Talk:Thirteenth Doctor (The Curse of Fatal Death)

Name

If this page is to have a Template:Conjecture tag, it may as well be renamed to "The Female Doctor", the moniker used to refer to this incarnation from the script extract released in DWM 328. Epsilon (Contact me) 18:17, October 3, 2020 (UTC)

Mmmmh. Thing is, that's not great for disambiguation purposes. "Female Doctor" could describe a number of different incarnations of the Doctor. You'd have to go to Female Doctor (The Curse of Fatal Death) at which point you just go right back to having to dab anyway, and frankly what's the point?

Historically we haven't actually needed confirmation of the "Numberth Doctor" form to use it without a conjecture tag. As pointed out by User:Borisashton in the Curse debate, the Eccleston Ninth Doctor wasn't confirmed as the "ninth Doctor" (let alone "the Ninth Doctor") until Series 3 — and I'm not actually sure we yet have a source officially calling Whittaker "the Thirteenth Doctor" in so many words. Certainly we didn't back in 2017, and yet that doesn't mean we put a conjecture tag on her article. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 18:39, October 3, 2020 (UTC)

I only added it because of the wording of the article "an individual who would logically have been called...", but you do make a point there. However, Epsilon also make a point about calling them what the credits identified them as.... hmmm.... 🤔 NightmareofEden ☎ 18:45, October 3, 2020 (UTC)

Moving the articles would allow us to eliminate the disambiguation from Tenth Doctor (The Curse of Fatal Death), Eleventh Doctor (The Curse of Fatal Death) and Twelfth Doctor (The Curse of Fatal Death), since they would become ( Handsome Doctor, Shy Doctor and Handsome Doctor respectively. Lumley's Doctor will require disambiguation regardless, so why not just use the official name she's given in the VHS release? Gowlbag ☎ 03:59, October 4, 2020 (UTC)

Nuh-uh. Again, and with no offence to T:NPOV, it's not exactly hard to see how the descriptors Quite Handsome Doctor or Handsome Doctor could apply to other incarnations than the two Grants's. (Cough, cough, to name but the two "consensus" fangirl-worshipped heartthrobs.) And as for "Shy Doctor", just last season we had the Thirteenth Doctor sheepishly describing herself as "still quite socially awkward", so you don't even need to get into audience perception. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 09:11, October 4, 2020 (UTC)

Understandable, but are these descriptors ever actually going to be used for another official Doctor? Because these are the official names, as these were used in both the DWM script extract and the Curse documentary. (Which is actually on the wiki, I just can't remember its name...)Epsilon (Contact me) 09:29, October 4, 2020 (UTC)

All I'm saying is that we'd want to dab them if we used them, not that we shouldn't use them per se. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 09:31, October 4, 2020 (UTC)

I call your attention to [1] (dear lord I hate Discussions). The joke book used titles like "Sore Doctor". It's not outside the realm of plausibility that a second such joke book would use these descriptors. Najawin ☎ 09:35, October 4, 2020 (UTC)

And the chances of these exact, specific names being used would be very slim. Epsilon (Contact me) 09:38, October 4, 2020 (UTC)

I would personally advocate that we maintain Thirteenth Doctor with the dab. Script excerpt terms are good and all, but if one starts applying them for page name cases when there's a more recognisable term... well, it would be calling the First Doctor's page "Dr. Who" in my mind. Not strictly untrue, but not exactly what people are going to be searching for.

You could argue that Female Doctor might be more commonly searched when trying to locate this page, but does Thirteenth Doctor allow for that as is - since searching for CoFD Doctors is going to lead you to all of the other numbered ones (and I even more strongly would hope against changing them from numbering to descriptive terms) anyway. And as noted above, changing to Female Doctor would still need a dab.

