Canon Who?
Aug. 4th, 2005 05:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khaosworksI'll cut tag this, because it's Doctor Who continuity geekery, which I know very few of you out there share.
To set the scene: like nearly every shared universe, Doctor Who has its "canon" arguments. Even more so than other universes, perhaps, because while people mostly agree that Star Trek canon consists of on-screen stories, and for Star Wars we actually have Lucasfilm pronouncing on what is canon and what's not, and — God help us — I think Trek and Star Wars actually has levels of canonicity... the BBC has resolutely refused to take a stand on "official" continuity, happily declaring one thing official one moment and then something else official the next, to the constant wailing and weeping and gnashing of teeth of continuity fanatics. Not that the contradictions within the series didn't already give them fits.
The problem with Doctor Who is compounded by the fact that for 16 years, aside from the blip of the 1996 television movie, the only way people could get licensed Doctor Who adventures was through the novels, the comic strips, and the audio plays (Big Finish, webcasts, etc.). And while they did their best not to contradict the classic series, they had no obligation to be consistent with each other. And they weren't.
One of the things that illustrates this problem is the Seventh Doctor's companion, Ace. Because she was the companion when the classic series ended in 1989, there was no televised story to write her out. By the time the TV movie rolled around, the Doctor was on his own and there was no mention of what happened to Ace.
Which left her story to be told by the spin-off media. Ace has no less (and possibly more) than four different final fates reserved for her. The original plan, had the series continued, was to write her out by having her enrol in the Time Lord Academy on Gallifrey. The outline, Ice Time by Marc Platt, was written but never produced, obviously. In the televised story Silver Nemesis and the novelisation of The Curse of Fenric, it was hinted that Ace would one day end up in 18th century France, where a painting would be made for her. In the New Adventures novels published by Virgin from 1991 to 1996, Ace was written out in the novel Set Piece by Kate Orman, where she wound up with a personal time machine and became "Time's Vigilante", sort of a smaller version of the Doctor, looking after a particular slice of history. In the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip story "Ground Zero", Ace was killed by a bunch of intergalactic mercenaries called the Threshold. In the webcast story Death Comes to Time, the Seventh Doctor and the Time Lords all die and Ace is left to carry on in their name.
Confused, yet? This is just one example, mind. There are others, but we won't go into them at the moment.
So, how to reconcile all these without getting major brain damage? Unlike, say, the continuity messes of Hawkman and the Spider-Man Clone Saga (oy vey!), there is a way. I'll explain later. For now, let me tell you how the various lines dealt with the contradictions between them. The stage was really set in "Ground Zero", where there was a scene where our heroes get glimpses of other times and places, one of them which was clearly the Ace we saw from the New Adventures. The implication was this, that these stories took place in some multiverse, and these were other possibilities. In the Eighth Doctor Adventure novel Sometime Never... and the Big Finish Productions audio play Zagreus, coy references were made to each other in the same way, once again providing a mechanism for explaining away the discrepancies between the lines.
But there was already a mechanism, really. It was part of the series all along. It's called time travel.
Sure, in The Aztecs the First Doctor tells Barbara emphatically that, "You can't change history, not one line!" But an alternate future is prevented from happening in Day of the Daleks, and by the time of Genesis of the Daleks the Doctor is being sent on missions to change Dalek history and it's arguable that he succeeds, though not in the way the Time Lords wanted. In Remembrance of the Daleks the Seventh Doctor tells Ace that even the Daleks would pause before making a "rrradical change in the timeline", implying that even the deadly pepperpots can do it. And of course in The Unquiet Dead the Ninth Doctor is telling Rose that time is in flux and everything can change, and in Father's Day it does, with nasty consequences.
So the First Doctor telling Barbara notwithstanding, history can be changed. I guess the First Doctor was just trying to get Barbara out of trouble, or hoping that she could be dissuaded from making ripples in the fabric of time with a white lie. In the novel Unnatural History by Kate Orman and Jonathan Blum, it is implied that the Doctor's biodata — that bit of him which keeps track of his life essence, so to speak (it's all fuzzy and complicated) — has been so tangled up by history changing that even he isn't sure who or what his origins are anymore. Which is the perfect set up for my own mantra about canon, after all this rambling:
It's all canon. It's all non-canon.
Alan Moore said it best in his prologue to his magnificent Last Silver Age Superman story, Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow?: "This is an imaginary story. Aren't they all?"
