///The issue of canon, validity, and alternate realities: the core issue with the functionality of our Wiki.
User:SOTO/Forum Archive/Inclusion debates/@comment-4028641-20180406151023
CLARA: Is this a story or did this really happen?
DOCTOR: Every story ever told really happened.
Everything is canon.
Folks, we have a problem. And we've had this problem over and over again, time and time again. And I think it's about time that we all got together to say, “this isn't working, we can fix it. Let's fix it.”
In the novelisation of Day of the Doctor, a new piece of dialogue is added, where Kate Stewart points to two VHS tapes of the Dr Who Dalek films and discussed to Clara that the Doctor “loved” the films, and was personal friends with Peter Cushing. What this means is that our currently-invalid page for the version of Dr Who from the 1960's Dalek movies technically exist within what we perceive to be the Doctor Who Universe. So the most logical choice for us at this point is to discuss this revelation and to decide then how we should try and cover the numerous stories surrounding the Cushing Doctor. But to be frank, I think the fact that we are continually doing this is a much more pressing issue.
The fact that we always seem to be bringing up the same few stories declared “non-canon” on the site long-ago, whenever a mainstream story makes reference to them or when it's brought into question how “non-canon” they are... Well, it's shocking given our clear rules in T:VS about such things.
Our methods have long stressed the need to include as many different tales as possible, even if they are in explicit narrative contradiction.
Certainly, this is reasonable to point out? That we are always fighting over the same few stories over and over again, and we're still arguing over that same word. “Canon.” Is this canon? Are the Peter Cushing films canon? That's what we're still fighting over. To this day. And the fact that we've sworn off that word for years but we are still fighting over it... Well, it's something that I think we need to point out and talk about for once.
Because so often stories that men long-ago declared “too irregular to be covered as part of the canon” are being brought back up again with the same question worded slightly differently. Suddenly we're trying to find out how much of these stories contradict the “deep lore.” We're declaring that stories which invent Doctors can be valid until they give us a number, that small technicalities are the only difference between if a story “counts enough” for us to cover it. And I know for a fact that everyone is tired of talking about these same four or five stories over and over again. So let's fix it. Right now.
I would like to examine how we have reached this point, why it's an issue, and how we should fix it all at once, instead of tunnelling our way through every single case continuously for the rest of time.
Defining Words
To start off in this elaborate discussion of our site's history, the nature of Doctor Who stories, and where things might have gotten confused, we must first agree on the meaning of phrases which have taken on new connotations in the recent decades. This is mainly so that we can understand how all of these phrases, in a way, represent one-and-another.
- Canon: The word Canon is meant to mean “a collection of stories.” One of its earliest uses was when discussing which stories featuring Sherlock Holmes fit inside the original collection. In a modern sense, the word canon means the same thing but is meant to exist under the pretence of which stories exist within a universe. As in, “this story is canon because it exists within X universe.”
- Universe: The word “Universe,” in this context, could be best said to be the world shared by a collection of stories. The consistency between stories and the intention of them to be set within the same time-frame indicates both an active membership to a canon, and existence within the universe of said collected stories.
Now here's where it gets controversial.
- Non-canon: A story which is non-canon is not a part of a certain collection of stories. It is still a part of some collection of stories.
- Part of an alternate universe: A story which is part of an alternate universe exists in its own world outside of a certain collection of stories. But, it still has a universe.
This is an important point to make. The sentences “Doctor Who and Star Trek exist within completely different canons” and “Doctor Who and Star Trek exist within their own universes” are saying the same thing, without controversy. And when a fan of Sherlock states that “the Moffat TV series isn't in the original canon,” he means that the universe of the original Holmes books and the Sherlock TV series exist are independent.
It might seem that this is an unimportant thing to get caught up on, but this needs to be clarified for this discussion to run coherently.
A History Lesson
Long ago, we as a wiki separated our stories into two groups. Canon and non-canon. The Canon stories, as explained above, were all part of the “mainstream” Doctor Who Universe. Non-Canon stories, meanwhile, were fully-functioning Doctor Who stories capable of being covered in a coherent fashion, which merely existed in universes separate from the “normal” one.
Thus, stories were sorted, pretty much, as follows:
Canon Stories
- Most things on the wiki
Non-Canon Stories
- Doctor Who Unbound
- Seven Keys to Doomsday
- Scream of the Shalka
- The Curse of Fatal Death
- Sometimes The Infinity Doctors
- Any story to feature the Peter Cushing Dr. Who
Again, it might seem like I'm going on a pointless tangent. But there's a significant distinction here regarding how our rules used to function, and how they operate as-of-today. These days we consider non-valid stories to be ones which we are incapable of covering. But the stories which were "non-canon" were always capable of coverage.
To prove this, all that one needs to do is to go to many of the pages created as non-valid still successfully wrote from an in-universe perspective. Ninth Doctor (Scream of the Shalka). Third Doctor (Exile). And of course, Dr. Who (Dr. Who and the Daleks).
