You guys make any "adjustments" when aligning all the Doctor Who media?

Cross-Media Discussions
,
1

Doctor Who is this cross-media behemoth that is always growing more and more. Because of this, from time to time (or several times, let’s be honest) some inconsistencies arise when aligning all the fronts of the franchise. The TV show is the true north, with everything always revolving around the facts that it establishes in the lore.

Unlike Star Trek for example, where the “Alpha Canon” and the “Beta Canon” are admittedly separate continuities, in Doctor Who everything belongs to the same giant continuity cluster until something is categorically said to not belong to the regular continuity of the TV show (as is the case with Peter Cushing’s films, or the continuities of the Big Finish Unbound audios for instance).

That said, how do you align all this in your heads? There is no right or wrong here, it’s more of a curiosity.

I’m the kind of guy who likes to think that everything is in the same line of continuity, so whenever I need to, I tidy up my thoughts here and there to keep everything organized in canon.

For example, the whole shebang with The Other. Until Timeless Children brought back aspects from the Cartmel Masterplan, the “truth” we had was that The Other was one of the three founding members of the Time Lord Society, along with Omega and Rassilon, and that in the end, The Other was actually the Doctor in a past existence, even before the 1st Doctor. So far so good.

Then, decades later, the TV Show brought to the table that the third founding member was in fact Tecteun, who discovered regeneration by using the Timeless Child as a guinea pig.

So where do we stand now? The Doctor was the Other… Tecteun was The Other? The answer is “yes”
The best explanation I came up with to ease my mind was “Tecteun is the Other and so is the Doctor”
See, “The Other” for all intents and purposes was Tacteum using the powers she scythed from the being who would eventually be known as the Doctor to found the society, so in a way the Doctor was a bit of the Other too.

Is this a perfect explanation? Not at all. But it worked for me :laughing:

That was just one example, but there are many other cases where I had to give these nudges to keep the canon (if it really matters) aligned.
At the end of the day I love Doctor Who, so the more material comes the better, even if it sometimes shakes things up a bit.

What about you? What do you do in cases like this? Any examples so I don’t feel like the only crazy person who does that? :laughing:

15 Likes
2

I basically go by the view that the Doctor’s adventures have resulted in altering his own timeline many times, as has the time war, and that any time something contradicts something elsewhere, one of them was from a previous/alternate version of the timeline.

There’s also spots in canon where it’s indicated that there’s more then one future, and the Doctor is travelling to a future.

But yes, as far as I’m concerned, the Shalka!Doctor is an alternate timeline with a different 9th Doctor, and so are The Curse of Fatal Death doctors, for example.

18 Likes
3

I basically count everything unless it’s specifically an alternate universe (unbound, Cushing, Fatal Death, Shalka, etc). Contradictions I just take in stride. Yes, I’d prefer if Big Finish were acknowledged, but understand why it isn’t (see the Mary Shelley issue between the Big Finish trilogy and Diodati).

16 Likes
4

YES! I went nuts over this when The Haunting of Villa Diodati premiered. I’m pretty sure I had an explanation on how to squeeze Mary with both 8th and 13th when I recorded the review back then :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

9 Likes
5

Yeah, this is where I stand always. Especially when we take The Tomorrow Windows as base. The 8th Doctor literally sees three possible futures there so…

I hope they go this route when they explain Shalka 9th’s cameo in Rogue I mean, if they care to explain it someday.. Well, Reality War is a very suggestive title. Who knows…

8 Likes
6

I feel like I’m going to trot out the Orphan 55 speech a million times, but it’s one of the better canons we have for this:

YASMIN: When did you know that it was Earth?
DOCTOR: Just before you did. Look, I know what you’re thinking, but it’s one possible future. It’s one timeline. You want me to tell you that Earth’s going to be okay? Cos I can’t. In your time, humanity is busy arguing over the washing-up while the house burns down. Unless people face facts and change, catastrophe is coming. But it’s not decided. You know that. The future is not fixed. It depends on billions of decisions, and actions, and people stepping up. Humans. I think you forget how powerful you are. Lives change worlds. People can save planets, or wreck them. That’s the choice. Be the best of humanity. Or…

Wouldn’t it be something if we actually see the Shalka Doctor for more then that one shot in live action?

