Maybe they could. But according to Lungbarrow, they didn't. IIRC They were loomed with the minds of children in adult-sized bodies, and live in special houses with giant-sized furniture to make them feel child-sized until the time came for them to move out.

Something like that, anyway. It's years since I read it, and I'm in no hurry to go back and read it again. It's one of those books that's more interested in showing off how clever it is, rather than telling a good story. I'm glad it's not canon any more!

Well, if you're going to nitpick, canon says the the TARDIS claimed she chose the Doctor, but she might've bluffing, teasing the Doctor, when she said that.

Whatever really happened, the Doctor didn't think the TARDIS was making a choice. Clara didn't change that.

Can it not be both anyway? Clara pointed the doctor in the direction of our Tardis but the Tardis allowed the doctor to steal her, thereby choosing him. She could have refused to work for him.

Exactly. If people read and liked the New Adventure books there is no reason they can't consider them canon unless they are contradicted by something on screen. But, they can't claim that they Definately are either until things in them are stated on screen.

Fact is the new series has certainly drawn inspiration from them and is following the spirit of them but there have been contradictions. What happened to Ace as mentioned in SJAdventures as one example. Another being stories basically repeating themselves with Human Nature - if the 7th Doctor/Bernie adventure is canon, isn't it odd that almost exactly the same thing would happen again with the 10th?

What can't be disputed is that on screen since 2005 the Doctor has referenced being a father several times in a way that suggests that it was a 'normal' family type relationship with parents, siblings etc. Not being brought up with no parents, no siblings, only cousins in houses and not being allowed to loom a new Time Lord until the last one dies. The Master's comments about his father's estates also seem to contradict the looming theory.

Re last night, I think we were seeing him soon after being taken from his parents and shown the unchartered schism (or whatever it was called) which caused the Master to go mad and the Doctor to want to run away. So he was in some kind of halfway house where they decide what happens to Gallifreyan kids after being shown the Time vortex.

Moffat is quoted as saying that he's going to explain why the Tardis has seemed to have "issues" with Clara and it strikes me that the relationship between the two of them may be a bit complex.

It's arguable that the Tardis MADE the Doctor meet Clara specifically so she'd tell him to "steal" her - a kind of causal loop. It's a mess in the "timey wimey" sense but it's loopy fun and it's in keeping with something else about Clara.

The issue is that meeting those "clara-clones" - at the Dalek asylum and in Victorian England - caused him to go looking for Clara. In other words - his meeting Clara only happened because she entered his timestream - after he'd met her. Compared with that, the River>Amy>River timeline is a doddle.

Yes very true. Also Clara being the link in the Doctor becoming the Doctor by talking to him as a child.

It is interesting that the Tardis allowed Clara to interface with her last night given the previous animosity but maybe the Tardis got over it after she found out the reason for all the Clara splinters. And of course, going to Gallifrey at that point could link back into Clara 'being born to save the Doctor' and him often not seeing or hearing her.

In the end the Doctor didn't actually manage to find Clara though did he, she found him due to the phone shop woman giving her the Tardis telephone number which is also still to be explained.

No. No it really doesn't.

Anything not mentioned in the show can't be classed as definitely having happened. The show is the main continuity. Hell, even things mentioned in the show are contradicted. It takes a massive, and in my view illogical, leap to then make a sweeping statement like the fact that all of 8's adventures are canon. The only one that is is his Movie adventure.

Therefore, anything not in the show can be classed as personal canon, as it hasn't been mentioned/referenced/explicitly stated in the main continuity - the show. Anything else is the mind of the individual filling in blanks - or rather: voids.

I understand you're view that the show is sacrosanct, and other mediums are up in the air, but I don't see why you would choose to believe that the companions mentioned in the short are real, but entertain the idea that they had an entirely different timeline of adventures, rather than fill that blank space with stories that already exist. That's hardly illogical. In fact, to it seems like the most sane conclusion to reach.

Even if the show takes precedence over other mediums by your standards, surly actually produced stories take precedence over completely theoretical ones.

I mean, it's your opinion and that's fine and all, and given that we're talking about a fictional show with time travel and parallel universes; it's hardly an inconceivable concept, but it just seems really weird to me that you would still question the authenticity of the adventures despite not only the implications of the short, but the external endorsement of the show-runner.

It told an excellent story and I loved it, it also had a lot of stories to tell plus conclude like Ace's destiny

Another possible explanation is that the Tardis is doing everything she can to protect Clara - maybe trying to out her off from using the Tardis - to prevent her from travelling to some future "adventure" that causes harm to the girl - so the "animosity" is more like a parent "angrily" chiding a child for their own good.

Or maybe the Tardis allowed that "intimate" connection cos it was not really about giving Clara "remote control" - maybe even a transfer of information in the opposite direction.

Just because The Doctor mentions some names does not mean that they are necessarily the same people in the books. While it was a nod to the "fuller realized 8th Doctor", it did not necessarily make anything canon other than those names. It did not make canon the books in which those companions appeared, nor did it make canon any other books. To extrapolate from a single mini-episode that the entire audio series and/or the books are canon is spurious logic at best.

I don't think you're understanding. It's not my 'opinion' - I'm reserving my opinion until a later date. Until it is stated in the main continuity as having happened, then it isn't canon - you filling in the blanks is opinion. Whether you include the stories or not in your own personal canon, but to include something that has not been confirmed is an opinion. I will wait until such a time as something is confirmed as to include it in canon. For now they are fun, but could be blown away with a line from the show.

The endorsement from the show and show-runner has only been for the companions. Not one mention of the adventures themselves.

