CANON FODDER

Rob Buckley gave me and my work in televisiology an excellent shout-out today in his UK(! - heheheh) blog, "The Medium Is Not Enough" (link to the left):

Now, if there's a canonicity problem, I for one simply point in the direction of Toby at "Inner Toob" and say if anyone can sort out this tangled mess, he can. He, after all, has a grand project to make all TV shows fit together into one canonical whole. So the whole goading thing doesn't work. My faith in Toby is great. He will sort things out.

(snippet)

Toby: save me. Save us all.

Gee, I never knew Rob was a cheerleader!

His post about canonicity also includes a fantastic splainin about KITT of 'Knight Rider' and its origins. I've never heard of this theory before, but apparently it's widely accepted in the KITT corner of fandom. It works for me as well, with some minor tweaking to adjust for the TV Universe as a whole. (I'll have to google to figure out where to give proper creds, but Rob definitely would get the "thanks to" and "according to" nods.)

Most of all, I'd toss aside the reasoning that the splainin is needed in order to get 'Knight Rider' technology to jibe with the world of the 1980s. Toobworld, TV Land, the TV Universe, Tommy Westphall's Mind - whatever you want to call it - is not the same as our world; not everything has to be the same in the backgrounds of both "realities".

In Toobworld, androids have been around since the 1960s, and yet we're still bleeping around here with those little dancing Japanese bots. And there have been secret military installations on the moon since the 1960s as well over in the TV Universe. Back home, we just knocked around a few golf balls and haven't been back since. [See 'Get Smart' for both examples.]

But other than that, I love the idea that Wilton Knight cannibalized alien technology - Cylon technology at that! - to further his own research in building KITT.

Thanks, Rob!

Alas, I'm not sure if I can help him nor anyone else in trying to make some sense out of canonicity. Canonicity is like the weather - we all carry our own inside of us.

To make things easier on myself, though, I avoid the books, audio plays, comic books, and movies when it comes to 'Doctor Who'. Just utilizing the two TV series (counting the RTD rebirth as a separate entity) and the 1996 TV movie is headache enough!

The same goes for most other TV shows, although I do give leeway for certain movies like the 1966 'Batman', 'Maverick', and of course, the 'Star Trek' franchise. (And I have a certain fondness for a 'Star Trek' novel, "Ishmael" by Barbara Hambly, which linked 'Star Trek' to 'Here Come The Brides' in a most convincing manner.)

Like Rob points out, at least with 'Doctor Who' (and certain other sci-fi series) there is some elasticity to the canonicity because of time travel properties. (Could have used a good "icity" word there.....)

But sometimes you really do need to just look at the forest, rather than trees. Otherwise ye'll go mad. MAD! I tells ye!

And should that happen, you'll be left a mindless imbecile, doomed to walking the streets, talking to no one in particular.

At least if you were living in Toobworld, you could then get a job as a serlinguist and sell the real world viewing public on various products.

Worked for Billy Mays.....

Thanks again for the tip o' the hat, Rob!

You can read Rob's post about canonicity here.

BCnU!
Tele-Toby