9 Likes
7

ngl I’ll probably burst into tears if Shalka really appears live action. Just having more material with him would be already amazing, but seeing E. Grant actually there in costume… ARE WE REALLY WORTHY? :smiling_face_with_tear:

Btw, where’s Big Finish signing a contract with this man to have a whole range just for him?!

10 Likes
8

I find that everything becomes more enjoyable when you just let contradictory things be true at the same time without any need for explanation

18 Likes
9

I like to call my approach to it Schrodinger’s canon. Basically I regard every story to be the same amount of potentially canon, but, until it is supported or refuted by a story, it both is and isn’t canon. And this can change from story to story! Though of course, there are some stories and bits of lore that are more supported or that I simply like better, so I’m more likely to take those as canon for my own fics or interpretations.

Ultimately though, I think that conflicting things can be true at the same time and I’m not bothered to make it all a coherent picture in my mind (although I think it’s very cool when people do that)

11 Likes
10

I like to think of continuity in Doctor Who as not strictly linear, circular or circuitous. It’s more like a huge blob of contniuity-wooity stuff. Some things fit. Other things don’t… yet. Contradictions occur sometimes because someone has lied or timelines have changed or due to extra-dimensional phenomena that mere humans, who live within four dimensions can’t possibly understand. Everything is canon and nothing is canon, all at the same time. It’s a mess and yet it is all perfectly in order.

I love to read how people can make certain apparent contradictions fit. There’s usually a rationale that makes it work. It may not be the one that we finally learn of, if we do at all, but it’s fun to try to make it all make sense.

12 Likes
11

What a great way to put it! Continuity-wooity stuff. Everything is canon; nothing is canon. Everything happens; nothing happens. It’s a show about time travel, so there are infinite potential timelines and realities all existing in one jumbled mess.

For me, the TV continuity is the main one, with the EU filling in gaps and telling alternative versions of events in situations where TV and the EU clash. But ultimately, it doesn’t really matter, because all I care about in the end is getting good stories.

12 Likes
12

I quite like the idea that I believe The Time Travellers (book) goes with: every single time the TARDIS lands, time is altered in some way.

The Time Travellers is notable for featuring a unique take on the effects which the Doctor’s adventures have on history. In the version of 2006 which the characters visit in the story, it is stated that WOTAN, the Cyberman, and the Daleks have accomplished somewhat successful invasions of Earth, implying that because the Doctor has yet to intervene in those events (seen in The War Machines, The Tenth Planet and Remembrance of the Daleks respectively) that different outcomes came into being.

Almost like there’s a palimpsest timeline/universe. Things are happening, unhappening, re-happening, all the time. Not unlike Moffat’s approach to endless rewriting and unwriting of time.

I used to subscribe to the idea that there’s one main timeline and everything must fit, but to hell with that. Time travel is messy and chaotic. There’s too much Doctor Who now to try and fit together like a jigsaw. Everything happened, until it didn’t, unless it did again, maybe twice, then maybe unhappened before veering off and looping back again, etc. It’s just a wibbly wobbly mess.

From another POV, I tend to take TV stuff as stuff that actually happened, and expanded media as optional.

11 Likes
13

Sooo for me, I got into Big Finish in 2015 with Doom Coalition 1. Up until that point, I hadn’t delved into it really or paid it much attention, granted I was 16 when I started listening. I wish Doctor Who had a set canon like Star Wars or Star Trek, partly because when I started with BF I had this pre-conceived notion of canonicity due to Night of the Doctor.

For me, I’m a huge BF fan, and I really have a quite tunnel vision view when it comes to its canon. When they don’t respect it on TV, it really gets to me and I take it personally. I think really BF just means a lot to me and I love so many of the stuff they have done, and continue to do. The Mary Shelley incident for example, I hadn’t even heard the audios at the time but I knew of her, so it really got to me.

To answer your question… I just get frustrated :sob: Even more so when I get replies just disregarding my personal opinions on the matter.

9 Likes
14

I mostly listened to Big FInish or read books that are related to the Paternoster Gang until now so the inconsistencies are easier but still, there are some, especially with dates.
A couple of the short stories place the events before 1888, which is not possible since Strax hasn’t joined them yet.
And BF “Till Death Us do part” is supposedly in 1890 but I think there’s no way this takes place before the Snowmen or the Crimson Horror.

So, like Jamie, I mostly get frustrated and decide that the characters are just bad at math and/or mis-remembering the dates. Basically, I pick and chose.

