Doctor Who

[Meh]

That's a given, in my case.

[James Lyon]

The plot of the Christmas special has apparently been leaked. Y'all gonna hate it, if accurate.

Does Doctor Who save a spunky female from some alien threat in some quaint snow-covered location while going "whoooaahh" a lot?

[mrsnrub]

In relation to the continuity, I think it is basically "believe what you enjoy best" rather than "this is how it is and that's that".

For instance, I didn't care for the looms idea and just gloss over it, but there are others who rigidly believe that is the proper canon. Neither is wrong, neither is right, but there is room for both thanks to the fact that it was never really meant to be looked at in the horrible, analy retentive manner of trek fans.

Just enjoy the ride, don't worry about how the gears are greased.

[Teabag]

In relation to the continuity, I think it is basically "believe what you enjoy best" rather than "this is how it is and that's that".

Totally this. It's even tacitly supported in the show, with a sort-of Pythia appearing in Timothy Dalton's high council even though they don't refer to her as such. Either that or Chancellor Flavia had a really bad divorce.

[zxcvbnm]

But then Matt Smith has been the Doctor for 400 years and he looks the same.

I thought Matt Smith was supposed to be 400 years older than Hurt, so that's Eccleston, Tennant and Smith making up the 400 years?

[mrsnrub]

I thought Matt Smith was supposed to be 400 years older than Hurt, so that's Eccleston, Tennant and Smith making up the 400 years?

But you are trying to figure that out "as the crow flies"...I don't think Timelords measure time the same way we do...

or, as has been mentioned, if you try to actually work it out you will go cross-eyed/it was just a throwaway line not meant to be examined...

[SqueakyG]

I thought Matt Smith was supposed to be 400 years older than Hurt, so that's Eccleston, Tennant and Smith making up the 400 years?

Eccleston: approx 1 year. Eccleston always referred to his age around 900. He's probably freshly-regenerated, and if we saw a fairly unbroken chain of adventures with Rose, he probably lasted less than a year.

Tennant: approx 5 years. Tennant said he was 903 in the Titanic episode, 904 with Elisabeth I, and claimed 906 just before he regenerated.

Smith: approx 293 years (unless he's lying). Smith told Amy Pond he was 907 after a few episodes. By the next season he's 909, but he ages nearly 200 years in a single episode -- the older version of himself who gets shot by the spacesuit is 1103. When he picks up Amy and Rory for more adventures in his third season he's aged another hundred years to 1200. We don't know how long he spent grumping around in Victorian London. The most recent statement of his age is to the War Doctor, where he says, "1200 or something, I think, unless I'm lying."

[WibbleWorldGiddy]

Eccleston: approx 1 year. Eccleston always referred to his age around 900. He's probably freshly-regenerated, and if we saw a fairly unbroken chain of adventures with Rose, he probably lasted less than a year.

The 9th Doctor needs to visit 1880, 1912 and 1963 in order to be photographed/sketched for Clive's conspiracy theory website (shown in 'Rose'), so there's an opportunity to add additional adventures/years somewhere. You're probably right that he didn't last long, though.

[kensei]

I think he lies about his age all the time. The seventh doctor claimed to be 953. There is also no reason to believe those are Earth years. I'd really prefer is they just dropped a few more hints that he just makes it up and drop the issue.

Any continuity errors can also be explained by the fact he's rewritten the entire universe in The Big Bang, and the fact people entered his own time stream messing stuff up. Again I'd prefer if they just dropped ahint or two that ham waves the whole thing.

Moffatt's went most of the way on both. Things will be substantially cleaner when he leaves versus when he starts, He's got rid of a lot of stuff that supposedly happened in the modern day, much of the Doctor's fame, moved his age on to where it "should" be, shown all regens and will probably resolve the regent limit. He's a fan at heart.

[Ivanho]

Total side note I know, but all you Whovian iDevice owning types that have GarageBand, try going into the keyboard instrument, switch to Retro Bass & double keyboard layout, then turn on sustain. Ta da, instant vintage Dr Who musical effects creator.

[mrsnrub]

That term always makes me cringe

[merman]

The 9th Doctor needs to visit 1880, 1912 and 1963 in order to be photographed/sketched for Clive's conspiracy theory website (shown in 'Rose'), so there's an opportunity to add additional adventures/years somewhere. You're probably right that he didn't last long, though.

I really want to see more of Clive/Mark Benton and the conspiracy nerds.

