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Latest revision as of 14:37, 6 May 2023
User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon II XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:128978
There are already two Mark Oliver's on the wiki (Mark Oliver and Mark B. Oliver), as well as the Mark Oliver who acted in Journey.
Firstly, it seems reasonable to me that the two already existing, may be the same writer, but credited under different names.
Secondly, should "Mark Oliver" become a disambig page, linking to "Mark Oliver (editor)", "Mark Oliver (actor)", and "Mark B. Oliver"?
- CzechOut
Why is it "reasonable" to you? You have any proof? I've never looked into this at all, so I'm genuinely asking for your opinion on the matter.
- Geek Mythology
No, I don't have any proof (and won't change the articles if I don't find any), but I did have a look online.
From what I found, Mark B. Oliver lives in America, and Mark Oliver worked on Doctor Who Insider, which was an American magazine.
Added to this, it's not unheard of for writers to do both fact and fiction (B. Oliver also wrote a non-ficion Blakes 7 guide), and when considering the similarity of the names, and the limited topic, it's seems reasonable (as I said, not definate) that it is the same writer but using two names, in a Iain [M.] Banks kind of way.
- SOTO
I briefly looked into it when I first created the Journey page, and it seems unlikely that the actor is either of the American Marks.
But I can see the other two being the same person...
Also, you're correct in your assumption in 'secondly'. If they're different people, then Mark Oliver would be a dab page, since there are three pages, as per T:DAB.
- Geek Mythology
Yeah, I never assumed that the actor was the same as the writer, just that the two writers were the same.
- CzechOut
The difficulty is that Doctor Who Insider wasn't put together in America. It was written and edited in England by Panini and then, for cost reasons, printed in America. So we learn nothing from seeing a credit in DWI. What we should probably do next is ask the one guy who has all the DWI issues, The Librarian, to actually check each issue to see if Oliver is ever credited with a B. If so, then that's evidence enough for me that they're the same person.
But I think there's enough "reasonable doubt" in what you're saying above to hold off on a dab page. Note that T:DAB doesn't say you have to create a dab with three pages. It only says you have to have three pages in order to be eligible to create a dab. {{you may}} takes two variables, and so I wouldn't create a dab page that may eventually be deleted. I'd just do some double-barrelled {{you may}}s.
- CzechOut
Oh, by "we should ask The Librarian", I meant one of you two guys. You're far more interested in this than I am.
- SOTO
But if we're just using {{you may}}, where would Mark Oliver lead to?
- Anoted
Mark Oliver (actor) and Mark B. Oliver
- CzechOut
{{you may|Marc B. Oliver|Marc Oliver|n1=the writer of several short stories for the Adventure Calendar|n2=the actor of the same name}} - 76.102.84.243
Hi,
I am Mark B. Oliver and in addition to writing the four stories for BBC Online, I was the Assistant Editor of Doctor Who Insider. Because Insider was put together in the UK, they needed someone to cast an American eye over it, even though I am in fact English but have lived in the US for many years. I was supposed to be credited as Mark B. Oliver (as there is a BBC journalist also called Mark Oliver, and of course the actor from Journey, amongst many others) but was simply credited as Mark Oliver in error.
Hopefully this clears it up. Feel free to email me for any further clarifications.
Mark (Oliver) [email protected]
Users wishing to add the credit "Mark Oliver" to a page where they mean to indicate the writer should remember to pipe trick it: [[Mark B. Oliver|Mark Oliver]]. Example at DWI 5.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:129068
T:IU dictates that all text in in-universe articles must be written in past tense. So what's up with our picture captions? Most captions I've seen on this wiki are written in the present tense, as demonstrated in the example on the right (taken from smoking pipe).
Personally, I try to word my captions in a more ambiguous fashion, such as the example on the left.
So what should become the law around here?
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:129125
Is there much point have an individual’s non-canon appearances in their list of appearances?
For example: Eleventh Doctor - List of appearances.
The list of the Eleventh Doctor appearances shows all his appearances, even Worlds in Time and the National Television Award sketch?
Surely, if they are non-canon, then they should not be included.
I propose we removed them from the list of appearances, so create a new section at the bottom of the pages to store this information.
- Shambala108
I agree.
- Mewiet
A non-canon appearance is still an appearance, so I don't see why it should be removed, just labeled as non-canon. If someone is searching for the entirety of a character's appearances, they should be able to view all of them. It's easier access to have them all in one spot.
- Mini-mitch
Mewiet wrote: A non-canon appearance is still an appearance, so I don't see why it should be removed, just labeled as non-canon.
By forum:What is a cameo?, there should be nothing like '(cameo) or '(non-canon)' after a story name.
- CzechOut
Well, appearance pages are real world, so it's not really against policy to have a reference to things that are legal, but {{notdwu}}. I have sometimes swept this info away, though, primarily cause it's so much of an edge case.
The language is problematic though. We absolutely cannot use the language "non canon", because that's against T:CAN. There is no canon, so therefore there can't be "non-canon". I'd go with simply "other appearances" rather than "non-canon appearances".
- Mewiet
Mini-mitch wrote:
Mewiet wrote: A non-canon appearance is still an appearance, so I don't see why it should be removed, just labeled as non-canon.
By forum:What is a cameo?, there should be nothing like '(cameo) or '(non-canon)' after a story name.
That's a decision that doesn't make much sense. On one hand, I understand why cameo, guest, and similar titles would get crowded.
However, readers should know key differences in appearances. i.e. When an appearance is voice only, when an appearance is archive footage (or worse, voice archive footage), and when appearances are non-canon. I've been that person using wikias to try and find other appearances by specific characters, either for research purposes or for personal entertainment because I simply want more of that character, and if there's not a way to distinguish between such appearances it makes the access to that information needlessly complicated and often useless.
- Mewiet
CzechOut wrote:
The language is problematic though. We absolutely cannot use the language "non canon", because that's against T:CAN. There is no canon, so therefore there can't be "non-canon". I'd go with simply "other appearances" rather than "non-canon appearances".
Perhaps a section on the appearance page that's specifically headed as Non-DWU?
Other appearances sounds misleading to me.
- CzechOut
How is "other appearances" misleading? It's appearances that are not like any of the things that have been listed previously. It's appearances that are … other. With what could it be confused?
- CzechOut
Mewiet wrote: That's a decision that doesn't make much sense.
Fine, but that's not the topic of this thread. Please don't muddy the waters by using this thread to argue for change about a wholly separate policy. This thread is about whether appearances in {{notdwu}} productions can go on lists of appearances.
- Mewiet
CzechOut wrote: How is "other appearances" misleading? It's appearances that are not like any of the things that have been listed previously. It's appearances that are … other. With what could it be confused?
It can be confused quite easily. If I did not know the context of "other appearances" by having read this thread, I would think it refers to miscellaneous appearances, but not necessarily appearances that don't take place in the DWU. "Other" and Not-DWU are not going to be instant synonyms for all (I would suspect even most) people.
- CzechOut
But what specifically would other mean besides "something other than what appears above this line"?
- SOTO
Agreed on that point, although I'd personally prefer something that more explicitly says "non-DWU." "Other" just means "different than the above media."
- 78.9.5.157
Out of continuity appearances?
- CzechOut
Yeah, I'm really not comfortable with the words continuity or canon being in this at all. I strongly think that if you just say other, it'll be clear that it's different from everything above it.
- Anoted
I disagree strongly. From the usage on the page I'd understand that these appearances were categorised as other, but I wouldn't have any clue what that meant, and I'd probably draw erroneous conclusions based on noticeable similarities and differences. Anything I notice that the bits in the other section have in common I'll assume is the dividing principle. Why not explain what we mean by other? Add a heading to the top of the other section that says something close to what {{notdwu}} does? Something like "You may consider these Eleventh Doctor appearance part of the Doctor Who universe. But we don't."
That makes the distinction clear without using the words continuity or canon.
- CzechOut
Well, the other thought is that we could just say that the list of appearances is just a list of appearances in things the wiki considers to be a valid source. That's a simpler solution.
In other words, I'd prefer Mini-mitch's original suggestion of totally eliminating the {{notdwu}} from the list by stating in the lead that these ar "appearances in valid sources" rather than trying to hang on to these highly miscellaneous appearances with some variation of the {{notdwu}} language at the bottom of the page. I think that fewer people would actually reach that message than the lead, and therefore they might interject {{notdwu}} appearances above the message, simply because they never got to it.
If instead we say in the lead, through the use of a standardised template, that the lists may only contain stories considered to be valid sources, it'll be clearer to everyone what we're trying to have, and will have a much better shot at a standardised approach.
- SOTO
A good idea. Although, for the purposes of feeding the discussion, the non-DWU appearances in Strax - List of Appearances (which the bot didn't actually rename, due to Strax - list of appearances having been created independently) are most certainly webcasts, rendering 'other' entirely moot.
"Other" would imply that the non-DWU stories there are not television stories, webcasts or prose. Putting things like Songtaran Carols under the header 'other' would be entirely misleading.
- Anoted
But there are people who'd use the list of appearances page to find ALL appearances. Maybe we could put a heading at the top of the page saying that this is for appearances that we consider valid, and that for notdwu appearances see the other section?
- CzechOut
Removing the {{notdwu}} stuff would only confirm the way we do things elsewhere, such as {{DWTV}}. In that list of appearances, we simply say that we've deliberately left some things off the list. It's really no big deal. We are editors. There's nothing wrong in making an editorial choice — particularly if it benefits clarity.
Writing a decent, standardised lead for these pages is long overdue, since most of them lie anyway by purporting to be, as you seem to think, a list of "ALL appearances".
- Shambala108
"The following is a list of appearances of fill-in-the-blank. It is not a comprehensive list, and does not include appearances in stories that this wiki doesn't consider valid sources." Or something like that.
Here, I removed all the non DWU stuff and added a couple of sentences to say why they are not covered.
I also removed all comments like 'cameo, flashback etc' as per forum:what is a cameo?
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:129204
Every time I try to start a new discussion at Drax something goes wrong. Hitting the post button takes me to Undefined. What's going on?
And posting this just confirmed that it's only Drax that I'm having this problem with, not the forum in general. Great.
- CzechOut
What exact message are you attempting to post?
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:129452
Given that the Doctor's TARDIS is not merely a means of why the characters are in "location a", but also a living character in of herself, would it make sense to state a chronological history on the page as a history or biography section, or is that too unfeasible due to her ubiquity on top of there already being tons of speculation to the order of individual Doctor pages?
I don't know, it seems to make sense to mention when she goes seriously out of control, malfunctions, is separated from its occupants for long periods and shows emotion or had emotions projected on her by the Doctor.
I think writing the article primarily using the organisational principle of locations and features is the only sane way to write the article. If you tried to chronicle her like a person, I think you'd just get into all sorts of timeline — not to mention motivational — speculation. With something as narratively ubiquitous as the TARDIS, a "biography" would be tantamount to a timeline article, and if we can't even figure out the order of stories for individual Doctors, why would we think we could do it for the TARDIS?
Another way of looking at it:
That being the case, it's really not allowed by policy to do a timeline of the TARDIS, since it's already been rules that timeline pages can't be in namespace 0.
I think it's better to layer in the history as it pertains to the locations within and features of the TARDIS. A true biography would make the article far less helpful.
Really, we should be continuing to edit down the TARDIS and putting more and more "history of individual components" off onto those component pages.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:129501
I was on Tower of the Hand; the wiki for Song of Ice and Fire, and they have a bit of code that allows reader to determine how far into the series the article shows. Would it be possible to set up the same for the Tardis wiki, but rather then make a distinction between books, make it between mediums?
For example, the first sentence in the article on The Great Intelligence is from a Virgin new adventure that connects that entity to HP Lovecrafts Great Old Ones. I think thats an interesting idea, and the fact that a Who writer has drawn that connection should be on this wiki. But that hasn't been established on the show, and future writers of the show will not think twice about contradicting that info. A TV viewer coming to this site for info on whats been established in the show would be nothing but confused by that.
The work of citing the various sources for info has already been done, this would just make it easier to sort through.
- Shambala108
I may be misunderstanding your question, but we have prefixes in citations that tell what medium a story is. For example, TV is for television stories, COMIC for comic stories, etc.
- CzechOut
Please provide a link to the template that you're talking about. Or, if you can't do that, just link to a page that contains this code of which you speak.
- 129.105.166.129
I do know you've cited sources for the material, so someone can figure it out, but its not the most readable. Someone won't know until they get to the end of a section what the source is.
Heres an example of what I'm talking about, from the Song of Ice And Fire Wiki Tower of the Hand. If you change the scope of book read, it changes which biographical details of the character are included. http://towerofthehand.com/reference/k/00506/index.html
If Tardi Wiki implemented something like this, then visitor who was only interested in what had been established in the show could set the slider at the top to TV, and only info with that prefix in the citations would be visible. They could choose between TV, Prose, Audio, or combinations thereof.
- Shambala108
I clicked on the link you provided, but I don't understand what your example is supposed to do.
However, it kinda doesn't matter anyway, because on this wiki, we treat all media the same. There is no preference for TV over the others, for example. Yes, it's frustrating for someone who only cares about one medium. But the benefits outweigh the inconveniences.
And the thing is, towerofthehand.com is not a wiki. It doesn't allow the general public to edit articles, so they have an extraordinary amount of control of their content. They don't have to consider building something that can be edited by anyone of practically any age. Moreover, they're not a part of a wikifarm, so they don't have to worry about any parent company telling them what standards they have to maintain. They can do it precisely the way they want to do it, and not worry whether their design is too far away from their host's "norms". And it's not built on the MediaWiki platform. It appears to be a completely custom, purpose-built site. So they've integrated this concept into their site from the ground up.
We could do something like this through javascript or potentially SMW, but it would actually require starting over. From ground zero. We'd have to tag every bit of information as belonging to one of the several groups: TV, AUDIO, PROSE, whatever. That task would be … formidable in the extreme. Game of Thrones is a literal handful of books. Doctor Who is thousands of stories. And we have tens of thousands of pages about those thousands of stories.
Finally, I've seen this approach done with Doctor Who stuff, and I find it difficult to understand. There are sites where people will colour the text to indicate the source of the statement. Imagining how that would work if we actively hid information is challenging. There are many short stories, for instance, which require an understanding of precedent (and sometimes antecedent) audio and television stories. So if someone wanted to come here and allow only prose stories to display, they'd be lost. I mean, sometimes literally half a sentence would be visible. There are any number of sentences I know I've written which integrate facts from different media so tightly that hiding the various media would result in only a few words to be visible at a time. Sure, we could rewrite the sentences so that full statements were given for each media, but then the text wouldn't flow the same way, or at all.
Doctor Who doesn't actually lend itself to a separation of media like this. Most non-televised stories trade on the references they make to other media. There are very few totally original, free-standing stories out there. And Doctor Who fans are, I would say, hardwired to be most interested in finding the connections between one story and another. Big Finish and the DWM and IDW comic stories clearly trade on the notion that they're creating stories that amplify and enhance televised stories.
For example, if you choose to show only information from comic stories, then I'd suggest that The Eye of Ashaya or The Time Machination or Hunters of the Burning Stone would make very little sense to you. Or at least you'd be missing the emotional impact of the stories. These stories, like so many others, trade on what you know about various characters from their appearances in other media.
And it's not just that the stories all require knowledge from television. If it were true that every story derived from television, then we could make TV information permanently visible, and the rest, optional. But there are audios that have characters from prose and comics, and short stories that are wholly based on audio characters and situations, and books that are based on things that originated in comics.
Being able to freely write articles that can pull in things from different media allow us to tell the reader why it's important that the writer put this character in that situation while equipping them in a certain way and saying a certain phrase.
So, yes, I concede that being able to hide the information per media would make the source clearer. But it would make the meaning much more opaque.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:129568
I've seen "et al" crop up in some citations such on the Vessica, Griffin, Tarnished Image (short story), Kennedy, Panda and Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS (TV story)#Continuity pages.
It seems a very lazy way of citing a source, by just citing one and saying 'and others'.
But often doesn't actually help.
For example:
- Vessica was the home planet of Majenta Pryce, who was a green humanoid. (COMIC: Hotel Historica etc al).
There are no other pages you can go to to find info about the planet from there. From that page your can find out about Majenta and the story she was in, but saying "et al" doesn't help the reader.
Over on the England page there's this:
- English was also one of the principal languages of the human race. (TV: The End of the World, et al.)
Which if you navigate to English language you find different stories mentioned but not the story used as a source on the England article.
From the Dalek article there are these uses;
- Dalek gunsticks could kill almost any sentient being (TV: The Daleks, et al)
- Some models were able to hover, or fly under their own power like small spacecraft. (TV: Revelation of the Daleks, et al)
There's a lot of Dalek stories and here using 'et al' is only borderline helpful. These stories cited here do show the first example of these two things, though perhaps not the most obvious. Daleks is notable to the Daleks' first appearance and their using stun. The hover ability is more noticeably demonstrated in Remembrance.
I know "et al" is traditionally used when there's you have a citation that includes more than 4 or so authors, but that's usually in an essay and an essay has a Reference List/Bibliography at the end, so you can actually check what the citation is referring to, on our articles we don't have that.
I'm proposing we abolish and note that we don't use it in the T:CITE.
- Shambala108
I agree we should abolish "et al". It should be replaced with the {{facts}} tag when other sources are needed.
- CzechOut
I don't know. There are some statements that are so wide-ranging that et al does make some sense to me.
- The Doctor used his TARDIS to travel through space and time. (TV: An Unearthly Child, et al)
- Sarah Jane Smith was a journalist. (TV: The Time Warrior, et al)
I mean, there are some facts that are just generally true, and it would be a waste of space to give more than one source. {{facts}} is really for when there's obvious numerical disagreement between a sentence and the number of citations, as with:
- There were many cases in which Sarah Jane's career as a journalist got her into trouble (TV: The Time Warrior[additional sources needed])
- Tangerineduel
I understand what you mean, and it's how I've felt when I've looked at some of these citations which is why I've not mentioned it for a long time.
As I've said "et al" only makes sense if you know what the other sources are or have a Reference List/Bibliography (neither are workable for us).
If you're going write vague/general statements either cite the first or the most illustrative example.
For your Sarah Jane Smith example, Time Warrior is one of only a few good examples where she's working as a journalist Invasion of the Dinos is an example of her investigating, but not actually being a journalist. Others that I can immediately think of that actually show her as a journo are Interference - Book One (novel) (which actually shows her investigating and reporting) and BF's Sarah Jane Smith (audio series) where again she's shown to have an editor and works/worked as a journalist.
The other way to go is if you need to cite a general statement, counter it was a specific one to illustrate both.
- The Doctor used his TARDIS to travel through space and time, sometimes he could travel through just time or only space these he referred to as "short hops" (TV: Hide, Full Circle)
- Spreee
I've used "et.al." a number of times myself, mostly for the space & time saving reasons mentioned above. Listing every story in which a Dalek shot a sentient being, for example, could indeed become cumbersome; and, on the off chance (haha) that the Daleks reappear in the future, there could be a lot of back work to be done adding in the new story as citation for the relevant areas. Citing only notable examples is fine of course, but very subjective. Eventually, we'll end up with a list of every time a Dalek gun was ever fired. In the body of an article, that kind of list is pretty distracting.
Would something along the lines of footnote citations be an alternative? It still ends up taking up space, but it's at the end of an article rather than in-line. I'm not totally sold on the notion myself, it's just a thought.
- Tangerineduel
Footnote citations aren't an option as we use them for real world citations. We also want people to seek out pages on the wiki, having the citations assists this.
I understand that notability is subjective and that it's not feasible in many cases to list every example. But as I've said above the use of et.al is as bad for new readers as it assumes the reader has prior knowledge.
I think it's better to cut to it and cite notable examples of the concept. If the stories illustrate the topic clearly then that's enough.
- StevieGLiverpool
For obvious ones like, Daleks for e.g, couldn't we make a link to their list of appearances, they kill in all of them. It does sound pretty silly and it's my idea!
- Tangerineduel
I considered suggesting this. But wondered if we linked to the list of appearances would be the same as placing 'et.al' or a worse position.
For instance in the Daleks' list of appearances there's plenty of stories that don't illustrate the Daleks killing someone. For instance The Also People (novel) where the most the Dalek does is drink champagne. In many of the TV21 Dalek comic stories no one person gets exterminated, occasionally it's Dalek-on-Dalek action, I think sometimes no Dalek dies. The I, Davros series only features them in the intro and they don't do any killing then.
Even TV, Army of Ghosts (TV story) doesn't show them killing anyone. Same with The Pandorica Opens (TV story) and The Five Doctors (TV story).
Linking to the list of appearances is perhaps worse as it suggests all the stories on the page will illustrate the subject.
- StevieGLiverpool
Yeah, sorry I suggested that :/
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:129580
There is a category called Category:Rassilon's Final Solution arc. It seems to cover some of series 4, the specials and comic stories set during this part of the Tenth Doctor's life. Where did this name come from? I can't find it anywhere else on the wiki. It's not on the list of story arcs page.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:129609
According to our Vienna Salvatori article, the Vienna audio series is not a Doctor Who spin-off but rather something set in a separate universe with her first appearance being a cross-over with Doctor Who. However, it looks like even Big Finish calls it a spin-off on its own page: [1] "in this brand new spin-off from the Doctor Who main range adventure". The summary, mentioning an Earth Empire, doesn't sound like it's in any way contradictory to the Doctor Who universe, so it doesn't seem to be any more separate than e.g. the Bernice Summerfield or Iris Wildthyme series, which are covered by the wiki.
- Shambala108
There is a fairly long discussion at Thread:125464 that explains the reasoning behind this decision.
- 78.8.132.97
It's not really convincing to me. Even if a producer doesn't consider it to be a part of the Doctor Who universe, it references DWU stuff and is being produced by people who actually do have the Doctor Who license. It's certainly more of a part of Doctor Who than things like the K-9 show or Auton movies, which only had licenses to use small elements of the Doctor Who universe, and which this wiki still considers part of the DWU for some reason.
- Shambala108
Like I posted above, there is already a discussion at Thread:125646, so your comments should be made there.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:129642
I've noticed lately that the infobox field "Main aliases" is often being used in ways that I'm not sure would qualify as "main aliases."
For example, over at Strom and Loxx, a pair of (totally unrelated) Sontarans, we see that their "main aliases" are "Commander Strom" and "Commander Loxx," which aren't nicknames or alternate names so much as titles. It's a very similar situation at pages such as Brian Carstairs, Barman (The Wormery), Boemina, Stella Stark... and that's not even the full first page of search results for "main aliases."
There's also a second way that I feel "main aliases" is being misused, and that's when the alias in question is substantially different for their real name, but the alias isn't a main alias. I see this happening less often, but it still bugs me. For example, according to the article on Hex, one of his main aliases is "Nurse Ken." A quick search reveals that he was referred to by that name exactly once, by Ace in scene 77 of AUDIO: Black and White. This also briefly happened at The Crooked Man, where it was stated he had main aliases "The Bogeyman" and "Old Romeo," but these were deleted by CzechOut.
So, here are my questions: is there a reasonable justification for people putting titles/rarely-used nicknames in the "main aliases" infobox field? And if there isn't, how do you propose we deal with this?
Thanks, Bubblecamera
- Shambala108
You're completely right that this infobox field is being used incorrectly. There are several archived forum discussions on the subject; I will post them here later.
I'm glad you brought this up because I've been wanting to bring this to everyone's attention.
- SOTO
Let me direct you to Forum:Notable Aliases, which should answer all your questions. If you have any further questions, a more experienced admin can answer them later.
- Bubblecamera
Thanks, SOTO. Reading it now :)
- Shambala108
There is also Forum:Also Known As getting a bit silly.
- Bubblecamera
Okay, I've now read both of those. Who knew it would be so hard to name a single infobox field?
An infobox is a summary of the most important information. A lot of people, I think, feel that it is a form that needs to be filled out in detail. That's why we:
- end up with long lists of aliases
- it gets cluttered with parentheticals like (dies), (joins), (leaves), (cameo) and the like
- people want to use the typically unnecessary {{{name}}} variable to label it with the longest name that person or object has ever had
- people say "none" instead of just leaving inapplicable fields blank
Infoboxes should be brief. You should always endeavour to trim the fat out of them, and make them as vertically short as possible.
And since we're pointing out reading lists, may I draw new users' attentions to the category of infobox discussions? If you thought finding the name for this infobox field was tough, you should see all the other work that went into creating them.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:129667
Would Jack Harkness be disintegrated by any means like a Special Weapons Dalek blast that would disintegrate his atoms ? If he was disintegrated in that way, would he be definitely die or his body would survive ?
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:129888
I've noticed that the aforementioned badges awarded in the Game of Rassilon stop at "Memory-Challenged McGann" when you reach 500 edits in the 1963 DW television stories and award the same badge per 500 edits. Not many editors have earned this one, so I don't blame you if you haven't come across this dilemma; I've not got the badge yet, either. Is it possible to incorporate the remaining three actors who played the Doctor in the badge system, or is the award system "locked" into awarding the same kind of badges for 500 edit increments?
Suggestions (alliterative titles befitting personalities of incarnations upheld): Embittered Eccleston (100 points)= 1000 edits; Tenacious Tennant (100 points)= 1500 edits; Smug Smith (100 points, though a 250-point platinum badge might be in order for this many edits)= 2000 edits,+ every 500 edits onward until the 12th Doctor is introduced
This is just me addressing my OCD for not including the New-Who era Doctors. What are your thoughts? --Thunderush ☎ 05:43, May 6, 2013 (UTC)
- Shambala108
First of all, after a badge gets to 500, it doesn't change the name. Wikia only allows for 8 total badge names, I believe, and we can't change that.
Second of all, the badges are done by category, and the 1-8 Doctors are in the category category:1963 television stories while 9-11 are in category:2005 television stories. There is no real need for badges for the NuWho stories, as those pages are among the most actively edited.
By contrast, the original series' story pages do need some propping up. Thus, the badge specifically centres on the first eight Doctors.
In other words, that particular awards track is working as expected, and there are no plans to change it. Another way of looking at it is that the BBC Wales Doctors are not part of the 1963 series. They're a part of the 2005 series, and therefore ineligible for this award.
EDIT: Whoops; didn't see that Shambala already had this one covered. So just think of my whole post as one, big "what she said".
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:129896
I noticed that there's a GOR award for commenting on blog posts, which is confusing because I thought blog posts were disabled on this wiki....
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:130028
In the interest of preventing a continuing edit war, I'm starting a discussion here that will affect the articles Doctor-lite and The Crimson Horror (TV story). I've counted about half a dozen editors either removing or adding the story on the Doctor-lite page.
We can't keep editing this back and forth. Right now the Doctor-lite article contradicts itself. We need to come up with a decision on what does or doesn't make the story a Doctor-lite.
- MystExplorer
Well, to me the phrase "Doctor-lite" implies he doesn't have much screen time. Now, in the Crimson Horror, he clearly has more screen time than he did in Love & Monsters, Blink and Turn Left. In fact, I'm not sure there's been a true Doctor-lite story in the entire Matt Smith era. I think you could definitely make the argument that Crimson Horror is a companion-lite episode but Doctor-lite, not so much.
- Tangerineduel
The Doctor turns up in The Crimson Horror 14 minutes in. So I don't think it's a Doctor-lite story.
For Clara it only takes a few minutes more for her to appear, 17 minutes in and we hit the flashback sequence. Then between from when she stops being part of the flashback and re-joining the narrative there's about 10 minutes. Clara isn't in around 20 minutes of the story or around half of the episode.
I'm still not sure if that means this 'counts' as a companion-lite episode. Given that there's a 3 guest characters who are pseudo-companions for this story.
Clara's presence is still felt in this story, much more than in other companion-lite like Love & Monsters, Blink, Midnight or The Lodger.
So I think while Clara isn't in every scene either with or without the Doctor I don't think she's not "present" in the story.
One question that does remain, that may lend some weight to this being a "lite" episode, was this story (as the Doctor-lite article currently suggests) double-banked?
- MystExplorer
I recall seeing pictures of the filming last July and as far as I know it was the only episode being filmed at that time.
- Bold Clone
Well, the page itself defines Doctor-lite and Companion-lite as "a classification of stories in which the Doctor and/or his companions are deliberately de-emphasised in the narrative." I would argue that "The Crimson Horror" easily fits that definition. The Doctor and Clara are trapped and need the help of others to escape. Thus the Paternoster gang are brought in as the focus of the episode (at least initially). If that's not de-empasizing the Doctor and his companion, then clearly, the phrase "de-empasized" is meaningless. :D
- CzechOut
Well, the word de-emphasised is not used in isolation. If you read further into the lead, you'll see it stresses the term arises from "production need".
This listing that has arisen in the article, Doctor-lite#TV stories has crept into the article and divided the lead from the rest of the article, giving unwarranted primacy to television stories. Such lists are not necessary, thanks to the related category. And even if they were desirable, they shouldn't be that high up in the article.
The simple solution for stopping edit warring at Doctor-lite is just to remove that section.
The category, too, needs re-vamping, since it's all about "episodes" rather than stories. We don't really have any other categories ending in the word "episode", precisely because we want our categories about stories to have the word stories within. That way, we can just append the media to the word stories: television stories, comic stories, etc.
- Anoted
This episode is clearly not an episode about the Doctor and Clara running off to Victorian times and getting in and out of a pickle. This episode is a story about an escapade of the Paternoster gang in which they rescue the Doctor and Clara and save the people from the virulent red leech.
I don't know if this was done for the purposes of double banking but this is a story in which both the Doctor and the current travelling companion are "deliberately de-emphasised in the narrative" so it definitely fits. A story can be Doctor or companion lite for purposes other than double banking. While the article makes this clear for non-televisual material, we should make it clear that lite episodes being structured as such for dramatic purposes is a possibility for all formats.
If this was double-banked then we need to properly source that and we need to say what it was double-banked with. It's also perfectly possible that the story was not told this way for the purposes of double banking but that the production crew took advantage of the lite nature of this episode.
- CzechOut
I've significantly reworked Doctor-lite to include some kinda source for the term, and to include more examples from other media. I've also deleted the list, as it's just not necessary to define the term. Removing the list will also future proof the article — we don't have any obligation to run back to it and change it every time a new episode comes up.
I do think that in terms of the TV series, you have to be able to prove that something funky is going on with the shooting schedule. There has to be some evidence of double-banking, because that's pretty explicitly what Moffat says in DWM 383. It's not sufficient to just have the Doctor absent in the first 10 minutes of a show; that's just a simple restructuring of the plot.
We won't know for sure until we get the full Pixley on The Crimson Horror, so I say we should just leave it out of the category, and not attempt to claim anything about its "Doctor-lite" status until we get some more behind-the-scenes reporting.
- Thunderush
I thought that too at the beginning when he wasn't seen for about 15 minutes, but I realize that it was probably just to throw that curveball with the reveal he had been poisoned by the leech venom, a "what happened to the Doctor?" setup. I believe he's still had enough involvement in that episode to constitute a normal-size role, unless stated otherwise directly from the production crew.
- Shambala108
The intent of the production team is a key factor in deciding whether something is Doctor-lite. If we don't have a concrete definition, then it becomes a matter of opinion. How much time does the Doctor have to appear to make it a Doctor-lite? Five minutes? Ten minutes? What if it's nine-and-a-half minutes? What if he's in the background of a scene, does that count?
- CzechOut
That's a really good point, and it's especially tricky when you move away from television. The term really is original to BBC Wales, and may even be something Moffat came up with on the fly. It's so much easier to apply to television, because there's an easy litmus test. Of course, we typically have to wait a while for production details to emerge, but eventually it's easy to spot a Doctor-lite TV story from a non-Doctor-lite one.
The thing that's confusing people is language in the article that attempts to make the term applicable to other media. Certainly, it's wrong to use the term with spin-off shows. It only applies to Doctor Who stories, and attempts to use the term with respect to SJA and Torchwood have been excised. But clarity may be better served by focussing squarely on television, unless we can get something to prop up the sections on other media.
