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A nice non-contentious post for a change...(hollow laughter)
I've been reading Philip Sandifer's books on Doctor Who, and boy does he have some strange ideas. He spent several pages in one of them explaining how manned space travel was a stupid idea and would never happen. But he did give me an idea about Doctor Who canon, whose existence, of course, he denies, in common with a number of other authorities.
This was just after I'd come to a realisation about The Prisoner; to wit, that there's a first episode ("Arrival"), a final two-parter ("Once Upon A Time" and "Fall Out"), and pretty much all the rest are episode twos, each one containing the potential for further episodes in the same vein. I quite like this idea, which is partly borne out by the fact that several episodes were written in parallel immediately after "Arrival," and it lends a certain resonance to the repeated phrase "The new Number Two." But I digress.
Now. Obviously--to anyone who isn't an authority--there must be a Doctor Who canon, because there's a Doctor Who. Saying it hasn't got a canon is like saying it hasn't got episodes, or a cast, or a title. What it doesn't have, equally obviously, is a canon that can be resolved and made entirely self-consistent, canonical if you like. Stories were written, after all, by a multitude of different jobbing writers who didn't refer to each other, whose grasp of essential facts like the difference between galaxies, constellations and universes was shaky at best, and who were in the end just trying to do the best they could with what they had before the deadline. I've opined elsewhere that that's one of the reasons why realWho was good despite its faults, whereas nuWho is mediocre despite its excellences. But it doesn't make for a coherent timeline, and even Lance Parkin's herculean efforts can't paper over all the cracks.
But there's no need.
One of the notions Sandifer lets fall--and I shamefully can't remember if it's his own or someone else's--is the fact, self-evident given a moment's thought, that the Doctor and his companions change history every time they open the TARDIS doors. The theory is that ordinary Time Lords use TARDISes simply to travel to other times and places, sit inside invisibly and observe, for this very reason. Thus, whenever the Doctor and company arrive at the beginning of a new adventure, the universe into which they emerge is different in a myriad incalculable ways because of what they did last time. Dates, histories, all are subtly fluid; the nature of the monsters they encounter changes from story to story, simply because they have met them before and changed their history in unpredictable ways. Factor in all the other various entities bopping around the vortex changing history and it's hardly surprising nobody can date the UNIT stories reliably.
There is a canon...but the only consistent thread within it is the personal timeline of the Doctor and his companions, the only coherent history that which takes place inside the TARDIS. Everything else is up for grabs, subject to change without notice.
I think that works.
I've been reading Philip Sandifer's books on Doctor Who, and boy does he have some strange ideas. He spent several pages in one of them explaining how manned space travel was a stupid idea and would never happen. But he did give me an idea about Doctor Who canon, whose existence, of course, he denies, in common with a number of other authorities.
This was just after I'd come to a realisation about The Prisoner; to wit, that there's a first episode ("Arrival"), a final two-parter ("Once Upon A Time" and "Fall Out"), and pretty much all the rest are episode twos, each one containing the potential for further episodes in the same vein. I quite like this idea, which is partly borne out by the fact that several episodes were written in parallel immediately after "Arrival," and it lends a certain resonance to the repeated phrase "The new Number Two." But I digress.
Now. Obviously--to anyone who isn't an authority--there must be a Doctor Who canon, because there's a Doctor Who. Saying it hasn't got a canon is like saying it hasn't got episodes, or a cast, or a title. What it doesn't have, equally obviously, is a canon that can be resolved and made entirely self-consistent, canonical if you like. Stories were written, after all, by a multitude of different jobbing writers who didn't refer to each other, whose grasp of essential facts like the difference between galaxies, constellations and universes was shaky at best, and who were in the end just trying to do the best they could with what they had before the deadline. I've opined elsewhere that that's one of the reasons why realWho was good despite its faults, whereas nuWho is mediocre despite its excellences. But it doesn't make for a coherent timeline, and even Lance Parkin's herculean efforts can't paper over all the cracks.
But there's no need.
One of the notions Sandifer lets fall--and I shamefully can't remember if it's his own or someone else's--is the fact, self-evident given a moment's thought, that the Doctor and his companions change history every time they open the TARDIS doors. The theory is that ordinary Time Lords use TARDISes simply to travel to other times and places, sit inside invisibly and observe, for this very reason. Thus, whenever the Doctor and company arrive at the beginning of a new adventure, the universe into which they emerge is different in a myriad incalculable ways because of what they did last time. Dates, histories, all are subtly fluid; the nature of the monsters they encounter changes from story to story, simply because they have met them before and changed their history in unpredictable ways. Factor in all the other various entities bopping around the vortex changing history and it's hardly surprising nobody can date the UNIT stories reliably.
There is a canon...but the only consistent thread within it is the personal timeline of the Doctor and his companions, the only coherent history that which takes place inside the TARDIS. Everything else is up for grabs, subject to change without notice.
I think that works.