Forum:A Fix with Sontarans: Fixing Fix's Validity: Difference between revisions

In fact, it is truly the elephant in the room. It is messy. Undeniably so. It has Jimmy Savile inexplicably enter the TARDIS and then the episode just kinda melts into non-fiction where Savile gives Gareth a medal and a [[meson gun]]. Arguably, this isn't even a fourth wall break, as at no point does any character turn to the camera and say "you're watching ''A Fix with Sontarans''!", it's in-universe-ness fades, which is the issue. Six and Tegan don't really break character however, although they also don't really question the inexplicable appearance of Savile either. However, I think it should be said that all of this plausibly ''could'' take place in-universe? It would be very ''strange'', but not ''impossible''.

Furthermore, if this isn't good enough reason to validate ''A Fix with Sontarans'', then there is the rule-four-by-proxy angle to validate the minisode from. ''[[Fixing a Hole (short story)|Fixing a Hole]]'' was a short story printed in ''[[Short Trips (series)|Short Trips]]'': ''[[Past Tense]]'', which serves as a direct sequel to ''AFwS''. Heck, even the title of this story is pun about fixing ''A Fix with Sontarans''{{'}}s plot holes; quite ingenius if I say so myself. In this short story — which is mostly a character piece — it follows Tegan and Six after Gareth has been returned to Earth. Interestingly, unlike other cases of stories like ''[[First Frontier (novel)|First Frontier]]'' bringing more infamous stories like ''[[Dimensions in Time (TV story)|Dimensions in Time]]'' "into continuity" by recontexualising the latter's events (e.g. "it was all a dream"), ''Fixing a Hole'' just seems to... ignore the ending of ''A Fix with Sontarans''. No mention of Savile or ''Jim'll Fix It'' is ever made, which is contrasted by the rest of ''AFwS'' being recapped. Is this enough evidence for rule-four-by-proxy? I'd say so, even if it doesn't provide a satisfying way for us to Wikify the ending of ''AFwS'', which is something I don't believe is necessary for the rule-four-by-proxy approach.

So the simple solution? Validate the 1985 version and just have to deal with "according to one account Jimmy Savile entered the TARDIS and gave Gareth Jenkins a medal and the [[meson gun]] prop". Not too complicated, is it? If the pages are merged, I do feel it is necessary to keep [[A Fix with Sontarans (home video)]] as a redirect for the occasions we want to specifically cite the 2022 recut, as well as allowing "([[HOMEVID]]: ''[[A Fix with Sontarans (home video)|A Fix with Sontarans]]'')" to be used alongside "([[TV]]: ''[[A Fix with Sontarans (TV story)|A Fix with Sontarans]]'')" as co-existing citations. This probably will be even easier to do given the developments at [[Forum:Cite source, a new citation template]]!

The other solution to the validity of the 1985 version of ''A Fix with Sontarans'' is to ''in''validate the 2022 cut, which I feel is wholly unideal and would result in an unfair invalidation of a source despite it passing [[T:VS]] and would also impact a lot of valid pages which cite the 2022 cut, such as [[Tenth Sontaran Battle Fleet]], as the 2022 cut seems to actually conflate the [[Tenth Sontaran Battle Brigade]] from ''AFwS'' and the Tenth Sontaran Battle Fleet from ''[[The Sontaran Stratagem (TV story)|The Sontaran Stratagem]]''. {{User:Epsilon the Eternal/signature}} 17:16, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

:I don’t understand how it can be any harder than having the 1985 version be invalid and make the 2022 re-cut valid. The original with Savile was entirely removed from their releases. For years basically wanted to remove it from existence. They wanted you to forget about it because they wanted you to forget Savile had ever been involved with the show. Only they found it a pity that the story itself had to go, most likely because they found the story itself decent enough, plus it would mean a piece of the actors' work would be lost. Which is why we now have the 2022 re-cut with Sontaran fleets, entirely removing Savile from the story. And given that this one even has a continuity with another story, whereas the original did not, I think it is entirely proper to say that the 2022 re-cut is the valid one while the original remains invalid. Also, while fourth wall breaking is not grounds for invalidity, the fact that there is a version without it gives an entirely sound reasoning to make the fourth wall breaking version invalid. I disagree with the merge, if not for anything else, then at least for Epsilon's original reasoning that while 7 seconds from a full story of about an hour is not a lot (and hence we would not split articles over that) it '''''IS''''' a lot for a mini-sode (which, as the moniker suggests, doesn’t go on for very long). [[User:Danniesen|Danniesen]] [[User talk:Danniesen|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 09:33, 31 March 2024 (UTC)