The vexed question of what does or does not constitute canoncial Doctor Who used to be one which exercised some of the keenest minds in fandom, until by and large it became too complicated for any one individual to attempt to reconcile. In the last few years alone the number of spin-offs has become such that one has to admire Lars Pearson’s optimism or bravado in attempting to construct an "uber-timeline" in his last volume of I, Who. I can think of at least three adventures (or parts thereof) set before ‘An Unearthly Child’, for example, which is a sign of just how confusing things have become.

And into this melee and confusion are coming new fans. The current series has been something of a success by every measuring standard known to the industry, however when these new fans start going into Waterstone’s and checking out Amazon, they’re going to find not only thirty or so "classic" stories on DVD but soundtracks and some 200 or so original books of widely varying quality and significance to the overall scheme of things. Big Finish must be getting near their century of Who-related releases now- in fact, if you include the Benny range, they’re some way over. So as a phenomenon, Doctor Who is becoming somewhat unwieldy for newcomers to get into- and given that a fair number of these newcomers are going to be youngsters with a small amoun of pocket money to spread over all the material available, we need some rules- priorities, even. Hence this little essay, which is an attempt to collate some thoughts on the subject which I’ve been having for a few years with the implications of a world where, for every new episode of Who we’re getting even now the series is in production, we’re getting one original novel, a Big Finish CD and half a DVD.

Perhaps elementary, but necessary nevertheless. Doctor Who was conceived of as a television series and began as such; apart from comic strips, novelisations of televised stories and the occasional oddity, the original books and CDs only began once the supply of original stories dried up. So if anything conflicts with events as they occur in a televised story, it’s the TV episode which wins. Note that at this stage, there’s no difference between the series as transmitted between 1963-1989, 1996 and 2005 onwards and BBC-produced parodies such as ‘Dimensions in Time’ and ‘The Curse of Fatal Death’, however at this point we do have to concede that the likes of ‘Scream of the Shalka’ and ‘Real Time’ will never have complete canonical status.

Q: But what about Shada?

A: As primary canonical status belongs to transmitted stories, the parts of Shada included in The Five Doctors are in the first rank of canonical adventures however as the remainder has never been transmitted they could conceivably form part of another adventure which the Fourth Doctor and Romana happened to have in Cambridge. As we will see from later rules, the BBC video release then takes priority over the Big Finish audio where the Eighth Doctor has broadly the same adventure.

Bear with me on this one because it gets a bit technical. Imagine the Doctor’s life as a continous existence which passes through his incarnations in chronological order, from his early life on Gallifrey to his eventual death. Now imagine that life mapped onto a chronologically ordered universe, with the Doctor’s journeys zipping back and forth between past and future. In that situation, it seems logical to me that if the Doctor finds himself in the setting of one of his previous adventures, the later adventure becomes the canonical version of events. At this stage, therefore, we say goodbye to ‘The Curse of Fatal Death’, as its Ninth and Tenth Doctors have clearly been supplanted by the 2005 series.

Q. Does this solve the Atlantis issue?

A. As far as it can be answered, yes. According to the above rule, the events of The Time Monster take priority over both The Underwater Menace and The Daemons. Atlantis was destroyed by Kronos and so didn’t exist to provide a refuge for Professor Zaroff or for Azal to wipe it from the face of the earth. Note how it isn’t mentioned again in the series after this point.

What’s important here is the question of agencies- for those not used to fluent media studies-speak, who is telling us something. It seems logical and sensible for books, audio series and so on produced by the BBC to take priority over licensed products released by others, not least because of the presence of individuals involved with the production of the television series in many of them. So here we find a home for not only the BBC books but the mixed bag of audio series that we’ve enjoyed (or tolerated) over the years and little oddities like Tom Baker’s links in the ‘Shada’ video release and "Ian Chesterton"’s introduction to the video of ‘The Crusade’. To an extent this is an arbitrary rule, but I think we do need a yardstick for those situations where a BBC-produced item conflicts with Virgin, Big Finish et al.

Q. What about Scream of the Shalka ?

A. Tricky, this one, but bearing in mind the previous rule, the Doctor as presented in Scream clearly cannot be either the Ninth or the Tenth incarnation now. However, its existence in both book and webcast form does mean that the events are firmly in the second tier of canonicity, along with, say, The Infinity Doctors.

Rule 4. Tertiary canonicity belongs to BBC-licensed material in whatever format.

Again, this is arbitrary to an extent, but I think necessary. This includes primarily the Big Finish and Virgin lines, and is therefore home to Professor Bernice Summerfield among others, but also the DWM comic strips and those instances where Target adaptations differ from the transmitted stories. By extension, this is where some of the earlier tie-ins, TV Comic strips and annuals also reside.

This is basically a crib from the Stanley Gibbons stamp catalogues, where in order to be given a full listing, a stamp has to be generally available at face value over the counter. In other words, anything produced solely for a specific group and not generally available cannot have canonical status- this goes for limited edition CDs, subscriber-only freebies and so on. It just seems fairer, rather than telling new fans that they absolutely have to have something which was only issued to subscribers ten years ago .

In other words, anything else can be counted in as long as it doesn’t contradict something with canonical priority- and bearing Rule 2 in mind, stories in the lower ranks of canonicity are particularly subject to being busted down and/or out by new material. Thus, for instance, if the Cybermen story in the new season contradicts ‘Spare Parts’, the new story will have priority in status, but if it doesn’t then ‘Spare Parts’ will continue to be the canonical version of the creation of the Cybermen until contradicted by something with higher priority- which in the case of licensed material would have to be either the TV series or a BBC-produced book, CD or something else of that nature.

So that’s more or less it- an attempt to cut through some of the confusion and give rightful priority to Doctor Who on television, which is after all where it started, and for many years the only place where the Doctor’s adventures were recounted with any regularity. This may stimulate debate, however on the other hand I might be several years behind the game and this stuff has already been sorted out. In any case, if anybody wants to put any questions to me I’ll try to answer them in terms of The Rules.