Forum:Temporary forums/Inclusion debates speedround: Difference between revisions

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{{retitle|{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}[[Category:Temporary forums]]
{{archive}}[[Category:Inclusion debates|{{SUBPAGENAME}}]]
==Introduction==
==Introduction==
As our website is currently set up, [[T:TF]] allows for six temporary forum posts at any given time. Threads last three weeks typically, meaning that it's been a priority to put site-changing posts ahead of anything more minor. Because of this, there are several stories which are controversially still invalid, yet remain too obscure and minor to ever have a full slot at T:TF.
As our website is currently set up, [[T:TF]] allows for six temporary forum posts at any given time. Threads last three weeks typically, meaning that it's been a priority to put site-changing posts ahead of anything more minor. Because of this, there are several stories which are controversially still invalid, yet remain too obscure and minor to ever have a full slot at T:TF.
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:::::: ''Pudsey'' treats it as ridiculous that Redmayne is contacting the TARDIS, but for his part, the Twelfth Doctor responds as he might in a comedic moment in any regular ''Doctor Who'' story. Only thing is, right after, with the banana milkshake bit, [[Mel and Sue]], who are acting as switchboard operators, knowing what the TARDIS is. It's a pretty cheeky bit where it's just understood that this would be common pop culture knowledge to the audience. But hey. Maybe they've had dealings before. It doesn't ''break'' the diegesis, necessarily. It's just a bit silly.{{User:SOTO/sig}} 16:59, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
:::::: ''Pudsey'' treats it as ridiculous that Redmayne is contacting the TARDIS, but for his part, the Twelfth Doctor responds as he might in a comedic moment in any regular ''Doctor Who'' story. Only thing is, right after, with the banana milkshake bit, [[Mel and Sue]], who are acting as switchboard operators, knowing what the TARDIS is. It's a pretty cheeky bit where it's just understood that this would be common pop culture knowledge to the audience. But hey. Maybe they've had dealings before. It doesn't ''break'' the diegesis, necessarily. It's just a bit silly.{{User:SOTO/sig}} 16:59, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
: The closing post for this mammoth-thread is in progress, but not quite due yet. However, I'll just pop in to inform everybody of the announcement I just posted at [[Tardis:Temporary forums/Admin announcements#10,000 Dawns crossovers]]. We ''can'' finally discuss this — but it will, for obvious reasons, require its own highly-regulated thread ''after'' the Speedround. Discussion of the matter ''here'' is void. So — not that I think anyone was really going to — don't waste the days of discussion left in ''this'' thread on that part of the argument. It'll get its own time in the limelight soon enough, in a proper, official, Fandom-approved way. [[User:Scrooge MacDuck|'''Scrooge MacDuck''']] [[User_talk:Scrooge MacDuck|⊕]] 22:24, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
::Huzzah! [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] [[User talk:Najawin|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 22:44, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Popping in to say that I disagree with the suggestion that any kind of fourth wall break, especially one so minor, indicates a story lacks internal logic enough to say that it takes place in a reality. That's just a very silly argument to me, and again is indicative of why we shouldn't consider any "fourth wall break" to be immediately discluding because no one can define what a "fourth wall break" is. To me, it seems there are three kinds: actors breaking character, characters talking to the audience, and characters having moments of lucidity. In all below debates, we've discussed exclusively the middle category, yet now I am supposed to buy that the otherwise inoffensive third category is also discluding? I think that's ridiculous. [[User:OttselSpy25|OS25]][[User Talk:OttselSpy25|🤙☎️]] 17:01, 20 April 2023 (UTC)


== ''Dermot and the Doctor'' ==
== ''Dermot and the Doctor'' ==
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:This is one where, modulo SOTO's concerns, I'm happy to say that I don't have to be a spoilsport and I think there's a very strong case for validity. [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] [[User talk:Najawin|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 19:22, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
:This is one where, modulo SOTO's concerns, I'm happy to say that I don't have to be a spoilsport and I think there's a very strong case for validity. [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] [[User talk:Najawin|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 19:22, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
I do, and always have '''supported''' making this thing valid. And for the record: claiming that Bruce Forsyth was still alive by 2111 is no more ridiculous than claiming that William Hartnell [[Lady Penelope Investigates the stars of the Sensational new film Dr. Who and the Daleks! (short story)|was still around by the 2060s]]. [[User:WaltK|WaltK]] [[User talk:WaltK|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 16:52, 21 April 2023 (UTC)


== ''Doctor Who and the Bootstrap Paradox'' ==
== ''Doctor Who and the Bootstrap Paradox'' ==
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:As a whole, the proposal of presupposing invalidity is like "guilty until proven innocent." Which, I guess, is fine if that's what you wish to do. But it's not benefiting the site. It's sabotaging it. Sorry for going full r/atheism, but the logic here is backwards. [[User:LilPotato|LilPotato]] [[User talk:LilPotato|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 21:13, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
:As a whole, the proposal of presupposing invalidity is like "guilty until proven innocent." Which, I guess, is fine if that's what you wish to do. But it's not benefiting the site. It's sabotaging it. Sorry for going full r/atheism, but the logic here is backwards. [[User:LilPotato|LilPotato]] [[User talk:LilPotato|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 21:13, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
::https://doctorwho.tumblr.com/post/37738593040/miranda-hart-is-after-the-doctor-from-bbc Just wanna add that the official account treats It’s Showtime like an event that actually happened to the Eleventh Doctor [[Special:Contributions/81.106.187.1|81.106.187.1]]<sup>[[User talk:81.106.187.1#top|talk to me]]</sup> 15:30, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
::By posting a gifset with a very very neutral comment? Does that mean that if they post the most recent red nose day skit we have to consider that valid too? "Valid" != "whatever The BBC wants to promote". (Attaching, once again, the disclaimer that I just think this argument is poor, not that I have strong feelings about the story in question.) [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] [[User talk:Najawin|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 16:40, 21 April 2023 (UTC)


== ''TARDIS Yule Logs'' ==
== ''TARDIS Yule Logs'' ==
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:: Re. ''Senor 105''... funny misconception that I distinctly remember. [[Cody Schell]] ''never ever'' it wasn't set in the DWU. He said it didn't belong on a ''Doctor Who'' Wiki. That is a large distinction everyone glossed over.
:: Re. ''Senor 105''... funny misconception that I distinctly remember. [[Cody Schell]] ''never ever'' it wasn't set in the DWU. He said it didn't belong on a ''Doctor Who'' Wiki. That is a large distinction everyone glossed over.
:: For people unfamiliar with the Wiki, you'd be forgiven for misunderstanding the scope of it; yes we cover all ''Doctor Who'' material, but we also cover so much more than that. ''Doctor Who'' is the veritable tip of the iceberg, and our scope covers as much of it as we can, to the point its connection to ''Who'' becomes thin. Cody likely didn't know that we cover a lot of expanded media, and presumed we were trying to cover ''Señor 105'' on a Wiki about the 2005 revival of ''Who''. {{User:Epsilon the Eternal/signature}} 03:27, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
:: For people unfamiliar with the Wiki, you'd be forgiven for misunderstanding the scope of it; yes we cover all ''Doctor Who'' material, but we also cover so much more than that. ''Doctor Who'' is the veritable tip of the iceberg, and our scope covers as much of it as we can, to the point its connection to ''Who'' becomes thin. Cody likely didn't know that we cover a lot of expanded media, and presumed we were trying to cover ''Señor 105'' on a Wiki about the 2005 revival of ''Who''. {{User:Epsilon the Eternal/signature}} 03:27, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
: I support the validation of this story. If we cover Paul Marg’s autobiographies why not this one?[[User:Anastasia Cousins|Anastasia Cousins]] [[User talk:Anastasia Cousins|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 09:34, 20 April 2023 (UTC)


== ''Requiem for Death's Head'' ==
== ''Requiem for Death's Head'' ==
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::#while mulling it over, I thought twice and decided to look for an alternative, good-faith interpretation, as the good-faith rule says we should.
