deliberate historical errors?

[spdk1]

A question for the hardcore BF folks on here:

I've recently started listening to the big finish audios and am really enjoying the R101 arc with the eighth Doctor and Charley, but I have been noticing something: there are a ton of historical errors. some of them are so obvious such as the Doctor saying something like "Ben Franklin was a great president" that I am wondering if they are deliberate or not. I know this arc deals with Time distortion, and episodes such as "Time of The Daleks" revolve around this idea. does anyone know if these were initially mistakes and they ran with it, or are these actually goofs?

[James (DWP)]

I'm not sure this is one for hardcare Big Finish people or historians!  Big Finish are usually extremley well researched and historically accurate.  I'm not so sure the example you give is actually incorrect either - Franklin was the president - of Pennsylvania - in the late 18th century and perhaps that's what the Doctor was referring to. 

What other inaccuracies have you noticed?

[Nick off of Twitter]

It sounds like poor research based on a common misconception, because I'm sure that I believed he'd been a president and maybe other British people do/did as well. I'm not sure when I learned differently, but I may not have been alone in my error.

[spdk1]

I'm not sure this is one for hardcare Big Finish people or historians!  Big Finish are usually extremley well researched and historically accurate.  I'm not so sure the example you give is actually incorrect either - Franklin was the president - of Pennsylvania - in the late 18th century and perhaps that's what the Doctor was referring to. 

What other inaccuracies have you noticed?

Ooooh, good point about Pennsylvania! although he does specifically say "united states" when he says it as far as I can remember.

here are a few others that stuck out (here I'm concentrating on 8th doc plays, maybe there are more in others?):

In Storm warning it was mentioned countless times that there are no survivors of the R101 crash, there actually were a handful of survivors.

Invaders from Mars has a ton of them, this leads me to believe that they are deliberate: The CIA did not exist at the time of the play, nor did Lamborghini cars (much less one owned by Al Capone!), War of the Worlds wasn't aired on the 31st etc...

There seems to be some stuff intentionally put in because of the Daleks messing with time in "Time of the Daleks" namely nobody knowing about Shakespeare in "invaders from Mars" despite Orson Welles being a student of Shakespeare plays!

I haven't listened to Neverland yet, and I've heard it had to do with time unraveling or something, so maybe this is super obvious and I'm jumping the gun...lol

[spdk1]

then again, maybe I'm just "seeing patterns in things that aren't there"

[qixotl]

Can't say if all of those were deliberate errors or not, but I do remember when they first came out that BF had indeed purposely put some wrong facts in the early McGann stories. Keep listening!

Brad

[spdk1]

Phew! that's good to hear, I figured that surely they didn't let that many slip past on accident!

[elvisomar]

I see this thread has been dormant for a year, but I was prompted to register here because of the Big Finish thread here.

I noticed those historical inaccuracies in the early McGann stories, as well. They certainly didn't spoil the stories for me, but I was very puzzled. I'd like to ask Mark Gatiss: Were those errors intentional, and if so why did you include them? The Ben Franklin and CIA errors in particular would not change the story in any way to have them corrected. Within the context of a Doctor Who story, I would think that intentional variations on history are fun to include, but they really only make sense to me when they are variations with a reason inside the story and are somehow acknowledged.

[Michele]

Elvisomar,

Welcome! Great to have another Big Finish fan. Help us get these BF threads more active!

 

Michele

[timdalton007]

I noticed those historical inaccuracies in the early McGann stories, as well. They certainly didn't spoil the stories for me, but I was very puzzled. I'd like to ask Mark Gatiss: Were those errors intentional, and if so why did you include them? The Ben Franklin and CIA errors in particular would not change the story in any way to have them corrected. Within the context of a Doctor Who story, I would think that intentional variations on history are fun to include, but they really only make sense to me when they are variations with a reason inside the story and are somehow acknowledged.

Mark Gatiss has said that the errors were intentional amd were done as a way of setting up the story arc with Charley and the web of time coming apart. In fact, Gatiss is quoted in the Big Finish Inside Story book from 2003 as being rather annoyed with reviewers who only seemed to focus on the errors! Apparently a lot of the early reviews focused heavily on the errors and assumed Gatiss was simply being lazy hen he wasn't.

The Ben Franklin being president thing though was, as Paul Cornell has said, was an honest mistake as he thought that Franklin had been an American President (and it somehow got through all the way to the recording and eventual release). There's a line in Neverland that, though meant to be about a much more recent Presdient, covers that goof rather nicely.

timdalton007

[Henry Gordon Jago]

To be fair, there are more than a few American schoolchildren who think that Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton were Presidents, simply because they're pictured on currency...   

[elvisomar]

Mark Gatiss has said that the errors were intentional amd were done as a way of setting up the story arc with Charley and the web of time coming apart. In fact, Gatiss is quoted in the Big Finish Inside Story book from 2003 as being rather annoyed with reviewers who only seemed to focus on the errors! ...

Well, to be honest, if I have to learn that after the fact, from a third party on a fan forum... well, I suggest it probably could have been more clearly addressed in the actual story. Just a one-line, throwaway comment from the Doctor would have sufficed, e.g., "The American CIA in the 1930s? But that... oh never mind. What were you saying Charley?" That might have given some of us something more to hang our anal retentive hats upon.

I sympathize with the Gatiss quote referenced above, however. If reviews at the time focused too heavily on the historical errors, intentional or not, they likely were doing him and Big Finish a disservice. I am a very big fan of Mark Gatiss. Invaders from Mars is one of my favorite Eighth Doctor Adventure stories for a variety of reasons. I also think his work with Moffat on the Sherlock series is nothing less than television genius. And anyway, this is water under the bridge, around the bend, out to sea, and evaporated back into the clouds. Big Finish, Nick Briggs, Mark Gatiss, and most everyone involved have continued to evolve and mature as artists. I'm grateful they bother to do it at all.

And thanks for the welcome, Michelle. I'm not sure I will be terribly active, but I will read and pipe up from time to time. I followed Leeson from Radio Rassilon to the DWP, and from there to the forum because I wanted to find more Big FInish fans to chat with.

[timdalton007]

I think that, at least in the case of Invaders, they were meant to be throw away lines that would have greater importance later but that people instead picked up upon very quickly and seemed to have made a big deal out of them.

timdalton007