The secondary meaning of a "narratively de-emphasised Doctor or companion" needs some sourcing to establish that it's not just a term that fans are applying retrospectively. Or to establish firmly that this is what's happening. The article would really be helped if we could get an author on record using the term, or if maybe the Big Finish boys (for they are all boys) had ever used the term to describe some of their output.
- Anoted
Yeah, if it was just used as a production term then this wouldn't be an issue, because we wouldn't dream of adding anything where we didn't have confirmation of a story structure being written around production limitations. But the nebulous nature of the term and the way we've applied it to books (where there are no such production limitations) makes the application of the term a judgement call.
Maybe the article should mention that it's since been adopted as fan terminology to apply to any story which features a downsized main character appearance, with an example of a story that the term could apply to. And if we can find supporting evidence of an author referring to their work as -lite, then we can mention that this phrase has also been adopted by creators of alternate media works though not to refer to production but overall story. At any rate, that section of the article should be seriously downsized. There's way to much emphasis on things with little or no production on a page that's ostensibly about a production term.
- 63.143.238.98
Regardless of the way it is technically defined, I don't think that The Crimson Horror is a Doctor-lite or Companion-lite episode and I hope that designation has been edited out of the story description.
As far as I can see given the accepted examples of "-lite" episodes, it's not a simple deemphasis of the role of a character but actually a very limited screen time (I'm guessing that it's 10 minutes at the most). I mean, "Rose" is really more about Rose than the Doctor, she's the featured character in the story. But that doesn't make it a Doctor-lite episode.
- Anoted
See that's the exact problem. Everyone has a different judgement of what make a lite episode lite. Everyone draws a different line.
Though, by the line you draw, Clara's role in this episode is very much companion-lite. She's really barely in the episode at all.
- CzechOut
I think you're being a little alarmist. It's not chaos out there. It's not really that "everyone draws a different line". It's just that there's a casual, fan definition and a "proper" production definition. And if there's no double-banking involved, it's really not a -lite episode.
- 64.134.71.199
Well, I agree with the definition of "Doctor-lite" on this wiki, especially the section on "Fan Cooption". I think it's good to draw a strict line on what's included and, therefore, The Crimson Horror designation as a "Doctor-lite episode" should be changed in its description.
What I don't get are why people so eager to label episodes as "-lite" whatever? Why is it at all important to apply this label?
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:130067
Looks like Neil Gaiman pretty much confirms the theory that the Eleventh Doctor era Cybermen are a result of an alliance between the Mondasian and Cybus Cybermen.
"They met a bunch of the Mondasian/Telosian Cybermen, and there was some cross-breeding and interchange of technology, which is why you then get the ones that look like, but actually aren’t, the Cybus Cybermen."
Which is what at least some editors supported from their first appearance. While we should wait with actually stating it as a fact until it is confirmed in-universe, I think that this statement from Gaiman should be enough for them not to be lumped simply under Mondasian without any explanation, especially given that they do look like Cybus Cybermen visually, so this fact should at least be noted.
- 78.8.96.155
Maybe we should even consider merging the Cyberman articles, given that all far-future versions, even if they were conceived before the new series, are now likely to be descended from both Cybus and Mondas Cybermen.
- SOTO
Welcome. While we appreciate your enthusiasm to expand the wiki based on new episodes, according to policy, you must wait until the episode is fully broadcast.
Please take a look at Tardis:Spoiler policy, and erase any info on unreleased episodes in your above mentions. Spoilers (and not your usual definition) are not permitted anywhere on this wiki other than in The Howling. Thank you.
- 78.8.96.155
It's not a spoiler, since Gaiman simply states his theory on the origin of the Matt Smith-era Cybermen. The same theory that has been debated on this wiki for a while. He doesn't actually say whether it's confirmed in the episode itself.
- SOTO
Either way, Gaiman's opinion is of no value to us. If an upcoming story confirms what you say above in-narrative, then we might consider reorganising. But, for now, how about you put your questions on hold until such a thing is confirmed?
- 78.8.96.155
OK, fair enough. Although my point is that regardless of whether the episode itself confirms it, I think merging the articles might be a good idea. Even the current Cyberman (Mondas) article has a picture from Assimilation² with a Cybus logo on the Cyberman's chest. Some of the Matt Smith era Cybermen are considered separately under Cyberman while others are under Cyberman (Mondas).
Whether it is explained in-narrative or not, it's pretty much a given that all future appearances of Cybermen are going to share characteristics of both Mondasian and Cybus versions. Therefore it makes more and more sense to merge the Cybermen into one article, one that considers them as a whole, despite their two separate origin stories. E.g. something like this Cyberman/new#History (just a start for now)
- 78.8.96.155
Oops, I see it was deleted. Anyway, I think that it makes sense to have a section in the beginning of the History part of the article about their origins on Mondas, then one about their origins on Pete's World, and then the rest of the history of both versions and of versions of uncertain origin.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:130176
In several articles we mention that Strax dies in A Good Man Goes to War. Some of these articles mention that he's then later resurrected in Two Days Later.
Is there a reason why we are treating his death as a real and concrete thing?
- Digifiend
In fact, didn't Two Days Later explain that he only fainted?
- CzechOut
Digifiend wrote: In fact, didn't Two Days Later explain that he only fainted?
No, Jenny explained that. But Jenny is, like all good nurses, lying. She's getting him out of recovery with a white lie before laying the full truth on him.
The difficulty here is that we have to look at three narratives to establish the sequence of events: A Good Man Goes to War, The Battle of Demons Run: Two Days Later and The Snowmen.
If you take Two Days at complete face value then the other two sources are wrong. Why? Well, let's look at what happens.
In AGMGTW, Rory is with Strax at the moment of death. If he walked away from Strax before the moment of death, Rory's core competency is stripped away. Strax has to die for Rory to leave the scene. Period. Or else Rory's character actually crumbles. I'd argue that you actually hear Strax' death rattle in the mix, and that Eleven is reacting to hearing it.
Also, look at where Jenny actually is during the Rory/Strax scene. She's rubbing Amy's back, quite far away from Strax. Vastra, meanwhile, is with Lorna. Neither of them is on scene, giving immediate medical care to Strax. Both of them remain close to Rory and Amy throughout the whole River revelation, all the way to the end of the episode. Strax is dead, dead, dead.
And this is what the Doctor explicitly confirms in The Snowmen:
- DOCTOR: He gave his life for a friend of mine once.
- CLARA: Then how come he's alive?
- DOCTOR: Another friend brought him back. (shouts) I'm not sure his brains made the return trip!
You might think that the Doctor is lying here. But before you apply "Rule 1", ask yourself why. He has no motivation to lie to Clara, while Jenny has every motivation to lie to Strax himself.
Note, too, that the device which resurrects Strax is actually established in Snowmen. It's the same device that Strax uses to bring back Clara. In The Snowmen it's very clearly established that the equipment does indeed resurrect the dead. There's no doubt that Clara has died, then been revived by Strax's (well, really, Vastra's) device.
- VASTRA: Her injuries are severe. That equipment will bring back anyone for a while, but long term ...
So, was Strax resurrected? Yep. Absolutely. Without doubt. By using the same prop used on Clara, Two Days actually confirms that he died and was brought back. Evidently, though, he just had less severe injuries, or at least more easily-repairable ones, than Clara.
- Anoted
Watching these out of order probably didn't help me. At any rate we should make the related articles clearer.
- CzechOut
I don't see anything unclear about Strax, which is obviously the article that needs the greatest clarity. The section is called "Death and resurrection" and it seems perfectly straightforward to me. I mean, fine, the article is missing the fact that the Doctor in Snowmen firmly said Strax died and was resurrected. But other than that omission, I don't think it's that unclear.
- CzechOut
Per request, Strax#Death and resurrection has been given a bit more clarity.
- Anoted
Thanks much. I'll look in on the other pages that mention his death and clarify them. You've managed to make something that's not uncomplicated rather simple to understand and I'll use that as a template for other pages that discuss his death.
I've got to say, looking at everything that I'm not sure Jenny was trying to be comforting. What she said was perhaps the least comforting thing any Sontaran could hear at that point and I'm pretty damn sure that she knew that.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:130293
MediaWiki:Wiki-navigation needs updating, because you have some items listed whose links aren't showing up. A list can only contain ten links. So in the Friends list, Donna, Amy, Rory, Jamie and Ian's links don't appear, and under Real People, Caroline Skinner is cut off.
- Anoted
Also, is it just me or did forum disappear from the "under the wiki" selections?
- CzechOut
Having more than enough links is fine. Doesn't hurt anything. Forum has indeed disappeared, due to a need to briefly turn off Wall Forum earlier today. Not quite sure whether it will return or not. Doesn't really matter: clicking on "community" takes you to the same place.
- 64.134.71.199
Please bring "Forum" listing back. The only way I could get back to a discussion going on there was to look through recent Forum activity. I did searches for "Reference Desk" and other forums and nothing appears in the search results. Not all forums appear when you click on Community.
- 64.134.71.199
Okay, found it.
- Anoted
So it wasn't just me. Weird. What happened?
- CzechOut
64.134.71.199 wrote: Please bring "Forum" listing back. The only way I could get back to a discussion going on there was to look through recent Forum activity. I did searches for "Reference Desk" and other forums and nothing appears in the search results. Not all forums appear when you click on Community.
We have no control over when the Forum button returns after de-activating and re-activating the Wall Forums. It does what it wants to do.
But I don't know what you mean by your last sentence. The "Community" button is linked to Special:Forum — exactly the same place as the "Forum" button goes.
(For those wondering why we had to de-activate the forums at all, it's because of a bit of a design flaw on Wikia's part. When Wall Forums are active, the old Forum namespace isn't. So if you need to move a page into the old Forum namespace, you can't, because it "doesn't exist". So you have to turn off Wall Forum, make your move, and then turn Wall Forum back on. You may have noticed another horrible effect of Wall Forums elsewhere. Special:Search doesn't allow you to specifically search in the Forum namespace — quite a disadvantage on this wiki, which has hundreds of pages in that namespace.)
- Anoted
Wow! So this is old, not wall? What's the difference?
- CzechOut
What?
- Anoted
old Forum and Wall Forum and turning one off in order to effect a move?
Or did I completely misunderstand....
- 452
I think you misunderstood, this is the new forum, not the old forum. (Fun fact: when you "disable" the new forum, all new forum posts remain accessible and functional)
Back to the original topic, regarding the limitation of the menus, you might be interested in looking at this: http://aion.wikia.com/wiki/MediaWiki:Wiki-navigation?action=edit
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:130306
I was in the middle of overhauling an article when I suddenly realised that when we start referring to a character with one name we sometimes use the last name and sometimes use the first name. We seem to use the first name pretty much always for women, and we vary widely on the men. Meaning that when we refer to Martha Jones we call her Martha, but when we refer to Jackson Lake we call him Lake. We sometimes end up using both last name and first name in sentences that have multiple characters being referred to in the same breath. For example: "Using the devices to attack the Cybermen, Lake, Rosita, and the Doctor..."
Do we have a preference for one format over the other on this wiki, or do we just care that articles use the same format all the way through? Either way, this seems to be a problem on tonnes of pages and fixing it is going to require some massive copyediting.
- Shambala108
That's why my vote is to not worry about it.
- Anoted
It's incredibly sloppy though, and in articles where the men are all called by their last names and the women by their first names, it's really bad. This is a case where we have wide variation on how we refer to people when using one name. We have a lot of variation within the same articles--going between last name and first name. It seems abundantly clear that editors are simply using whatever comes to mind first or following their own standards, and it really shows. If we sit down and decide what is preferable, then editors at least have a guide for how the article should be written.
- SOTO
Yeah, I've been meaning to bring this up for while... For example, Rex Matheson, when I first encountered it, used "Matheson" for the entire article, even though he's called "Rex" in all of Miracle Day. So I actually changed most of those to his first name.
I think we should just generally go by whichever name's most used in their appearances, but not employ a strict rule about it. For the most part, people are called by their first names in the DWU, but, in exceptions, their surnames should be used, although it is not obligatory. Simple as that.
- Tangerineduel
I appreciate Anoted's wish for a fixed ruling. The issue is that DW as we've found with the encyclopaedia/encyclopedia discussion is anything but consistent.
I agree with SOTO that we should follow how they're referred to in the majority of their appearances.
SOTO is correct that most people get called by their first name. Others get a salutation and last name a lot of the time like Gia Kelly who's called "Miss Kelly" throughout most of The Seeds of Death (TV story).
- CzechOut
When it comes to in-universe characters, I don't really care, but I generally default to using last names, except where that would result in ambiguity. Still, I'm just as likely to say "Peri" as "Brown" or "Harry" as "Sullivan". I think the OP's claim about sexism doesn't take into account that there are simply more female main characters in DW than male. Of course you'll find more instances of female first names in articles; it's simple math, not institutional bias.
However, with respect to real world articles, I think it's absolutely vital that we stick to last names. It's disrespectful in a biographical, informational article to give the impression of familiarity through the use of first names.
- Tangerineduel
I agree with CzechOut on the real world front. We shouldn't get too casual or informal on biographic real world pages.
- CzechOut
The other thing to consider when you make any proposal with us is how the proposal would be enacted if adopted. If you recognise from the get-go that your proposal would require massive manual editing, then the chances are it's not even worth proposing, because it could never be fully (or even mostly) enacted.
Yes, perhaps we could incorporate this as a sort of "best practice", but it could never be actual policy.
Well, I suppose the real world thing could be policy because relatively few of those pages have any substantive content to them, so you're only talking about a few hundred pages to copyed. But there's no way you could do it with the bulkier character pages — unless you decided that it was the only thing you were going to do on the wiki for the next few months.
- Badwolff
I hope a policy is made. It's a little patronizing to call women/female characters by first name (which is typically used for children or those of "lower status", like waiters) while men/males are referred to by surname. Unfortunately, this is frequently a problem created by the writers who often don't provide a last name for female characters.
I think that since there are several characters with similar last names, I think it would be best to refer to all characters by first name or, if there are several characters with the same first name, by first name, last name initial. I also think this would work because it's not unheard of to have several characters in a storyline have the same last name (like "Smith" or in cases where there is a couple or family) but it is very unusual to have a storyline with more than one person with the same first name.
The complication arises when it seems more appropriate to refer to characters as they are addressed in the storyline (like Madame Vastra or Mr. Sweet). In these cases, I think writers have provided a professional or titled name, we should go with what the writers have provided.
I think whatever decision is made is could be mentioned in the style guide and changes made when editors come across incidents where they need to be made.
- CzechOut
Badwolff, you're accepting Anoted's initial hypothesis on face value. I don't particularly believe that Anoted is correct.
It is not true that we uniformly call all women by their first name and all men by their last. Rather, it's that it has become a tradition to speak of companions by their first name, and the overwhelming number of companions are female. It's also true and fair to say that many main characters — starting with the Doctor himself — were only referred to by a single name on television: Susan (though called "Foreman" once or twice, it was very clear that wasn't a true last name), Vicki, Polly, Leela (unless you want to count "of the Sevateem"), Romana I, Romana II, K9, Adric, Nyssa (unless you want to count "of Traken"), Kamelion, Turlough (okay, this eventually turned out to be a last name, but only the most intense of fans know his first name), and Mel.
The show absolutely encourages us to think of people by a single name. It's not wrong to therefore do so. And it's certainly not sexist. Again, it's simple math: more women in a show that stresses first names means that there will be more instances in articles of a woman being referenced by her first name.
Since this thread's initial assertion is logically flawed, there is no cause for new policy.
- Anoted
Let me clarify. I've found that (in my experience only) we refer to characters by first name for the most part. Referring to characters by their last names is most certainly an outlier. But, sometimes, particularly in in-universe biographies we start to refer to one or more characters by their last name. Now it's true that we don't always know last names for characters, and that some characters don't even have last names. Having multiple names, having a surname--these are all cultural artifacts. These practices are not universal even in the real world, so to expect that they'd be universal in the world of Doctor Who is more than a little silly.
That being said, I don't really have a problem with referring to characters by their last names in some formats. John Smith is a real-world, human persona. So is for that matter Jackson Lake. Referring to them by their last names is perfectly acceptable.
My real problem is the massive variation that we have. We have both formats being used. We have both formats being used within the same article, sometimes even for the same name. It's not ok. It's dreadfully confusing and it's just plain bad writing. And it's very uncomfortable when these lines fall upon sex. Which, sometimes it does. Again, this is just what I have noticed in my personal experience editing, but in an article about multiple characters, if one of the characters is going to be referred to by their last name instead of their first, it tends to be the guy. I'm not saying that I think sexism is the driving force here, but whatever is driving this, the outcome is bad, unprofessional writing with the appearance of sexism.
I think that the main cause of this is simply that this is wiki writing. We have different writers who come to these articles with different notions of how they should be writing. And that's why we have policies to regulate writing. Spelling policies, grammar policies, tense policies and so on. We need something for this.
I think that we should always use last name format for real-world people. Whether it's an article that uses real-world or in-universe perspective, we should always use last name format for real people. When referring to characters in articles that use a real world perspective, we should use first names. I think the exception would be for people who are called by their last name all the time. We may know Mr/Ms/Dr So-and-so's first name because it's on a name tag or used once, but for the most part everyone calls them by their last name. This happens most often with professionals of some sort.
I think the only place we have a real question is in-universe articles. In Jackson Lake's biography, should we refer to him as Jackson or as Lake? Whatever decision we make, we should hold it true for all in-universe pages.
I'd really, really, like to see consistency here, especially within the same page. So I'm not really fond of the "use whatever the source uses the most" idea. John Smith (10th doctor) is more often called Mr Smith then he is John. But Martha is called Martha at least as often as she's called Ms. Jones and Joan Redfern is called Matron and Joan more often than she's called Matron Redfern. So if we follow the rules of "most often used name applies" we end up using the names Smith, Martha and Joan. This is really awkward and weird. It also has the appearance of sexism even though sex is not the determining factor. We need to look at this from the reader's perspective, not ours. They're going to wonder why we're referring to only one character by their last name.
I think the only issue that we really have to decide is how we should refer to characters within in-universe articles. I don't have a problem with either format, though I think that last name sounds a bit more proper. We'd certainly never be that informal in a real-world biography and it's a bit weird that we're that informal in an in-universe biography. But I'm ok with either choice. I just think that we need to make a choice.
- SOTO
All I've got to say is, we need to look from the readers' perspective. We're not going to call Rose "Tyler" when no one knows her as that. We're not going to call John Frobisher "John" because, within Children of Earth, he's alwats referred to as "Frobisher." Readers will get confused if we start calling Ace "McShane." Bernice Summerfield is most often referred to as "Benny," not "Bernice" and certainly not "Summerfield."
So, yes, this may very well end with us saying "Smith, Martha and Joan." But there's nothing wrong with that. It may seem sexist to you, but, if anything, it's sexism on the part of the writers — not us. We simply chronicle events; we don't alter people's names for consistency.
- Anoted
Yes, but Smith is very clearly John Smith. While he's called Mr. Smith more often, he's called John a fair amount. And his full name is given multiple times.
I'm not advocating altering names for consistency. His name is quite clearly John Smith. Besides, if we were to go with most commonly used name, then we'd refer to him as "Mr. Smith" not simply Smith. This habit creeps into the wiki not because the show actually refers to characters by their last name, Jackson, Smith, etc., but because of real world writing styles. We use last names in the biographies of real world people not because they are commonly called by their last name, but because that's the way biographies are written. And in some cases we seem to be applying this to in-universe biographies.
If Rose Tyler's was a real person, we'd have written her biography in a different style. We'd never say "When Rose was in her late teens", we'd instead say "When Tyler was in her late teens". It's the style. Matt Smith's biography says "Smith grew up in Northampton", not "Matt grew up in Northampton". This isn't because he's primarily called Smith, it's because this is the style used in writing a biography.
We need to decide what style we want to use for in-universe biographies. We haven't really decided on one. We use first names most of the time, but we sometimes use last names. And most of the time there's no real reason. Jackson Lake isn't most commonly called Lake. He's most commonly called "Doctor" or "The Doctor", then Jackson, then Lake. And John Smith (Tenth Doctor) is most commonly called Mr. Smith, then John. The only way in which we refer to characters mimics the name they are most frequently called is when we use first names and only names. The last name format found in biographies is not a format that is used much outside of formal writing, and there aren't really instances of it in Doctor Who. The exception might be soldiers, who are referred to by their last names this way in the real world as well, but we generally don't get full names for most soldiers, so they fall under the one name rule.
The question remains, are we going to use the real-world style of biographical writing for in-universe biographies, or are we going to stick with first names? Should we have the same level of formality in in-universe bios that we have in real-world bios?
- Shambala108
SmallerOnTheOutside is right about it being on the part of the writers. If a writer uses a last name, then in writing the article I will use the last name.
I really don't see a need for an in-universe policy that will just lead to multiple edit reversions. The sources themselves aren't consistent. We have Ian Chesterton, who is known by "Ian" and "Chesterton". Jamie McCrimmon is usually called "Jamie" but sometimes "McCrimmon".
Then there's William Shakespeare, who is usually called "Shakespeare", but travels with the Eighth Doctor as a young boy and is called "William" (or even "Wilf").
- Anoted
In regards to William Shakespeare, it wouldn't matter if he was called Will 99% of the time. He's a real person and as such, we refer to him by his last name in his biography.
The question is a style question and I think having a consistent style is important. And let me clarify this for a second. Ian Chesterton is called Ian Chesterton in his biography. But after that we use a lot of "he" and "Ian". So both names are there, and they are always going to be there. The question is between "Ian's hero was Sir Francis Drake" and "Chesterton's hero was Sir Francis Drake". The second format may be used more rarely on this site, but it is the proper format for a biography.
This is only an issue for characters who have both a first name and a last name. And it's only an issue for in-universe biographies. Episode, prose and comic articles should all use whatever name is most prominent and I believe they already do.
- SOTO
Woah, woah, woah, I can see the real world creeping in here... We're not going to refer to someone by their last name simply because they're a "real person." In-universe articles will use whatever name is most common in-universe; not whatever's most common in the real world. Lucky you, though — since they're known by their last names in the real world, they're usually referred to as such in-narrative.
William Shakespeare, however, is correct in its current usage of his name. It uses it within context; he's called "Will" as a boy and "Shakespeare" as an adult. In the same way that Amy Pond was called "Amelia" as a child — calling her "Amy" when talking about her childhood would be factually incorrect.
- SOTO
Here's what I propose:
- Out-of-universe articles about real-world people (cast, crew, etc...) will be written in last name format, as per regular biographies.
- In-universe articles about people (regardless of whether they exist in the real world as well or not) will be written in whatever format is most used in their stories, and used contextually (ie. Melody Pond will not be called River Song until she employs the name; Shakespeare will be called Will as a child if that is what he is referred to as in that context).
- If it's entirely ambiguous (such as Ian/Chesterton), only then can we look at what most people call them out-of-universe. In the case of Ian Chesterton, most fans (as well as cast & crew) refer to him as Ian, so we'll go with that. Once again note, however, that this is only to be used when we have no other options, when first and last names are used exactly equally.
- When first referred to on an article other than their own, people (in-universe and real world) must be referred to by their full names — don't expect every reader to know that "Barbara" means Barbara Wright. This is, in a sense, in accordance with T:DOCTORS:
- "Many of our readers will not necessarily know as much about Doctor Who as you. Therefore the phrase, "the Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan" — which might clearly identify the incarnation of the Doctor to you — is not as helpful as, "the Fifth Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan". The latter construction instantly identifies the incarnation without forcing the user to mouseover."
--T:DOCTORS
- "Many of our readers will not necessarily know as much about Doctor Who as you. Therefore the phrase, "the Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan" — which might clearly identify the incarnation of the Doctor to you — is not as helpful as, "the Fifth Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan". The latter construction instantly identifies the incarnation without forcing the user to mouseover."
- Anoted
There is a difference between real-world articles about characters and in-universe articles about characters. (ex. The Family of Blood (TV story) and Joan Redfern (TV character).)
And I think we need to have a clear preference. If we go purely by what's most used in the source, then Joan Redfern is called Matron most, followed by Nurse Redfern, Nurse, Joan, and one instance of Redfern. If we don't have a stated preference, then we just end up referring to her as Matron. John Smith is called "John Smith" as much as he's called "Mister Smith". He's called John a handful of times and never called Smith. If we just go by what he's most often called then we end up referring to him as John Smith or Mister Smith, and both are a little ridiculous.
We should have a stated preference. Going purely with the most commonly used name is a problem.
- SOTO
Still not seeing the problem. There's nothing wrong with Matron, and, between Joan and Redfern, Joan is the clear choice. Also, Mr Smith is the equivalent of Smith. So, all that considered, the following is the number of usages of both first name and surname.
- John: 9
- Smith: 28
- John Smith: 13 (although we couldn't use it anyway)
So, clearly, in this case "Smith" prevails. Therefore, he should be called "John Smith" when first introduced to an article, and then "Smith" afterwards. That's not, of course, saying that "John" is wrong...
- Anoted
Why is Joan the clear choice? If you look at both episodes, she's called Joan a grand total of four times. She's referred to as Redfern seven times. If we're going by usage Redfern wins. And why is Matron all right? For people that have names we tend not to use titles, and that's what Matron is.
I still say that if we're going to use first names then we use first names unless the source material provides a compelling reason not to. And frankly I still prefer using last names for in-universe articles. We're writing encyclopedia articles. Granted it's an encyclopedia of Doctor Who but still an encyclopedia. This use of first names is highly informal and out of place when you consider what we're doing. At the very least we should use last names for in-universe articles about real people. Episode pages (prose pages, comic pages) are recaps. It makes perfect sense to allow informality on them. But in-universe pages are supposed to be encyclopedia articles. Why are we equally familiar on these pages?
- Badwolff
While some of my points were dismissed when I posted them, the same ideas or suggestions were later approved of when someone else posted basically the same thing.
I guess the other Wiki's "Don't bite the newbie" policy isn't part of the culture here. Too bad.
- CzechOut
This discussion hasn't yet resulted in any sort of policy. Nothing's been approved at all.
Thread is 5+ years old; OP has not posted here in 5+ years. If anyone wants to revive this, they can start a new thread, which can include a link to this one.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:130311
Are Jenny, Strax and Vastra ever called the Paternoster gang in Doctor Who? Because right now we have a category for the Paternoster gang, but no page, and I'm not sure that their individual pages even use the name.
- CzechOut
Certainly The Great Detective mentions "Paternoster Row" and speaks of a "gang". But I think you might have to check in that ebook precursor to The Snowmen for the whole thing in a row. The official website also uses the term non-narratively.
- Anoted
I know that the website does, but I hadn't seen it anywhere in the actual story so I was wondering. If we can't actually use it in articles can we use it as a category?
- 37.225.52.51
I believe they were called that by the narrator in The Great Detective.
- Narrator: There are also accounts of a fourth member of the Paternoster Gang, a shadowy figure whose assistance was only sought in the direst of emergencies.
And with that, thread closed.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:130435
I think it's pretty obvious by now, both from the episode itself (e.g. dead Cybus-style Cybermen both with Cybus logo and without it) and from Neil Gaiman's comments that the intent is for the Matt Smith era Cybermen to represent a result of the alliance between the Cybus Cybermen and the Mondasian Cybermen. They share characteristics of both, like the general appearance of the Cybus version and the use of cybermats and other Mondasian technology. At this point, even if a given story from before series revival was meant to feature a future version of the Mondasian cybermen, from the in-universe perspective, we cannot determine them to be purely Mondasian/Telosian in origin unless they actually are shown to be one of the models shown on TV in the classic series.
To quote Gaiman:
"For me the absolute joy of bringing back the Cybermen was coming up with a weird rationalisation: in the Tom Baker universe the Cybermen pretty much died out. They were incredibly unsuccessful and clunky. And then you get the Cybus Cybermen. My theory is the Cybus Cybermen were sent to Victorian days and zapped off into time and space at the end of “The Next Doctor”. They met a bunch of the Mondasian/Telosian Cybermen, and there was some cross-breeding and interchange of technology, which is why you then get the ones that look like, but actually aren’t, the Cybus Cybermen."
The articles are already one big mess, with some Matt Smith era appearances lumped under Cybus, some under Mondas, and some considered separately.
Therefore, I propose that Cyberman (Mondas) and Cyberman (Pete's World) be merged, to cover all versions of the Cybermen. The history section could e.g. have an "Origin on Mondas" sub-section in the beginning, then an "Origin on a parallel Earth" section with information on how they ended up in the Doctor's universe in different time periods, and then the rest of the history of the Cybermen. This way, we would actually have a history of their activities in the Whoniverse without having to distinguish between the two varieties now that they are obviously mixed or at the very least of uncertain origin.
- CzechOut
Neil Gaiman's comments are simply, flatly, totally inadmissible on this wiki. If the narrative doesn't state a connection between Cybus and Mondasian Cybermen — which Nightmare doesn't — then we can't assert it. For the moment, unfortunately, Cybus and Mondasian Cybermen survive as separate articles.
That's not to say that they won't/can't be refined in the light of Nightmare. But separate articles will indeed remain.
- 31.61.129.104
I'm not saying Gaiman's statement should be admissible as valid source. You were in favor of merging the articles in a different discussion anyway, even before Nigthmare. There is no need to actually state in the article that the Moffat-era Cybermen are descended from both Mondas and Cybus ones. But we can always state the differences between various types etc. in one article. One that has two origin sections for both of their origin stories, while having a common history past that, as as of now they can't easily be divided.
- 31.61.129.104
There is no need to state in the article that Moffat era Cybemen are descendants of both previous types, simply that they share characteristics of both. Which they do, in all stories they appear in.
- Imamadmad
If nothing else, combining the artices into one with a single history with multiple subsections will make a place where the Moffat era Cybermen can definitely be placed in regards to "which main Cybermen article do they belong on". Right now, they don't really belong on either the Cybus or the Mondasian articles, and the combined article currently seems to mostly be as a summary of the larger articles, and I think we can assume that any future appearances of the Cybermen will be of as inconclusive origin in regards to Cybus versus Mondasian as the Cybermen of the past few series have been. So, unless we want to start an article just about Cybermen of unknown origin from the Moffat era, it would probably be best from the perspective of equal coverage if they are all merged onto one article with different sections. If nothing else, I think it would be better than just having the unknown origin ones tagged onto the end of the Cybermen article while the Mondasian and Cybus Cybermen get their own full article's worth of coverage.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Currently, some of the Moffat-era Cybermen appearances are in the main Cyberman article as "unknown origin, some are under Cyberman (Mondas) and some under Cyberman (Pete's World) (the ones that have the Cybus logo, even these also share some characteristics of the Mondasians). In Assimilation² it is stated to be a "production" error that some of the Cybermen there have a Cybus logo and some don't. But given the Moffat-era episodes, shouldn't we actually take it at face value that the Cyber-Fleet now consists of Cybermen of both Cybus and non-Cybus origin?
- CzechOut
31.61.129.104 wrote: You were in favor of merging the articles in a different discussion anyway, even before Nigthmare.
And I still am, personally. But as an admin I have a sometimes burdensome "duty of care" over previous discussions. Because we have arrived at the current setup through discussion, we can't just switch it on a dime without clear narrative evidence.
Moreover changing to one article would require a good amount of work, mostly on my part. Since I care so very little for the Cybes personally, I want to make sure that the editorial plan we have for making such a large structural change is sound.
I am not opposed to a single article. You'll note the tone of regret in my initial post. I'm opposed to a single article which is written on the basis of invalid sources.
Jagoandlitefoot said: ...shouldn't we actually take it at face value that the Cyber-Fleet now consists of Cybermen of both Cybus and non-Cybus origin?
Could you clarify what you mean by this? What "face value"? Simply the fact that some have "C"s on their chest and some don't?
- JagoAndLitefoot
"I'm opposed to a single article which is written on the basis of invalid sources."
