Forum:BBV and canon policy

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There's been some chatter on Talk:The Doctor (Party Animals) and between Revanvolatrelundar and Tangerineduel that has seemed to produced the basic sentiment: "If it's BBV, it's canon to us." Indeed, it would seem that the ill-nuanced canon policy is behind such a notion.

But I'm not sure such a blanket policy makes sense.

BBV weren't like Big Finish or IDW. They never, ever had a full license to produce Doctor Who fiction. In fact, they had no license whatever from the BBC. So characters that looked like wholly-BBC-owned characters, like the Doctor, couldn't actually be those characters. The Nick Briggs BBV character, Fred, is therefore Fred, not, as was previously intimated by redirect, a version of the Doctor who appeared briefly in official DWM comics. I think we need to remember and clearly state in our canon policy that BBV productions are at best semi-canonical, because they never involve the rights of the BBC. However, at worst they're not at all canonical, because quite a bit of BBV's output doesn't involve the rights of even Doctor Who writers.

Actually, this "Fred" character shouldn't be mentioned by us whatsoever, because all his adventures involve the Cyberona, who are themselves rip-offs of the Cybermen. There's zero legal tie whatever to the DWU, so why are we covering them?

I get why we're including some of BBV, like that which uses Autons, Zygons, Krynods, the Rani and Sontarans. But for the life of me, I can't understand why we allow things like The Time Travellers, as the explicit point of these is that they have been designed so as to come as close as possible to portraying the Doctor, but to do so in such a way that explicitly avoids copyright infringement. It's zirconium — not a real diamond. And since we don't cover/allow in-line references to any other unlicensed stories, we shouldn't be covering these, either.

Seems to me that the such a stance would compel a few actions:

  1. The rewriting of tardis:canon policy. The rule should be: BBV productions which involve the rights of people who contributed to televised Doctor Who are valid resources on this wiki. However, works which are 100% copyrightable by BBV Productions should not be referenced here. Thus, if the production uses Auton, Zygons, Krynoids or any other race or character seen on Doctor Who, it's allowable. If, however, the production uses only characters that are close approximations of those seen on Doctor Who — as in The Time Travellers, The Wanderer, The Stranger, Adventures in a Pocket Universe and the like — they're not allowable.
  2. The creation of a template, like {{nc}}, to be clearly displayed the top of allowed BBV articles. It should read something like, "'This topic related to BBV Productions is only semi-canonical, as rights to create it were granted by the original Doctor Who writer, but not by the BBC.
  3. The transfer of all the non-compliant BBV material to the Doctor Who Extended wikia.
  4. The eradication of most of the links to the non-compliant material from our in-universe articles, and the redirection of real world links to the DWE articles. (Really not as daunting as it sounds; you can create a redirect directly to the DWE article. And there wouldn't be that much "eradication", as most in-universe articles have shied away from BBV, anyway.)

Thoughts?
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 

I agree, ive just been going through the BBV stuff I just got (hence the interest in the subject atm) and things like the PROBE and even the Stranger has nothing to do with the DWU (The Stranger branches away and i didn't even see too much of a resemblence to the Doctor or Peri anyway).

I'll get a list together of all productions that are definately in the DWU, those i havent tried yet or are unsure of and lastly the unrelated productions.

watch this space

--Revanvolatrelundar 20:38, January 29, 2011 (UTC)

Within DWU

The Auton Trilogy

Zygon

The Time Travellers

(the Doctor and ace with new names) ABSOLUTELY NOT DWU
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 

Agreed, DWE here we come. --Revan\Talk 21:36, January 30, 2011 (UTC)

Adventures in a Pocket Universe

(both with K9 in as far as i know) Perhaps DWU, but K9 isn't K9 Mark II and The Mistress isn't Romana II.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 

Agreed characters may not be who they're intended to be but still DWU related with K9 in it. --Revan\Talk 21:36, January 30, 2011 (UTC)

Zygons

Krynoids

Sontarans

The I

(from Seeing I for convenience)

