Talk:Timeless Child

Incarnations of the Child

Given that there is (as yet) no definite point where we can say this being stops being "the Timeless Child" and starts being "The Doctor", I believe it makes sense to make pages for individual incarnations of the Child. Of course this page should remain for the general concept; but, for instance, for the child we've seen in flashbacks throughout the series, Timeless Child (Spyfall) might make sense. CoT ? 21:32, March 1, 2020 (UTC)

Since we know nothing about them, would it not make more sense to group them together like The Doctor (The Brain of Morbius)? So like The Doctor (The Timeless Children).--TheOneTrueJack ☎ 21:45, March 1, 2020 (UTC)

I agree with OneTrueJack that we should group them. But I think we should keep the name as is: "the timeless child" is the name given to these incarnations during the episodes and is currently still how they are the most commonly known. (T:CHAR NAMES).RingoRoadagain ☎ 01:29, March 2, 2020 (UTC)

This page should stay as the only page for the Timeless Child as making more is just all the more confusing given that they only appear in 1-second glimpses apart from the dark-skinned little girl from the visions and the dark-skinned young boy that was recruited to the Division, and "The Doctor (The Timeless Children)" is not ideal either as they are not "the Doctor" yet. This one page is enough. However I'd suggest a template like "Docpic" that shifts between various images, showing each incarnation of the Timeless Child. --DCLM ☎ 12:53, March 3, 2020 (UTC)

Revisiting the "single-page/multiple-page" discussion

An official ruling was never given, but consensus was clear enough at the time to leave them as a single page. And, while I agree splitting the pages would leave us with small pages, I'd like to suggest that we split them. Not only based on our recent wave of page-splitting (Rani, Monk, Drax, etc.), but also:

• Having a "small page" has never stopped us in the past. For the Doctor themselves, take a look at The Doctor 1 (Rose) and the Doctor 2 (Rose).
• That said, splitting the pages for each incarnation seen would give us two immediate advantages over a single page for them: directly stating which actor played that incarnation, as well as illustrating all of them with an image (which we can't do in this page, because our policies don't allow so many images per page, for an article this size, and because they literally don't fit here).

As for concerns of how to name them... well that's pretty intuitive, right? First Timeless Child, up to Seventh Timeless Child (with this page kept as an overall page). We already refer to them as being "first" to "seventh" incarnations through the wiki after all. Thoughts? OncomingStorm12th ☎ 03:24, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

Since there have been no further arguments, and this is in line with precedent, motion approved. The Timeless Child page stays, of course, and will not simply be merged into the Doctor as the section below suggests, since this is a whole other life they've been made to forget, and it's all "according to some accounts".

First Timeless Child, etc., will be for individual incarnations of this past life, as User:OncomingStorm12th outlines above, following the same logic under which we cover later numbered incarnations of the Doctor.
× SOTO (☎/✍/↯) 18:49, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

Merging

Shouldn't this just be put into the Doctor's page? The Doctor and the Timeless Child are the same person, after all. Never Forget The Day The 456 Arrived ☎ 15:02, March 2, 2020 (UTC)

That’s pretty confusing though, and would mean that we’d also have to merge the Morbius Doctors too. I think we should keep the Morbius Doctors and the Timeless Child incarnations in their separate pages (grouped between the two) and have them listed as alternative version of the Doctor in each Doctor’s infobox (similar to the Curator and Meta-Crisis). Icyneo1 ☎ 15:32, March 2, 2020 (UTC)

Yeah — it’s useful to have a separate page for them in the same way that we have a separate page for The Other, despite the numerous sources that suggest the Doctor and the Other are the same person. – N8 (☎/👁️) 15:34, March 2, 2020 (UTC)

This case is exactly the same with Jo Martin's Doctor, Contents Doctor and so many other pages containing "the Doctor", which are essentially the main "The Doctor". --DCLM ☎ 12:59, March 3, 2020 (UTC)

And indeed, we don't simply merge the Second Doctor's page into the page for the Doctor.
× SOTO (☎/✍/↯) 19:42, March 3, 2020 (UTC)

Infobox

Should the contents of this page's infobox be added to The Doctor? DarkerBit ☎ 12:47, March 3, 2020 (UTC)

This has already been discussed heavily, and the conclusion was no, because the Timeless Child essentially is another stage of their life LONG before they became the Doctor. --DCLM ☎ 12:55, March 3, 2020 (UTC)

Sorry to reopen this discussion, but I definitely think the "Timeless Child" should be put into the "more ambiguous" section of the Doctor infobox. The Fugitive Doctors and the Morbius Doctors should also be placed in the ambiguous section. Xx-connor-xX ☎ 19:19, March 29, 2020 (UTC)

This and more is being discussed even now on the forum thread, by all means head over to that. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 19:25, March 29, 2020 (UTC)

Ok, I have no clue as to what this discussion is about, but wiki policy is that any kind of "ambiguous" information, as User:Xx-connor-xX describes it, does not go in the infobox. Shambala108 ☎ 21:15, March 29, 2020 (UTC)

Then why is there literally a section for "more ambiguous" incarnations like the Watcher and the Valeyard? Xx-connor-xX ☎ 21:17, March 29, 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, Shambala, Xx-connor-xX was referring to the "More ambiguous" section of Template:Doctors, not to the information as such being ambiguous. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 21:25, March 29, 2020 (UTC)

See, now I'm even more confused. Are we discussing templates, or infoboxes? Because there is a major difference. Shambala108 ☎ 21:29, March 29, 2020 (UTC)