I'm not saying the Gaiman quotes should actually be considered valid. But generally, I think Nightmare in Silver is a good opportunity to revisit the Cybermen discussion, especially that it also shows Cybus and non-Cybus logo Cybermen among the "corpses". If something was arrived at through discussion, another discussion can change the setup, and it's clear that any future appearances of Cybermen will share characteristics of both Cybus and Mondas Cybermen, mostly without actually mentioning either origin explicitly. I can help with any reorganization of the Cybermen article if needed.
"Could you clarify what you mean by this? What "face value"? Simply the fact that some have "C"s on their chest and some don't?"
Yes.
- CzechOut
As regards the prima facie evidence, the "C" could have originated in the prime universe for different reasons than the Pete's World universe. It might mean Cybus over there, but over here it might mean "Cyberman". Or like the "S" on Superman's chest it may not be a letter of the English alphabet at all. We don't have anything clearly telling us that says, "C on the chest necessarily means "Cybus".
In fact, going by Nightmare alone, I would think the "face value" meaning of the "C" would be "Cyberiad" — a way to mark off those Cybermen from this particular "batch".
But again, we got nothin' narratively.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Only a dead Cyberman is seen with the Cybus logo, not any of the new ones. I think that coming up with the logo actually having another meaning in the prime universe is too much of a conjecture (and while not stated in narrative, we know why Gaiman decided to have both Cybus and Mondas Cybermen there from his comments anyway).
- CzechOut
This comment by an IP user that was prevented from posting, but it's worth including in the discussion. I'm not quite sure where in the timeline of this thread it belongs, but I think somewhere around post 3 or 4.
- I was thinking that too. As Cyberman appearances go on, it's looking less and less likely that the writers are going to directly address this issue on screen or some other source. Meanwhile, the wiki has three pages (at least!) which give an overview of the Cybermen - Cyberman, Cyberman (Mondas) and Cyberman (Pete's World).
- One merged article called "Cyberman" could indeed still distinguish from the Mondas races and the Cybus variety under the same page but under dirrent heasdings where necessary. "Cyber Legions" or "Cyber Fleets" or something like "Later History - The Cyber Legions" could be used for the Series 6 appearances and Blood of the Cybermen.
- It wouldn't change any information, it would just put all the existing information on 3+ pages on one single page (and it's a wiki so if it needs to be changed back or just cnaged, it can be changed easily), so I think merging is a good idea.
- Badwolff
I think that this suggestion is similar to what others were asking for. One Cyberman article with different sections if people want to account for their differing origins.
Honestly, when I saw Nightmare in Silver, I began to think that the writers no longer want to make distinctions between types of Cyberman and just collapse them into a generic cyberman. There was no discussion about where these Cybermen came from, what their origins were, how they came to this galaxy. Maybe they originated in Mondas or Pete's World or a different place entirely. But what was consistent was their appearance and the personality (removing all emotion, having a Cyber Leader, having them linked through a mental network, etc.).
So, given the lack of information Gaiman included about their origins in the storyline, I think they belong in a generic Cyberman category and the Mondas and Pete's World entries either be incorporated or seen as derivative of the generic category.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:130560
Please Check this out to whomever may concern
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:130767
Is there any chance audio only companions could be unprotected? There's a 0% chance of them appearing in the finale.
- CzechOut
Nah. Not gonna play the game of "this person/thing can't possibly be in the finale". Anything's possible in the 50th anniversary year. Heck, anything's possible on Doctor Who, period. At this point it's only 96 hours or so to go. Maybe you could just park your edits in a text file on your local machine, and then be ready to pounce once the protection comes off?
- Cult_Of_Skaro
Fair enough. Though considering the only times expanded media's been referenced were BBC books, I don't think a BF character is going to appear too soon.
- CzechOut
I don't either. But neither do I really believe that the vast majority of uploads or edits to the Theory namespace, or edits to the pages obviously concerned with series 7, which would occur between now and Saturday would be spoilery in any regard.
This isn't really about what's likely, so much as what's possible.
- Cult_Of_Skaro
Anyway, I'm just going to pray that because you locked the pages down, it'll convince the BBC to put Lucie Miller in the finale. :D
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:130853
Now, I'm new to this forum and not sure I'm in the right place, but I consider it likely enough.
There has been quite some attention at the Sci-Fi voting battle going on at the wiki for said subject. While it will over in two days, is it worth putting up a live vote counter at the main page, or at least the forum thread? (Or below the "spaceship battle" pic) That would mean one browser tab less for a lot of people. If it is added, it should not only give you the vote count, but also the Tardis percentage of them, and the difference in both percents and amount.
Perhaps I should have put this in our thread dedicated to the matter instead.
- Digifiend
I'm not sure that's technically possible (the vote is on a different wiki, you see), and the main page has currently been blanked out to make way for an anti-spoiler notice.
- Thomsons Gazelle
But there's still the "Sci-Fi Battle" sign in the right column. I barely know anything about this kind of coding, but can't bots read other sites? Then the bot would just have to keep an eye on the voting page, filter out the essentials, put it in a page in the hub and let a template read it.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:130866
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As discussed earlier, our days of the year pages could be more useful if they were split into one of four types of article:
- 1 January — the article about things that happened in-universe on 1 January
- 1 January (people) - the article about real world births and deaths on 1 January
- 1 January (production) - the article about events in production history
- 1 January (releases) - the article about stories that were released on 1 January
This would then allow us to link to the right day in the right kind of article. On story infoboxes, we'd use 1 January (releases). On real world biography pages, we'd use 1 January (people). In discussions about production history, we'd use 1 January (production). And within in-universe pages, we'd use just plain ol' 1 January.
By separating the information, not only would we give people more precisely what they're most likely looking for, but we'd have the ability to dump discrete amounts of information on various navigation pages within the newly created "Transmat" namespace.
So on the as-yet-uncreated Transmat:Stories we could very easily create a dynamic "released on this day" box. Or at Transmat:Behind the scenes we could, with one command, chronicle "this day in production history".
We really wouldn't have that kind of flexibility if we continued on with the one-size-fits-all approach that we're now using.
Note that this is an extremely practicable idea. A lot of the heavy lifting here can be done by bot, and SmallerOnTheOutside has enthusiastically offered his assistance in any manual cleanup required.
So, whaddya say? Good idea? Bad idea? Not sure? Give your thoughts below — but, please, limit your responses to this subject. This thread isn't about whether we'll do the same with year pages, or about the visual design of any element of the project. It's just about whether it's a good idea to perform the split.
- Mini-mitch
I think it is a good idea. Much better than what we are doing at the moment anyway.
- SOTO
Umm... Don't know if I really need to respond, but I'm for it. And your "transmat" idea makes it even better!
- Cult_Of_Skaro
100% agree. Perfect idea.
- Bubblecamera
Seems great!
- Tangerineduel
Just a question.
Would broadcast dates go into production or into releases?
- SOTO
Releases. Production is for going-ons behind the scenes, such as cast read-throughs, filming, audio recordings, announcements, meetings, emails, etc... Releases is for however the finished product reaches the general public.
- StevieGLiverpool
Great idea, but wouldn't it take quite a long time?
- ZivTargaryen
No! I don't think you should do that, it will create a mess in this Wiki and in others.
If you wish to do the split thing, I think it's better to create sections in the article.
- Cult_Of_Skaro
Number one, I don't see how it creates a mess in this wiki.
Number two, it cannot create one in others.
- SOTO
I think he's referring to the Hebrew wiki. Ziv, if you don't want to split on your wiki, you can split it into sections if you so wish. How could the split here affect you? Couldn't you put language links to one centralised w:c:he.doctorwho:במאי 1 in each of the 1 Mays here?
- Sutekh'sGift
It'll probably take a helluva long time. But otherwise yeah it sounds good.
- CzechOut
StevieGLiverpool wrote: Great idea, but wouldn't it take quite a long time?
Depends on what you mean by "it". If you mean the physical creation of the pages, no, that's a snap. If you mean "getting the pages to a reasonable state of completion", the truthful answer is more complicated. I don't expect the (people) pages to be particularly difficult, because we have lots of good data on births and deaths, and a few users who really like that work. I don't expect (releases) to be too difficult because we know an awful lot about that too. The most difficult of all is the (production) stuff. That might take quite a bit of time, because we haven't done that much scholarship on the ins-and-outs of hiring/firing/commissioning/cancelling. But we do have some information already and we can lay the groundwork quite quickly.
Overall, I expect the pages to be viable within no more than a day of the close of this thread, and "reasonably complete" a varying amount of time thereafter, ranging from two weeks to a year.
- CzechOut
StevieGLiverpool wrote: Great idea, but wouldn't it take quite a long time?
Depends on what you mean by "it". If you mean the physical creation of the pages, no, that's a snap. If you mean "getting the pages to a reasonable state of completion", the truthful answer is more complicated. I don't expect the (people) pages to be particularly difficult, because we have lots of good data on births and deaths, and a few users who really like that work. I don't expect (releases) to be too difficult because we know an awful lot about that too. The most difficult of all is the (production) stuff. That might take quite a bit of time, because we haven't done that much scholarship on the ins-and-outs of hiring/firing/commissioning/cancelling. But we do have some information already and we can lay the groundwork quite quickly.
Overall, I expect the pages to be viable within no more than a day of the close of this thread, and "reasonably complete" a varying amount of time thereafter, ranging from two weeks to a year.
- CzechOut
ZivKarni3 wrote: No! I don't think you should do that, it will create a mess in this Wiki and in others. If you wish to do the split thing, I think it's better to create sections in the article.
Please define how you think it would be a mess on this wiki. That's the only concern of this thread. Existing w:c:he.doctorwho links would still be useful here, as all these date variants will be linked. So you might arrive from he.doctorwho at 1 May, but there'll be a big link there to the other 1 May pages.
- Anoted
I said this before that I was in favor of tabs, and am even more in favor of tabs if the alternate is this many alternate pages. If we're going to make multiple pages, why not tabs? I didn't think the previous arguments against this were that strong, and they seem largely negated by this alternate set-up.
- Anoted
Edit:
It was brought to my attention that the other issues I raised here were not only off-topic but had been specifically mentioned as not in the scope of this thread. As such, I'm removed them so people don't get off track.
- SOTO
Something tells me you didn't quite make it past the first paragraph of the thread:
Give your thoughts below — but, please, limit your responses to this subject. This thread isn't about whether we'll do the same with year pages, or about the visual design of any element of the project. It's just about whether it's a good idea to perform the split.
You were specifically told not to talk about the visual design or whether this will be employed on year projects. If you wish CzechOut to re-explain why we can't use tabs, then ask him at his talk page — although I'm sure he's too busy to respond straight away.
- Anoted
I posited the question a week ago on the previous thread and never received a response.
And a large part of my question about the tabs is in regard to linking. There are two arguments made against tabbing--one was that nesting was harder on editors but the larger argument seemed to be that it would be to hard for editors to link directly to the different pages. If we tabbed, then I don't see why we have to link to a particular tab. It's all there together and super easy to navigate (if we don't tab, I think we do need to direct link). I don't understand why something that made linking to hard for editors a couple weeks ago is now not a problem. Czech is also presenting this set-up as not just important for the reader of the day of the year page, but also as important in terms of links. I don't understand that argument, I don't know where it's coming from and the flip-flopping on this position has me confused, in large part because I don't know what's propelling these opinions. This is being presented as helpful for transmat, but it's not explaining what these new transmat pages are.
I'm trying to understand why the idea behind this has changed so drastically.
Also, my opinion of this subject changes depending on how it's formatted. I'm not necessarily in favour of this without tabs, so how it's formatted seems to me to be an important part of the discussion. At the very least, it needs to be understood that my opinion in favour of this, at least at this point, is dependent on formatting.
- SOTO
As I understood it, the main argument against tabs was that the feature might disappear any day now. (File pages now appear to be using the tab feature, so it seems to be pretty solidified at this point. Still, Czech does know better.) Also, whatever this transmat namespace is (believe me, I'd like to know as well) is implied to somehow not be compatible with day of the year pages if they remain on one page.
- StevieGLiverpool
Good points. So when is all this going to get made?
- CzechOut
The other argument against tabs is that you can't dump the contents of particular tabs on page. There's no version of tabs under consideration by Wikia that will allow us to do what we can do by physically separating the articles. Tabs aren't flexible. Please do not derail this conversation into a discussion about the merits of tabs. I understand that the tab issue might influence your decision, so I'm answering your question here. However, if you have more questions about tabs, please ask them on my user page, not here. The proposal before us is whether it's a good idea to actually split the articles — not about alternate approaches or formatting concerns.
- Anoted
Ok. got it. What is it exactly that we are trying to do? Just split the pages up? Or more? This conversation seems to be centered around the benefits, but I'm not sure I fully understand the benefits. This will have an affect on transmat pages but I don't know what transmats are. Is there anything else I'm missing or is it just the transmat bit?
- Anoted
where would real world stuff that wasn't production, release or birth/death go?
- CzechOut
Such as?
- Anoted
Well I don't know how much there is but there's random stuff, like...Billie Piper's single re-charting. It's not particularly important, just the first example I could find by randomly summoning a date page.
- SOTO
Honestly, that's not important enough to merit highlighting on a day of the year article. But let's say, just for the merits of this discussion, that it was because of that recharting that she got cast as Rose (which would make it more important), then it would go under production, because it relates to production.)
We generally don't cover things such as weddings or milestones unrelated to Who, but we would have Tennant's wedding on the people page, since he's a Doctor, he met his wife on-set of a DW production, and his wife is the Doctor's daughter (in two senses).
Finally, an example of unorthodox release info would be S7B being released early and BBC's comments.
- Anoted
well it's notable in terms of showing how doctor who propelled her completely unrelated singing career. it's not directly related to the production, but it's showing the effects of the production.
I am more aware of the types of items we have on year articles than day of the year article but I was wondering. I know that the things that would likely be an issue are few and far between but I'd like us to have some plan for them. I wouldn't want something that we'd put on a day of the year article now to be left off in the future simply because of how we're drawing these divisions
but overall I think that this is a good idea
- ScotchAutopilot
I don't know, I feel the current format is quite convenient.
- Robotnick2
Is it possible to at the same time split the dates into a separate namespace? That would, to my mind, at least keep things neat.
- CzechOut
Robotnick2 wrote: Is it possible to at the same time split the dates into a separate namespace? That would, to my mind, at least keep things neat.
It would be inadvisable for at least two reasons. First, it would simply add unnecessary keystrokes to a name. Instead of 1 May, we'd have Date:1 May or somesuch. Second, it would imply, given the way we otherwise use namespaces on this wiki, that the date pages were subject to different rules than normal pages. And that's really against what we've been trying to do with the date pages for several years now. Our point with these pages — which unfortunately were ignored and allowed to run wild for the first few years of the wiki's existence — is that date pages are normal articles, which must have leads, full sentences and all the other things that other articles must have.
- Harry Potter Nerd And Geek
Can't we have sub-headings, like the Harry Potter Wikia? It's just that it will be really confusing when you click on 1 January.
- SOTO
If you want a visual, take a look at this an old mock-up of what it would look like. As you can see, navigation is simple between the pages.
- Tangerineduel
Harry Potter Nerd And Geek wrote: Can't we have sub-headings, like the Harry Potter Wikia? It's just that it will be really confusing when you click on 1 January.
Part of the issue is that some dates don't exist in the DWU, which means we can't have a page for them because they don't "exist". They would only exist for us to have a behind the scenes page for them in order to cover the behind the scenes pages.
Subheadings are what we have at the moment. But as you can see looking between our 1 January page and the HP 1 January page there is a sizeable information difference. Even with specific years there's a large difference our 1998 and HP 1998 with regard to the amount of information we have to manage.
- StevieGLiverpool
So is this going to be done or not?
- Leda74
Couple of questions: 1) The behind the scenes day pages are just going to be split from the in universe ones, am I right? Not deleted altogether? I use them on a very regular basis. 2) I notice the day pages are all locked for editing. Is that part of this process?
- SOTO
Yes and yes. All info from bts sections will be split into the various pages that have now been created. The central pages are locked as CzechOut is currently readying the pages for this very proposal. If you have any further questions, feel free to ask me or — better yet — Czech at one of our talk pages.
- Shambala108
In short, yes and yes ;)
The behind the scenes pages are currently being moved into the different page types mentioned in the first post. The pages are locked to make the move process go more quickly and smoothly.
- Leda74
Thank you both :)
- JasperStarfox
i think this is a great idea
|- |130930 |20130515224647-188432/20130516201226-188432 |Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-188432-20130515224647/@comment-188432-20130516201226 |1430726 |2013-05-16 T20:12:27Z |188432 |CzechOut| |133
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:130977
I'm asking this question because I'm working in food articles right now. Some foods, particularly beverages appear all the time, often with no particular comment or notice being paid attention to it. Should the tea article include every single time someone drank tea or is that ridiculous? It seems like overkill to me. Must these instances be in one place? Should a list of appearance article be created? What are the guidelines here?
- SOTO
A list of appearances should most definitely not be created for tea. Tea is so commonplace that you can't even claim to be able to give a complete or near-complete list of tea's appearances in the DWU. When I first started out here (not that long ago, really...), I created mobile phone - list of appearances, which CzechOut immediately objected to here. Read his message to me for more information.
As far as listing all instances of tea, the best FTRW articles derive information from each instance it mentions. Take my recent glass, for example. You can see just from the headings (physical properties, uses, durability) that it's something more than just a long list of every instance of glass in the DWU. Or even the less well-made wood: listing every instance of wood would be ridiculous, so I went through how it could be destroyed, its ineffectiveness on the Doctor's sonic, and its uses.
But, main thing: you should always back up every statement with examples from the DWU:
- Broken, glass could cut deep through flesh; Lady Casaubon stabbed Orlo with a piece of glass, and then shot him with a glass bullet. (PROSE: Martha in the Mirror)
...gives us more context than simply:
- Broken, glass could cut deep through flesh. (PROSE: Martha in the Mirror)
- Anoted
That's what I thought. The problem is that some things are really common, but not quite as common as glass. I'm pretty sure that no one thought that it was appropriate to add every single instance of glass to the article, in the same way that no one would add every instance of sidewalk. Unfortunately this has happened with some articles and I've got a handful or two of food articles that I want to overhaul in the most major way, but was held back a bit by just how prevalent "mention every time it shows up" type of articles are.
This is what I thought as this seemed super obvious, but I've been wrong before so I thought I'd ask. If this isn't mentioned anywhere in policy or style articles (I didn't find it but doesn't mean I didn't miss it), I think that this might be helpful. We edit towards ridiculous levels of inclusion here and people seem to think that reduction is bad. It might be worth saying somewhere that no, it isn't always.
- SOTO
Can you give me an example of such an article?
(also, don't act on anything I say until an admin comes along and confirms it. I'm not always right.)
- Anoted
- Anoted
Also, the tea one in particular is ridiculously pointless. The vast majority of stories have someone drinking tea or offering tea or asking for tea. This is a British show. If we could create a list of all instances of tea it would be really weird.
- Badwolff
That's crazy, only someone writing a truly overly detailed analysis would want to see a list of every time a cup of tea appeared on Doctor Who TV episode, audio program, novel and comic book. It's seeking some kind of perfect 100% completeness that, in effect, no one is asking for.
The bottom line, to me (a non-admin) is that there is plenty of work to be done on this wiki...would compiling a list like that (even assuming you have access to all of the Doctor Who materials) be the best use of anyone's time? I know that for some "every little bit counts" but it's an issue of priorities. I think it would be more informative to write how tea often functions in a Doctor Who storyline (often as a pretense to get to know a stranger) than to know every instance of tea appearing.
Think of it this way: Would it be useful to anyone but the most obsessive fan to have a list of every instance where he says, "Hello, I'm the Doctor"? It might be amusing to scan over a list like that but it doesn't really tell you anything about the DWU to know this fact. It's enough to know that it's a catch-phrase.
- CzechOut
Have to agree with Badwolff on this one. Frankly, I'm not the biggest fan of lists of appearances anyway. But when we start getting into ubiquitous items, it's a waste of time that could be spent on other things. This wiki still doesn't have an image of every character seen on television and in comics. That's a pretty basic goal of the wiki that could be accomplished pretty quickly if people took the time to learn, rather than spending time on appearance lists.
- CzechOut
I think, Anoted, that you're basically asking what you should put in the infobox.
In the first place, you should really consider whether the page needs an infobox. An infobox that creates confusion is not worth having. So if you really need an infobox, then you should think whether it's important to have a list of appearances at all. You don't have to. And you certainly don't have to even attempt a complete list. If it's an ubiquitous item like tea, you could either leave it blank (probably best in most situations) or say "most stories set on Earth".
- Anoted
No, I'm not asking about the infobox and I was never considering compiling every instance of tea in Doctor Who. I want to rewrite these pages and clean them up, so that they are more than just a list of who drank tea where and when. There are already instances of people drinking tea that don't add anything to the article.
What I'm basically asking is if editing includes more than adding information and rewriting for clarity. I'm asking if editing can include removal, specifically removing instances.
- Anoted
- Shambala108
- Anoted
Oh yah, I started doing them in-line the way other in-universe articles do, but when you include a citation in the middle of a paragraph it gets very difficult to read. And when you have multiple citations in each paragraph and occasionally even citations in the middle of sentences, it gets really confusing really fast.
And yeah, you can just stick all the citations at the end of the paragraph but it gets hard to tell which citation is for what, which makes fact checking something you think is off very hard.
Also, citations inline made it so that the emphasis of italicising a word within a sentence was completely lost, because there the sentence was surrounded by italics on all sides. There's an example in coffee I think.
I considered doing a mix of in-line and ref tags and only using in-line for cases in the middle of paras and the like but just went ahead and did the whole page that way. Is this a problem? Because I've noticed that I often rewrite things to place in-line tags at the end of paragraphs, often splitting up information and phrasing sentences in ways I otherwise wouldn't.
- Shambala108
If you look at any in-universe page, you'll see that we do end of paragraph citations or mid-sentence citations. We don't ever put these citations at the bottom of the page.
- Anoted
I didn't see it as policy and I thought it was just habit. Since this is getting off topic I'll open a new page on the panopticon asking about this. Thanks.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:131242
I'm copying over a bit of conversation that started on Thread:130977 but was really getting that thread off track.
The issue at hand is the use of reference tags for in-universe citations.
"I started doing [refs] in-line the way other in-universe articles do, but when you include a citation in the middle of a paragraph it gets very difficult to read. And when you have multiple citations in each paragraph and occasionally even citations in the middle of sentences, it gets really confusing really fast.
And yeah, you can just stick all the citations at the end of the paragraph but it gets hard to tell which citation is for what, which makes fact checking something you think is off very hard.
Also, citations inline made it so that the emphasis of italicising a word within a sentence was completely lost, because there the sentence was surrounded by italics on all sides. There's an example in coffee I think.
I considered doing a mix of in-line and ref tags and only using in-line for cases in the middle of paras and the like but just went ahead and did the whole page that way. Is this a problem? Because I've noticed that I often rewrite things to place in-line tags at the end of paragraphs, often splitting up information and phrasing sentences in ways I otherwise wouldn't."
- Anoted
Here are two examples of paras written both ways.
From coffee: in-line format
- Coffee was often served with milk and sugar. The Ninth Doctor took his coffee with milk but no sugar. (TV: Rose) Coffee was often served with breakfast. (TV: The Sea Devils) Amy Pond once drank coffee for breakfast. (PROSE: The Coming of the Terraphiles)
From coffee: ref format
- Coffee was often served with milk and sugar. The Ninth Doctor took his coffee with milk but no sugar.[1] Coffee was often served with breakfast.[2] Amy Pond once drank coffee for breakfast.[3]
From tea, in-line format: this paragraph can be done two ways. One with specific in-line references (clearer refs but harder to read):
- Tea was prominent in British culture and often drank for comfort. (TV: The Christmas Invasion, The Time Warrior, The Invasion) Rose Tyler considered tea "the solution to everything" and said that her mum would not go to bed until she had a cup of tea, with two sugars. (TV: The Christmas Invasion, Rise of the Cybermen) According to Mickey Smith, drinking tea while the world was coming to an end was "very British".(TV: The Christmas Invasion)
and one with references dumped at the end of the paragraph (easier to read but murkier refs):
- Tea was prominent in British culture and often drank for comfort. Rose Tyler considered tea "the solution to everything" and said that her mum would not go to bed until she had a cup of tea, with two sugars. According to Mickey Smith, drinking tea while the world was coming to an end was "very British".(TV: The Christmas Invasion, The Time Warrior, The Invasion, Rise of the Cybermen)
From tea, reference format:
- Tea was prominent in British culture and often drank for comfort.[4][5][6] Rose Tyler considered tea "the solution to everything"[4] and said that her mum would not go to bed until she had a cup of tea, with two sugars.[7] According to Mickey Smith, drinking tea while the world was coming to an end was "very British".[4]
- Tangerineduel
No.
Having the citations within the sentence/in the body of the article means the reader can know and follow the source immediately from that point without having to go through the article to find the source.
- Anoted
What if we do both?
Here's a section from my coffee article:
- Coffee was often served with milk and sugar. The Ninth Doctor took his coffee with milk but no sugar.[1] Coffee was often served with breakfast.[2] Amy Pond once drank coffee for breakfast.[3]
What if we both have the references in-line, and at the end of the paragraph:
- Coffee was often served with milk and sugar. The Ninth Doctor took his coffee with milk but no sugar.[1] Coffee was often served with breakfast.[2] Amy Pond once drank coffee for breakfast.[3] (TV: Rose, 'The Sea Devils; PROSE: The Coming of the Terraphiles)
I don't think that ref tags are too hard for readers to handle, but this way gives us the best of both. The references are in-line there at the end of the paragraph, but the way they would be. But, the references are also in the middle, where they belong. This means that we don't have to break up article text by having references in the middle of paragraphs or sentences. And we can keep with our current format of organising multiple references by media and not by the order they appeared in. (we do TV: title, title2; PROSE, title3 even if within the paragraph they references are title1, title3, title3)
So we have the precision that references should have while having the easy availibility of in-line citations. And remember, being able to precisely reference things isn't just a benefit to editors trying to fact check something but to readers trying to find something. This bugged me a lot as a reader because I'd see something in an article that I didn't remember or didn't know and click through to the reference and find that it wasn't what I was looking for. So I'd go back to the article and try to figure out what in-line citation was the one I was looking for. This both makes the references super-easy for the user to see and grab, though, I do think that ref tags aren't too hard for users to handle.
While I've slowly gotten used to the TARDIS in-line citations, it's still a bit weird to me. And it was very strange when I first came here. I don't know if I'd seen citations done like that before, at least on the scale we're using here. And while I like that we bother to use citations, the format has always bothered me. If I'm reading an article about a part of Doctor Who I know nothing about, these citations are not really helpful. And I've spent a fair amount of time going and looking up things that were not the things I wanted to look up, because of the way citations are done.
And yes, we want readers to click through to other articles, but we don't want to mislead them. And I've been misled a lot because of the way that citations are done here. I want things to be easy for our editors and readers but not at the expense of accuracy and readability. And I think that the in-line citation method often affects at least one of these, if not both.
And, as this proposal shows, this doesn't have to be all one or the other.
Closing as simply not practicable, because it would requite tedious hand-editing of every single in-universe page to enforce.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:131381
I went to Template:Companions of the Eleventh Doctor in order to update it and got a bit stuck because we don't have a clear preference for how these templates should be ordered.
At the moment these templates are ordered roughly in terms of appearance. This is not only problematic for comics, but causes problems even where order should be perfectly clear.
Dorium Maldovar for instances first appears in television a season earlier than he appears as a companion. Which do we use?
We also seem to be sometimes putting long term companions ahead of other companions. Which isn't too bad except we then get into discussions of what makes someone a long term companion.
I think the easiest thing to do is to order these templates alphabetically. It means we don't have to make judgement calls and it's probably easiest for readers too. These templates get big and an alphabetical order makes it clear to the reader how these people are organised. You don't need to know duration or importance or anything else.
- CzechOut
Swiftly seconded. Alphabetic order within each media makes good, common sense.
However, I think we should pipe trick the names to the one name by which they were most commonly known, since a hefty percentage of companions were only known by one name. This will also usefully condense the vertical height of the templates.
So, for the Fourth Doctor's TV companions, it would be:
- Adric, Benton, the Brigadier, Harry, K9, Leela, Nyssa, Romana, Sarah, Tegan
- Mini-mitch
Thirded... is that a word?
Anyway, I completely agree with you. Might also be time to flush out the categories as well - so the navboxes and categories match.
Could we make it so that the only way to add a companion category is through the navboxes?
- Anoted
I'm not super fond of piping names like this. For starters, we've grouped at least one family by last name. (Madge, Lily and Cyril Arwell) Also, it's possible to remember only part of someone's names especially if it's not a character you're familiar with. If you hear someone talk about a partcular companion what says that you'll remember the name that they were most often referred to as?
Maybe to add something, like Madame Vastra over Vastra, but for the most part pipe tricking names like this REMOVES information, and I don't know why we'd want to do that. How many cases are there where pipe tricking isn't a matter of information removal?
Besides, it's nice to be able to look at a template and see that X doctor had so many one-named companions, or so many companions who were frequently referred to with a title or other things like this.
The purpose of this navbox is to give a snapshot of the Doctor's companions. Why crop it unnecessarily? That's a bad metaphor but the only one I can find right now.
- CzechOut
Mini-mitch wrote: Could we make it so that the only way to add a companion category is through the navboxes?
Only? No. We can make it so that the navboxes automatically add cats. But we can't stop people from adding the cats manually. Well, not by any other method than locking the page.
- SOTO
Fourthed.
- Anoted
MM, there's another open thread on the Panoptican about labelling people as companions.
- CzechOut
Anoted wrote: Maybe to add something, like Madame Vastra over Vastra, but for the most part pipe tricking names like this removes information, and I don't know why we'd want to do that. How many cases are there where pipe tricking isn't a matter of information removal?
Um, 100%. In no way is it information removal. All you have to do is mouseover and the info is there. Using the power of a wiki on a wiki isn't a bad thing. This isn't a print encyclopaedia — we can pipe trick without making things difficult for our readers. This isn't 1999; getting information from a mouseover is something we all know how to on the interwebz now.
Besides, it's nice to be able to look at a template and see that X doctor had so many one-named companions, or so many companions who were frequently referred to with a title or other things like this.
Is it? I can't honestly think why anyone would ever want to know the percentage of companions who only went by one name. Especially since there's no indication that, for example, Adric didn't have a surname. We just never knew it.
The purpose of this navbox is to give a snapshot of the Doctor's companions. Why crop it unnecessarily? That's a bad metaphor but the only one I can find right now.
Exactly. Snapshot. Reducing the number of words would give a snapshot.
- Anoted
I know that it's available if you look deeper. And I'm not saying that being able to look at the nav box and instantly be able to tell how many companions have middle names is important.
I'm saying that I see advantages to not pipe tricking. Most importantly, someone who is new to this wiki and looking for a companion name might only know a last name even if the first name is more common. If might never occur to them to mouse over to see if more information is available (which is also, btw, pretty tedious).
Maybe the advantages to keeping the full names are small. I don't know. But I see advantages. If there was an obvious advantage to pipe tricking away part of the companions names, I missed it. What does pipe-tricking away names get us exactly?
Yes, the reasons not to pipe away might be minor. But piping away isn't default. We should have a reason to do something, not just little evidence that doing it is bad.
- CzechOut
A mouseover is not "looking deeper". It's simply using the basic functionality of HTML. If this were a print encyclopaedia, I wouldn't even be suggesting this method. And again, this is 2013. It will occur to most people to mouseover these days. We understand a whole lot better how the HTML 1.0 works, now that we're on HTML 5.0. People who frequent wikis really do get the whole pipe tricking "thing". They understand that the power of a wiki is that you can substitute words in a link, because Wikipedia's been comfortably doing it for over a decade now.
And we do have solid reasons to do it. By and large, companions are known by one name. If I say "Sarah" or "Susan" or "Jo" — sure there are other people in the DWU with those names. But it is so commonplace to refer to companions by their first name that I'm sure those names brought up a singular connotation to you.