It boils down to this. It all never happened. It all did. History is in flux. Ace became Time's Vigilante. She died fighting the Threshold. She became the first of the new Time Lords. She went to the Academy. She went home to Perivale. Personally, I like to think that she went to the Academy and by becoming a Time Lord, her history becomes just as entangled as the Doctor's. After all, the Eighth Doctor regenerated into Rowan Atkinson. Or was that Richard E. Grant? He rescued the town of Lannet from the Shalka and travelled with Alison and the Master. He went to Tersurus to announce his marriage to Emma. Or no, he fought in the Time War and destroyed Gallifrey. Twice. He had two granddaughters named Susan and Barbara and was named "Dr. Who". Or were his grandchildren John and Gillian?
It's all glorious anarchy, and I love it that way.
Because this way, the Doctor becomes something you can never pin down, and you never should. That's the mystery of the man, that's the magic of the man. And that elevates him to something more than just a man. He becomes a myth. The Ka Faraq Gatri, the Oncoming Storm, the "nice guy, if you're a biped." The Loomed Cousin from the House of Lungbarrow, the son of Ulysses and Penelope, the husband of Patience, the half-human, all Gallifreyan, Time Lord from the Dark Time, the contemporary of Rassilon...
You can have all the slash you want, have him married off to Charley or Jo, or have him having babies with Benny or setting up house with Turlough or Jack. It all happened. It all didn't happen.
And it'll happen again, or unhappen, in a heartbeat, as the universe warps around us, and we're none the wiser. The difference between this and the multiverse model is that it all happens in one universe, and there's no need to keep everything separate. It all comes out in the wash, basically. No crossovers, no continuity contortions, just one single eternal question: "Doctor Who?"
My advice to writers is this: Don't contradict anything if you don't have to, but if you have to, don't let it bother you too much as long as you keep to the spirit of what this "more than just another Time Lord" is. Have fun reading everything, taking in every little detail, without worrying how it all fits. It does. It doesn't. All of it. None of it. Enjoy it. Bathe in it. You know I do.
So there it is. I'll admit that this attitude may be tongue-in-cheek. But at the same time, like the self-contradictory mantra, I'm deadly serious. Or maybe I'm just being a punk. Or not.
Have your heads exploded yet?
To set the scene: like nearly every shared universe, Doctor Who has its "canon" arguments. Even more so than other universes, perhaps, because while people mostly agree that Star Trek canon consists of on-screen stories, and for Star Wars we actually have Lucasfilm pronouncing on what is canon and what's not, and — God help us — I think Trek and Star Wars actually has levels of canonicity... the BBC has resolutely refused to take a stand on "official" continuity, happily declaring one thing official one moment and then something else official the next, to the constant wailing and weeping and gnashing of teeth of continuity fanatics. Not that the contradictions within the series didn't already give them fits.
The problem with Doctor Who is compounded by the fact that for 16 years, aside from the blip of the 1996 television movie, the only way people could get licensed Doctor Who adventures was through the novels, the comic strips, and the audio plays (Big Finish, webcasts, etc.). And while they did their best not to contradict the classic series, they had no obligation to be consistent with each other. And they weren't.
One of the things that illustrates this problem is the Seventh Doctor's companion, Ace. Because she was the companion when the classic series ended in 1989, there was no televised story to write her out. By the time the TV movie rolled around, the Doctor was on his own and there was no mention of what happened to Ace.
Which left her story to be told by the spin-off media. Ace has no less (and possibly more) than four different final fates reserved for her. The original plan, had the series continued, was to write her out by having her enrol in the Time Lord Academy on Gallifrey. The outline, Ice Time by Marc Platt, was written but never produced, obviously. In the televised story Silver Nemesis and the novelisation of The Curse of Fenric, it was hinted that Ace would one day end up in 18th century France, where a painting would be made for her. In the New Adventures novels published by Virgin from 1991 to 1996, Ace was written out in the novel Set Piece by Kate Orman, where she wound up with a personal time machine and became "Time's Vigilante", sort of a smaller version of the Doctor, looking after a particular slice of history. In the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip story "Ground Zero", Ace was killed by a bunch of intergalactic mercenaries called the Threshold. In the webcast story Death Comes to Time, the Seventh Doctor and the Time Lords all die and Ace is left to carry on in their name.
Confused, yet? This is just one example, mind. There are others, but we won't go into them at the moment.
So, how to reconcile all these without getting major brain damage? Unlike, say, the continuity messes of Hawkman and the Spider-Man Clone Saga (oy vey!), there is a way. I'll explain later. For now, let me tell you how the various lines dealt with the contradictions between them. The stage was really set in "Ground Zero", where there was a scene where our heroes get glimpses of other times and places, one of them which was clearly the Ace we saw from the New Adventures. The implication was this, that these stories took place in some multiverse, and these were other possibilities. In the Eighth Doctor Adventure novel Sometime Never... and the Big Finish Productions audio play Zagreus, coy references were made to each other in the same way, once again providing a mechanism for explaining away the discrepancies between the lines.
