Talk:Rassilon

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(Partial) split

In light of the recent splittings, I've taken interest in seeing how many pages could feasibly be split into their respective incarnations. Rassilon proved to be a particularly tricky case, in the sense that everything currently covered from their "early life" to their (first) death (covered now by the "Supposed death and survival" section) is extremely contradictory, and, honestly, makes it nearly impossible splitting.

However, from the moment Rassilon gets transferred to the Matrix onwards, his lives are far less contradictory (well, basically not at all) and are easily "splitable". Therefore, I'm proposing that we do exactly this. Leave all the contradictory/messier stuff here, where we currently make it into a coherent structure, and split only his post-death/resurrected incarnations, as follows:

• The overall page, which deals with everything up to "Supposed death and survival", and then link to his following incarnations
• Matrix Rassilon, which deals with all the stuff from his Matrix projections, until the moment of his resurrection during the Time War
• Resurrected Rassilon (fittingly), the incarnation that was resurrected on the early days of the Time War, but which soon regenerated into...
• War Rassilon (very obviously, not the only incarnation of Rassilon to be involved in the war, but then again so aren't the War Doctor and the War Master, and it's all-too-clear who we're talking about when we say these names, I think the same could be said about this one once we get used to the names)
• Ultimate Rassilon, who lived the final days of the Time War, and whose "biggest" act was trying to bring the Ultimate Sanction
• Banished Rassilon, as the two stories he appear in are partially motivated by his banishment from Gallifrey

Now, finally, as these are not "oficial" names, we'd use {{conjecture}} on the top of the pages. Even then, as our pages of the Monk, the Rani and all the others have by now proved, splitting by incarnations when possible improve our coverage of the stories these Time Lords are involved with, so I propose we do the same for Rassilon. OncomingStorm12th ☎ 23:45, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

My only real issue with this is that I'm not sure about the names of the "War" Rassilon and the "Ultimate" Rassilon. As someone who is not familiar with the Gallifrey audio series, when I first saw the "War" title, I thought of Timothy Dalton's incarnation. And if I hadn't already read the list to get some context, I wouldn't have even guessed which Rassilon the "Ultimate" one was, being more familiar with the term "Final Sanction".

Also, at what point in the Time War is the "War" Rassilon from? Is it possible that they are a younger version of the "Ultimate" incarnation? LauraBatham ☎ 03:02, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

An excellent point made by User:LauraBatham. Didn't the individual Rassilons get nicknames in Pandoric's Box? Maybe they could be used, since they are used in-universe and in a licensed stoiry? BananaClownMan 03:16, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

The point about nicknames is a fair one, but I don't think there's any doubt that the Richard Armitage Rassilon is a different incarnation from the Timothy Dalton Rassilon. They sound different and look completely different on the cover. When they're simply recasting a TV character, Big Finish Productions don't usually use the new actor's face on the cover (the one exception is the Bradley First Doctor Adventures line, and even then, only because those actors had previously appeared on TV in those roles, sorta). And if they did, you'd think they'd have made Armitage look moderately like Dalton, instead of giving him a beard. No, they're definitely different. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 11:40, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Ditto on what Scrooge said. Apart from both being war incarnations, there's nothing (even in Armitage's announcement that he was the same as the Dalton incarnation, so I'd advise a "separate-until-proven-same" vision in this.

As for the (valid) concerns raised by LauraBatham: I can understand how in hindsight one'd assume "War Rassilon" to be the one from the television because, despite T:NPOV, we know TV will have a wider reach than audio stories. And I see your angle of not associating Ultimate Rassilon to the Final Sanction, but ultimately, our page is set at Ultimate Sanction (and that was indeed what was used on the TV episode, so arguably that could be the most widespread name, via my last note.

That said, I'd say that I can't see much of a better name for either of these incarnations (but please feel free to suggest a different one if you can think of one). And, push comes to shove, even if a user comes to War Rassilon expecting Dalton, it'll only be a click away via the navbox.

Now for BCM's suggestion of the Pandoric's Box for monikers, all they give us (afaik) is "Crewcut" for Dalton and "Baldy" for Sumpter, which, while obviously both valid, I'd personally prefer not to use. OncomingStorm12th ☎ 15:18, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Actually, both 'Ultimate Sanction' and 'Final Sanction' are used at different points in The End of Time. When proposing the vote, Rassilon states that the choice is "Whether we die here, today, or return to the waking world and complete the Ultimate Sanction"; but later, when voicing his intentions to the Tenth Doctor, he declares that "we will initiate the Final Sanction. The End of Time will come, at my hand." Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 15:50, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

