Forum:IDW Doctor Who/Star Trek crossover

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So what do we think of the announcement of the IDW DW/ST:TNG crossover? How do you think this will impact our coverage of the topic of Star Trek, which is already somewhat bifurcated into an in-universe and out-of-universe article? If we have to start creating articles for Worf and Troi and Riker and the lot, where will it end? Do we go with a policy that very narrowly says "only write about Star Trek topics that are actually in the story"? Or do we say, "Worf is evidently a Klingon, so therefore we need an article about Klingons" or "If it's the Enterprise-D, there must have been an Enterprise-A, -B, and -C, too?".

I guess what I'm trying to understand is where the boundary will be, because I have a feeling this is going to be a straight up, serious, honest-to-god crossover, and I don't think any of us want to just say, "Okay, that's it, the STU and the DWU are now merged. Any STU topic is valid here."

Another thing to consider. This crossover will almost certainly result in w:c:tardis:Jean-Luc Picard and w:c:tardis:Data (android). Question is, how in the world do we write those articles. We're probably gonna get next to nothing in terms of narrative explanation of who they are, as the writers are expecting we'll know those characters. There's every possibility we won't even get ranks, positions or even full names outta these guys. So how do we handle them? Do we go off of strictly what we know from the narrative, as we would any other topic? Or can we slip in the word "Captain" to the Picard article if we're not told it in the narrative? Or -D to the name Enterprise if we're not told it?

Yes, of course I know we need to read this thing, but I thought it might be as well to get us all thinking about the implications of this crossover ahead of time, since it might well engender a lot of writing.

I personally think it makes sense to go for a super narrow tolerance on this one and insist upon a very literal reading of the text. Otherwise, we'll soon be hosting a mini-Star Trek wiki.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  <span style="">01:45: Mon 13 Feb 2012 

We should probably only put information that is in the crossover story into our articles. For example, if Counselor Troi uses her empathic powers, but it is never mentioned that she is half Betazoid, then we can mention that she comes from a telepathic species, and maybe mention that she is a Betazoid in the Behind the Scenes section. If Worf is directly stated to be a Klingon then we can create a Klingon page, but not add any information about the Klingons that doesn't come from the IDW story. It would be ridiculous to assume that Star Trek and Doctor Who share a universe, since Star Trek takes place in a universe where first contact with aliens was in 2063, and (apart from a few occassions) there was no contact with aliens before that point, and certainly no full scale invasions or organizations designed specifically to fight aliens. Not to mention other obvious problems, like the fact that the alien ship in Area 51 was clearly not Quark's Treasure, or the fact that Star Trek has been stated to be fiction in the Whoniverse.Icecreamdif ^{talk to me} 04:54, February 13, 2012 (UTC)

I feel confident that IDW will think of DWU and STU continuity with this. The TARDIS has the ability to fall into different universes, and I have a feeling this comic will demonstrate the DWU and STU as two seperate universes, with the Doctor, Amy and Rory merely falling into the wrong one. Another thing is to remember that this does not take place in STU canon (see memoryalpha:Canon), so regardless of whether or not any of us want to merge the DWU and STU, those over at Memory Alpha will be opposed to it. The preceding comment was made by Bigredrabbit (talk to me) 08:23, February 13, 2012 (UTC)

We should only cover what the story covers. Nothing else. I'm not a Star Trek genius, but if a character from the Star Trek universe has two powers, and they use one of them in the comic story - we should only cover that specific power that is used. We should not focus, think about or even mention anything that is not used or mentioned in the story.

Going back to the X character. If they, say, have three powers in the Star Trek universe and use one of them, mention another and don't mention the third at all, we can only acknowledge the powers that are seen or mentioned and would add it to the wiki - briefly.