[Harsin]

Bit difficult since he died in the same episode.

[Mogster]

I've only got one more serial to get through before I've finished the first season now. The Sensorites was quite a step up in my opinion, with the Doctor establishing himself as the central character of a rather interesting sci-fi story. The first episode was genuinely creepy too, with some of the best direction so far, and this continued to a lesser extent with the early encounters with the Sensorites in the second. Having them turn out to be mostly decent folk after this was quite surprising after The Daleks being outright evil, but welcome.

Like Sprite said though the pacing is still a bit weird. One plotline can stretch itself over three or four episodes while others are introduced and resolved in the space of twenty minutes. I enjoyed the story a lot, but again it could easily have been compressed, or at least evened out.

There were a couple of interesting titbits of lore in the episode, including the first description of Gallifrey (not named), and the Doctor referencing his singular heart. Guess which one stuck.

[NEG]

I think maybe people are trying to apply too much logic to something held together for decades by toilet roll inserts and sticky backed plastic. You're just going to have to accept that there's been too many contradictions for it to all even out in a sensible manner.

Nonsense!

[merman]

Bit difficult since he died in the same episode.

Future Doctors can travel back in time to a point before he died. We can see videos of Clive from his website. We can see his fellow nerds carrying on his work.

[Nick R]

I think maybe people are trying to apply too much logic to something held together for decades by toilet roll inserts and sticky backed plastic. You're just going to have to accept that there's been too many contradictions for it to all even out in a sensible manner.

In relation to the continuity, I think it is basically "believe what you enjoy best" rather than "this is how it is and that's that".

For instance, I didn't care for the looms idea and just gloss over it, but there are others who rigidly believe that is the proper canon. Neither is wrong, neither is right, but there is room for both thanks to the fact that it was never really meant to be looked at in the horrible, analy retentive manner of trek fans.

Just enjoy the ride, don't worry about how the gears are greased.

Would you like to read a 3000 word blog post on why there is no such thing as "canon" in Doctor Who?

Canon isn't "what most people think is canon" (otherwise the Buffy comics, unheard of by most of the millions who watched the show, couldn't be Buffyverse canon. Which they are) .

Canon isn't "what the majority of the fanbase would prefer was canon" (otherwise Han shot first).

Canon is what the people running the franchise tell you it is. It's not a democratic thing. Star Trek fans didn't have the option of outvoting Gene Roddenbury when he wanted something stricken from the record.

Of course, people are, in these free-spirited and post-structuralist times, quite capable of thinking for themselves and saying, "Well The Animated Series is certainly part of my Star Trek", but what they're doing there isn't changing the canon, or establishing a new and individual canon; It's a rejection of the idea of canon itself. A denial of the franchise owner's authority to tell you how to conceptualise the components of that franchise.

But there isn't a canon to reject or deny in Doctor Who. In some ways that's a shame, as I'd enjoy rejecting and denying one if there was, but nobody with the authority to define a Doctor Who canon has ever done so, so I'm cruelly denied that anarchic thrill.

Here's what the BBC had to say about Doctor Who canon during the lifespan of the English Series...

*Insert Echoing Sound Effect Evocative Of Infinite Hollow Nothingness Here. The Silence Beyond Silence of a Thought Never Formed*

That's right. Not a whisper.

If that seems suprising to you, that's because you're assuming a British mass-audience show from 1963 would work like American cult-audience show from the Nineties. Nobody at the BBC back then would have had a concept of canon in its modern, fannish sense.

So they never defined one. So one never existed. And the television show just chugged along fine without one, merrily incorporating information from the comics, the novelisations and even the Find Your Fate game books as they went along.

Skip ahead a couple of thousand words, and we get this conclusion:

Oh, alright then. There is a Doctor Who canon.

The Doctor defined it in The Gallifrey Chronicles...

"Sherlock Holmes solved the case before I could, as I recall."

"Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character," Trix pointed out.

The Doctor grinned. "My dear, one of the things you'll learn is that it's all real. Every word of every novel is real, every frame of every movie, every panel of every comic strip."

"But that's just not possible. I mean some books contradict other ones and -"

The Doctor was ignoring her.

- Lance Parkin, The Gallifrey Chronicles.

He later refined it in The Unicorn and the Wasp when he told Donna that there is no Noddy.

So Doctor Who canon looks like this...

My daughter grasped this the other day in a conversation we had on the bus. She said, "There's three ways of getting to all the different lands. The Faraway Tree, whirlwinds, and Doctor Who's little house."