::#while mulling it over, I thought twice and decided to look for an alternative, good-faith interpretation, as the good-faith rule says we should.
::Indeed, I'm glad I took that second step, since I did think of an alternative explanation which, as it happens, did match OS25's actual intention! I recommend extending that same grace to Najawin's comment, the real intended meaning of which, as explained above, certainly constitutes good faith (and was immediately apparent to me, at least). – [[User:NateBumber|n8]] ([[User talk:NateBumber|☎]]) 00:02, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
::Indeed, I'm glad I took that second step, since I did think of an alternative explanation which, as it happens, did match OS25's actual intention! I recommend extending that same grace to Najawin's comment, the real intended meaning of which, as explained above, certainly constitutes good faith (and was immediately apparent to me, at least). – [[User:NateBumber|n8]] ([[User talk:NateBumber|☎]]) 00:02, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
== Conclusion ==
<div class="tech">
I keep saying this every time, but this was a big one. In fact, I think if there's ''one'' thing this thread reached consensus about, it's that this one was ''too'' big.<ref>Faced with the prospect of closing the darn thing in a satisfactory manner to all parties, I am rather inclined to agree. And weep.</ref> So let's address the procedural meta-discussion first.
=== Part 0 - Should this Speedround have existed? ===
I don't think this format is ''inherently'' ill-suited to inclusion debates, particularly so long as we are operating with only six slots. [[User:NateBumber]] was seen to wonder if he had set a nasty precedent with the multi-sectioned structure of [[Tardis:Temporary forums/Archive/Subpages 2.0]] — but more than anything else, the precedent here is [[Forum:The original inclusion debates]], the ancestors of them all, which were conducted in a very comparable format.<ref>[[User:Najawin]] calls me out, I think in hindsight fairly, on this comparison not taking into account that [[Forum:The original inclusion debates]] grew organically over a very long period; so it was quite a different animal from nine topics proposed at once and discussed in parallel within a bounded three-week time-span. He's quite right and I should have thought about this more. Apologies.</ref> So long as we are discussing stories any ''one'' of whose validation would be a trivial matter<ref>Note that I mean trivial in the vernacular sense, not the epistemological sense [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] is fond of employing.</ref>, the basic consolidation of different inclusion topics into one big three-weeks thread seems like a basically sound instinct.
Nate is speaking to a real concern when he notes:
{{quote|…it's one thing to validate these stories, and it's another thing entirely to, yknow, actually edit the wiki and cover these stories once they're valid – and in this latter case we're unfortunately rather lacking. There are at least dozens of pages, probably hundreds, which still describe material as invalid because it came from non-narrative sources, and personally I'd like to see the impacts of that sweeping change before worrying about validating a single story like ''Doctor Who and the Fangs of Time''.|User:NateBumber}}
I hear this complaint, I understand it. But I think it can be disregarded as far as the viability of a thread like this is concerned. Firstly, the admin team's decision when the Forums was created was to predicate the rising of OPs to the six slots entirely on votes from the community, give or take the availability of an OP. I am not comfortable with the idea of admins policing what threads do and do not rise to the top, except of course for ones which directly break policy. "It seems like strategically we shouldn't have another inclusion debate so soon to encourage editing" just isn't strong enough to get over that basic procedural objection. If the community feels that it shouldn't have another massive thread so soon, let that consensus manifest as not voting massive threads up the ladder so quickly!
Furthermore, in response to the same problem [[User:OttselSpy25]] proposed a "rest period" for each slot after a given thread is closed. This is noble but, I think, doomed. Sad as it may seem, the Wiki's actual contents not reflecting policy is an inevitability. Yes, we don't have nearly as many [[/Spoiler]] subpages as the recent reforms authorise, and they're being created quite sluggishly; but the same is true of Big Finish plot summaries. Just because editors aren't as quick as we'd like about implementation, shouldn't impact policy. We make policy to describe the ideal Wiki; implementation is a separate stage. And a few days' respite would not, I think, do much good. It'd frankly take months to ''wholly'' carry through every change to policy we've made.
However, a few common-sense suggestions for any future "Speedround" were discussed and are hereby accepted as, to use a technical term, jolly good ideas:
* '''Speedrounds should not have more than 5 topics at most'''.
* '''Users should not be allowed to add additional topics to a Speedround after it has been launched.'''
* In the case of an inclusion-debates speedround or other such debate where the diferent topics are only very loosely related to one another, '''the title of the thread should attempt to list out the main topics, not just remain an opaque "Inclusion Debates Speedround"-type affair'''. (Listing every story would be impractical even with a five-topic cap, but the idea is to usefully convey to someone scanning [[Tardis:Temporary forums#Current threads]] whether they might want to have a look.)
None of these are meant as slights to [[User:OttselSpy25]]. Any prototype like this was bound to have kinks to work out. This was on the whole still a remarkable piece of work, and moreover, notwithstanding a few slight issues, the community largely rose to meet it; for all the talk of a free-for-all this has actually been a very responsive, very orderly, very efficient thread. So let no one be too harsh on themselves.
=== Part 1: ''Friend from the Future'' ===
This is perhaps the archetypal example of a topic for a Speedround like this — discussed to death in the past, a single short film, a special case which was brushed upon in [[Tardis:Temporary forums/Archive/Trailers|another T:TF thread]] but dismissed as not quite being on-topic there. More of these, please.
It's also the easiest one for me to close: it had pretty clear consensus, and my fellow admin [[User:SOTO]] already put in a pseudo-conclusion.
{{quote|I think the Moffat quote, along with the in-text effort to find a place for this minisode within the final narrative (ie. the psychic paper bit), are more than persuasive enough.<br>Against the previous ruling, my stance is that this shouldn't count as a deleted scene, since it was ''already released'' as its own complete narrative.|User:SOTO}}
To briefly go through this in more detail: this is the ''opposite'' of a deleted scene. This is a narrative short which was filmed ''first'' as its own production; and which Moffat then decided to remake as part of ''[[The Pilot (TV story)|The Pilot]]''. It was not written as a scene from ''The Pilot'', filmed as a screen test, and then reshot with changes; it was created as its ''own'' production, and only later did Moffat decide to rework it into ''The Pilot'', with the explicit purpose of making it "fit" with the narrative arc of [[Series 10 (Doctor Who 2005)|Series 10]].
If it had not been "remade" in ''The Pilot'', this would have been valid long ago as a [[minisode]]; or if not, it would have been valid weeks ago as a narrative trailer, anyway. Its relationship to ''The Pilot'' is the only thing putting Rule 4 into question — but Moffat's quote clarifies that the entire reason he put it into ''The Pilot'' was ''in order'' to try and "make it fit". And that in the final analysis, even though he only inserted the beginning into the episode, he does view it as giving the whole of the short a place in continuity.
