Talk:Ghosts of the Northern Line (comic story)

Barack Obama confusion

Article currently says:

Barack Obama is said to be President of the United States. This would appear to conflict with TV continuity (both in Doctor Who and The Sarah Jane Adventures) which established other individuals as having been in office as of 2008-2009. Arthur Winters was President Elect. If Obama was his running mate, then he would have become President when Winters was murdered.

How can Barack Obama's presidency possibly conflict with televised episodes when The End of Time debuted on television at the time this comic strip was almost the most current one available from DWM? You could literally have been reading this comic as a "new comic strip" at the same time you watched TEOT as a "new episode". Surely this comic strip supports, rather than conflicts, televised evidence. Whether you believe TEOT to have taken place around Christmas 2010 or 2011, Barack Obama could plausibly have been President of the US and won the election of 2008 in his own right.

He's not Winters running mate; The Sound of Drums does not take place anywhere close to wintertime, so Winters has not just been elected, no matter what he says in one line in the script. Every other piece of evidence in that script suggests he is fully the president: the fact that his plane is called Air Force One, the chirons on the news reports, the fact he says "Send this out under my seal of office". None of these things would happen unless he was actually the President. The "President-Elect" thing is best viewed as a mistake on the character's part. Like Bush, when he goes to make a high-pressure speech, he flubs the line.

Last time I checked, it was site policy not to treat obvious gaffes as "gospel". I propose replacing above with something like:

Barack Obama is said to be President of the United States. Within weeks of the publication of the final installment of this story, the the character of Obama, and a clip of the real-life president's voice, debuted in televised Doctor Who in The End of Time. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 03:02, January 8, 2010 (UTC)