The Rani

Wirrn

The Faction Paradox Protocols

I don't personally see FP as part of the DWU; it's written so as to avoid copyright issues with the BBC, but maybe there's a point of definite intersection I'm missing.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 

See below, these stories are set in an alternate timeline that ignores one story in the DWU. --Revan\Talk 21:36, January 30, 2011 (UTC)

Besides, Toy Story is an example of a crossover between series and is now included in FP universe. --Revan\Talk 21:38, January 30, 2011 (UTC)

Rutans

Mike Yates

Don't know about this. The fact that it has fourth Doctor in it is dubious. Can't imagine he's there legally. Can't imagine Mike Yates is, either. Both characters wholly owned by the BBC and BBC definitely didn't license this puppy so it's fan fiction, I'm afraid.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 
Legally or not, the Doctor and the Master etc. are all called by their proper names and DWU stories such as the Planet of Spiders are directly referenced. This story should definately stay. --Revan\Talk 21:36, January 30, 2011 (UTC)

Guy de Carnac (Sanctuary)

P.R.O.B.E.

(Liz Shaw)

Is Liz Shaw legally present here? I'm pretty sure she's a BBC-owned character, so how is she present? If rights weren't sold, it's just fan fiction.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 

NOT DWU

Cyberons

The Stranger

Not DWU, characters were later revealed to be some universal teleport terrorist people (i was bored so i didn't take it all in). --Revan\Talk 21:36, January 30, 2011 (UTC)

The Wanderer

See above, not DWU. --Revan\Talk 21:36, January 30, 2011 (UTC)

The Stranger

See above, not DWU. --Revan\Talk 21:36, January 30, 2011 (UTC)

Other

Not DWU. --Revan\Talk 21:36, January 30, 2011 (UTC) I have not included Reeltime productions in here (although as far as i know they all use DWU characters).

Discussion

Please discuss Revanvolatrelundar 20:44, January 29, 2011 (UTC)

If they have no obvious tie to Doctor Who, then I think they should go.--Skittles the hog--Talk 22:38, January 29, 2011 (UTC)

Guy de Carnac is from Sanctuary. He gets a fake cameo in Happy Endings. Like Miranda (comic), its a spinoff from the character's creator. --Nyktimos 01:35, January 30, 2011 (UTC)
Oh right! I should also add that a clean way to not simply junk stuff like The Wanderer is to migrate it to Doctor Who Expanded which is our version of memory(gamma?) but lawless and full of self-promoting lowlifes. --Nyktimos 01:59, January 30, 2011 (UTC)


Refined the list somewhat, any flaws? --Revan\Talk 15:33, January 30, 2011 (UTC)

