I think the point is being missed in terms of what has mildly annoyed a few people.
No expects the whole ‘tie ins should be canon’ thing. No one. Even though Who has historically had a different approach to other franchises since the wilderness years, because many of those formerly official continuations were worked on by the *same* people who work on the show now. (Davies, Gatiss, Briggs, Tennant… ) and so the ‘you can’t expect them to know about *that*’ justification doesn’t entirely apply.
But, there’s two things at play here. Let’s look at Tegan.
‘Tegan is alive, that contradicts x’ (something we are used to with Ace, because she always becomes a time traveller, and always dies, almost as a deliberate way of separating a work from another continuity… she also usually gets better)
Fair enough… because the story benefit of ‘here is Tegan in a meaningful role again’ is enough of a fannish ‘win’ that it really doesn’t matter, and most people won’t mind *even if they knew about her ‘death’. (To go back to Ace, I probably enjoyed the comic in which she died more than Set Piece, and I enjoyed Alien Bodies more than both. I did not enjoy most of the later BF stories, didn’t like Hex, but loved their first two NA Ace stories. Haven’t heard Love and War yet, and I think there’s more.)
The throwaway lines that discount whole swathes of stories? Those aren’t a fannish win, and they disallow the vagueness of characters timelines that allow other writers and teams to squint and squeeze stories into.
Those demonstrate *clumsiness* rather than a desire for creativity.
They also yet again demonstrate Chibnall’s disregard for any work other than his own.
If it’s sheer audience numbers that count, then sod it… Dimensions In Time called, and says it is more canon than the entire Chibnall era. (I fully expect someone to go full Pixley with the numbers to discount this — I don’t care.)
I suspect SJA can do the same.
