I don't particularly need my "canon" to be non contradictory. Just use it to tell the boundaries between the contradictions I have to explain away for myself and those I can discard without loss of sleep.

(I hope nobody is taking seriously my jokes about having peculiar hangups about this ).

You just used it



I've never been all that bothered about it, I'll just pick up a book occasionally, see if I enjoy it. Obviously there are occassionally stuff which contradicts the tv series, but then, as anothers posted, the tv series often contradicts itself to

Too late - I've already added it to my scrapbook

. I'd best keep quiet about the weird stuff then!

Of course sometimes the novels serve to put right continuity errors in the TV show.

The 2nd Doctor was apparently exiled to Earth and forced to regenerate at the end of The War Games by the Time Lords, a race not mentioned until this episode. The regeneration was never shown on screen. Meanwhile his companions were returned to their rightful place in time and space and had their memories of their travels with the Doctor wiped. Also the 2nd Doctor was never able to control his TARDIS.

However come The Five Doctors the 2nd Doctor was able to travel to a UNIT convention with his TARDIS and was aware that Jamie had had his mind wiped. Neither should have been possible. Again in the The Two Doctors the 2nd Doctor is on a mission from the Time Lords, who were not mentioned and he was scared of until the event of The War Games and again was able to control his TARDIS, this time even remotely.

Therefore a theory was born that between the events of The War Games and Spearhead From Space the Doctor was recruited by the Time Lords to work for them doing deeds they were unable to do themselves, or not wished to be associated with. Part of the deal involved them granting the Doctor control of his TARDIS and use of whatever companions he wished. Once the deal was done, his mind was wiped and his sentence was enforced. The 3rd Doctor even suffers memory lapses during Spearhead From Space. This theory is known as “series 6B”.

Terrance Dicks has written 2 novels which make reference to, or are set in this time frame. “Players” was the first and just features a flashback scene. Whereas “World Game” bridges the gap totally between The War Games and The Two Doctors and features the vast majority of the series 6B theory.

Big finish counts because after all they actually signed up the classic doctors.

I've not read the books so I'm not worried about those but I've been an avid fan of the Big Finish audios. The audios have always tried to fit the continuity of the TV show and so I like to consider them part of that continuity. However, if the TV show then contradicts the audios I would have to consider the TV show to be canon and ignore the audio version. I'm not sure there's been too many contradictions, though. Even the destruction of the Time Lords is ok because all the main Gallifreyans in the Gallifrey audios ended up being trapped in a parallel universe so they would have been oblivious of any Time War.

I'm still hoping that means Romana is going to show up on the TV show some day

!SPOILERS!

From vague memories Romana III was President of Gallifrey during an arc in 8th Doctor novels, and was still President in 2006ish according to RTD in the annual during the Time War, despite being apparantly killed during the 8th Doctors tenure, either when Gallifrey was destroyed or shortly before that by assasination . That said the 8th Doctor was meant to be re-creating Gallifrey from the Matrix but this never happened during the books, so supposedly it did before The Time War, just in time for her to be killed again.

However she was nowhere to be seen when the Time Lords made an appearance in the new TV show but given that Rassilon was there they lilely came from a differing time period.