Yeap, a simple tip of the hat towards Chinall as RTD moves the show onwards, nothing wrong with that, as it should be, as i am sure RTD has his own ideas he wants to stamp onto the show during his run.
Russell T. Davies Returns to Doctor Who as New Showrunner
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Yeap, a simple tip of the hat towards Chinall as RTD moves the show onwards, nothing wrong with that, as it should be, as i am sure RTD has his own ideas he wants to stamp onto the show during his run.
I think you're missing the point. RTD and Chibnall are friends. RTD isn't going to go out of his way to imply anything negative about his friend's work. Hence, this type of comment could well be a diplomatic thing as the other poster indicated.
Time will tell what RTD actually does, if anything, with it. I'm in the camp of hoping he ignores it but suspect he'll use it to attract big name stars to appear in one-off movie events where they can appear as one of the mystery pre-Hartnell Doctors. That wouldn't be a terrible use to be honest.
In 2005, RTD brought back Doctor Who as something new and fresh and nobody had to know decades of backstory to make sense of it. But he gradually brought back elements of the past. He did not say, the hell with that old crap; at a time when many fans were convinced that McGann would be decanonized, he said, no, McGann was the Doctor, no matter what his characters in Queer As Folk might have thought. He saw the need to make the show work for new viewers but also resisted the temptation to wipe out the show's history, and as viewers grew more comfortable, he worked more of the show's classic continuity into his new era.
In 2023, we already know he's bringing back a villain from a 1966 episode, redoing a comic strip story from 1980, bringing back David Tennant and Catherine Tate more than a decade after they left the show. He likes the show's history, He likes stuff he didn't create. He hired Chibnall to write episodes and got him to run a spinoff series. I doubt he's making plans to overwrite Chibnall's work to make the Get Rid Of Slimy Girls group happy, any more than he's going to try to make the anti-woke crowd happy in general.
In 2023, we already know he's bringing back a villain from a 1966 episode, redoing a comic strip story from 1980, bringing back David Tennant and Catherine Tate more than a decade after they left the show. He likes the show's history, He likes stuff he didn't create. He hired Chibnall to write episodes and got him to run a spinoff series. I doubt he's making plans to overwrite Chibnall's work to make the Get Rid Of Slimy Girls group happy, any more than he's going to try to make the anti-woke crowd happy in general.
What's the basis for thinking that it's an idea that he secretly doesn't like, though?
Looking at the entire history of his career and at who he is as a person, do you really think Russel T Davies is the sort of man who'd say, "I hate that the first Doctor is now a black woman but I have to pretend I don't so the Woke Police won't come after me."?
I never said he didn't like the idea, just saying that his comments are possibly a diplomatic answer. That's why I wrote "could well be." Doesn't mean it is but perhaps. And, I certainly never said anything about RTD's attitude towards Jo Martin's Doctor or the "Woke Police." Not sure why you're attributing that to me?!
I actually called out a reason why he might take the idea of the Timeless child and run. Casting big names as one-off Doctors might be too good for him to pass up!
Shoot, I'm not a fan of the Timeless child but even I can see that it opens the door for some interesting possibilities.
Good.
Is it really the ‘only IP in existence which doesn’t have a canon’? Really?
Nonsense.
If you think there's another example out there, name it.
Doctor Who has a canon. A loose one, but it does have one.
The only IP in existence that doesn’t have a canon… how are you even defining ‘canon’?
In total Doctor Who has sixty years of interwoven stories. Opinions vary between ‘all of it counts’ and ‘some if it counts’, but there’s definitely a continuing narrative there and fans take that and define it as canon.
The BBC may never have officially defined it, but that never stopped fans of anything from codifying and ordering stories into a ‘canon’.
No, it doesn't.
Quoting noted Whovian contributor and Modern Who episode writer Paul Cornell:
1) "I can’t think of any other fandom that assumes they have a canon when nobody has ever told them that they do. Especially since our show itself declares that it doesn’t now have, and probably never did have, a canon."
2) "Nobody at the BBC has ever uttered a pronouncement about what is and isn’t canonical."
3) "because the continuity of Doctor Who was always so all over the place anyway that something in a new story not matching up with something from an earlier one was just the way things were, rather than an aberration that had to be corrected through canonical excommunication."
4) "Not giving a toss about how it all fits together is one of Doctor Who’s oldest, proudest traditions, a strength of the series. It’s allowed infinite change, and never left the show crunched into a corner after all the dramatic options had already been done."
