How to determine if a story is Past, Present, or Future?

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Some discussions are happening about how to determine if a story is set in the Past, Present, or Future, as our main protagonists are always a bit timey-wimey!

I will merge the posts here and we can carry on the discussion below:

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@taraoftraken I saw you suggest “time travel: present” for Vampire Weekend. Since we consider time travel to be relative to the publishing date and the story is set at Yaz’s present, we should tag it as “time travel: past”. I suggested a new edit to override yours

Edit after 137 posts of discussion, 25% of which are my rambling — jump to the recap if you can’t be bothered with them.

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I was thinking about this and wondering if we shouldn’t track it from the ‘era’ the story is set in e.g. these new 13 audios are set between Series 12 and Flux so anything in Yaz’s own time would be present. It makes more sense to me because otherwise EVERYTHING released by BF or the books is going to be set in the past or future and never the present.

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But if it’s a story with say… Jamie and Zoe? Whose “present” do we refer to? Or do we consider the 60s as the second doctor’s present?

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Yeah,I would say that. The Evil of the Daleks has episodes set in the ‘present’ at the beginning when it is just Jamie and the Doctor so it isn’t ‘their present’.

I think I got confused when we discussed this before and didn’t realise we were tracking it from publication time. It doesn’t make sense for something like Vampire Weekend to be classed as ‘the past’ when it is set in Yaz’s present and more importantly, the ‘present’ of the TV Doctor Who it is emulating.

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I agree with Delta – there should definitely be leeway. Take the Eighth Doctor: Stranded; most episodes are set in 2020, but only the first boxset was released in 2020. I think labelling boxsets 2-4 as ’past’ because they take place one or two years ago feels really silly.

It’s also about the way people use the website. When people filter for ’past’ I don’t think anyone is looking for stories set even five to ten years before the story was released – they’re looking for stories set in history. At least, I am.

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Yeah – I think it makes the most sense for Second Doctor stories set in the 60s to be ’present’ while Second Doctor stories set in the 2020s are ’future’.

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I like the publication date most because it’s clear. Else we really need to debate it and write some documentation to explain how we define past/present/future.

What delta suggests makes Benny’s stories hard to tag. Her stories after she left the doctor mainly take in the 26/27th century. I believe they are mostly tagged “future” now. Should we change them to “past” then?

Also, if we define time travel according to the doctor’s era, 8 would be such a headache…

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It’s very difficult to pin down because the Doctor and their companions all have different relative times, but I definitely do not think Vampire Weekend should be set as “Past”, that seems wrong.

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I’ve been setting Three’s UNIT stories as present regardless of when they were actually published because it’s like. The vibes of being present? This seems similar.

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Like if Three had a story set in that period that dealt with actual historical events that’d be different but as is

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If we do end up going by publication date I think there should still be leeway of a couple of years. Vampire Weekend, to me, is absolutely set in the present.

Going by the companion’s era is too tricky I think. The Benny stories set in the 26th century are definitely future.

I think going range by range makes more sense – most Torchwood stories are set in the present, even if they are set in 2007 and released in 2020, because it’s fitting in with a series set in the present. (And they’re certainly not historical – they’re contemporary.) For stuff like the Eighth Doctor: Stranded, it’s not following on from an established series, so Present works for that.

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Hmm… So,

  • Anything before 1963-11-23 is definately past
  • If a doctor’s run is clearly defined (such as 1-7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, or spin-off like class) we can work according to that
  • 8, war, fugitive (and spin-off like Benny and Torchwood) need to be further discussed
  • Then we have a lot of obscure stuff I can’t begin to imagine how to work out their “time travel”
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As I say, it should be based on the ‘era’ of the show relative to the TV era it is set in.

On TV we know which episodes are past, present and future (apart from the whole UNIT dating thing) but, as tara says, it would be a bit weird if you were looking for past stories and got Vampire Weekend about a hen party in Sheffield in 2020ish.

It’s hard enough teaching kids who think my childhood in the 80s is the same as learning about the Tudors without people thinking five years ago is the domain of historians and archaeologists.

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13 with Yaz in 2018 feels like present, yes. What we need is a system that can tackle with situations like say “2 and me, a 20-something from 2025 set in the pandemic published in 2021” — it’s past for me, but present according to publication

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Yep but the production era for that is still the 2000s so anything set in the 26th is definitely future.

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The thing is that you are not consistent with it. Vampire Weekend feels present because it’s Yaz’s present but Benny in 26 century is not while it is her present… They both require no time travel in the story

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I think if a story’s set in the present like that it should be tagged as the present no matter what era it’s written for.

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I think more important than it being Yaz’s present is that it was our present at the time it was hers?

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Why not according to the doctor or the companion this time? The lack of a clear set of rules for me to submit my edits is driving me crazy…

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