Talk:The Investigator (series)

Coverage

As the first story of this comic crosses over with Doctor Who with the use of Unity City then should the whole series not be considered valid? Anastasia Cousins ☎ 16:54, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure, since we don't cover all of Lady Penelope because of Mr. Steelman ^[+]Loading...["Mr. Steelman (comic story)"] being a crossover. It might be worth consideration, though, since one of the characters in the series does have Unity City as an explicit part of their backstory. (Also I changed your squiggly brackets around "Unity City" to square ones, since squiggly ones are used for templates, so weren't linking to the page properly) Cookieboy 2005 ☎ 16:59, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

(thank you for the correction in regards to the brackets) the Investigators is an original to TVC21 strip and has no prior existence before the crossover thus the characters and concepts could all be argued to be DWU Who concepts like Unity City or Astraso I propose that the series is not so much a crossover as a spin off from these Doctor Who Universe Concepts.Anastasia Cousins ☎ 17:21, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

(To be fair, Mr. Steelman ^[+]Loading...["Mr. Steelman (comic story)"] is the first piece of media released in the Thunderbirds franchise) Cookieboy 2005 ☎ 17:43, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

the validity of Thunderbirds has always been skirted around on this wiki and whilst I think the time to discuss it is soon it would definitely need a major forum. However I feel that the Investigators should be a more clear cut example as there is no significant documentation anywhere else on the web (and thus won’t be stepping on any other wiki’s pages) and it has no major franchise or remakes to contend with. It is simply a comic which spins off from a doctor who concept and was to the best of my knowlage never reprinted. Anastasia Cousins ☎ 18:16, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm less keen on mass TV21 coverage on Tardis these days but I'm happy with the extent of our coverage currently. I think we're probably at the maximum of what we should be covering on the site unless we adopt a different philosophy. (In an ideal world I'd like TV21 to be covered through interwiki linking across several wikis, including the Thunderbirds Wiki and a separate TV21 Wiki for the series and features too small to sustain sites of their own, but this is besides the main point.)

The what-is and what-is-not covered of it all is already fairly arbitrary when it comes to TV21. The simple fact is everything published before January 1967 definitely passes Rule 4 (and debatably so after that point) and it is pretty much luck of the draw whether any given story features something which this Wiki defines as a "DWU concept". The logic I used when originally going through TV21 was that any concept which debuted in a Dalek story would count as the Daleks are, of all things, one of the most firmly rooted in the Doctor Who universe.

This is fine but I don't think it's a terribly good idea to extend that logic and count concepts which debuted in e.g. Unity City stories as belonging to the DWU. As I alluded to above, there was no intent specifically tying a concept to the DWU when it appeared in the Stop Press panel of a Daleks story. That space was allocated as a teaser on an almost random basis to the Stingray, Fireball XL5 or Thunderbirds comics (and others) published the following week. If a concept was first mentioned in that panel, I've classed it as a DWU concept but I accept that it's arbitrary. Extending the definition beyond that just increases that randomness of the gaps in our selective coverage and, honestly, Unity City is prevalent enough that it's probably just easier to think about covering the 1965-7 era wholesale at that point.

All that said, the lack of documentation elsewhere on the web and the size of its franchise are both good points. Aside from the introductory short story, there were only two eight-part comics published before the end of the series so I wouldn't push back too hard if these two stories were grandfathered in. Do bear in mind, though, that the UEI was subsequently integrated into the shared universe and has quite a few scattered mentions in later features.

Hopefully all this makes sense and I don't sound like too much of a spoilsport. There are lots of Investigator-related pages that still need creating if that's an area your interested in, not to mention everything from elsewhere in TV21. --Borisashton ☎ 19:45, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

I think one of the main characters of the series having Unity City as a big part of their background is a fairly conclusive point in favour of that character, at least, being a DWU element, if we are to consider Unity City a DWU element. The lack of documentation on the web, the fact it's a TV21 original, and also it being fairly short are all other points in favour of its coverage, as Boris said. Aquanafrahudy 📢 🖊️ 20:18, 16 June 2024 (UTC)