I support this proposal but I feel that Rassilon's early life should be covered on Rassilon's early life, much like The Doctor's early life. It seems much tidier this way. Bongo50 (aka Bongolium500) ☎ 15:54, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

It's not really "early life" though. It's the entirety of his (first) cycle of life. Perhaps something like Rassilon's first regeneration cycle would be more accurate, if a bit unwieldy. The section on his "supposed death and survival" says he died in his 13th incarnation, so we do know he had but one cycle. Danochy ☎ 22:13, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Good thought but no cigar — a key issue is that Lungbarrow suggests that Rassilon and Omega never had regeneration. In that account (and possibly others), the Founders were able to splice regeneration into new generations of Gallifreyans, but not grant regenerations to anyone who'd been born as a regular Gallifreyan — including themselves. Thus the Five Doctors Rassilon is construed as the only Rassilon there ever was until the Time War. This is one of the main reasons (though not the only reason) we can't split the pre-Matrix stuff. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 22:18, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Right, in which case someone who has read that book really ought to add that vital piece of information to that section. In that case, I agree that accounts of pre-Time War Rassilon should largely remain on this page, although that's not to say that individual and distinct incarnations in that era can't be split off. Although I currently see little benefit in doing so. Danochy ☎ 22:27, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

I think we should create Rassilon's early life as a place to but the first bit of the biography. It looks very odd to me to have just that bit in the section while the rest of the main Rassilon page discusses all his incarnations in the appearance and personality sections. Although, according to some accounts, Rassilon was in his thirteenth incarnation when he died all of this stuff deals with very early Gallifreyan history prior to the creation of the Matrix so it is "early" in that sense. I believe this will also help the other sections if we split this off because the page can specifically focus on the idea of "Rassilon the Founder" rather than his depiction after any of his revivals. Additionally, there are two conflicting first incarnations so The Doctor's early life is ample precedent for this. Borisashton ☎ 11:38, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

First Rani / First Tecteun is one thing, but I am completely opposed to speculative titles like "Banished Rassilon" that are used nowhere in-universe or in fandom. Our job as a wiki is descriptive, not prescriptive, and inventing conjectural names for Time Lord incarnations in the hopes that they catch on is an abuse of our position! It will undermine fans' (and authors'!) already-low trust in the wiki, not to mention how it will make search impossible: there's no way the not we can be counted on to know that we call Timothy Dalton's incarnation "Ultimate Rassilon" as opposed to "War Rassilon". In contrast, not only is the existing common practice of dabbing by first appearance consistent with how Rassilon is currently linked throughout the wiki, it also better lends itself to searchability and accessibility for casual and new fans (ie 99.99% of wiki users). If we're determined to debate over names for individual incarnations, I suggest it be on the individual talk pages like Talk:Rassilon (The End of Time), after this page has been split into incarnation pages titled by appearance. And I think this would be a good precedent to set overall, given how getting everyone to agree on names for other Time Lords' incarnations has already indefinitely delayed the long-overdue splitting of some pages. – n8 (☎) 13:56, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree that if we are to split the page, using the first appearance as a dab would be the most appropriate way of naming the different incarnations, such as what was done with the Monk. LauraBatham ☎ 14:04, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

While I agree with Nate that the discussion of names for individual pages can and probably should be made after the pages are split, I strongly disagree on the notion that we can't "make up" descriptive names for individual incarnations of Time Lords. I understand his hesitation on the matter, but when I did it (or if anyone else were to do it), it wasn't out of vanity or to "hopes that they catch on". Part of our coverage is assuring our text flows propperly.

Multi-Time Lord stories are, more than ever, a popular thing. Trying to describe a story like Masterful using only "The Master met the Master in the Master's castle and then Missy arrived" is horrible, and certainly less informative then "The War Master met the Decayed Master in the Saxon Master's castle and then Missy arrived". This is a specific situation, yes, but my point is: inevitably having descriptors help our coverage of stories. Or are we to pretend that Battle for the Movellan ship, Andrea Yates' World and etc are intuitive, and the people most like don't arrive at most in-universe pages via story pages, or from other event/character pages? Most people could easily arrive on Ultimate Rassilon (or whatever title we come up with) via two paths: searching for Rassilon, and then seeing a handy link to it right below his infobox, or by visiting The End of Time (TV story) and seeing "Ultimate Rassilon" on the infobox.