I agree with CzechOut on the approximations front, 'The Time Travellers, The Wanderer, The Stranger'.
I disagree in relation to PROBE and Adventures in a Pocket Universe. PROBE includes Liz Shaw and Adventures in a Pocket Universe includes K9.
I think we should keep 'Do you have a licence…', it is a spoof, it is made by BBV, it does include the Autons and Sontarans, it's an interesting book end to the big DW parodies etc.
I disagree partially on the template, I think if we start getting into statements like "semi-canonical" we'll start to get into trouble with things. If it's really needed I'd prefer it to read "This topic is related to BBV Productions. Rights to create it were granted by the original Doctor Who writer, but not the BBC." With maybe a link off to the a page covering all this, stuff about the Wilderness Years and how all this came about. But I'm not sure if it's needed or would help or confuse more.
I'd be cautious about stating whether or not something has an "obvious tie" to DW, the reason a lot of people bought these things DW related or not is precisely because of their ties to Doctor Who. It's the reason I've got The Airzone Solution VHS on my shelf (which is actually a very good story). --Tangerineduel / talk 15:43, January 30, 2011 (UTC)
I'd already put the pocket universe and PROBE stuff in the DWU section, it was an initial mistake that i thought they didnt haev Who characters in them. Any clue about the Infidel's comet or The Pattern? --Revan\Talk 15:45, January 30, 2011 (UTC)
Adventures in a Pocket Universe is tricky, though. Okay, it's a character called "K9", but is it our K9? Was there actual permission obtained from Baker and Martin? And it's definitely not Romana, even if played by Lalla Ward. So I'm not sure how you'd easily refer to this work in, say, pages about K9. It's total speculation that this is K9 Mark II who went off with Romana II at the end of Warriors' Gate — even if that's what the writer is implying. Frankly, I think it deserves to be considered K9 (BBV), and definitely shouldn't be mixed with the DWU K9 Mk II.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 
Infidel's Comet is definitely original SF. Nothing to do with DW. Closest connection is that its writers, Colin Hill and Simon Gerard, also wrote Sontarans: Old Soldiers. But the story definitely has nothing to do with Sontarans or anything DW-related. If any of the actors are related to the DW television programme, they must have had only very minor roles. The Pattern is similarly original, and definitely shouldn't be covered by us. In fact, neither should even be covered by DWE. Articles like this should be redirected to a page which says something like, "This title has nothing to do with the DWU, but was produced by BBV, a company associated with making semi-canonical DWU stories."
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 
Looking in a more detailed way at Revan's list, I'd note a few problems.
  • The Time Travellers (series) isn't a part of the DWU and shouldn't be covered here. Again, approximations of characters wholly owned by the BBC aren't the characters themselves, and so therefore aren't deserving of coverage.
  • Cyberon (video) is well off the list. There's nothing in the narrative of Cyberon which is in any way definitively set within the DWU. Cyberons do not exist within the DWU. Trying to retrofit it because the two stories share Dr. Lauren Anderson isn't on. The 100% BBV copyrightable characters aren't of interest to this wiki.
  • As for other objections, please refer up to Revan's original chart. Kinda laborious typing it all here, when I can just annotate the chart.

  • czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 

Faction Paradox definately IS within DWU, it just takes place in the timeline where The Ancestor Cell didn't happen, and the Second War in Heaven continued as normal. There are far too many overlaps with characters from DW and Bernice Summerfield for it to be considered non-canon. --Revan\Talk 18:47, January 30, 2011 (UTC)

