Forum:Aliens and Enemies

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Well, it's stuppoded to be aliens and enemies, but here, that doesn't always seem to be the case. A good example is Gadget from The Waters of Mars - he is classed as one of the Aliens and Enemies of the 2009 specials. But he is neither. He is a non-enemy Earth robot. Not an enemy alien, or either of them.

I think this really needs to be sorted out because, quite frankly, the term Aliens and Enemies is a complete lie if there is Earth robotos who aren't enemies on there. This seems to be the case with quite a number of characters, and it is bothering me. How about anyone else? Yet, the ironic thing is that there are alien characters (enemy or not) who aren't down in the Aliens and Enemies section. I believe Atrid Peth, a near-human, is one of the non-humans who aren't in Aliens and Enemies, yet an Earth robot who isn't an enemy is in the Aliens and Enemies section?

I just thought I would bring it up, and see if anyone else even noticed. If that can't be changed, at least change the name to 'Aliens, Enemies, and Robots.' Delton Menace 11:30, May 24, 2010 (UTC)

I've often looked at this and wondered what it was for exactly.

It's sort of mixing two different things (or calling all aliens enemies).

Are these templates even necessary?

We've got the [[:Category:Villains navigation templates]] for all the major enemies. Do we need templates covering each season of aliens/enemies?

At the very least we should define what these templates are for either aliens or enemies, I'd suggests enemies because if we went the aliens route it would be a decidedly long list for some stories. --Tangerineduel 14:56, May 24, 2010 (UTC)

Maybe just enemies. For example, The End of Time has lots of cameo appearances of aliens and they are all listed in a long list on the template. Just enemies then imo. ☆The Solar Dragon ^(Talk)☆ 15:04, May 24, 2010 (UTC)

There are further examples of wrong use for series 5 Doctor Who, too: the security Guard is down as one of the Aliens and Enemies, neither is he alien or an enemy. The artificial forest trees in Flesh and Stone are also down as Aliens and Enemies, but not only are they non-living and human-made machines, they're far from being an enemy. It think it is getting ridiculous, to be honest.

I the two templetes should be sepperated because it indeed does make all aliens sound like enemies and clunks "good guys" with "bad guys" (some of which are human, others alien, making it more confusing), but it makes the templetes contain eneities who are neither aliens (like human-made robots) nor enemies.

Could we agree to sepperate 'Aliens and Enemies' into two different templetes? Delton Menace 19:10, May 24, 2010 (UTC)

I too have often wonder about Gadget. But could we create a template, in this case Series 5 - Allies and Enemies of Series 5 or even split them up into Allies of Series 5 and Enemies of Series 5? or anything around that idea, like Delton Menace suggested? Mini-mitch 15:05, May 26, 2010 (UTC)

I always thought "aliens and enemies" was a weird thing to make a list of, for the same reasons as Tangerineduel.

I assume the motivation is to include all "monsters of the week," even the ones who turn out to be friendly or neutral aliens instead of bad guys. But the term "aliens and enemies" really doesn't get that across. Obviously you can't take it literally, or you'll be listing Romana, Adric, and hundreds of background characters, and you can't list non-alien "monsters" like haemovores, Silurians, etc. But if you don't take it literally, what sensible category could you possibly infer using what's already there as an example? (I'm honestly not surprised someone got confused and added Gadget.)

I think Tangerineduel's idea of making it just "enemies" is the simplest. If people want a list of aliens, that could be done, but keep it separate. And if people want a list of "monsters", that's fine, but again, keep it separate. (Obviously there'd be a lot of overlap, but this isn't like a library, where everything has to be in exactly one category.)

PS, the trees in FaS weren't non-living; they were cyborgs, which makes them just as alive as Cybermen, Daleks, etc. But I still don't think something made by Earthling humans out of Earth trees counts as an alien, unless you want to start listing every human who's a citizen of another planet as an alien, at which point you're going to start attracting BNF types.... --Falcotron 00:00, May 27, 2010 (UTC)

I don't think splitting the templates is the best way to go, we should be trying to eliminate templates rather than add to them. I know the templates are good at simply organising information, but even with the show/hide ability added to all the templates the bottom of the page starts to become somewhat awash with them. --Tangerineduel 16:22, May 28, 2010 (UTC)

I abhor the "Aliens and Enemies of Season X" templates. Useless. Wholly useless. Dalek stories, Cybermen stories, that makes sense to me. But the alien templates are pretty subjective, and contradictory. They don't define one thing, but in fact two diametrically opposed things. I wouldn't even support Tangerineduel's suggestion of just leaving it to enemies, because that's subjective, too. Some episodes don't have enemies, like The Mad Woman in the Attic, The Edge of Destruction, Black Orchid; others have secondary characters who oppose the Doctor but aren't necessarily enemies. What, for instance, makes Solana Mercurio an enemy in Planet of the Ood, but not the Brigadier in Doctor Who and the Silurians? They both are opposed to the Doctor but true to their sense of duty. So eliminate the concept altogether.

While we're on the subject, I for one think a much better place for these "bottom of the page" templates is actually aligned to the infobox at 260px, floated right. We could make them all much briefer by manipulating the line height and font size, and just have one nice long column on the right side of the page. Just looking at [[Planet of the Ood] right now, both the Series 4 and Ood TV stories templates would sit more usefully off to the right under the infobox than plonked down across the whole page at the bottom. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 22:54, May 28, 2010 (UTC)

Archivist's notes

Although this particular thread ended with no clear resolution, it did lead to Forum:Aliens and enemies templates: the final battle, which offered more definite resolution. Another related thread is Forum:Aliens and Enemies Template.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 23:06: Thu 03 Nov 2011