An interesting fact here is that this implies that he may not have fully intended it to be part of continuity when he ''first'' wrote it — but then explicitly ''went back and tried to make it fit after all''. Some may know where I'm going with this: '''arguably, this is our first solid case since the original thread of something being validated through [[Tardis:Temporary forums/Archive/An update to T:VS|Rule 4 By Proxy]]''', with [[Steven Moffat]]'s ''[[The Pilot (TV story)|The Pilot]]'' as the story explicitly designed to "bring" ''[[Friend from the Future (TV story)|Friend from the Future]]'' into continuity.
One way or another, yes, this is valid now.
=== Part 2: Crossovers (''One Born Every Minute'', ''Looking For Pudsey'', ''TV Terrors'', the ''10,000 Dawns'' crossovers) ===
First off, as discussed at [[Tardis:Temporary forums/Admin announcements#10,000 Dawns crossovers]], the ''[[10,000 Dawns (series)|10,000 Dawns]]'' crossover fall outside the remit of this debate. We're finally, finally able to dot that I and cross that T — but after all the strife, it really should be done on its own thread. [[The Husbands of River Song (TV story)|Time to do it properly]].
These notwithstanding, this section actually seems to me to have been slightly misconceived. Multiple people expressed bafflement at the notion that it had ''ever'' been policy for [[crossover]]s to be invalid-by-default, which is good, because it hasn't. Not explicit policy, at any rate. Are there a number of crossovers which were treated more harshly than they would have been in the absence of the crossover elements? Quite possibly. But the crossoveriness has never been more than ''circumstantial'' evidence, not a disqualifying element in itself (even in the days when our coverage thereof was seriously flawed it's always been clear that things like [[Death's Head]] should be valid!). And really, that is, in itself, fair enough. A crossover mixes elements from two preexisting universes; it's sensible to stop and check whether the resulting story is still intended to take place in "the DWU Plus" rather than, say, "some mashup universe that's really neither".
Something like ''[[Dimensions in Time (TV story)|Dimensions in Time]]'' is one thing — but to pick a clear non-DWU exampke, {{wi|Who Framed Roger Rabbit}} is not a valid part of the ''Dumbo'' universe. There is a Dumbo in ''Roger Rabbit'', he's even characterised as quite similar to the "canonical" Dumbo, but ''Roger Rabbit'' takes place in a world of its own, a strange, magic-realist mashup meta-world where "fictional" characters live together in Fictional Character Town, mere actors in their own stories, who can hang out together in their downtime.
Still, if it needed clarifying, '''being a crossover (even a comedic one) is not in itself evidence of a Rule 4 breach'''; at best it's just circumstantial clues which may lead us to look for ''real'' evidence. And it's plausible that we may have drawn the lines incorrectly in the past. So let's examine the stories themselves.
==== ''One Born Every Minute'' ====
''[[One Born Every Minute (TV story)|One Born Every Minute]]'' has remained controversial, and my thoughts on it haven't changed much since I posted on that talk page. The crossover is not in itself the problem; the problem is that it seems to be a fourth-wall-breaking spoof. The ''Call The Midwife'' characters are characterised as meta parodies of themselves; not real women from the 1950s but ''living characters'', the tropes of whose native stories follow them around. It is in short a ''Roger Rabbit''-style situation for them. I don't mean to say that any fourth-wall break is inherently disqualifying (we'll come back to it), but as much as we mustn't throw out stories because they don't fit a narrow conception of what a DWU story ''is like'', we must also remember not to square-peg-round-hole stories into "making sense". The premise of this minisode is ''not'' "the Doctor has transported people from the 1950s to 2010s", it's very tangibly "the Doctor has transported people from one TV show into another".
Would this be disqualifying in itself? I still don't know. There are, to say the least, [[The Mind Robber (TV story)|precedents]] for Dr. Who interacting with living fictional characters. But what further sways me towards reaffirmed invalidity is that, from what little we see of him, the Eleventh Doctor is ''also'' characterised as a self-caricature, not as the real Time Lord in a world of fakes. For pity's sake, he's trying to stop the birth of a terrible abomination… "[[Jedward]]". On the whole the semiotics of the short really do treat him as a "meta" character like the others. In ''Roger Rabbit'' terms, imagine a Disney promo where Snow White has wandered into ''Star Wars'', causing it to transform into a musical to the confusion of the native characters; and at the end the Genie from ''Aladdin'' appears, apologises for zapping Snow White onto the Death Star, and notes that while he's here he ought to take care of the most evil entity in all of outer space… [Insert Hatable Celebrity Of Your Choice Here]. Would anybody, anybody at all, reasonably conclude that this is intended as a canonical part of the ''Aladdin'' universe, and the Genie is "real" even if the singing princess and the Jedi aren't? It's not that the Genie physically ''couldn't'' do that… but it would seem rather like missing the point.
And granted, there are magic-realist storytellers within ''Who'' who do treat the Doctor as by default a living fictional character. It's not ''inconceivable'' that someone would write ''One Born Every Minute'' the way they did, and intend it to be something that the Doctor can look back on in ''[[The Time of the Doctor (TV story)|The Time of the Doctor]]'' when he promises to remember everything he did with this face. If [[Paul Magrs]] had written it…!… But he didn't, and absent a statement or a body of work to draw from about probable mindset, this just doesn't seem like it's intended to be in the real DWU.
Not because it's a crossover, though.
==== ''Looking for Pudsey'' ====
Shorter here. ''[[Looking for Pudsey (TV story)|Looking for Pudsey]]'', from what I have seen, ''does'' treat the [[Twelfth Doctor]] as "real". Capaldi plays him straight, and although there are comedic shenanigans happening in the wider story, they aren't a matter of fictional characters crashing into each other. I ''have'' watched the full ten-minute thing, and I find no evidence to substantiate the idea that [[Eddie Redmayne]] is on any level playing [[Newt Scamander]]. From the very first scene, it's clear that what we simply have is the in-universe Redmayne attempting to film a Children in Need appeal while in costume, and being side-tracked by the fact that he can't find [[Pudsey Bear]]. 
The switchboard operators' way of discussing the TARDIS is actually instructive:
{{simplequote|How on ''Earth'' did we manage to patch him through to a transdimensional vessel such as the TARDIS?!|Mel and Sue}}
That is: we are not in a universe where the Doctor is just a "living fictional character" who's on the BBC's payroll and can be casually contacted for shenanigans like any other celebrity (as is the case in ''[[It's Showtime (TV story)|It's Showtime]]'' which we'll discuss later). The TARDIS is an actual "transdimensional vessel", and is ''not'' meant to be on the phonebook, and Redmayne is only put through to the Doctor by a freak accident, without ever realising that he's talking to an actual space-time-traveller. When he overhears the switchboard operators' line about the TARDIS he's confused and tries to get them to explain, but they brush past him.
(Likewise, when the same improbable mechanical fault in the phone system causes Mel and Sue to put Eddie through to [[Sister Julienne]], he does not recognise her as a known fictional character, or indeed someone from another time-zone; he remains thoroughly oblivious to all the sci-fi goings-on, that's part of the joke.)
The sole arguably-"meta" thing in the whole minisode is that Pudsey himself is very much treated as a ''living'' stuffed animal, not just an imaginary mascot. But that's crossovers for you. In a Children in Need short Pudsey is a real being, so in a crossover between that and ''Doctor Who'', Pudsey continues to be presented as a real being. [[Panda|Living]] [[Teddy Sparkles|stuffed animals]] [[Death of the Author (short story)|are not unknown]] in the DWU to say the least. It's not a problem when ''those'' stories introduce living stuffed animals to the DWU (any more than it's a problem when ''Doctor Who'' introduces [[Santa Claus]] or ''Torchwood'' introduces [[fairy|fairies]]), so it shouldn't be a problem here.
