Talk:John (comic strips)

Portion of a Forum Discussion

The following is from a lengthy digression from a prefix discussion.
The only thing excised from this portion was a short line about a prefix.
Note: the "it" referred to below is COMIC: Beware the Trods! from DWCC Issue 8
--Nyktimos 20:36, September 21, 2009 (UTC)

Really? John and Gillian's last names are 'Who' they say that in a comic strip? Shouldn't we move their article then to their 'proper names'? --Tangerineduel 16:16, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, it's a one-page piece of prose fiction, in the form of an in-universe memo from "Professor John Who" at Zebadee University (the university in which the Doctor enrolls John and Gillian in COMIC "Invasion of the Quarks") to the head of the Space Security Service. According to the text, Sara Kingdom had come across an abandoned spacecraft and sent the video back to her boss at SSS headquarters. He, in turn, shunted the video to the "expert" at Zebadee. John analyzes the information and sends a report back to Sara's SSS boss, saying, basically, "Run like hell, you have NO idea what you're up against."

The piece was likely, but not confirmably, written by John Freeman, and is one of the few pieces of fiction to originate in COMIC. (Actually, it might be the only new fiction in DWCC, now that I think about it.) Basically, it served as the introduction to the Trod-themed issue.

Now, as to whether that's really their last name, I suppose you'd have a debate on your hands. It makes sense, given that in the strips in which they appear, the central hero's in-narrative name is "Dr Who", and they are said to be his real grandfather. Certainly the fact that the COMIC First Doctor takes pride in John's victory at a track meet (COMIC: "The Galaxy Games") and then the COMIC Second Doctor ships the pair off to college makes it feel like there's a genuine familial pride there. So if his name is "Who" then their name could logically be "Who" as well. It's the only name we have for them in any piece of fiction. On the other hand, the two do eventually stop calling him "grandfather". And in their farewell they oddly call him "Doctor" instead of "grandfather".

Still, if you accept "The Land of Happy Endings"' conclusion that Dr Who is a dream of the Eighth Doctor, then, yeah, their last names are "Who". Within the DWM continuity — which is usually recognized as more authoritative than TVC — John and Gillian are definitely the grandchildren of "Dr Who". If, on the other hand, you're treating early COMIC stuff as an actual part of the First Doctor and early Second Doctor's history, then you're more likely to believe that "Dr Who" is a continuity error, as in The War Machines. Thus, I think you'd have a hard time diggin' the "Professor John Who" bit. You can accept some of the less ridiculous strips of that era into "real" continuity if you just go on thinking they had no last names and ignore Lungbarrow.

Not sure if that really answers the question, "should we change the article names to John Who and Gillian Who?" For me, the answer's no, simply because this one-page story is incredibly obscure. They are overwhelmingly known as "John and Gillian". I do think the articles should be merged to John and Gillian, though. There's not enough information on them as individuals to justify having two articles. And it's a hell of a lot of typing to type [[John (comic strips)]] and [[Gillian (comic strips)]], when you could just type [[John and Gillian]] and be done with it. This little memo thingie is the only piece of fiction in which one appears and the other doesn't.

While we're on the subject, I suppose I should mention for completeness that there are "John Brent" and "Gillian Roberts" from Kim Newman's novella Time and Relative, but these are not purported to be the actual John and Gillian. Rather, they're classmates of Susan at Coal Hill School, which makes them too old to be the TVC John and Gillian. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 18:18, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

I think we had a John and Gillian combo article at one point.

But I think we should keep the individual articles, they're individual characters...no matter how one dimension they were. But John and Gillian could be a disambig leading off to the John and Gillian articles if that helps?

I rather like Lungbarrow and The Infinity Doctors despite the problems they both cause. (I don't really like War of the Daleks though because of all the continuity problems it causes. Random rambling...) --Tangerineduel 17:37, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

To me, it's not a question of their unrelenting one-dimensionality. It's just the fact that they never appear apart. There are two times you're gonna link in an article about them: in the lead and in the infobox. And you will never, ever say anything but: "The Doctor, John and Gillian go to the planet X and fight monster Y." If there was even one full adventure where it was just the Doctor and John or the Doctor and Gillian, I wouldn't press the point. But these kids are always together. But the fact is, you could write the article such that John was in one section, Gillian in another and be done with it. I mean, just look at the leads in their now-separate articles. It's impossible to write the lead for John without immediately saying "his sister Gillian", or the reverse. The lead begs for the article to be about both of them. It just bugs me to think about how many extra characters have to be typed for no good reason. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 03:50, 13 May 2009 (UTC)