I return from my (lovely) holiday with an especially esoteric bit of
Doctor Who meta. You can blame down time at work and lokisrose for this. She's the one who told me to post it a while
back, when I explained my crazy idea to her *g*.

To people who don't count the spin-offs in their version of Doctor
Who canon, the Eighth Doctor is a footnote in continuity who was only
around for an hour in 1996. For those of us who are not so fussy about what
medium we get our fix in, he held the title of current Doctor for nearly a
decade, starring in in own ranges of books, audios and comics [1]. The
comics will fit fairly comfortably with either the books or the audios [2],
but the audios and books do not work very well with each other. The Eighth
Doctor's personal continuity is thus even more confused than that of his
predecessors, although Seven runs him a close second in the bewildering
canon stakes.

The most sane response to this is to pick either the books or audios as the
'real' version. However, I never claimed to be of sound mind ...



I should start by saying that although I've read all the comics and listened
to most of the audios, I'm only six books into the EDAs. I have a rough idea
of the major events, but any corrections/expansions on book canon are
welcome.

This theory of mine came about because I think it's increasingly unlikely
that the books and the Big Finish audios can be jammed into the same
timeline. As Gallifrey explodes in the books in a way that doesn't have
anything to do with Daleks, it's difficult to make it fit in with new series
continuity as well. There are - as far as I'm aware - no major
contradictions between the audios and the TV show thus far, and I'm sure Big
Finish will try to avoid creating any now. Arguably the contradiction
between the books and the new show make the audios 'more canon' than the
books.

This makes some book fans cranky, and not without reason. For one thing,
it's annoying to be told by the Powers That Be that adventures you've
enjoyed don't count. For another, trying to reconcile the irreconcileable
provides esoteric entertainment for Doctor Who fans, who take delight
in finding elaborate ways to explain how it is that Atlantis is destroyed in
three different ways during the classic series [3]. Declaring the books to
be AU spoils the game.

That said, making the books, audios and new TV series fit into the same
universe is not easy, mostly because of the exploding Gallifrey issue. In
The Ancestor Cell, the book Doctor destroys his own planet to stop
Faction Paradox getting their hands on Time Lord technology. (Er, as far as
I know.) He then has his memory wiped and goes to live on Earth for a
century or so. In the audios, Gallifrey is still there as late as Blood
of the Daleks, on course to be destroyed in the Time War at some later
date. It is certainly easier to make the audios tie in with the new TV
series, especially now that Big Finish have started putting little hints
about the future into their output. Since I don't like dismissing whole
chunks of Doctor Who out of hand, though, I came up with an insane
explanation for the discrepancies.

In my crazy theory that after his adventure in San Francisco, the Doctor met
Sam Jones. He soon dumped her at a Green Peace rally and didn't come back
for three years. In that time he visited his old friend Benny, then met
Stacey Townsend and the Ice Warrior Ssard. He may or may not have had a
great deal of sex with a woman named Claudia and/or travelled through time
and space with two lesbians, a Cyberman and a fishgirl. Eventually he
remembered that Sam existed and went back for her. Later on they picked up
some guy called Fitz and, er, stuff happened. Eventually the Doctor had to
blow up Gallifrey. (Oh noes!)

The books end with the revelation that the Doctor has been carrying the
entire Matrix - and thus the brains of all the dead Time Lords - around in
his head ever since The Ancestor Cell, which might enable him to
restore his dead planet at some point after The Gallifrey Chronicles.
It's possible that he did so, and that the Gallifrey of the audios is a
reconstruction created from the Doctor's memory, but this seems a bit silly
if it gets blown up again in the Time War. (To lose one's home planet once
may be considered a misfortune; to do so twice looks like carelessness.)
It's also possible that the audios can be squeezed into a gap in book
continuity - either the three years Sam was at the rally or after
Interference. However, I like my crazy theory better.

For the sake of argument, let's say that the Doctor did travel with Sam and
Fitz and the rest, and one day blew up his home planet. At some point after
The Gallifrey Chronicles he decided that this was a mistake. Maybe he
missed Romana, or thought there weren't enough silly robes in the universe.
In any case, for whatever reason he decided to do something he'd never done
before go back on his decision. Perhaps he made a deal with Faction Paradox
or the Celestis, or talked to his omnipotent friend Kroton - the mechanics
aren't important. What is important is that the Doctor rewound his own
personal timeline back to San Francisco 1999 [4]. Everything that had
happened to him from The Eight Doctors onwards unhappened.
Suddenly, there was no enemy, no War in Heaven, and Gallifrey still existed.

Unaware of what his future self had done, the Eighth Doctor had a completely
different set of adventures. He probably never met Sam Jones [5]. Instead,
he travelled with an entirely different blonde teenager called Charley
Pollard. However, the disruptions caused by the future Doctor's actions were
not without consequences. Because the Doctor unravelled so many years of
future history, time became more fragile. When he saved Charley Pollard from
the R101, the paradox created was serious enough to threaten the universe,
when before it would have caused only minor ripples. Instead of the War in
Heaven, the Time Lords fought the equally destructive Time War. Gallifrey
still ended up destroyed. (It's probably destiny.)

So, you know, insane and unprovable. But it's one way to make the books and
audios play nicely together, and it comes with a bonus explanation for why
the Doctor saving Charley Pollard made such a godawful mess of the timeline.

[1] The 'only TV is canon' people miss out not only on vast swathes of Paul
McGann, but on talking penguins, Gilbert & Sullivan musicals and Godzilla.
This is why I am not one of them. As I've noted on previous occasions, I do
not care if other people want to count books/audios/comics/chocolate
wrappers in their Doctor Who canon or not. I do object if they tell
me that I should consider canon, though.

[2] There's some stuff about the Master in the comic strips that could be
seen to contradict the book canon on the subject, but given what happens at
the end of The Glorious Dead it's a bit of a moot point. There's also
a big Cyberman attack on contemporary Earth in The Flood that you'd
expect people to remember if this happened in the same timeline as the new
series, but we've all seen how good humanity is at remembering any kind of
alien invasion.

[3] Personally, I'm rather hoping that the new series will do an Atlantis
story that completely ignores the previous three versions. It's the kind of
thing that RTD would probably find hilarious *g*.

[4] Of course, somebody else could have rewound the timeline. I just
think it's more interesting if the Doctor did it himself.

[5] Or not blonde Sam Jones, anyway. It's intriguing to speculate that the
'dear Sam' mentioned in Minuet in Hell may not be Samson Griffen, but
the brunette Sam Jones who never existed in the book timeline because of
Faction Paradox interference ...