"I keep telling the truth. Why is it no one believes me?" - What Canon is

Canon, simply, is a way of defining what is true and what isn’t true within a franchise's universe. However, it can be far more complex than this. As we have already seen from analysing textual poaching, fans can take control over the media that they consume and interpret it as they please. Not only fans can do this, producers and writers also choose on whether to ignore, or interpret differently previous information stated within the franchise they’re making.

Will Brooker analyses what canon is in his book Hunting the Dark Knight: Twenty-First Century Batman. Brooker states,

“Canon is not absolute gospel but a database that allows for constant tweaks, reboots and revisions.” (Brooker 2012, p158).

Here Brooker is describing that canon is a general guideline for producers and fans to follow. Producers and writers of the show have the most power and final say over what becomes canon. Changes can in fact be made while previous information goes ignored. Producers do this to help continue the story, or sometimes by mistake of not realising previous information in the franchise existed. The information they create in new episodes gets added to the franchises universe and fans can choose whether to accept the new information or ignore it. Canon is the base-plate of the universe of a franchise but within a large television series like Doctor Who, some facts which were originally true are suddenly going to become untrue. But what do fans do when information becomes contradictory over what has happened before within the franchise? Fans have two options. The first, ignore the latest rule and concentrate on what happened before as the true canon. Nonetheless, some facts are more difficult to ignore than others as I shall be looking into later. The other option is to accept the latest information but create or find a believable reason as to why this change has occurred. This choice is down to each individual fan watching the show. So every fan shall have a unique idea of what the canonicity is within the franchise. This can be seen when talking with the fans of Doctor Who. Paul Cornell, a fan, but most importantly a writer of Doctor Who episodes explains his view on canonicity in the show.

Paul Cornell

Cornell mentions the ‘Time War’ as the event which caused all historical events to alter within the universe, including previous Doctor Who adventures. Cornell concludes that

“There was never and now cannot be any authority to rule on matters of canonicity in a tale that has allowed, or at the very least accepted, the rewriting of its own continuity.” (Cornell 2007)

However, while Cornell has an excellent argument he is still just one voice in a crowd of Doctor Who fans giving their opinion on the franchise. Some could argue that as a writer for the show, Cornell’s say on the canon is greater than fan’s opinions. Yet, as we’ve seen from textual poaching this isn’t entirely true. The line between consumer and producer has become blurred so who decides on what is canon or not? Or even if canon in Doctor Who exists.

It’s time for me to analyse the two eras of modern Doctor Who to try and decipher on whether the story ‘The Day of the Doctor’ written by Steven Moffat should be considered as canon.