I always thought FP happened because Larry Miles pitched one of his famous hissy-fits cause he didn't like how The Ancestor Cell had been written, so he took his toys off to another universe to play. Aren't all the references to the DWU incredibly oblique and, in any case, one-way? Actual, branded DW stuff doesn't directly and unambiguously refer to FP elements, does it? I could have sworn it was all "coded language" to avoid copyright probs with the BBC —just like most of BBV's output. It's not actually the Time Lords or Gallifrey, right?
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 
If its not the Time Lords or Gallifrey then it's hard to see how Lolita, one of the Master's (called as such in Toy Story) previous TARDISes. Faction Paradox preys heavily on Doctor Who's past, with Morbius, Chris Cwej, Compassion and many other characters appearing. The "Evil Renegade" who Cwej used to travel with is also the Doctor. BBC books in the "War arc" like Unnatural History and the Taking of Planet 5 reference events that occured within the Faction Paradox books (Time Lords deserting Gallifrey, Mictlan being destroyed etc.). --Revan\Talk 13:31, January 31, 2011 (UTC)
What I have a problem with in regards to FP is the fact that it is an explicit reaction against The Ancestor Cell. I mean, it was the desire of the rights holders — the BBC, through their publishing arm, BBC Books —to end the FP story arc. They decided to kill it. Miles brought it back, saying that he was therefore going to ignore The Ancestor Cell. It's therefore a deliberate attempt to create another universe which is not the Doctor Who universe. Dig, for example, this quote from Miles himself:
Q: So you don't feel that the Faction's too close to Doctor Who?
A: No. I'm too much of a monomaniac, probably. While I was writing INTERFERENCE, I think I started to realize that I didn't really want to write about the Doctor any more. I was more interested in the universe around him, and as it was my book that meant the little sub-bubble universe I'd built up since ALIEN BODIES. Which isn't really the Doctor Who universe at all, of course, although it does owe a huge debt to Robert Holmes. So I feel very very comfortable writing stories set in that universe which don't, for example, contain the word TARDIS. Besides, I think Faction Paradox have done their bit in the novels. It would've been terrible, to keep inflicting them on people who just wanted a Doctor story rather than a time-travelling voodoo-cult story.[1]
If the creator of the universe himself is saying, directly, it "isn't really the Dotor Who Universe at all", why are we arguing with him? It just seems easier to believe Miles and go with the BBC-approved timeline than to refer to things that are clearly set in at least an alternate DWU as if they were things that happened in the "real" DWU. It's awfully misleading to slip a FP ref into the middle of an article about a DWU topic, because it won't convey to the average reader the notion that this statement is true if and only if you deem the events of The Ancestor Cell non-canonical. The truth of the matter is that that FP at Mad Norwegian and other companies is absolutely not a part of BBC-approved continuity. It's quite different from the Benny stuff, I think, which is simply the further adventures of an ex-companion. It was Miles saying "screw you" to BBC Books. We can't treat it as just another corner of the DWU. In no way, should (Mad Norwegian and beyond) FP be referenced in DWU articles.
We would definitely need to create new language within tardis:canon policy to explain this, however. Especially since Faction Paradox is canonical, but the lines referred to by the acronym FP are not. Articles like Hellfire Club, Timeship and rather incredibly Eighth Doctor - Timeline really bug me, because they claim a mixture of FP and DWU sources which imply a consistent narrative that simply doesn't exist. The timeline article really has me shakin' my head, because, as Toy Story appears in the Mad Norwegian version of Dead Romance, it can't include language that identifies the Doctor or any other BBC elements (or if it does, it does so quite illegally). And its original printing was in a charity publication, so there was never any BBC license employed. It's fan fiction written by a published author, who then later repurposed it in such a way that he could publish it in his own line of books.
No, I fully admit that Faction Paradox existed within the DWU at one time. But its storyline concluded with The Ancestor Cell and that's as far as we should go with it. Anything else is doing a disservice to our readers. There's a Faction Paradox Wiki, desperately in need of contributions. I say we shunt all our stuff there and stick a link on our main page with all the other "related" wikis.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 
As CzechOut notes Miles does have a…contentious attitude to some Doctor Who (there's his for instance amusing reviews of the new series are linked into the Gallifrey base forums that people seem to like to argue about). Miles also likes to change his mind and make provacative staments anyway, see the notes section for Dead Romance.
As far as I know the FP stories haven't contradicted what happens in The Ancestor Cell, they've just gone off exploring as Revan said the timeline that didn't happen.
Side note: War of the Daleks is an explicit reaction to Remembrance of the Daleks (as much as I'd like to remove that story from canon) it and its various continuity references and retcons is canon.
The FP stories are still referencing and taking a sizeable amount of material from the DW universe.
As Revan says the FP stories explore the further adventures of several companion; Compassion, Cwej, etc (and elements of the FP universe have trickled back into the BIg Finish universe with the Cwejen appearing in The Adventure of the Diogenes Damsel).
The timeline articles themselves are a separate issue. --Tangerineduel / talk 15:17, January 31, 2011 (UTC)

Have we reached a decision on what to remove from the wikia then? everything in the not DWU section above seems eligible to go to me. --Revan\Talk 15:22, January 31, 2011 (UTC)

Winnowing down

Just giving a bit of a section break to make this more manageable. I think we're in agreement that the following things are definitely not on. I'm not entirely sure that they universally belong at DWE, though, because some of them simply aren't DW at all. However, I think they should all be redirected to a central page on this wiki that explains why we don't cover them. I think a lot of users (and apparently editors) believe that if it's BBV, it must be okay to cover here. And we need to put a message up at the end of all these articles to make the point clear.

