Talk:P.S. (webcast)

For which episode?

We need to cite a source that says this was meant for Angels Take Manhattan. Chibnall did not write that episode, Moffat did, so one would assume that Moffat would have written P.S. All the online sources I've seen have either been ambiguous or have said this was for the end of Power of Three (making its cut make sense as it would have blown the ending of Angels Take Manhattan). 70.72.211.35^{talk to me} 12:43, October 13, 2012 (UTC)

The page doesn't say what it was "meant" for. Just that this webcast was put up after Angels Take Manhattan aired, which it was. -- Tybort (talk page) 13:51, October 13, 2012 (UTC)

Actually, it does say that currently under Story Notes. If it is to be left there, a source would be appropriate. Spreee ☎ 19:39, October 13, 2012 (UTC)Spreee

Is the Chris Chibnall Twitter account his real account? I know it sometimes takes time for an account to be labeled as verified. If it is his actual account, he says in a tweet from yesterday, "The Brian scene: written to be a DVD extra, not an alternate ending to Angels Take Manhattan. Not filmed due to actor availability clash." Additionally, "The scene was written long before S7 transmission, same time as Pond Life."Mewiet ☎ 21:07, October 14, 2012 (UTC)

Are there webcasts for every episode? Or just this one? And can everyone outside the U.K. watch them? I'd love to see these!  :) Jay JLOM^{Things turn out for the best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out - John Wooden} 09:25, October 14, 2012 (UTC)

Last I heard, they were not geolocked.Mewiet ☎ 21:07, October 14, 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Mewiet! I was able to see it through the link here.  :) I was actually worried about Brian until this news came out.  ;) Jay JLOM^{Things turn out for the best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out - John Wooden} 15:59, October 31, 2012 (UTC)

Timeline

I'm a bit confused about the paragraph referencing the age discrepancy of Anthony. It seems to imply that The Power of Three took place before Dinosaurs on a Spaceship for Brian, which obviously isn't correct.     ǝsʞpɐןǝ  (talk page)  19:00, 16 October 2012

Dating the episode

in the continuity section of this article, it states this takes place in 2020 after power of three. however there is already enough controversy about the dating of power of three as can be seen at the howling thread Howling:Dating the Amy era. should we keep this statement about the date given the fact there is so much argument about whether it is accurate? Imamadmad ☎ 08:25, October 17, 2012 (UTC)

Not a valid source

It is a long-held belief of this wiki that unfinished works are not valid sources. By Chibnall's Twitter admission, this was a cancelled project, abandoned because of actor availability. What we're seeing are a series of storyboards for an unfinished project, and therefore it doesn't "count" when trying to write in-universe articles.

Yes, it may be referenced in the "behind the scenes" sections of articles, but along with the Eighth Doctor's regeneration in Endgame (graphic novel), the spider Dalek from The Dark Dimension, the "bit of TARDIS coral" scene from Journey's End, the unfinished televised version of Shada and other incomplete bits and pieces that have been made public by the BBC, this one is "officially released but invalid".

Hence, it will continue to fly the {{notdwu}} banner, and cannot be used as a source for other in-universe articles.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  00:44: Tue 30 Oct 2012

Continuity section moved here

Because this is a cancelled scene, and therefore not a valid source, the notion of it having "continuity" is somewhat spurious. It is our usual position that non-DWU material doesn't have active continuity. I've preserved the entirety of the continuity list here, however, for posterity:

• The Angels Take Manhattan implied that Amy and Rory had been sent from the cemetery to circa 1938, the era to which Rory was first sent.
• The Angels Take Manhattan also implied that Amy and Rory remained in or about New York City. P.S. confirms this. Anthony's sister was in New York during their parents' lifetimes, both as adult River Song in the summer of 1969, and as young Melody and infant Mels in January 1970. (TV: Day of the Moon)
• The Doctor and his TARDIS were momentarily in Manhattan twice during Rory's and Amy's temporal exile: once carrying the First Doctor in 1966 at the Empire State Building's observation deck; and again in July 1969, piloted by the Eleventh Doctor and carrying Rory's and Amy's younger selves on the side of a skyscraper under construction. (TV: The Chase, Day of the Moon)
• Anthony is stated to be in his mid-sixties, and to have been adopted as an infant in 1946. However, The Power of Three and P.S. take place in or after 2020, by which time, Anthony would be in his mid-seventies, barring time-travel.
• Rory says that he realizes "having a grandson who's older than you is so far beyond weird". Rory grew up with his own daughter and also knew her as a woman considerably older than himself. Even in their youths, Mels was already several years older than Rory and Amy, despite appearing to be their age.
• Asylum of the Daleks established Amy's inability to bear additional children after Melody, resulting from the events at Demon's Run. (TV: A Good Man Goes to War)
• Amy and Rory are the second and third former companions shown to have adopted children, after Sarah Jane Smith. (TV: Invasion of the Bane, Sky) Ben Jackson and Polly Wright were said to have operated an orphanage in India. (TV: Death of the Doctor)
• Rory mentions that he bought a trowel, in response to Brian's suggestion. (TV: Dinosaurs on a Spaceship)
• Brian is watering the plants when Anthony arrives, as he told the Doctor he needed to do. (TV: The Power of Three)

It should be noted that since the infobox contains the entirety of the piece, it's hardly a tragedy to lose this section. Readers can watch the thing for themselves, from our site. It would take them longer to read this list than to just watch the scene.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  05:06: Tue 30 Oct 2012

DVD release header

I added a header with a "to be added" note underneath. Although it's not included in the Series 7 Part 1 release, until the complete season is released we won't know for certain that it won't be issued in some form. The BBC seems to have been pretty good about issuing stuff like this these days, so it's quite possible it'll be included in the complete series 7 box. Obviously if we get official word that it won't be (i.e. Chibnall or Moffat indicating this), then the section can be removed. I also followed Wikipedia's Be Bold philosophy and put in the reference to Angels Take Manhattan - it's a no-brainer, regardless who wrote the thing since it makes direct and indisputable reference to the events of that episode, whereas it contains very little that has to do with Power of Three. 70.72.211.35^{talk to me} 13:43, November 26, 2012 (UTC)

I think this is backwards. You are putting it up there until it is proven wrong, rather than the logical method of not putting it up until it is confirmed. Otherwise any speculation could be put in any article, as it isn't proven wrong yet. Besides, Chris Chibnall already indicated it wouldn't be included as a DVD extra when he said it was "...written to be a DVD extra" but not filmed, and it was then released on the BBC website instead. And the fact that it wasn't on the Season 7 Part 1 DVD really indicates that is probably won't be released for DVD. I'm not saying that it won't be, just that the evidence we currently have all suggests that, and assuming that it will be is just pointless speculation until we have any indication to the contrary. --SnorlaxMonster 09:08, November 28, 2012 (UTC)

Inclusion

BBC press release - A special scene was written by Chris Chibnall that revealed some of the answers but sadly, the sequence was never shot. However, we’re happy to announce that we’ll be bringing you the scene tomorrow. Using animated storyboards and a voice-over specially recorded by Arthur Darvill, we’ll discover more about Brian and the Ponds, post-Angels.

...

Doctor Who’s Executive Producer, Caro Skinner, said, ‘We’re delighted we can present this lovely scene written by Chris Chibnall. People took Rory’s dad, Brian, to their hearts very quickly, so it’s fitting we can give the character a degree of closure in this poignant piece.’

Doctor Who: P.S. is a short video written by Chris Chibnall and is essential viewing for anyone who wants to know more about what happened to Brian, Amy and Rory.

Chris Chibnall on Twitter - The Brian scene: written to be a DVD extra, not an alternate ending to Angels Take Manhattan. Not filmed due to actor availability clash.

But delighted the scene's available.