Indeed, Pudsey appeared as a real being before in what was very much a non-parodical ''Doctor Who'' story: ''[[Doctor Who Game Maker]]'', where he was outright made a [[companion]] . Silly, perhaps, but the story didn't ''treat'' it as silly. The ''Game Maker'' is not currently a valid source, but, as far as I know, purely for "interactive fiction"/"non-narrative fiction" reasons.
===== ''TV Terrors'' =====
This is actually currently valid, so I'm not entirely sure what's going on here. I can at least put paid to any notion that it's a ''parody''; it clearly isn't. It simply uses [[the Doctor's TARDIS]] as the gimmick-of-the-week for a comedy narrative, but the TARDIS itself isn't the subject of the joke, just the characters' stupidity and recklessness in what they do with it.
Arguably, it might be read as falling within the "''Roger Rabbit''-esque" category I outlined above. But if it does so, it is in a way completely removed from its crossover nature; the Doctor might kinda sorta be a meta character here, but the ''TV Terrors'' characters ''aren't''; they're just ordinary TV-watching folks here. And there's no analogue of the "Jedward" gag to flag the ''Doctor Who'' elements as parodies of themselves, despite the meta-ness.
On the whole, there ''may'' be an argument for invalidating this on Rule 4 grounds but it has nothing to do with crossovers or parody; and it's a case that ''could'' be made, but it's not a case that anyone here ''actually'' made. So there are no grounds that I can see to justify invalidating it at present.
=== Part 3: ''Dermot and the Doctor'' ===
This one flows very naturally from everything discussed above. There is only one factual error in the OP: [[User:OttselSpy25]] claims that "the general belief is that Czech made a new response [in [[Special:Forum]]] stating that because the segment featured real-world actors and was a skit at a real-world awards show, it isn't fiction" but that "this has since been lost". Actually, the post was on [[Talk:The Ultimate Guide (2013 documentary)]], ironically being cited for evidence that we shouldn't call ''[[The History of the Doctor (TV story)|The History of the Doctor]]'' valid — which we do now, and have done for some time. In the same breath Czech also cites ''[[Tales from the TARDIS (comic series)|Tales from the TARDIS]]'' and ''[[The Trial of Doctor Who (short story)|The Trial of Doctor Who]]'', both things which have since been redeemed as valid sources, as examples of things that are held to be invalid for the same reason. That should make quite a lot of alarm bells ring about ''Demot…''<nowiki>'s</nowiki> invalidity reflecting a wildly outdated ethos of validity.
Says Czech:
{{quote|Because the "narrative" of that sketch depends on believing the Doctor was somehow involved with the non-fictional awards show itself, we obviously can't include it, because that would logically mean that everyone who was in that awards show was a part of the DWU. In the same way, we'd have to believe that every single interviewer, Tovey's narration, and '''the actors who played DWU characters''' were themselves a part of the DWU in order to admit the sketch.|User:CzechOut}}
So it's a Rule 1 thing and a Rule 4 thing. Can the sketch be viewed separately from the real events of the Awards? If not, what are the implications on Rule 4?
But both these worries are misplaced. As regards the first, there was a ruling ''looong'' ago that we could call the prerecorded/DVD-release version of ''[[Music of the Spheres (TV story)|Music of the Spheres]]'' a valid source without worry; that is, that we could ''cover only the Doctor's half of the conversation'', while plugging our ears on just who he's talking to and taking long pauses to hear back from. If we can divide the prerecorded live-action ''Who'' stuff from the real world bits in a case as entangled as ''this'', it makes no sense at all to act like we ''just can't tell where one ends and the other begins'' between the prerecorded ''Dermot'' sketch, and the real awards show it tied in with.
But even then — "that would logically mean that everyone who was in that awards show was a part of the DWU"… yes, and? I do slightly get the worries about the BTS ''Who'' stuff. ''[[The Ultimate Guide (2013 documentary)|The Ultimate Guide]]'' can't easily exist in the DWU (but then, ''[[The History of the Doctor (TV story)|The History of the Doctor]]'' never said it did, hence why it's valid now; and ''Dermot'' never says that Steven Moffat will be at the Awards Show or anything like ''that''). Sure. But the ''people''? Of ''course'' "everyone in that awards show is a part of the DWU". ''Doctor Who'' has always operated as [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LikeRealityUnlessNoted "like reality unless otherwise noted"]. Any given real person can and should be assumed to exist in the DWU unless proven otherwise. [[T:NO RW]] prevents us from using the real world as a source directly, but we shouldn't be surprised at all when fiction proves that yes, people like [[Graham Norton (in-universe)|Graham Norton]] do in fact exist in-universe.
With regards to the "is the Doctor treated as a meta-character", this passes with flying colours. Not a single person in this story shows any sign of knowing about ''[[Doctor Who]]''. Not that it would be a dealbreaker ''necessarily'', but the fact is that the script goes ''out of its way'' to show us otherwise. Multiple people see the TARDIS and fail to relate this to any über-notorious pop culture imagery they might have seen around; no, they're just confused at the incongruous police box, just like any celebrity-playing-themselves in any mainline ''Doctor Who'' story.
{{quote|What's that ''box'' doing in the studio? I'm trying to present the news!|[[Graham Norton (in-universe){{!}}Graham Norton]]}}
This pointedly ''isn't'' quite the Graham Norton who's had David Tennant and Matt Smith on his talk show. ''He'd'' recognise the TARDIS in a heartbeat and go "what's this TARDIS prop doing here, this isn't the ''Doctor Who'' panel". But no, they go the "box" route.
Likewise the [[Eleventh Doctor]] is given an actual reason to care about getting [[Dermot O'Leary]] to the Awards Show on time; he's not just doing it because he's a BBC character and TV personalities gotta stick together, or anything like that. No: it's a "gotta preserve history" thing.
{{quote|The 26th of January, 2011. It's a temporal tipping point. Millions of people going to be making vital, important decisions. And if they make just one, tiny mistake the entire universe will be destroyed.|[[Eleventh Doctor{{!}}Dr Who]]}}
This isn't a meta thing, and this isn't indistinguishable from the real-world awards show. What's left — is it a spoof? No it isn't. It's a ''bit silly''. Sure. "Invisible handcuffs". But TV stories by Moffat have had [[The Time of the Doctor (TV story)|holographic clothes]] and [[Twice Upon a Time (TV story)|invisible hair]]. This whole affair is pretty tame as far as the Eleventh Doctor's off-air minisode misadventures go: we've seen him [[Bad Night (home video)|trying to save Queen Elizabeth II from being sold in a pet shop after being turned into a gold fish]], we've seen him [[Good Night (home video)|"…concealing a euphonium. Guiltily. Has that even been attempted before?"]] in an adventure that also involved "telling [[Marilyn Monroe|Marilyn]] she'll have to use the biplane". And then there's the opening scenes of ''[[The Impossible Astronaut (TV story)|The Impossible Astronaut]]''. Eleven gets up to ridiculous shenanigans in-between big TV adventures; that's just what it does. Unlike the "Jedward" thing, the stakes here are justified in meaningful DWU terms, and everything flows from there.