6 Likes
15

My attitude towards all the contradictions between the TV show & audios, books etc

6 Likes
16

I get this. It used to really bother me when the show contradicted itself. Especially when it did so for no good reason. The Silurians’ third eye suddenly becoming a speech indicator instead of a weapon in the eighties or how cybermen could suddenly be killed by flicking a gold coin at them from a kid’s catapult were two that I remember really rankled at the time. However, I went to a Q&A with David Banks, the former cyberleader, when he was publicising his Cybermen book. I asked him about how in Earthshock the cyberleader was barely affected by gold being ground into his chest unit, yet by Silver Nemesis the mere touch of gold made them explode. I probably showed how aggrieved I was, despite such story decisions being well and truly out of his hands. Instead of answering me in production terms, like most people who were involved with the show would have done “we were telling a story” being a common refrain when faced with fans who had better memories than those producing the show, he chose to talk in story terms, explaining how one legion of cybermen must have become infected with a particularly damaging reaction to gold, like someone with a life threatening peanut allergy. His approach was that you take what’s shown on screen to be the truth and then, like a historian, work out how to reconcile the pieces of puzzle to make them fit.

I hadn’t taken history beyond the level where we’d been told what happened and had to commit it to memory so this was an approach that hadn’t occurred to me before. When something in the current show contradicted what had gone before, I had always thought that the production team had been lazy and had got it wrong! In real terms this might have been precisely what had happened, but what they had made was no more or less valid than Doctor Who that had preceeded it. It took a while for this concept to sink in. Don’t get me wrong; I still feel a disconnect if there is an obvious continuity error, but I try to let it go a little now and choose to assume that there’s something that I don’t currently know that will somehow link the contradictions together.

I feel your pain. There are so many alternative narrative strands that there are inevitably mismatches now. You can choose to enjoy them in isolation or find a way for them to somehow fit. If your frustration is like mine, it’s there because I can’t see a way for these pieces to fit together yet. The trick, if there is one, is to have some faith that there is a way that they can work together; we just might not have seen it yet.

I don’t know if this is of any comfort to you, but rest assured that your personal opinions matter, and they are no less valid than anyone else’s.

14 Likes
17

I’ve always taken each story in isolation. It’s an adventure with the Doctor and his companions. In the midst of that adventure I’m not bothered about other stories that may or may not contradict the one I’m experiencing. After the fact I might think about it but it will rarely bother me beyond a creative exercise as to how they could be made to fit.

Lance Parkin’s A History is a great example of almost the entire history of the show can be fitted together with a bit of thought (and fudging) and I more or less take my cue from those books.

And I can’t help but return to the fact that the TV series has contradicted itself continually almost from the start and so I can never be cross at the audios or books for doing what the TV show has always done. It’s certainly nothing to do with respecting the expanded universe because it’s very obvious that the production teams, and writers especially, very much do respect it. They’re just not beholden to it.

15 Likes
18

I tend to follow the ‘it’s all canon but the doctor’s timeline got rewritten’ policy.

I’ve said here before I think Shalka is the original 9th doctor from the no-time war timeline.

11 Likes
19

For me, it really depends, at times I like to make up a Headcanon to explain a Contradiction in-universe, such as the UNIT Dating Controversy or why there are two different Versions of Atlantis.

Other times I pay less Attention to it.
For me, I subscribe to the Idea where everything is canon, with me favoring certain Stories over others due to liking them more or whatnot.

While Continuity Errors are annoying for sure, I think there is no Way to avoid them. Taking Star Wars for example it’s having a set Canon does not mean it avoids Contradictions that easily. Even nowadays, despite having somebody whose Job it is to make sure everything fits there are still Contradictions happening, some major ones even similarly to Who. I think it’s just (sadly) a Thing you have to kinda accept, would it be nice to have a Set Canon with fewer Contradictions? For sure, but I imagine that would require to choose what counts and what doesn’t, which honestly I don’t even want to imagine. (I mean, it kinda happened with my Example of ‘Star Wars’ too, where after the Disney Takeover a lot of Past Novels and other beloved Materials were put out of the official Canon.)

So in Conclusion, while I would love for Contradictions to be not there, ultimately they are unavoidable in many Ways. But due to its Nature as a Time Travel Show, you have many Options to explain those Contradictions away if you decided to, which is great in my Eyes!
Hope my little ramble made a bit of Sense!

7 Likes
20

Quality filter

3 Likes