Hello there, faithful reader. And trolls. I get a lotta them...
Canon. Canon, canon, canon, canon. Canon... I hope you're writing this down. Today's lesson, class, is on official timelines and canoninity. What happened and what didn't? Do Big Finish audios "count" as "real" Doctor Who? What about NAs? Or annual short stories? Short trips? The new BBC novels? DWM comic strips? The Dalek Annual...? Actually, I'm boring myself now.
Some people reckon that "canon" is everything that is officially sanctioned by the BBC... everything, official, with a BBC logo on it. Even thoughs "make your own adventures" books with K9. People confuse the word "official" with "canon". It's not the same. "Official" simply means "paying the BBC to use their product and not be sued for it". That's all. It doesn't mean "actually happened".
Let's start discounting things. Let's go right back to the beginning. Target novelisations. Not canon. Why? Well, for a start they give a non-representative view of the episode they novelise. This isn't a criticism, I love em, I learned to read - and write - through them - but they don't always follow the story exactly. Mal Hulke, for instance, was very guilty of changing things round, Stephen Gallagher too. Ian Marter. And of course David Whittaker's Exciting Adventure With the Daleks rewrites An Unearthly Child (using Bunny Webbers original premise) into a brand new origin story. So target novelisations. Nope.
Whilst on books, what about the NAs? Virgin and the BBC produced hundreds of books under the banner "Doctor Who" from the early 90s on, featuring every Doctor from one to eight. Are these canon? Did these adventures "happen" to the Doctor? Well, nope, of course not, don't be silly. Why? Well, because the PtB nowadays plunder them for ideas. Which Doctor had a brush with humanity in Human Nature for example? Well, obviously, it was the tenth. Not the seventh. Obviously. We saw that. That in itself is enough to discount everything else. Or, if not that, then, em, who destroyed Gallifrey? The Faction Paradox? Or the Doctor in a desperate bid to stop the Daleks? Well, the Doctor of course, he's told us. To our face. The Faction Paradox didn't happen. It's just a story.
Big Finish suffer from this more than any other medium. I love big finish, but which Doctor was locked in with a broken and insane Dalek who was thought to be the last of its kind? The sixth? Or the ninth? The ninth, of course. Who went to Pompeii just before Vesuvius erupted!? The tenth! Not wee Times Champion. How many official adventures has the Eighth Doctor had? One, I'm afraid, fighting the Master in San Fransisco.
Doctor Who is a telly show. That's all. And, faithful reader, let's stop bush beating here, it's all pretend. It's made up. It's not real. But in the Doctor's own personal "history" he can't have a million different versions of the same thing. Even the time travel excuse doesn't really hold water. It's a telly show, and what happens on the telly is all that matters. That's why RTD and the Moff adapt the other mediums. The Moff redid Blink from a very recent Doctor Who Annual. He also redid Continuity Errors from Decalog3 for Silence In The Library (well, at least used the same setting) and RTD paid Marc Platt for the idea of The Rise of the Cybermen from Spare Parts - even though it's just the pulses that are the same. Human Nature is a complete rewrite, by the same author. So is Dalek.
The television series is all. It's all that matters. The rest is fun. It's genius, in fact. It's brilliant drama written by very talented people. But in the Doctor's universe, it didn't happen, it's just a distraction. It's just a way to make money and to feed fans Who when there is none. Licenced fan fiction, mostly. Brilliant fan fic, but just that. Incredibly well written fan fic, but no more. It's no more "real" than if you wrote a wee story for your nan.
Doctor Who has it's own internal continuity problems - UNIT for talkings sake. I mean, what? Where? When? ("Slightly in the future" according to Barry Letts in The Sea Devils dvd, "the real world, but not ours, slightly in front...") So, the Brigadier retires... anyway, you know the score, you know the worms. We don't need the can here. I mean, we have that, we don't really need te rest. People like Terry Nation, Bob Holmes, Terrance Dicks, alumni of Whovian scriptures, bastions of the narrative, those guys didn't give a fuck if it was set then, had been done before, was a bit like this or that, they went with the story, that's all. Eric Saward lost the plot with Ian Levine for moaning about "27 glaring continuity errors" in a draft of Johnny Byrnes Warriors of The Deep. And it was that kind of bollocks that ground the eighties into the ground. I mean, how hard would it have been, rather than get Levine to look at it, to say "hey Johnny, watch those two adventures, eh? Give us a story that doesn't step on toes..." That's lip service to the fans, and that's what RTD does now. He gives us excuses for continuity errors. The Time War. Torchwood. He gives us escape valves. He doesn't need to.
Terry Nation completely rewrote the origins of the Daleks - at least once - but no one blinked. In fact Genesis of the Daleks might contain more than "27 glaring continuity errors" but who gives a shit? It's brilliant!
Canon is an old word describing whatever the pope at that time decreed to be the official turn of events. It didn't have to be accurate, just what the pope decided. Some popes would countermand previous ones. History was rewritten.
RTD in the pontif of Who. I'm sure you'll love the imagery Russell, I can see you in a cassock.. the Moff soon will be. Brilliant! Genius! Fabulous fellows both. What those guys say goes. Full stop. It doesn't make it any righter than the last guy, or more wrong than the next.
It's what we see that makes our "history" or "reality". Doctor Who begins and ends on Saturday teatime telly. The rest is smoke.
