 11, 2011 (UTC)