Talk:Sentient oil

Rename argumentation

Here is the relevant part of the dialog starting from around 35:50:

Doctor: "Intelligent oil. Super intelligent space oil. No! Part of the ship itself. Shape-shifting fluid that becomes anything it needs to be."

Then later, around 36:30:

Doctor: "A left-behind droplet of a liquid spaceship." Amorkuz ☎ 21:32, April 22, 2017 (UTC)

Ah yes, I picked up on this on a rewatch, and totally forgot to bring it up here. This is indeed part of a liquid spaceship, as the Doctor explains, rather than simply oil left behind from a regular solid one. It's a shapeshifting liquid ship? Apparently? I suppose liquid spaceship might indeed be the way to go here.
×   SOTO contribs ×°/↯/•]   💬•| {/-//:   21:39, April 22, 2017 (UTC)

Strictly speaking and for the record, it is not the whole spaceship. But it can act like one. And there is no page called "liquid spaceship" so far. Seems like making it "liquid spaceship part" or "shape-shifting liquid spaceship part" would just make matters unnecessarily complicated. Amorkuz ☎ 21:46, April 22, 2017 (UTC)

Maybe we want to cover a general concept introduced here (and maybe elsewhere) at liquid spaceship, and have this specific spacecraft part at somewhere like spaceship puddle? Spacecraft puddle? Something puddle? Liquid spaceship droplet? Might be helpful to differentiate this particular creature, with Heather as its pilot, and liquid spaceship as a spacecraft type.
×   SOTO contribs ×°/↯/•]   💬•| {/-//:   21:50, April 22, 2017 (UTC)

Okay, so in principle, we have four different objects here: (1) the type of spaceships consisting of shape-shifting liquid; (2) the whole original individual spaceship, (3) the left-over puddle before consuming Heather and (4) the left-over puddle merged with Heather. Problem is that (1) and (2) are based on speculation, the Doctor's speculation but still: no one ever saw them. I would be hesitant to make pages for them right now. Also, the spaceship itself confirmed that Heather is the pilot, so it seems wrong to create a separate page for (4). But it is true that liquid spaceship seems more like a generic page for the type of spaceship. Well, if this is an individual spaceship, perhaps, it should simply be dabbed: Liquid spaceship (The Pilot)? Amorkuz ☎ 22:07, April 22, 2017 (UTC)

The reason I don't like names with "puddle" in them is because it was a temporary state of this thing. So it does not reflect fully what it is. Amorkuz ☎ 22:10, April 22, 2017 (UTC)

Just as a guess, but sometime this season I presume that we're going to see "Heather" again. We'll learn what the oil is and what that raspy-voice and arm belonged to. It's probably then that we'll be most likely to get the thing's real name. OS25 (Talk) 22:14, April 22, 2017 (UTC)

Liquid spaceship (The Pilot) is an enticing option. 3 and 4 are, in terms of how we tend to cover things, the same thing, while 3 may be considered a part of 2, I suppose. Does the Doctor not confirm liquid spaceships? Maybe another story does.
×   SOTO contribs ×°/↯/•]   💬•| {/-//:   22:31, April 22, 2017 (UTC)

@OS25. I like what I think you're thinking. I just hate it when names are misleading. We don't know what it is, true. But we know it is not oil. Amorkuz ☎ 22:47, April 22, 2017 (UTC)

@SOTO. My hesitation comes from the fact that the Doctor can be wrong sometimes. It feels like they're brainstorming and he comes up with this idea of liquid spaceships. It feels more descriptive than based on his prior experiences. The "puddle" part we've all seen. But the ship itself for me is somewhere in OS25's realm of various possibilities. It can be taken in different directions. Maybe the original ship had a name. Maybe it was a sentient being. Maybe it's not a droplet but the only surviving part after the ship was destroyed? Maybe the full ship is not fully liquid? Even the fact that the scorch marks were left by a spacecraft is, in principle, the Doctor's speculation. Were it the last episode in the season, I would have agreed with this being the most straightforward explanation. But we all know how Moffat likes misdirection. What I'm saying is: the page for the "puddle" already exists. It should be as complete as possible. The page for liquid ships does not yet exist, unless I'm mistaken. It might pay off to wait with its creation until we know more. Amorkuz ☎ 22:47, April 22, 2017 (UTC)