Happy Times and Places
Eddie
Canon. Canon, canon, canon, canon. Canon... I hope you're writing this down. Today's lesson, class, is on official timelines and canoninity. What happened and what didn't? Do Big Finish audios "count" as "real" Doctor Who? What about NAs? Or annual short stories? Short trips? The new BBC novels? DWM comic strips? The Dalek Annual...? Actually, I'm boring myself now.
Some people reckon that "canon" is everything that is officially sanctioned by the BBC... everything, official, with a BBC logo on it. Even thoughs "make your own adventures" books with K9. People confuse the word "official" with "canon". It's not the same. "Official" simply means "paying the BBC to use their product and not be sued for it". That's all. It doesn't mean "actually happened".
Let's start discounting things. Let's go right back to the beginning. Target novelisations. Not canon. Why? Well, for a start they give a non-representative view of the episode they novelise. This isn't a criticism, I love em, I learned to read - and write - through them - but they don't always follow the story exactly. Mal Hulke, for instance, was very guilty of changing things round, Stephen Gallagher too. Ian Marter. And of course David Whittaker's Exciting Adventure With the Daleks rewrites An Unearthly Child (using Bunny Webbers original premise) into a brand new origin story. So target novelisations. Nope.
Whilst on books, what about the NAs? Virgin and the BBC produced hundreds of books under the banner "Doctor Who" from the early 90s on, featuring every Doctor from one to eight. Are these canon? Did these adventures "happen" to the Doctor? Well, nope, of course not, don't be silly. Why? Well, because the PtB nowadays plunder them for ideas. Which Doctor had a brush with humanity in Human Nature for example? Well, obviously, it was the tenth. Not the seventh. Obviously. We saw that. That in itself is enough to discount everything else. Or, if not that, then, em, who destroyed Gallifrey? The Faction Paradox? Or the Doctor in a desperate bid to stop the Daleks? Well, the Doctor of course, he's told us. To our face. The Faction Paradox didn't happen. It's just a story.
Big Finish suffer from this more than any other medium. I love big finish, but which Doctor was locked in with a broken and insane Dalek who was thought to be the last of its kind? The sixth? Or the ninth? The ninth, of course. Who went to Pompeii just before Vesuvius erupted!? The tenth! Not wee Times Champion. How many official adventures has the Eighth Doctor had? One, I'm afraid, fighting the Master in San Fransisco.
Doctor Who is a telly show. That's all. And, faithful reader, let's stop bush beating here, it's all pretend. It's made up. It's not real. But in the Doctor's own personal "history" he can't have a million different versions of the same thing. Even the time travel excuse doesn't really hold water. It's a telly show, and what happens on the telly is all that matters. That's why RTD and the Moff adapt the other mediums. The Moff redid Blink from a very recent Doctor Who Annual. He also redid Continuity Errors from Decalog3 for Silence In The Library (well, at least used the same setting) and RTD paid Marc Platt for the idea of The Rise of the Cybermen from Spare Parts - even though it's just the pulses that are the same. Human Nature is a complete rewrite, by the same author. So is Dalek.
The television series is all. It's all that matters. The rest is fun. It's genius, in fact. It's brilliant drama written by very talented people. But in the Doctor's universe, it didn't happen, it's just a distraction. It's just a way to make money and to feed fans Who when there is none. Licenced fan fiction, mostly. Brilliant fan fic, but just that. Incredibly well written fan fic, but no more. It's no more "real" than if you wrote a wee story for your nan.
Doctor Who has it's own internal continuity problems - UNIT for talkings sake. I mean, what? Where? When? ("Slightly in the future" according to Barry Letts in The Sea Devils dvd, "the real world, but not ours, slightly in front...") So, the Brigadier retires... anyway, you know the score, you know the worms. We don't need the can here. I mean, we have that, we don't really need te rest. People like Terry Nation, Bob Holmes, Terrance Dicks, alumni of Whovian scriptures, bastions of the narrative, those guys didn't give a fuck if it was set then, had been done before, was a bit like this or that, they went with the story, that's all. Eric Saward lost the plot with Ian Levine for moaning about "27 glaring continuity errors" in a draft of Johnny Byrnes Warriors of The Deep. And it was that kind of bollocks that ground the eighties into the ground. I mean, how hard would it have been, rather than get Levine to look at it, to say "hey Johnny, watch those two adventures, eh? Give us a story that doesn't step on toes..." That's lip service to the fans, and that's what RTD does now. He gives us excuses for continuity errors. The Time War. Torchwood. He gives us escape valves. He doesn't need to.
Terry Nation completely rewrote the origins of the Daleks - at least once - but no one blinked. In fact Genesis of the Daleks might contain more than "27 glaring continuity errors" but who gives a shit? It's brilliant!
Canon is an old word describing whatever the pope at that time decreed to be the official turn of events. It didn't have to be accurate, just what the pope decided. Some popes would countermand previous ones. History was rewritten.
RTD in the pontif of Who. I'm sure you'll love the imagery Russell, I can see you in a cassock.. the Moff soon will be. Brilliant! Genius! Fabulous fellows both. What those guys say goes. Full stop. It doesn't make it any righter than the last guy, or more wrong than the next.
It's what we see that makes our "history" or "reality". Doctor Who begins and ends on Saturday teatime telly. The rest is smoke.
Happy Times and Places
Eddie
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