But there was already a mechanism, really. It was part of the series all along. It's called time travel.
Sure, in The Aztecs the First Doctor tells Barbara emphatically that, "You can't change history, not one line!" But an alternate future is prevented from happening in Day of the Daleks, and by the time of Genesis of the Daleks the Doctor is being sent on missions to change Dalek history and it's arguable that he succeeds, though not in the way the Time Lords wanted. In Remembrance of the Daleks the Seventh Doctor tells Ace that even the Daleks would pause before making a "rrradical change in the timeline", implying that even the deadly pepperpots can do it. And of course in The Unquiet Dead the Ninth Doctor is telling Rose that time is in flux and everything can change, and in Father's Day it does, with nasty consequences.
So the First Doctor telling Barbara notwithstanding, history can be changed. I guess the First Doctor was just trying to get Barbara out of trouble, or hoping that she could be dissuaded from making ripples in the fabric of time with a white lie. In the novel Unnatural History by Kate Orman and Jonathan Blum, it is implied that the Doctor's biodata — that bit of him which keeps track of his life essence, so to speak (it's all fuzzy and complicated) — has been so tangled up by history changing that even he isn't sure who or what his origins are anymore. Which is the perfect set up for my own mantra about canon, after all this rambling:
It's all canon. It's all non-canon.
Alan Moore said it best in his prologue to his magnificent Last Silver Age Superman story, Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow?: "This is an imaginary story. Aren't they all?"
It boils down to this. It all never happened. It all did. History is in flux. Ace became Time's Vigilante. She died fighting the Threshold. She became the first of the new Time Lords. She went to the Academy. She went home to Perivale. Personally, I like to think that she went to the Academy and by becoming a Time Lord, her history becomes just as entangled as the Doctor's. After all, the Eighth Doctor regenerated into Rowan Atkinson. Or was that Richard E. Grant? He rescued the town of Lannet from the Shalka and travelled with Alison and the Master. He went to Tersurus to announce his marriage to Emma. Or no, he fought in the Time War and destroyed Gallifrey. Twice. He had two granddaughters named Susan and Barbara and was named "Dr. Who". Or were his grandchildren John and Gillian?
It's all glorious anarchy, and I love it that way.
Because this way, the Doctor becomes something you can never pin down, and you never should. That's the mystery of the man, that's the magic of the man. And that elevates him to something more than just a man. He becomes a myth. The Ka Faraq Gatri, the Oncoming Storm, the "nice guy, if you're a biped." The Loomed Cousin from the House of Lungbarrow, the son of Ulysses and Penelope, the husband of Patience, the half-human, all Gallifreyan, Time Lord from the Dark Time, the contemporary of Rassilon...
You can have all the slash you want, have him married off to Charley or Jo, or have him having babies with Benny or setting up house with Turlough or Jack. It all happened. It all didn't happen.
And it'll happen again, or unhappen, in a heartbeat, as the universe warps around us, and we're none the wiser. The difference between this and the multiverse model is that it all happens in one universe, and there's no need to keep everything separate. It all comes out in the wash, basically. No crossovers, no continuity contortions, just one single eternal question: "Doctor Who?"
My advice to writers is this: Don't contradict anything if you don't have to, but if you have to, don't let it bother you too much as long as you keep to the spirit of what this "more than just another Time Lord" is. Have fun reading everything, taking in every little detail, without worrying how it all fits. It does. It doesn't. All of it. None of it. Enjoy it. Bathe in it. You know I do.
So there it is. I'll admit that this attitude may be tongue-in-cheek. But at the same time, like the self-contradictory mantra, I'm deadly serious. Or maybe I'm just being a punk. Or not.
Have your heads exploded yet?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-08-04 10:21 am (UTC)Just repeat to yourself "It's just a show", you really should relax!
There are certain things that are insurmountable. Anything that would be in a series handbook (the Doctor is a Timelord from the Planet Gallifrey) etc etc. Anything more than that is subject to flux and change. There _is_ no official canon.
Can't change history
Date: 2005-08-04 10:30 am (UTC)Re: Can't change history
Date: 2005-08-04 10:34 am (UTC)Re: Can't change history
Date: 2005-08-04 11:01 am (UTC)And in the real world, there's a fundamental misconception in the idea of "your own history". All of history up to this moment is "your own history". The atoms and molecules that make up your body today didn't spring into being the day you were born. Indeed, many of them have only been part of your body for a few months, or even days or hours. Before that they were bits of a cow, or a tea leaf, or a Dorrito, and long before that they were bits of a rock or a cloud or a dinosaur, or a boy from the future, or the equally doomed space freighter he was riding on.