Stories that were “non-canon” were allowed to have pages about the elements featured in their narratives, and they still are allowed this space to this day. The only real reason that they were ever splintered off is due to a belief that they were too different from our common perception of the regular Universe to be put with the other stories without disclaimer.
But as time went on, “non-canon” was replaced by a new system of sorting stories. The non-valid and valid system sorted stories by our ability to cover them. Are they actual stories? Are they meta-contextual? Is there a narrative? Is the story the same every single time? And while there is a clause in our four little rules discussing a story's need to be “within the Doctor Who universe,” in recent years we have seen that be used almost exclusively to decide is a story has any place on our site. Most stories found not to be “set in the Doctor Who Universe” are kicked without discussion, as they rightfully should be.
But there is no point in kicking the Peter Cushing Dalek films because, while it might be controversial to say, they are Doctor Who stories.
T:VS discusses the need for a story to exist within The Doctor Who Universe. Well, all of these stories, at the very least, exist within a Doctor Who Universe.
Dr. Who and the Daleks, Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D., Daleks Versus the Martians, and Dr Who and the House on Oldark Moor all certainly exist within the same universe. They are meant to be congruent, and their connections are meant to be explored by people like us. This is a collection of stories. They are set in a consistent world. This world is a universe. All four of these stories count to each other, they all exist to one-and-another, and they exist within their own Doctor Who universe. Thus, they all have the potential to be covered and explored by someone. And we are the Doctor Who wiki, after all. It's kind of our thing to create a space for people to do that with Doctor Who stories.
Here's the thing. There are going to be people in this debate who staunchly stand by the fact that all of the stories listed above can't exist within the mainstream Doctor Who Universe. That they can't be part of the regular canon, and thus we shouldn't try to hide their warts from our readers. And the thing is that I pretty much agree. Our logic isn't broken -- it's our system that needs to understand better what we are trying to say.
To understand how this can be fixed, let us glance over to other wikis to see how they cover this same situation.
Precedent in Other Wikis
In this section, I will be discussing other wikis who have come across this same issue. That being, stories which they have to cover despite them not existing in the current “canon.” All of these wikis found ways to clarify to readers which stories and characters fit into what collection of stories, and did this without “exiling” them from coverage.
Sonic the Hedgehog
Sonic the Hedgehog, over the years, has had numerous canons in numerous mediums of fiction. And instead of trying to pick one to cover in full, or indeed trying to banish all others, they simply keep their readers informed about which pages fit within what worlds, canons, and universes.
Check out w:c:Sonic:Doctor Ovi Kintobor. Here, you'll see a page dedicated entirely to a version of Robotnik which existed in early comics, alongside promotional material for the game. At the top is proudly shown a banner explaining what this character is.
| This article's subject exists primarily or exclusively within the Sonic the Comic continuity. Information in this article may not be canonical to the storyline of the games or any other Sonic continuity. |
Power Rangers
Power Rangers Wiki notably covers two completely different canons. That of the Japanese Sentai series, and that of the American Power Rangers series. They apparently decided at some point that having different sites for the two versions wasn't in their interests. However, what interests us is their coverage of Power Rangers: The Movie. For the many of you uninitiated, Power Rangers: The Movie was a stand-alone high-budget film made to tie into the TV series. It did this by retelling a key sequence of episodes, and because of this, it is considered by fans to be non-canon. You might notice that it is a precise description of the 1960's Dalek films created for Doctor Who, which infamously starred a human Peter Cushing. So the question is, how do they allow for coverage of these stories? The answer is that they create unique pages for every human, alien, species, and rock featured in the film with the DAB term “(movie)” added. Then, at the top of these pages, like at the Sonic wiki, a banner explains the issue.
At the top of the page for the film, a banner reads “This article is about a/an independent-continuity film entry in the Power Rangers franchise.” Pages about characters featured in the film display a similar banner.
| This article is about a/an [blank] in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie, existing in a different continuity than the TV series. |
I think this choice, of referencing the “universe” as an “independent-continuity,” is the closest to not only what the original “Non-canon” banner served, but also to what we need as a wiki.
What to take from this
These sites have realised something that is important for us to as well. There is no point in there being a billion Sonic wikis for every canon, or a separate set of wikis for Sentai, Power Rangers, and the Power Rangers movie. One Sonic wiki should learn to find a space for all fans of the series to discuss the stories that exist under its title. And in the same light, there is no need for there to be a 1960's Dr. Who Dalek Films Wikia. We are the Doctor Who wiki. Warts and all. We should find a reasonable place to cover stories that break rank, just like these sites have.
And, again, this is the same logic that was used to call these stories non-canon in the first place. That they were valid to be covered on the site, but that it needed to be pointed out that they existed within a reality different from most DWU stories. The good news for us is that precedent tells us what to do with stories like this on our current site.