Anyway, I'll reiterate that I agree this is a discussion that can be held at a later time, as Rassilon's are easy to dab by story. OncomingStorm12th ☎ 15:04, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Those use cases would work in any naming scenario – although I'm curious how the navbox would be formatted so users could find an incarnation without knowing where it fits in the timeline – but there's also the case where one can type "Rassilon" in the search bar, see Rassilon (The End of Time) pop up as a suggestion, and go, "Ahh, of course!" In any case, it seems we agree on practical steps in the short term, so I'll withhold the rest of my comments for later, more appropriate talk pages :) – n8 (☎) 15:23, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Alright, well, it looks like there is a consensus that the pages for Rassilon's Matrix iteration, and post-War regenerations, should be split off. I hereby rule that we move forward with this to clarify the situation, using dabbed names for the time being. Once this work is completed, we can implement a second phase of this discussion, discussing alternative naming schemes and precisley how to deal with pre-Matrix stuff — but there is no reason those issues should delay work which we've all already agreed can be done.

@User:OncomingStorm12th, feel free to move your sandboxes to the main namespace using the dabbed names. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 01:59, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Don Warrington in the infobox gallery

I feel that Don Warrington should appear in the infobox tabbed gallery. Problem is, I think there's only one visual image of him (the cover of The Next Life) and it's not exactly the most clear photo. Any suggestions? Fractal Doctor ☎ 11:06, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

I wouldn't say it's any less clear than Christine Summerfield's image. Jack "BtR" Saxon ☎ 13:38, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Good point, Jack "BtR" Saxon. I agree. I think Don Warrington should be added in. Fractal Doctor ☎ 14:19, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Complete split

We have a new category for Category:Rassilon's regenerations, and some of the pages look a bit incomplete without there being pages for Rassilon's pre-resurrection incarnations. Ages ago, I compiled a table of how we might split the earlier Rassilons, but never got around to posting it, and this seems like a good time.

The opening of the earlier split ignored pre-resurrection Rassilons with the justification that "Rassilon proved to be a particularly tricky case, in the sense that everything currently covered from their "early life" to their (first) death (covered now by the "Supposed death and survival" section) is extremely contradictory, and, honestly, makes it nearly impossible splitting." This made sense for a climate in which the act of splitting was more contentious, but nowadays we have lots of incarnation pages. Contradiction is generally a reason for not against splitting; many of these accounts have different incarnations of Rassilon doing the same things in different orders for different reasons, and it would give more clarity if we gave them different pages.

The current incarnations section has the DWM Rassilon treated as two separate incarnations, the first incarnation seen in The Scrolls of Rassilon is equated with a modern BBC Books incarnation who is textually not Rassilon's first incarnation, and the Monstrous Beauty female Rassilon gets one sentence in the same paragraph which describes the appearances of other first incarnations of Rassilon. This isn't working.

By my count, if all the different versions of pre-Last Great Time War Rassilons were to be split into different pages, it would look like this:

Page name	Description
Rassilon's first incarnation	A general page similar to the Doctor's ninth incarnation, detailing the possible first Rassilons: Rassilon (Monstrous Beauty), Rassilon (Star Death), First Rassilon (The Legacy of Gallifrey), First Rassilon (The Scrolls of Rassilon), Ras (Omega), and Rassilon (The Five Doctors).
Rassilon (Monstrous Beauty)	Seen in Monstrous Beauty, a pre-regeneration “first Rassilon”, who may be a relative of Rassilon rather than the man himself according to The Shame.
Rassilon (Star Death)	Appears in Star Death, The Tides of Time, The Stockbridge Horror, Catalogue of Events, The Final Chapter, Wormwood, The Infinity Doctors, and as a statue in Supremacy of the Cybermen. In original sources doesn’t seem to ever regenerate and dies within 20 years of founding society, but in later ones is placed in the lineup of Rassilon’s many incarnations.
first Rassilon (The Legacy of Gallifrey)	A brown-haired compatriot of Omega. A character in an in-universe unreliable text.
second Rassilon (The Legacy of Gallifrey)	A younger, fair-haired man. A character in an in-universe unreliable text.
first Rassilon (The Scrolls of Rassilon)	The bearded man seen in an illustration in the story. A character in an in-universe unreliable text.
second Rassilon (The Scrolls of Rassilon)	A character in an in-universe unreliable text.
Ras (Omega)	Appears in flashbacks in Omega, played by Conrad Westmaas! Despite the story's ambiguity and tricky layers, the Doctor acknowledges at the end that these memories are genuine. Its worth noting that other voice actors in the flashbacks (namely, Vandekirian) don't correspond to the in-universe actors who play those characters in the present parts of the story, further suggesting the memories are genuine. In Zagreus, Charley takes this incarnation's place in a Matrix simulation of his lifetime. He is confirmed here to be the first incarnation, and his history involves a very distinct version of the Vampire War. He studies “alternative presents” of his own time which are identified elsewhere in the story as being the continuities of other Doctor Who mediums, placing this version of Gallifreyan history as being alternate to other depictions.
Rassilon (The Enemies of Time)	One of Rassilon’s younger incarnations who was more tyrannical then his later selves. An independent matrix imprint of this incarnation features in The Enemies of Time.
Rassilon (Pandoric’s Box)	A young, optimistic man, who is new to being Lord President, seen in Pandoric's Box.
Harpist (The Five Doctors)	Seen in the painting in The Five Doctors. Goth Opera describes the fellow as one of Rassilon’s “guises”.
Rassilon (Jorus and the Voganauts)	An incarnation similar to, but confirmed as a distinct incarnation from the Rassilon in The Multi-Faceted War. Appears in Jorus and the Voganauts.
Rassilon (The Multi-Faceted War)	A recently-regenerated, bearded Rassilon at the end of the Vampire War. Appears in The Multi-Faceted War
Rassilon (The Lost Dimension)	see section below
Rassilon (The Five Doctors)	The “Mutton-chops” Rassilon who appears at the end of The Five Doctors, as well as Pandoric's Box, Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible, Lungbarrow, Blood Harvest, The Eight Doctors, Christmas on a Rational Planet, Interference, Do You Have a Licence to Save this Planet?, and as on ornaments in the Eighth Doctor's TARDIS in Doctor Who. By most accounts the thirteenth incarnation, but by Marc Platt's 1990s stories the first and only incarnation. Platt's novels show a young Rassilon who eventually becomes this Rassilon. He is described to live on as a “spectre” in The Five Doctors and The Eight Doctors. Notably, Five Doctors does not once mention the Matrix or APC net, with the idea that the spectral Rassilon is definitively a 'Matrix Rassilon' comes from later canonwelding with Rassilon’s active unseen role in The Invasion of Time.
Rassilon (Seasons of Fear)	Don Warrington's Rassilon, who primarily appears as a Matrix projection but is indicated by several sources to be one of Rassilon's old faces. He appears in the early early 2000s Eighth Doctor Big Finish stories, plus is depicted in a statue in Supremacy of the Cybermen, plus the business in The Timeless Children. Zagreus indicates that it is this incarnation's body that lies in the Tomb of Rassilon; this could either be taken to indicate that Don Warrington was meant to be playing the Five Doctors Rassilon or that, given the various continuity demarcations of the story, the Big Finish version of Gallifreyan history has him as the final Rassilon. The fact that we have visual sources depicting him as a separate incarnation regardless means that he should get his own page.
Rassilon (The End of Time)	Timothy Dalton's Rassilon, who is depicted in several 2010s sources as being the Rassilon of ancient history.

There are three issues which may require more discussion:

1. Matrix Rassilon currently covers three different Rassilons, all of whom would get separate pages if we split pre-resurrection Rassilon. With any other Time Lord (see Fugitive Doctor and Ollistra (The Side of the Angels)), we don’t usually treat Matrix appearances as separate characters. Complications are heightened by Terrance Dicks intending the Five Doctors Rassilon to be something other than a Matrix projection (a Time Lord ghost), with this interpretation appearing in Dicks' novels to the end of the 1990s.

Matrix Rassilon could function in a similar way to The Doctor's ninth incarnation, being a hub for the three characters, as well as instances which are more general or ambiguous, like The Invasion of Time. To my knowledge, The Legacy of Gallifrey is the only story to equate the Matrix's Star Death Rassilon with its Five Doctors Rassilon. Don Warrington's Rassilon is also inspired by earlier depictions of Matrix Rassilons, but narratively discontinuous with them. Overall, the three Matrix Rassilons are divided more than they overlap.

A panel of The Lost Dimension where Rass resembles Timothy Dalton.

2. The Lost Dimension features a sequence on Ancient Gallifrey with a Rassilon who is an older grey-haired man whose facial details shift across the story, at one point directly resembling Timothy Dalton. There are two relevant quotes from the story for this phenomenon, which connect it to author Nick Abadzis' Ocean of Time concept: “For some reason, even now, my brain struggles to focus properly on him. Am I remembering him right? His face… I’m left with impressions of strength, power. Like the Doctor, he contains multitudes.” and “I’m still not sure I’m processing all of this [these events] correctly. Like with Rassilon, my impressions have become slippery: like the details are changing, subtly, behind my back.” I would propose having a page called Rassilon (The Lost Dimension) which covers the events of the story and all of its subtle variations on Rassilon's appearance, while also acknowledging Rassilon (The End of Time) as one of these faces (with the story seeming to suggest that with Gallifreyan history constantly shifting, the Lost Dimension Rassilon is sometimes Dalton's Rassilon.)

