Might be of interest to some in this bailiwick: www.biroco.com/yijing/manda...

Not a complete one though: Dame Judi is still M

Bond has basically just decided “lol fuck off nerds were not having continuity” and even then they felt the need to do a reboot with the first Daniel Craig movie.

Steven Moffat's Life On Earth

Wombles and The Famous Five

"the three Great British franchises" meaning that you think Moffat is going to do Paddington Bear or Blake's Seven?

As I've said before, of the 3 great British franchises we can be glad Steven Moffat will never get his hands on James Bond (I am kind of surprised he didn't do, say, The Saint as a consolation prize).

You can get away without it more easily with bond where his gadgets are shit that plausibly might get declassified in ten years and his enemies are whoever the news doesn’t like these days. If you’re doing Star trek you have to have some idea of what a transporter can or can’t do etc.

hear hear

A certain kind of fan (without wanting to stereotype, often ones who don't make eye contact and were very into Thomas the Tank Engine when young) really wants consistent world building and lore, but indulging them invariably makes the story and franchise much worse

Conan Doyle used to be absolutely plagued with correspondents wanting to fill in background details iirc

SECRET ORIGINS OF THE MULTIVERSE There’s a reason we don’t call it the megaverse, the pluriverse or superspace… because it’s Michael Moorcock’s multiverse. CLICKING ON A PICTURE WILL OFTEN TAKE YOU TO A BIGGER VERSION. USE YOUR BR…

This article, via a link to @ansiblemag.bsky.social's article on Multiverse in @sfencyclopedia.bsky.social, looks pretty interesting (and comprehensive): legionofandy.com/2019/08/15/s...

Ah, but he probably has access to alien anagathics and prosthetic technologies...

Swerved a little by 2000ad refusing to reboot Dredd, so he's 87 ( well most of him )

Parallel worlds are simply part of the sf (mega|meta)text, there to be used as needed: sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/parall... @sfencyclopedia.bsky.social

Ultimately, there are fantasy universes. Obviously, the 1930s Clark Kent (even if that TL is explicitly deleted, it can always be undeleted) is still out there because you are going to want to have the occasional time travel story to that timeline...

Certainly, in the comics, you have continuities twice a month for nearly 90 years, so the 1930s Bruce Wayne is still out therein an appropriate Earth. Things like "Crisis on Infinite Earths" attempted to simplify matters, but that only goes so far and you have to repeat the exercise periodically

And I don't see how your examples relate to either the multiverse concept or Doctor Who? When the Batman and Spider-Man films reboot, they reboot; they don't try to imply that Michael Keaton is out there in another dimension or that Tom Holland has Tobey Maguire's memories

Some people like to wonder whether "James Bond" is just a codename like 007. Note, for instance, that Dame Judi Dench is M is both the Pierce Brosnan films and the early Daniel Craig ones. There are those who will always seek a Watsonian answer, for various reasons

Why hello Tompkins County

On the "James Bonding" podcast they used to debate whether Bond is or is not supposed to be the same person throughout the series. Obviously, that's ridiculous - Bond has become a figure of folklore like King Arthur or Robin Hood - but it's noteworthy it's something some fans want to debate

Counterexample: James Bond

"What Was, What Is, What Will Be, What Might Have Been" is my four-part mantra

Also, it's perfectly natural for us to wonder about alternative timelines. We can't not do even if our tragedy is to be trapped in just a single reality

DW actually avoids this because the Doctor is an immortal alien time-traveller. He can spend decades as a lecturer at "St Luke's University, Bristol" or intriguing at the Draconian court or getting the Miniscope banned and we never have to worry about whether he was old enough to serve in WWI

You have a continuous continuity over more than 80 years, but, occasionally, you still have to press the BIG RESET BUTTON in order to avoid the question of just old, exactly, is Bruce Wayne?

Any long running property runs into the problem that after a while you have to reboot it just to try and make the ages of the characters vaguely work. So, we have Superman and Batman in the 1930s and the 2020s, but to what extent are they the same characters?

The multiverse is like the nuclear bomb or Turing Test-capable foundation models: once you have invented them, you can't uninvent them

Doctor Who aa a format has a bunch of reset mechanisms built in that mean you can juat ignore the canon at times

… but the show already has a built-in way to do that.