Talk:Magnus (Flashback)

Merge with The War Chief

I feel we have committed a tremendous oversight that has led the fandom astray for as long as the page has existed. This must end. This page needs to be merged with The War Chief, as it's abundantly evident that the illustrations in Flashback (comic story) are meant to resemble Edward Brayshaw. While the page image may look more ambiguous, the images of "Magnus" throughout the rest of the story are embarrassingly obvious in hindsight. The chin dimple, the lips, the nose, the eyebrows, the structure of his head, the placement of lines on his forehead. The hairstyle resembles that of Brayshaw's appearance in The Champions, and the mustache (while different from the one we see in The War Games) is heavily reminiscent of his appearance in Rentaghost. All of these images would be available for reference in the BBC Photo Archive at this time, while shots of The War Games would be strangely harder to come by (no publicity photos seem to have been taken of Brayshaw in close-up in the behind-the scenes for The War Games). I feel as if we must take back all the mean things we ever said about the Doctor falling for "Anthony Ainley in a wig". We really ought to right this wrong now, as the longer we keep it up, the more people will make the mistake of claiming these are separate incarnations. This cannot stand.

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  Panel from Flashback (comic story)

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  Screengrab from The Champions

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  Panel from Flashback (comic story)

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  Screengrab from The Champions

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  Panel from Flashback (comic story)

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  Panel from Flashback (comic story)

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  Screengrab from The War Games (TV story)

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  Panel from Flashback (comic story)

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  Screengrab from The War Games (TV story)

This won't cause any major coverage changes, as this information already essentially needs to be covered on The War Chief anyways, so this should be a simple move. Dewinter ☎ 21:14, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

See Talk:Antonio Amaral and Talk:Blue Humanoid. Suffice it to say this is not as cut and dry as you're suggesting. Najawin ☎ 21:20, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

In our defense Gary Russell seems not to have noticed the guy looked like Brayshaw, even as he asserted him to be the War Chief…

Najawin, I'm not sure what you're driving at. It's not as though we don't have a narrative link, here — the character is meant to be the same man as the War Chief regardless, whether the War Chief is the Master or not, and various other narrative sources attest to that much. So this seems more like debating whether a story known to feature "the Doctor" can be said to be a Third Doctor story if the art is determined to physically resemble Jon Pertwee. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 21:25, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Ahem. Najawin ☎ 21:53, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Well, yes, but the assumption when we get a new comic where the Doctor looks like William Hartnell is still "this is the First Doctor", not "this is some hitherto-unknown pre-First-Doctor regeneration who happened to already look like Hartnell", no? I mean, you're not arguing we move "Theta Sigma (Flashback)" to its own page, I don't imagine… --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 22:00, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm uncomfortable taking for granted that our deeply ambiguous policies surrounding when to merge pages based on visual evidence require that we do so here, is all. I think it's messy. Moreover, I think if we applied the standard being suggested here we should merge Tenth Doctor and Fourteenth Doctor. Now we all know why we're not doing that. But our policies are so messy here that I'm really not comfortable calling this a clear issue, is all. Najawin ☎ 22:07, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Let’s be real though, the Fourteenth Doctor’s appearance would and should have been covered under Tenth Doctor if it weren’t for the specific numbering scheme. We have no trouble covering the younger Hartnell under First Doctor despite Flashback calling him “Thete”. Same principle should apply to the other character who is younger and dressed differently, but resembles the same actor. Dewinter ☎ 22:27, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

@Najawin, I really don't think the "standard being suggested here" would force a Fourteen/Ten merger. The standard is more or less "if the most reasonable assumption of the authorial intent is that it's the same incarnation, keep'em merged; only separate if there is positive evidence that they're distinct but physically identical incarnations". Default assumptions, able to be shaken loose by extraordinary evidence. If accept that the man in Flashback is Brayshaw, then we have every reason to believe that he was simply intended to be a younger version of the same corporeal manifestation seen in The War Games — much as we assume that for any given story featuring a Doctor who looks like a given televised actor. Only positive evidence that the intent is otherwise leads to a split. But we have plentiful such evidence for Fourteen. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 23:29, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