3. Rassilon appears in a generic/unclear incarnation in The Fractures, Remembrance of the Daleks, and The Record of Rassilon. While close to the Platt mythos, the Remembrance novelisation shows a version of Time Lord history where the triumvirate can regenerate and so its Rassilon is uncertain. Given that the comic depicts a period of Ancient Rassilon's life which other sources depict him having Dalton's face in, The Fractures should be mentioned on the page for the Lost Dimension Rassilon as another example of the Dalton incarnation being murky in the past.

Thoughts? TheChampionOfTime ☎ 18:07, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

This is very impressive, but I have two major concerns, plus some niggles.

The first and strongest of the concerns is that I do think Matrix Rassilon should remain a page in some form; that even if we give the 'real' Warrington Rassilon his own page, Zagreus should not be considered an appearance by that character. By at least some depictions, the ghost-in-the-Matrix Rassilon is a very different beast from ordinary "Matrix projections of a specific Time Lord incarnations" — he's the original's mind, taking on the appearances of past incarnations as avatars. Really more like the Curator turning into Matt Smith or Colin Baker, than like the Matrix Jo Martin. We're not dealing with virtual projections of specific regeneratons as with the Fugitive in Timeless Children or Trey: "Rassilon's time as a disembodied mind in the Matrix/APC Net/etc." is (by some accounts) a continuous period which exists between the death of his last original body, and his Time War resurrection. I think it would be very problematic not to have a single page giving all that biographical info in order, even if we also have some "while in the Matrix, the dead Rassilon's mind used this face as a virtual avatar in such-and-such circumstances" coverage at e.g. Rassilon (Star Death).

My other big concern (pun not intended) is that I really, really think there should be a single place where readers can get a linear runthrough all the actions attributed to the original-lifetime Rassilon regardless of which face he was wearing. Many of our readers will care much less about the specifics of which actions are more-or-less-implicitly ascribed to each incarnation than they will about getting the full picture. Indeed, the lines about the Lost Dimension-Rassilon seem to be coming from exactly this perspective: "which face did what is somewhat up in the air, the core of Who The Original Rassilon Was And What He Did is the important thing". And if you send Moore!Rassilon off over there and Grussell!Rassilon off over here and Platt Rassilon way over yonder, you lose the ability to highlight the ways in which all these accounts of the Eye of Harmony, Omega, etc. stuff are riffing on each other and — in many cases — trying to more or less fit in together even as they fudge which face did what and how many there were. Moreover, there may be relatively few stories with on-page appearances by unspecified Rassilons, but what your table obscures is the large number of off-hand references to "Rassilon having done such-and-such things in the Dark Times" which don't give us a jot of information about the face he was wearing at the time. Perhaps a Rassilon's original lifetime page could be created, in the mould of The Doctor's early life etc.? With duplicate information being no concern.

In small niggles: the deDaltonified-but-Daltonesque grey-haired-man Rassilon from The Lost Dimension also appears in a flashback to an unrelated Ancient Gallifrey event in COMIC: Gangland ^[+]Loading...["Gangland (comic story)"]. Not sure how to fit this onto your proposed coverage scheme at Rassilon (The Lost Dimension), though I suppose it could be done.

And surely First Rassilon (The Legacy of Gallifrey) is simply meant to Rassilon (Star Death). It's a DWM short story a couple of years after DWM ran Star Death — which was, after all, in black and white, so as worn as his features may look, his beard and bushy eyebrows could very well be brown rather than wizard-white. The text of Legacy specifically refers to Rassilon getting younger upon regenerating into the fair-haired "Second Rassilon", aligning with the idea that Russell would have been picturing John Stokes's gaunt old blighter.

Suddenly, before the astonished eyes of the Council and Chancellery guards, Rassilon's body changed, the face growing younger, the brown hair turning fair, and the body altering its shape.PROSE: The Legacy of Gallifrey

With all that said, though, do take the above in the spirit of constructive criticism, I think this proposal is very fine work and look forward to a refined version being implemented. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 19:20, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. I was hoping for a response like this, and so speedy! Yea, Rassilon's original lifetime was mooted back in the original discussion, and its still a good idea. Most of the Rassilon page's contents at the moment wouldn't really be able to be transferred to individual incarnation pages, so definitely spreading things out and a bit of repetition is good. Same with Matrix Rassilon, that works IMO as a hub page. I just don't think pages like that can ever be linear, since the pieces have been arranged in every which order.