The argument that "P.S." should not be included just because it was not released in the form originally intended for it is spurious. The webcast supersedes the planned scene in the same way that the webcast of "Shada" supersedes the incomplete live-action version of "Shada". The BBC present it as an official continuation of Amy and Rory's story and have released it on their own website. --220.239.109.57^{talk to me} 05:41, December 14, 2012 (UTC)

Say you let P.S "count" on this wiki. What is the argument that you then make to disallow Shada (novelisation)? It was released by the BBC in an incomplete form. So what's the difference? Also, by what basis would you then prevent deleted scenes included on official DVDs? Do we say that the Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor and Rose went on to grow a TARDIS from a piece of coral? There are tons of deleted scenes that got much farther in the production schedule than this one. Do we let them all in, too?

You see, I know people love this particular scene. I know they want to include it. (Heck, I'll let you in on something: I love this scene, and I want to allow it.) But administrators have to try to establish policies that are easy to apply, so that everyone understands them. If we don't say, "the scene has to have been published in the form it was originally meant to have", then we run into trouble. Where's the line? At what point is an idea enough of an idea to justify using its narrative elements?

Do we take RTD's rather well-documented The Writer's Tale musings as actual narrative points? Do we believe that, in fact, the Tenth Doctor regenerated because he was trying to help a small, alien family trapped in a doomed spaceship? Do we believe that Partners in Crime co-starred a companion named Penny? Do we count known elements of the known script of Doctor Who Meets Scratchman?

Perhaps an even more relevant example is that of the cornucopia of cut scenes found on the series 4 DVD boxset. All of those got much closer to their final form than P.S., yet I've never heard anyone complain that we're not including the bit where, say, Donna drives Lance and the Doctor to H.C. Clements. It's been four years since that material was officially released by the BBC and yet no one in that time has questioned our decision to disallow it.

It seems to me that the reason the completely pro forma decision to disallow P.S. has generated such resistance is because people like this scene a lot. (And as I said, so do I.) It delivers emotional content that, really, Moffat forgot to put in Angels, and so we crave it to be true.

But when you're making a policy for a lot of people to follow, you've got to try to base it on something objective. Current policy is something you may not like. But it does have the virtue of being objective.

We have direct evidence from multiple sources, including the writer himself, that this isn't the way P.S. was meant to go down. We know that it's being presented as unfinished. This isn't like the webcast of Shada at all, because that was a finished webcast. Shada's medium, as starring McGann, was meant to be Flash animation. This is a series of storyboards showing us what the scene might have looked like. They may seem superficially similar, but really the two cases are nothing like each other, except that they are based on drawings.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  19:29: Tue 18 Dec 2012

Why not include Shada? We do right now anyway... OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 20:44, December 18, 2012 (UTC)

Why not include the VHS edition of Shada? Because we decided not to. Shada is specifically on the "not valid source" list at T:VS, with links to the community discussion that decided to treat the TV version as one, big deleted scene.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  05:48: Wed 19 Dec 2012

I think the main proplem here is that we disagree where that discussion ended... You think it ended witheveryone agreeig that the TV version of shada is a deleted scene, and I know that the discussion was closed with multiple people agreeing that the stry really should be included and that there was no reason not to other than "this story is hard to cover..." and that not covering it was a stupid idea. I also note that no one has ever followed through on your statement that "the webcast info should become main and the TV story info should be removed." And I have never seen any reason to even begun to consider it a deleted scene, because it's not. At all. It's a "new episode that has never been released before now new to home video!" Not "a deleted scene never released and not to be taken seriously..."

Furthermore, I stand my ground that Shada, wheather HOMEVID or otherwise, is a TV story and needs to be covered.

Basically, if our relues say that Shada isn't cannon, then there is something wrong with our rules. Perhaps our rules need to be changed to include P.S. and Shada. Not including stories (theoretically) because they are "kinda deleted-scenes-ish-things" like we have done for P.S. and Shada is silly. Saying "Well, it was meant for DVD release but was released as a webcast instead... So it's kinda a deleted scene" and "Well, it wasn't released for 20 or so years, and the missing scenes are just narration... So it's kinda deleted-scenesqu" are just silly. How is Shada and P.S. and diffrent from The Nightmare Fair (audio story) or The Ultimate Foe (TV story)? They're all deleted, never used, and forgotten narratives turned stories.