I agree with this merge - it's already broadly agreed that this is an incarnation of the War Chief and I agree the two have a strong physical resemblance suggesting they are the same incarnation, especially since they are (as far as we know) next to each other in the timeline with no known physically different incarnations between the two. Warrior2852 ☎ 00:03, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

We have plentiful OOU evidence, certainly. I think the IU evidence that we should consider it to be a distinct regeneration as opposed to Retro-regeneration is relatively weak. Najawin ☎ 00:19, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm sorry but I don't know if I follow. There is no "IU" evidence that this specific appearance is meant to be a distinct regeneration or a retro-regeneration. Much as retro-regeneration or regenerating into the same face may happen in-universe on occasion (even to the Master), the Wiki fundamentally relies on assuming that incarnations that look the same are the same incarnation, unless that instance is specifically earmarked to the contrary. We don't assume that every appearance of the "Delgado" Master is a discrete incarnation, even though some sources suggest that the Master has regenerated into that likeness multiple times. The Curator might exist, but that doesn't mean we need to parse through EU appearances of the Fourth Doctor and split them ad infinitem. Dewinter ☎ 00:28, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

I think Najawin was talking about the Tennants in the post you replied to, not Magnus.

@Najawin, that IU evidence does exist, weak or not; and heck, the OOU one does, which we might propose to be enough for a merge or split for such questions. It's still more than exists for Magnus vs. War Chief, where we don't have any evidence, however OOU, that they're intended as different incarnations, nor any particular circumstantial reason to suspect as much. The cases are very much different enough to draw a line between them and Tennant/Fourteenant — whereas I have yet to see how the opposite policy could be worded in a way that doesn't demand that we create Theta Sigma (Flashback). --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 00:41, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

The opposite policy of "it's not clear that this is cut and dry, and we should be hesitant to portray it as such given our very messy precedent here"? You yourself acknowledge that they were originally intended to be The Master qua The Master (rather than The Master qua The War Chief, as GRussell would later try to argue for). So at the time their intent couldn't have been that they were the same incarnation. The visual identification in this instance is a sheer coincidence. It's not analogous to the other cases at all. Perhaps the distinction between knowing they did not intend for them to be the same and failing to know that actively intended them not to be the same is where you're going to argue that there's wiggle room here, and there certainly would be for R4. But our policies here are much muddier than in that area, and there's reasonable disagreement already over how to approach cases like The Magistrate, where it's messy as to whether two incarnations are the same. Merging policy should be pluralistic and accommodate reasonable disagreement, imo, for OOU reasons as well as IU ones. (IU is already enshrined in T:MERGE, of course.) Najawin ☎ 01:20, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

The idea of the War Chief as an incarnation of the Master long predates Russell's shenanigans, though — that's the entire reason he bothered to try and pointedly contradict it. For my money, the fact that (as we can now see) comic-Magnus looks like Brayshaw simply proves that Warwick Gray, John Ridgway, or both were knowingly running with the idea of the War Chief as a pre-Delgado Master as established in the Targets; and illustrated their pre-Delgado Master as Brayshaw on purpose in that light.

If we believed it to be a coincidence, I agree this would all be a very different matter, but that's not what we're arguing! We're arguing that if it looks like (what was then) a known pre-Delgado Master, and is meant to be a pre-Delgado Master, then that's probably not so coincidental a waterfowl as all that. I now believe that I was wrong in my previous assertions that Flashback!Magnus was intended as a Master with no particular connection to the War Chief — indeed, what I now believe is that the comic was actively intended to depict the Brayshaw incarnation as a pre-Delgado Master.

