And, yet, in doing so (reinventing) it never does so (for me, at least) in a way which removes or discredits what has gone before. I can enjoy it all and believe that it has an internal (chaotic and constantly evolving) consistency of its own.
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I tend to take the view that a lot of times, contradictions are just simply that changes to the timeline have caused one of the two versions to now no longer have happened that way in the main timeline…
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Exactly! This is precisely what I mean by having its own internal consistency. The mechanism is there in the DNA of the show. It creates such imaginative freedom without seeming completely contrived and random. I love it so! 
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There’s also a pretty huge in-canon justification for why there is no canon, too. Gallifrey is at the center of the Web Of Time, but it’s also basically under constant threat from external forces, so the history of the Time Lords is technically being re-written and altered in innumerable small ways. My head-canon is that Time Lord propaganda (because of course there’s a propaganda division of the CIA) keeps it all tightly under wraps.
It also helps me square the circle of both Looms and regular Time Lord births being canon - at some point history was altered and the Curse of Pythia was erased entirely; Loom born Time Lords both remember being Loomed AND being born naturally.
Speaking of fics, one of my favourites basically ran with that idea - The Doctor remembers multiple different versions of their past at once, because technically they all happened, but none of them did at all. They use Martha being two years older but the world not remembering the Master PM years as an example. So for me, yes, the canon does exist, but it’s its own fluctuating beast, it isn’t a static thing.
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Precisely so. A malleable, fluctuating … thing. It’s there, yet it’s entirely susceptible to change (in universe).
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“Shippers have a tendency to warp characters into shallow stereotypes”
Oh I didn’t realize I was in the Rogue discussion thread 
My other ick is people demanding that Briony Redman and Kate Herron get the showrunner job off the back of one of the laziest OC ship fics ever put to paper. Some Doccy Who fans would probably suggest Ayn Rand as showrunner just because it lets them look good for suggesting a woman, ANY woman, for the job.
(FWIW, I would love to see a woman at the top but it will absolutely never happen because any woman with a fraction of sanity would steer clear of being in the firing line of DW’s fanbase but I feel like the upsurge in demands that it’s specifically K + B who do it is just because of recency bias. You may as well say Jacqueline Rayner should get the job.)
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I wouldn’t complain if that was the case!
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Maybe Helen Goldwyn? She run a few of the Big Finish ranges. I thought Georgia Cook had been in charge of something at Big Finish, but the wiki didn’t mention anything.
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Dream team of Louise Jameson and Lisa Bowerman.
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This happens all the time though, doesn’t it? One good story (I DID enjoy “Rogue” 
) and suddenly people are clamouring for them to be the next showrunner. I remember the calls for Neil Gaiman to showrun after “The Doctor’s Wife”. Yes, it’s frustrating because it isn’t realistic… and there’s a LOT more to showrunning than simply turning in a good script.
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It used to be when people called the Doctor ‘Doctor Who’, but after the Peter Capaldi era, I don’t mind that anymore.
The Doctor Who ick that remains for me is when people who aren’t fans call the show ‘Dr Who’. It just doesn’t look right to me, because the title is supposed to be like a question asking who the Doctor is.
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I used to be one of those people who had very rigid views about canon, but now I see that as boring, because it’s very restrictive. Much more fun to just go with the flow and enjoy everything without worrying where it fits into any official canon.
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Yes, indeed. I think we need to be genuinely grateful that Doctor Who is genuinely a show that transcends canon. It doesn’t mean that there isn’t a place for canon, but I see it is locally rather than universally important in Who. It defines eras and adds an evolving thread to the whole thing, but is more malleable here than anywhere else. That is a thing to be celebrated!
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I sort of regard doctor who canon as a type of schrödinger’s canon, as in everything is both true and false until it is used or disregarded in a story and that goes for every story. I think it’s really fun how many interpretations that gives you and how each can provide a new angle for a story
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Plus I think canon in media in general is no longer as big a deal as it used to be. You get a lot more shows and films that now explore multiverse storylines, for instance, where everything becomes canonical, and shows and films that don’t fit into the current canon are just an alternate timeline or universe.
Spider-Man: Across The Spiderverse’s plot is basically a debate between those who believe there should be a strict canon, and those who think that there shouldn’t. It makes for a really interesting movie.
I could see Doctor Who doing a similar plot to that one day, that delves into the idea of alternate timelines, and whether there is one ‘true’ history.
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That’s a lovely (and very constructive) way to look at it. I like!
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“The timelines in the canon are rupturing.”
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I forgot about that line from Tales Of The TARDIS. Hopefully it’s a sign of Russell T Davies’s future plans.
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That’s the thing with RTD. Many things that might be seen as throwaway in other eras of the show tend to have specific meaning and be carefully chosen.
“Hiding away” for example? 
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Hiding away makes me think Mrs Flood is a Time Lord.
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