Oooh RTD You FIBBER! (Something's Coming...)

[Starkers]

So the very fact that the BBC state that Hartnell was the first Doctor, Davison the 5th, Tennant the 10th doesn't count, even remotely as a canon? So Peri didn't travel with Six, Jo with Three, Rose with nine and ten? Surely aspects like this count as some form of canon for the show, even at a very basic level?

 

[Haggis and tatties]

I think Dr Who has done quite well canon wise through the years for a show that nobody way back in 1963 would have ever ever dreamed in their wildest dreams would still be here 46 years later and popular.

 

[Classic Fan]

Canon Shmanon.

Maybe Captain Jack violates a Dalek 'cannon'.



As long as its good hour or two, who cares.

Besides, Doctor Who + Canon.

 

[Lonemagpie]

So the very fact that the BBC state that Hartnell was the first Doctor, Davison the 5th, Tennant the 10th doesn't count, even remotely as a canon?

I refer you to The Brain Of Morbius...

 

[OmahaStar]

So the very fact that the BBC state that Hartnell was the first Doctor, Davison the 5th, Tennant the 10th doesn't count, even remotely as a canon?

I refer you to The Brain Of Morbius...

And I refer you to The Five Doctors ...

 

[Butters]

So the very fact that the BBC state that Hartnell was the first Doctor, Davison the 5th, Tennant the 10th doesn't count, even remotely as a canon? So Peri didn't travel with Six, Jo with Three, Rose with nine and ten? Surely aspects like this count as some form of canon for the show, even at a very basic level?

Yeah but whats the point in hoarding facts of 'canon'?


Dr Who is fortunate to have so few tangible certainties that it can completely reinvent itself on a whim and still be considered one consistant entity
Suppose a future producer wants to call Hartnell the third Doctor instead so he can make Smith the thirteenth and introduce the drama and tension of exhausted regenerations early in a story that reveals something new about the Doctor's youth. What would that do to canon?

 

[Meredith]

Maybe it involves Tom Baker....

 

[Lonemagpie]

So the very fact that the BBC state that Hartnell was the first Doctor, Davison the 5th, Tennant the 10th doesn't count, even remotely as a canon?

I refer you to The Brain Of Morbius...

And I refer you to The Five Doctors ...

Exactly - the TV show itself is (often intentionally) contradictory

 

[Captain Pike]

Doctor Who does have an established canon.... the order of the Doctor's, place names and certain events like the Time War. If any of these were changed, then it would be against canon... however, for all the inconsistencies in stories I look at it as the Doctor Who universe being in flux, timelines changing and being altered etc by events in other episodes....

Quoted for Truth!

So, when were the UNIT stories set, then? Mawdryn Undead destroyed that view of "canon." Or, what were the non-Thal inhabitants of Skaro called before they became Daleks?

This argument is meaningless. There are many inconsiistencies in Star Trek also. What do the inhabitants of the planet Vulcan call themselves. Was Cochrane from Alpha Centauri?

The fact is these things are updated by the new versions and rationalized into something loosley resembling coherency.

Now Dr Who may at times play fast and loose with it's canon and the constant time travel invites paradoxes (so that we now have at least two versions of the history of the Daleks) but mere inconsiistencies do not mean there is no established characteristics or sequence(s) of events.

 

[Sci]

Now Dr Who may at times play fast and loose with it's canon and the constant time travel invites paradoxes (so that we now have at least two versions of the history of the Daleks) but mere inconsiistencies do not mean there is no established characteristics or sequence(s) of events.

But that's not what a canon is. Strictly speaking, a canon is merely a collection of works. In fan parlance, it tends to be used to refer to a definitive collection of stories that "happened" and against which other stories may or may not have "happened," but that second definition doesn't exist. There's nothing to say that any of the books of audios are non-canonical... and there's nothing to say, therefore, that any of the episodes are canonical.

Canon is only a meaningful concept in relation to that which is non-canonical. There's nothing that's strictly canonical or non-canonical. It's all just Doctor Who.

 

[Captain Pike]

Again, I refer you back to Star Trek and it's many contradictions and inconsiistencies.

ETA - Ok Sci, thats fair enough I guess (although most fans don't consider the Cushing movies canon and I think there is something on the BBC website defining their viewpoint) but thats not the same thing Magpie was talking about.

 

[Saul]

You can't say there's no such thing as canon when the producer of the show admits to it.

You can when he obviously only used the term as a joke.

Yep, he's previously said there is no canon, and also that some of the other things he'd done with DW had destroyed canon

He lies about many things so who is to say which he considers to be true. But as a collection of episodes and whatever tie in books etc there is it is all presenting a story continuity we can call canon. Yes it contradicts itself, yes it makes mistakes. But a show running this long with this many episodes is bound to. The thing is that they aren't completely throwing away everything starting from scratch. Like Star Trek they were at least trying to follow what came before in some way.