(That Gary Russell clocked him as a pre-Delgado Master but not as Brayshaw, then tried to retcon him away from being the Master but "decided" to make him an incarnation of his separate-War-Chief, seemingly without realising that he'd been intended as a Masterly portrayal of Brayshaw all along… that is the coincidence, and quite a hilarious one.) --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 01:38, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

" my money, the fact that (as we can now see) comic-Magnus looks like Brayshaw simply proves that Warwick Gray, John Ridgway, or both were knowingly running with the idea of the War Chief as a pre-Delgado Master as established in the Targets; and illustrated their pre-Delgado Master as Brayshaw on purpose in that light"

Except this argument relies on us inferring intent through clear resemblance, which, A, is precisely where our policies are messy, and B, the fact that GRussell didn't notice this does lend weight to the idea that the resemblance could plausibly be a coincidence. We have the intent down from one person in the production apparatus, clear as day. The argument for inferring intent from the others is very messy imo. If we had a statement from either one I'd be more comfortable? I'd still think that pluralism is the way to go, but that's just me. In that situation a merge would be understandable. But given we don't have such a statement, just trying to divine intent that we know contradicts what another person in the production apparatus at the time thought, I think it's tenuous. (And, yes, I know, of course, that M = WC predates GRussell. My point was his changing views as it applied to this specific instance with that comment.) Najawin ☎ 02:10, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

That's all defensible, I was just taken aback at the very idea that you thought we were all working from the premise of the resemblance being a coincidence. (I suppose this echoes our recent miscommunication over at the Dirk Gently thread. As a rule of thumb, if you find yourself thinking I'm arguing for something which seems insane in view of the evidence as you understand it, it seems to more often be the case that we diverge earlier, in our basic assumptions/beliefs about the facts themselves…)

Russell failing to spot it is arresting, certainly, but… I don't know, now that it's been pointed out to me, it's dashed hard to unsee. Facial hair aside it seems as close as Ridgway's very fine photorealistic Hartnell. To think you'd end up with such a pitch-perfect rendition of an actor who actually had portrayed a pre-Delgado Master by sheer accident while trying to depict a different pre-Delgado Master — it boggles the mind, especially looking at a picture of Brayshaw's Rentaghost character. (That's an exact match for Magnus's moustache, chief.) It really feels less like a plausible coincidence and more like the proverbial egg randomly unscrambling itself.

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Asking the great Ridgway if he indeed used reference pics of Brayshaw would of course be ideal. Perhaps it can be done. But failing that, I don't think Gary Russell overlooking it at the time is enough to outweigh the basic implausibility of such a close match happening by chance. (Honestly, most Titan Doctors aren't that on-model in most panels!) After all, coincidental or not, the resemblance is clearly noticeable to us in 2024, so does it really prove very much that 1980s Russell would overlook it too? --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 03:05, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

I absolutely don't think we're working from the assumption that this is a coincidence. I think, however, we can't rule this option out. It's entirely possible, hence my comment above, that this is sheer coincidence. The War Chief is a villain who plays into a lot of tropes, and comics erase a lot of visual information compared to television. Tremas Master plays into many of those same tropes. Comparing File:War Chief looks left.jpg and File:Cat and Mouse (comic story).jpg, I could easily see how, given the standards being acceded to here (hairstyles and facial hair don't have to match, they can be references to other roles of the actor) we might conflate the two. So saying that in 2024 we see a clear resemblance strikes me as being too quick to jump the gun. We could see the resemblance pretty easily, even if that's not the intent, and that's precisely why I'm concerned.

I think the problem is worse than that though. We have reference to a few different things here. One, the fact that Bradshaw has a cleft chin. Fair enough, he does. It is, however, very minor, visible in only one of the pictures on this page, in The Champions, and barely at that. But it's very, very notable in every head-on image of Magnus. That's a substantial difference in portrayal, whether the artist intended it to be or not. I also don't believe that the images provided would have all been available in the BBC Photo Archive at the time. The Champions would have been available in the ITV Archives, rather than the BBC Archives. This may seem to be a distinction without a difference, but it matters - for people working with the BBC it'd be easier to get into the one than the other. Moreover, The Champions seems to have last aired 7 years prior to Flashback. So the hypothetical we're considering is that they went looking in the ITV archives for pictures from a show they remembered from 7 years ago? This seems bizarre to me.

