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False appearances
Contents and The World Tree should absolutely not be considered as appearances by the Fifteenth Doctor. Contents was written long, long before the casting of Ncuti's incarnation and the vague description no better suits him than it does the Spy Master incarnation. As for The World Tree, Nick Slawicz (nor Big Finish for that matter!) has any right to use the Fifteenth Doctor. He was writing as a competition winner under strict rules as to what he could include, things outside Big Finish's license (which doesn't extend to the Fifteenth Doctor yet) cannot be used. So regardless of what the writer's "intention" was - in order to shoehorn his story as the first appearance of a new main series Doctor - is a bit of trivia that can be shoved on the BTS sections. DrWHOCorrieFan ☎ 21:09, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
- Contents and The World Tree should absolutely be considered as appearances by the Fifteenth Doctor. Danniesen ☎ 21:18, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
- Because RTD could predict five years into the future and Big Finish are able to use concepts that they have no license to? DrWHOCorrieFan ☎ 21:19, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
- Yeah, there does exist such a thing as retroactive continuity! Besides, in an era where the novelisation of Rose is being drawn upon in everything from Grounded to Redacted (even so far as to contradict the original television episode!), and where the Fourteenth Doctor's debut is Liberation of the Daleks and one of Thirteen's pre-TV adventures was another poem from this very same anthology, so, such a thing is entirely within precedent.
- Furthermore, not only is accusing Big Finish of breaking copyright potentially libellous and implies it fails rule two of T:VS... Big Finish have done this before! Do you not remember, @DrWHOCorrieFan, audios like The Kingmaker featuring the Ninth Doctor? 21:47, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
- I think Epsilon needs to be dealt with here, yet ANOTHER discussion being IMMEDIATELY taken off-track by false accusations of rule breaking. How many times do admins like Shamblar have to warn against such things before you and others take note? Absolutely outrageous to falsely accuse me of being libelous to stifle my argument.
- No, Big Finish has not committed any copyright infringement because, despite Nick Slawicz's comments, the Fifteenth Doctor did not appear in that story. He is free to say that is who he intended to but he had absolutely no rights to include that character therefore it can be considered nothing more than an interesting factoid to add to the BTS pages (as I said in my original post!). And, as well aware as I am about retroactive continuity there is absolutely no evidence that links the Doctor from Contents to the Fifteenth Doctor. It describes the Spy Master's incarnation just as much, if not more, than Ncuti's. DrWHOCorrieFan ☎ 22:23, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
- Even if we put aside the concerns about libel, it is 1000% within precedent to identify the Fifteenth Doctor appearing in The World Tree considering the Wiki has had no issue saying Nine appeared in The Kingmaker for years. TK is a very fitting bit of precedent, as at the time that audio drama released, Big Finish didn't have the copyright to Nine, but he still appeared in it.
- Also, the Spy Master Doctor being in Contents is silly. RTD was heavily involved with that poem, so it would make sense for him to draw upon it with Fifteen; I doubt Chris Chibnall even knew the poem exists. 22:30, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
- RTD didn't even know Fifteen was a thing back then! You can say that it is "silly" for the story to be about the Spy Master, I say it is "silly" for it to be about Fifteen. Without concrete evidence both are speculative and neither should be viewed as correct! DrWHOCorrieFan ☎ 22:32, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
- He may not have known about Fifteen specifically, as he was yet to come up with the idea, but he still knew about a future Doctor that wore a hat and boots... so him having a future Doctor who has a hat and boots... that is what continuity is; Moffat obviously hadn't planned out his story arc about "Silence will fall" in series five and its later relavance to The Time of the Doctor, but the sources are still in continuity with each other! 22:37, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
- I agree that no one would argue The World Tree should be covered as a fan work — the thing to do would clearly just be to confine it to BTS notes. I'd like the tone to quiet down a little — remember Tardis:Capital letters — but Epsilon's reducio ad absurdum was a bit question-begging, yes.
- As regards the facts… re: World Tree, I wonder if there's a T:HOMEWORLD sort of argument to be made here. It's tricky. But importantly characters' identities aren't platonic ideals. World Tree wasn't allowed to describe the physical features of the Fifteenth Doctor, nor to say "Fifteenth Doctor", but it was allowed to depict "a near-future Doctor relative to the Eleventh" and then say it was meant to be that one. Isn't this like being able to refer to "the planet Grandfather Paradox came from" even if you aren't allowed to call it Gallifrey? Maybe. The argument against is that it's too vague in the text to pin it down to any future Doctor in particular (we'd have a very different situation if the clues more specifically pointed to "Thirteen's full-time successor, whoever he is") but… it seems silly to imagine sticking indefinitely with The Doctor (The World Tree) even though in four years 1) BF will be able to tell Fifteenth Doctor stories and 2) no one would ever dispute that it was Fifteen in The World Tree.
- Regarding Contents, it could not possibly be the Spy Master, who was not, in fact, an incarnation of the Doctor; nor did he wear a hat. Ambiguous future Doctor or closest-feasible-successor-to-Thirteen is the essence of the debate (which a quote from the writer about intent would clinch, as per Talk:Totem (short story)). Tying it to the Power of the Doctor bodyswap is entirely absurd: we can reasonably assert that it's meant to be a version of the Doctor, some time after Thirteen. The question is whether we can reasonably infer that RTD thought back to the Contents Doctor when designing the Fifteenth Doctor's outfit. Maybe that's a stretch. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 22:39, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
- I expected nothing less from someone who included Epsilon as a character in their story to challenge me on my reaction rather than swiftly punish them for their outrageous and unacceptable accusation. Cute. DrWHOCorrieFan ☎ 22:44, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
- @Scrooge MacDuck, what did I say that constituted reducio ad absurdum? I merely compared this story to others, so show there is precedent for its coverage as such. 22:50, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
- @DrWHOCorrieFan: what "outrageous and unacceptable accusation"? Suggesting that some hitherto-covered story might fail T:VS is not outside policy, and certainly not a punishable offense, even when it's actually inaccurate (which I did acknowledge, chiding Epsilon for his tone). Nor is it off-topic for a discussion about whether or not the allegedly-unlicensed character appeared in the story under discussion! Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 22:52, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
- @User:Danniesen Nice threat. I'd watch how you talk to average users if I were you, on Wikia admins are no different to the average user despite their ability to moderate. They are absolutely open to be called out when someone sees fit, as I have.
- @Scrooge I was accused of accusing Big Finish of copyright. Don't play coy. DrWHOCorrieFan ☎ 22:54, 7 September 2023 (UTC)