Forum:BBV and canon policy: Difference between revisions

There's been some chatter on [[Talk:The Doctor (Party Animals)]] and between [[User talk:Revanvolatrelundar|Revanvolatrelundar]] and [[User talk:Tangerineduel|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 [[tardis:canon policy|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, [[The Doctor (Party Animals)|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 [[Cyberon]]a, 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:

#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]], [[Zygon]]s, [[Krynoid]]s 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.'''

#The '''creation''' of a template, like {{tl|nc}}, to be clearly displayed the top of allowed BBV articles. It should read something like, "'This topic related to [[BBV Productions|BBV Productions]] is only semi-canonical, as rights to create it were granted by the original ''Doctor Who'' writer, but not by the BBC.'''

#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.)