The Timeless Children isn’t Canon, anyone claiming otherwise is a bully ( according to Paul Cornell)
The Timeless Children isn’t Canon, anyone claiming otherwise is a bully ( according to Paul Cornell)
“Oh. what tangled webs we weave, when we practise to deceive”
Hello all.
I thought I would write this today because I came across an article about Dr Who Canon written by Paul Cornell back in 2007, and found it very relevant to the situation fandom finds itself in with the failure of Series 12 and the Timeless Children aborted Retcon.
Canonicity in Doctor Who. By Paul Cornell on February 10, 2007
https://www.paulcornell.com/2007/02/canonicity-in-doctor-who/
Now Paul is an interesting character. I bought his New Adventures books back in the 90’s, doing my bit to keep the franchise going, and both “Fathers Day” and “Human Nature/Family of Blood” are well received and rated highly as some of the best of the revived series.
So it was a bit mystifying to me, as I’ve never interacted with him online, to find myself blocked from his Twitter account when I went to check out what he had to say for the watchalong of Human Nature, under the hashtag #DoctorOfMine organised by Emily Cook:
https://twitter.com/Emily_Rosina/status/1252204342377144320
Only to find myself excluded from the inclusivity Paul said he wanted the watchalong of his story to be about, along with what appears to be 1000’s of others. Someone obviously fed Paul Cornell a big long list of Doctor Who fans to be censored. And that’s curious: when I’ve been saying Timeless Children isn’t Canon: and Paul agrees with me…
Its almost as if the BBC wants to bully dissenting voices who don’t like its product into silence: certainly, Paul’s toadying to Chris Chibnall came off as if he was using the watchalong to suck up looking for a writing gig. And yet its Paul himself who says those trying to impose canon on others are trying to bully people from a false authority…
So, let’s have a closer look at what Paul has to say on the issue of Canon.
At the time Paul wrote his canon article, the fandom discussion was about “What is Canon?”
The new series only? The new series and the new adventures/big finish content that sprung up during the hiatus? The new series, hiatus content and the classic series? The classic series and the new series but not the hiatus content?
Paul reasoned this out like this: quite sensibly, Russel T Davies was the show runner, and he took the view that what matters is what the audience remembers, and any sense of canon must be derived from what is on screen, not from anything else (which automatically De-canons Russell’s “shipping” of Nyssa and Tegan in his recent Sarah Jane Smith memorial story by the way)
Russell Davies probably could utter a pronouncement about canonicity that would be accepted. If he wanted to. He could declare that only the TV series was canonical, and that the books and audio plays were not. He’s come close, in that he’s said that only what the general TV audience remembers is important in terms of what’s referred to onscreen (I’m vastly paraphrasing here), and also that BBC television dramas must be whole unto themselves, and must not require extra purchases that ‘complete the story’, as per the BBC charter. (And how arcane a rule is that? But one that fan fora make as much ado out of… as probably the BBC themselves do.
^^^
So that’s fine, the show runner generally sets the pace and doesn’t have to be tied up in knots by every little extra thing ever created with the Doctor Who name on it: but Paul goes on to say a little more: NOTHING in the revived series is bound by anything in the classic series...
Russell’s quietly invented something, and I have no idea as to whether or not he realised it could be used for this purpose. (I don’t think he sits up at night worrying about canonicity, except for the times when I’m pretty sure he does.) I’m talking about The Time War. As mentioned often by the Ninth Doctor. Probably between the Time Lords and the Daleks, and it probably ended with both sides being wiped out, probably that being a sacrifice made by the Doctor. (Like I have any idea, I’m just following the hints.) There’s a line in ‘The Unquiet Dead’ (I think) indicating that the War puts all historical events up for grabs. Nothing necessarily happened like we think it did.
Including previous Doctor Who.
^^^
Interesting! Doesn’t this also mean nothing in the new series can rest UPON the classic series?
Like we can’t be told Timeless Children IS Canon because Phillip Hinchcliffe and Co messed about having Cameos in Brain of Morbius back in 1976?
Can’t have it both ways!
If nothing in the new series is bound by the classic series, neither can the fanbase be told it MUST accept something in the new series trying to justify itself off the back of a minute of footage from 44 years ago…
And Paul had something else to say about the sort of people who might try to make the fanbase accept that kind of strong arming: he said such people are AUTHORITARIAN BULLIES
If an authority on canonicity is the law, they are a lynch mob. And judging from the passion they often show in abusing or looking down on the other sides of this so-called debate, they really enjoy the feeling of assumed power
...
