Talk:The Lethbridge-Stewart Short Story Collection

Invalidity?

Seems like these stories are invalid because the publisher said they don't belong in the main Lethbridge-Stewart timeline (although there isn't actually a citation for that claim). If the page lead-in is accurate and the stories have been officially described as "alternate takes" on the character, might these just as easily be covered as alternate timelines or parallel universes a la Unbound? – n8 (☎) 23:01, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Here's the quote in question describing them as non-canonical.

It is not necessary to fit within the timeline; these stories are out of the canon of the series, so feel free to let your imagination run wild!¹

Epsilon📯 📂

23:42, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Thing is, this should technically not affect these story's validity.

And it wouldn't be much for the author of the story to claim that they deem them to be in the "main" continuity of Lethbridge-Stewart, as the deciding authorial intent is deemed to come from, well, the author, not the publisher, for all intents and purposes on this Wiki.

Epsilon📯 📂

23:45, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Actually, there is some amount of debate about who the ultimate authority is in this situation.

Certainly the deciding factor on whether The Infinity Doctors is set in the DWU did not lie with John Birt, Baron Birt; in fact he could hardly be expected to understand the geeky subtleties inherent in the question "Does this tie-in book to our old children's TV series take place somewhere in the DWU omniverse, albeit not the prime timeline; or is it a completely walled-off continuity that has no in-universe connection to N-Space?". You might get an answer from such a man as to whether something was "canon", but not about whether it "took place in the DWU, somehow, somewhen".

On the other hand… if Justin Richards (the range editor) had disagreed with Lance Parkin on whether TID took place in the DWU at all, who would we have believed? I am not sure. User:SOTO's half-ruling on the invalidity of Rescue highlighted that in a cowritten project, if there is an "ultimate creative authority", that authority overrules potential dissent among subordinates. In the case of an anthology, does the editor automatically have that role, the way the showrunner might relative to a TV Who production? I wonder. It's a complex question. An interesting one, too, with philosophical ramifications from here to the next century.

All of that being said, I am merely making an academic point.

The fact is that the above line, if that's all there is, is pretty thin as far as Rule 4 quotes are concerned. It's not just that something can be intended to "be set in the DWU" without being intended to be "canonical", although that is true and a good point; there's a reason Tardis:Canon policy is different from Tardis:Valid sources. It's also that the quote from Candy Jar Books isn't even speaking about "Doctor Who canon" in general. They're speaking about “the canon of the series” (“the series” here meaning Lethbridge-Stewart).

I think we are, here, more in the realm of "literary canon" — of the sheer concept of newers choosing whether or not to draw from older ones — than of canon-as-"whether-something-really-happened". Candy Jar says that, as an editorial choice, future releases in their Lethbridge-Stewart lines would not refer back to Short Story Collection stories. That says precisely nothing about whether Short Story Collection itself, on its own terms, takes place in the preexisting DWU or not.

Looking at edit history, these stories appear to have been created-as-{{invalid}} by User:Revanvolatrelundar, one of our officially retired admins, which puts me in a bit of an awkward position; ideally I'd have wanted to go poke Revan and ask for his take. But, as they say, “Be there or be square”; Revan made his choice to leave, we can't become paralysed out of deference to the opinion of someone who left all their admin responsibilities of their own free will and left the Wiki in the rest of our hands.

Equally, however, correcting random users' mistakes (however old) is one thing; validating an entire anthology which had been created as invalid by an Administrator is another. This is the kind of situation for which an inclusion debate would be useful, if that were an option…

In the meantime, User:NateBumber and User:Epsilon the Eternal, two prominent editors, have voiced their assent, however. So here's my idea. What I'd like to know is if there is any dissent to a validation of these. So let's wait a while, see if anyone disagrees. If within, say, three weeks?, no one voices opposition to the validity of these things, I'll remove the apparently-spurious invalid tags, although with the understanding that late-arriving opposition can always start an exclusion debate in the Forums whenever they reopen. If anyone does disagree, we'll keep them provisionally-invalid until such a time as we can make a proper Forum debate of it.

Does this sound fair? Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 00:12, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

I have two snarky comments to get out of the way, and then some serious points to make. Feel free to ignore the snark.

Well why shouldn't we expect authors to understand the subtleties of how various literature multiverses/omniverses work? We had an author write a narrative into a joke book just to fuck with us.

Obviously the solution is that Revan should come back as an admin, since by reading the old conversations I don't think the reasons he left still hold true.

Okay, that's out of the way. Moving on. First and foremost, Epsilon's quote, while helpful, does not seem to be the sum total of reasons why we might think this is invalid, since, you know, it's a quote from 2020, and the page was made invalid in 2018. Indeed, the lead specifies that:

As per the book's introduction, these short stories are not considered part of the Lethbridge-Stewart series, but rather alternative takes on the lead character. [emphasis mine]

So clearly there's something more to this than

It is not necessary to fit within the timeline; these stories are out of the canon of the series, so feel free to let your imagination run wild!

Do I know the specific quote? Nope. But I want to be clear that this quote is not the reason why these short story collections were invalidated. The wording of what was said might or might not be sufficient. But we need to see it to actually have that discussion. Currently we're talking about something that's helpful, but is not the entire story.

And, as to the intent of the publisher, I mean, couldn't someone just ask Candy Jar or whoever manages the range? Aren't they sort of infamous for not being discrete on twitter when they should tone it down? They might or might not understand the nuances of wiki policy here, but more information can't hurt, right? Just, literally, "do you intend for these to be an unbound/alternate universe situation or outside the literary universe of Doctor Who/Lethbridge Stewart/Cwej/FP/etc altogether?" That should clear it up if they answer, and it's relatively simple to understand. Najawin ☎ 01:10, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

I think your first snarky comments is answering to a misunderstanding of what I'd said. Sir John Birt, my example of someone who could not be expected to have a take on the TID question, is not an author at all (at least within the DWU), but rather a producer — specifically, he was the head of the BBC as a whole when TID was published.

Good point regarding the dates; I think this puts the kibosh on my earlier idear. We'll just have to make a thread of it when we can and ask someone who owns the book to present the introduction.

(We can try to ask Candy Jar, but it's worth noting that we care about intent at time of release; they could say a different thing in 2021 than what was on their minds in 2018.) Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 01:21, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Ah, foot in my mouth on a snarky comment. (I think the point stands wrt Candy Jar though, since it's a press specifically about DWU books. Not that it's entirely serious, again.)

Well, they're working on a third anthology, right? Presumably under the same criteria, and they summarized it for prospective writers as Epsilon said above. This isn't the same as the intro they'd put in the book, but we might still have the same overall intent throughout. Not a be-all end-all, but helpful, at least. Najawin ☎ 01:43, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Should we come back to this? Nate made a recent comment in an edit summary about the other two asking why they were invalid. Najawin ☎ 21:10, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Ahh, thanks for reminding me that this discussion exists – I'd looked for a talk page on Short Story Collection (horrible series page name btw) but not here. I've actually reached out to one of the authors for unrelated reasons so I'll see if I can get some clarity. – n8 (☎) 21:34, 7 September 2022 (UTC)