Talk:TARDIS Tour (short story)

Got to say, I agree with User:SarahJaneFan here. The "Sorry, Yaz" feels more like an aside comment that as if the Doctor was talking to her in-person. Like how people go, "Sorry, Mum/Dad", to themselves when they're about to do something they know their parents would disapprove of.BananaClownMan ☎ 00:03, November 3, 2020 (UTC)

I also agree with this. Scrooge also said that non-valid information would be needed to claim this isn't Yaz, but a) authorial intent has been used in the past to determine who is appearing (see: PROSE: Canaries) and b) even limiting to the contents of this story, the mention is more of an offhanded joke-y apology, as BananaClownMan has said, rather than an indication that she's giving this tour to Yaz. Danochy ☎ 01:58, November 3, 2020 (UTC)

There may or may not be precedents about using authorial intent in such matters, but I would caution against citing something as recent as PROSE: Canaries. I'm not quite sure what you're referring to about our current coverage, but it can hardly be a solid precedent when there has (to my knowledge) been no discussion on the subject — the talk page is blank.

Also, the issue with authorial intent is that the framing device given in Meet the Fam doesn't mesh with the narrative of TARDIS Tour. In the framing device the Doctor is just sending a book out into the world like a message-in-a-bottle; in TARDIS Tour she's by all appearances physically giving-a tour of the TARDIS to… somebody. Unless we start to speculate about some sort of double-fiction framing device, whereby the Doctor-as-seen-in-Meet-the-Fam wrote the text of TARDIS Tour and phrased it as though she were giving a tour of the TARDIS as part of a set of events that never actually happened… but again, that's speculation, and speculation trying to justify an invalid framework at that.

I will defer to consensus if it is felt that, taking the text of "TARDIS Tour" on its own terms, the line still reads more like "the Doctor is making an offhand comment about Yaz but is giving the tour to someone else we don't know" more than "the Doctor is talking to Yaz, who must therefore be who she's giving the tour to". But IMO some sort of guess about authorial intent based on Meet the Fam’s framing device should not, and indeed cannot, enter into it. -Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 02:09, November 3, 2020 (UTC)