Maybe this is the intent! But to me, this is rampant speculation of the worst kind, when we clearly have someone involved in the production saying that this wasn't his intent and he didn't see any connection at the time. It's precisely what the wiki should be forbidding. Pure speculation as to whether this iteration of TWC is the same as the one in TWG. Najawin ☎ 04:52, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

The Rentaghost pic I just posted is from the BBC Archive, though, and it's the most 1:1 of the lot. Fair enough on the cleft chin and the generic-villainy traits, I'll admit… But the sorta-off-model Hartnells of TV Comic and such still feel like much closer matches than the Tremas Master. And the most conspicuous Brayshawy traits of Magnus (the shape of the nose, of the yes - and the Rentaghost 'stache) are not the most archetypally villainous traits of the War Chief, starting with the moustache itself.

Again, your refusal to consider OOU information here as a possible standard is I think wrong-headed. We think he ought to be considered "the War Chief incarnation until proven otherwise" because he looks like Brayshaw and fills a Brayshaw-shaped hole in the pre-Delgado Master's timeline. Ainley has only one of the two, therefore with the assumptions about probable authorial intent not matching up, superficial resemblances are insufficient to draw any conclusion. But if a man in a role where we would expect the War Chief looks conspicuously like the War Chief's actor in specific publicity shots we can go back and check out… surely you see how that's different from "if you look through all of the Ainley Master's comic appearances, some panels make him kinda look more like Edward Brayshaw than like Anthony Ainley, if you squint"? Even if you still think the former is too audacious, surely you see how the equivalency here is unbalanced. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 13:17, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Except the Rentaghost pic has a different hairstyle, one for which the explanation is still "they checked the ITV archives to reference a show that had aired 7 years ago." If there's simply no explanation for it, and it's a coincidence, I don't see why we're giving the time of day to the Rentaghost comparison, we need to be balanced here.

I also think it bizarre that I'm the one being suggested of not considering OOU information, given that I'm the one consistently referencing GRussell's statement. What I'm objecting to is the repeated attempt to divine authorial intent from people who haven't mentioned their intent in direct contradiction to known statements about the intent from other people in the production apparatus. Yeah, sure, this isn't an R4 debate, intent is less relevant here. But it seems to me to be to be wholly backward and speculative of the worst sort, a license to do anything we wanted. This is an order of magnitude worse than my current objections to R4bp, because the reasoning being done is being done in direct opposition to other statements made. (We could speculate that the fact that Tomorrow Windows references Shalka and the Alan Davies Doctor, both of which Morris hates, indicates that it was a dicta from higher up, changing how we should think about it, for instance. But we just have no OOU reason to do this, and it stands in direct opposition to the statements Morris made. It's pure speculation, inventing reasons to come to a reading we like. Again, intent matters less here, but I do not think it's at all plausible to argue intent in this situation, when we have direct statements that contradict the idea, and none supporting it.) Najawin ☎ 19:50, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

I guess I just don't view Russell as meaningfully in an authorial role. He neither wrote nor drew the thing, he's just the guy who bought it. He's a reader like all of us. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 20:32, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Well who are the works in DWM copyrighted to? That's the real question. If it's Gray and Ridgeway, I'd agree, GRussell isn't relevant. If it's the BBC, then GRussell is. I've been operating under the assumption that it's the latter, somewhat similar to the US comics industry, but perhaps I'm mistaken? (See Thread:207499 at User:SOTO/Forum Archive/Inclusion debates 1.) Najawin ☎ 20:46, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

I don't see what that has to do with it. The legalities are orthogonal to who is in a position to give "authorial intent" except insofar as they might be reflected in the copyright owner/publisher/whoever actually having creative input during the creative process. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 20:58, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

