Finally finished the new Prisoner. I'm disappointed they couldn't keep up the momentum of the first two eps, and it was jarring how suddenly the tone switched from "Oh you silly - the Village is the entire universe, and it's perfect except for the constant spying, la la la!" to "Yeah, you're in a walking nightmare being held against your will. Say, did you ever read The Doll's House by Neil Gaiman?"

I think it could have benefited from a longer run, or a shorter story. They tried to cram in too much and it wound up just not holding together.

I also can't think of an actor with less charisma than Jim Caveziel. A better Number Six could have made the last hour much MUCH more watchable.

(I'm also not sure why Sara was chosen as the dreamer. Isn't a homeless schizophrenic going to have exactly the opposite kind of dreams from you'd want when creating a subconscious utopia? And now she gets to be catatonic in The Village too? So life sucks doubly for her?)

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I feel compelled to note that there is no Doctor Who canon. So, um, there, now I have. Yay me.

I've been absorbing more Who-stuff recently, so that I can decipher a highly tangential set of stories, which I'm reading out of order. It's kind of like digging into 1960's Fantastic Four in order to unpack Planetary. While riding a tilt-a-whirl. So my perspective on everything is a bit askew.

That said, I've seen maybe a dozen episodes of nuWho and the only episode of this past series I've seen is Waters of Mars, but I'm going to whitefont this since it's based on all sorts of third-hand stuff and fascinating-but-perhaps-demented fandom analysis. As far as I know this is pure speculation about the finale, but in light of Waters of Mars: it seems fairly likely to me that The End of Time involves restoring Gallifrey somehow. WoM is rather toothless unless he's going to go even further, and changing an event that he himself was responsible for seems... appropriate. And it also makes sense as a conclusion to RTD-era Who. "Putting all the toys back in the box" was how I saw it phrased somewhere. So that'd be where my money is.

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I feel compelled to note that there is no Doctor Who canon.

How do you mean?

Strega, a friend of mine has that same theory. I don't know how I feel. We shall see, I suppose.

I just watched "It's Your Funeral," which I actually stayed awake through. I found it entertaining but terribly convoluted. I didn't understand what Number Six's role in the whole thing was. Things would have gone perfectly fine if they hadn't involved him.

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How do you mean?

"Canon" is the authorized version, and there isn't one. Originally it wasn't an issue at all because the question didn't exist, and when it did come up BBC declined to care, and for the new series Davies & Moffat have both explicitly said that the concept of canon doesn't really make sense when applied to time-travelling, dimension-hopping character. Episodes contradict each other; comics and radio and books contradict each other and the TV version. And all of that's okay, because that's what makes it Doctor Who.

I'll try to dig up this entertaining rant about it that I read a while back. Later, when I'm actually awake. Whirrr.

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I'm ready to say goodbye to Ten, and yet, in a way, I really don't. I LOVED Tennant, the passion and the innocence he brought with him to the part.

ita, I see your point regarding to kick-ass moms. You're right, we're missing those on TV.

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"Canon" is the authorized version, and there isn't one.

I agree over Who as a whole, but I do think RTD and co. have tried to make the new series consistant and of a piece with the old series (as in WoM with the reference to the ice people) . So I do think that there's something approximating to canon, at least for all the new series.

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RTD has explicitly abdicated from the idea of a canon. And if the only people in position to declare things canonical refuse to do so... there isn't one. Even within the current series. (And Moffat has echoed him as far as the idea of "canon" being nonsensical WRT Doctor Who.) If random subsets of fans of the show decide that X is "true" and Y is "imaginary" that's fine, but saying something is/isn't canon is meaningless.

Within Doctor Who, your choices are: it all happened; some of it happened, and you can pick and choose, and understand that other people may disagree; or, I guess, none of it happened, although then it's an odd thing to even have an opinion about.

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Different fans have chosen different things to be semi-canon (e.g. there are some books that are considered so), but it's generally agreed that most of the TV stuff (usually excepting the TV movie) is canon. But yeah, there's a massive debate around it. So there are something like three different stories showing how Ace ended her travels with the Doctor, with about two of those being BBC-authorised or BBC-created work.

I'm assuming that, for the new series, they're not going to contradict much that we've seen in the original series. RTD is enough of a fanboy to know what he thinks is canon, even if he won't confirm that to the fans. I believe the destruction of Gallifrey was inspired by time wars shown in the books, for example.

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And if the only people in position to declare things canonical refuse to do so...

I agree that RTD is wise not to comment on what he considers canon and what not - he'd never get anything else done, for one thing. But I still think he has been trying to make the tv series a consistant continuation of the previous tv series and the movie (which he could have ignored - lots of fans do) and that's about all one can ask of a series which has been going for so long in so many media. Whether you label it "canon" or "non-canon" is up to you.

One of the things I love about the new series is that they keep dropping in little references to the old shows. They're clearly people who love the programme and want to honour its history.

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but it's generally agreed that most of the TV stuff (usually excepting the TV movie) is canon.

But it's a canon without continuity. I mean, how many origin stories have the Daleks had?

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