There was never and now cannot be any authority to rule on matters of canonicity in a tale that has allowed, or at the very least accepted, the rewriting of its own continuity. And you’re using the fact that discussions of canonicity are all about authority to try to assume an authority that you do not have.
In the end, you’re just bullying people.
^^^
So it turns out, Paul Cornell says there is no such thing as Doctor Who canon. And he says people trying to impose a canon are bad people, authoritarian, bullies, and just general bad eggs. Therefore, he should be supporting those fans who reject the Timeless Children: because the one thing Russel T Davies clearly intended is not to ignore what he himself established from the start of the reboot, and Steven Moffat thought the same, or why did Moffat go to such extraordinary lengths to detail the order of regenerations of the Doctor in Name of the Doctor and Day of the Doctor, and to ensure the 11th Doctor got the full new regeneration cycle he needed to not die in Time of the Doctor?
Now THAT must be Canon… because its what the new series showed… and when the Chibnall series trashes all that and tries to justify itself off the classic series that cant be shown to apply because of the impact of the Time War…
Then fans rejecting the Timeless Children, simply on the basis of it being bad product, nothing better than Fanon to please the writer not the audience: HAS to be justified.
Pretty sure that isn’t a consequence Paul Cornell realised when he wrote his words back in 2007: but he has labelled those who insist the fanbase accepts Timeless Children as Canon to be nothing more than authoritarian bullies, the mindset of bigots: and I agree with him!
Who are those people again, and why do they want to bully the Doctor Who fanbase into accepting their bad writing as holy gospel?
Well according to the words of the Doctor Who Screenwriters Alliance, AKA @DoctorWhoFem4, it’s all about their issues with daddy…
“As writers on Doctor Who it is important that we take your questions and concerns. But remember, this show belongs to our creative control. Honesty is our direct line to meet your concerns.
When we began ten years ago, few believe that we would be able to slowly take patriarchy institutionally out of a show. It was a subtle long worked effort that Ms Jung hints on the significance of. The image of a male Doctor and what he stood for is now irrelevant to young men as symbolic abuse to women. By feminization, the character as a male role model is no longer what it once meant. This is for the BETTER people! This makes it a matriarchal role model for young women, young men, gay and transgender, as well as sexually exploratory for opening up women to have a better body image. It is not done to be cruel, but the systemic implementation of the ability to change the meaning of a character over time. Few in the creative process understood this profoundness at the time!”
^^^
I really think the Fem Front should unhide that word press they still have linked in their profile again, so the fanbase as a whole can read more of their “wisdom” in pursuit of their #DoctorHer agenda (why so shy these days ladies? You used to be so bold!), and we can learn more about why they thought destroying Gallifrey and the Doctor’s history because the character of the Doctor "stood for the abuse of women" (sic) was a good idea. Furthermore, why they think they can bully the fanbase with the help of BBC shills like Huw Fullerton to accept their agenda because of what Brain of Morbius said over four decades, when the new series purposefully broke its link to the classic series back in 2005…
Paul might want a writing gig and be prepared to suck up to them and sing the praises of this rejected version of the show they have brought into being through the writing room in Cardiff (with Chibnall as their covering cuck), but there is a reason this misandrist garbage struck so many people as wrong and has been so roundly rejected…
Until these people are removed and the show can regenerate with a new show runner, none of this is going to get better, and these canon bullies are risking there being no more show for anyone, ever again, with their weak woke unpopular rubbish trying to pass itself off as the Canon of Doctor Who
For #NotMyDoctorWho
@JohnTheWhite1
PS: a note for Paul:
Mass blocking on Twitter is a really bad idea. You should have taken the advice of Neil Gaiman and used the mute button instead. Better still, you should have followed Moffats good example and created a Twitter account JUST to promote your watchalong. Then you wouldn’t have need to block anybody and the whole fanbase could have followed along, and you wouldn’t have started a shit-storm and earned yourself this article. Spitting in the faces of the people who have supported your work for years just because you were too weak to face any criticism on your posts on Twitter has really let yourself down. An APOLOGY to the fandom for being foolish enough to make yourself a hypocrite WOULD be a good idea, especially if you DO get that Series 13 or beyond writing gig you were too obviously pitching for…
Be sure to check out my previous article that also explored the issue of Canon, "The DOOM of Doctor Who"...
https://steemit.com/getwokegobroke/@john-the-white/the-doom-of-doctor-who-series-12-episode-10-aftermath