Template, sorry. I just said infobox as it was what the previous person said. I've found the discussion now, thanks. Xx-connor-xX ☎ 21:30, March 29, 2020 (UTC)

Shifting infobox image

I was wondering whether we should have a template show up in the infobox that shifts the image between all the seven incarnations that we see, the same way that we have "Docpic" on the page for the Doctor, showing all the different incarnations from Hartnell to (currently) Whittaker? --DCLM ☎ 08:47, March 6, 2020 (UTC)

The first thing required would be specially uploaded images for each, at exactly 400 x 225 px.
× SOTO (☎/✍/↯) 10:55, March 6, 2020 (UTC)

Here's the best I can do. Maybe someone can do better, but I fear some are a write-off because they only appear briefly in the shot at one angle. I think the last incarnation is seen later on, so there may be a better shot of him. --TheOneTrueJack ☎ 01:07, March 7, 2020 (UTC)

Aside from all our other images rules, images uploaded to the wiki must have the proper license. The images in the gallery here have been deleted for having no license, and incidentally they would need to be more clearly named if they get re-uploaded. Shambala108 ☎ 05:01, March 7, 2020 (UTC)

Confused information

I believe it makes hard to make pages for individual incarnations of the Child.

Of course this page should remain for the general concept;

for instance, for the child we've seen in flashbacks throughout the series,

TheDaleks100 ☎ 13:12, March 6, 2020 (UTC)TheDaleks100TheDaleks100 ☎ 13:12, March 6, 2020 (UTC)

Pictures of the others

The experimentation sequence is up on YouTube now. Would screencaps from that work as pictures for the other incarnations seen in said episode? Meganerd18 ☎ 07:53, April 1, 2020 (UTC)

The Foundling

Under aliases or something, could "the Foundling" also be one? I know it was more a descriptor, but it seemed to be used as a name for the Child in the same vein as other Time Lord title-names. Spitballing again, mostly. Meganerd18 ☎ 08:43, July 26, 2020 (UTC)

Context from old books

In Special:Diff/3389523 Tybort removed this section from Timeless Child#Legacy for the reason that it is "obvious speculation and fanon relating to books published two decades before The Timeless Children":

Richard Francis Burton once guessed that the Great Houses (PROSE: The Book of the War) of the Time Lords (PROSE: Lungbarrow, et. al) had achieved the power of regeneration by modifying themselves with the "taint" of the Yssgaroth, (PROSE: The Book of the War) much like how the account involving Tecteun and the Timeless Child involved the former taking biodata from the child and applying it to Time Lord DNA. (TV: The Timeless Children) Indeed, the vampires active in the universe were searching for a Child-That-Was-Taken. (PROSE: Out of the Box)

Contra Tybort, I think this is relevant to the page, since it contextualizes the Timeless Child storyline in what was previously established about the non-Gallifreyan origin of regeneration, which is surely relevant to the Child's "legacy". But I'm open to other points of view, so I'm hoping to hear input from other users. – n8 (☎) 15:36, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

No, it is an entirely separate account to how the Time Lords first regenerated, and anything to the contrary is, to quote the behind the scenes section, "a fan theory". That is why it's irrelevant to a page on the Timeless Child from series 12.

Also in my mind (and maybe discussions to the contrary in regard to including Faction Paradox can clear this up), equating Great Houses with the reference in the Virgin New Adventures is itself a violation of rule 2 (which is how I also described Out of the Box in Special:Diff/3389523), given how Mad Norwegian Press is not a BBC licencee. The term biodata isn't even mentioned in The Timeless Children that I'm aware of. -- Tybort (talk page) 17:00, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Out of the Box is perhaps another matter (there is nothing in the text to connect the Child-That-Was-Taken to the Sun Builders at all, save BTS implication), but as regards equation between the Great Houses and the Time Lords — particularly the Time Lords of the VNAs and EDAs — please familiarise yourself with T:HOMEWORLD. To quote the most relevant passage, which actually uses this particular case as an example:

For example, tthe Faction Paradox series continues the story of the War in Heaven, a time war established in the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures as being fought between the Time Lords of Gallifrey and the Enemy. In PROSE: Lungbarrow, the Time Lords were established to have ruling clans known as the Great Houses. The Faction Paradox series licensed the concept of the "Great Houses" from Marc Platt, and of "the War in Heaven" from Lawrence Miles — and carried on writing about the War between the Enemy and "members of the Great Houses", whose homeworld is now only ever mentioned as just that... "the Homeworld".

Because stories licensed to use both terms, "the members of the Great Houses" and "the Time Lords", already equated the former with the latter, only one page is required for "Homeworlders" and "Time Lords", and information about "the Homeworld of the Great Houses" belongs on Gallifreyan history.T:HOMEWORLD

Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 17:02, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Whether or not I fully agree or understand, I concede that that is standing policy on the specific matter of the Homeworld and Great Houses. Thank you. -- Tybort (talk page) 17:15, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

While it's usually agreed to violate T:NO SELF REF (though I'm not sure it does), during the most recent attempt by someone to relitigate the status of FP on our now invisible forums it was explicitly mentioned by a friend of Lars Pearson that they licensed the concept of the Great Houses from Platt. Platt, being a contractor, owns the IP to the specific conception of the "Great Houses" found in Lungbarrow, due to how the BBC wrote the contracts for the work during this the time period. Platt equated the Great Houses with the political structure of Gallifrey in the fully licensed Lungbarrow, so the Great Houses as they're found in Faction Paradox are the political structure of Gallifrey, even if the series Faction Paradox can't use the term "Gallifrey". Najawin ☎ 17:42, 17 January 2023 (UTC)