Replace text of article with redirect to a central article
Edit article to make its place within the DWU clearer
Where we don't seem to yet be in agreement
  • The Killing Stone - Ya can't just say "legally or not" the fourth Doctor appears. The legalities matter. The legalities are what this whole movement is about. If they don't have permission from the BBC to use the fourth Doctor, Master and Mike Yates it is a fan film, and it belongs on DWE.
  • P.R.O.B.E. - Again, how is Liz Shaw present? The Wikipedia article says they got the rights to use the character, but . . . how? Who the hell owns Liz Shaw but the BBC? The Wikipedia article gives no source for their assertion. If she's not, in fact, legally present, then the videos are, again, fan films.
  • FP - There's more than enough to be getting on with, above. We can settle this at a later date in a discussion just about FP. Suffice it to say, though, I don't think the presence of DW elements in FP (and, please tell me they're in more than just Toy Story, which clearly doesn't count as "true" FP or "true" DW) means diddly. How are the DW elements present, precisely? And ultimately, why should I believe you guys when the creator of the FP universe is directly telling me in an interview that the FP universe is not the DWU?

czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 

I believe that with BBV, if theres a Doctor Who character in it, we should keep the story, be that FP, the Killing Stone or PROBE. I agree that with The Pocket universe stuff we should created a BBV K9 article and put in the behind the scenes section that the intention of it was to be...

Miles explains the FPU in the Book of the War et al. as being shaped by the War itself, thus meaning that the nature of this "timey wimey" war removed some elements from DWU. DWU elements such as the Celestis are a big part in the FPU and they as explained in EDA: Alien Bodies as the Celestial Intervention Agency removing themselves from the universe for self-preservation.

I think we need to research the Killing Stone some more, i understand that if BBV used the Doctor and the Master in the audio and were selling it to an audience without copyright permission then it is illegal. We need to find out if the audio did have permission (it is one of the later audios). So lets keep this one on the fence while more info about it is found. Just to note that in Tangerineduel's message to me he said that we include BBV because it is a production company and not just a loose group of fans, to quote:

"The BBV stories were made by a production company (you can't really call it "fan made" using the definition it was made by fans of the programme, if you used that definition then the BBC Wales series is fan made because likely more than half the production team are fans). --Tangerineduel / talk 13:13, January 28, 2011 (UTC)"

--Revan\Talk 18:25, January 31, 2011 (UTC)

Ive found that this story was apparently an unpublished novel made into an audiobook by BBV (http://www.ozmusicbooks.com/oz-music-books/doctor-who/reference-library/audio-cds-records-and-tapes/bbv/other-bbv-audio-titles). Still looking for further info. --Revan\Talk 18:46, January 31, 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I saw that opinion from TD on your talk page, and I think he probably wasn't writing with the precision that he might've liked, on reflection, to use. I mean, Paul Cornell's a professional writer, but that doesn't mean he hasn't written fan fiction. Tons of professional writers have contributed to charity publications, and we routinely rule these out of bounds. The delimiting line isn't the professionalism of the individuals, but rather the legal right of publication. What makes the BBC Wales series "canon" isn't that RTD and Moffat have been in charge of it, but rather that Lorraine Heggessey and Jane Tranter fought for two hard years to get the rights to broadcast it on BBC One. Thus, the thing that matters with respect to BBV is exactly what rights were actually held by Bill Baggs. And I'm tellin' you right now, there is no way he ever had the rights to the Doctor or the Master. No. Freakin'. Way. The Liz Shaw thing we need to investigate more. The FP thing is probably a matter for a wider and more specific debate. But, happily, we are in agreement on the vast majority of these titles and can begin dispensing them forthwith.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 
CzechOut is correct in his interpretation, when I wrote it I got a little bogged down on the fanfic idea.
In this instance in relation to BBV we need to be sure on the rights elements. I'll have to go digging around for my VHS copies, hopefully they'll have some fine print on them with regards to who owns what.
The Charity Publications are another topic I think we need to revisit / write into the canon policy our stance on them.
As to Liz Shaw, I think due to the weird way the BBC licensed stuff the characters are owned by whoever created them, so BBV I would guess must have licenced it from Robert Holmes' estate? Given that he wrote Spearhead from Space. --Tangerineduel / talk 14:28, February 1, 2011 (UTC)
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