Surely the whole point of a show about time-travel is that there is no such thing. Davies tried to cheat by inventing "fixed points" which Moffat then promptly subverted in order to free it all up again. (OK, so The Aztecs may have been the first real 'fixed point' story, but not in quite the same way.)
Heck, this story even busts the only bit of consistently 'real' canon, which was that the Doctor can only exist forwards in their life and can't just go back and tell themselves something useful.
That's not to say that those of us who spent our formative years trying to make some sort of coherent canon wasted our time. OK, maybe we - yes, I was one - did. It was fun though and several of us went on to run the show after all. :-)
There's a great Paul Cornell essay on this which includes a sweet line about how Star Trek and Star Wars fans pity Doctor Who fandom for the BBC refusal to lay down clear lines about Canon.
Canon? What is this thing called 'canon'?
Surely the whole point of a show about time-travel is that there is no such thing. Davies tried to cheat by inventing "fixed points" which Moffat then promptly subverted in order to free it all up again. (OK, so The Aztecs may have been the first real 'fixed point' story, but not in quite the same way.)
Heck, this story even busts the only bit of consistently 'real' canon, which was that the Doctor can only exist forwards in their life and can't just go back and tell themselves something useful.
That's not to say that those of us who spent our formative years trying to make some sort of coherent canon wasted our time. OK, maybe we - yes, I was one - did. It was fun though and several of us went on to run the show after all. :-)
There's a great Paul Cornell essay on this which includes a sweet line about how Star Trek and Star Wars fans pity Doctor Who fandom for the BBC refusal to lay down clear lines about Canon.
I know it well - the best essay on canon in Who was Teatime Brutality, but he deleted his blog alas