Talk:How The Monk Got His Habit (short story)

"Discarded"

uh, i understand why theres two separate pages for this story - as harness said that he planned a novelisation of the story too. BUT i dont get why the short sotry is being treated as valid when, like the television episode, it was "discarded" in harness' own words. the article says its similar to RTD's discarded time war story but its different in the fact that RTD's story was signed off on and planned for the lockdown event. this story had nothing to do with locdown, harness took it upon himself to find the unfinished scrift after mentioning it and being asked to by fans. DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎

Just for the rcord, Davies's story wasn't planned for the Lockdown! event at all — it was written for the anthology The Doctor: His Lives and Times way back in 2013.

Either way, though, the thing is that Doctor Who and the Time War and Robert Shearman's Dalek alternative script extract were both written as complete products that looked (and were cheekily presented as) like extracts from deleted stuff. I think it more likely than not that Peter Harness was riding the same trend, and wrote this short story in 2020 for the Lockdown event.

I mean, let's look at the facts — one day all he has to offer of How The Monk… is a loose outline from an email, and the next, he springs on us that he'd already started writing a Target novelisation, of all things? Even though the BBC Wales series has never, at any point in its history, been known to be amenable to writers submitting novelisations of their stories, out of nowhere, before said stories are even aired? There have been a handful of Target novelisations of NuWho stories, but always "big ones" like The Day of the Doctor or Rose, and never developed right alongside the TV story.

Even in the fairly likely event that the novelisation project was real, though, Harness still decided to release a standalone scene from it, which ostensibly can function as its own short narrative about the pre-meddling Monk. Such a thing — taking a fragment of something-that-never-was and releasing it as its own shorter story — isn't unheard of: see for example Rain Gods, even if it's not a 1:1 analogy.

If we could credibly take Harness's word that the novelisation was planned for back in 2014 or so, we could have an {{unproduced}} page about How The Monk Got His Habit (novelisation), the unfinished and unreleased novelisation. This is distinct from the short prose story about "Roger" in his TARDIS that was in fact released in 2020 as part of Doctor Who: Lockdown!. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 12:21, May 17, 2020 (UTC)

what short story??? i dont see a short sotry, harness said himself that it was "discarded first page of a novelisation". and while RTD's work was intended to be published a long time ago it never happened, and then it was reworked and planned for the lockdown event. this wasnt. DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎ 12:29, May 17, 2020 (UTC)

even if like you speculate the novl wasnt real and harness did just write it on the spot, then he had no licensing for the characters so it isnt valid - and the story was never prtrayed as being part of lockdown. RTD's story was part of lockdown, and had narration on the official outube channel, but this shown to be a spur of the moment thing that had no connecitons to the event. DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎

This story was very much a part of Harness's Tweetalong. The Wiki has thus far rightfully been exercising good faith when it comes to all the fiction released on creators' Twitter accounts during the official Tweetalongs being licensed, and without plausible grounds, it's quite a serious accusation to levy against a real person that he infringed copyright out of nowhere. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 12:41, May 17, 2020 (UTC)

the tweetalongs are not "officially licensed" so i dont get what you mean. emily cook clarfieid this herself and said that the tweetalong / watch alongs are all her doing and onlt the official original stories are being licensed and signed off on by chibnall himself. so no, the entire tweetalong being licensed doesnt make any sense especilly with a number of representatives have "views their own" mentioned in their information section.

and no, im not suggesting hes infringing copyright becase i actually believe that the noveliation was planned and he did in fact post the first page of that as he stated. why do we have reason to doubt him??? DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎

Because there were three other instances in Lockdown! of a story being released under the banner of being an extract from a project than never was, and in all those cases, it was clearly good-natured fibbing that was just meant to make the experience more fun.

Cook may have stated that the Tweetalongs weren't a Doctor Who Magazine-endorsed project per se, but clearly some sort of agreement exists with the BBC, since some of the stories were released on the official Doctor Who YouTube channel or the BBC website, with no specific logic to which ones (one chapter of Paul Cornell's "Shadow" trilogy was released on the BBC website, then the other two were released on the Lockdown YouTube channel). Unless told otherwise, we have wisely been assuming that all the Lockdown-original stories and documentaries are being released under this agreement.

One way or another, Peter Harness released a page of fully-written out DWU fiction on 11 April 2020. Whenever and however it came to be written, it exists. The only reason it plausibly shouldn't be covered on the Wiki in some shape or form is if Harness didn't have the legal right to publish that page.

Assuming we continue to cover it, then if we make a lot of assumptions it might be an invalid short story for similar reasons to P.S.. But I see little reason to make such assumptions. The three precedents within Lockdown! were clearly not genuine excerpts from old material. And even if a novelisation was for some insane reason begun in 2015, Harness deciding to release this specific scene in 2020 could still count as a separate short story release, unless it were proven that Harness doesn't think this scene can stand up as its own event in the DWU.--Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 12:58, May 17, 2020 (UTC)