Additionally it's better for alphabetisation if we use a common standard. Where does "Adric" go in a list that otherwise is organised last name? What about Nyssa or Leela or Romana?
Going "one name, but most common single name" is a rule that works better than traditional "last name, first name", because there are so many companions that don't allow us first and last names. Adric shouldn't come before Harry Sullivan; Adric should come before Harry, though. Also, practically no one knows "Vicki Pallister" or "Polly Wright", but they do know Vicki and Polly.
- Anoted
"practically no one knows "Vicki Pallister" or "Polly Wright", but they do know Vicki and Polly."
Yes, but the name Vicki Pallister contains the name Vicki. I'd have a hard time believing that someone looking for Vicki would fail to click on Vicki Pallister.
And, on the chance that they only knew or remembered a last name, Pallister is there too.
But that's not the big issue with pipe tricking names away. Alphabetisation by first name is a problem, whether or not we keep last names.
The big problem is titles. We're not going to alphebitise Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart under B for Brigadier. But we should have the title Brigadier in the box. He's probably the most obvious issues but calling someone by a title with frequency is not uncommon. If we organised by first name/title, we'd have to drop the Madame from Vastra and so on.
Also, alphebitisation by first name is not standard, whether or not people have only one name. People have only one name in other contexts, but the standard is still to alphebitise by last name if there is one.
You're propsing that we adopt a practice that is not a standard in the real world, and if it had some benefit to us, I'd probably be ok with it. But I don't see the benefit and I think it causes other problems.
In the real world, if you alphebitise a list of names, Alan (only name) would come before Adam Smith even though Adam precedes Alan. That's not a problem, that's the just the way alphebitisation by name most commonly works. Yes, we have a few more people with only names here than you standardly find, but so what?
If we're going to take a real world standard and throw it away for a different standard not commonly found in the real world (which is what you're proposing), there should be an obvious benefit. And what's the benefit other than making the box a little less vertically inclined?
- Shambala108
I think the problems you're looking for have already-existing solutions.
1. The Brigadier - according to Tardis:Honourifics, the Brig is a special case with regard to honourific redirects, so why not let him be a special case here?
2. "You're propsing that we adopt a practice that is not a standard in the real world" - there's really no problem here. We already have practices that are not standard in the real world — for example, we use British spelling but we follow the American use of quotation marks because of coding limitations. The benefit in alphabetizing by first name is "making the box a little less vertically inclined", which we already try to practice for infoboxes. This reduces the load time for an article. Some people have slow connections, some use mobile devices; anything that speeds up their load time is a benefit, even if it doesn't affect you personally.
- Anoted
Right now the Brigadier is listed in companion boxes by his full name, sans Brigadier. I'm in favour of adding Brigadier to that, but dropping his name altogether? That's a bit much.
I'm aware of the fact that we've adopted non-standard practices here before. But there have been real reasons behind them. Our use of American quotation marks is because using British quotation is a technical problem. Here, the only problem is that it makes the box slightly bigger vertically. Yes, that might affect people's load times. But we also might have someone come here who hasn't seen the Eleventh Doctor but read about the Pond name being created as a link to River. If the companion box was structured the way you are suggesting we have River but no Pond. And anyone who's load time is really effected by this small difference most likely has way bigger problems. If we're including mobile devices in out technical consideration than mouseovers are a much more serious technical problem then the additional load time cause by a few extra lines. Mouseovers are not only more physically difficult to do when using a mobile browser, but it's not a technical standard.
Also, grouping by last name has been helpful. The format or Madge, Lily and Cyril Arwell is incredibly useful. It makes it clear that these are all members of the same family and should be thought of as such. If we piped these characters to all be first name only and then alphabetised them by first name we'd be separating them. The names Lily, Cyril...they mean squat to me. I only remember who they are with a last name and their being grouped together.
You're not just propsing that we adopt a practice that isn't standard in the real world. You're proposing that we adopt a practice that isn't standard in the real world and that we create exceptions for characters for whom this practice doesn't work, and the only benefit is that the page is a few lines shorter and therefore loads marginally quicker? The practice of using full names and alphetising by last name works for everyone, because that practice automatically treats only names as last names.
- CzechOut
But the source material itself does things that aren't a standard practice in the real world. Not that "standard practice in the real world" is a legitimate concern anyway, cause this is a wiki about a show where a guy who can have multiple lives travels in a police box through time and space. But for the rhetorical fun of it, let's examine things through the filter of "the real world". In the real world, you wouldn't travel with someone for years and never ask their last name. The practice of using full names and alphabetising by last name does not work for everyone because we know surprisingly few companions' full names.
- Anoted
I'm not saying that we alter the source material or how it's presented in any way. I've never said that, and in fact, using full names and alphetising by last name if available helps preserve the way the source material presents characters. The practice of using full names and alphebitising by last names is not a problem for only names. Doctor Who isn't the only place where there are people who have just one name. When this happens everywhere else, no one freaks out about it. Lists of musicians are organised alphebitically all the time without it being a problem that some muscisians only use one name or that other names are in fact the names of bands. This isn't a problem anywhere else, why is it a problem here? Yes, we have an unusually high number of people for whom we have no last name. So what?
Standard practices in the real world are important to us, because that's where our readers come from. Our article structures and lots of other things on this wiki come from real world standard practices. That's the only reason people don't come to this wiki and go "huh? what? i'm lost. this is useless". We don't have to alphebitise names in the template. We don't have to order the template at all. But we're having this discussion anyway because we realise that no order, or order by appearance might be confusing to people who aren't familiar with Doctor Who.
Alphebetising by first name or title and piping away the rest has complications. It means that we end up droping the Brigadier's actual name, or doing some weird organisational thing with him. It means that we can't group the Arwell family as a family. And the source material is what's grouping them. The Doctor doesn't go off and have an adventure with just Madge or Lily or Cyril. He doesn't have a relationship with any of them individually, not really. They're a package. Madge helps him out and as a reward, her family gets an adventure with the Doctor and the members of her family are considered companions. If and when the Doctor thinks of Lily, he thinks of her as Lily Arwell, Madge's daughter, and that's how the audience thinks of her as well.
If we can alphebitise by first name without losing the ability to group families, without getting rid of the Brigadier's name, etc., then I'll drop my objection. I'd think it's odd going to all this trouble to subvert a fairly standard real world practice that isn't a problem in the first place, but I won't object.
Also, let me point out that choosing the most frequently used name in the source material has been a problem before. Joan Redgrave isn't a companion, but she's a good example. She's called Redgrave more than she's called Joan. Using only the name Joan is problematic. So is using only the name Redgrave.
Names are treated a ton of different ways by Doctor Who. We have characters with only one name, and characters whose full names aren't known. We have characters who are frequently refered to with a title in addition to a name. We have characters who are frequently referred to with a title instead of their name. And we have good reason to group certain characters together (like the Arwell family).
The one name issue is a much more frequent issue than any other. But, BUT, it's not an issue that's a problem in terms of standard alphebitisation. And forcing a different alphebisation standard causes real problems for characters who don't fit this mold.
This preference seems to be based on the idea that alphebitisation by last name doesn't work for people with only one name, that there is some inherent problem. But there is no real problem. Everyone else who alphebitises names handles one named people just fine, and no one thinks it's weird that Alex comes after Alice Adams, when he'd come before plain old Alice. So why is this a problem for us? What makes us different? And are we really different enough that this is problematic enough to create a whole new system that has some fairly big inherent issues and requires some pretty big exceptions?
- Digifiend
I think Sarah Jane Smith may be a special case. Isn't she more commonly known as Sarah Jane instead of just Sarah these days?
- CzechOut
Nothing makes us "special". It's simply not uncommon for last names to be dropped when presenting a list of companions, particularly when space is an issue, as it is in a navbox. For instance, Wikipedia's comparable template doesn't use last names.
- Anoted
Yes, but Wikipedia isn't including the Brigadier, the Arwells or most of the chacters we are. It's also a very different template.
Let me condense my point. Last names are not a problem in terms of alphebitisation and characters lacking last names are not a problem. But first names or most frequently used name is presenting us with multiple problems. We have Sarah Jane Smith, the Brigadier, the Arwells. We have characters like Joan Redfern and so on.
Using full names doesn't present a problem for characters who only have one name. Using first names present a problem for all sorts of characters. So why?
- Shambala108
I've already given you a reason, which you quickly dismissed. We are trying, with infoboxes and these templates, to reduce the vertical height of the pages. You may not care about those who have issues with load time, but their opinions do count too.
- CzechOut
This entire proposal is predicated on the notion of making things easier for the low-information user. So let's imagine that you know comparatively little about Doctor Who, and that you don't spend too much time worrying about the rules of alphabetisation in your daily life. So let's say you're a 12-year-old kid who doesn't spend too much time in the library.
Which are you the more likely to understand:
- Adric, Nyssa, Peri, Tegan, Turlough
- Adric, Peri Brown, Tegan Jovanka, Nyssa, Vizlor Turlough
- Anoted
They are equally easy to understand. They are both alphebitised lists of names, one seems to contain more information than the other. And if I knew little about Doctor Who, this template might convince me to click on an article simply because only one name is not that common and I'd want to know if there was a reason or something behind it.
I'm not trying to be insensitive to users who have slower computers or browse this wiki on a phone. And I'm not trying to make this harder for editors or readers, especially readers who are unfamiliar who Who. But this "solution" causes a lot of problems and I don't see it really fixing any problems. Most kids understand the idea of alphebitisation. At worst, someone who doesn't simply thinks that the names are in a random order. That's not that big of a deal. Hiding parts of people's names in order to make the template uniform is a big deal. Hiding parts of some people's names but not everyone is a big confusing deal.
If alphebitising by first name didn't cause problems I'd be fine with doing this. But it does cause problems. Are we going to call Sarah "Sarah Jane" or just "Sarah"? Can we still group the Arwell family? Do we have to drop the title from Madame Vastra's name? Do we have to drop the Brigadier's name altogether? What about K9? Which K9 should the Forth Doctor template link to and why? Does this K9 will only be listed as a television companion? Is the Tenth Doctor template going to have "Donna, Jack, Jackie, Martha"? That's confusing, and it hides the fact that Jackie is Rose's mother. What are we going to call Lady Christina de Souza? Christina? How many people are going to recognise her as "Christina"?
- CzechOut
Since you've just regurgitated point after point without a breath, I'll respond in kind:
- Calling "Sarah" "Sarah Jane" has no impact upon alphabetising.
- Of course we drop "Madame" (per T:HONOR).
- Yes we drop the Brig's name (again, per T:HONOR, as Shambala108 explained).
- Yes K9 is listed as a television companion, because the current structure of these templates stresses the media of origin.
- Having "Jack, Jackie" isn't confusing.
- It's not the job of this navigation template to indicate familial relationships
- Yes, Christina. In the context of list that's labelled "Original to television" in a navbox labelled "Companions of the Tenth Doctor", it won't be confusing at all. There's only one Christina.
- K9 I, K9 II (television) K9 III (prose)
- The only person whose name I'm thinking of hiding is the Brigadier's. And that's an exception already covered by rule. You're being hyperbolic when you say "hiding parts of some people's names but not everyone is a big confusing deal". The rule is simply to go with the one name by which they are most commonly known. That's not confusing because it's consistent.
- Anoted
In the example you provided you only listed one K9. I wasn't sure if that meant 2 and 3 wouldn't be listed.
I'm sorry that I'm been regurgitating the same points over and over again, but they were never really addressed, just dismissed.
From my perspective, cutting down how much of the name we show "Christina" instead of "Christina de Souza" is confusing. Not because there are two Christinas, but because I only remember who the template is referring to when I see the whole name.
Using only one name would be consistent in terms in terms of using one name, yes. The inconsistency is in the source. Yes, there are lots of characters for whom most people would be hard pressed to remember their last names. But there are other characters whom are know be their last name (few though there are) and many characters for whom the last name is very helpful when people are trying to place the name. I know that for me, there are some companions I cannot place with only a first name. If we are really trying to make things easy for readers of all levels of familiarity, then this is not only unnecessary, but IMHO, it's obstructive.
I don't like this whole obsession with "most common name". I get that it's necessary when we can ONLY use one name, but this isn't the case here, so why are we trying to treat it as such? Referring to characters by only one name when they have more than one requires a judgement call.
What is the advantage here? What is it that necessitates this judgement call being made? I know I keep asking this, but aside from the fact that we apparantly believe that standard alphebetisation is too much for 12 year olds to handle (really??) and the fact that this makes the templates slightly longer than they'd otherwise be, what do we get out of doing this?
All that making this shorter does is...well, make this shorter. But I know that this will make it harder for me to use these templates. And I don't think that I'm alone. If you only know these characters by their first names, then adding their last names doesn't detract. But if a first name isn't enough for you (and in several cases it's not, at least for me), then a last name is very beneficial.
- CzechOut
Reducing the footprint of the navbox is a legitimate concern unto itself. It's completely uncontroversial to pipe trick to a shorter name, and it's done with great regularity on this wiki. Do you think we put the full name of hospitals at {{hospitals}}? Of course not. And it's already a best practice to use only a single name when filling out the {{{featuring}}} and {{{companions}}} variables of {{Infobox Story}}. So this is merely a decision that's inline with current practice. This isn't breaking new ground.
Why do we need to make this judgement call? Because we're genuinely editors, not just users of the site. And editors make judgement calls all the time, or they get fired. We have tons of pre-existing rules that are essentially arbitrary, like Tardis:K9, Tardis:Doctors, Tardis:Romana, Tardis:The Monk, Tardis:Quotation marks and the like.
But it's important they be specified because we have one of the most diverse user bases on Wikia. People of all ages, and all English language fluencies, edit here. Administratively, it's deeply important to have a rule to point to.
So going with the single name or word (since not all characters actually have a name in the DWU) is better than using a last name for some characters but not for others. And I really don't think it's going to be as tricky as you seem to suppose. In any navbox labelled "Companions of the Tenth Doctor", "Christina" can mean only one person. Indeed, she's the only Christina there is anyway, so even if the box were labelled "Companions of the Doctor", full stop, it still could only mean Christina de Souza.
I think you're devaluing the utility of context, along with the willingness of users to just click on the name if they're confused.
The other thing that you seem not to appreciate is the basic function of a navbox. It's not there to give information. It's there to facilitate navigation. We want people to click. The only thing we want to say with these navboxes is, "Here are links to the companions, arranged alphabetically by media". That's it. It's not a promise to give the whole name of the person. It's just a promise to give a link so that they can click through and find more details — the surname usually being the chief detail.
Having a standard way of arranging those links lets readers know what to expect the template to do.
- 78.8.7.189
I'd say that for navboxes one or two-word common name should be enough. It's usually first name (Susan, Tegan), sometimes last name (Turlough, Benton, Wibbsey) can be two names (Sarah Jane) or a title (Brigadier). In most cases, it's pretty clear.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:131414
What is it exactly that makes someone a companion? Must they travel in the TARDIS? How much time must the spend with the Doctor?
If there's a clear standard on this wiki I'm not seeing it. We have a clear place for characters that are one-time companions but what is it that makes a guest star a companion?
Should inclusion in a companion category, inclusion in a companion template and being listed in the infobox as a companion all have different weights attached?
This isn't a proposal, just a question. I've seen this discussion more than once on talk pages, and I've seen edit summaries go back and forth. I'm thinking that maybe this should be discussed and decided here and not on each character and episode pages as new issues arise.
- Shambala108
- Anoted
Yeah, I'd read a couple of those before, but not all three completely. The problem is is that this still isn't clearly defined anywhere. So people editing a character article may agree that a particular person is a companion and add them to the category, but then they don't get added to the nav box because there isn't agreement there.
Deciding if someone is a companion on a case by case basis is slightly problematic because it involves multiple pages. A character page, the nav box page, episode/book/comic pages, and so on.
So there are characters who are considered companions in that they are in the categories and have the navbox on the page but they aren't in the navbox. Or they're listed as a company in a real-world article about a story but not on their pages or in the navbox.
We need some sort of guideline, especially because users aren't great about communicating this stuff. Someone often gets added and removed as a companion multiple times before a discussion pops up on the talk page. If the discussion ever even pops up.
IMO, tt's got to be possible to make this system less messy and clearer for readers.
But until then, this has already been answered by the community's … lack of ability to answer. And it's covered as thoroughly as it can be at Companion#Behind the scenes.
Thread closing.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:131653
Just a question and this seems like it might be the right place.
I'm noticing some pages that, in the little Talk navigation tab, indicate there are comments on the Talk page but when I click on it, the page is blank. Sometimes the number is small but sometimes it is not. I can see where a user would choose to delete an individual comment but these are just completely blank pages.
Is there a reason why Talk pages would be wiped clean and not have comments be archived? I would hate to think that any user would just come in and delete an entire page of comments.
- Digifiend
If someone did blank a page, the page history should identify the culprit. Any specific pages you're referring to?
- SOTO
The number of comments is actually the number if edits. So "20" might actually be one comment that was heavily edited by its maker. A comment that violates T:SPOIL will get deleted, and some people delete off-topic comments as well.
Usually, though, page blanking is not a good thing, and is a form of vandalism, I believe...
Examples? The page history should answer your question.
EDIT: Now I look stupid because they beat me to it.
- Digifiend
Sorry about that, SOTO.
- SOTO
:) No worries...
- CzechOut
As SOTO has said, the number next to the talk button is the total number of edits to the page. The number therefore almost never tallies with the number of comments.
However, I do feel compelled here to draw a line between blanking and archiving. They both have similar effects, but the latter is allowed by policy, while the former is not.
Archiving can certainly profoundly affect the apparent "fit" between these two numbers. You'll note, for instance, that Doctor Who Wiki says the talk page has been edited close to 300 times, but when you go to Talk:Doctor Who Wiki, you see only a message from me … and the archive box.
If you do have examples of genuinely blanked talk pages, please give them to me or another admin for investigation, because that's straight up vandalism. Users do not have the right to remove even their own comments, under T:DISCUSS.
- SOTO
What if someone posts a major spoiler in their comment? Can we not delete that post before anyone else has to see it?
- CzechOut
Welllllll, I suppose as an emergency measure. But please do still inform an admin immediately. We can hide the spoiler more effectively, because we can delete the whole page and then restore only those revisions we want.
And we still want to know about it, cause that user needs to be immediately blocked.
- SOTO
Okay. Thanks for the info.
- Badwolff
These are definitely NOT instances where there are archives. When I was just a visitor, before I registered an account, I saw one entry whose Talk tab was 100+ but the Talk Page was blank, no archives. I left a comment on it, asking what was up but I'll have to track back to see what it was. That was the first time I noticed it but I've seen this since. I'll find some examples and share them if this thread stays open.
Thanks for all of the replies. Nice to know that this "blanking" is not business as usual.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:131930
In Let's Kill Hitler (about 31'), the Telesecta says that River Song is following the orders of the Silence... and the "Academy of the Question". I found no reference in the wiki about this mention. I can't say if it's a synonymous for the Silence, or a sub-organisation, or a parallel organisation. I think it is mentioned no more. However, I think we should reference it somewhere.--HarveyWallbanger ☎ 22:42, May 24, 2013 (UTC)
- Doug86
- HarveyWallbanger
Thanks!
But if I search it with "Probe the data core", nothing occures. Can I create a redirect to the Silence? Meanwhile, I'm adding a note in the Question page. --HarveyWallbanger ☎
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:131968
I really feel that the BBC missed a trick last week when they showed the cylindrical "default" Tardis shape without the chameleon circuit switched on. In my opinion, they should have gone for basically a big, black, featureless door shape (with the dimensions 1 to 4 to 9). It would have been an amusing wink at Kubrick's "dawn of man" scene in 2001.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:131971
We really need to get rid of those red links! I don't have all the DWA comics, but the ones I have, I create the pages. Along the years, we have stopped focusing on the DWA comics, and I think we should. Please, if anyone has the missing comic stories, make the pages!
- CzechOut
Seconded. We're really quite behind on DWA stuff, and don't even have skeletal articles for the issues since series 7b began — much less the comic stories.
- StevieGLiverpool
Yes, I agree. I'll try and get some of those DWA magazine pages done too.
- SOTO
While you're at it, can you work on Alien Babies!? I would, but I don't get DWA.
- StevieGLiverpool
I'll try. The problem with Alien Babies is each comic doesn't come with a name, so I'd have to create one..., so what do I do then?
- Tybort
- StevieGLiverpool
So each one I put, AB 1 (comic story)?
- CzechOut
We honestly don't need to create pages for every story of Alien Babies! It's {{notdwu}}, so it's barely within our sphere of interest, anyway. I was thinking they didn't have actual titles, so the references on the character pages are total BS.
Please focus your energies on the main comic strip and disregard SmallerOnTheOutside's earlier request. (No offence, SOTO, but we don't chronicle each individual Doctor Who? strip; we really don't need to have a page for each page-long Alien Babies!)
- SOTO
Okay, fine, it's certainly not priority. But it would be nice to have a little more background information.
- StevieGLiverpool
The thing is, we still have no solution to the missing comics! I only have some, and I've made them anyway!
- CzechOut
Stevie, you might appeal directly to The Librarian. He's our magazine specialist, and is responsible for starting the vast majority of our magazine-related entries.
As for the Alien Babies! thing, I wouldn't be opposed to a table containing a brief, one-sentence summary of each issue's basic storyline, but on the page Alien Babies! itself. Something like WP:DW do with their coverage of DWA comic stories. (Though I note with a smidge of pride that we're nowhere near as far behind as they are!)
- StevieGLiverpool
Well done wikipedia... :P. And I'll talk to The Librarian now.
- StevieGLiverpool
Also, if I do post the Alien Babies thing, I still won't be able to post all of them... again
- The Librarian
Hi guys- sorry about the lapse in DWA comic stories. Got a bit tied up in adding images but the good news is I'm in the middle of playing catchup. Been busy sorting out scans of comic strips over the last 50 years - there's some gems I know and got a bit distracted! ;)
Steviegliverpool - chat anytime as Im backk to being about a bit more and if I can help I will.The Librarian ☎ 08:40, August 17, 2013 (UTC)
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:132653
1001 Nights (audio story) is a 4-episode audio drama that contains of the framing narrative and individual tales told by Nyssa to the Sultan in 3 of the episodes. The fourth episode is simply the continuation of the framing narrative. Nyssa's stories have individual titles (My Brother's Keeper, The Interplanetarian and Smuggling Tales) given in the script (available to Big Finish subscribers), but, while unconnected plot-wise, they are told within the framing narrative. Given this, should the article for "1001 Nights" be divided into articles for the separate stories, or should they be kept in one article? Previous Big Finish anthology releases don't have this kind of framing structure, even if they are interconnected.
- StevieGLiverpool
It's hard to say, but I think it should be the same article, I mean, the real classics had parts with individual titles. If it's the same plot, but different bits, it should be one article.
- Bubblecamera
The problem is, though, it's not the same plot. The three shorter stories have no narrative connection to the framing story. (There are thematic connections, though.) Really, what we're dealing with here is essentially a story with three very detailed flashbacks to previously unseen adventures.
- CzechOut
It's not hard to say at all, but it seems like someone mucked around with the name of the article and confused things.
See, there should be 1001 Nights (audio anthology), which is an overview of the release itself — i.e. the physical disc that contains all four stories. 1001 Nights (audio story) is the framing narrative, and this should be the thing that's included in infobox navigation, along with the other three individual story names.
I haven't reviewed it carefully, but hopefully the continuity section still at 1001 Nights (audio anthology) applies only to the story 1001 Nights, so that it would be easily transferrable to the as-yet-unwritten 1001 Nights (audio story).
In other words, we treat 1001 Nights (audio anthology) just just like 100 (audio anthology) or any of the rest of them.
- CzechOut
Oh, and the cast list currently at 1001 Nights (audio anthology) is hopelessly confused. No one can tell by that which people are in which story. The anthology page shouldn't have a cast page; only the individual story pages.
- Bubblecamera
Hi Czech,
Here's who was in which story. Hope this helps!
1001 Nights:
- The Doctor - Peter Davison
- Nyssa - Sarah Sutton
- Sultan - Alexander Siddig
- Old Man - Nadim Sawalha
- Nazar/Gantha - Teddy Kempner
- Alien Nurse/Woman Stallholder - Kim Ismay
- Gantha - Malcolm Tierney
- Crying Woman - Debbie Leigh-Simmons
- Alien Psychiatrist - Christopher Luscombe
My Brother's Keeper:- The Doctor - Peter Davison
- Nyssa - Sarah Sutton
- Prisoner - Teddy Kempner
- Warden - Malcolm Tierney
The Interplanetarian:- The Doctor - Peter Davison
- Nyssa - Sarah Sutton
- Elizabeth Spinnaker - Debbie Leigh-Simmons
- Hill - Oliver Coopersmith
Smuggling Tales:- The Doctor - Peter Davison
- Nyssa - Sarah Sutton
- Lottie - Kim Ismay
- Bessie - Debbie Leigh-Simmons
- Balladeer - Christopher Luscombe
- Archie - Oliver Coopersmith
- Bubblecamera
Oh, and re: the continuity section, the first bullet point is from the framing narrative, the second and third are from My Brother's Keeper, and the fourth is from The Interplanetarian.
- CzechOut
So why are you putting that helpful information here rather than on the pages for those stories? I mean here is better than nowhere — so, really, truly thanks — but why not just create the individual story pages, since you've clearly got some knowledge about them?
- CzechOut
If you're worried about making a mistake, don't. Just click on one of the redlinks and pull down the "standard preload" menu to "audio stories" and start typing!
- Bubblecamera
Sorry about posting this here instead of on the pages, my computer is having some technical difficulties that essentially render it impossible to create pages.
- CzechOut
Ooooh, sounds technically intriguing. Are you sure it's your entire computer and not just a browser issue?
- Bubblecamera
Looks like it was just a browser issue, sorry. I was on Chrome before but Firefox seems to be working fine. I'll tell you if the problem with Chrome still persists by tomorrow. Off to create some pages, then!
- Bubblecamera
Okay, 1001 Nights (audio story) is done. I have to log out for tonight, but I'll be back on tomorrow morning and will hopefully finish the rest of them then. (And we'll see about that issue with Chrome.)
- CzechOut
Thanks much for your help!
- Bubblecamera
Looks like the problem with Chrome has resolved itself. I'm working on My Brother's Keeper right now, hopefully it'll be done soon.
Also, a question: should the order of pages go 1001N --> MBK --> TI --> ST, which is the order the listener would be introduced to them in, or MBK --> TI --> ST --> 1001N, which is the order of the episodes that feature the stories most prominently?
- CzechOut
Yeah, the order is somewhat arbitrary, since 1001 is linking narration. But I'd probably go with 1001 as the first story, not the last.
- Bubblecamera
Okay, cool. That's the order I had already, so I don't need to change anything. All four story pages should be done within fifteen minutes or so.
- Bubblecamera
All of the pages have been created now. Anything else left to do?
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:133143
The article on Beep says that "whilst most Meeps had white fur, Beep had purple fur." However, in The Dave Gibbons Collection all Meeps, including Beep, are blue. Given that the comics were originally published in black and white and that apparently there exists more than one colored version, I think it would be best to move such information to the "behind the scenes" section with notes like e.g. "in this colored edition, Beep was purple, while in that one he was blue".
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:133428
Today, I created a whole group of categories under the new category:individuals by religion. A tree containing those categories can be found below.
CzechOut expressed here that this was a complicated matter that should be brought to the community.
His original message was:
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 16:24: Wed 05 Jun 2013
The rest of the conversation can be found here and here. Does anyone have any comments on this matter before I continue working on these categories?
- SOTO
Suggestions:
- If someone converts, they get both categories.
- We need absolute, definite proof that they take part in those religions. If they are described as Muslim, especially if they're a religious leader, that can put them in category:Muslims. If they're just Arab or once attended a mosque, they do not automatically count for the category.
- We might need to abolish category:Catholics and category:Protestants due to blurriness in the DWU, and merge them into category:Christians.
- Shambala108
I have two comments:
One, now that you've raised this in the forum, you have to wait for a decision to be reached before you continue.
Two, I have a big issue with how much real world has creeped into the categories you've assigned today. Just to use an example:
- Julius Silverstein - you've assigned him the "Jew" category, based on the mention in the article, but where does the "Jew" actually come from? It's not in the story; is it in the novelization? If so, it needs to be sourced. If not, it needs to be removed. We can't just assume he's Jewish based on some real-world knowledge, such as his last name.
If we allow these categories to continue, they are going to have to be closely policed to make sure new users don't misuse them.
- Tangerineduel
I think you're over simplifying and trying to force categories on some things that aren't religions or to call them religions is over simplifying a complicated and vague topic. One that we are already fairly vague about on our page that discusses the topic.
Considering how "religion" is used so interchangeably in some DW stories I think we need to be careful how we apply it in categorisation.
Here's a couple of examples where I think the category falls down.
- Kurkutji, no where on Aborigine article does it even mention religion. Even going to real world sites "religion" is a term that's barely used.
- Pilgrim, its page describes it as a "Pilgrim was a small Cardiff-based discussion group on metaphysical and philosophical matters". The term "religious" only turns up on one of the pages in the Pilgrim category.
- Savants, who're a science-based group, contrasted against the Deons (the religious ones). Classifying Caris and Deedrix as "individuals by religion" is a little odd. They'd maybe be better as a sub-cat of Category:Groups.
- Category:Faction Paradox members shouldn't be in the religion category as they're specifically identified as a Cult for which we have a separate page with its own definition.
I agree with SOTO we need definite proof that they're a member of the religion, definitely not an extrapolation based on the real world as Shambala108 queries.
I don't agree with SOTO that we should merge Category:Protestants and Category:Catholics as many characters are specifically identified as such, and I think that'd be over simplifying things. I think we do need to go through those categories and make sure we have proof those characters belong to those specific denominations and if not then maybe push them into the Category:Christians category if they're non-specific about their specific beliefs.
- SOTO
I did say "maybe". I don't think we should merge either — it's just that Czech complained about them, so it's an option. We of course have to decide how far we'll allow proof. Is the Church of England protestant in the DWU? Is an Spaniard in the 1200s definitely a Catholic?
Obviously, the answer to the second question is no. But what if there's a short story that establishes that all Spaniards in the 1200s were Catholics. Do we add category:Catholics to every individual that fits that description, or do we only do so if we have proof for that specific individual?
- SOTO
There's also the issue of religion by association. We have a Saracen bandit in The Crusade. If one of those individuals are not explicitly described as Saracen/Muslem, then can we still apply the category? I think yes.
- Tangerineduel
I think we need to completely avoid blanket groupings like that.
It would be fine to say when speaking of general history that in the "1200s all Spaniards were Catholics". As we're speaking on a general cultural level with vague statements like that.
But when on specific pages we'd have to cite a source that confirms their religion.
- CzechOut
I'd just like to emphasise Shambala108's point about the need to police these categories. I am so not a fan of categories that need to be regularly policed. If the name is debatable then it shouldn't even be a category. And even putting Category:Catholics under Category:Christians is something that some people would absolutely have a problem with. I have to raise my eyebrow at your easy equivalency of category:Saracens with category:Muslims, as it was originally purely a demonym and had nothing to do with religion. I don't see Aztecs as primarily indicating a religion. That's a racial and to some extent political distinction. Yes, there is an Aztec religion, but a part of the point of The Aztecs is that not everyone who is an Aztec follows the Aztec religion. The central guest star notably loses his religion. I don't think it possible to say that every Aztec we see in the production is "of the Aztec faith". Same thing with Category:Mayans. And then there's the question of category:Tesh and category:Sevateem. Eventually, both groups completely abandon their religious beliefs. But Leela refers to herself as "Leela of the Sevateem" throughout her life. I think that introducing these categories into a religious category only complicates the matter needlessly. These are social groups or races, for the most part, one of whose characteristics may have (temporarily) been a religious element.