Precedent on our own Wiki
In the past several years of debates, numerous validated stories have served as test-runs of the implementation of these rules. First, in Forum:Is The Infinity Doctors canon?, it was decided that despite the fact that the book The Infinity Doctors was not intended to be set inside THE Doctor Who Universe because the writer saw it as an alternate reality, we could cover it and simply state that this was the case. This change has gone over extremely well. It not only gives writers the chance to write about the versions of characters in that book but also gave a window for references to the book to be explored in an in-universe fashion. This was arguably one of the debates that lead to us changing the word “canon” to “valid." In short, there are no reasons for The Infinity Doctors ever to be invalid.
Then came the discussions of Thread:197392, Thread:197509, and Thread:207240. In short, Big Finish had done a crossover between one of their Unbound audios and their Bernice Summerfield line. Other users pulled up plentiful examples of various people saying that the Unbound audios were set in alternate realities and universes. (As discussed above, saying that something is an “alternate universe” and saying that the story is a “separate canon” are pretty much the same statements as far as writers are concerned.) The rules were changed to allow a space for the Unbound stories to be discussed as “alternate universes.”
The amazing thing that happened next... was that the world didn't end. Suddenly, all Unbound audios were now available in their own little pocket of the wiki, where connections between the Unbound stories and regular ones could be discussed fairly, all while letting the readers know that the stories existed outside of the regular Doctor Who Universe. It didn't scare users off, and it certainly didn't distract users who otherwise would be writing about mainstream stories. People who liked these stories wrote about them, and people who didn't care watched Aliens of London again.
The final nail in the coffin came in 2015, when Thread:180396 set in stone the consensus that Non-DWU was not a reasonable description of how our current rules explain what is and is not a valid source. Thus it was rejected as a prefix and as a phrase to-be-used in categories. What this meant was that we have now officially declared that a story being Non-valid and a story being non-canon are entirely different things. So we can't just say “Because this story doesn't fit into our universe [See: Non-canon], it must be invalid,” because, by the fundamental precedent of discussions on this site, that is not the case.
What should we do?
What I (and arguably a good chunk of people who care about these stories in the first place) want is simple. Because it's been routinely agreed upon through precedent that our rules have evolved to create a difference between a story being “non-canon” (of a different universe) and “Not-valid” (not suitable to be covered on this wiki as a feasible Doctor Who narrative), then we should take all alt-DWU stories currently placed in the “Not-valid” category and move them to a stance of being a part of an “alternate Doctor Who reality.” This will allow users who want to write about the Doctor as he was played by Peter Cushing to easily discuss what this character was and how it existed without roadblocks. It will allow users trying to point out how The Taking of Planet 5 mentions the plot of The Curse of Fatal Death from an in-universe perspective to do so. And to be frank, it will end any gatekeeping trying to dictate what can and cannot be Doctor Who.
Why this is really, really easy
This is amazingly easy to pull off, mostly because all of the pages who exist under this issue are already written as if they were valid. Go check out Dr. Who (Dr. Who and the Daleks), for instance. A page which is the perfect example of how we should be covering these stories, and the only thing making it “invalid” is a little tag at the top. Otherwise, it perfectly functions as a valid coverage of a story.
The only big issue we would come across is that the prefixes for these stories (all “NOTVALID”) would need to be replaced. However, a little problem like that has hardly stopped us fixing a blatant problem before.
Furthermore, this is just the right choice for people who are tired of the in-universe pages created under the NONVALID category. If we can take pages out of this group that are fully-functional and ready to be valid, then it would easily allow us to clean up this part of the site. We can get rid of horrid superfluous pages like The Doctor (Shada) and Graske (Attack of the Graske) (if these stories are invalid because they can't be covered, why are we covering them?), and people who actually care about these Doctor Who stories that “contradict too much” would have a place on the wiki to discuss them without their coverage really being changed that much at all.
No, seriously, this shouldn't be controversial.
In essence, I am not suggesting that we overthrow age-old rules on the site. Instead, I am pointing out that our rules have changed, and some stories are still affected by logic that is gone. In taking these few stories that are "alternate universe Doctor Who" stories and creating a system for interested users to find out about them and cover them, we are only respecting the original purpose of separating them in the first place. And we are making our current system for invalid stories more clean-cut and easy by sorting out a massive inconsistency that has existed for a very long time.
Stories which should be affected by this change
The following stories, which are invalid for not fitting the current view that we have of the Doctor Who Universe (and are thus invalid for the heinous crime of being allegedly “non-canon”), are what I intent to have covered as “alternate realities” if the community comes to a consensus about these points.
- The 1960's Dalek Films
- The Curse of Fatal Death (In a DWM interview, Moffat noted that the story, despite being written to be funny, was meant to be real, honest Doctor Who, and watching it, you can tell that it was meant as a genuine continuation (and finale) of the show. If it were the only sequel ever made to the show, we would cover it the same way that 21jumpstreet wiki covers the (comedic) sequel films.)
- Scream of the Shalka (This is a story that's packaged with regular Doctor Who stories in most shops, it should be said)
- Death Comes to Time
- All and any stories considered invalid for being connected to the above narratives. See: The Feast of the Stone, Daleks Versus the Martians
Thank you for your consideration, apologies if I was a little to blunt in any key places.
