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andrasteI have been walking around grinning like an idiot all afternoon after watching the rest of Death of the Doctor, but it also got me thinking. Usually when new series canon contradicts something that preceded it (classic series, books, audios, comics, Sky Ray ice lollies ...) my reaction is to shrug and conclude that the Time War made a mess of continuity [1].
This time, though, I think there may be something other than the usual Time War shenanigans going on ...
People who are familiar with the various Doctor Who spin-offs will have long ago noticed that Sarah Jane's appearances in the books and audios are contradicted by pretty much everything we've seen on screen from School Reunion onwards. (Given her involvement in alien affairs, I am still inclined to put her weird continuity down to the Time War, as it's the sort of thing she could well have got caught up in.) Now we find that Jo Grant is still happily married with seven children instead of divorced with one, as she was in the novels.
There's actually only one companion confirmed to be alive who was firmly declared dead (before the year 2010, anyway) in the spin-offs: Elizabeth Shaw. However, there are a couple of others who were in poor health the last we saw them who seem to be fine now: Barbara and Tegan. Barbara was shown to be very ill in one of the short stories although I can't remember which one. (ETA: It's Distance in Short Trips: Companions.) Tegan has a brain tumour in the Big Finish audio The Gathering. (For the record, nothing stated here about Harry, Ben or Polly contradicts anything. The 'Dorothy Something' who could be either Dodo or Ace is harder to draw conclusions about.)
Here is a curious thing, though: Eternity Weeps is the book where Liz Shaw dies. On the moon. Where she works. For UNIT. This actually fits in suspiciously well with the latest info on her ... except that unlike in the book, she didn't die there in 2003. What's going on?
Perhaps something other than the Time War or the cracks has been messing with history. We now know that the dying Tenth Doctor visited all his companions. Given his behaviour during those scenes, it's tempting for me to conclude that he wandered around time and space curing their cancer and stopping them from contracting the space plague. As for Jo's marital status, maybe when they had that big fight after their first son was born, Cliff just happened to run into a mysterious stranger who smacked him in the side of the head and told him to go back to his wife ...
[1] Obviously many people don't consider the spin-offs canon anyway, but I prefer to stick with the version of Doctor Who that has the talking penguin in it. Also, if we start declaring things uncanonical on the ground that they're contradicted by later stories, we will soon not have any canon.
This time, though, I think there may be something other than the usual Time War shenanigans going on ...
People who are familiar with the various Doctor Who spin-offs will have long ago noticed that Sarah Jane's appearances in the books and audios are contradicted by pretty much everything we've seen on screen from School Reunion onwards. (Given her involvement in alien affairs, I am still inclined to put her weird continuity down to the Time War, as it's the sort of thing she could well have got caught up in.) Now we find that Jo Grant is still happily married with seven children instead of divorced with one, as she was in the novels.
There's actually only one companion confirmed to be alive who was firmly declared dead (before the year 2010, anyway) in the spin-offs: Elizabeth Shaw. However, there are a couple of others who were in poor health the last we saw them who seem to be fine now: Barbara and Tegan. Barbara was shown to be very ill in one of the short stories although I can't remember which one. (ETA: It's Distance in Short Trips: Companions.) Tegan has a brain tumour in the Big Finish audio The Gathering. (For the record, nothing stated here about Harry, Ben or Polly contradicts anything. The 'Dorothy Something' who could be either Dodo or Ace is harder to draw conclusions about.)
Here is a curious thing, though: Eternity Weeps is the book where Liz Shaw dies. On the moon. Where she works. For UNIT. This actually fits in suspiciously well with the latest info on her ... except that unlike in the book, she didn't die there in 2003. What's going on?
Perhaps something other than the Time War or the cracks has been messing with history. We now know that the dying Tenth Doctor visited all his companions. Given his behaviour during those scenes, it's tempting for me to conclude that he wandered around time and space curing their cancer and stopping them from contracting the space plague. As for Jo's marital status, maybe when they had that big fight after their first son was born, Cliff just happened to run into a mysterious stranger who smacked him in the side of the head and told him to go back to his wife ...
[1] Obviously many people don't consider the spin-offs canon anyway, but I prefer to stick with the version of Doctor Who that has the talking penguin in it. Also, if we start declaring things uncanonical on the ground that they're contradicted by later stories, we will soon not have any canon.