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)

im struggling to deal with your comments. you speculate that Harness completely made up that there was a novelistion for this story, but when i tell you that would be unlikely as he woulnt have the licensing to do so - you falsley lable me as accusing him of copyyright infringment. thats complete slander and i want you to stop. DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎

theres a very big difference between official lockdown stories - pompadore, the zygon isolation, doctor who and the time war, farewell sarah jane, etc. these are promoted by the organiser of the event emily cook, and official sites like the DW twitter page. these stories are also planned and teased in advance. this on the other hand wasnt planned, it wasnt promoted by any of the lockdown representatives or the official DW sites. it was simply posted by harness by himself, after his tweetalong had endded too, after fans asked to see mre from his unproduced episode. he stated that this was a "discarded first page of a novelisation". and not a short story. DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎ 13:18, May 17, 2020 (UTC)

I didn't mean to falsely accuse you of anything, merely to caution you what you, accidentally I'm sure, implied about Harness. If he had no legal right to publish new fiction about the Monk by that point (but personally, I think this was still part of the Tweetalong event!), why should it change anything whether the one-page bit of prose fiction was originally written in 2015? That doesn't give him any more or less legal right to publish it.

(And a short piece of prose fiction is what a short story is, whether or not it started out as part of a larger novel that never materialised. That is in that sense that I am using the term. If it's worthy of having a page on the wiki, it's, per T:DAB, a "short story", in the same way that the Dr. Men books at "(novel)s" even though they're not exactly Oliver Twist.)

I don't think the distinction is anywhere near as clear as you make it out to be; Strax Saves the Day was released on Twitter, as were Message from the Doctor and the clearly-licensed Incoming Message (webcast) — yet the latter at the very least certainly had no "teasing in advance" involved, and as far as I remember neither did Message. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 13:27, May 17, 2020 (UTC)

i didnt imply anthing about harness! youre the one who is suggesting hes lying about intended to write a novel, and i said that he wouldnt have the rights to the characters if hewasnt telling the truth.

both strax / incoming were promoted by emily cook! thats the whole thing, the lockdown is her organisation. she plans all the official material, and chibnall signs off on it. she had nothing to do with this story whatsoever. it is the only one on the entire list that she hasnt acknowledge at all, because it was not planned - it was a spur of the moment post by harness after his tweetalong ended when fans begged to hear more about his unproduced story. DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎ 13:32, May 17, 2020 (UTC)

someone should pose the question during the lockdown watchalong tonight. but im pretty sure what the answer will be, this story had nothing to do with locdown. DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎

someone should pose the question during the lockdown watchalong tonight. but im pretty sure what the answer will be, this story had nothing to do with locdown. DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎

You've got me all wrong if you think I'm saying Peter Harness was lying about his having actually planned the novel. I think he claimed to have planned the novel in 2015 as a self-evidently outrageous metafictional framing for his new short story — no different from the framing of The Thief of Sherwood being framed as scavenged material of a lost Hartnell serial. There's no lying because the readers aren't supposed to believe for one moment that the improbable 2015 novelisation ever existed.

Either way, though, you haven't addressed my point. What does it change if the page is indeed an extract from a 2015 draft? If, as you claim, Harness was no longer permitted to release new DWU thing as part of his Tweetalong by this point — then why would it make any difference whether the DWU thing had been written in 2015 or 2020? He'd still be infringing the BBC's copyright by publishing it. Either Harness had the right to publish prose with the Monk on 11 April 2020, or he did not ("does he have the right?"); the exact nature of the prose with the Monk isn't the point in this instance. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 13:41, May 17, 2020 (UTC)