The thread explicitly establishes the opposite? (And if this is the argument I'm unconvinced that the editor lacks any and all creative input.) Again, again, not an R4 issue. But I just don't see that this approach is a winning one. Najawin ☎ 21:36, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

If so, the thread you linked is archaic nonsense. "Authorial intent" is about creative intent, not some mysterious moral authority bundled with the legal concept of copyright. I feel like we explicitly hashed this out in a thread in the last couple of years? But even if we didn't explicitly refute it, it's long been T:BOUNDed out of existence as the going understanding of Rule 4. We care what the authors thought — the actual creatives, not the money-men. That's the spirit in which every inclusion debate in at least five years has been carried out, and closed. BBC diktats, in the rare case that they exist, matter insofar as they might be internalised by the creatives and thus impact their mens rea at time of release; not because "the BBC" is capable of having authorial intent about what it produces. Which I don't think wors in this case — Gary Russell seems to have not noticed any Brayshaw resemblance, as opposed to speaking out against a Brayshaw resemblance, so there's no directive he could have actively passed down the chain of command that would have influenced Gray and Ridgway's intentions.

With that said, fair enough on the editor sometimes being a legitimate part of the creative process, but I feel like Russell's quotes don't position him as a co-creator in that particular case. He calls it "Wick's strip", and talks about his external opinion as a (re)reader.--Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 22:56, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm pretty certain we never hashed this specific thing out, no. Nor does it seem to have been T:BOUNDed out of existence so much as never come up, as it's a pretty niche corner case that largely only applies to Shalka. We're not even really discussing it here, since this isn't an R4 issue, but us trying to sorta squint at an unclear area of our page merging policies through an R4-jurisprudence shaped lens. I think the closest we've ever come to discussing it is Talk:Origins (comic story), but that was about Rule 2, not Rule 4, and you commented that Shalka wasn't invalidated for quite the reason I gave at Talk:The Stranger (novel). Forum:Temporary forums/Validity debate: Scream of the Shalka explicitly doesn't discuss this reasoning in the context of the old thread - the old forums weren't around! It does discuss the idea on a very high level, but, funnily enough, it doesn't dispute it! It cedes it completely, and offers a different historiography. If anything this is strong evidence that it's still policy! Najawin ☎ 23:32, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Ignoring all this precedent talk. But thinking from first principles. Since there are conflicting accounts that say this Magnus is distinct from the War Chief. It would be good to keep this page separate. But rewriting coverage to make it clearer that they're the same incarnation. Covering some material from this page on "War Chief" or maybe making that page more about the title rather than the Time Lord. This is just from first principles I have not read up all the old threads. But it would be convenient if this matched precedent. WarDocFan12 ☎ 13:34, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

"Since there are conflicting accounts that say this Magnus is distinct from the War Chief"

I don't think there are. We have one source that treats "Magnus/the War Chief" as distinct from the Master (and a handful of sources that treat the War Chief as separate from the Master without discussing the "Magnus" of it all), but to my knowledge, none of the sources treating Magnus as the Master contradict the idea that he's also the War Chief. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 15:30, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

Oh. I said that since the page points out that Goth Opera (novel) implies Magnus is the Master. So you suggest that we should just treat this as Goth Opera implying that the War Chief is the Master. Like so many other sources have. That makes a lot of sense but of course Virgin policy was the opposite so I don't know if we should interpret Goth Opera that way. If we are okay with ignoring Virgin editorial intent than your position makes sense and I agree the pages should be merged. Maybe it would make more sense to discuss Virgin policy in the behind the scenes section of the combined page anyway. In fact we already do on The War Chief. WarDocFan12 ☎ 22:31, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

(nb: lol, lmao even.) Najawin ☎ 00:34, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

What? --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 01:41, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Oh, topical given the Shalka reference is all. Doesn't materially change the above discussion. Just very funny. Najawin ☎ 01:45, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Oh, yes. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 01:50, 8 June 2024 (UTC)