 

[Haggis and tatties]

So the very fact that the BBC state that Hartnell was the first Doctor, Davison the 5th, Tennant the 10th doesn't count, even remotely as a canon?

I refer you to The Brain Of Morbius...

Terrance Dicks makes it quite clear on the DVD of The Brain Of Morbius that the faces were simply faces, logically they could be pre hartnell Dr reincarnations but there was no great planed significance of who and what the faces represented, that as he says is all down to the fans, as the writers were all too busy.

 

[Steve Roby]

I can't stand "canon". It's the most depressingly tiresome aspect of Star Trek fandom, and fortunately Doctor Who has been relatively free of it. UNIT dating is about as far as it goes really, because almost everyone knows it doesn't matter.

Amen to that.

You can't say there's no such thing as canon when the producer of the show admits to it.

And he has also said the opposite at least as often. Not to mention the fact that he's the producer of four seasons and a few specials, and he has no canony powers over what came before and what comes next.

Doctor Who does have an established canon.... the order of the Doctor's, place names and certain events like the Time War. If any of these were changed, then it would be against canon... however, for all the inconsistencies in stories I look at it as the Doctor Who universe being in flux, timelines changing and being altered etc by events in other episodes....

That's probably better described as continuity, not canon.

Here's the thing... in media SF discussions online, there's usually one reason to bring up canon: to say that this stuff I'm talking about counts and that stuff you're talking about doesn't, so I win. Saying that, for example, Star Trek or Star Wars books aren't canon is a simple matter of fact. Saying that they aren't worth reading is something else again, and that's where a lot of the canonistas are going. Particularly the Star Wars fan trolls who pop up occasionally in TrekLit who don't understand their fave franchise's canon policy and think that SW books are better specifically because they're canon. (They aren't. Ask George.)

Properties like Star Trek, Star Wars, and Babylon 5 have canons because the people who created them said so. That never happened with Doctor Who, which has no one single creator who could declare canon with any expectation that it would have any actual weight. (And in Star Trek, canon might as well be irrelevant now. Roddenberry's dead. Berman's gone. The only stuff being filmed is in a different continuity. So, stuff like the DS9 relaunch novels isn't canon... but since there's virtually no chance they'll ever be contradicted by any new TV or movie Trek, who cares?)

 

[Butters]

Back to puzzling what Special Project 3 might be. Has there been any announcement on a complete DVD Box Set for the RTD era? Perhaps they're doing extra footage or something on those lines.

 

[PlainSimpleJoel]

^ That sounds a little lame, as I would be expecting it to be something that will happen in the who universe.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I refer you to The Brain Of Morbius...

Terrance Dicks makes it quite clear on the DVD of The Brain Of Morbius that the faces were simply faces, logically they could be pre hartnell Dr reincarnations but there was no great planed significance of who and what the faces represented, that as he says is all down to the fans, as the writers were all too busy.

While Philip Hinchcliffe would vehemently disagree with that assessment of the faces; he and Robert Holmes intended for the faces to be past Doctors.

 

[Haggis and tatties]

^^^^^The point being the faces were a throw away addition specifically for that episode and never meant to be studied under a microscope or tried to be fitted nice and neat into continuity all these years later, they are what they are, faces on a screen, people make of them what they wish, but at the end of the day they don't really matter in the grand scheme of Who.

 

[Timofnine]

So, when were the UNIT stories set, then? Mawdryn Undead destroyed that view of "canon." Or, what were the non-Thal inhabitants of Skaro called before they became Daleks?

It's all in flux, timeline alterations, parallel universes etc... it's like comparing canon from Star Trek 2009 and Star Trek 1966 - the only solidly consistent thing between the two is Prime Spock. In Doctor Who it is the Doctor. We've seen one of the parallel earths in Age of Steel.

 

[Tomalak]

You can't say there's no such thing as canon when the producer of the show admits to it.

Doctor Who does have an established canon....

At no point did I say there wasn't some internal continuity, merely that I find the discussion of such things tiresome. You've both done the typical Trek fan thing of overreacting when "canon" is brought onto the table, a la Trek XI forum.

Doctor Who writers throughout the life of the show have played fast and lose with continuity. Sometimes they referenced previous episodes, sometimes they totally ignored them. Usually any continuity was based on what the writer could remember.

Unlike Star Trek (and Star Wars, the fans of which are perhaps even more hardcore, given that they like to include as sacrosanct things that weren't even in the six films!), Doctor Who fans generally have more of a sense of humour about the whole thing. It's just a fun TV show, leave the analysis for Shakespeare or Tennyson.