Maybe this should be renamed "Liquid spaceship fragment"? JMC Red Dwarf ☎ 07:21, April 23, 2017 (UTC)

You know what? I like it, actually. It doesn't look half as bad as I thought a three-word name would. And it sounds much more decent that Liquid spaceship part. Amorkuz ☎ 15:46, April 23, 2017 (UTC)

With the recent reveal of Heather's name being The Pilot, it should officially be changed to The Pilot (entity) – The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:75.68.40.109 (talk • contribs) .

Heather's name is nowhere revealed as "The Pilot". She says "I'm the pilot. I can fly anything." in The Pilot the voice says "a pilot has been found". --DCLM ☎ 21:50, July 1, 2017 (UTC)

I vote for "liquid spaceship." We already have one non-Heather appearance of this species, so going for something with a wider net would be great. Spiralpolitic ☎ 06:28, March 22, 2018 (UTC)

I mean, given that "Heather" refers to herself as 'THE Pilot' ("I am The Pilot, I can fly anything"), why not refer to it as 'The Pilot' like the unsigned user did earlier? If that'll solve the issue between Liquid Spaceship/Sentient Oil (which doesn't sound as good imo). 2A02:C7D:250D:E900:B525:DFA:F99D:5306^{talk to me} 19:01, April 5, 2018 (UTC)

Individual?

Another point to argue is whether it should be removed from category:Individual time travellers, and added to category:Space-time vessels instead. What's the implication of the Doctor calling this intelligent? It is a sentient being? An individual? Sentient technology? Smart technology simply doing its function? It does seem to speak on its own a few times.
×   SOTO contribs ×°/↯/•]   💬•| {/-//:   21:52, April 22, 2017 (UTC)

Good point. And I have to say I was never clear on which robots are individuals and which are not. For instance, can/should the Category:kth century individuals be applied to a sentient robot or computer? What is the difference between Kamelion, who is an individual, and BOSS and WOTAN, who are computers? And why is K-9 an individual who has been inside the TARDIS but not an individual time traveller?

But back to the question at hand. It does speak up, seemingly with Briggs's voice, before consuming Heather. But it doesn't do anything until it consumes her. It doesn't time travel. It's waiting for the pilot. And the story makes it very clear that all the time-travelling actions are based on the last conscious thought of the human Heather. I'm starting to lean to Category:Space-time vessels treatment. Its behaviour is not much different from that of a lifepod programmed to take off as soon as crew member enters. Amorkuz ☎ 22:27, April 22, 2017 (UTC)

At the same time, though, Heather doesn't just pilot it - she becomes part of it. Her page quotes "Sentient oil" as the species she becomes after being human. This page is literally linked in the Species section on her page. The sentient oil (or whatever we want to call it) isn't just being controlled by Heather, it is Heather. Or rather, Heather is it. Heather is no longer a human, but becomes this other creature. Heather describes it as "a different kind of living" in The Doctor Falls. So all in all, I would argue that with Heather being this creature, she is as this creature a time traveler. So I guess that depends on whether we are seeing this as a species, and the species that Heather is - as is quoted on her page - or more, I don't know, as a merged but distinct entity. Either way though, it was made clear in the episode The Doctor Falls that Heather is no longer human, but has instead become something else; a different sort of life form. Despite still being herself, she's not still human. In the same episode, after Heather made Bill like her, Bill said "So I'm like you now? I'm not human anymore?" Heather said "I can make you human again." I think this helps confirm that neither of them are human anymore, at least in their current state. They are now this species, if we are considering this the page for the species... it is linked as such, on both Heather and Bill's pages. Anonymous2606 ☎ 10:20, 7 November 2022 (UTC)