Then, there are two minor concerns brought up by [[User:SOTO]] which I must address. The first is that after the sketch, in the "real" awards show, Dermot rocked up in the TARDIS on the actual stage. Okay. But it's very very easy to "make an editorial decision on when the story ends": it ends at the titles and the end of the prerecorded material. Whodathunkitt. We have a ''very'' close precedent for this: the [[Children in Need 1983 (TV story)|1983 ''Children in Need'' special]] aired after ''[[The Five Doctors (TV story)|The Five Doctors]]'', and features what is distinctly [[Peter Davison]] arriving on the ''Children in Need'' set in the TARDIS, with some light banter treating him as having materialised directly here from the final frames of ''The Five Doctors''. But we can and do cover ''Five Doctors'' as valid without worrying about that. Same thing here.
As for the fact that…
{{quote|[[DWMSE 30]] also tells us in the original script, there's a bit where the Doctor does a telephone mime which means "vote for me" in ''The X Factor'' before turning to the camera,|User:SOTO}}
as they say, this was pointedly ''cut'' from the final version. Besides, quick sideways glances to the camera have happened in all kinds of episodes e.g. ''[[Heaven Sent (TV story)|Heaven Sent]]''. If we're not bothered about "A merry Christmas to all of you at home" in ''[[The Daleks' Master Plan (TV story)|The Daleks' Master Plan]]'', then in the face of all the other evidence that this is ''not'' meant to be a meta thing, I really don't think we should lose any sleep about a blink-and-you'll-miss-it glance at the camera ''which didn't make it into the finished product''.
'''It is with resolution, and considerable satisfaction, that I rule ''Dermot and the Doctor'' a valid source once and for all.'''
=== Part 4: Fourth wall stuff ===
This was one of the most controversial things in the whole Speedround, and for good reason: "fourth wall breaks" are a very blurrily defined concepts. So I'm goingto try and disentangle the whole mess. But first, let me clarify, as I did with the crossovers, that '''it is not and has never been policy that a fourth-wall break is ''in itself'' a reason for invalidity'''; rather, it's an extension of [[Tardis:Valid sources#Rule 4|Rule 4]], a piece of circumstantial evidence about authorial intent, albeit, historically, what has been deemed very ''strong'' evidence, perhaps too strong. This is why ''Doctor Who'' TV stories get "special treatment" here without injury to [[T:NPOV]]: it is ''beyond doubt'' that the writers of ''[[The Daleks' Master Plan (TV story)|The Daleks' Master Plan]]'' and ''[[Before the Flood (TV story)|Before the Flood]]'' intended them to be set in the DWU; no amount of in-story evidence could prove otherwise. Whereas things are very different for a narrative trailer or a ''Lockdwon'' webcast or even a charity minisode; those ''are'' sometimes intended to be set outside the DWU, the scenario is not in itself absurd. So it must be examined.
Now, as to the many kinds and varieties…
First there is the basic notion of talking generically to the camera/audience interaction. Treating ''that'' as in itself evidence of Rule 4-breaking has led us astray and should not stand as policy. ''[[A Message from the Doctor (webcast)|A Message from the Doctor]]'' clearly ought to be valid, and always should have been. It's an in-universe transmission the Doctor is sending out in the middle of an adventure; the diegesis of the DWU isn't even ''actually'' being pierced here. And this applies to a lot of what OttselSpy refers to as "interactive fiction"/"audience participation". ''[[The Runaway (video game)|The Runaway]]'' or ''[[Attack of the Graske (video game)|Attack of the Graske]]'' aren't doing any fourth-wall-breaking in the sense of acknowledging a metafictional ''Doctor Who''/the Doctor's own fictionality; they're ''just'' framed in such a way that a nondescript "you" is kept "off-screen", inviting the viewer or player to imagine themselves in the diegetic character's shoes. But the Doctor isn't Watsonianly talking to you out of a TV show; there's just someone actually standing there in front of them whom you're standing in for, as in ''The Runaway'' which ''explains'' how "you" came to be in the TARDIS. '''These should be valid by default unless there are other parameters in play.'''<ref>After some reflection I think this includes ''[[Time Is Everything (TV story)|Time Is Everything]]''; the [[Time is Everything (feature)|print tie-ins]] explicitly treat the situation as "the Doctor has been hired to make commercials for Superannuation", so he's genuinely filming commercials in the TV shorts, not just generically talking to camera. And he is introduced there in terms of "he's a real live time-traveller," not "you know him from beloved show ''Doctor Who''", so there isn't really a fourth-wall problem at all. If there are Rule 4 concerns they lie elsewhere, and the presumption should be validity unless prove otherwise, as with everything else.</ref>
Then, there are "monologues to camera". These still don't acknowledge the fiction, ''per se'', but the character really is talking "to the camera", not to some in-universe element (whether a live audience or an in-universe camera) that we the real audience aren't allowed to observe directly. In this category we find ''[[Introduction to SJA (webcast)|Introduction to SJA]]''<ref>Although this one is ''not'' hereby ruled valid because I'm having doubts about how in-character the actors even ''are''. I think this one bears discussing further even if we grant that a monologue-to-camera can be valid in principle.</ref>, ''[[Death of the Doctor (trailer)|Death of the Doctor]]'', ''[[Doctor Who and the Ambassadors of Death (trailer)|Doctor Who and the Ambassadors of Death]]''. These are tricky, but on the whole the thing with these is that they're valid, but not as things which actually happen. You have to think of these as similar to theatrical asides. The character non-diegetically turns to the camera and describes, from their own, in-universe perspective, their current situation and feelings. Those feelings are valid; the fact that "the Third Doctor once turned to no one at all and started monologuing about the ongoing crisis while frowning", isn't. This is similar to the current parameters of the validity of ''[[She Said, He Said: A Prequel (webcast)|She Said, He Said]]'', and it can also be compared to prose or audio with a first-person narrator who's not actually intended to have committed these words to paper at any specific point in-universe. Such sources document a ''point of view'', not actual ''events''. '''As a rule, these should also be valid, although it is not uncommon for things of their type to break the fourth wall in other, more concerning ways.''' The thing we're calling ''[[Luckily for me, I have a time machine (TV story)|Luckily for me, I have a time machine]]'' seems to be a similar thing, and an example of one which is ''not'' a trailer. It describes the Doctor's mindset, and should be valid in ''that'' mode, but we shouldn't be saying "at one point the Eleventh Doctor literally walked through a mysterious landscape made of gears".
Now we come to the really tricky stuff: "fourth wall breaks" in the sense of actual, material acknowledgement of ''Doctor Who'' as in-universe fiction. Sometimes — and this has been a source of great confusion — this is combined with talking to the camera. ''[[The Trip of a Lifetime (TV story)|The Trip of a Lifetime]]'' is not just talking "to camera", it's directly talking to you-the-viewer, and equivocating playfully between "do you want to be my companion" and "do you want to watch my show". Things like that ''can'' be valid sometimes, but when they are not in a medium like the mainline TV series, we should be mindful of potential Rule 4 concerns. I don't think ''Trip of a Lifetime'' was intended to be read as "real" events by [[Russell T Davies]]; all his efforts to curb the notion of anyone but Rose travelling with the Ninth Doctor in the EU surrounding [[Series 1 (Doctor Who 2005)|Series 1]], and we should take literally the idea that he's here offering a nondescript "you" the same chance? No. It's a meta joke about watching the show, not something that "really happens" to any degree. Regrettably I think ''[[Animal Magic (TV story)|Animal Magic]]'' is ultimately a source of this type. It was half-ad-libbed on the set of a real ''Doctor Who'' story, but that seems rather more like that clearly non-Rule-4-passing ''[[Peter Capaldi and Simon the Shy Cyberman Invite You to Breakfast with 7 Doctors (webcast)|Peter Capaldi and Simon the Shy Cyberman Invite You to Breakfast with 7 Doctors]]'' being shot on the set of ''[[The Doctor Falls (TV story)|The Doctor Falls]]'' than anything else. I keep talking meta cartoons, but it's really like the Doctor-as-living-fictional-characters suddenly freezing the world around him to talk to th audience out of their TV screen. It's fiction, yes, and so's the Capaldi thing. But DWU fiction? No, not really, that I can see. Not at first glance.