Can you give me a source for Matrix Rassilon taking on the appearance of past incarnations and swapping between them? As far as I can tell, The Legacy of Gallifrey and Zagreus might be the only stories to both depict Rassilon having multiple incarnations and depict him surviving as a Matrix being. Legacy isn't very specific on what the Matrix Rassilon looks like, with most details suggesting the Richard Mathews Rassilon but his involvement with the Matrix Lords suggesting the DWM Rassilon, but interpretation is ultimately left to the reader. Zagreus has Leela see Don Warrington's Matrix Rassilon and then go to his tomb and remark that the corpse looks just like him, indicating him to be the last incarnation (although, Neverland has the Doctor remember the events of The Five Doctors, but the story is also the first time he's seen the face of Warrington's Rassilon.) In general, stories with versions of Matrix Rassilon tend to imply that he is in the form that he died in (that's certainly the case for The Tides of Time, which was Rassilon's second ever appearance!), and its only in later stories that those faces are clarified into being incarnations somewhere in the middle of his cycle.

I also disagree with the notion of Matrix Rassilon being a continuous narrative period which spans the three faces. There's something there, in that The Legacy of Gallifrey depicts the Tomb of Rassilon version with the Matrix Lords, but it doesn't go so far as to mention the events of Star Death, The Tides of Time, or The Stockbridge Horror, the events of the DWM Rassilon's life. Otherwise, I don't think there's another appearance of Richard Mathews' ghost which connects it to the Matrix. When the Warrington Rassilon meets the Eighth Doctor in Neverland, they both say they've never talked to each other before, and this was being written by the same guy who wrote the Eighth Doctor meeting the DWM Matrix Rassilon a few years earlier (and that story seems to indicate that Rassilon and the Doctor haven't seen each other since the Doctor's fifth incarnation). Plus, Zagreus literally says that its in a different continuity from DWM. Therefore, the three Matrix Rassilons do not form a narrative, and a page on Don Warrington's Rassilon should list all the times Warrington played him as a Matrix ghost as appearances because his character living and dead is a distinct singular thing.

Responding to the last bits, I checked Gangland again, and to my eyes that's definitely just Timothy Dalton. Especially when I look at how the artist depicts Jenna Coleman and Peter Capaldi, and how they stylize faces, I can only see a direct Dalton when I look at that Rass.

Star Death has a large team in a fleet of spaceships harnessing a black hole created at the moment of a star’s collapse. The Legacy of Gallifrey depicts Omega's sacrifice as involving a pre-existing black hole which Omega goes out to detonate while Rassilon stays on Gallifrey and takes all the credit, implying it to be a team of two people. By saying that Rassilon is taking all the credit, the story is already indicating a secret nastier history underneath an official history, so I don't think the text is implying that the events of Star Death are being obfuscated by its in-universe historian, especially when Rassilon's a noble guy in that comic. The personalities don't match. Coupled with the brown hair thing, when DWM Rassilon is clearly old man white in terms of hair texture and shading, I don't think the two sources fit to give any incarnational placement on the DWM Rassilon. Gary Russell is not a subtle man, and he was but a boy at this time. TheChampionOfTime ☎ 00:46, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

“I also disagree with the notion of Matrix Rassilon being a continuous narrative period which spans the three faces…”

I think you may have misunderstood me. My main point isn't that there are accounts which conflate the three faces into a single continuum, as such — but simply that each one is presented as "the uploaded mind of the real, overall Rassilon", albeit appearing with the face of their last incarnation, rather than "a virtual simulation of a specific incarnation of Rassilon".

The thing is, Big Finish frequently use these incarnation-specific 'Matrix projections' who are simply advanced probabilistic projections of a specific incarnation of a Time Lord who isn't dead; the Fugitive Doctor in Timeless Children is an example of that idea. She isn't a mental upload of the real Doctor, who is alive and talking to her, nor indeed a full backup of the Fugitive as-was's memories (she explicitly "doesn't have the answers" to Thirteen's questions about where the Fugitive really fits in).

But, despite the similar depiction and terminology, that whole thing is, to my mind, completely different from the separate recurring plot point that dying Time Lords' minds (incorporating their memories of all their incarnations) might be uploaded into the Matrix after death, and, if necessary, downloaded back again. I don't think the way we do coverage in one case should dictate coverage in the other. How Big Finish depict Razzy's Time War resurrection in AUDIO: Desperate Measures ^[+]Loading...["Desperate Measures (audio story)"] definitely casts it as them recovering "the mind of Rassilon" as uploaded post-mortem, not downloading "the virtual template of his last incarnation"; it is in this sense that I spoke of Rassilon's existence in the Matrix as being, by that source, a linear period in Rassilon's life, postdating his thirteenth incarnation and predating his first War body — a continuous experience that the resurrected Rassilon remembers — rather than the "Matrix-projection" thing of hypothetical extrapolations of how-a-guy-would-act-in-certain-circumstances that we more typically cover in the simulated incarnation's #Legacy section.