Now, the effect on your body today, and your life in the future, of just one of those molecules not existing because the freighter never crashed, is incredibly tiny... In your perception. But each and every such tiny change has consequences that ripple outward and multiply as we go further into "your" future - which is, quite simply, *the* future.
It's convenient for us, as human beings, to look at a particular clustering of particles at a particular moment in time, and say: "I recognise you... Jim! Your name is Jim! I have been, and ever shall be, your friend." But time just sees a bunch of particles - a random bunch out of many, many more equally meaningful/less particles - hanging out togther for a while before passing on their way...
Unless, of course, time also recognises a fundamental particle called a "soul". =:o}
Re: Can't change history
Date: 2005-08-04 01:29 pm (UTC)I have very strong issues with the consequences of changing history as portrayed in "Father's Day," which I articulated elsewhere at the time. On the molecular level I think the consequences of molecule number 34,974,762,919,376,889,401,766 of my body being formerly from an apple tree as opposed to a gaseous anomaly are never likely to ripple into anything that might affect the macroscopic world. It should be remembered that the particles that make us up don't just swirl together at random: they come from the food we eat and the air we breathe, and those things are pretty much (a) earth- and time-bound and (b) interchangeable. I still drink the tea no matter where its molecules came from. I live on the edge, you know.
(sudden epiphany) Time sees agents, things that do things, things that influence other things. Time sees processes. Time is a verb. Whether it is a particle or a person doesn't matter. If it changes, or causes changes, time notices it. So yes. Time notices souls.
Re: Can't change history
Date: 2005-08-04 03:39 pm (UTC)( [WINCE]. That's a different high-on-the-list-right-now bug-bear... Just 'cos a word relates to an action doesn't mean it's a verb. But let's save that one for later... )
" - Whether it is a particle or a person doesn't matter. If it changes, or causes changes, time notices it. So yes. Time notices souls."
I like that. Not sure exactly what it means in practice, but I like it.
I've long held that the only way stories like "Inferno" (DW) or the Mirror Univers (ST) can make any sense is if there is something fundamental about human (and other) souls/personalities, and the combinations and permutations they form, that cannot be overriden by such "trivia" as an entire planet's or galaxy's history being completely different! E.g. the odd coincience of the Brigade Leader being the guy sent to the drilling station in the parallel universe, given that the Brig was only there as an outside investigator, sent by a totally different organisation with a totally different agenda, in ours! This is where I get my law of conservation of OTP; More generally, there has to be a law of conservation of personal associations, in order to explain how the same characters end up together in the same place, but for totally different reasons.
I'm a big fan of the idea that people who hang out together long enough end up hosting half each of pairs of entangled particles that were created while they were in proximity to each other. One particle might be swallowed in one cup of wtarer from the coloor, and it's partner gets swallowed by the next person to take a drink, for example. Or one of the particles might become part of a molecule of exhaled breath, that gets inhaled or swallowed by another person during a kiss, while the other remains lodged in a protein molecule and stays in the original host body... The more time two people spend together, and especially the closer their average proximity to each other, the more pairs of entangled particles end up lodged in and shared between their brainmeats, and so the more they are able to communicate instantaneously at a distance (telepathy); the more they become sensitive to each other's changes of emotional state (empathy); and so on.
But I don't think that would adequately explain the smae souls being brought together generations after the changes had happened that separated their worlds. Entangled pairs can't (as far as I know) be replicated, so you couldn't carry the connection from one generation to the next except by the sheer fluke of both hosts happening to pass on their halves of enough entangled pairs to the right children, in both universes. Which is not to say it couldn't happen, just that you'd encounter far more cases of it *not* happening than happening.
So, given the evidence of "Inferno", and especially if we accept some other deutero-canonical sources as well, I reckon we have to say that in the DW universe (and in the ST one), souls are fundamental "physical" entities, in the sense that they and their associations/interactions obey certain conservation laws.