I have to say that I just don't see the overwhelming need for much of this. It would seem safer, to me, to just eliminate Earth religious distinctions, wholesale, identify religious leaders as such, and put the purely DWU stuff into category:Individuals by association directly. But getting into a question of whether a Spaniard in the 12th century is a Catholic — or Jackie Tyler is not a Christian because she had a civil wedding — is going to interject an apparent level of certainty where no such damned thing exists.
These categories are going to be picked up by kids who don't really know what these religious words mean, or by adults straining to find as many of their own religion in DW as they possibly can, and they'll ultimately mean nothing.
Is it okay to use categories to identify rabbis or COE vicars or Baptist preachers or imams or Buddhist monks? Sure. Such people are formal members of a religion, and we're really identifying them by their occupation. But anything else is going to be very hard to police, because you can't do it with a bot. You'd have to periodically look on every single page and figure out whether you think there's enough narrative evidence to support the assertion. And even I just don't have a complete enough Doctor Who library — nor, really, time in the day — to do that. And it would still largely be a judgement call.
- SOTO
Shambala108 wrote: Julius Silverstein - you've assigned him the "Jew" category, based on the mention in the article, but where does the "Jew" actually come from? It's not in the story; is it in the novelization? If so, it needs to be sourced. If not, it needs to be removed. We can't just assume he's Jewish based on some real-world knowledge, such as his last name.
Actually, come to think of it, he couldn't possibly be called a Jew in the novelisation, as he's specifically made not Jewish in it due to stereotypes. Our own page even says that!
- Shambala108
This one needs to be resolved. Some of the categories that we seem to have decided against still exist, so there should be a massive cleanup.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:133496
Hello. I've been browsing Waterloo Road Wiki and the entire wiki in general needs a cleanup. This seems to be a big and rather impertinent ask, but as the doctor who wiki is in good condition it means we have some great editors here. What I ask is, I suppose, a request for backup on cleaning up and improving that wiki, in a manner of speaking. So yes, what I'm asking is if you watch Waterloo Road please at least have a look at the Waterloo Road Wiki, see if there's anything you can do to help. This request may seem utterly ridiculous and if it is I apologize. Thank you. MrSiriusBlack ☎ 16:22, June 6, 2013 (UTC)
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:133537
Hello.
Perhaps this is a dumb question. But then, perhaps I'm a dumb person.
After reading this announcement about spoilers, I began wondering about 'spoilers' that I have seen around this wiki.
For a prime example of this, take a look at the Asylum of the Daleks page. Right at the top of the article. Third line in, massive spoiler for The Name of The Doctor.
I mean, I understand that both episodes have been already released. And I can understand finding out this info on Clara's character page, that's totally reasonable. But surely for someone who's just watched Asylum of the Daleks, the first episode of the season, it would be a rather unpleasant thing to pretty much have the season finale ruined? I enjoy watching a Doctor Who episode, then immediately afterward checking the Tardis Data Core page to see if there's things I've missed or misunderstood. There's lots of little spoilers for upcoming episodes scattered around, most often in the 'References', 'Story Notes' or 'Continuity' sections.
Are these spoilers ripe for removal? I feel they should be. I've found a bunch of different examples similar to this around the wiki, rather less drastic than the aforementioned example, but seeing that example is what it took for me to formulate this thought.
So, am I on to something? Is this something I should change when I come upon it? Or is it TDC policy that since an episode has been officially released, anything goes with regards to spoiling it? Clarification would be much appreciated.
Regards.
- Shambala108
Once it has been released, it can be written. The spoiler policy only applies to unreleased stories.
Think of it this way: I just started watching classic Who about a year ago. Should the wiki have left off all spoilers on those pages for people like me? Definitely not. It would make for very short articles, and we wouldn't be able to make all the continuity connections that make this wiki, frankly, superior to most other Doctor Who sites.
From your post, it looks like you've only seen the recent forum thread warning against spoilers. The actual definition of our spoiler policy is here. Take a look at it; it will probably answer a lot of your questions.
If you have any other questions, feel free to ask.
- CzechOut
Your last paragraph sums up wiki policy. See Tardis:About#Our stance on spoilers for an overview of wiki policy. See T:OFF REL for incredibly detailed examples of what, precisely, counts as a spoiler in each medium.
That will answer your question, but I'm going to now give a few more thoughts, because this is an important and topical issue around the wiki.
A spoiler couldn't be defined as "what I personally don't know about". We'd never get any work done around here, as we'd be trying to guard against what viewers in certain parts of the world haven't yet seen. Heck, Canadians didn't get an official airing of Voyage of the Damned until like last year or something ridiculous like that. New Zealanders have, at various points in the BBC Wales run, been months behind the BBC One premiere. Many print releases don't make it to South Africa. IDW comic books were, until the advent of the IDW comic reader app, unavailable in the UK, except as a trade paperback once the story was finished in the US.
Doctor Who stories in all media are released at different times in different regions of the world. So we have to have the more objective standard of "after the official release of the story in whichever country first released the story".
I'm sorry that we spoiled something for you, but it is almost a month after the end of the series and several weeks after the (ahem, official) DVD/Blu-Ray release of series 7b. There's only so much we can do to protect people from spoilers. We vigorously — some have recently said ruthlessly — protect the site from spoilers about un-released stories. But our somewhat stern approach to spoilers can only work if the floodgates are completely opened swiftly after the credits roll on an episode. There has to be a simple and common standard that everyone understands and works toward.
At the end of the day, we have to draw a line in the sand somewhere. Our line is the time of release. If you don't want to be spoiled about a story that has already been released, watch, read or listen to the story before you come here. People who wait until the whole series is released on DVD are at a disadvantage with this site, because we will go back and change the article about episode 1 based on information from episode 9, and then it'll get revised again based on new info from episode 14. If you were using our site back in September 2012, you wouldn't have been spoiled after Asylum, cause we didn't know anything beyond that episode. Nine months later, we do, naturally, know plot-ending details.
Another helpful clue for you is that if there exists a page about story on this wiki, there's an almost 100% chance that the story has been officially released, and that its details may be freely seen anywhere on the wiki.
Let me end by pointing out the relevance of this thread to the broader debate some members of the community have recently brought to bear against our spoiler policy. Do you see now how difficult having a spoiler policy is? On the one hand, we got people who are complaining that they can't post about "official" announcements impacting stories that are months away, while poor Mister3hj got spoiled by something that's a month old. So our policy, which may seem to you Draconian, or at least administrative fiat, is actually a compromise, between your views and those of people like Mister3hj. And lest you think that Mister3hj's views are atypical, do remember there was a huge, multi-year debate on Wikipedia as to whether spoiler tags were required across all their fiction articles to protect people, even when the story was decades old.
By pointing to, and maintaining, a precise date as the demarcator of spoilers, we're giving people simple information that they can then use to decide whether — or when — to use our site.
- Mister3hj
Hello.
Thanks for the insightful responses. To start off on a somewhat irrelevant note, the Asylum of the Daleks page didn't actually spoil anything for me, though your apology was certainly appreciated, CzechOut. I've been following series 7 as it aired (and I must say I really respected the way you handled the 'leaked' DVD situation - very well), so no harm there. Can't remember what I was looking for on that page, but I checked it out yesterday, long after I'd seen The Name of The Doctor, but while it didn't actually spoil anything for me, it did feel a little jarring to read such a large reveal in such an incongruous place, and it may very well have spoiled the series 7 mystery for others, which is what brought about my posting this question in the first place.
Shambala108 wrote: From your post, it looks like you've only seen the recent forum thread warning against spoilers. The actual definition of our spoiler policy is here. Take a look at it; it will probably answer a lot of your questions.
This is entirely correct, and I probably should have re-read through all of that stuff before posting. I have just re-read the spoiler policy, and I think it's pretty much spot on. I'd like to emphasize that I fully agree with the spoiler policy as it stands.
I guess I worded my question badly? I don't know. I did use the word 'spoilers' flanked by apostrophes, but since the episode has been released, I probably shouldn't have used the word spoilers at all, since by this wiki's definition, they aren't. I feel my point still stands, but maybe I should phrase it as: unnecessary spoilery information in odd places. That still sounds vague and rubbish, though. But perhaps it gives a clearer idea of what I'm talking about.
I remember a while ago reading a throwaway line or two revealing who River Song actually is, on a page that wasn't post-Almost People or a character page. Don't ask me to recall where this was, because I've tried, and I can't. But it serves to illustrate my point. Look again at the third sentence of the introduction to the Asylum of the Daleks page. I know I'm harping on about this, but it's the only valid example I've been able to find in the short time I've had since this started bugging me. Does this "spoiler" (for want of a better term) add much of value to the article? I posit you could truncate that sentence before the word 'albeit' and you wouldn't lose much (if any) clarity, with the benefit of keeping the series 7 finale unspoiled. Blurting out that information where it is just seems... I don't know, crass and unnecessary perhaps?
I understand there's a line to be drawn. And that it's a difficult line to draw. The planet Gallifrey was only named so during what, The Time Warrior, right? So naturally, it would be absurd to censor all mentions of Gallifrey prior to that, and not just because it's a major part of DW lore. I think this we can all agree on. I'm more talking along the lines of major plot points in unnecessary places. I suppose an example (perhaps a slightly over-wrought and absurd one, though) might be if I re-wrote the introduction to the Spearhead from Space page to read:
Spearhead From Space was the first story of Season 7 of Doctor Who and was the first to feature Jon Pertwee as the Third Doctor (who regenerates at the conclusion of Planet of the Spiders as a result of radiation poisoning).
As I said, perhaps a little over-wrought and dramatic, but serves to illustrate my point. I've seen these sorts of things in a few places on this wiki, although it didn't really bother me that much until I read that forum thread about spoiling upcoming episodes, then soon after read the Asylum of the Daleks page.
CzechOut wrote: And lest you think that Mister3hj's views are atypical, do remember there was a huge, multi-year debate on Wikipedia as to whether spoiler tags were required across all their fiction articles to protect people, even when the story was decades old.
Your entire response is fair deuce, definitely. But I suppose in essence I'm arguing for a time and a place. To draw upon my aging example from above (but, again, it's not the only instance of this sort of thing), does that information about Clara really add anything important where it is? Is it necessary? I feel that information of that sort of gravity should be on her character page, and on the relevant episode page. It's very much obvious, superfluous information to anyone who's seen The Name of The Doctor or read Clara's character page; it's rather unexpected (and possibly unwanted) spoilers for those who haven't.
Or am I being overly pedantic, and chasing my own tail?
- CzechOut
The offence at Asylum of the Daleks isn't the inclusion of a spoiler. It's — with no offence intended towards the writer, for I don't know who it is — poor writing. I mean, that's practically a run-on sentence to end the lead.
It also conveys no sense of the episode's notability. The key point about the inclusion of Clara is not what eventually happens to her in The Name of the Doctor, but rather that Steven Moffat and company scored a massive publicity coup by successfully preserving the surprise of JLC's appearance.
In my opinion, you've spotted relative irrelevancy in the lead of Asylum of the Daleks — not the breaking of spoiler policy.
Now, having said that, something like the back half of the last sentence of that lead could appear, if better written, in the "Continuity" section at the bottom of the article. But it's definitely not lead worthy.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:135326
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:135357
Is the New Dawn secret society from Birthright (novel)/Birthright (audio story) meant to be the same as the Sentinels of the New Dawn? They seem pretty similar, and obviously have a similar name. I believe the Sentinels were occasionally referred to as just "New Dawn" as well.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:135519
Something that has been bothering me for a while is the sometimes-uncertain, sometimes-presumptuous way in which the cracks are mentioned in a number of articles. For instance, in the articles for "The Vampires of Venice" and Saturnyne, it is assumed or said to be "most likely" that since the cracks were sealed, the events mentioned in the articles never happened. Now, there is a problem with this that I'll touch on in a moment, but the manner in which this is written contradicts other articles like that of "A Good Man Goes to War" which says that which events did and did not happen any longer are not known for sure. This doesn't really flow with the former two articles, which sounds rather sure of themselves. I think that we should decide on a single explanation for events involving the cracks; did/didn't they happen, etc.
Now, concerning that matter, there is the question of what did happen. The article for the cracks themselves, as well as the article for "Flesh and Stone", state that after the Doctor sealed them in "The Big Bang", they never existed. The TVOV and Saturnyne articles comply with this, but assume that it means the listed events (namely Saturnyne being lost and the vampires coming to Earth) never happened. However, this is not how the cracks work, and we've seen that. Even when the Weeping Angels in "Flesh and Stone" were erased, the Byzantium stayed crashed. Though her parents were erased, Amy was still born. The Doctor himself walked into a crack, but the dolls that Amy made of him were still there, meaning that she still met him when she was young. So as you can see, there is a major precedent for the effects of things erased persisting beyond erasure when involving the cracks. Therefore, Saturnyne would still be lost and the Doctor would still have defeated the Saturnynians in Venice, because they still would have come to Earth through the cracks. Supporting this statement are a number of other quotes and circumstances, like in "A Good Man Goes to War" when the clerics talk about the Doctor chasing off the Atraxi, which he only did because Zero came to Earth through the cracks, or when, in "The Wedding of River Song", the Doctor reminds Amy of how she grew up with a crack in her wall and when we see River appear to Amy a the end of the episode "fresh out of the Byzantium". Clearly, the cracks still existed in the current "reality", if you will, and their effects would have as well.
In fact, I don't recall it ever being stated that the cracks never did exist - they were sealed, yes, but they were caused by the time explosion, which the Doctor overwrote by restoring all of history with the Pandorica. Even then, they still existed for a time (which seems to be the time in which their effects on the universe were seen by everyone, as evidenced by the future Doctor's appearance in "Flesh and Stone" being the same as his "rewind" from "The Big Bang), because there had to have been an explosion to stop. Even if the Doctor was erased when he stepped into them, it's clear from the past examples that his imprint on causality would not have been. He would still have been targeted by the Silence and his TARDIS would still have been destroyed, but the explosion itself would have been "overwritten" by him which is what caused the effects of the cracks that we saw and lead to the Doctor erasing himself by walking into one.
All in all, I think the solution to this problem would be to look at the evidence and edit all of the articles accordingly, as we actually have more of an idea of what happened when the cracks were closed than some of the articles would suggest. And the evidence, of course, says that everything involving the cracks still happened, that Series 5's part in the timeline is still intact, and that the cracks didn't "never exist," but were instead merely closed. If they weren't, then how could River jump from the "non-cracked universe" to the cracked one and then back again? To me, it seems like there is just one singular timeline in which everything except for the events in the totally-collapsed universe occurred, as the collapsed universe was overwritten by the Doctor's restoration field gambit.
If you disagree or see an error in my reasoning, then please, let me know. I simply think that the current inconsistency within the articles is not exactly up-to-standard and could stand to be revised; but I have tried to back up my statements with clear facts from the show in order to potentially help resolve the issue. I just didn't want to go on a massive edit-spree without discussing the matter first and making sure that there was an agreed-upon verdict.
- Shambala108
You are correct about the assumptions made. "It is likely" is speculation, which we don't allow on articles but which sometimes slips through anyway. As for us as a wiki deciding whether something is negated by the cracks or not, we cannot decide that as a group; we must wait for narrative evidence.
The solution is to remove any instances of "since the cracks were closed this thing never happened". There is some narrative evidence that various characters remember different things that were changed, so for them it did happen.
I'm not sure if I covered everything you were wondering about, but I hope this helped. If you need more clarification, feel free to add more here.
- Ensephylon
Good points. I'm still trying to suss out all of the relevant articles, but I'll keep that in mind as I find them and am able to see what's where. But now I have a guideline to follow, and that does help, so thank you.
Although I'm still unsure as to how I should address the "cracks never existed" thing. As far as I know, that was never said in the show, and it doesn't appear to be the case anyway. So how do you (and anyone else who may read this) think it should be changed?
- Shambala108
River says, "So all the cracks in time will close," so that's a good place to start the discussion.
- Ensephylon
"Close" sounds like a good, simple term with a clear meaning, and according to your quote, was actually used to describe what happened to the cracks. So I agree.
- DCT
The problem we have with this sort of discussion is Steven Moffat's love-in with paradoxes and his failure to realize that that the the term "paradox" is just a fancy sci-fi word for nonsense.
We have a similar problem in The Angels Take Manhattan because while common sense tells us that history has already happened and we have every right to ask how characters can hop between timelines just like that we have a different story. We have a story where historically the Angels die, they are killed by the paradox Winter Quay, as River (I think) explain never happened. However, from the beginning they are in possession of a book describing the full details of this "never happening" and it does stop they having to go though it again themselves. So what happened to Winter Quay, did it exist or didn't it?
More pertinently on the matter of the crack in time one of the examples you mentioned was from A Good Man Goes To War. This is actually the strongest, most conflicting example we have because while we do, indeed, have the story of the eleventh hour described in unambiguous detail we also have the Doctor explaining how all that "never happened" just so he could come to the conclusion that the first time Amy and Rory were together on the TARDIS was there wedding night. Which, of course, led to the conception of River. It was all very confusing and paradoxy and as Steven likes it.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:135579
As far as I can tell, every single one of the edits made relating to these issues is by User:OverAnalyser, who has had a lot of reverted edits from abuse of T:NO RW, so maybe it's just one that we missed at the time, but still.
On the following pages are references to the Eleventh Doctor flying over London. Are brief sights of the landmarks visible worth mentioning on the page?
- Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament (this one I can possibly understand, as he apparently gets within reach of the tower. I'd need to rewatch the scene.)
- Canary Wharf and Torchwood Tower
- Tower of London
Do we even know (from a narrative source) what year it is if shortly before the Tenth Doctor's regeneration in The End of Time, he takes off from 2005 London and goes into orbit?
Also, Southwark. Now I DO recall Southwark being explicitly named in the narrative of The Shakespeare Code and The Lazarus Experiment and the Globe Theatre either being there or around there, but would seeing Southwark's skyline in The Eleventh Hour or (from the same edit) the real world appearance of Southwark's Butler's Wharf in Resurrection of the Daleks be within the boundaries of T:NO RW, such as "it looks like that part of London, therefore it's that part of London"?
- Shambala108
User OverAnalyser made so many edits in violation of T:NO RW that I'm still catching several of them months later.
I took a look at User talk:OverAnalyser before posting here. In it User:CzechOut gives a nice long very detailed explanation of our T:NO RW policy. My interpretation (and you might want to look for yourself in case I'm wrong) is that most of your examples are violations. You are way more familiar with NuWho than I am, so I can't help you with specifics.
- Tybort
From said talk page, this is sort of a better phrasing from User:CzechOut of what I meant by "it looks like London".
- Starting an article at Drayton Court is fine, because we have signage. Moreover, the article must have a name of some sort, and it's better to have a genuine name rather than some generic thing like Tavern (Survival). We obviously allow some identification of cultural references from the real world based on auditory or visual information alone, because otherwise we wouldn't have a good title for a number of pages. For instance, we hear "Voodoo Child" and we know it is this song, because that's evidently what it is. Otherwise, we'd end up with some ridiculously unhelpful name like Song the Master Played (The Sound of Drums).
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 05:32: Sat 29 Dec 2012
However, in context, this seems to be more to do with giving pages intuitive titles, not the naming of landmarks in the background or skyline in in-universe paragraphs.
- Starting an article at Drayton Court is fine, because we have signage. Moreover, the article must have a name of some sort, and it's better to have a genuine name rather than some generic thing like Tavern (Survival). We obviously allow some identification of cultural references from the real world based on auditory or visual information alone, because otherwise we wouldn't have a good title for a number of pages. For instance, we hear "Voodoo Child" and we know it is this song, because that's evidently what it is. Otherwise, we'd end up with some ridiculously unhelpful name like Song the Master Played (The Sound of Drums).
- Shambala108
Right, Czechout was very careful to point out there is some leeway for article titles, but not for content.
- Tybort
Another point Czech made there seems rather close to what I'm trying to say, however.
- Is it the O2 Arena and Canada Tower we see at the top of The Eleventh Hour? It's irrelevant to the story.
- [...]
- I'm not sure I've answered every example of yours, but this post is growing long and I think you should be able to see where I'm going with this. I would spend less time on writing articles about things that are in the periphery of action, and much more time on articles that are about things which have some level of interaction with the characters. If we start down the road of filling in details about everything that is the background of every shot, we quickly descend to a very, very dangerous place: the first shot of Rose. The first thing we see in S1E1 is Earth. So, according to the logic you're pushing, everything on Earth is deserving of an article here. And that viewpoint would quickly turn this wiki into a nonsense.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 20:44: Sat 29 Dec 2012
As I've said before, Big Ben is nearly interacted with; from what I can recall, the TARDIS swerves near it in its crashlanding before the Doctor rights her course. So I do understand that that example could be an exception to London passing by in the background.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:135635
What is the reference for the countdown clock on the front page? It appears to be in the USA (west coast?) instead of Britain. Shouldn't it reference 18:30 GMT on November 23, 2013?
- SOTO
The countdown is set to 18:30 on 23 November. The wikitext for it can be found at {{Doctor Who Wiki/Charity}}.
I am pretty sure it's UTC, but I can't confirm it.
It's definitely not a countdown to the probable broadcast of the 50th anniversary special. Not sure why the OP thinks it's set to Pacific Daylight Time.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:135792
Is there any way of reconciling various accounts of early history of the Sontarans?
From The First Sontarans we do know that the Kaveetch considered themselves "Sontarans" as well (simply as demonym "from Sontar", just like Humans are "Earthlings"), and called what we know as Sontarans the "Sontaran clones". Therefore, I think that any references in Sontaran#History to the Sontarans before they became a clone race should actually be taken to mean the Kaveetch. I haven't read Pureblood (comic story), but from the summary, it looks like the purebloods could be considered just another name for those Kaveeth that survived (or, alternately, descendants of a group of Sontaran clones that reverted to natural reproduction of the Kaveetch).
- JagoAndLitefoot
I edited the articles a bit and merged purebloods into Kaveetch. The First Sontarans and Pureblood don't seem to be that hard to reconcile. The only thing that contradicts The First Sontarans in any major way is Shakedown, but that can be considered the official version, as we know that the Sontarans erased the existence of the Kaveetch from history.
- CzechOut
Hey :)
This is a complicated question requiring research. It's generally bad form to ask such a question in the forums and then go ahead and edit the article without allowing a reasonable time for people to respond.
Second, it's absolutely not a good idea to edit an article trying to reconcile two different source when you've only got access to one. You cannot possibly assert anything about Pureblood. Never, ever make an assumption about a work — especially the rather major one you have in this instance — based upon a summary of a work.
I'll take a look at Pureblood and get back to you.
- CzechOut
The Seventh Doctor establishes the following facts. These are full quotes:
- "Ten centuries ago they began their interstellar expansion." (Pureblood is explicitly set in the 26th century.)
- "The Sontarans abandoned their natural breeding methods in response to the Rutan threat, and adopted cloning as a way to perpetuate and strengthen their kind. That allowed for faster redistribution of learned skills, and altered the Sontaran stock into specialist castes, like colonial insects."
- The "gene-bank and memory core" is called "the racepool".
- When Benny asks the Doctor why he's seemingly helping the Sontarans on this occasion, rather than just letting them die, he says, "I've seen futures where the Sontarans survive and continue to conquer. But some of their developments in space drive, vaccines, genetic solutions to disease … I can't rob the universe of those. Besides … if I do destroy the Sontarans, what will stop the Rutan Host from overrunning the galaxy then?"
Some other tidbits:
- The homeworld is called "Sontara", according to Marshal Stave. (The major narrative point of the story is that Sontara is successfully overrun by Rutans, and Stave and his men have to successfully transplant the racepool to another location, a space station called the Pandora Spindle.)
- The Rutan Modine says, "Months ago, our scouts found a lost Sontaran colony at the edge of the [Mutter's] Spiral. These Sontarans had been there long before our two races ever met. They were purebloods, aggressive animals untainted by the race pools cloning. They had no reason to fear us. We told them how their race had changed in their long absence, turning its back on its proud martial past. how it had rejected traditional mating in favour of clinical science. they were completely manipulable puppets, nothing more! WE gave them ships, weapons … fired with outrage and a desire to "purify" their people, they made for Sontara. Their flesh and blood passed undetected through Sontara's damper screens where we Rutan could not. Their fury burned Sontara into a cinder."
Ultimately Benny is able to show Vord, the leader of the Purebloods, that the Rutans have no plan of a permanent alliance with them. So Vord begs Stave's forgiveness and the two lots of Sontarans join forces against the Rutans, defeat them, and are able to set up the racepool permanently. They then make the world beneath Pandora the new Sontaran home world.
The word Kaveetch is never given by the story, and I really don't think you can make a claim that the Kaveetch are "first seen in Pureblood".
In fact, Pureblood is in fundamental disagreement with The First Sontarans, because the Purebloods had never encountered the Sontarans at all until the 26th century. The Kaveetch, by contrast, were the original participants in the war with the Rutans.
So I'm gonna be rolling back your merger. We should have two separate articles, one for Purebloods and mother for the Kaveetch.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Sure, they are not named as such, but aren't they ultimately the same thing? I think there are lots of articles here on subjects that have different names in various media. "Kaveetch" is one name for non-clone Sontarans, "pureblood Sontarans" is another. We could just as easily have the article at Pureblood Sontaran instead. It's just a question of nomenclature, not a question of these being completely different. Pureblood establishes the existence of such non-clone Sontarans that were closer to humans in appearence than the clones, and The Last Sontarans simply gives them a new name.
"In fact, Pureblood is in fundamental disagreement with The First Sontarans, because the Purebloods had never encountered the Sontarans at all until the 26th century. The Kaveetch, by contrast, were the original participants in the war with the Rutans."
It can still be easily reconciled. The Pureblood Sontarans from Pureblood are descended from lost Kaveetch colony that was established before the war with the Rutan host. There is no contradiction unless it's specifically stated that the war with the Rutans was started after the Sontarans became a clone race.
- CzechOut
Nah they're really not the same.
- JagoAndLitefoot
I recreated the separate article on Kaveetch and Pureblood Sontaran, but I don't see why you deleted the following article from Kaveetch:
"During either the 25th or 26th century, after the destruction of Sontar by the Rutans, the Sontaran clones encountered a lost Sontaran colony established before the Sontaran-Rutan war. They were called Pureblood Sontarans and eventually joined forces with their clone brethren. (COMIC: Pureblood)"
I can concede that the Purebloods might not be Kaveetch by that point, but since they are descendants of a lost colony established before the Rutan-Sontaran War, they clearly are descendants of the Kaveetch, even if the name "Pureblood" is not spoken in "The Last Sontarans" nor "Kaveetch" in "Pureblood". The Kaveetch also called themselves Sontarans so there is no contradiction there. I think the paragraph is very much relevant, as it directs the reader to a later surviving group of non-clone Sontarans.
- JagoAndLitefoot
All Sontarans are descended from the Kaveetch, and the non-clone purebloods from a pre-Rutan War colony surely have more in common with the original Kaveetch than the clones. So I don't see why they wouldn't be mentioned in their respective articles.
While merging the articles altogether might have been premature, there is no contradiction in the story itself, so it's obvious that the Purebloods are descendants of a group of Kaveetch that established a colony before the War.
- CzechOut
I deleted the paragraph because it's almost entirely wrong. It wasn't "either the 25th or 26th century". It was definitely, clearly, declaratively "the 26th century". And the Rutans didn't meet the Purebloods after the destruction of Sontara. The Purebloods were the ones who destroyed Sontara. Reread the quotes which I painstakingly typed out, above, particularly the last one by Modine.
- JagoAndLitefoot
OK, sorry for that. I'll try go get a copy of Pureblood myself. Anyway, while I agree now that they should have separate articles, I do think the two articles should be linked with each other, as, while not the same, the two groups are related (even if they were created independently by their respective writers). If we consider both to be valid sources, pre-Rutan War Sontaran colony would need to be a Kaveetch colony, even if not stated as such (and even if the descendants of the colonists are no longer Kaveetch).
- CzechOut
JagoAndLitefoot wrote:
...it's obvious that the Purebloods are descendants of a group of Kaveetch that established a colony before the War.By your own admission, you haven't read the story. How are you qualified to say what's "obvious"?
- CzechOut
As I reread this story, I'm beginning to think we are unwise to just blithely assume that Sontar and Sontara are the same things. The big point of part one of this four-parter is that Sontarans have gotten to the point where they're ready, at a moment's notice, to pick up house and move, wholesale, to a new home world. We might be as well to assert that that Purebloods are descended from Sontara whereas the Kaveetch come from Sontar. It would make more sense overall, because Sontara is shown to be flat out destroyed here, which I'm sure contradicts something if we believe that Sontara=Sontar.
- JagoAndLitefoot
"These Sontarans had been there long before our two races ever met."
If we take both stories to be valid, before the Rutans and Sontarans met there were no Sontaran clones, so the Sontarans who established the colony had to be Kaveetch (who also considered themselves Sontarans), not clones. The comic, as you quoted it, also states that the colony was established by pre-clone Sontarans. The only thing that The First Sontarans adds to that is to actually name the pre-clone Sontarans that these Purebloods were descended from.
None of the things you quoted actually means that "Pureblood is in fundamental disagreement with The First Sontarans", as the only thing adding TFS to the mix changes is supplying the early non-clone, pre-Rutan War Sontarans with a name.
- JagoAndLitefoot
"We might be as well to assert that that Purebloods are descended from Sontara whereas the Kaveetch come from Sontar."
I don't really see how it would work. I think the intent of both stories was that Sontara/Sontar was the name of the Sontarans' original homeworld. And I don't see how they would be related to two races from different planets. Just because Daleks are said to be descended from Dals in one story and from Thals in another doesn't mean they're two different origins of Daleks, simply that the name was changed/retconned/forgotten between the stories.
- CzechOut
Well, again, you're asserting things about Pureblood without having read it. And your comparison to Daleks isn't particularly apt. It is completely impossible to square Genesis of the Daleks with Genesis of Evil. Can't be done. They are two different accounts, in precisely the same way that Lungbarrow's looms prevent the First Doctor from calling Susan his granddaughter or the Tenth Doctor from lamenting a not-anymore brother.
Doctor Who is messy. You can't try to fit it altogether. The approach this wiki tries to take is to stay as close to the source material as possible and report what's there.
And what's there in this case is that Sontara was shown to be flat out destroyed, whereas Sontar never has been.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:135843
Is anyone else mad at the fact that she convinced the Doctor to do so? Idk, for some reason it made me really uncomfortable that they saved them...
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:136206
According to the Doctor Who Online Adventures Facebook page, they are now an officially-licensed BBC production: http://www.facebook.com/groups/dwoadventures/permalink/10151700662631206/ So, does that mean this wiki should cover them? I'm not entirely sure if Rule #2 would apply in their case. For what it's worth, their creator says they're in the same "canon" as the DWM comic strips. I suppose a compromise could be reached by covering them but only in the Non-DWU section.
- Tangerineduel
Can you provide a source that is from the BBC?
And also a source from Doctor Who Online Adventures which isn't locked behind Facebook's login?
The only source I could find is this tweet from Doctor Who Online's account
- Thrilled to announce that the BBC has officially endorsed our 'Doctor Who Online Adventures' YouTube series! - http://www.drwho-online.co.uk/DWOA
They also don't provide a link other than to their own page.
I'd also like to see clarification on what exactly is meant by "endorse".
- MystExplorer
I asked Doctor Who Online what they mean by "endorse" and they replied it means they now have an official creative media license for the series. I'm afraid I don't have a source from the BBC itself.
- JagoAndLitefoot
If true, looks like it's only about the forthcoming series, not any of the previous ones.
- CzechOut
No. Just no.
- StevieGLiverpool
Well Jagoandlitefoot, I just asked them, so once I get an answer, I'll tell you.
- StevieGLiverpool
Got the reply. "I believe the contract officially started a few days ago, so from here on out it will be licensed, so I guess that includes this series and the (hopefully) many that follow." -Billy Garratt-John
- StevieGLiverpool
He also said it's probably official starting from Heart of Steel
- CzechOut
No, we're not covering these. No way.