Though I do also strongly think, for the record, that the Matrix Lords tie-in in Legacy is operative with regards to asserting that the text should be viewed in connection to Tides of Time, and thus, as indirectly suggesting that the singular uploaded mind has been known to appear both the way it did in DWM, and the way it did in Five Doctors. (Furthermore, I'd argue that what Zagreus is going for is that it was already Warrington's body in Five Doctors even though the Matrix ghost manifested as Mathews at the time; so in a backwards way it would still hint at avatar changeability.) But that's not essential to my "continuous period requiring its own page and spot in the navfobox incarnation-navigation template": the point is that "Rassilon's time as a Matrix ghost" is an atypical step in his life cycle (in the same way as "the Master's time as Eric Roberts"), rather than a discontinuous post-mortem evocation of specific prior incarnations.

Re: the Grussell First Rassilon, I could compromise on them having separate pages but having pointed language at both which highlights the Matrix Lord connection and thus says that "despite the discrepancies, this incarnation may thus have been interpreted as the same as…". I do think there's something there, though, and I'm not sure the discrepancies in how the Eye of Harmony experiment work justify considering them different characters. Legacy also gets some of the implications about Salyavin and Morbius in their original stories all wrong, but we don't create Salyavin (The Legacy of Gallifrey) and Morbius (The Legacy of Gallifrey)! --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 12:38, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

That’s a good point with regards to the Fugitive Matrix projection comparison! That makes sense. Rassilon in the Matrix is genuinely, wholly Rassilon in the same way that he is in the flesh.

My interpretation of what we're disagreeing on is whether the Rassilon seen in The Tides of Time would be primarily covered on Rassilon (Star Death) or Matrix Rassilon, whether the corpse and floating face of Rassilon seen in The Five Doctors would be primarily covered on separate pages, and so on. The reason we usually split Time Lords after they regenerate is that they become distinct characters, not the mere fact that a character dies. This conversation would be easier if the “Matrix Rassilon” had the markers of a distinct incarnation such as his own face or personality, like The Master (The TV Movie) does, but the three forms of Rassilon which appear as Matrix minds are depicted identically when they appear in the flesh (except for Don Warrington, who hasn’t really appeared in the flesh aside from quick references, and so we can't really say). If Matrix Rassilon in its current form had a personality section, it would describe three personalities, two of which would be continuous with the personality sections of pages for flesh incarnations of Rassilon. I notice that Eric Roberts’ Master page covers the Master’s time in the distinct form of Eric Roberts, and if we were following the Master chronologically we would then read Decayed Master, because the next period of the Master’s life has him revert to a previous form. If the Matrix Rassilons take the forms they died in, as the original sources indicate, then the “true mind of Rassilon” doesn’t change much, as these Rassilons would also have the memories of all their lives while they were corporeal.

Rassilon's resurrection is described in Engines of War as him being "encouraged to take corporeal form once again", with the third person narration describing the Richard Mathews Rassilon as being the "previous incarnation" of Dalton's Rassilon. To me, that speaks to Rassilon's eternal sleep being a period of Mathews' Rassilon's life, rather than a distinct incarnation, but that's not necessarily indicative of how to treat Matrix Rassilon.

Sorry if I’m playing catch-up, but I see now that The Legacy of Gallifrey is central to considering Matrix Rassilon his own incarnation. It describes several of his incarnations, and when it gets to the end of the thirteenth Rassilon's life it says that Rassilon's mind is put in the Matrix, leaving his body empty to be put in the Tomb. Then, we are told “Rassilon was no more.” A page later, Rassilon returns to the narrative as a Matrix mind and he does a bunch of things, with these events making up most of our current page on Matrix Rassilon (which, I'll note, doesn't currently cover the events of The Tides of Time). Thus, since the story describes multiple incarnations of Rassilon and separates Rassilon's original lifetime from his time in the Matrix, you could take it to say that Matrix Rassilon is like an incarnation, this culmination of Rassilon's mind that you describe. I was too dismissive in my previous post of how much this Matrix Rassilon resembles the one seen in The Tides of Time, right up the Tides version of the Celestial Intervention Agency being placed in reference to TV continuity; the DWM Rassilon appears in the story as the Matrix Rassilon, even if I don’t think he appears as that story's First Rassilon. Now, you say the story's “indirectly suggesting” that the Matrix Rassilon switches between his Mathews and Star Death appearances, but… since it's not a visual story and since lots of things could be interpreted as being indirectly suggested, one could also interpret it as saying that the beardy Tides Rassilon looks and is exactly the same as the beardy Mathews Rassilon, or… since Legacy doesn't actually mention Rassilon's appearance at the end of The Five Doctors and since The Five Doctors doesn't use the Matrix to explain its Rassilon appearance, one could take it to say that the story's Matrix Rassilon is an incarnation of Rassilon introduced in The Tides of Time (the 4-D War trilogy doesn't seem to be part of Russel's history) who is distinct from the Mathews Rassilon (although, it's an unlikely interpretation due to Legacy using similar “mind of Rassilon” terminology to Five Doctors). Any way you slice it, the Matrix Rassilon is continuous with a previously-introduced version of the character, and I don't believe retcons which contradict original stories should supercede what was originally said. I think this is best covered with duplicate content on Rassilon (Star Death), Rassilon (The Five Doctors), and the general event page of Rassilon in the Matrix, with other pages like Guardian of Time continuing to link to the general event page due to the ambiguity.

