Talk:List of unproduced stories

Defining the scope of this article

This article is a bit out of control. We need to create a lead that establishes its parameters and then move forward with the list that conforms to those parameters. Specifically, a story is not just a pitch. It must have been definitively greenlit, with some kind of actual commissioning of scripts. Just a few lines in a series bible or a letter to the production staff doesn't make a "lost story". There is, in other words, a difference between an unsold story and an unproduced story.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  21:01: Fri 23 Jun 2017

Indeed, when it comes to stories that were pitched and not taken up on, I think we don't need to have a page on them. OS25 (Talk) 22:24, June 25, 2017 (UTC)

looking at the list it seems to follow similar to Wikipedia an lists all the story's listed in reference works and i agree it needs trimming it one thing this list shod not do is simply become an list of titls as that whoud make the list useless for finding out about them these story's not having there own pagers will reduce the value of this kind of list as there is no info on the story's on this page with all details on the story pagers 2.30.191.42^{talk to me} 13:27, June 26, 2017 (UTC)

I find myself thinking of stories like The Killing Stone, and I come to decide that just because a writer met with someone at the BBC to pitch the story doesn't mean that we need to document them. However, I think deleting every story that was greenlit without being produced is going over-board. OS25 (Talk) 23:37, June 26, 2017 (UTC)

if all picheres are deleted then all stories listed in the planland season 27 and 28 will have to be deleted as non where atuley commissioned infac the stories earth aid ice time and crime of the century are described on the endgame documentary as just ideas whats more both andrew cartmell and JNT had quit by the end of season 26 2.30.191.42^{talk to me} 18:56, June 28, 2017 (UTC)

A possible solution to this would be to go the way of Wikipedia and change the name to List of unmade stories. I agree with the users above that deleting every unmade story would be overboard but pages like Circus of Destiny certainly don't need to exist with the amount of content on them. The solution to this would be to turn the list into a table and unmade stories with a detailed plot and production details etc. can get their own page but stories to which little is known can be covered sufficiently within the confines of the table. --Borisashton ☎ 23:54, December 16, 2017 (UTC)

Most of these entries need supporting evidence (I've never heard that "The Paradise of Death" from the 1990s was pitched twenty-thirty years previously, and it's not even mentioned on its own page) and those that do have footnotes, the footnotes themselves have vanished.86.161.139.26^{talk to me} 10:10, March 24, 2019 (UTC)

Return of the Cybermen

How about adding return of the cybermen Which is evident of existing– The preceding unsigned comment was added by The doctor of who?cirkd,rik (talk • contribs) .

It is already inserted in season 12RingoRoadagain ☎ 01:59, March 24, 2020 (UTC)

Rename

Given that this page collects the wiki's pages about both unproduced and unsold stories, wouldn't a better title be "List of unmade stories", as Borisashton suggested a few years ago? – n8 (☎) 20:46, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure. That 2017 discussion seems quite archaic anyway — I think it's pretty well-demonstrated at this point that pages about official pitches that didn't end up being greenlit are considered of interest to the average Doctor Who fan these days; for one thing, The Lost Stories, as close to an "official" definition of the idea as we're likely to get, have indeed produced things that were never greenlit in their original form.

The distinction is also only really applicable for TV — cases of a book or audio being greenlit only to be cancelled partway through "production" are so vanishingly rare that I can think of only one “Unproduced” novel fitting that description. Nearly all the interesting non-TV "stories that almost were, had influence on later productions, but were never completed themselves" never made it past the pitch, because "production"-wise, much more of the work on a novel is done before the author officially brings a pitch to the publisher.

As for the proposal to limit stories about which information is scarce to a mention on a table on this page, without a page of their own — it seems to cut against the general philosophy on the Wiki that no topic is too small. If one thing of one 'kind' is worth a page, then another that is identical in kind should be too even if the content is smaller.

That's not necessarily relevant to the rename, I just thought I'd highlight all of this since the earlier discussion never really had a conclusion. I'm not completely sold on the rename either, though, or at least on this specific option. What's nice about "unproduced" is that it highlights the idea that a story wasn't produced commercially. Deadline to Doomsday did end up getting made — but for an unlicensed zine; it was never produced fully in a commercial context. It's unproduced, but not unmade!

(Oh, and: even laying aside the fact that we absolutely do want to keep pages about noteworthy failed pitches, Czech's suggestion of "unsold" is I think too vague. It could be taken to mean something which was produced in full, but never sold to the general public for one reason or another; e.g. Journey into Time.) Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 21:05, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

To clarify my opinions on the matter in 2021, I absolutely agree with Scrooge that the idea of not having pages on things like Circus of Destiny is outdated by today's standards. For a definition of "unmade" more rooted in Wiki policy, how about something like "a story expected to pass rule 2 of T:VS at its conception, which does not violate T:SPOIL now, but does violate either rule 2 or 3 in its current form"? It's a tad wordy but it covers stories always intended to be fanfiction, rule 3 failers still in production (e.g. Series 13), and stories both finished for release in non-licensed publications and ones that never saw the light of day at all. I imagine all of this would ideally be in the lead in conjunction with the "List of unmade stories" rename. Borisashton ☎ 00:11, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

I think the most obvious case of unproduced stories we can use to flesh out our ideas on the proposed rule would be this list (simply because the nature of the series means that there will always be a lot of "never were"s). Some of them sort of obviously don't qualify, some of them might violate spoiler rules still, and some probably do qualify. Najawin ☎ 00:24, 6 March 2021 (UTC)