I would suggest that if whole narratives as deleted stories are turned into new stories, that those should not count as deleted scenes. If a story was never made and then is made into an audio book, we should cover said audio book. If a story was never finished and then is finished, then we should cover that sorry. If a story was never made, and then is made as a animated webcast instead, we should cover said webcast. It's all as simple as that. OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 12:24, December 19, 2012 (UTC)

I really wish you would get your facts right before you start making assertions, particularly when those assertions have to do with me.

I do not think it ended in some magical fairyland where everyone agreed. Almost no discussion we ever have on this wiki ends in unanimity. And they don't need to, in order to be binding. All that needs to happen is that a reasonable consensus be formed. And I do think that a consensus emerged, in that two of the three active participants agreed that deleted scenes aren't canon, full stop, and TheOmnius agreed that there were certain conditions under which they weren't canon.

On the specific issue of the VHS release of Shada, there was sharp disagreement, but at the end of the day, however, Tangerineduel made a more convincing argument, and TheOmnius failed to respond. While it is not true that in every case the person who gets "the last word" wins the argument, it can be true that a "no-response" effectively means that the opposing side has capitulated. And I certainly think that's the only reasonable interpretation of Forum:Are deleted scenes canon?

I should also point out that I didn't force close Forum:Are deleted scenes canon? Indeed I didn't archive it — or even participate in it — at all. The Thirteenth Doctor did on 27 August 2010 one hell of a long time after Tangerineduel's final comment on 23 January 2009.

So let's recap. The thread was given a completely fair length of time to generate additional comments that were better than Tangerineduel's. Such comments never came, and so policy was born.

That's how it happens in every case, OS25. Nothing tricky. Nothing unusual. That's just the way policy gets made around here. But you've been with us for long enough to know that. The only reason you're having a problem with it is because you don't like the outcome. If you were on TD's side on this one, you'd be perfectly happy to go along.

Finally, the fact that you can find examples of where a certain policy isn't being followed doesn't invalidate the policy. Plenty of people speed, but that doesn't mean there aren't speed limits.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  17:25: Wed 19 Dec 2012

The thing is, Forum:Are deleted scenes canon? didn't have the right to call Shada not cannon, or label it as a deleted scene. The passer would presume that it was about the obvious, to not include scenes removed from released narratives. This is precisely the only reason that the Shada isn't canon ever got off the ground; no one knew it was happening! No one saw that title of the Deleted Scenes forum and thought "I'd better get in there and save Shada!" For the same reason, Forum:P.S. can't change policy on Deleted Scenes. Because it's not called Forum:I want to change our policy on deleted scenes, it's called Forum:P.S.

That's why Forum:Versions of Shada (again) was made, where the question of "Is Shada reliable" was truely brought into question.

Precisely for your own reason for believing that "Silence looses the race" that I believe the "Shada is cannon" argument had won. The forum discussion Forum:Versions of Shada (again) ended with multiple arguments made by people for it staying. Immad was the last to offer a rebuttal, and it was not very strong. Constant rivers of rebuttal and disagreement came in arguing for Shada's inclusion, and for a long time, none was given. As you said, "While it is not true that in every case the person who gets "the last word" wins the argument, it can be true that a "no-response" effectively means that the opposing side has capitulated." Thus, we on the battlefield of Forum:Versions of Shada (again) presumed, "Hey, we've won then." But it soon seemed apparent that the other side was absolutely sure that they had won the argument. And now I think it's because none of you seem to remember the second battle at Forum:Versions of Shada (again), and seem to think that Forum:Are deleted scenes canon? was the only discussion and that you won fair and square.

The simple fact is that in the forum discussion actually about Shada's inclusion and not about something completely different ended with the consensus "Shada is a reliable source" reached and then archived, and then ignored. Basically this either needs to be discussed again (AND HIGHLIGHTED) or we need to go with the consensus of the actual forum discussion on the subject. OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 18:09, December 19, 2012 (UTC)