We need to set up a template, like the Wikipedia one to the Memory Alpha wiki, so we can link the pages we create to the Star Trek stuff to more detail pages at Memory Alpha - and hopefully vise-versa. MM/Want to talk? 12:14, February 13, 2012 (UTC)

Well, we won't want to link to MemAlpha, but MemBeta, because they'll actually cover this thing. They have a canon policy which is essentially compatible with ours, in that they accept the events of other media. In fact, I've asked this question at their forum.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  <span style="">14:09: Mon 13 Feb 2012 

This isn't difficult. Memory Alpha is linking to TARDIS Index Files for Doctor Who articles in their article on the crossover, so why not just link to Memory Alpha articles in the same way? --Ben Paddon ^{talk to me} 22:09, February 14, 2012 (UTC)

Well, MemAlpha will only have out-of-universe articles on it, because they won't consider the story canon in any way. They consider it just a piece of merchandise, not a source with which to write in-universe articles. That's very different to our approach, because we believe the comic is canon. That poses questions for how we handle the Star Trek parts of the story. Principally it forces us to consider where the line is between the STU and DWU. Put another way, we can't just create a link to MemAlpha and be done with it. Our view of our universe is much more compatible with MemBeta.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  <span style="">05:37: Thu 16 Feb 2012 

Can't we link to both? – The preceding unsigned comment was added by 78.9.146.201 (talk).

Well, in this instance, a link to MemBeta articles will actually be more helpful than MemAlpha ones, because MemBeta will actually attempt to cover this story as an event that actually happened to Picard and company. The MemAlpha articles won't. If we include external links, they should be relevant.

But this talk of linking is a bit peripheral. This thread is really about coming up with a common approach for how we write our own articles. Since the event is still months out, we have time to agree a common stance for writing the various articles that will certainly ensue from the publication of this story. So far, it appears as though the über-strict approach is being favoured by the respondents to this thread. And I'm sort of okay with that.

Certainly, I don't think the presence of Worf gives us cause to write an article about the Klingon language, nor that because we meet Data we necessarily have an article about the positronic brain or his "father".

The danger here is going too far off the panels of the comic into what's "common knowledge" about Star Trek.

We have a similar issue all the time with historical figures, where some editors will include commonly-known facts about real people, without understanding that the DWU writer didn't get his facts right. For instance, there are differences between the DWU accounts about w:c:tardis:Marco Polo and the real wikipedia:Marco Polo. We need to ensure that we're always using what we know from the DWU, not what we know from textbooks.

On the other hand, it is a visual medium. And being shown something is as good as having it specifically named by dialogue. If, for instance, we get no rank out of, I dunno, Worf, but the artist has carefully drawn in the rank insignia, I think we can call him "Lt. Worf", or "Lt. Cdr Worf", depending on what we see. If we know that the captain's full name is Jean-Luc Picard, but the script only calls him Picard, I think we give him his full name anyway, and then mention in the BTS note that he wasn't actually named in the script? See what I mean? I agree in principle that we should be literalists, but because comics are a visual medium we don't need to be told everything by dialogue. Sometimes we're shown things rather than told them. If we get a likeness of Sir Patrick and "Picard" in dialogue, is there any doubt it could be another Picard but Jean-Luc?

I think we should agree from the outset to use the names of the characters as they're presented on MemBeta, even if we don't fully get that name in the script. We need to make it easy for casual users of the site to understand whom we're talking about.

This is going to be especially important for technology. We're just not going to get explicit dialogue for all of the standard equipment of the STU. I think that if we see a phaser, but it's not called a phaser in dialogue, we should be able to write an article about a phaser. Similarly, we don't, I think, have to get a horrible line of dialogue like: "Pardon me, Doctor. Let me use this communicator to talk to my Chief Engineer." If the panel depicts Picard hitting his insignia and talking, then we have the basis for an article about a communicator. Or if they go to a holodeck, we don't have to be told it's a holodeck to know that's what the article here should be titled. If we never see the holodeck, then the presence of the Enterprise is not enough to allow for an article about it. But if we see the holodeck, we don't need an explicit line of holodeck to tell us that's what it is.

If we see a Ferengi, but it's not called a Ferengi, we still have an article about Ferengi, rather than Unnamed alien (Insert story name here). If they never name Worf's species, he's still a Klingon, because we can see he's a Klingon. See what I mean?

Just as there's a danger of going too far with the connections and ending up with articles about Khan and Gary 7 and the Mirror Universe and Dax, there's equally the danger of being so narrow in our interpretation that we don't accept what is given to us visually. Our article names have to be useful and searchable. I worry that we'll end up with Unnamed weapon (story name) rather than phaser.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  <span style="">21:56: Thu 16 Feb 2012