Happy New Year! Hope you had a lovely Christmas, and didn’t get into too many arguments with the family. Although I can’t talk. Here at DWM, we’ve been arguing about all sorts of things – and not just whether to count Face the Raven, Heaven Sent and Hell Bent as one story, two, or three. In the end we went with three – partly because I’m in charge, partly because Steven Moffat agreed when we asked him how he thought we should arrange the Season Survey form, and partly because I want to see if we really do have any influence at all over Wikipedia.
But that’s not the only debate we’ve been having at work recently. A seemingly innocuous remark about Rassilon kicked off a huge argument about whether he was supposed to be dead or alive in The Five Doctors. I must admit I’ve always thought he was supposed to be alive – and immortal – yet trapped inside his tomb. Art editor Richard Atkinson agreed with me, but deputy editor Peter Ware and comic strip editor Scott Gray said that they’d always believed Rassilon to be dead – he had intended to trap dangerous souls who craved immortality, but the big floaty head who spoke to Borusa at the end of the story was some sort of artificial intelligence or computer programme.
Confused, I took the debate to Facebook, where the argument raged on. Among the ‘he’s dead’ camp were DWM writers Ben Cook, Will Howells and Richard Molesworth, but TV writers Steven Moffat and Rob Shearman (among others) sided with me in the ‘I always thought he was actually still alive’ camp. Gareth Roberts helpfully said, ‘I think he’s a ghost’, but still no consensus could be reached. None of us have quite plucked up the courage to ask Terrance Dicks, but I’m not sure it would make any of us change our minds now...