Also, I can't speak for the accuracy of it but I also note that this page notes the script as calling her "The (Female) Thirteenth Doctor". That would imply emphasis on the number first, surely? JDPManjoume ☎ 09:16, October 5, 2020 (UTC)

I feel strongly against either moving this page or the main Thirteenth Doctor. Everyone understands the deal going on with Curse, and we call get why "Thirteenth Doctor (Twice Upon a Time)" is a no-go. At the same time, what is "Female Doctor?" Immediately you're making a situation where it's unclear what that means, thus we'd still need a dab term. Totally defeats the point! OS25🤙☎️ 18:05, October 5, 2020 (UTC)

Also, I don't get how this is conjecture? Is counting conjecture now? Are we not allowed to do math anymore?

If we know that Rowan Atkinson is the Ninth Doctor, then we know the numbers for the rest. Presuming otherwise is speculation itself. Saying that "Thirteen" is conjecture is itself conjecture. OS25🤙☎️ 18:08, October 5, 2020 (UTC)

A more pertinent piece of evidence than the script extract (scripts aren't final products, after all) is the Comic Relief Doctor Who Uncovered documentary produced for the VHS release. "The Quite Handsome Doctor" is not just a description; it is the actual and only official name of the character played by Richard E Grant. We see Richard Curtis refer to him as such here, and then we see the name superimposed on the screen as Grant is talking, capital letters and all. These have been the characters' official names in publicly available media for two decades. To continue calling him "Tenth Doctor (The Curse of Fatal Death)" when we know his real, much more unique name is rather like keeping War Doctor at "Ninth Doctor (The Name of the Doctor)" forever. As for name-recognition value, surely that's not a primary consideration when naming articles, or else Ninth Doctor (Curse of the Shalka would be located at Shalka Doctor, the name used approximately 100% of the time people discuss him; and besides, Hartnell's Dr. Who has been brought back and referred to as "the First Doctor" countless times, whereas the COFD incarnations have never had their original names challenged or overridden in this way. Even if there were evidence that a supermajority of readers found the article on the Hugh Grant Doctor by searching "twelfth doctor (the curse of fatal death)" (and I rather suspect they find it by googling "hugh grant doctor who"), that would not be a reason to keep the article there, any more than we should move The Doctor (The Brain of Morbius) to Morbius Doctors. Moreover, now that COFD has been validated, we're starting to see references to these incarnations proliferating throughout the wiki; if I were a casual reader and I saw a reference to "the Shy Doctor" (or "the Shy Doctor"), capitalised as such, I would immediately understand that this was the name of some distinct, probably comedic incarnation. If I came across a reference to "the Eleventh Doctor", I would immediately think of the character who is actually called the Eleventh Doctor, and be confused as to how this incarnation relates to him. Gowlbag ☎ 20:44, October 5, 2020 (UTC)

I concur. Also, I'd like mention that even if you were to find a person referring to these Doctors by their incarnation number, it'd most likely be because they had previously read the name of the erroneously named wiki page. Epsilon (Contact me) 21:03, October 5, 2020 (UTC)

I wouldn't say they're erroneous, Epsilon. As OS25 restated earlier, it is not inaccurate to call them by the numbered versions, any more than it is inaccurate to call the "main" Thirteenth Doctor "the Thirteenth Doctor". That's just how counting works. Whichever kind of name we go with, we will definitely keep redirects from the other kind. (Note that we have a redirect at Shalka Doctor!)

The comparison to "War Doctor" is an interesting one, but the issue here, really, is that there isn't any kind of evidence that the so-called "Handsome", "Shy" and "Quite Handsome" Doctors ever called themselves that in-universe, or were ever called that by somebody else in the DWU.

These nicknames may be official, but a documentary isn't a valid source at the best of times, and I don't think this one is attempting to say anything about what these Doctors are called in the DWU.

