Inclusion debates/Vienna Salvatori: Back Once Again
With brand new Vienna story coming up this month, I think this is the perfect time to reopen discussion about the series. Because, frankly, there are lots of arguments in favour of inclusion.
Currently Vienna considered invalid because of a single comment made by producer David Richardson in the christmas edition of The Big Finish Podcast in 2012.
I do not see it as a Doctor Who spin-off. It's its own thing. It's not set in the Doctor Who world at all.
…and that's it. Why the decision was made to exclude the series because of a comment from one person involved in production, in whose vision of a term spin-off Vienna sadly wasn't included? When there's this:
Big Finish itself from the very beginning promoted the series as "brand new spin-off from the Doctor Who main range adventure". And then in 2016 they stated:
For as long as Big Finish have been making audios, we've always been interested in a good spin-off. Our first ever range continued the adventures of the Doctor's New Adventures companion Bernice Summerfield, and over the years we've added to our universe, with Dalek Empire, Jago & Litefoot, Counter-Measures, Gallifrey, Charlotte Pollard and more. But while some of these ranges have been long in the making, Vienna holds the record for the quickest commission of all....
And the statement was backed up with quote from behind the scenes material from the pilot episode The Memory Box:
It's quite unusual for us to get the edits in for a story and then suddenly decide that there was the potential for a spin-off character. We do spin-offs at Big Finish, but rarely that quickly!
Well, there's a bit of a confusion. In that comment he clearly calls Vienna a spin-off, but in the other says that he do not see it as one. And why Wiki currently believes only one of those?
There was one comment from Paul Spragg in 2013:
From the basis of promotion and licensing, this isn't a Doctor Who spin-off. It's not licensed through AudioGo or subject to compliance rules because Vienna is our character and thus can exist in her own series as long as the Doctor doesn't turn up. Also, it's useful to distance the series in the hope it will appeal to non-Who fans[…] But there's no denying that this is the same Vienna who is in The Shadow Heart. So all the tropes of that story are present, that setting is present (and events of the story referenced in The Memory Box), but to all intents and purposes it's a locked off little side-universe that the Doctor has once appeared in. I suspect that probably doesn't help you, but that's basically it: David wanted Vienna to stand on its own so it helped to separate it from Doctor Who. We didn't want to call it a spin-off and have it saddled with the need to know Who[…]
He says that Big Finish did not promote Vienna as a Doctor Who spin-off. Well, they do now, with clear comparison with other Doctor Who spin-offs and quote from producer, that states that it is a spin-off.
And what about the authorial intent? Jonathan Morris, writer and creator of Vienna, in 2015 said:
I'm afraid I'm not in a position to make any official statement. My feeling is that canonically she exists in the same sort of hinterland as Bernice Summerfield or the Graceless girls, if that helps (it probably doesn't). The character is owned by Big Finish, not the BBC, so legally speaking she's not from 'The Worlds of Doctor Who'. With the three series, my approach has been to establish the character in her own right, so (since 'The Memory Box') there haven't been any references to Doctor Who. But are the stories set in the same universe as 'The Shadow Heart'? In my opinion, yes.
There's the intent for you! And if he wasn't in a position to make any official statement, Big Finish certainly were. And they released those statements: Vienna is a spin-off.