- SOTO
Just noticing this now. For once, I agree with Czech: no way are these getting onto the wiki.
- CzechOut
If you want a reason — and I really can't believe I have to given a reason to deny the admission of a series based upon action figures that uses none of the original vocal talent — it's because its backstory goes into areas that aren't licensed. So therefore the whole thing is based upon a non-licensed foundation.
Please note that it's not just a couple of episodes that aren't licensed but the first five series, as revealed by the BTS video here: http://www.drwho-online.co.uk/DWOA/Behind-Doctor-Who-Online-Adventures-Series-One.aspx#bdwoa-1
Additionally, the series will cause tons of issues in the already complicated world of Cybermen, as you have Cybus Cybermen interacting with old series Doctors. It's a nightmare not worthy of exploring.
Oh and there's something they're not telling us about this license they've got. Why in the world would they have the right to use new series Doctors when Big Finish don't? It doesn't add up. Something tells me a "creative media license" doesn't mean quite the same thing as the license they've got at Big Finish or DWM.
Discussion is now closing. We'll of course keep an eye on the development of this idea, and it may be possible to revisit this discussion in a year or three, if we get more clarity about the license, and more narrative distance from the first four series.
For us to cover a thing, it must be something the BBC care about enough to sell.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:136990
As some of you may know, Big Finish have been coming out with an installment of a new podcast series every week or two for several months now. This podcast series, entitled "Toby Hadoke's Who's Round," documents Toby Hadoke's ongoing quest to interview someone associated with every Doctor Who story.
I was wondering if an article about Who's Round would be a valid topic on this wiki. If anyone can give me an answer to this, it would be very greatly appreciated.
- JagoAndLitefoot
I'd say yes - it's a documentary series produced by a company that has a license to Doctor Who on audio.
- Bubblecamera
Okay, I'm going to create the page, since nobody seems to be objecting to it.
- Bubblecamera
The page has now been created.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:137011
I've noticed a common trend among editors (including myself) is to name real-world language pages as "X language" and fictitious languages for the most part as "X (language)". Is there any real reason to keep to this, or does it make more sense for consistency across all language pages (with the exception of instances that don't need language disambiguation like Latin).
For instance, either: German (language), French (language), Baby (language), Gallifreyan (language), Heavenite (language).
Or: German language, French language, Baby language, Gallifreyan language, Heavenite language.
While as it currently stands, it's German language, French language, but: Baby (language), Gallifreyan (language), Heavenite (language).
- Shambala108
I think you're right that they need to be consistent. From an in-universe perspective, there is no difference between, say, German and Gallifreyan. So they should follow the same naming conventions.
- SOTO
I think we should go with everything being dabbed. For one thing, French language has lead to someone not knowing it existed and creating French.
The whole purpose of adding the word language is to disambiguate — so we can tell the difference between the English from England and the English language. And since Latin isn't also a demonym, it's "Latin" but German is "German language".
Unless we're going to call even Latin "Latin language", let's just go by disambig policy, and apply dab terms only when necessary — not added words, dab terms.
Just my two cents. Take it if you like.
- Tybort
Did not know about that thing with French. I've changed that back to a redirect to France, as it had been for 5 years before User:ComicBookGoddess' edits.
Same with any country demonym like Chinese, Celtic, Greek, Egyptian.
Relatedly, Tibetan and Croatian probably should be dabed to "Tibetan [(]language[)]" and "Croatian [(]language[)], while the links Tibetan and Croatian should be demonym redirects to Tibet and Croatia. No idea how or whether Golos, Gholos and Golosian should be approached, though.
You do make a good point about dabbing, though, Smaller. In the DWU, they're called "Chinese", "Tibetan", "English", "French" and "horse", rather than "the Chinese language", "the Tibetan language", "the English language", "the French language" and "the horse language". That's pretty good reasoning to put them in parentheses.
Either way, there's just no reason to call Latin and Esperanto "language" when Esperanto is a constructed language, and I can't really imagine the DWU mentioning Latin as in Latins.
- CzechOut
T:NAMING requires article names be nouns. The only noun that the word French describes — without help from any other words — is the language. Otherwise it is an demonymal adjective, not a noun. Alternately, it can be converted into a mass noun using a prepending article — the French. But that meaning requires the prepending the. French on its own does not mean "the French people". Since French can only mean "the language spoken primarily in France", the term French language is kinda redundant. The article name should simply be French. This is true of pretty much every other real world language, cause "real world English" works fairly consistently in this way.
Obviously some of the made-up languages do require a dab term because "baby" and "horse", for instance, have other noun meanings. These "new nouns" haven't been forged in the crucible of history, so they don't work according to the same pattern of "real" language names — unless the writer actually gave it some thought.
So ComicBookGoddess was right to try to move that redirect target to the language, not the country. She didn't have the power to change all the instances and move the page properly, so it created a bit of a mess. But her basic thought was correct.
When there is a need for the word "language" for clarity, it should probably be parenthetically, as this can be easily pipe tricked away.
[[baby (language)|]] is easier than [[baby language|baby]]
Like all of us responding to this thread, I too have been partially responsible for this mess. It's really going to take a bot to fix all this, since, as Tybort has pointed out, we've been doing it wrongly for so many years.
But the basic deal is that most of our languages from the real world should simply have the "language" dropped. There are exceptions — like Russian and Egyptian — but where such exceptions exist, the dab term should be parenthetical.
- Tybort
Huh. You're right. If everything was dabbed, several would be an adjective followed by (language), which is against T:NAMING.
If I'm following correctly, you mean the exceptions which require dabbing are:
- Czech(s)
- Egyptian(s)
- German(s)
- Greek(s)
- Norwegian(s)
- Russian(s)
- Tibetan(s)
While the rule is:
- Cantonese
- Catalan
- Celtic
- Croatian (the demonym for "a Croatian person" is "Croat", right?)
- (the) English
- Esperanto
- (the) French
- Hebrew
- Hokkien
- Latin
- (the) Japanese
- Mandarin
- Old Norse
- (the) Spanish
- (the) Welsh
- CzechOut
Well, more or less. Thing is, we also have to remember that it needs to have been mentioned in the DWU to exist, and even then we need to be sensible about it. For instance, Hokkien is actually used as a noun to refer to "a person of a group called 'Hokkien'". Cantonese, while it can be a noun to refer to 'a person from Canton', is not so used, as far as I'm aware. Japanese is actually a noun — "a Japanese" is correct — and it almost certainly has been used that way in the DWU. But is it worth an article that essentially says, "A Japanse
The question we face is this. Do we want to:
- create Japanese (people) and Japanese (language)?
- have Japanese simply used for both?
The thing is we've done this act of genuine laziness where American, for instance, redirects to United States of America and French redirects to France, rather than actually having proper articles.
So since we've now kinda gotten into a discussion on all this, we should make a decision not just on the title of these articles, but on what the articles should contain.
We tend to do rather better with fictional demonyms than real world ones. For instance, Venusian and Martian don't point to Venus and Mars. they both try to make a go of defining the words.
So while we're deciding on the proper title for these articles, we should give some thought to what the articles actually contain.
In my opinion, it would make the greatest amount of sense to just start an article like Russian with:
- Russian was a name applied to people from Russia, as well as their main language.
I'll grant that we could split the articles. But policy on this sort of thing is different for articles than for categories. Categories are required to be about one thing and one thing only. There is actually no policy about an article being about one thing only. If they're about related things, but there's not that much info on either, they can often be combined. That's why Venusian and Martian are about multiple things, really. On the other hand, there's nothing wrong with having both a (language) and a (people) page for Cantonese.
It's just a matter of deciding, really.
- Tybort
Huh. Didn't realise "Japanese" was a noun. Considering how odd on the tongue "Japaneses" is, I'm guessing that's the singular and the plural, then.
I'm really not sure how to properly approach pages for the groups of people. All I was really considering is what to name the languages and why it's inconsistent with several non-real-world languages.
- Shambala108
Bumping this post so we can come to some kind of conclusion.
- NateBumber
I'm in favor of the (language) dab term. Pretty much the only time I find myself linking to a page like French language is when I say (eg) "Babewyn is the French word for grotesque"; In that case, French (language) is far easier and more useful than manually piping away the second word. It's also very useful to be able to say that someone is a German soldier and have it link to Germany. I understand the case-by-case idea proposed above, but in the end that just lends itself to unnecessary inconsistency and confusion.
- Shambala108
At this point, I'm inclined to agree with User:CzechOut's idea of making a non-dabbed page that covers both nationality and language, like his example for Russian:
- Russian was a name applied to people from Russia, as well as their main language.
This has the advantage of not requiring pipe switching and not expecting new users to know that, say, a language needs a dab term but the nationality doesn't. Consistency is always easier to explain and enforce.
This discussion is several years old, and if anyone has any objections, or any other ideas, please post them. If there are no objections, we can get to work on fixing this.
- SOTO
What you suggest, or rather what CzechOut first put forward, would not just be a matter of fixing. Quite a bit of research would have to go into creating an article about the German people/nationality.
And even with all that work done, I just don’t see how that information is best served with an article that tries to juggle both topics. I would end up covering the language and the people in separate sections, which would amount to the same thing as simply covering them separately.
As for naming the pages for languages, the original topic of this thread, I agree with user:NateBumber that the ability to pipeswitch outweighs the... well, whatever reason we went for English language in the first place. As I said in 2013, it's also simple application of T:DAB. And finally, I can be fairly sure that "French" is simply used more commonly in the DWU (to denote the language" than "the French language".
- Shambala108
This issue needs to be resolved.
- Scrooge MacDuck
I agree with User:SOTO and User:NateBumber that it would probably be counterproductive to try and cover both nationality and language on a single page, especially if a single nationality speaks several languages over the length its history. That could get confusing too. All in all the dab term seems just right to me.
- Shambala108
Bumping for suggestions. We need to have pages for languages, since they are nouns, but figure out the best way to name them (and then get to renaming). At this point it seems the best thing to do would be (using one example for ease of discussion) to make the page "French" for language and if newer users link it to people, then we can correct if necessary.
It doesn't seem like the idea of using "French" for language and people is feasible.
- Najawin
I think we're going to have to be very careful on what criteria is chosen between the people and the language, if this is done, if we aren't to violate the current wording of Tardis:Disambiguation.
By contrast popularity has nothing to do with whether a title gets a disambiguation term here. We base dabbing decisions largely on whether the topic is in-universe or out-of-universe.
If we added dab terms to both articles there's no issue. But if we do this because "it's more efficient" to let German refer to the language, that's specifically an issue of popularity.
- Scrooge MacDuck
I see no particular reason not to introduce a general "(language)" dab term, personally. The thing is that for alien languages, there's all kinds of instances where we absolutely cannot have the people/species be the one that gets the dab term. We can't have "Gallifreyan" be about the language, let alone "Dalek". Since we're bound to have Gallifreyan (language) and "Dalek (language)", might as well make it consistent. Is my take.
- Najawin
I guess the general policy could be something like "as we always hear all comments made in English b/c of translation circuits Dalek (language) is pseudo out-of-universe in the sense that when a character encounters a Dalek they will be cognizant that it is a Dalek but not cognizant of the Dalek language."
But that's sorta messy and reaching imo, if we're trying to shoehorn just dabbing language into the already existing language of the policy.
- Scrooge MacDuck
I'm not sure what you're talking about? The translation circuits are neither here nor there. We have many accounts dealing with what the "untranslated" Dalek language sounds like, from words like "insli" or "Ka Faraq Gatri" to Missy mentioning the fact that "the Dalek word for sewers is the same as their word for graveyard" in The Witch's Familiar.
- Najawin
I realize. Hence the "pseudo". I'm just trying to figure out how to justify dabing language and not people based on current policy. Obviously it could be changed. But I think it would end up being just a weird exception.
- Scrooge MacDuck
Well, why not? This is a Panopticon thread. It's allowed to lead to the formulation of new policy.
- Najawin
Sure. Just put into the rules it would probably just be a random exception. Which is doable. Just not elegant. Hence why I'm looking for an elegant way to do it if possible.
- Scrooge MacDuck
It's all a matter of perspective. An exception notice on T:DAB would be inelegant, but the creation of a separate Tardis:Languages policy? Now that's something else.
- Imamadmad
Wowzers this thread is old.
Just throwing this out there, is there any downside in not having a non-dabbed page for things that could be confused as languages? So, for example, there is no page "French", just "French (language)" and "French (people)", and no "Gallifreyan", but "Gallifreyan (language)" and "Gallifreyan (people)"? That way, when people are looking for pages to link, only dabbed options are there to choose from which forces people to choose the correct destination for their intentions?
I will add that I've not read the dabbing policy since before dab meant something other than "disambiguation" in the popular consciousness, so maybe that doesn't work with current policies or however the new (ok, not so new anymore) editor works. But man, this discussion needs closing!
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:137362
Okay, I think it's about time we get this discussion out of the way. We all know that on this site we like to keep in-universe pages and out-of-universe pages reasonable separate providing the circumstances. With the recent separation of date pages that is clear enough. But there is another type of page on our site that likely needs discussing.
How do we deal with stories that represent themselves in the DWU?
They have popped up occasionally, albeit briefly, and I think that we really need to tackle this issue.
To name a few, we've had Happy Deathday, which represented a video game entirely up to the last page. Eventually it was decided that it made the most sense to make a separate page for the video game itself, which meant just as much plot description there as on the actual page for the comic (I doubt its actually happened like that, but it needs to)
Then there was The Angel's Kiss: A Melody Malone Mystery, which was an in-universe prequel to Melody Malone: Private Detective in Old New York Town.
But those are mostly the small examples. The big fish to fry is Who Killed Kennedy. This book was told from the first perspective and listed itself off as a book within the DWU. Every page, paragraph and letter in this book is also in a book within the DWU. PROSE: The Dying Days references the book, further proving its existence in the DWU. If you check the tags on that page, it currently has both in-universe and out-of-universe categories. So the question is, do we keep it as one page, or do we split it into two pages, one of the book printed in the real world and one of the in-universe book it represents?
- Tybort
I'm certainly in favour, especially if the in-universe book is referenced in another story like with Kennedy, Summer Falls and Snow White and the Seven Keys to Doomsday. I kind of find it...it's hard to explain, when an entry goes, for example,
The Doctor, who had met the Tritovores before, was reminded of a previous invasion and slunk away, ready to face he who will knock four times.
So for Who Killed Kennedy we wouldn't copy the plot description from the story page over to the Who Killed Kennedy (in-universe article). What we'd do is summarise that plot description down further. Neutralising and re-aligning its description to describe the book rather than explain the plot.
I think that's how we have to approach these articles. There is a difference between the real world article which lays out the plot, references, contiuity and behind the scenes info and the in-universe which is how it exist in the DWU and in relation to the DWU.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:137368
In Julius Caesar I took the liberty of removing the following:
"While this cannot be, in-universe, confirmed as Julius, in the real world, Julius Caesar did in fact cross the river Rubicon in the year 49 BC."
after:
The Tenth Doctor once offered to take Rose Tyler to see "Caesar crossing the Rubicon." (TV: Tooth and Claw)
I think that this is an obvious enough reference to Julius Caesar and to the famous historical event that we can just assume he's referring to that. I don't think that if just "Churchill" or "Hitler" are mentioned in any stories we would assume that they refer to some other members of the Churchill or Hitler family. And while Roman emperors have held the title of Caesar, if just the name "Caesar" is used, it's in most cases used to mean simply Julius Caesar himself.
- SOTO
Well, I think this is really a question about how much real world we let seep in. When Donna says "That film, under the Earth, with dinosaurs", we all know she's talking about Journey to the Centre of the Earth. But she doesn't explicitly call it that.
Do we know that Obi-Wan Kenobe's from Star Wars? All we've got is two "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobe"s (TV: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, PROSE: The King's Dragon) and one "He's Luke, which makes me Obi-Wan Kenobi" in TV: Warriors of Kudlak. All three of those are written on our page for Star Wars, but should that be allowed? Should we instead mark down those three things at Obi-Wan Kenobe, and only write that he's from Star Wars in a BTS section?
Do we know that Jabberwocky was part of Through the Looking-Glass? Indeed, are "said Alice" and "Like Alice, I like to believe three impossible things before breakfast" definitely from Alice in Wonderland? Neither (as I recall) express as such. The Doctor says "With great power comes great responsibility" in Timewyrm: Genesys, and only says that it came from Marvel Comics. He does not make a direct link to Spiderman. Can we write that there, or just note it in a BTS section?
There are many examples of characters making explicit references to the real world, but can we connect them to other references to the same thing if such a connection is not made in-narrative? The thing is, there are some things that the writer just expects the reader/viewer to get without explanation. We're meant to know that Narnia is the setting of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but can we say that if we're not told so?
I say no. If a reference to Harry Potter is made that can't be confirmed as a reference to Harry Potter, then it can go in the BTS section of Harry Potter. - JagoAndLitefoot
Well, I agree it might be a grey area, but in this case the reference to a major historical event is IMHO too obvious to not assume it's about Julius Caesar.
If it was about "Hitler entering Poland" would we assume that it might be about Alois Hitler going shopping to Krakow and not about the start of WW2 and Adolf Hitler? If a mention is made of Shakespeare being a literary genius without specifying that it's about William, would we assume that it might also mean Clive Shakespeare and therefore is ambiguous? If the Doctor mentions Newton or Columbus, can't we really assume it's about Isaac and Christopher? Hell, even "Julius Caesar" might be ambiguous, since in "100 BC" we meet Gaius Julius Caesar the Elder.
A mention of "Caesar crossing the Rubicon" in the episode assumes that the viewers know who they mean
I think references to such major historical events are a bit more obvious than references to literature, comics and movies you mentioned.
On this wiki we do not make assumptions about real world history being the same as Doctor Who history. Please read T:NO RW for the policy. The key point is summed up in the last sentence: "Additionally don't go further than what the DWU source actually tells you."
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:137391
There are certain set of pages on here where gender-specific pronouns where the subject is of an unknown gender or is specifically mentioned within the course of a story as having no gender, an example of both cases I have identified, the first is the page on Sentris, where we don't know Sentris' gender, yes in Neverland Sentris is played by India Fisher, but Sentris only takes Charley's form, so apart from referring to Charley, we shouldn't use her, etc, to reference Sentris. The other case's example is Christopher in Love and War, Christopher has no gender as referenced in the adventure as an accident from a drug, so Christopher's page shouldn't have he, etc, in relation To Christopher. Having recently listened to Neverland no gender is placed upon Sentris, apart from in referral to Sentris' appearance, and I will reread and re-listen to Love and War to check about Christopher, but I propose using Gender-Neutral pronouns, such as the singular they, or ones such as, Xi, Thon or Per. AdricLovesNyssa 19:25, July 13, 2013 (UTC)
- JagoAndLitefoot
Christopher is genderless by the time of Love and War, but he was originally male, and I believe he is referred to as male in L&W.
- Tybort
Christopher is consistently called "he" in at least the audio version, though I think there's a line where Jan asks Ace whether she could tell what Christopher's sex was.
- Tybort
Considering we're on the subject of gender-neutral pronouns, what subject is "the hermaphroditic hexapod for the job", Alpha Centauri, referred to throughout the ambassador's appearances? I don't think it was called an "it" or "they" in The Bride of Peladon, but I'm not 100% on that.
- Tybort
Oh. An additional thing. The Prisoner of Peladon does consistently call Centauri an "it".
- SOTO
I think the same issue applies to Zygons, too. Current articles seem to use she/her pronouns when talking about a Zygon who later adopted the body of a woman. Queen Elizabeth in Day even makes it clear that her duplicate was only "at the time" a woman.
I feel singular they/them should always be the way to go when nothing more specific is given, but I may be biased, because those are my pronouns. I highly doubt xi, thon or per have been used anywhere in the DWU, and they would only confuse our readers.
I would certainly say for Sentris (if referred to as she, it's because of the form she took up, so perhaps 'she' is acceptable once she's in that female form) or Zygon Queen Elizabeth I (yeah, that name ain't lasting), or indeed any characters whose genders are not specified, singular they pronouns should be used.
So would we call Alpha Centauri "it" like TPOP does, or use "they" as is standard English convention? ("It" is not really in use when referring to sentient individuals, and if applied to humans in the real world will probably be seen as rude.)
I'm really interested about the case of Christopher. Can anyone who owns the novel tell us what pronouns are used there? I'm not sure "originally male" is argument enough. What pronouns are actually used in both source materials?
How does it address sex vs. gender, also, because those upthread seem to be using "gender" loosely, when, in the real world certainly, gender is social while sex is biological. Is he used because that is his gender, but his sex is now indeterminate? How are the words "gender" and "sex" specifically used in the text of the novel or the script of the audio, and how are issues of the gender binary addressed in relation to this character?
- AdricLovesNyssa
- ) good I plan to relisten to Love and War soon so I'll check how the characters refer to Christopher. Could the same thing apply to robots/androids as I have used 'they' when no other characters use gendered pronouns
- WJDTwGL
Christopher is physically genderless, but is mentally the same person and always referred to as "he."
I believe that in Legacy, Alpha Centauri is referred to as "he" out of convention, but not for purposes of accuracy.
- Bwburke94
We've had this discussion before, haven't we?
- SOTO
On Alpha Centauri: if they're referred to by different pronouns in different stories, I think we should definitely use they/them pronouns here for consistency, rather than switching between pronouns for certain stories, and for others not knowing what to put at all.
Christopher: "physically genderless" doesn't really mean anything. Do you mean he lacks a sex? Again, I need to know what kind of language is used in the stories.
And you say Christopher uses (or is referred to) by he/him pronouns, but is that in the audio or the novel? We still haven't established what's used in the novel.
- SOTO
Bwburke: Maybe you remember this very discussion? It started in 2013.
- WJDTwGL
Christopher is referred to with male pronouns in both. I'm not sure the audio matters anyway, since it's treated like a novelisation. His penis literally melted away.
- SOTO
I really do need some quotes from this story on the topic of sex/gender.
Anyway, definitionally, gender is not defined by one's sex, certainly not one's primary sexual characteristics. So, in the real world, the loss of one's penis says nothing about their gender at all, and I can't imagine it having an effect on their pronouns unless they choose to redefine their identity because of it.
I do want more information about this, though. He's referred to with he/him pronouns by whom? Does he himself use he/him pronouns? How is he defined, sex- or gender-wise? Tybort alluded to a brief conversation between Jan and Ace. I'm probably going to need to get the novel and audio, won't I?
- WJDTwGL
>Anyway, definitionally, gender is not defined by one's sex, certainly not one's primary sexual characteristics. So, in the real world, the loss of one's penis says nothing about their gender at all, and I can't imagine it having an effect on their pronouns unless they choose to redefine their identity because of it.
Definitely. I don't know why he needs to be in this thread. He's always referred to as male. The only remotely non-male thing is that in the audio the actor sounds very female.
- AdricLovesNyssa
SOTO I Have both I'll have a check this weekend? Also going to check on Sentris in Neverland as I don't remember Sentris being referred to as as She. Also anyone got an opinion on robots with gendered actors but there is no gender to the robot?
- SOTO
Well for the sake of completeness, from the prelude: "He was finely-chiselled, bald and tatooed, his face not quite of either sex." Just a few sentences later, "She was the Priestess of the Travellers, as Christopher was their Priest."
Haven't checked the novel itself, but this definitely seems to an indication that Christopher is thoroughly male, simply sexless. Maybe androgynous in appearance, but referred to by he/him pronouns, definitely at least once identified as male, and Paul Cornell makes a clear distinction between Christopher, the (male) "priest", and Máire, the (female) priestess.
I do think he continues to be relevant to this thread, though, because of the way the idea of lacking/having indeterminate sex was dealt with in this DWU story, in terms of pronouns.
Anyway, on Alpha Centauri, the character's very first scene certainly uses he/him pronouns ("The delegate from Alpha Centauri, member of the Galactic Federation, presents his credentials before his Majesty, King Peladon."), but then we have this exchange:
- Jo: No, I think he's rather sweet. Or is he a she?
- Doctor: Neither. She is an it. It's a hermaphrodite hexapod.
Then in the next story, though:
- Doctor: Actually, you owe Alpha Centauri a very great deal of gratitude. Without him you'd have been lucky to have got out of there alive.
And that's just the first television stories. According to what's been said above, Alpha's been both he and it in separate stories. This is why I think, when pronouns are inconsistent, we go with them.
- SOTO
AdricLovesNyssa: Awesome, thanks a lot for your help. With the information we have now, it seems to be that Sentris isn't given any pronouns. Are there any others of her kind?
Hmm. Robots. I mean robots can have gender, evidently (in the context of the DWU). If no statement is given that a robot lacks gender, and gendered pronouns are used, those are the pronouns we should use. Trine-E and Zu-Zana are ladies, and Christmas on a Rational Planet tells us about "gynoids". However—if gendered pronouns are not used, we should not assign any individual pronouns based on the implied sex of the actor, certainly not for non-humans.
- Bwburke94
SOTO wrote: Bwburke: Maybe you remember this very discussion? It started in 2013.
No, the discussion I remember was about the use of ze/hir as pronouns.
- SOTO
Oh yeah, I remember that now you mention it. I thought I remembered a pronoun discussion... That was more recent than 2013, I think.
- SOTO
After quite a bit of computer lag, there's the thread: Thread:152896.
- SOTO
Oh my god...
"SOTO These should be used only when the stories use them. If the story gives nothing, then something neutral like "it" should definitely be used, and not something of your own creation."
...and then I go on to say that singular they isn't grammatically correct, and it doesn't matter if "it" comes off as a bit rude. I was one of those people!
Yeah, this was before I identified as agender and non-binary, clearly. :P
I most certainly do not think it should be used in reference to any sentient individual. It can most certainly be noted in cases like Alpha Centauri that "it" was among the many pronouns used for them, but that's not even a clear case at all. Show me an example of a character consistently referred to with "it" pronouns, to no objection from the person themself, and we can have this debate.
I propose, as a general rule, stick to they if more than one pronoun is given or used, but obviously go with whatever the character goes by if something else like he/him, she/her, ze/hir (or at least hir in that one case...can't wait to incorporate that into my as-of-yet uncreated gender articles!)
I also think if we're referring to Time Lords who have been more than one gender, and we're not talking about a specific incarnation, we should use they/them pronouns as well. It's now wrong to call the Time Lord known as the Master he if we're talking about all their lives.
That's different from a character who's actively transitioned in any manner, or who has discovered that their gender did not match up like they might have thought as a child. Yes, those characters do exist, and we should use their real pronouns (ie. the "latest update")
It's different because Missy may regenerate at any moment into another man. Female is certainly true of her latest incarnation, but she very much was a man in previous lives, rather than just assumed to be so within the same life.
- SOTO
I just don't want to be seeing "it" on articles like these: Sgloomi Po
"It" is for objects and ideas, maybe for non-sentient animals/creatures.
Benny calls hir "hir", so that's certainly a start. I don't have the story on me, though, so no clue if any pronouns are used as subjects at all. In the real world, hir is joined by ze, but I'm not sure of DWU prose explicitly supports that. Still, though, grammar's grammar.
- SOTO
That's not to say, of course, that all single-gendered or single-sexed species necessarily have individuals who are gender-neutral or that don't fit into the binary.
Sontarans, from their first appearance, are made clear to all be male clones. First Sontaran we meet think women must be a second intelligent Earth species. Strax uses male terms for everyone.
And Chelonians are all hes? Are Drahvins all female?
I think the Doctor tends to refer to individual Daleks as it, right? Have there been any exceptions aside from humans converted into Daleks?
Is it acceptable when it's what used all the time? Aaaaaaaaa :P
- WJDTwGL
Chelonians are all referred to with male pronouns and female familial terms (mother/daughter).
- SOTO
Fascinating. So yeah, that's what we use. He/him pronouns, and mother/daughter terminology. No quotation marks like saying "mother".
I'm interested, though, in finding out too if these cases of all getting one gendered pronoun also explicitly state the sex and/or gender of the people themselves. I wouldn't necessarily say, when we're talking about non-humans certainly, that "male pronouns" equals "male gender", or if they're all just another case of writers lazily using masculine pronouns as somehow gender-neutral, which is certainly quite outdated.
- JohnSmith5000100
Outdated, but still technically accepted.
- SOTO
But sexist.
- JohnSmith5000100
That depends. Many writers used 'he' because that was an accepted gender-neutral term. I know Spanish and I think Hebrew use plural masculine forms for a mix of both genders.
But this is an irrelevant philisophical arguement. I would propose using 'they' or 'it' depending on context as a rule of thumb.
- WJDTwGL
"They" is a perfectly correct singular gender-neutral third person pronoun, and "it" is fine for non-gendered robot sentients.
- SOTO
Can you give examples where you think it is warranted for a sentient, rather than they?
- WJDTwGL
Oracle is sentient enough to make the occasional survivalist decision where necessary, but not written as a character in its own right.
- SOTO
Bah, I'm so distractible.
Okay, Oracle. Hmm. Hmm. I suppose we don't want to get into philosophical debates about personhood. I would assume that "it" is used 100% of the time in its story, so it's perfectly acceptable for technology to be called "it", sentient or not, if that is what's actually used.
Not sure, more specifically, though, about individual robots. Certainly we would never use "it" for an android, and many sentient robots use "he", so are they not too persons? I guess that's a hard position to hold, though, because non-sentient robots, like Gadget, certainly should have "it" used. Blah. Robots are complicated. So obviously, use whatever is used if it's 100% consistent. That way we're never imposing judgment. If there is a discrepancy between stories—or indeed within a story—for any sentient character, we should default to "they".
Let's not make the mistake Donna did: "but its face". In the words of the Tenth Doctor, "It's a he, not an it." Let's not disrespect any sentients by alienating the aliens.
I'm really interested to hear what non-technological beings should actually be called "it". I've argued against its use for Alpha Centauri, and I've argued against "she" for Sentris. Furthermore, the General, the Master and the Corsair are all Time Lords who have had both genders at different points, so when discussing them in general, I think they/them pronouns must be used. "The Corsair had the symbol of the Ouroboros tattooed on each of their incarnations."
Thus, the sentence "Throughout his lives, the Master would adopt many disguises and aliases, often to pursue his goals"—currently found at the Master#Personality—is in fact wrong, whether or not that sentence yet applies to their female incarnation. When a statement is about a specific incarnation, or the actions of a specific incarnation, either he or she should be used.
- Also, since it's been brought up, Hebrew and French don't really have any non-gendered pronoun options. Can't speak for any other languages, but even plural pronouns are gendered as well. And yeah, grammar in both those languages dictates that if you're discussing a group of both males and females, male pronouns are correct, and female plural is only right when a group is all-female. It's all very sexist, but I suppose there are no alternatives in the current set-up of those languages.
- Thankfully, in English, we do have some gender-neutral options, and this wiki is in English. "They" has been in use for centuries, and "he" hasn't been widely used at all as a non-gendered option since the rise of feminism. It's just plain wrong, really, and is not at all applicable in the 21st century. "It" most certainly is not accepted as a personal pronoun, because it's really just downright demeaning, like saying somebody's not a person.
- JohnSmith5000100
That last bit of language pronouns was irrelevant philosophy in relation to this discussion.
- SOTO
You brought it up yourself, so I was replying. Anyway, it's not irrelevant to this discussion to bring up real current grammar, because proper grammar is required and essential here on this wiki.
What I am debating here is that "he" is no longer correct as a gender-neutral pronoun, and should never be used as such. If a story uses he/him pronouns entirely for a character, we use those pronouns, as stated; no problem. But if it doesn't, we do not make that leap.
I was also making the point that "it" is long deprecated, as a personal pronoun, if it was ever accepted as a respectful pronoun for people.
Anyway, for the most part, I think we should look to the texts and/or scripts of the story in question, and if a certain pronoun is used all the time, make use of that. When stories run into conflict with each other in terms of pronouns, though, or pronouns are unclear/unstated, I think we should always default to they/them pronouns when describing a person.
