User:SOTO/Forum Archive/Inclusion debates/@comment-4028641-20170322025232/@comment-24894325-20180923004835

There is a near consensus that the whole of The Incomplete Death's Head should be valid. And indeed, virtually all relevant points have been raised and thoughtfully discussed. Thus, in affirming the consensus, I should only address the concerns of Bwburke94.

He points out that a comic story having no relation to the DWU at its first publication should never become part of the DWU. And he is completely right. Part of this ruling is that the original versions of all comics "reprinted" in TIDH remain invalid. I put "reprinted" in quotation marks because these comic stories have been modified (see examples in images upthread) to dovetail with the linking narration of the TIDH comic series. In other words, these stories are not merely referenced by a DWU story, which would not have resulted in their validity. No, these stories are retold within a DWU story. And there is a long history of retellings in the DWU, starting from Homer's Iliad retold in the First Doctor TV serial The Myth Makers and all the way through to the movie Casablanca retold in the Eleventh Doctor comic story As Time Goes By. Note that both stories appeared well before Doctor Who and, hence, could not have anything to do with DWU at their first release. Simply put, it does not matter whether things happening to the Doctor originate from history, from real-world fiction or are original. Only the DW-story version is considered part of the Doctor Who universe, whereas by T:NO RW neither real events nor real-world fiction is acceptable.

It might be hard to recognise this particular case as a "retelling" because the reprints are almost identical to the original comic stories. But this is immaterial. After all, we do not deny validity of the documentary coverage of the Moon landing in Day of the Moon because it is accurate (minus the Silence inserts obviously).

Thus,

1. The original versions of all comics "reprinted" in TIDH remain invalid. (By extension, any other non-DWU Marvel UK comic stories remain invalid. This also applies to other comic stories directly referenced by asterisks in TIDH.)
2. The new versions printed in TIDH are valid.
3. The new versions of stories already valid (e.g., Time Bomb!) do not change their status: they remain valid.
4. Given the lack of titles for later parts of the linking narration, the whole linking narration should be considered one story and called The Incomplete Death's Head (comic story) (cf. the similarly nameless The Story of Martha (short story)) and split into named sections according to names given in TIDH (cf. The Lost Dimension).
5. Any character appearing in TIDH is fair game for creating a page, under the name used in the story (if any) or under the most recognisable name (otherwise). But the information on these pages should, as always, be restricted to in-universe information, i.e., information from TIDH.
6. All numerical info about Marvel universes can only be used in the BTS sections. No assumptions about travel between parallel universes are to be entertained, except when there is narrative evidence of inter-universal travel. The presence of an Iron Man in 2020 is not going to be more disruptive than the presence of Cybermen in Antarctica in 1986, or of a CyberKing in Victorian England, for that matter.