Re: Re: Grussel, the logic behind not creating Morbius (The Legacy of Gallifrey) is the reason I didn't propose the creation of Thirteenth Rassilon (The Legacy of Gallifrey) or Rassilon (Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible), because both are just Rassilon in the form of Mathews, with both accounts of the incarnation overlapping with the events of his original appearance. I don't see an overlap with any element of Star Death. Anyways, what you propose with regards to both Rassilon pages mentioning each other makes sense; those two versions of the character are more connected than most instances of Rassilon's first incarnation for the reasons you describe. That's a good plan. TheChampionOfTime ☎ 04:19, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Incarnations of Rassilon
Rassilon's original lifetime
Beyond corporeal life
Time War and onwards
Other realities
More ambiguous

I've put this together as a working model: how does it look?

Going back over the table, I noticed the "Harpist (The Five Doctors)" row, which I'd glossed over (sorry!). I'm confused. Isn't that pretty obviously an attempt at a likeness of Mathews? But fair enough on Legacy of Gallifrey possibly meaning to imply that Mathews is, as it were, the Hurndall to DWM-Beardy's Hartnell… though that calls into question your later assertion that Thirteenth Rassilon "is just Rassilon in the form of Mathews", doesn't it? (As a matter of fact, the harpist portrait actually looks pretty plausible as a midway point between DWM and Mathews…)

"If the Matrix Rassilons take the forms they died in, as the original sources indicate"… I'm not sure I agree. Again, surely, surely Zagreus ^[+]Loading...["Zagreus (audio story)"] is implying that Mathews in Five Doctors was indeed the selfsame Matrix Rassilon it features. From your recent edits it outright says that his private Matrix slice is connected to the Tower! And following that implication, that would mean that Mathews is a pre-Warrington incarnation as whom Rassilon appeared in Five Doctors (whose onscreen events are clearly valid-to Zagreus by assumption, surely we don't need to adjudicate that) even though per Zagreus's retcon the body of the final Rassilon was Warrington.

"To me, that speaks to Rassilon's eternal sleep being a period of Mathews's Rassilon's life, rather than a distinct incarnation, but that's not necessarily indicative of how to treat Matrix Rassilon." Does it? If Rassilon was invited to "take corporeal form again" then the suggestion is that he had left the Mathews body long ago. In a very literal sense he was no longer in that incarnation, because he was no longer incarnate in the first place.

Relatedly, I think part of our different knee-jerk approaches to the question of how to handle Matrix Razzy is the hard line you seem to draw between the "disembodied ghost Rassilon" interpretation and the "Rassilon's mind uploaded to the Matrix" option. Sometimes the "mind uploaded to the Matrix" idea is phrased in terms of a purely sci-fi "they scan the Time Lord's brain and run a virtual simulation of it in the big computer" terms, yes, but equally, sometimes it seems that it's more like the Matrix being a kind of pocket-dimensional afterlife in which Time Lords' dead souls/ghosts/etc. go. See for example The Book of the War ^[+]Loading...["The Book of the War (novel)"]'s caldera stuff, and Hell Bent ^[+]Loading...["Hell Bent (TV story)"] defining the Matrix as "a big computer made of ghosts, in a crypt, guarded by more ghosts" and, in an earlier line, as "like a living computer" moreso than a literal computer. That's more my bent (as my own writing in Love & War ^[+]Loading...["Love & War (short story)"] bears out) and within that view, re: Five Doctors, "Rassilon in the Matrix" isn't so much of a rival explanation to "Rassilon the ascended ghost" as simply an added detail that tells us precisely on what higher-dimensional plane the ghost usually hangs out when he isn't tricking evil Presidents to their doom. I'm not sure what this implies coverage-wise but it seemed important to make sure you grokked that aspect of my thinking. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 14:07, 6 October 2024 (UTC)