Hello! I noticed something which I find a little confusing regarding the dating for different stories, and thought might prompt an interesting discussion.
So, TV stories are pretty clear; if it’s set before broadcast, it’s a past story, and so on.
But the expanded universe stuff has tripped me up. Take “The Way Forwards” for instance. That’s set in 1986, and it’s listed as future. But for whom, exactly? For the Doctor and Zoe it’s the far past. And the story was published in 2011, so it’s the past for the author, and us, too.
Are we saying that story settings depend on what era the stories are intending to emulate? I get the intuition; if the story had come out in the 1960s, that would indeed be the future. But that surely leads to strange problems down the line, when you get stories that don’t fit that category, or crossover, or do other unusual things we haven’t even imagined.
I suppose my point is - wouldn’t it be wiser to classify these based on when they were published, rather than a more subjective notion of when they’re supposed to fit in?
EDIT: Got my wires crossed - it’s Victoria, not Zoe. Still, I hope you get my point - even if it’s based on companion perspective, that still seems to present more headaches than publication (for instance, are Pertwee-era UNIT officers from the 70s or 80s…?)