- Bwburke94
In terms of the Master and the General (each of which have only one "opposite-gender" incarnation) would it be best to refer to them as male and female respectively except when referring specifically to their opposite-gender incarnations? We're supposed to be representing the DWU, not modern gender politics.
As much as I support the singular "they", using that word for the Master is ridiculous.
- SOTO
Do you mean to tell me my reply didn't send?
- SOTO
(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
- SOTO
It is? Sure, with the Master, you can pinpoint one gender as covering the majority (but still not all, so it would be incorrect), but with the Corsair, for example, what else would you propose? And what about any future Time Lords that follow this trend?
I don't think my proposition is political at its roots. It's quite simply not correct to say, "The Master displayed cunning ability in the art of deception in all his incarnations". Because they weren't a he for all their incarnations. If you're thinking of the Master as a he, you'll probably referring back to a specific incarnation in your head. And hey, I don't make the rules of grammar. If the Master never had a female incarnation, using "he" all the time would absolutely still be correct. For the most part, anyway, we're not referring to the Master in general, but saying something which related to a specific, often male incarnation.
I just find it absurd to say something about the Master, with a number of sources including Death in Heaven or The Magician's Apprentice, and to say "he" as if that encompasses all the sources used, or indeed all the incarnations under examination.
- He would often casually murder for no particular reason at all, showing a general disregard for the lives of others. (TV: Terror of the Autons, The Keeper of Traken, AUDIO: The Light at the End, TV: Logopolis, Castrovalva, Survival, Doctor Who, Death in Heaven, The Magician's Apprentice)
Now tell me that doesn't sound like a ridiculous statement once you're visualising Missy in Death in Heaven and The Magician's Apprentice. Look at those two sources, then reread the sentence, and then tell me it doesn't seem very, very off indeed.
- They would often casually murder for no particular reason at all, showing a general disregard for the lives of others. (TV: Terror of the Autons, The Keeper of Traken, AUDIO: The Light at the End, TV: Logopolis, Castrovalva, Survival, Doctor Who) Death in Heaven, The Magician's Apprentice) Missy compared her imminent murder of Osgood, despite her not being important, to "bop[ping] a balloon". (TV: Death in Heaven) He held that life was "wasted on the living", (TV: Doctor Who) telling Osgood that "human beings are born dying" due to their short lifespans. The Master seemed to take joy from the act of killing, (TV: The Keeper of Traken, The Sound of Drums, Last of the Time Lords, Death in Heaven) saying that destroying the Doctor's favourite species would be "reward in itself". (TV: The Sea Devils) She once killed a UNIT soldier just to prove to Clara Oswald she hadn't "turned good", even noting that the man was married and had a family right after doing so. (TV: The Magician's Apprentice)
Now that's the kind of approach I suggest we take. It's just simple grammar, really. Whenever a statement is about all incarnations, or multiple incarnations about Missy, we use "they" as that is most correct, and all other times we use more specific pronouns, sometimes even jumping between grammatical genders within the same sentence. And that's fine. That's the nature of cross-gender regeneration. I just don't think we're about to start going "himself or himself" every time we mention the Master as a whole. "They" is simply a more correct substitute to constant he/she, him/her use. If at least one source involves a female incarnation and at least one other involves a male one, "he" just ain't right.
Characters themselves, by the way, seem to consistently use whatever current pronouns apply to a Time Lord, often even to refer to previous, opposite-sex incarnations. The Corsair was male when the Doctor last saw them, as well as when they died, so:
- Eleventh Doctor: The mark of the Corsair. Fantastic bloke. He had that snake as a tattoo in every regeneration. Didn't feel like himself unless he had the tattoo. Or herself, a couple of times. Ooo, she was a bad girl.
In this instance, the Doctor introduces the character as male, as this is their latest incarnation, but also makes sure to point out when saying "himself" that "herself" was sometimes applicable, too.
Right after she has it confirmed who Missy is, Osgood starts referring to the even the Simm Master (Harold Saxon) as "she":
- Osgood: 'Cos I thought she might be the Master, regenerated into female form? Your childhood friend, responsible for a number of previous incursions. [...] We do have files on all our ex-prime ministers. She wasn't even the worst.
Once the General regenerates, the Doctor starts using "If she says so."
So it seems, in-universe, from the moment a Time Lord changes gender, everyone else switches over from then on, sometimes even when referring to the past. There are no cases in-universe of "he" or "she" being used to represent the Time Lord in their entirety from the point where they've been two genders, on.
Considering that we obviously...
- ...can't (and shouldn't because it would break T:IU and would hardly be future-proof) change all mentions of the Master to retroactively fit her current gender, as DWU characters do for her and for the General...
- ...nor can we say "he, or sometimes she", "him or her", "the Master found himself or herself..." every time we make a general statement, as the Doctor does for the Corsair...
- ...the obvious, and I think only, feasible solution to the dilemma of the multi-gendered Time Lord is to use "they" whenever making a statement that includes both "he" and "she" incarnations.
- The only real-world comparison I can think of for this sort of case would be statements like:
- "Every British Prime Minister makes Downing Street his residence, and is free to redecorate as he sees fit."
- Obvious, the use of "he" and "his" here is incorrect, as not all British Prime Ministers have been male, even if it has been a ridiculous majority. But it's still not correct to make that generalisation when referring to all British prime ministers, because it is simply not accurate.
- Instead, the following language is used (actually took an example from Wikipedia this time, because my last one was shit :P)
- "The Prime Minister guides the law-making process with the goal of enacting the legislative agenda of their political party." (not a letter changed in this quote from WP: Prime Minister of the UK)
- A more direct example, though not as common a case, of course is the bigender individual who alternates between different pronouns. If you read any interviews for people like that, you'll notice a lot of switching between pronouns depending on which personality the person feels more like at the time being recounted, and indeed the time of the interview. Let's say those two identities are Jeff and Jenna. When discussing things about Jenna, or things Jenna has done, you'd use she pronouns, and when discussing Jeff, you'd use he. Let's say they were never heard from again, and you're writing a newspaper article on Jeff/Jenna. You'll probably try your best to stay away from gendering when making general statements, but when you really have to, and you don't want to make convoluted statements to avoid all personal pronouns, you kinda have no choice but "they".
In short, what I mean to bring up with these final points is that they/them pronouns are neutral and, in effect, default when nothing more specific is altogether true. It's the only option English gives us. And it's the pronoun used by pretty much everyone when we either don't know a specific gender, or it's simply not relevant. "They" is by no means radical. Instead, singular they lies in between he and she as a (respectful) personal pronoun, and should always be the starting off point in cases where anything other than one gender in the gender binary is meant.
We shouldn't be doing double backflips to avoid neutral grammatical tense for a multi-gendered being simply because that entails using neutral pronouns for a character who, for almost 44 years, had exclusively male incarnations. And that's because that may have been true for 44 years, but as of the last the last 14 months or so, the notion of the Master as an exclusively male character is simply outdated. Just as it would be weird and wrong to start calling Delgado's Master "she" because of a later incarnation, or to include him in a citation with Missy episodes, on a sentence with that starts with "she", it's just as weird, and just as wrong, to apply male pronouns in any capacity to a female Time Lord incarnation, or indeed, to a Time Lord with a female incarnation when discussing them in a general capacity, in a way which at least suggests inclusion of that female incarnation. It's just as weird as using specifically female pronouns when discussing companions in general, while there have been male companions, or male pronouns when discussing Time Lords in general.
- JohnSmith5000100
My point was never that we should use he in gender neutral situations (although I would prefer that, it is merely my personal agenda). I was just trying to steer the discussion back to the topic from what may have become a political arguement.
- SOTO
I feel the issue at hand is more grammatical than political, more about presenting truthful information in a neutral manner than lining up with any real world personal identities. I do feel that it is incorrect to assign more specific pronouns than 'they' when those pronouns do not actually line up with the (sometimes lack of) sex/gender of a character—perhaps due of their species, or maybe as a result of their identity. If unsure, and a DWU story doesn't help to clarify what we should call them, I think we should just default to they/them. It's not political; it's the 3rd person pronoun we've got in English that doesn't have any gender markers.
It just feels weird to use "he" when referring to incarnations of the Master including Gomez, and it's equally weird to use pronouns like "he" or "it" when those are not truly representative, nor widely/consistently/at all used in the relevant story or stories.
If one pronoun is used consistently (all the time) for a character, and there's no question about it in-narrative, we just go with that set of pronouns. So Christopher is a he, because that's what is used. Don't take any of this to mean I'm in support of us deciding on characters' pronouns when recording their stories. If it's clear, it's clear.
It's when there's confusion or inconsistency—as with Alpha Centauri—that we need a consistent approach to turn to. Since we would never use "it" for a human character who doesn't fit into either grammatical gender, it doesn't make any sense to make exceptions for members of other sentient species. Just as importantly, though, we don't have a consistent pronoun for this character, because different stories call them different things, and different characters use different pronouns within a single story. Heck, the Doctor uses at least three different pronouns to refer to Alpha Centauri in their first appearance. So: "Alpha Centauri was the delegate on Peladon for the planet Alpha Centauri. They helped the Third Doctor in defeating Hepesh and Arcturus."
And in cases where we only ever meet a character in a certain form, which is not their true form, it would be acceptable to use gendered pronouns when discussing the person while inhabiting that body, but, unless gender is made clear, usually not necessarily correct to gender them at any point before then. The truth is that we don't really know Sentris' gender. "When a prime breach developed between the two universes in the form of Charlotte Pollard, Sentris took her form to honour her." Before this part on Sentris' story, we should not assume anything, and so gender-non-specific pronouns should be used.
Likewise, we don't really know a Zygon's gender, and shouldn't assume male or female based on a human they imitate for any stretch of time.Actually, Zygons are a bit complicated.- Bonnie certainly seems to have a female identity (remember that gender can exist without sex distinctions), but in PROSE: The Bodysnatchers, Zygons are pretty clearly hermaphroditic, starting out with a more feminine appearance before being essentially masculinised, I guess, in the sterilisation process. Queen Elizabeth seems to refer to them all as men in Day of the Doctor. In their very first appearance, the Doctor says, "Broton escaped and he still has control of the monster. He plans to attack some target in London." So do we always use he for Zygons? In a quick search of The Zygon Inversion, the Doctor doesn't seem to use any pronouns at all for Bonnie. Do Zygons have binary gender?
- SOTO
I can confirm that "hir" is used consistently for all Sloathes, at least in Sky Pirates!. But we don't know what might be used as a subject. (In the real world, "ze" tends to accompany "hir".) But we definitely do know /hir/hir/hirself. So it/it/its/itself is wrong for a member of this species, as is he/him/his/himself.
The book seems to avoid referring to them (members of this species) as the subject of a sentence without saying their full names. So, rather, than assuming "ze" is correct, it's probably just best to follow suit and avoid using that kind of pronoun for these characters, sticking to hir and hirself. "Sgloomi Po found hirself on..."
If it's absolutely necessary to use such a pronoun in a sentence, ze, I think, should be used, as grammatically it tends to accompany the hir pronoun.
- SOTO
And a direct quote from Oblivion:
- When hir friends had been lost on Earth, Sgloomi had been almost frantic. [. . .] Hir only thought had been to try to find old friends, who helped hir, hir kind and hir family before. . .
Looking further, it seems like Oblivion uses "it/hir" pronouns, strangely enough:
- It retracted hir various limbs, and assumed hir androgynous human form.
Oblivion seems to be the only one to use it/hir, though. Sky Pirates! uses neither it nor ze, but definitely uses hir.
- Bwburke94
SOTO wrote: The book seems to avoid referring to them (members of this species) as the subject of a sentence without saying their full names. So, rather, than assuming "ze" is correct, it's probably just best to follow suit and avoid using that kind of pronoun for these characters, sticking to hir and hirself. "Sgloomi Po found hirself on..."
If it's absolutely necessary to use such a pronoun in a sentence, ze, I think, should be used, as grammatically it tends to accompany the hir pronoun.
We don't have to follow any valid-source rules for pronouns, if a character's gender is given in a valid source. We should use "ze" if necessary, but we shouldn't reword sentences to avoid such a pronoun.
- SOTO
I suppose. I was just saying that I don't think "ze" was ever used in a DWU source, while "hir" is certainly correct. Perhaps these writers thought they were coming up with something new with hir, and didn't even know "ze" existed (and maybe they were; not sure when ze/hir came about in the real world). Maybe they just didn't want to confuse the reader, so specifically didn't use anything as a subject but hir name or a description.
But of course, proper grammar isn't strictly speaking real world creep. We don't need "him" used in a sentence to know to use it that with somebody called "he". The only reason I'm at all reluctant is because I'm not sure ze/hir was actually the intent at the time. I think it's notable that ze/he/she/etc is specifically avoided, but it also leaves us in a funny place.
In the real world, hir is most commonly used with ze. Ze told hir that hir wallet had been stolen.
- Bwburke94
It does not matter whether "ze" was ever used in a DWU source. What matters is whether the source invented "hir", which it did not.
- SOTO
I like that angle, actually. The source didn't invent "hir" as a pronoun, so standard rules apply. So ze/hir/hirself is totally acceptable even though we've only actually seen hir (both as object and as possessive) and hirself used.
And indeed, "hir" was used in print outside the DWU as early as 1988. Interestingly, though, that source which I found uses "hir" in the subject too.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:137487
How is River Song, Amy and Rory's daughter? Explain in complicated sentances
- 66.91.113.23
66.91.113.23 wrote: How is River Song, Amy and Rory's daughter? Explain in complicated sentences.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:137506
The preload for disambig pages has a section named "As only name" for DWU individuals whose last names are unknown to us. But that's it — for the most part, that's not their only name. Technically, they should go under "as first name" or "as surname", since they mostly do have another name.
How about renaming that title to something like "Only name given"? That doesn't imply that the individual has no first or last name; it simply tells the reader that we just don't know the second name.
Or, we could keep that section but use it for what it's meant for — people with literally only one name. There's plenty of people, mostly aliens, out there in the DWU who only have one, common name. They can't possibly fit under "as first name" or "as surname".
"As only name" is fine.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:137619
I am writing to give you some exciting news - Wikia Video has recently received some fresh videos on Doctor Who. Many of the videos embedded on wikis come from sites like YouTube and often become unavailable when they are removed or taken down for copyright violations there. To help provide a reliable and legal option, Wikia has licensed thousands of videos for use on your wikis from several content partners. These are all found in Wikia Video. They are viewable worldwide and Wikia has the full license for these videos, which means your wiki can use them anywhere you like.
Through a quick search, I found this set of videos for the Tardis Wiki Please let me know if you need any help adding them or your community, or have feedback on the videos. We are working hard to improve the content and tools for adding videos, so let me know your thoughts or if you have any questions.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:137866
There are two Lord Barsets in AUDIO: Frozen Time, one in the backstory from a 1929 expedition and his descendant in 2012, now represented on this wiki by the page Barset.
From what I can gather, Frozen Time essentially functions as a sequel to the Audio Visuals [and ergo unlicensed Doctor Who] story, Endurance.
I put off writing a page at all prior to User:AdricLovesNyssa's creation of Barset, as I didn't really know how to title the hereditary title, nor whether it should be two pages or one overall "Lord Barset" page referring to the grandfather and grandson and their separate Antarctic expeditions. Naturally, despite the involvement of Nicholas Briggs, per T:NO FANFIC, we can't say Barset (Endurance) and Barset (Frozen Time).
- Shambala108
There is a similar situation on the wiki, though I don't know if it's a great solution.
There are two Gavins and two Conrads in Twin Piques, and the character pages are Gavin (Twin Piques) (I) and Gavin (Twin Piques) (II); similarly with the two Conrads. It's not pretty, but the creator of the pages probably thought it was the best solution at the time.
Barset probably wouldn't need the title dab, just the numerals.
- Digifiend
I assume the first names of the two Lord Barsets are unknown? Because that would be the easiest disambig method.
- Tybort
The 1920s one definitely isn't named in Frozen Time, and I'm pretty sure the 2010s one isn't either.
- CzechOut
The easiest solution in this case is to make the page about the title, put it only in Category:Titles and offices, and then to have sections given to the holders of the title.
In other words, the page should not be at Barset, but Lord Barset. This does not violate T:HONOUR, as the page's lead can be easily used to frame the article about the title. Please see Lord London and Lord Haldoran as examples.
I can't vouch for current categorisation of those pages, but they do probably still offer a general template for how to handle aristocratic titles involving multiple individuals.
- Tybort
I've sorted out a version of the page about the title on the lower half of my sandbox page. A couple of questions about this:
- Can the page be made right away on Lord Barset and have Barset either "merged" or deleted, or should User:AdricLovesNyssa's version of Barset simply be moved by an admin to Lord Barset?
- Does the placement of the infobox where it is on the sandbox make sense? Or should there not be an infobox at all if it's about the title?
- CzechOut
I think what's on your sandbox is fine, with a few provisos:
- I'd make the sections titled, rather boringly, "The grandfather" and "The grandson", just so it's super clear whom we're talking about
- I'd strip the infobox, and put all its information in a BTS section, where you also explicitly explain that there is no person who actually played the grandfather, since he's an off-stage character.
- Tybort
Does it make sense to follow Lord London and Lord Haldoran's lead in including "Individuals" categories, or is that an oversight?
- CzechOut
Neither London or Haldoran should have individuals category. The article must be about a title, and a title only, for the thing to work.
- SOTO
We still haven't seen any action on this.
- AdricLovesNyssa
Hi, I've just relistened to the audio and only the 2012 version appears so I don't see the point of creating a Lord Barset page about the title. If we must have a page about the 1929 Basset then it should be titled in the same way as Matteusz's babcia etc.
- Danochy
This still hasn't been resolved. Would it be against policy to name one them "jr" and "sr", or even "Barset" and "Barset's grandfather"? At the very least we should go with the page for the title to conclude this almost 6 year old discussion once and for all.
- AeD
If there's no proof that either character used a Jr or a Sr, both of those feel too presumptive, I think -- but "Barset" / "Barset's grandfather" seem like fair and accurate page titles.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:137911
Maybe I can't see the forest for the trees, but how do I navigate to http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Doctor_Who_television_stories via the menu?
I found the page by probing the data core and bookmarked it. But shouldn't I be able to navigate my way to that page?
- CzechOut
The navigation bar is a limited facility. It mainly offers broad, top-level navigation. If you want to get to that particular list, click on "TV" and you'll go to the category covering all television episodes, and you'll get links to all our TV-related pages.
- Zipper1976
Ah ha. I didn't think to click on "TV". When I hovered over it I saw the sub-menu change and naturally thought what I was looking for would be under the sub-menu item labeled "Doctor Who".
Thanks for the help.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:137970
Recently I've been getting a lot of Big Finish on CDs, and as they have a good deal of info on who did what for the story, I've added a 'credits' list at several pages. See The Elite as example.
After adding these credits to The First Sontarans, Shambala108 told me to stop, as "there are no audio stories with the credits sections like you added to a couple of audio stories. There must be a reason why this hasn't been done in the nine year history of this wiki. It may be a good reason, it may not, but since you are adding something major — a new section — it is better to either run it by the majority (i.e. the forums) or at least ask a senior admin such as Tangerineduel or CzechOut." So I am now doing this. Should I continue, or should I not?
- JagoAndLitefoot
I don't see why there shouldn't be credits. I think the reason they hadn't been added before is because no one bothered to do it yet.
- Cult_Of_Skaro
That was my thought also.
- CzechOut
The reason the so-called "full" credits haven't been done before is because I'm not really aware of anyone who has an absolutely complete set of liner notes. It has allowed our pages greater uniformity to simply go with the information that is accessible to all users through bigfinish.com than to give the information that we might individually own.
I rather suspect most people that bother with the audios at all tend to be like me in that we started going for physical purchases but then gave into the economic reality of going for downloads, which, though legal, are slightly inferior in that they don't give the information on the booklets.
The other thing is that credits have not been equal across all releases. There is a difference in what gets credited, making the creation of some sort of credit template somewhat tricky. For instance, in the Briggs era, Briggs and Haigh-Ellery are called "Executive Producers" on each release, while before Gary Russell and Haigh-Ellery were simply called producers. Additionally, there are some wacky things credited sometimes — The Game, as I recall, credits a lute player, of all things.
While I'm generally a fan of adding whatever behind the scenes detail that we can, I don't want to start something we have no realistic chance of finishing. I am not in favour of starting with a handful of these and hoping that someone, someday will fill them in. If all we're talking about is doing a coupla dozen of these to completion, I think it'd be better to opt for simply making sure that our entries match the level of information available on the BF website.
That said, if people want to use this thread to establish precisely how many liner notes we collectively have — and if we as a community can assert that we have over 60% of the total liner notes that currently exist — then I'd be all for adding this extra detail. If what we're talking about is only 5-10% of BF's current output, then I think we shouldn't bother.
I also think that if we are going to add this material, we must have a template for it so that we can leverage the information usefully, as we do with our television stories. This will require a little bit of thought and planning.
But let's see just how much information we have collectively first.
- Cult_Of_Skaro
I have liner notes for:
- The Masters of Luxor
- The First Sontarans
- Destination: Nerva
- The Elite
- The Rocket Men
- Thin Ice
- Legend of the Cybermen
- A Thousand Tiny Wings
- Survival of the Fittest
- The Architects of History
- Frozen Time
- The Reaping
- The Gathering
- Colditz
The CD of Masters of War is in the process of being shipped.
- JagoAndLitefoot
I have CDs for Real Time, The Holy Terror and the 2nd series of Bernice Summerfield.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Also, I don't think not being able to finish these for now is a reason not to do any. The wiki also lacks full plot summaries for most audios, but I don't think anyone would remove one if I wrote it just because the others lack it.
- CzechOut
Of course they wouldn't. That's a plot summary, and is explicitly considered necessary to move the article out of stub status, per Tardis:Stub. This would be introducing an entirely new — and frankly expensive-to-obtain — level of information that would tend to make articles that lack it look stubby. This changes the baseline of information necessary for an article. And if all we have so far is around two dozen stories, that's just not good enough.
Also, there is a very real need to harness this information usefully. It's not really good enough to just recreate the liner notes. The information has to be linked in a way similar to {{wales crew}} in order for us to use it. And the problem is that we need to get a much wider sample of liner notes across a larger number of release years than the list so far presented.
Again, though, Cult of Skaro and Jago aren't the only audio fans here. Maybe others will come to this thread and offer their collection lists and we'll be able to put some things together. Again, I strongly feel that we need to have something like 60% of all of BF releases on hand, collectively, before we can think about including this information in articles.
For the moment, the most useful thing you could do would be to start scanning the credit pages and archiving those scans here at TARDIS. That way, you won't waste time typing in all these credits, but we'll be able to start building up a sense of the kind of shape the eventual credits template will need to take.
- JagoAndLitefoot
We could always try asking the people at Big Finish forum to help out.
- Cult_Of_Skaro
Does Revan get CDs or Downloads?
- JagoAndLitefoot
I have mostly downloads myself, with only just a few CDs that weren't released as downloads.
BTW, maybe we could try asking Big Finish themselves?
- CzechOut
JagoAndLitefoot wrote: We could always try asking the people at Big Finish forum to help out.
Absolutely. And there are other places where Big Finish listeners congregate, like certain areas of Gallifrey Base and http://thetimescales.com.
I wanna make it clear that I'm not at all opposed to the idea of including this information. I just want to make sure that we get enough of it to help us — well, okay, me — to devise a template that will allow us to leverage the data in a useful way. And I want to make sure that there are more pages that have this data than that don't.
- Cult_Of_Skaro
Czech, should I put together all the info into one place, so if we get enough info, it'll be all there for template making?
- Cult_Of_Skaro
After the recent Dalek sale, the following CDs are being shipped to my house.
- CzechOut
Cult Of Skaro wrote: Czech, should I put together all the info into one place, so if we get enough info, it'll be all there for template making?
Indeed. Remember, the only thing we want are actual scans of the credit pages. Please don't type anything in. Scan them and then follow these instructions:
- Make sure they adhere to T:ICC standards (.jpg, <100kb, you know the drill by now)
- Apply the following license tag: {{BF credits}}
- Make the name be precisely this for main DW line: XXX This Is the Title credits.jpg. Thus, if you were doing The Sirens of Time, it'd be 001 The Sirens of Time credits.jpg.
- Make sure that your extension is .jpg. Not .JPEG, .JPG, .jpeg. Just and only .jpg.
Using this method will create a very orderly list, categorised at category:BF credits.
For the other ranges, make an acronym out of the (final) range name, dropping any precedent articles, then add the number of the release, then the full name of the production, then the word "credits" So,
- Frostfire would be CC 001 Frostfire credits.jpg.
- Human Resources part 2, would be EDA 008 Human Resources part 2 credits.jpg.
- The Nightmare Fair would be LS 001 the Nightmare Fair credits.jpg
- Excelis Dawns would be ES 001 Excelis Dawns credits.jpg
I know that all of this will probably seem tedious. However, this is an archiving project. These pictures aren't meant for display. They're meant merely to underpin our data set. It's very important that we proceed in an orderly fashion.
- Cult_Of_Skaro
All right. I can get to work scanning on Thursday. :)
- Cult_Of_Skaro
Almost done with scanning. All I have left are my McCoy stories, my Warner story, and the Gathering, which won't be scanned for a little bit as the CD is in the car.
- SpaceTimeWiggles
I have Season 3 and half of Season 4 of Benny, season 3 of the Companion Chronicles as well as a couple from other seasons, UNIT Dominion, Dark Eyes, The Companion Chronicles Specials Box Set, about a dozen various audios from the main range, the Love and War adaptation, The Maltese Penguin, and the two Jago and Litefoot individual releases.
I don't have a scanner though... would pictures suffice?
- SOTO
You, sir, have a lot of money to spend on BF! ;)
I'd imagine anything readable would suffice. We don't need amazing image quality; we just need to see how many we can cover, and have images that we can later copy down into text.
So send in all you've got!
- SOTO
Just don't forget to follow Czech's above instructions!
- SpaceTimeWiggles
Ok cool, I'll send them in when I get a chance. Yeah... they aren't cheap... But pretty much my entire collection was bought on sale, so I use that to justify my addiction.
- Cult_Of_Skaro
I think images would probably be fine, as long as you make sure the inlay's pretty still, and the image is readable. :) You should leave a message about it on Czech's talk page first, though.
- CzechOut
In answer to SpaceTimeWiggles, photos are fine so long as they are clearly legible, and they otherwise obey these rules:
- photos and screenshots must be jpgs or pngs — not any other format
- images should be no narrower than 420px
- infobox images must clearly illustrate their subjects at 420px widths
- files must be appropriately licensed
As revealed upthread, the "appropriate license" here is {{BF credits}}, which you'll have to manually enter into the Special:Upload field next to the words "Categorise your image here".
- Cult_Of_Skaro
I'll be scanning more on Saturday, hopefully.
- CzechOut
In that event, I'll wait until this weekend for a few more datasets to come in. I'll start constructing the credit template soon, since this project has clearly generated interest involving several members and appears to have a good chance of success.
Thanks to everyone who has contributed. Please keep posting your image scans of credits so that we can dramatically increase our coverage of the behind-the-scenes aspect of audio production!
- Cult_Of_Skaro
CzechOut wrote: In that event, I'll wait until this weekend for a few more datasets to come in. I'll start constructing the credit template soon, since this project has clearly generated interest involving several members and appears to have a good chance of success.
Thanks to everyone who has contributed. Please keep posting your image scans of credits so that we can dramatically increase our coverage of the behind-the-scenes aspect of audio production!
Wait, I thought we needed 2/3 of BF's stuff to make a template. So far, I've only scanned 11 things, with 19 or more left (Soon to be 23). Are you just starting now, and continuing as our library grows?
- CzechOut
Well I had kinda thrown SpaceTimeWiggles' offer into the mix, which seemed like it would get us close to the 100 mark. Granted, the thing will always need to be adjusted but that seemed like a good sample of credits to start thinking about the design of what will need to be a fairly complicated and flexible template. Obviously, if STW doesn't, in fact, post what's been offered, then it might very well be premature to move on template creation.
- Cult_Of_Skaro
CzechOut wrote: Well I had kinda thrown SpaceTimeWiggles' offer into the mix, which seemed like it would get us close to the 100 mark. Granted, the thing will always need to be adjusted but that seemed like a good sample of credits to start thinking about the design of what will need to be a fairly complicated and flexible template. Obviously, if STW doesn't, in fact, post what's been offered, then it might very well be premature to move on template creation.
Oh, all right. :)
- SpaceTimeWiggles
Many of my CDs are in boxes as I'm in the middle of a pretty big move. It might be a couple weeks before I get a chance to upload the pictures.
I apologize for offering them up prematurely, but I'll definitely get them up eventually.
- CzechOut
That's totally fine. You're not under the gun or anything. But when you do get time to do it, it would be helpful to start with the things that aren't in the main range. The point of collecting the data is to be able to start construction on a flexible template to present the crew information in a helpful way. The likelihood is that the non-main-range stuff has credits that are significantly different than the main range, and so would be useful to have first.
- Cult_Of_Skaro
CzechOut wrote: That's totally fine. You're not under the gun or anything. But when you do get time to do it, it would be helpful to start with the things that aren't in the main range. The point of collecting the data is to be able to start construction on a flexible template to present the crew information in a helpful way. The likelihood is that the non-main-range stuff has credits that are significantly different than the main range, and so would be useful to have first.
And by non-main range, I think Czech means not so much the Lost Stories or anything (From what I have of them, there's not much difference in credits) but things like Benny, or Graceless, or Jago and Litefoot as those are actual spinoffs.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Well, for Lost Stories there's the "adapted by" credit.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Also, Real Time (audio story) and presumably Shada include BBCi credits too.
- Cult_Of_Skaro
Apologies for not having done any more scanning yet. I'll get to it one of these days!
- JagoAndLitefoot
I don't have a scanner - is this photo quality sufficient?
- Cult_Of_Skaro
JagoAndLitefoot wrote: I don't have a scanner - is this photo quality sufficient?
It could be a bit more square, but the quality looks great.
- CzechOut
Eh, doesn't even need to be square. I kind of like the imperfection because there's no way you could take that image and reproduce it downstream to any level of quality. All we're looking for is the information, and you've given it to us in under 100kb. So that's a win on every count!
- Cult_Of_Skaro
Just got Dark Eyes today. So that's another on the 'to scan' list.
- Cult_Of_Skaro
Um, Czech, someone's been adding a ton of random bits of art from UNIT: Dominion to the category...
- CzechOut
Bot cleaned up the mess and I changed {{BF credits}} to more prominently include the words "image of the credits page". If this happens again, I might consider moving {{BF credits}} further down the drop-down menu under site maintenance. Don't really want to do that, though, cause it's most logical to put it under the "audio covers" section.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Added a Benny one:
File:BS_2.4_The_Skymines_of_Karthos.jpg
Looks like the main difference is the separate opening and closing theme credit for these audios that use the infamous "Adventure is My Game" song.
- Cult_Of_Skaro
JagoAndLitefoot wrote: Added a Benny one:
File:BS_2.4_The_Skymines_of_Karthos.jpg
Looks like the main difference is the separate opening and closing theme credit for these audios that use the infamous "Adventure is My Game" song.
And also the 'also available' though that may not count.
- CzechOut
Another nice contribution. Honestly these things are better if they aren't perfect. We're really just trying to get passably readable copies. Those of you with scanners will obviously get better results, and that's great, but just taking a quick photo with a camera phone is absolutely fine. Great work, JAL!
- JagoAndLitefoot
"And also the 'also available' though that may not count."
I'd say it doesn't. It's on the credits page, but not actual part of the credits.
- CzechOut
JagoAndLitefoot wrote: "And also the 'also available' though that may not count."
I'd say it doesn't. It's on the credits page, but not actual part of the credits.
That said, I don't want to encourage people to crop the photo so that the "also available" section is framed out. We want a picture of the full page.
The template that results from this project will simply not include an option to list the "also available" section.
