Paul Cornell discusses Canon / Canonicity in Doctor Who…  How the new TV series goes out of it’s way to not shut the door on the previous novels, TV series episodes, etc in regards to Canon discussions…

Back in the mists of time, the fans of Sherlock Holmes thought it would be funny to refer to those stories about Holmes written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as being ‘part of the Canon’. They were thinking of the books that had been officially declared to be part of the Bible. They thereby confused two things, and it’s their fault we’ve been in a linguistic twist about this ever since. The canon they referred to was decreed by authority, the theological authority of a group of high clerics concerning how much truth and how much fan fiction was contained in a particular proto-Gospel. The Canon of Sherlock Holmes stories, on the other hand, wasn’t decided by authority after the fact, but by authorial authority. If Conan Doyle wrote it, it was in. If he didn’t, it was out. Sherlock Holmes fans could have no debates about what was and wasn’t ‘canonical’. ‘Written by Conan Doyle’ was what their new version of ‘canonical’ meant.

That new definition of ‘canon’ works fine if you’re dealing with works by one author. It works not at all in any other frame of reference. Doctor Who was created by many people, over a long period of time, and they did not cooperate. There is no authorial authority, and, as I’ll get to in a moment, no council of Bishops.

Read the rest of the article at PaulCornell.com: Canonicity in Doctor Who.