[Mr Cochese]

Every religious schism in history was the result of fans trying to rewrite canon.

[CarloOos]

I really hate the contemporary obsession with canon. The only two things it ever accomplishes are to stifle creativity, and to temporarily placate the superiority complex of anal fans.

It doesn't matter. Take each story on its own merits, irrespective of the franchise/medium.

[Mr Cochese]

It's like, The Simpsons perfectly lampooned the slavish obsession with continuity and canon back when it was still good, which by my calculations places that episode's air date in at least the 15th century AD.

[NEG]

There is no Noddy?

[NEG]

I really hate the contemporary obsession with canon. The only two things it ever accomplishes are to stifle creativity, and to temporarily placate the superiority complex of anal fans.

It doesn't matter. Take each story on its own merits, irrespective of the franchise/medium.

I mean sure a good story is a good story with or without backstory and years of canon, in that respect sure I don't give a shit either. In fact Moffat's rubbish arc writing styles has made for far less genuine standalone stories then I would like.

But that's not to say canon doesn't have any merit whatsoever, even for Doctor Who.

[Not Thread Owner]

There is no Noddy?

Then how do we know when it's Christmas?

[NEG]

Then how do we know when it's Christmas?

Sonic 3&K

[Hideous Kojima]

I love that Doctor Who is loose with canon. I like that it's so easygoing that anything which might be a blatant "plot device" or "plot-hole avoider", like timelocking, just works. It all makes for a much more fun experience in my opinion, whereas in other sci-fi it might get too bogged down in all sorts. At the same time, I like how the current era has tried to undo a lot of what I felt were missteps from the 2005 era, not only in terms of tone and such, but more blatant things: the only purpose of Victory of the Daleks was to "reset" them to before the convoluted half-human etc etc stuff, and I have no problem with that.

[Garwoofoo]

I love Moffat's quote for when people question whether something is canon (taken from the article posted above by Nick R): "The audience just hasn't seen the adventure when the Doctor goes back in time and changes that detail."

Works for me. Currently I'm listening to the 8th Doctor Big Finish audios and I'm quite happy to accept them as being as valid as any of the TV series - they are excellent and as entertaining as any Who I've previously watched, listened to or read.

[Eighthours]

I really hate the contemporary obsession with canon. The only two things it ever accomplishes are to stifle creativity, and to temporarily placate the superiority complex of anal fans.

It doesn't matter. Take each story on its own merits, irrespective of the franchise/medium.

It's annoying when it's obsessive and prevents a good story from being told. On the other hand, ignoring canon and continuity entirely would be foolhardy. It's a balancing act. The trick as a storyteller is not to back yourself into a corner with your 'rules'. A good example of where this went wrong was in the final season of ST:TNG, when the Federation established a speed limit of Warp 5 due to environmental concerns (it was a pretty clumsy analogy to the destruction of the ozone layer). In pretty much every episode after that, the Enterprise had 'authority to exceed warp regulations' due to whatever disaster needed to be averted. In Deep Space 9, however, the speed limit was quietly ignored because it was a shit idea.

[Venice Cull]

It's annoying when it's obsessive and prevents a good story from being told. On the other hand, ignoring canon and continuity entirely would be foolhardy. It's a balancing act. The trick as a storyteller is not to back yourself into a corner with your 'rules'. A good example of where this went wrong was in the final season of ST:TNG, when the Federation established a speed limit of Warp 5 due to environmental concerns

If I remember correctly - the Warp 5 limit was only applicable to one particular strip in space (where lots of ships where forced down due to some anomaly or other) - not everywhere.

Edit: No, you're correct it was everywhere. The idea was quietly dropped for sanity reasons.

[JohnC]

IIRC, they came up with a technical solution rather than just dropping it, because, well, Star Trek. It's why Voyager's nacelles tilt and they further advanced the technology to do away with the tilting after that.

[kensei]

Rules are OK. The Doctor can't cross his own timeline is a rule. 13 regens is a rule. Used right they enhance dramatic tension and storytelling.

I think you need to be careful because if you have then, they should be enforced. If the Doctor meets himself there should be an explanation. Otherwise shows just become Calvinball. Which is dull. It's so much more satisfying when stuff adds up and makes sense within its own rules, which is what good sci fi does.

But if you are asking every little detail that could have 100 different valid explanation s you've gone wrong. Just needs a bit of balance.