For the life of me, I don't understand what you're not getting. It is for your own comfort that you have decided to include unmentioned, unreferred to stories, and only that. You can't possibly see how it could be different - fine. But there is at least one example of how an external story has been included but was entirely different: Human Nature/Family of Blood. Therefore, a sweeping statement of: all the Big Finish 8th stroies are officially canon, simply can't be used. There is a high likelihood that most of the stories could be canon. But if they choose to use even one story in a series without 8, then that instantly proves you wrong. I just don't want to use definites until there is such a time as it has been proven one way or another.

Apparently not. I've been told it's the only sane way to view it. Despite previous form on Doctor Who of reusing stories from other mediums in the main continuity with major differences (ie: different incarnation of the Doctor)...

WTF is Lungbarrow?

I ask as someone who's been watching since Troughton and think the Peter Cushing films are master pieces in comparison to the Paul McGann "movie".

It's a Virgin New Adventures book which was the end of the Cartme Masterplan, and cast the Doctor as being a founding member of the Timelord race... I didn't like it, nor did I like the premise.

I'm glad it's not being used as part of the main continuity! No reason to include it other than as a novel idea (pun not intended).

Yes, I would say so. It's banished to the realm of obscure spin-off merchandise fiction forever, and no one involved in the making of the series will ever pay it the slightest bit of notice. Good riddance, I hated it all. Any writer with any amount of experience or sense would have known better than to try to tie together lots of disparate plot strands that had been created with virtually no regard to continuity, and the result was a clunky, contrived mess. Steven Moffat is clearly going his own way with the Doctor's background, and a good thing too.

You're opinion is that the series is the main canon. I'm perfectly fine with that. It's a fair stance to hold.

My gripe is that you seem to think it's somewhat irrational to assume that the stories did happen just because he mentioned all the names, despite it being extremely implicit. I'm not saying you're wrong for seeing things that way, I just find it weird. That's all.

EDIT: This was the quote. Doesn't really matter since it wasn't said in the show, as per your criteria, just an FYI.


EDIT Number 2: Actually, after reviewing our conversation, I don't think we actually disagree on things that much. I think the show is the main driving canon too.

The only difference seems to be that I consider all things canon until disproven by the show, while you seem to consider things potentially canon until confirmed by the show.

That's why you're ambiguity towards the audio adventures was confounding me.

I'd say it's not proven either way. In your prime example you've assumed that the GI interfered with the Doctor's choice of TARDIS and then Clara corrected it. But it's not possible to know for sure whether the GI attempted a change that far back as he wasn't shown in that Clara clip.

A counter argument could be that old Gallifrey was still protected from changes and the GI could not reach that far back in the Doctor's timeline. One of Clara's splinters was able to because she always had ["assisted" the Doctor in that choice].

Maybe I just prefer the idea that the past cannot be changed and my preference here just reflects that.

Of course, as you said, it still contradicts the notion that the TARDIS chose him. Perhaps she left the door provocatively open? Or maybe she was exaggerating (lying)? Just a tiny bit?

Even that remark could be explained if it turns out that Clara is/will be the TARDIS.

We know - for a fact - that the Doctor originally took the current "correct" Tardis - and we were shown in that episode that he was about to take a different, "wrong" Tardis until Clara intervened. In addition, we were told that Clara was placed throughout the Doctor's timestream and that the timestream specifically started at that point in the Doctor's life - and she was only placed at points where the GI had interfered.

Since there was a Clara-clone on Gallifrey over a thousand years before she was born, it's illogical to suggest that she was impossibly on an alien world for no particular reason.

We were shown some of the events where Clara's "clones" had specifically needed to intervene in some manner - that was one of them.

But what if Clara had always been the means by which the "right" TARDIS was chosen? A causal loop - of which Steven Moffat is quite fond (Listen being the most recent example).

I don't recall anything said which specified when the Clara splinters would intervene nor how they intervened. Nor was how the GI would change things shown. It's not illogical to allow the possibility that Clara's entry caused the Doctor's life to be/stay the way it always was.

The one sequence that contradicts that is the evident pain the Doctor suffered and the stars going out, Strax forgetting he was friends with Vastra etc. Plenty of time travel stories rely on that (Back to the Future II, for example) drama of getting things back to the way they were.

And more to the point what building were they occupying. The barn as referenced in the Day of the Doctor was in the middle of nowhere?

Canon can be rewritten.

You have the timeline completely screwed.

Clara - the real Clara - is just a normal human being and wasn't born until about 20 years ago. The "clones" were spread throughout the Doctor's timeline so she existed in those forms before she was born - but only AFTER she entered his timestream.

Put simply - there WAS a timestream which was shown onscreen and described in the script and that original one did NOT contain the GI or Clara-clones - there then became a timestream which was rewritten by the GI - and then another timestream which had the GI changes PLUS Clara's changes to "repair" it - but there was never a timestream that had Clara with no GI.

As Clara said in the voice over - I've always been there, right from the very beginning - about 1 second before before she told the Doctor that he was about to make a big mistake in chosing the wrong Tardis.

Even the Timestream as it existed before the GI and then Clara interfered with it no longer exists and even the Clara-fied one is defunct because the Doctor didn't die at Trenzalore.

Well to be fair 1000's of years could have passed between that we don't know when he was a child or when the war was.

The building could have been destroyed or moved in the war for all we know the buildings could be like TARDIS's with enough room for 1000's of kids inside but easily movable if need be.

Easily explained by the war and/or the passage of time - we don't know what year (Gallifrey local time) any of the events took place and there could have been a million years between the kid and the War Doctor being in that barn. In fact, with a Tardis the war Doctor have gone to the derelict barn a thousand years BEFORE that kid slept there and it was until hundreds of years later that the barn was repaired and a new farmhouse built - or maybe a race of people who can travel faster than light, across time and teleport simply don't even think about buildings needing to physically next to each other - or even in the same time period.