(To be clear, that's not a definitive admin-hat-on decision. Just a statement that for the time being I remain unconvinced.) --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 22:02, October 5, 2020 (UTC)

The War Doctor article isn't located at War Doctor because he's called that within the DWU, though. It's located there because the BBC and Moffat consistently referred to him as "the War Doctor" in non-narrative media such as press releases and interviews, comparable to the aforementioned documentary. It would have been silly to keep him at Ninth Doctor (The Name of the Doctor) for the following three years, or however long it took until Titan made a comic where Alice Obiefune called him "War Doctor" once. REG's character may not be called "the Quite Handsome Doctor" in-universe, but he's not called "the Tenth Doctor" anywhere, in his universe or ours; the former name has the advantages of being both unique and the official one released for public consumption, whereas the latter has neither. The argument that numerical names extrapolated by fans should override official non-numerical ones provided by the creators seems to rest on an assumption that the numerical names are somehow inherently objective, but I would say that cases like the War Doctor demonstrate that that's emphatically not true. Gowlbag ☎ 23:07, October 5, 2020 (UTC)

I would also call into question extrapolating the name of a character based on the lower third line of a documentary. And, if we delve that, could we not then also be querying that the credits for the story itself as released in VHS omnibus refers them all as "The Doctors"?

And then it's like War Doctor in that there's three credited and/or scripted names: The Doctor, The Other Doctor & The War Doctor. I'll admit that I'm lacking in knowledge re. the decision that came in that situation. I see the talk page, but there may have been a thread on the matter too (Sadly, the current forum/discussion shift makes it difficult to check, but if anyone knows of one - please let me know & I will consider whatever points were raised there).

But, for now, looking at the talk page - it seems moreso that the reasoning for War Doctor was not of self-reference but rather out of not conflicting with the self-references of 9, 10, 11 etc. Whether or not it should've been named War Doctor at that time, before he was named by someone as such in-universe... I'll leave aside.

Getting back to CoFD, The Master is the only one who refers to the Doctor in any meaningful way - and that's the Ninth Doctor as being the "ninth body". In the short lifespans of the following three incarnations, none of them notate themselves in any way or self-describe as such. Thus, I would argue that following the pattern set by the first of the featured Doctors being Ninth Doctor is the most sensible option (much as two of the Unbounds notate The Doctor, and New Doctor & Previous Doctor, and The Doctor), and numbering them as has been done.

It would be an altogether different matter if there was other material in which any of them did identify using a different term, but thus far no such media exists. So I would stand by the numbering. And I would also say it's not conjecture to number them. The only argument against the idea that the incarnations following are Tenth, Eleventh & Twelfth... would be to make conjecture yourself in speculating that there were other incarnations inbetween the blasts, and that the successive incarnations for some reason don't remark on that, and that as a result - the Thirteenth would then not be Thirteenth... and you'd be in a quagmire of speculative conjecture by then.JDPManjoume ☎ 00:03, October 6, 2020 (UTC)

Richard Curtis provides the particular names of the Quite Handsome Doctor, the Shy Doctor and the Handsome Doctor during the interview; the on-screen captions later repeat these in text, reiterating and confirming their capitalised proper-name status and the name of the Female Doctor. That's two discrete instances for most of these names already; they weren't winging it. (For anyone interested, the script extract provides more details on the evolution of the characters' names; their working titles had been "the New Doctor", "the Plump Doctor", "the Gorgeous Doctor" and "the Lady Doctor" respectively (with an additional "Geeky Doctor" between the latter two), but these were amended to reflect the actors who were ultimately cast, so it's quite clear that the production considered the ones in the documentary to be the finalised names.) It's not conjecture or extrapolation to notice the names being used in an official piece of media and then use those names. This isn't just "a documentary"; it's the official BBC-authorised documentary that was produced alongside COFD, on the set of COFD, and then bundled with what was to be its only available release for some fifteen years. Gowlbag ☎ 01:16, October 6, 2020 (UTC)

I do want a resolution to this, especially now that a year has passed. I just created a section in one of my sandboxes showing how the lesds of these articles could benefit from these descriptive names.

Another point I'd like to make clear from earlier on in the discussion is that, while these names are somewhat generic and could apply to other Doctors, they haven't been used on other Doctors, only on the Curse Doctors. And recently, the Romana precedent has been applied to a certain Fugitive Doctor, so there is now a good precedent for the proposed name changes.

