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Post by Cyggy on Aug 17, 2022 21:29:50 GMT
Does meticulously maintaining continuity and strictly adhering to 'canon' matter?
Or are all of those seemingly incompatible mistakes, contradictions (and sometimes deliberate, wilful changes) that have cropped up over the years - and trying to explain them away - all part of the fun of being a fan?
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Post by iank on Aug 17, 2022 22:39:21 GMT
Of course it matters. If there's no continuity, there's no story, and nothing matters. What is then the point of anything?
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Post by sadako on Aug 17, 2022 23:49:15 GMT
It would be impossible for a 50+ year old show that's passed through many different production teams to maintain entirely consistent continuity, so I can live with the contradictions and errors to a point.
I can live with Dalek history in The Daleks, Genesis of the Daleks and Destiny of the Daleks not exactly matching up.
I can even live with Troughton working for the Time Lords in The Two Doctors.
Sometimes writers are fallible, and that can give their work a nicely human element. Sometimes there's enough ambiguity and wiggle room for the clashing interpretations of canon to work. And sometimes they tell such a good story anyway, that I can accept a few changed premises.
And in any case, there's only so much I would want canon to become the point of the show as it all can get a bit too dry and limiting if focused on too much (as indeed happened in the 80's).
However, there's a difference between making stumbles on the way of telling an interesting story, and just being brutally cavalier and contemptful about canon in the way that Russell, Moffat and Chibnall have been.
When RTD started to show disdain for even fans who expected a story not to contradict itself scene to scene, nevermind previous canon, I just felt insulted and found my expectations diminishing to subterranean levels.
When Moffat decided to mess with both the Doctor and Davros' childhood history, and declared that now gender-bending regenerations were always possible and it suddenly just happened to be a chain of flukes all along that the Doctor had always regenerated male-to-male..... yeah I just stopped being able to believe in what I was watching. It all felt insipid and meaningless anew now. Like I'd wasted my time investing anything in it.
When Chibnall did his stupid Timeless Children retcon, I knew I would never care about any future of the show now. It had destroyed all reason for me to. There is now, for me, the classics and nothing else and I separate the two canons completely.
And certainly Chibnall committing wanton vandalism like that is just unpardonable. We fans know that a lot of it doesn't match up, but we often find it a fun exercise to pretend it does and find ways to make it match up. Chibnall has rendered that pointless, he's spoilt the game, and made the show no longer fun. And I just don't understand why.
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Post by Cyggy on Aug 18, 2022 2:15:55 GMT
JN-T, being asked in 1984 about his approach to continuity.....
1:15 in video....
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Post by Bowties on Aug 18, 2022 2:29:20 GMT
There are no Doctors before William Hartnell and there are no Doctors after Peter Capaldi. That’s where I stand on the matter.
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Post by Cyggy on Aug 18, 2022 10:26:31 GMT
Some of the usual suspects and their views on the matter..... Canon
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Post by GC on Aug 18, 2022 14:24:56 GMT
Only when it's been fiddled with or an axe has been taken to it...
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