5) "During the 1990s, when the New Adventures were such a source of friction, I kept saying, about my own work, since I was one of the authors, that there was ‘no such thing as “canon'. The New Adventures were as ‘real’ as any other sort of Doctor Who."
6) "in Doctor Who there is no such thing as ‘canon’."
Source: https://www.paulcornell.com/2007/02/canonicity-in-doctor-who/
Paul Cornell is very far from being an authority in what “is and isn’t” as far as this kind of thing goes.
Still, can’t be bothered with you. Go and tappity tap tap your keyboard at somebody else. You’re wrong.
Is Steven Moffat enough of an authority for you?
Because he said the following back in 2008:
"It is impossible for a show about a dimension-hopping time traveller to have a canon."
RTD also once said that the word 'canon' had never been uttered in his production office/writer's room.
The BBC has never made an authoritative declaration of official Doctor Who canon, and individuals either formerly or currently involved with the IP have declared/stated that the concept does not and/or cannot exist; therefore, Doctor Who does not have and has never had a canon, regardless of what certain pockets of the fandom want to believe.
To once again paraphrase Star Wars Story Group Sr. Creative Executive Matt Martin, 'Canon only matters to creators; to everyone else, it's a meaningless concept.'
And since the many and varied creators of Doctor Who content have never officially established a Canon for the IP, the concept itself does not matter and does not exist.
The sixth Doctor. A bloviating, pompous, opinionated blowhard that most people don’t like.
Rarely have a poster and an avatar fit together so well.
Rarely have a poster and an avatar fit together so well.
Right. I agree with you, even if you believe there's some point I'm missing. Indeed, the beauty of Who is how problem-free it is to hit the big ol' red button on the Universe with each new incarnation. Wibbly wobbly, and all that.
Putting aside what he may or may not have planned: while he does not have to be diplomatic in the sense of respecting / adhering to Chibnall's work, he's not going to publicly dismiss it. That'd just be rude and unprofessional.
I presume the question was thrown at him during the magazine interview. Is it really so hard to believe he'd say what he did, rather than launch into some "I'll do whatever the I want" spiel (even if he were intent on ignoring it)?
In any event his answer does not provide any insight one way or the other as to whether The Timeless Child will be revisited under his watch.
Post, not poster. Remember that.
I disagree because of the nature of Doctor Who as an overall IP.
There would be zero negative consequence, either professionally or personally, to RTD - or any other Doctor Who creative - declaring their intention - either on the record or through their writing - to ignore or retcon any aspect of the franchise's 60-year history.
Oops.
Disney+ have accidentally confirmed that the Christmas Special will indeeed be on Christmas Day. Oh, and they threw in the title too. Which is exactly what the leaked synopsis from months ago said it would be. So add that to the other bits we know were right and it's safe to assume the whole thing is correct.
https://twitter.com/DisneyPlus/status/1721544215069593912
Disney+ have accidentally confirmed that the Christmas Special will indeeed be on Christmas Day. Oh, and they threw in the title too. Which is exactly what the leaked synopsis from months ago said it would be. So add that to the other bits we know were right and it's safe to assume the whole thing is correct.
https://twitter.com/DisneyPlus/status/1721544215069593912
There's only one important way in which fans talk about canon: "That doesn't count, it's not canon!" It's used to end arguments. If you can't back it up, can't enforce it, can't make the TV show adhere to it, it's not canon in any useful sense.
I admit, the idea of fans codifying and ordering the stuff that counts from a body of work like Doctor Who's is entertaining, not least because fans don't agree on anything.
Sure it does, it's just very loose.
The Doctor is a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey that travels time and space using a TARDIS that has the exterior shape of a police box and the inside is larger than the outside. S/he has two hearts and can regenerate due to mortal danger.
Sure, some of those details have evolved over time. But they're pretty firmly locked in now. That's a canon of information right there. There's probably at least a few more things you can add.
DW might not have as much lore/plot point canon as say ST or other franchises. But it does have one. Otherwise it's not DW it's just an anthology series like the Twilight Zone. TZ an example of something without a canon.
As Richard said, DW's canon is looser.
What you've described is a set of generally agreed-upon character facts about The Doctor.
They're also a set of generally agreed-upon character facts about The Doctor that anyone working on the IP could, were they so inclined, wholly ignore and/or contradict.
Yep, and that's a canon. A limited one. One that can evolve. But it is a canon.
You were talking about no canon at all, and that's more like Twilight Zone.