Epsilon📯 📂

12:26, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Ehh, after reading this discussion I remain unconvinced of the argument for the renames. As Scrooge said at the start of this conversation, conjecture tags have not been historically needed for the "Xth Doctor" format of page name so I would instead advocate for their removal. I believe the current names are closest to in-universe identifications we have and I think having the Curse of Fatal Death dab is better for searchability. Episilon says above that the names from the documentary haven't been used on other Doctors but the proposed name for this page is "the Female Doctor". In 2021, I think you would be hard-pressed to find many people who think of Lumley before Jodie Whittaker (or even Jo Martin) so a rename would just create confusion. To many people, Whittaker is the female Doctor. Additionally, as has been said before, the other names can be similarly applied to other incarnations in-universe and I don't think the pages would be easier to find under these names either. Borisashton ☎ 22:03, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

I really struggle to see how "Female Doctor" is likely to be confused with Jodie Whittaker but "Thirteenth Doctor" is not. And since anyone landing on the wrong page will immediately be greeted by the "You may be looking for another Thirteenth Doctor" redirect which is already at the top of it, I feel fairly confident saying that the number of readers likely to be stymied by this supposed problem is exactly zero. And while I doubt anyone is actually typing "Eleventh Doctor (The Curse of Fatal Death)" (as opposed to googling "jim broadbent dr who"), that page would remain as a permanent redirect to Shy Doctor, so, again, zero people would be confused.

Having reread the conversation, I still think that putting "(The Curse of Fatal Death)" disambiguation on Shy Doctor, Quite Handsome Doctor, and Handsome Doctor is absurd and unnecessary - these are unambiguous, unrivalled proper names, and arguing "but David Tennant is also arguably quite handsome!" is rather like saying "but the Eighth Doctor was also involved in a War!" and moving War Doctor to War Doctor (The Name of the Doctor) - but I would accept it as a compromise if it means we can finally use these characters' unique, official names in the article titles rather than the current fan-made ones. Gowlbag ☎ 23:03, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

I'd certainly agree to that first point if this article was indeed located at "Thirteenth Doctor" but, as I said above, I think maintaining the Curse dab would be helpful to people searching for the Curse Doctors. Whatever this page ends up being called it is obvious once on it that it does not cover the "main" Thirteenth Doctor but I fail to see how the proposed names would be an improvement on the momentary confusion some might experience when the current way is more in-universe. I do support creating redirects to Shy Doctor and its family though. Borisashton ☎ 23:41, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Okay, there was a reason I highlighted the Fugitive Doctor precedent.

That page was named due to the fact that, while the name hasn't been used in-universe, is otherwise the official name for the character and used by the BBC and fans alike, making it silly that the page wasn't name that.

That precedent applies here: the BBC have only used "The Quite Handsome Doctor", "The Shy Doctor", "The Handsome Doctor", and "The Female Doctor" to refer to these incarnations. The current names have never once been used by the BBC.

While @Borisashton raises the points that the current names are the closest to an in-universe name, as well as being ambiguous, I'd like to counter those points.

1. Firstly, the current names rely already on far too much speculation, to the point that the leads have to establish that "an incarnation who would've been logically called" before referring to them by number. Continuing this, the descriptive names, are, in my opinion, more in-universe, as we can see that they, well, describe the Doctors. Calling Jim Broadbent's Doctor "the shy one" is self-evident to anyone who is familiar with Curse. Whereas referring to them as "the Tenth Doctor" makes you immediately think of the other one.
2. Secondly, while yes, these names could be used to describe other incarnations, the fact of the matter is, is that they haven't been used. And the thing is, there are many names in the DWU that could apply to other characters, but we don't opt to not use them simply because of that, do we? We don't apply this standard anywhere else on the Wiki.

My point is, these names are the only official ones that exist, and they are also unique to each incarnation. Due to the Fugitive Doctor precedent, these descriptive names should be the ones used to name the articles.

Epsilon📯 📂

01:34, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Epsilon on this. Jack "BtR" Saxon ☎ 11:52, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Bumping the discussion.

