It's time for everyone's favourite topic: canon!

[locker_monster]

The "Meanwhile in the TARDIS..." scenes got me thinking: are they canon? They were written specifically for the DVDs, not any particular TV script, so they're not strictly deleted scenes. On the other hand, Steven Moffat wrote them and his word is kind of like law, canonically anyway.

This applies to all fandoms, really. All of this extra material, do we include it in official canon? Where do we draw the line?

With long running shows, it's hard. Once upon a time they had a central creator or creators, but shows pick up a lot of staff along the way. Can we accept anything, and I mean anything (an article, a post, an e-mail, etc.) from Russell or Steven Moffat as canon, for example? They're not the creator of Doctor Who but they certainly are a creator. On the other hand, you can have a show like Buffy, who has one stand-out creator. Anything Joss writes we accept as canon. Case in point, Faith's last name. I think Joss posted on Whedonesque about coming up with Lehane for a RPG and now it's canon.

I suppose, if you want it to be, any old fact or tidbit or phrase can be canonized. As fans, we all know how it goes. Everything's right until a retcon comes along. ;-)

Comments

[goldy-dollar.livejournal.com]

I have actually spent quite some time thinking about this! I guess because in Doctor Who, "canon" can almost mean whatever you want it to mean. :D

In Doctor Who specifically, I see canon as a hierarchy. Everything that happens on the show is, to me, indisputably canon. And in my hierarchy, New Who comes first. So if New Who contradicts something that happened in Classic Who (like that the Doctor has 507 regenerations versus 13), I take New Who to be the canon. If something in Classic Who remains uncontradicted by New Who, I accept it as canon.

After that, I consider everything an interpretation which can help me analyze and give layers to the canon. Almost like... the show itself is the Constitution, and things that RTD/Moffat/Julie Gardner etc say are judges making determinations about the canon. We can't really say whether they're right or wrong, but they're a pretty strong authority on it so chances are it's safe to accept what they have to say.

Deleted scenes are a bit trickier - what if they were cut *because* the writer didn't want it to be canon? But again, I think it can help with the interpretation. I don't know if I see the Amy and Doctor's conversation about the companions as strictly canon, but it helps describe what their relationship was like. Other things, like whether or not Cloen and Rose have the TARDIS coral, I think are totally up in the air and can go either way - almost like a case before the Supreme Court that hasn't been heard yet.

The books I don't really see as canon at all unless there's a reference made to it on the show, but again, they can work as an interpretive tool in nailing down the characters' relationships and development. Though given how terrible the books tend to be, mostly I just go with "not canon." XD

[kilodalton]

"Other things, like whether or not Cloen and Rose have the TARDIS coral, I think are totally up in the air and can go either way"

Yeah but that runs into the whole "things that RTD say" -- on the US DVD, he comes out and says that "they'll probably add that scene back in one day" and I also believe he says that it's fine to pretend it wasn't even cut, because to him, something like that happened.

[locker-monster.livejournal.com]

I'm loving your analogy about canon being like the Constitution. It really is up for interpretation. Every fan can take something away from an episode that is uniquely their point of view.

Though given how terrible the books tend to be, mostly I just go with "not canon." XD

I always ignore the books for any fandom, but the Doctor Who ones are just... Yeah.

[mornea.livejournal.com]

I'd consider them quasi-canon. that is, they could be canon unless a later writer wanted to make them not canon.
I don't think another headwriter could just decide the Master never came back in series three, it's there. But these little scenes are like "Time Crash" to me-- could be, probably is, but doesn't have to be.

I'm more inclined to find the Ten/Rose scene inbetween Parting of the Ways and Christmas Invasion to be canon, because it truly fits. These scenes are like it, but less... I don't know... important?

[locker-monster.livejournal.com]

I've been watching the season five DVD commentaries all afternoon and Steven Moffat keeps saying, "I'll leave it to my successor to figure out" about things that don't make sense. So even the writers are aware that canon is constantly evolving, that in ten years time something they wrote can be changed. But that's the case in any media with a long running history. Things change. Thankfully, we have wikis now to keep everything straight. :-)

[mornea.livejournal.com]

Part of the fun is trying to make it all work-- all the contradictions over the years. RTD and Moffat are fans. they are professionals, sure-- but they are FANS and writing as fans. So they do what the rest of us do-- try to make sense of it. Hence RTD's stabs at "half human" and the regenerations, and Moffat's Solution-o-matic of CRACKS in space and time. I find it kinda funny, and I 'get' wanting to do that. It is part of the fun of being a Who fan.

[tasty-kate.livejournal.com]

Found this entry on who_daily.
As far as I'm concerned, it was written by Moffat, filmed by the BBC, released by the BBC on their official merchandise and marketed as "Meanwhile in the TARDIS" and not deleted scenes, I consider them cannon.
Side note: They were adorable. :p

Foucault would have a field day with you lot!

[sensiblecat.livejournal.com]

It's similar to the difference between a film director or an "auteur" who self-consciously sees him/herself as the creative authority shaping a work. Case in point - you're hired to direct the next Bond movie. Your main point of ref will be to the franchise and you probably won't go around contradicting stuff willy-nilly. It's very different from Mendes filming "American Beauty".

In his new book "Trial of A Time Lord" the academic Matt Hills goes into this very question from a cultural theory perspective and he doesn't reach any black and white conclusion, but he kind of goes with the position that RTD qualifies as "auteur" for his period of DW, since he's the main person shaping it. But I'd have to agree it's a less straightforward case than Joss Whedon. Do Trek professionals ask themselves constantly what Gene Rodenberry would have done?

I think, also, there's something very English about the way canon develops through custom and practice in DW and is never laid down, US-Constitution style. In a sense, a lot of the people writing the show now are just fans who got lucky and started getting paid for it. I see those DVD extra scenes as Moffatt's fan fiction, but obviously he knows a lot that we don't about where those characters are going, so it has a little more authority behind it.

Sometimes, RTD in particular deliberately left some imaginative leeway - he never stated officially that the Woman in White was the Doctor's mother, although in Writer's Tale he said, "but of course she is."

Re: Foucault would have a field day with you lot!

[mornea.livejournal.com]

RTD resolved a lot of Who questions and conflicts -- and yet didn't resolve them at all. He always leaves a door open for a future writer who might want to interpret things differently--hence the 507 line in DotD-- could be flippant, could mean something, might not be canon at all as it's SJA. He certainly strongly made a case for the doctor NOT being half human in Journey's End, when the other doctor was so freaked out about finding he was part human (implying he never was, as himself, human before). And as with the doctor's mother-- since it wasn't said on air it's something that's left open. Now I LOVED it, and want it to be canon-- I think it would have added a lot and sort of brought things round full circle-- we saw the companions families but never HIS-- until this. However, RTD decided to leave it open.

I think Moffat does much of the same.