Re: Can't change history
Date: 2005-08-04 03:54 pm (UTC)And I'm talking about Quantum Entanglement, of course. I'm sure the principles could be demonstrated using Quantum and Tangle, though. =:o}
Re: Can't change history
Date: 2005-08-04 03:58 pm (UTC)>Not sure exactly what it means in practice
"It means...what it is." :)
Re: Can't change history
Date: 2005-08-04 04:24 pm (UTC)Off Dr.Who topic but I had to say-
Date: 2005-08-04 05:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-05 08:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-04 10:33 am (UTC)I prefer the multiverse model myself, because at any given moment the chain of causality has to be intact and self-consistent (that's part of what the Doctor's about, after all) and I'm offended by the wastage of energy involved in the universe rewriting itself differently but consistently from attosecond to attosecond, just for the hell of it. I like a game where the board stays the same for more than two turns in a row. At the same time, the character that represents me in my ongoing writings is by now at least as compromised continuity-wise as the Doctor, and the fact that he knows he is in some sense the writer doesn't really help. (Over in the Age and Country Hotel round-robin, we've just completely written the last three months of story out of the timeline, and everyone's going round trying to work out how much of what they should be remembering...)
Your way is fun, but a little too strenuous for me. I prefer the idea of multiple canons. Which works, as long as you've got enough [wheee squerk crackle wonderful raydeeo Wuunnn hissssss....]
no subject
Date: 2005-08-04 11:12 am (UTC)Which one, the "dream of a thousand writers" definition? :)
no subject
Date: 2005-08-04 11:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-04 10:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-04 10:45 am (UTC)Standard multiverse model: At every given space-time event, multiple possible futures fan out, based on what actually "happens" at that instant, at that point in space. Each possible future from that event then permutates with each possible future from all the other events going in the "absolute elsewhere" or "meta-present" of that event (See Minkowski Diagrams) - i.e., everything that hadn't already had an influence on the event in its past - generating multiply-infinite possibilities with each new "instant" of time (or each new "event opportunity", or each new chronon. Let's not get into that...).
It's debatable how many of these possibilites actually "happen" in some sense in the multiverse. The possibility exists that some of the future possibilities thrown up by this process are self-annihilating, e.g. on grounds of conservation of energy or other fundamental properties of the universe. (One fascinating speculation for fictional multiverses is that there might be a universal law of "conservation of OTP", so that no matter what course history takes, the right two souls will always find each other (no what kind of bodies they may happen to find themselves in that history)... =:o} ). Lets call the ones that aren't cancelled out in this way "feasible futures".
Now, with a universe that permits time travel, we just add the fact that each "present" event, and all it's possible consequent futures, can be informed/affected by influences from:
- (version 1) any of it's own possible/feasible futures;
- (version 2) any of the possible/feasible futures of any event that might ever have happened.
Simple! =:o>
[Note: To me, the events of "Day of the Daleks" are an example of a self-annihilating possible timeline. In fact, it is both self-generating and self-annihilating, temporarily violating the laws of causality but doing no lasting damage, in much the same way that the quantuum vacuum can throw up short-lived pairs of particles that temporarily breach conservation of matter and/or energy, but do no lasting harm... although they *do* have a real and permanent effect on the real universe, just as the Doctor and Jo's experience of "The Day of the Daleks" has a real impact on their lives, in the form of memories, Jo's understanding of time travel concepts, her later attitude towards "freedom fighters", etc.)]
no subject
Date: 2005-08-04 12:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-04 12:46 pm (UTC)"I have a cunning plan, Doctor, ..."
no subject
Date: 2005-08-04 03:25 pm (UTC)"I'll explain later."
no subject
Date: 2005-08-04 04:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-05 12:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-04 12:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-04 12:48 pm (UTC)Damnit, Jim—I'm a doctor, not a quantum chronodynamics mechanic!
no subject
Date: 2005-08-04 02:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-04 02:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-04 08:08 pm (UTC)I learned this a year or so ago when I was trying to write a story about young Dick Grayson becoming Robin and I tried to figure out how old he was when he became Robin. ::wince:: Talk about brain breaking...I finally chose 9, IIRC, out of the numerous possibilities.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-04 10:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-05 01:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-04 03:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-05 01:39 am (UTC)Yeah, I'm just a 3-dimensional being, or so I think. How can I grasp n dimensions? It's like the sphere falling through Flatland.
And then there was the discussion someone had in '86 about why the Doctor can't regenerate and/or change gender at the same time. That's something best left for the fan fiction, since the Beeb isn't about to show or discuss anything regarding Gallifreyan naughty bits.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-10 12:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-10 05:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-16 05:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-16 11:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-10 04:01 am (UTC)I'd read all the New Adventures, very few of the BBC books - you filled in some gaps. Thanks.
It all must seem intimidating for those who jump in now.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-10 05:34 am (UTC)What Has Gone Before is always quite intimidating, but if you pick up any of the EDAs, pick up The Gallifrey Chronicles. It's easily the most accesssible of the lot, wraps most everything up without assuming you know any of it, brings you up to speed on some things, and Lance Parkin has a beautiful description of what the Doctor is on Page 130 that makes me tear up every time I read it.