Epsilon📯 📂

14:31, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Has the Unbound Doctor ever been called that within a story or in credits? If not, that's another recent precedent for a real-world official name superseding The Doctor (Sympathy for the Devil) or Third Doctor (Sympathy for the Devil). Gowlbag ☎ 06:14, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, as there is at least one other fugitive Doctor and many Unbound Doctors.

But we absolutely did not go "well technically the First Doctor is a fugitive so therefore The Doctor (Fugitive of the Judoon) shall it remain". So let's be fair to the Curse incarnations.

Epsilon📯 📂

09:07, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Even if we have to move this page, and the related pages, to The Female Doctor (The Curse of Fatal Death) and like, that would be preferable than what we currently have.

Epsilon📯 📂

15:56, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Per the principle articulated by CzechOut at Talk:Interference - Book Two (novel)#Merge tag and discussed in my response at Talk:Ninth Doctor (The Curse of Fatal Death)#Name, I agree with

Epsilon

's final comment that the script names should be used but the (The Curse of Fatal Death) dab terms should be retained. – n8 (☎) 14:03, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Well, I only want these pages to remain dabbed as a final case compromise, as we don't place dabs on pages like Unbound Doctor even though there is more than one Unbound Doctor. Although I do agree that retaining the dab terms would be better for SEO.

Furthermore, it's been nearly a year since this talk page ceased development, and since then we have even named Fourteenth Doctor as such through promotional material, so these renames are more viable and under major precedent than ever.

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

14:09, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Checking Google SEO results, and typing in the search terms "doctor who" + "the handsome doctor" or "the shy doctor" or "the quite handsome doctor" yields the exact Tardis Wiki page relevant to the incarnation; therefore, I don't think dabs terms will be necessary on these pages for SEO purposes. That being said, however, the searching for "doctor who" + "the female doctor" goes about as successfully as you'd expect. So, perhaps it may be best to only give the Female Doctor a dab term?

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

14:32, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Not sure why you're testing SEO with those specific terms, since I have no clue why the average user would search for "Shy Doctor" – a name which has only(?) been used in fairly obscure BtS sources – instead of, yknow, "Curse of Fatal Death". Besides, when I google "Handsome Doctor Doctor Who", I get a bunch of listicles, pictures of David Tennant and men in lab coats, and Reddit discussions. Twelfth Doctor (The Curse of Fatal Death) is only the last result on the page. It's clear to me that the story title dab term should remain in all cases. – n8 (☎) 15:15, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

To answer your first point, it is to demonstrate that these pages can be found easily on Google if searched for. Most people wouldn't type in "Tenth Doctor" and "The Curse of Fatal Death", they'd go for "Jim Broadbent". And when I searched for "Handsome Doctor Doctor Who", the third result was Hugh Grant's Doctor. Not Tennant or anything or men in lab coats.

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

15:26, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

And I've also tested this on my college's Safari web browser which hasn't been affected by my prior activity. If Hugh Grant's TCoFD Wiki page appears third in Google's search results, it is pretty clear the dab term would be unnecessary. And the same is true for "quite handsome doctor doctor who" and "shy doctor doctor who", the latter's page being the very first result.

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

15:29, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

I don't know what to tell you. If you're not seeing any men in lab coats, we're getting very, very different results for "handsome doctor doctor who". Could you try on another search engine, like DuckDuckGo? Twelfth Doctor (The Curse of Fatal Death) doesn't show up anywhere in the results for me there, even after I scroll through several pages worth.

It seems objectively true to me that including (The Curse of Fatal Death) in the page name is best for SEO and disambiguation. – n8 (☎) 16:34, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Just FYI

This talk page is word-for-word duplicated at the highly inappropriately named Talk:Stupid whore (The Curse of Fatal Death), which was created by a Nazi who has been making similar such vandalism (most of which now reverted/removed) on other women and minorities pages. NightmareofEden ☎ 11:58, 13 February 2021 (UTC)