Big Finish Stories within TV Canon

I consider everything in Who to be equally non-canon/canon, it's a time travel show with a stonking great time war in the middle of it, either everything happened or none of it did, or perhaps both simultaneously...

I don't worry about how/where the stories fit with each other I just try and enjoy them (though in a personal sense, the McGann audios are 'my' era of who).

This was more just a thing I did to pass some of those boring Summer Break afternoons. It's not really supposed to be taken too seriously It's just what one could say was "truly" part of of the TV series universe as it's all directly related to what's been said in the show itself But it can easily be ignored

I actually think that due to the Novel Adaptions Shadow of the Scourge and The Dark Flame become canon as they were classed as Virgin side steps, but the NA's bring those two stories into canon

That was one of things I considered but I decided that, just for the time being, working off The Night of the Doctor was probably the best place to start Expanding beyond that could have made things a bit too confusing I may go back and add this one though.

As for Scourge and Dark Flame, I don't feel that they're entirely reconcilable with the TV series (which this list is "supposed" to be), so I'm thinking it would probably make sense for them not to be included. To each their own though

It comes down to being a little bit pedantic - there's no specific reference to state that these stories are sequential. There could, theoretically, be other stories in between (as I understand it), so they sadly don't "count" (Yes, very picky of me, but I set myself strict rules, otherwise I could basically have just said, "Meh, they're all near enough" )

EDIT: Also, some of the degrees of separation in some of the other ranges are nuts!

OK, point accepted! But wouldn't that also apply to the Older Nyssa stories - there's nothing to say for definite that there weren't more stories between X / Y and Z. I might suggest that there MUST be other stories in that arc, ones in which Nyssa actually remembered and did something about her quest to find the cure for Richter's Syndrome...

 
Ah, but the Older Nyssa stories are an exception: as all 15 of those stories feature the older Nyssa character (or the continuing story thereof), they are all definitely canon, regardless of whether more stories took place in between or not

I'll put it this way: any string of stories featuring an original Big Finish companion or bringing back a companion from the past get automatically canonised in full if just one story featuring that companion fits a canonising criteria; any string of stories featuring pre-existing TV teams are different however, as we can't say for absolutely certain that they're all directly sequential. Again, a bit picky, but I've got to stick to the rules (I should probably have mentioned this rule earlier is all )

If you're using the logic 'Charley is canon, therefore all stories featuring Charley are canon', then by that logic you could just easily prove that all Big Finish Doctor Who stories are canon by saying 'the Doctor is canon, therefore all stories featuring the Doctor are canon'.

Not really

Until The Night of the Doctor, there was nothing to suggest that the Big Finish stories were part of the TV canon. With TNotD, we've learned, straight from the Doctor, that five of those companions "definitely happened".

Let's take Charley as our example. In this case, as she is now "officially a companion", she must have a minimum of two stories - arrival (Storm Warning) and departure (The Girl Who Never Was). Given the complexities of Charley though, she has another two - arrival with Sixie (The Condemned) and departure with Sixie (Blue Forgotten Planet). Now we need to factor in C'rizz. As C'rizz is introduced in The Creed of the Kromon, that means that 8/Charley have to have reached the Divergent Universe, so all stories necessary to get there must be taken into consideration, and as most if not all of the stories that lead up to Neverland/Zagreus make mention of her non-death on the R101, all those stories must therefore, unequivocally, be canon. Then, as C'rizz leaves in Absolution, at least every story in the Divergent Universe arc must be canon to ensure that they definitely escaped from that universe for C'rizz to depart in this one, meaning that up until at least Terror Firma definitely happened. At this point it is only fair to assume that it is the adventures that Big Finish released at the time that would be the equivalent to, say, Season 24 of the TV show, where the 7th Doctor appears in Time and the Rani and Mel leaves in Dragonfire - it's the sequence of stories that we were given at the time that clearly "matter" (I hope that's the right word to use here), therefore all the other stories up until Absolution will have influenced Charley/C'rizz as characters and people, therefore they should be assumed to have happened.

The reason this is different to saying, "the Doctor is canon, therefore all stories featuring the Doctor are canon," is that their Big Finish stories could continue to be ignored unless he (the Doctor) directly mentions those events as having happened. If no mention is made, there is nothing to suggest that they happened. Non-canon until proven canon, as it were 5/6/7's stories have not been mentioned, therefore they haven't happened unless there is something (a companion, for example) to prove that they did.

I hope that's cleared things up? It's not very easy to explain in written words (if we could all talk in person this would be much easier ).