This brings me to a wider point. There has been a lot of confusion caused by people wanting to draw a big red line between "this is set in the DWU" and "this is just the actor in costume". I think that's led both to motions for excessive invalidations ''and'' excessive validations, because as I brushed up on in earlier segments of this closing post, '''there is such a thing as fiction which treats the Doctor as real but is not set in the DWU'''. Usually this takes the form of the "meta" stories typified by ''[[It's Showtime (TV story)|It's Showtime]]'', where the Doctor is treated as a "living fictional character" who can not only speak out of the camera, but interact with the real world; but who's aware of their own fictionality, of ''being a character on the BBC'' (as distinct from "a real person whose life is ''somehow'' also chronicled on an easter-egg in-universe show"; there's a difference). ''It's Showtime'' is set in a world where a whole cast of living fictional characters including the likes of Shrek are all real beings running around a BBC backlot, and need to somehow "perform" their stories live for the BBC Christmas programming to proceed. In no shape or form is this "Matt Smith in costume but not in-character"; it's fiction. But its world is not the world of the ''Doctor Who'' TV show any more than the world of ''Who Framed Roger Rabbit'' is the world of ''Dumbo''. I actually think ''[[United we stand, 2m apart (webcast)|United we stand, 2m apart]]'' is quite probably meant to be "in-character"; Jodie Whittaker is not only in costume, but adopts Thirteen's body language and refers to herself as a Doctor. However, it, alongside ''[[The Naked Truth (TV story)|The Naked Truth]]'', ''[[BAFTA in the TARDIS (TV story)|BAFTA in the TARDIS]]'', ''[[Introduction to the Night (TV story)|Introduction to the Night]]'', ''[[Pugwash Ahoy! (comic story)|Pugwash Ahoy!]]'' and the ''[[Famine Appeal (TV story)|Famine Appeal]]'', all seem to be the case of the Doctor-as-living-fictional-character, not the Doctor-as-real-being, interacting with the audience. All these things are fiction, all these things are stories, there's no need for scare-quotes. It's just not clear they're stories about a "real" Doctor.
(I think this is a better framing than "''Who'' in the DWU" vs. "Doctor in the real world", in part for the reasons I outlined earlier where an excessive distinction between "the real world" and "the DWU" in any respect ''other'' than the level of fictionality of the Doctor themself is misleading about the nature of the Earth in ''Doctor Who''. ''Doctor Who'' takes place in the world outside your door, ''plus'' sci-fi; not in a constructed sci-fi world that happens to have a planet called Earth with a lot of broad similarities to ours.)
As [[User:NoNotTheMemes]] wittily put it with regards to ''The Naked Truth'':
{{quote|The Doctor's costume being sold for charity only makes sense in terms of the real-world fact of it being a costume, you know? It's not that the actual Time Lord couldn't get up to shenanigans with hologram clothes and offer his clothes to charity but who'd actually let that be a segment on the actual in-universe BBC?|User:NoNotTheMemes}}
This is not a blanket ban on stories where the Doctor (or any other character) acknowledges their own fictionality to some degree. It's all about context. When an episode of the TV show does it, it goes without saying that it's not evidence intent that the TV show doesn't count as part of its own universe. When Paul Magrs does it, he's Paul Magrs. When the Fourth Doctor does it, we should at least pause and think about what it means. Still, a presumption of invalidity for some fourth-wall-breakers of this type, in the absence of an authorial-intent quote to defuse the worry, is not unreasonable. '''It is not objectionable to create something like ''The Naked Truth'' as invalid, and place the burden of proof on users wanting to argue otherwise.''' (Although this is not an obligation.)
=== Part 5: Yule Logs ===
Pretty clear consensus: the Whittaker Logs (but not the Capaldi ones) were clearly depictions of in-universe stuff, and don't break the fourth wall or nuthink'. They were invalidated because they wren't precisely ''stories'', if I recall correctly; which I never really agreed with, but as many people have pointed out, the question is now moot. They are at any rate clearly fiction, and clearly DWU fiction. Unless whoever made them comes forward and establishes otherwise, sure, they count.
=== Part 6: ''Chute!'' ===
Another short one with clear consensus: '''it's valid'''. This is a scripted, non-fourth-wall-breaking crossover, which could probably have been lumped into the "crossover shenanigans" discussion above. The story seems to carefully route ''around'' acknowledging SJA's in-universe fictionality, in a way rather similar to the famous gag in ''[[Remembrance of the Daleks (TV story)|Remembrance of the Daleks]]'' — stopping just short of confronting the characters with a SJA VHS tape. It's a fourth-wall ''gag'', but a gag which relies on the fact that there is a fourth wall to be broken, and that they hammer comes within inches of the wall in question, but then misses.
A lot of Ottsel's OP was given over to a discussion of the practicalities. He is correct that as per the precedent set by anything from ''[[The Incomplete Death's Head (comic story)|The Incomplete Death's Head]]'' to ''[[The Dalek Tapes (comic story)|The Dalek Tapes]]'' to ''[[Tales from the TARDIS (comic series)|Tales from the TARDIS]]'', the in-universe clips should be covered as part of the story — ''as'' in-universe clips, of course. This no more makes ''[[Potter Puppet Pals]]'' valid than [[Doctor Who (TV story)|the TV Movie]] makes ''[[Frankenstein (film)|Frankenstein]]'' valid.<ref>Note that, unlike the somewhat curious way we have given the individual stories within ''TIDH'' their own pages, we should here go with the ordinary procedure of merely covering them as part of the whole. Any pages about the clips qua clips would have to be in-universe ones. There is no cause for a "valid"-but-as-in-universe-fiction <nowiki>[[The Mysterious Ticking Noise (TV story)]]</nowiki>, that would be all ''kinds'' of confusing.</ref> There is no "slippery slope" situation here, not only because this is rare (as Ottsel notes), but because we've done it before. It's accepted procedure.
=== Part 7: ''Doctor Who at the Proms'' ===
I feel like dwelling on this too much would mean repeating myself from the ''Dermot and the Doctor'' segment. What we have here are relics of the old notion that we can't easily separate the in-universe bits from the out-of-universe bits when the same "overall thing" packages both. But anyone can see that the skits in ''Proms'' shows are their own embedded things, above and beyond the thing where some monster stunt performers might stomp around during some of the performances, silent and contextless.
We no longer have a problem with ''[[Archive - A History of the Cyber Race (short story)|Archive - A History of the Cyber Race]]''. We no longer have a problem with ''[[The History of the Doctor (TV story)|The History of the Doctor]]'' or (as of today) with ''[[Dermot and the Doctor (TV story)|Dermot and the Doctor]]''. ''[[Music of the Spheres (TV story)|Music of the Spheres]]'' has been valid from the start. '''The minisodes embedded within the ''Proms'' shows should be considered their own things, given their own pages, and validated''', because… that's what they are. Truth is, this entire line of argument has always puzzled me because you know what else is a mixture of BTS bits, DWU fiction bits, and fiction-but-not-Rule-4-passing bits? Any given issue of [[DWM]].
As our anonymous contributor noted towards the end of the discussion, there is simply no evidence that the 2013 ''[[Doctor Who Proms Film (TV story)|Doctor Who Proms Film]]'' (as the credits prosasically call it; but hey, it beats [[Doctor Who (TV story)]]) ''wasn't'' intended to pass Rule 4. It certainly doesn't break the fourth wall.
As is becoming traditional, I am also having to litigate a hypothetical R4BP case for a story which is in fact being validated through regular Rule 4. [[User:Najawin]], once again, has concerns. But these concerns are the same ones he espoused regarding ''[[Step Into the 80's! (TV story)|Step Into the 80's!]]'', as he explicitly acknowledges; so I can but direct him to my ruling at [[Tardis:Temporary forums/Archive/Trailers#A semi-digression on Rule 4 by Proxy and Rule 4]]. [[T:BOUND]] applies; if by his own admission the cases are equivalent, then the Ticker in ''[[Dark Water (TV story)|Dark Water]]'' should be considered potential R4BP evidence, ''because'' it is current policy that if necessary, the Prime Computer in ''[[Christmas on a Rational Planet (novel)|Christmas on a Rational Planet]]'' would be valid R4BP evidence if the shorts weren't already valid on their own terms. I think it's trivial<ref>In the Najawin sense!</ref> that the Ticker in ''Dark Water'' now belongs in the <nowiki>==Continuity==</nowiki> section of that page, and that fulfills the criterion I outlined there. Stop trying to probe the deepest recesses of Moffat's subconscious, people! I have explained some fairly clear standards that side-step the issue!
=== Part 8: ''Disney Time'' ===
Another one which is basically just an extension of the fourth-wall ones. Here we have an example of a story which, ''prima facie'', flits with the "meta-Doctor" framing. It's certainly not "Tom Baker in costume" — the opening and closing segments would put such a weird take to rest. And he's hosting a TV show, not just abstractly talking to the screen; so in that sense it's an "in-universe transmission" sort of thing, not a ''Trip of a Lifetime'' affair. But there are some Rule 4 concerns on the basis of the Doctor casually hosting a TV show like this, as a celebrity. This is a good example of something which probably '''shouldn't be valid by ''default'''''. It ''would'' set the kind of dangerous precedent that [[User:NoNotTheMemes]] is worried about elsewhere in the thread. A ''lot'' of things of this basic "shape" were most likely not intended to fit on any real level with ''the'' DWU even if they feature the Doctor rather than the actor.
But I think [[User:OttselSpy25]] does a good job of arguing that this story about the Doctor is very much a story about ''the'' Doctor, so to speak. Multiple people in the comments were impressed with the attention to continuity of putting Baker back in his old costume to make sure this fed ''properly'' into ''[[Terror of the Zygons (TV story)|Terror of the Zygons]]'', and the way it "restored the cliffhanger" of ''[[Revenge of the Cybermen (TV story)|Revenge of the Cybermen]]'' in much the same way as ''[[Time Crash (TV story)|Time Crash]]''. You wouldn't catch ''[[It's Showtime (TV story)|It's Showtime]]'' doing a thing like ''that''. And as for his status as a "celebrity" who can be invited to hold a programme like ''Disney Time'', Ottsel makes a good case that it was not intended to scan as a "breach o the rule" for the tiny tots watching at home. The Fourth Doctor grins at the camera, he [[Doctor Who Discovers|writes books]], he [[A Letter from the Doctor (series)|writes letters to ''Doctor Who Weekly'']]; of ''course'' he might host a TV show. Notably enough, ''Doctor Who'' is still treated as "real events" here, not some sort of meta-fiction that the meta-Doctor acts in; hence the cliffhanger to ''Terror of the Zygons''.
This is a tricky case. It's one that warranted discussion. But there is sufficient evidence here for a consensus to enshrine that as near as we could tell, or default assumption ''should'' be that this was intended to "count" as much as any other non-mainline-TV-series material of the era, ''despite'' the flirting with the fourth wall. '''So it's valid'''. File it alongside your merry Christmases and your Beethovens if you must.
I am personally unsure about the idea of using screenshots from other releases of the clips shown in the original broadcast. At least, we should be careful about cropping, and not show any margins which the 4:3 broadcast would have cutout. But the consensus seemed to be in favour of the suggestion, so fine. Let's give it a try. Far be it from me to arbitrarily rule against the obvious consensus just because ''I'' don't like it!
(As concerns whether all the cast and crew of the clips will need pages — I defer to precedent here, whatever it may be, which seems to be that ''credited'' performers get pages, and non-credited ones do not.<ref>If this causes any issues, they can be discussed at [[Talk:Disney Time (TV story)]].</ref>)
=== Part 9: ''Doctor Who and the Fangs of Time'' ===
Hello again, meta-Doctor! This is… ''such'' a clear example of that. Ottsel is right that the original thread wasn't well-equipped to discuss this story properly, but the notion which I think best explains it in modern terms is not [[Doctor Who (in-universe)]] — it's "the Doctor as a magic-realist ''Roger Rabbit''-esque living-fictional-character", as seen in ''It's Showtime'', etc. in various guises and perumutations. The notion that it's an in-universe-''Doctor-Who'' thing, or a case of the N-Space Doctor visiting a [[meta-fiction universe]], flounders in the face of the bit where Sean, standing right in front of the apparently-real Doctor, talks about him having been "made up" by other people.
But that does not mean that our only avenue is saying that the Doctor's presence is ''just a metaphor''. It's a metaphor on some level, yes. But I think it's also, perhaps more importantly, magic realism. This is a story about a grown-up ''Doctor Who'' fan meeting his old fictional friend, Dr Who. Not ''imagining'' that he's meeting him; somehow, impossibly, genuinely meeting the fictional character, who's aware that he's a fictional character. Just because the story ''can'' be read in other ways doesn't mean it ''should'' be, and from the evidence of the thread and the story itself I think we'd be doing it a disservice by construing it as somthing else than the comic poetry that it wants to be.
Ottsel argues that…
{{quote|…it's really less about "Do you want us to cover this," and more "If you don't want us to cover this, how is this story fundamentally different from the countless other meta-branded stories which we do cover?"|User:OttselSpy25}}
But as before, slippery slopes are only slippery if we're lazy about discussing things on a case-by-case basis. If the Speedrounds have a great virtue, it's letting us make bespoke decisions for all the little oddities like this, ''without'' doing anything so rash as "altering policy" on a broad level in a way that could have unintended side-effect. We can just reaffirm this specific story's invalidity here — not as a parody or a "metaphorical autobiography", just as a meta tale whose universe is not, as near as we can tell, ''the'' DWU — without invalidating things we don't want to invalidate!
(And as to the why, put simply, it's again about context. [[Paul Magrs]] is ''always'' a strange magic-realist. It's the same [[Iris Wildthyme]] in ''[[Bafflement and Devotion (short story)|Bafflement and Devotion]]'' and in ''[[The Scarlet Empress (novel)|The Scarlet Empress]]'', and anyone who follows the Iris franchise will testify as much. The meta stuff is a recurring part of how Magrs depicts the DWU as working in general. If such context xisted for Sean Longcroft, this might be a very different matter.)
This is one of those which maybe didn't see as much discussion as they ''could'' have done, so if someone has more to say and wants to relitigate it as its own thread — fine. But as far as what came out in this thread, I just don't think there's evidence ''or'' a consensus to validate this.
=== Part 10: ''Death's Head'' ===
I think there is a resounding argument, and a clear consensus, that [[Keepsake's vulture]] should henceforth be properly considered a [[List of DWU concepts not owned by the BBC|"non-BBC-owned DWU concept"]] whose appearance in something is grounds for coverage. It is unfortunate that we do not have access to the original thread on this topic, but as I was there, I have some recollection of it; and (as someone who hadn't read the story at that time) I am very surprised by what OttselSpy describes here, and what I found upon tracking down ''The Body in Question'' for myself. The old thread dismissed the vulture as, in the end, "basically just a prop".
Never mind that I don't think character vs. prop is the right framing here (we'd cover a licensed appearance of [[Jack Harkness's vortex manipulator]], wouldn't we?), it is now very apparent that that was ''wrong''. It's not the ordinary vulture I'd imagined, to start with, but some kind of sci-fi beastie as illustrated by Ottsel. But also, this vulture's an actual member of the recurring cast; silent, yes, but with personality, vying with [[Spratt]] for the job of Death's Head Official Sidekick as a recurring gag. And, of course, that makes the two fo them ''joint'' sidekicks. Any story featuring Death's Head and the vulture has a ''direct narrative connection'' to ''[[Keepsake (comic story)|Keepsake]]'' via ''[[Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling! (comic story)|Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling!]]''.
I think it is proven beyond doubt that ''[[The Body in Question (comic story)|The Body in Question]]'' should be covered. As Ottsel said:
{{quote|I understand that to us "''Doctor Who'' universe" is more of a state-of-mind… but I can not think of another instance of anyone trying to argue that a story which ''features the Doctor being name-dropped'' does not establish that it takes place within the Doctor's universe to a level of satisfaction.|User:OttselSpy25}}
But I will go further and extend the same ruling to ''[[Synchronicity II (comic story)|Synchronicity II]]'' (the actual title of the story in ''Revolutionary War: Death's Head II'' — that's the name of the ''publication'') and to the irritatingly-named ''[[The Bo(d)y in Question (comic story)|The Bo(d)y in Question]]'' (the actual title of the four-part story in the 2019 ''Death's Head'' miniseries). Yes, these are minor appearances. But as I just restated, going out of your way to show Keepsake's Vulture in Death's Head past ''is'' going out of your way to reference the character's origins being steeped in the DWU. It's like whenever [[Iris Wildthyme]] stories go back to [[Hyspero]]. It's going out of its way to say "this isn't just the preexisting Magrs-owned Iris we're dealing with here, this is ''the'' Iris who adventured with the Eighth Doctor in ''[[The Scarlet Empress (novel)|The Scarlet Empress]]''". And beyond that, as Ottsel said, covering every subsequent licensed appearance of characters who debut in ''Who'' stories is…
{{quote|…the basic fundamentals of what we are supposed to cover according to T:VS.|User:OttselSpy25}}
It doesn't matter if the appearance is ''minor''. There's a slippery slope for you. In the absence of negative evidence I really cannot justify picking and choosing which appearances of this DWM character we go on to cover based on whether they're "minor" or not. Perhaps I would be more hesitant if we had a dozen random ''Avengers'' stories to deal with, but both of these stories are Death's-Head-focused, very much steeped in the continuity of stories we already do cover-slash-will now cover such as ''Body in Question'' and ''Incomplete Death's head''. And there's only two of them. Let's cut the Gordian knot.
That being said, all this Death's Head stuff remains cases of '''crossovers''' moreso than conventional [[Doctor Who spin-offs|spin-offs]], and that has implications for sanity. It is not obvious to me that if there's some recurring character who debuts in ''Synchronicity II'' or ''Bo(d)y'', we should by default continue chasing down all of ''their'' appearances and treating them as valid-by-default. Let's not put the Marvel Wiki out of a job here. It's conceivable that such a character would warrant coverage, but I am hereby declaring that this would at ''least'' need a thread, and it would require a solid argument that the second-order-crossover-spin-off-thing is still very much intended to be read with the old 1980s ''Who'' crossovers in mind.
Indeed, I am rejecting the notion that we should cover ''Kangs of the Memories!! Or Guess Who's Coming To Dinner!'' because it "depicts Death's Head's theft of the time-cycle that he has in ''[[Priceless! (comic story)|Priceless!]]''". I am very sorry but this continuity here is the wrong way around to be anything of use to us. This would be like saying that we should cover ''Encounter at Farpoint'' because it's where [[Jean-Luc Picard]] assumes command of the ''[[USS Enterprise]]'' as he is seen doing in ''[[Assimilation² (comic story)|Assimilation²]]''. It's perhaps more promising that it "references the events" of ''[[Clobberin' Time! (comic story)|Clobberin' Time!]]'', now a story we cover in earnest; but even so, a verbal reference to crossover events isn't much to go on. Now, if the story ''also'' had the Vulture in it, or equivalent, then such a reference would help ground it in the explicit continuity of the prior DWU crossovers — but ''in itself'' I'm just not sure it's solid enough. If a later ''Star Trek'' comic ever referenced the Cybermen-Borg alliance in passing, without naming the Cybermen, I'm not sure we'd want to cover the whole thing just over that small reference. Generally speaking, to qualify for [[List of DWU concepts not owned by the BBC|"non-BBC-owned DWU concept" status]], something has to be a distinct enough ''thing'' that we have, you know, a page about that thing!
…I keep making ''Star Trek'' comparisons, but I think a lot of frustration here comes from the fact that there is some sentiment that we should in fact treat ''Death's Head'' like [[Iris Wildthyme]]: a <s>one-</s>two-of-a-kind "honourary" DWU character, who may have debuted outside the DWU but became so defined by it that we should just make a special decision to bend [[T:VS]], and go the whole hog to cover all his appearances without trying to hide behind vultures and namedrops.
{{quote|[''Kangs for the Memories!''] seems like something which would be fine to simply note, but also seems like it could be of utility simply in giving a full picture.|User:TheChampionOfTime}}
And I am, to be sure, sympathetic to this position. ''Increasingly'' sympathetic, the more of this tangled web we unravel. But ''that'' is much too broad and much too unique a proposal to be handled in a Speedround like this. The Speedround was good for correcting the application of ''current'' policy, as in the case of these three further appearances by the vulture. But I really don't think such an afterthought of a discussion should be held in such a format — nor do I think th epeople who brought it up meant for it to be resolved here.
Besides, I have long felt that if we extend the Iris precedent to other cases, there are several other stories we may want to look at before Death's Head. (For just one example, we cover 95% of the [[Cyberon (series)|''Cyberon'' series]] as it is. For another, this seems like the perfect, long-delayed resolution to [[Talk:Bibliophage (short story)]].)
So if we revisit this particular question, that should be as its ''own'', ''non''-Speedround thread.
As always, thanks, everyone! [[User:Scrooge MacDuck|'''Scrooge MacDuck''']] [[User_talk:Scrooge MacDuck|⊕]] 18:48, 22 April 2023 (UTC)
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