- Cult_Of_Skaro
And with Dark Eyes scanned, that's all the CDs I have currently scanned! (Though Fanfare for the Common Men is on its way.)
- Shambala108
Bumping this thread; has any progress been made in this area?
- Cult_Of_Skaro
I have two things to scan in hand (The Foe from the Future and The Valley of Death) and Love and War is on its way. So I'll scan those ASAP.
EDIT: Actually, I also have The Light at the End and Fanfare for the Common Men. I got a little behind on scanning.
- AdricLovesNyssa
Hey I've been directed here by User:Shambala108 as I have a lot of audios, now I have been thinking which would you prefer me to do, either scan all the credits pages I have and upload them, or go through them, see what credits are shown, record the frequency of each option and post or both?
- Cult_Of_Skaro
Scan or photo them. Czech said he just wants actual images of the credits pages.
- Cult_Of_Skaro
I'll scan some more as soon as my latest order comes in. I just got Love And War two days ago.
- SOTO
CzechOut wrote:
Remember, the only thing we want are actual scans of the credit pages. Please don't type anything in. Scan them and then follow these instructions:- Make sure they adhere to T:ICC standards (.jpg, <100kb, you know the drill by now)
- Apply the following license tag: {{BF credits}}
- Make the name be precisely this for main DW line: XXX This Is the Title credits.jpg. Thus, if you were doing The Sirens of Time, it'd be 001 The Sirens of Time credits.jpg.
- Make sure that your extension is .jpg. Not .JPEG, .JPG, .jpeg. Just and only .jpg.
Using this method will create a very orderly list, categorised at category:BF credits.
For the other ranges, make an acronym out of the (final) range name, dropping any precedent articles, then add the number of the release, then the full name of the production, then the word "credits" So,
- Frostfire would be CC 001 Frostfire credits.jpg.
- Human Resources part 2, would be EDA 008 Human Resources part 2 credits.jpg.
- The Nightmare Fair would be LS 001 the Nightmare Fair credits.jpg
- Excelis Dawns would be ES 001 Excelis Dawns credits.jpg
- Shambala108
At this point, we have 264 images posted in the category. At least one of them is .png and should be changed to .jpg. Some of them might have to be renamed to fit the naming pattern given by CzechOut. Otherwise we have quite a good selection. I did a count, but keep in mind that I don't know much about the audio ranges. I came up with these totals:
- DW: 142 / 187
- BS: 2 / 85
- CC: 42 / 80
- DWJR: 3 /
- DWBL: 2 /
- DWSR: 1 /
- DWU: 8 / 8
- EDA: 12 / 33
- FDA: 9 / 19
- Gal: 15 / 24
- ID: 1 /
- LS: 19 / 29
- Real Time: 1 /
- SP1: 1 /
- The Twilight Kingdom: 1 /
- UNIT2: 1 /
At a rough count, we are at about 53%, which is quite close to the 60% that CzechOut was hoping for. Thanks to everyone who has contributed so far!
- AdricLovesNyssa
Shambala108 just a note here. The Twilight Kingdom is a DW, I forgot to put a number when uploading, and it wouldn't allow me to change the title or delete it, same with 120 the title needs to be changed , also All the Gallifreys are done, series 1-4 have individual credits but series 5 and 6 have just one for all the series .
- SOTO
What do the files need to be renamed to, exactly? I can do that for you.
- SOTO
- CzechOut
Great progress here, guys! A little bit more and we can seriously think about moving to phase 2 of this project: actually getting these credits on audio pages in an orderly fashion so that we can leverage the data!
- AdricLovesNyssa
Thank Shambala108, now I know what to do when it happens again, I checked the credits thing and it seems a couple of mine didn't upload properly I'll place them up again when I have access to the scanner again
- SOTO
Maybe you just forgot to add the category?
- SOTO
Here's what DPL tells me you've uploaded recently that's not in that catogory:
- File:Slug (Runtime).jpg
- File:Source editor no syntax colouring bug.png
- File:Source editor syntax colouring bug.png
- File:First Doctor and Ncuti Gatwa.png
- File:TWMR051 thefivepeople 1417.jpg
- File:Iterations of I D2.jpg
- File:Iterations of i D1.jpg
- File:Hugo Lang.png
- File:GALL08 enemylines 1417SQ copy.jpg
- File:Sam Bishop.jpg
- File:Shindi.jpg
- File:Josh Carter.jpg
- File:Simon Devlin.jpg
- File:Rani KO.jpg
- File:DWNABS0204 thetearsofisis 1417.jpg
- File:DWNABS0203 theeyeofhorus 1417.jpg
- File:DWNABS0202 thevaultsofosiris 1417.jpg
- File:DWNABS0201 thepyramidofsutekh 1417 copy.jpg
- File:The Triumph of Sutekh cover.jpg
- File:DW8DDE0404 eyeofdarkness.jpg
- File:DW8DDE0403 masterofthedaleks.jpg
- File:DW8DDE0402 themonsterofmonmartre.jpg
- File:DW8DDE0401 alifeintheday.jpg
- File:194 The Rani Elite cover.jpg
- File:The Doctor in the Rani's TARDIS.jpg
- File:The Ghosts of Gralstead D3.jpg
- File:The Ghosts of Gralstead D2.jpg
- File:The Ghosts of Gralstead D1.jpg
- File:The Devil's Armada D2.jpg
- File:The Devil's Armada D1.jpg
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- AdricLovesNyssa
It's not on my contrubuting/following pages they are 014 Holy Terror and 034 Spare parts that aren't showing
- SOTO
Huh; yeah those two exist and are technically in the category through {{BF credits}} like the others, but don't appear on the category page. Weird...
- AdricLovesNyssa
Hi, I'm just about to reorganise my Big Finish Collection, and I now have audios which currently do not have credit pictures in the Category, should I upload them or has this project been abandoned?
- Shambala108
If you have some more, by all means add them. CzechOut's last post on this thread said that all we need was a little more to move to the next phase, so hopefully your new contributions can put us there. Thanks!
If anyone who has joined the wiki in the last two years would like to participate in this project, please read through this thread carefully to see what we're looking for. We can use all the help we can get.
- Amorkuz
I would like to participate but sadly have nothing to offer: credits for all (few) CDs I have are already present.
I would still hate this project to go into hibernation again. I don't think this has been mentioned before on this thread, but CDs can also be harvested for cast information: the cast list on a CD is often longer than that on the webpage.
- Shambala108
Trying to generate some new interest in this project. Please, if you are interested in contributing, make sure you read through the entire post for instructions. I just want to make a few points.
- I don't have any audios, and I have never listened to any of the audios. Therefore, I am dependent on those who have for help in getting this project back on its feet.
- We have a lot of lists for the DW, CC, and BS ranges. What we would really like is some credit scans from some of the ranges that we don't have yet. That will allow us to get a good idea of what to include on a template.
- I've created a page listing the different ranges, the prefixes we use, the current number of credits we have and the total number in the range.
- I also have a few prefixes listed at the bottom of the page that I don't know where they come from.
- If I have left out any ranges, I would like to know so I can add them to the list.
The page is located at User:Shambala108/Sandbox. If you see any mistakes I made, or have any suggestions, please let me know on my talk page at User talk:Shambala108. Do not edit the sandbox page; it is a user page and therefore other users are not allowed to edit it.
- Shambala108
To note a couple of things:
- First, I no longer have a page listing the images we already have, and I have de-linked the page in the above post.
- Second, in the almost two and a half years since someone (me) last posted, not only has there been a ton of more releases, we've had several new editors join us who seem to have an interest in the audios. Therefore, if there are enough users who are interested in this project, we might be able to get it restarted.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:138026
From The Master, about the version of Master from UNIT: Dominion:
"As of February 2013, we at Tardis are applying Occam's Razor, and simply going with release date. Since it was released long after the television movie, Dust Breeding and Master, we're assuming that it takes place afterwards.
But we don't know for sure how this Master fits into the puzzle. No one does. "
Well, we now know that Beevers is the Master directly after the TV Movie in "Mastermind". And by release date, this is the latest version of Master at Big Finish. Given this, and the fact that the Master's and the Doctor's timelines are always (or nearly always -perhaps there are some exceptions) in sync in their televised appearances, I'd say Occam's Razor would actually be putting the McQueen Master after "Dust Breeding" and "Master" - that is, in release order for encounters with a given incarnation of the Doctor, but before TVM.
- JagoAndLitefoot
The placement is still conjectural, of course, until more details are given, but I moved the "Before the Time War" after his other encounters with the Seventh Doctor and before the TVM, as it is IMHO the best assumption for now given lack of any other data. Can the title of the "Before the Time War" section be changed to something like "Impersonating the Doctor" or "The Other Doctor" and the redirect templates changed accordingly? (I'd recommend such a change even if this was to be moved back, since such a section title is too much of a conjecture timeline-wise for now).
- Shambala108
The section you moved has the following instructions:
"If you want to move this section because new narrative details have come to light PLEASE start a discussion at Board:The Panopticon."
This doesn't mean move it then start a discussion. The discussion comes first.
Therefore, I'm undoing your change for now (especially since you use the words "conjectural", "assumption" and "IMHO") until there has been adequate discussion.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Fair enough - although I started the thread 3 days ago and got no response. I then figured that if I actually edit the article, it might at the very least help get the discussion started, even if someone ends up reverting my edits.
Anyway, back to the topic. The box in the article says:
"As of February 2013, we at Tardis are applying Occam's Razor, and simply going with release date. Since it was released long after Dust Breeding and Master, we're assuming that it takes place after these stories, and before Mastermind, which was released later and for the Master himself was set immediately after Doctor Who. "
If we go strictly by release date for the lack of any other data, then the UNIT: Dominion Master must go before Mastermind (which features an incarnation of the Master directly after the TVM). We still don't know exactly when this happens in the Master's timeline, but the current placement is already conjectural and based on release order, so my move was simply to another conjectural place based on release order, but with the latest releases in mind.
This aside, I don't think going strictly by release order is entirely accurate - this would e.g. make the Master in Trail of the White Worm a post-Ainley incarnation, since it was released after Master, even though I think we can all agree that it's the Fourth Doctor era version of the Master. Given that the Doctor and the Master usually encounter each other in the right order, I'd say that a better idea would be going with release order for encounters with a given incarnation of the Doctor. Generally, unless it is specifically stated, the Doctor tends to meet his adversaries in the right order.
Either way, whether we go with release order alone or with the incarnation of the Doctor encountered AND release order (unless specified otherwise), with the latest info in mind, this puts the Dominion Master after Dust Breeding and Master but before the TV movie and Mastermind.
Unless at a later date this is stated specifically to be an earlier or older incarnation of the Master, that is. But for now putting it between Master and the TV movie is the least conjectural.
- CzechOut
JagoAndLitefoot wrote: Well, we now know that Beevers is the Master directly after the TV Movie in "Mastermind".
Evidence. Details. Let's have a quote to back that up, please.
- JagoAndLitefoot
In "Mastermind", he talks about his confrontation with the Doctor "around the millennium", about his escape from the Eye of Harmony and he uses a Deathworm Morphant to jump from body to body, each one gradually decaying, until he was captured by UNIT. So this is definitely a post-TVM Master.
- JagoAndLitefoot
To quote:
The Master: "It all began after the events of the millennium, when the Doctor's TARDIS brought me to the city of San Francisco".
Charlie Sato: "I've read Doctor Holloway's report. But according to her, you, or rather the body you were occupying, got sucked into the engine of the TARDIS."
"The Eye of Harmony. The singularity which enables us to travel in time. Within the eye there exist elemental forces which would kill any mortal being in a matter of seconds."
"But you weren't killed."
"I am no mortal being. I have acquired the physiology of a deathworm morphant."
"A deathworm morphant?"
"A creature with the ability to subsist in a viscous state. A necessary measure to escape execution by the Dalek Prelature. It also allowed me to exist in the Eye of Harmony. I don't know how long I remained there, trapped within the crashing forces of the black hole, but slowly I was able to project my mind from the singularity, careful not to alert the Doctor to my presence. But then he brought a human to the TARDIS. One of his companions. And then I reached out to him with my mind."
Then he tells about being released from the Eye by Edward Grainger in AUDIO: Forgotten and about all subsequent bodies he possessed until being captured by UNIT.
- JagoAndLitefoot
(looks like this means they are ignoring the comics, too)
- JagoAndLitefoot
- bumping this thread*
Can we update the Master page accordingly given the above?
- CzechOut
Is something locked on the page that's preventing you from changing it yourself?
- JagoAndLitefoot
If the title of the section were to be renamed to something like "Impersonating the Doctor" (which is more neutral regardless of when in his timeline we put it), Template:Macqueen, which is locked, would need to be updated.
- Revanvolatrelundar
The MacQueen template's been inaccurate since it was written anyway. The template talks about how this Master could come from anywhere in his timeline, yet in the story the Master has Goth's TARDIS, so it has to be set at some point after The Deadly Assassin.
- CzechOut
The template doesn't "talk" about anything. All it does is produce a link to a section of the Master article like this: the Reborn Master. It's a really minor part of this discussion and the fact that it's locked doesn't really stop anyone from making the article more accurate.
Looks like JagoAndLitefoot has assembled good facts that would improve the article and should alter the article at the Master as appropriate.
{{macqueen}} can be altered once those revisions are made, without having to come out from under protection.
- CzechOut
Looks like someone messed with the page a bit, and that made {{macqueen}} not link to the right place. I don't know where "impersonating the Doctor" came from, but whoever changed it didn't read the message underneath.
I don't know why JAL is saying that "Impersonating the Doctor" is more neutral than "Before the Time War". I mean, is there any real doubt that the MacQueen Master comes "before the Time War"? It's surely not after the Time War, is it? I mean, he's somewhere between Doctor Who and Rose, surely?
- JagoAndLitefoot
I see you reverted my section change. I think that renaming it to "impersonating the Doctor" is a better title than "Before the Time War" given the current placement of the section, as it now doesn't come immediately before the Time War and is more descriptive (this is the change to the template I said I think should be done).
I'm currently listening to UNIT: Dominion itself, looking for more clues. One thing I can definitely say is that it's not a pre-Delgado incarnation, given his detailed knowledge of the Master's time as UNIT's and Third Doctor's adversary.
- CzechOut
Yes, I reverted it. You didn't follow the instructions on the page. By changing it, you broke {{macqueen}}. Unlike most pages, editors absolutely cannot change sections heads at the Master, as is said in numerous places throughout the article or it will break {{delgado}}, {{ainley}}, {{roberts}} and all the rest of them.
If you know that you have changed any headers on the page please change them back.
- JagoAndLitefoot
"I mean, he's somewhere between Doctor Who and Rose, surely?"
I'd say he's almost definitely between Master and Doctor Who.
- JagoAndLitefoot
I generally think that "Before the Time War" made more sense when the section was placed immediately before the Time War. Given its current placement, I think the mention of the Time War looks out of place and can be potentially confusing.
I interpreted your "{{macqueen}} can be altered once those revisions are made" as "update the page and then let us know of any header changes so that the template can be then altered accordingly".
- CzechOut
I've reread the whole thread and am now a little more confused than I was. (Sorry!) I've noted your more hesitant, conjectural tone at the beginning of the thread, so I'm not sure what the facts that you found (thanks again for doing that!) are meant to prove or disprove. So let's start from the very beginning again.
Here's the complete text of the sidebar about MacQueen. Please explain, using the paragraph numbers provided, what you currently disagree with, and what proof you have. Remember, too, that this is a sidebar. It's not written in an in-universe way. It's a behind-the-scenes note drug up to a part of the text that may not exactly fit in the timeline being established int he article. This page is kind of like a magazine page in that it has little boxes of information that offset other information. If you're worried that it's not precisely at the "right" place vis-a-vis the text to the left, don't be. It's placed under a section head so that {{macqueen}} will work most effectively.
Anwyay, here's the text. Please explain, by number, what troubles you, and what proof you have to back up a proposed change:
Dominion doubt1 In 2012, Big Finish launched a new series called UNIT Dominion. It featured a new version of the Master played by Alex Macqueen, but gave no details about how this Master fit in with the other version of the Master they'd been using in Dust Breeding and Master.
2 It's absolutely unclear which incarnation of the Master this is supposed to be. It could be some sort of non-regenerative incarnation that happened after the Ainley Master turned back into the Beevers Master. It could be a Master from an alternate dimension.
3 As of February 2013[update], we at Tardis are applying Occam's Razor, and simply going with release date. Since it was released long after Dust Breeding and Master, we're assuming that it takes place afterwards.
4 But we don't know for sure how this Master fits into the puzzle. No one does.
5 Except maybe the hard working employees of Big Finish, of course.
- JagoAndLitefoot
I've already edited the sidebar a bit to remove the speculation of him possibly being a pre-Delgado incarnation (which can be disproven by his detailed knowledge of his time as the foe of UNIT and the Master) from (2). And from (3) I removed the assumption that it also takes place after the TV movie.
- CzechOut
Testing. Argh. This thing keeps eating posts. This conversation temporarily diverted to user talk:CzechOut and user talk:JagoAndLitefoot.
- CzechOut
So, from all that, what I don't get is this phrase:
- "...now that there's Mastermind, the 'release order' justification for putting it after TVM no longer holds…"
How does getting rid of an arbitrary and narrative-less rationale allow you to then say with greater certainty what the narrative order is? You're obviously leaning to putting MacQueen Master before the TVM. But why? And how do you explain going from Beevers to Macqueen to Roberts to Beevers again? Isn't it simpler just to say Ainley reverts to Beevers who then gets a Deathworm who then briefly inhabits Roberts, who then gets Roberts sucked out of him again and reverts to Beevers and then there's a MacQueen Master somewhere before Yana?
I mean, your way gives us another person between Ainley and Roberts, and I'm struggling to see what the narrative reason for that would be.
- JagoAndLitefoot
I'm not saying that there's any certainty on when it takes place for the Master. Simply that currently there is no narrative proof of it taking place after TVM, and given that usually the Doctor and Master's timelines are in sync, I think it requires less assumptions on our part to put it between Master and Mastermind (and thus before the TVM as well) for the Master. It being a post-TVM incarnation might fit the story more nicely, but for now there's no narrative evidence of that, so I don't think there's any justification for putting McQueen after TVM in the article until/unless he is proven to be a post-TVM incarnation.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Also, given that Ainley reverts to Beevers and then becomes Tipple at some point, I don't see how him possessing another body then is any less likely than possessing one after TVM. McQueen could even be meant to be the same incarnation as Tipple.
- CzechOut
But if we put him before the TVM then that makes the narrative picture complicated and begs the question — which we cannot answer — "How does he go from Ainley to MacQueen to Roberts?"
It seems easier just to say he's somewhere between Roberts (okay, the Beevers post-Roberts thing of Mastermind) and Jacobi.
I mean, like you, I'm not saying we know that it's one or the other. The truth of the matter is that Big Finish have actually written themselves into a hole. But for simplicity, and in the absence of any firm narrative detail, why not go for the thing that requires the least explanation?
(By the way, I'm completely rejecting your notion that the Doctor and Master must be in sync in terms of their own timelines. That's claptrap you've picked up from The End of Time part 1. But it's obviously not true, as there are stories in which the Delgado Master meets the Eighth Doctor. And, the whole premise of UNIT: Dominion is that the Master is pretending to be the Doctor, something that wouldn't work even for an instant if Seven knew the MacQueen Doctor. The only way it works is if MacQueen is from Seven's relative future, right?)
- JagoAndLitefoot
"It seems easier just to say he's somewhere between Roberts (okay, the Beevers post-Roberts thing of Mastermind) and Jacobi."
I don't really see how him going from post-Roberts Beevers (from Mastermind) to MacQueen to Jacobi is any simpler (or more complicated, for that matter) than him going from the post-Ainley Beevers (from Dust Breeding and Master) to McQueen to Tipple. In both cases, it would mean him possessing another body (just like he had done before) after reverting from a previously possessed body back to Beevers in his decrepit form.
"The only way it works is if MacQueen is from Seven's relative future"
No, it can work also if he's simply a new body that Seven hasn't seen before in his relative present.
I never said that they always must be in sync in terms of their timelines, just that it's usually the case, so it's best to assume that unless directly stated otherwise.
- JagoAndLitefoot
(as an aside, the Master definitely does have Goth's TARDIS in Dominion, further proving that it's definitely after Delgado, and Pratt for that matter)
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:138135
That would be so awesome!! Then we wouldn't have to be connected to the internet. Hope you take this into consideration. R
- Cult_Of_Skaro
118.92.199.231 wrote: That would be so awesome!! Then we wouldn't have to be connected to the internet. Hope you take this into consideration. R
Yeah, you would need to be connected to the internet. Apps for websites still require internet, as there's no way an iPhone could hold all the info from this wiki.
- SOTO
Yes, and that's just it — it's a wiki. Even ignoring the amount of work it would take to create, a wiki is ever-evolving so a saved offline version of the site might become obsolete in a manner of minutes.
So you'd still need internet; the only thing that'd be different is that maybe we could style the app like the Oasis skin as I do very much hate the mobile styling.
- CzechOut
Take what into consideration? What kind of app would you be looking for?
As others have said wikis are ever evolving and changing, an off-line app would not work. However, you can download a wiki's database as an XML file, but it's only text and does not include any images or private data.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:138389
What's happened to the page based the British Rocket Group? It may have originally been conceived in the Quatermass franchise, but it has it's own counterpart in the Doctor Who universe, referenced on TV and in novels.
Indeed, when you click on the resulting red link — in this case British Rocket Group — you'll get a little note that pops up saying that the page has been previously deleted. Click on that and you'll get a deletion log, which tells you why the page went away. (If you've already been to the page, the message won't reappear. You have to click "Notification" in the upper right-hand corner to make it display.)
Additionally, there was a precedent discussion in this case that gives further explanation.
There's no reason that the page can't be recreated, but it should be recreated based upon valid sources — in this case meaning that no information should come from the tie-in website.
To answer your question very briefly, sometimes it's simply better to scorch a page to the ground and have it wholly rewritten, rather than to try to pick out which bits of the text came from an invalid source and which didn't.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:138734
"Although this was the only time a future actor to play a Doctor would be involved in an earlier production on screen, David Tennant participated in several Doctor Who audio dramas for Big Finish Productions (the first being Colditz) before being cast as the Tenth Doctor."
In light of something I won't mention as it would violate T:SPOIL, should the note be removed?
- Shambala108
No, it can be removed if/when it becomes untrue.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:138757
I just really like the logos with the different Doctor for each month. I really think the wiki should keep it for good.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:138777
Currently to get to a list of the episodes ordered by Doctor and Season, you have to go to the tab bar, hover over TV then click Doctor Who which brings you to the Doctor Who Tv Show Page. Then you have to scroll down to the bottom of the page to get the list of TV episodes by Doctor and. Seems like a lot to me to get a list that many users would be looking for on this wiki.
Now I'm not sure if there is currently a faster way I haven't found to get to such a list but I would recommend adding a link to the tab panel that leads you to a page which has all the episodes organised in the same way, by Doctor and Seasons, as the section that is at the bottom of the Doctor Who Tv show Page. --87.198.20.109talk to me 01:15, August 5, 2013 (UTC)
- 5.144.14.44
oh thanks, I couldn't find the episodes list until I read this
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:138790
Why did the Doctor actors choose to leave the role?
- OttselSpy25
William Hartnell left because of health issues, Patrick Troughton left because he wanted to go out on a high note for both him and the audience, Jon Pertwee left because he wanted to continue his stage carrer and because everyone he had worked with for the last few years were either dead (Roger Delgado) or had left (Katy Manning, Barry Letts), Tom Baker left because he didn't like the direction that the show was going in, Peter Davison left for Typecasting reasons, Colin Baker was straight up fired, Sylvester McCoy's season was cancelled, Paul McGann's season was never picked up, Chris Eccles didn't like the way that people were treated on set (including him), David Tennant didn't want it to start feeling like a job.
- Digifiend
Well, Matt knows that he'll be able to carve out a successful career elsewhere. He's been filming a movie in Hollywood recently after all. I'd say he left to further his career.
- 76.249.20.185
Also, David left because he always felt that when Russel T. Davies left that he should too and when Davies announced he was leaving David did too. originally the break between 4 and 5 was so David could do Hamlet but then that's when Davies said he was leaving so David followed suit, but yeah he wanted to go out when it was still good and didn't want it to feel like a job, yeah.
- Tealbird25
Colin Baker was FIRED! I guess he was turning into the arrogant, self absorbed, sixth doctor!
- Cult_Of_Skaro
Tealbird25 wrote: Colin Baker was FIRED! I guess he was turning into the arrogant, self absorbed, sixth doctor!
That wasn't very nice.
- Hartnell was "fired" in the sense that his contract was simply not renewed. Now, it was mutual, in that he'd been convinced that it was a good thing, and he agreed to not having his contract renewed, but the truth was that he kept acting for several years after he left. He really was "eased out". (The Second Doctor Handbook describes his departure as an "agreement" between Innes Lloyd and Hartnell.)
- Troughton has specifically said that he always planned to do three years, and that was the condition of his acceptance to Innes Lloyd in 1966. His notion was that he simply didn't want to get typed. (DWM 78)
- It has often been said that Pertwee left because the death of Robert Delgado and the departure of Katy Manning left him feeling that the family was breaking up anyway. However, Elisabeth Sladen has said that he asked for more money for the new contract that would have covered season 12, the BBC didn't meet the demand, and so he resigned. The truth is probably a mix of the two. The Third Doctor Handbook quotes a Daily Mail interview in which he says, "I felt the team was breaking up. It all seemed to be changing and I decided I would change with it. Perhaps it's a bad decision — Doctor Who' would have been a certain bread ticket for another year … I have been out of the theatre for five years. It is time I went back." He gave another 1974 interview in which he largely attributed his departure to his back pain caused by not having "vertebra between the fifth and sixth lumbars" and was therefore in "permanent pain for the last two Doctor Who series". Unlike most other actors,
- Tom Baker has said that he routinely submitted his resignation at the end of each season and it was usually rejected. It's a little unclear whether this was literally true, but he did at least submit his resignation after the season 18 contract expired and JNT took him up on it. Of course, Baker has admitted that he was pretty unbearable during this period, so perhaps it's best to think of his departure as a kind of divorce with faults on both sides. In DWM 181, or thereabouts, he says, "…because I was the constant factor [as compared with transient directors], I became more and more proprietorial, and in the end it became obvious I had to go. I got more and more irascible and people seemed to think the programme was me, we became to utterly intertwined. This was very bad, and a sign that I had to go. Also I didn't find rehearsals as funny as I had done."
- Peter Davison has said repeatedly that he was influenced by Troughton's advice to only do three years. However, the best reason for his departure is really that he was disappointed in the quality of scripts in season 20. He has repeatedly said that if he had been making the decision on the basis of season 21, he'd have stayed for a fourth year.
- Colin Baker wasn't fired. He didn't depart willingly, that's true, but he wasn't fired. Fired means that your employer breaks your contract, tells you to leave the premises, and pays whatever penalties are associated with doing that. That didn't happen. Michael Grade's view of this situation is actually, legally correct. Grade and/or Jonathan Powell said that the contract was for three years, three years elapsed, and the BBC simply chose not to renew. And that's precisely what happened. The contract was for three years, not three seasons, and Baker was paid for 84, 85, 86 (and one story in 83). Thus, Colin Baker departed because his contract was not renewed. Now, there is some question as to what Colin's contract was actually like, and it's never been very carefully described. He claims that David Reid gave him a four year contract, but the way JNT always told the story, as reported in DWMSE 18, was that Colin's contract was not being "renewed". This suggests to me to that he probably had a three-with-an-option-for-four contract. While I've certainly heard that he was paid for 1985, I've never heard he was paid for 1987 — which he would have been if he was truly "under contract" for that fourth year.
- Sylvester McCoy has a bigger claim to being fired because he had actually specifically signed for the fourth year — a fourth year wasn't in any sense a part of his original contract — and it didn't happen.
- McGann's series option was simply not picked up because the TVM failed to go to series.
- Eccleston's departure has never fully been explained, but he has recently indicated that he didn't like the working environment. However, it does seem like his contract allowed for the departure after just one season, as there has never been any kind of word that he broke his contract by leaving.
- Tennant has said he wanted to go while he was still having fun and before it became a chore. But we know he was tempted by Moffat's plans for series 5, and that he resigned to Moffat, not RTD.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:138812
Okay, I get it. We're not trying to spoil who is playing the 12th Doctor, even though everyone already knows who he is. I get it. But, for the love of all things Rassilon, why don't we have a page on this live special yet?
It's a special. A world-wide-live special. It was put on schedules, it's just as much a story as any of the Doctor's revisited specials, so why don't we have a page on it yet. Because it revealed what we for some reason deam "A SPOILER"?
Well then lock it down until December so that it doesn't get said on the page who it was revealed to be at the end. But Holy Omega, we have a page on the special they aired for 11, so where's the one for 12?
- Shambala108
You answered your own question in your second sentence.
- OttselSpy25
As I disputed through the rest of my post, Mr. Witty McNit-Pick.
- Shambala108
You have been on this wiki long enough to be quite familiar with Tardis:Spoiler policy, so I don't understand why you even bothered to ask the question.
- Digifiend
In fact, Doctor Who Live: The Next Doctor has been creation protected by CzechOut. You won't be surprised to know that the expiry date is December 25.
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Special:Log?page=Doctor+Who+Live%3A+The+Next+Doctor
- 68.146.70.124
Yet another reason why this site is coming of as being silly. First-ever worldwide simulcast related to Doctor Who, a major milestone for the franchise, but because it included material that might make someone cry, we can't do an article about it. Not even a basic article acknowledging how it was put together, that Davison and Cribbins and a whack of companions were in it, that there was a major bit of misdirection involved... there is plenty of stuff that could be written without mentioning the guy. And at the end someone can write "This wiki has chosen not to join the hundreds of media and websites around the world in mentioning the actor chosen as the new Doctor. This site will become current and timely again after December 25. Come back then." Or something like that.
- 139.55.31.94
Furthermore, DWM 464 goes into great detail about it; and while we don't have a page on that yet, that's because we don't have a page on DWM 56 either. Infact the cover has already been uploaded, at
. (Which was a rational post and the poster deserves to sort of blocking) In that image you can see both his face and his name.
So are we to ignore all sorts of media coverage on the fact until Christmas because no one seems to be able to take a spoiler that everyone in the DW fandom already knew about well?
So are we to ignore all reason and ignore two pieces of media, because they both contained a spoiler we already knew about? Well then we can't have a page on DWM 459 either ,sense that has a big spoiler on the 50th. That's different? No, no it's not, you're just used to DWM. There is no actual difference between DWM and that special.
My suggestion?
We add the info on the special, on the magazine issues, and even on the page of the man himself (Who was already in Doctor Who and already has a locked page, as all of you already know) and add the spoiler template to all of them. Then we re lock the pages to prevent further spoilers past "You know who is playing the Doctor."
That's the only logical recourse in this current situation. I hope you all can pull together enough sense to enact it.
- 139.55.31.94
I accidentally forgot to add ":" to File:DWM 464.jpg. Oops.
Aaand it won't let me edit it, so oops squared.
You all get my point though.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:138928
Was the name "Vladimir Khrushgov" actually spelled this way anywhere (e.g. the script of "Protect and Survive")? If not, I'm pretty sure someone misheard it and it's Vladimir Kryuchkov, an actual Soviet hardliner who tried to arrest Gorbachev. It certainly sounds like Kryuchkov to me in the actual audio.
- Cult_Of_Skaro
Urgh. Helpfully, BF doesn't have the full credits for that release on their website, and I don't own it. :(
- GusF
I was the one who created the article in the first place. It's certainly possible that I misheard it. I have to admit, I'd never heard of Kryuchkov until now.
- Bubblecamera
Just checked the script. It's definitely Kryuchkov.
- Cult_Of_Skaro
Bubblecamera wrote: Just checked the script. It's definitely Kryuchkov.
I tend to trust the guy with the audio's cover as his profile pic. ;)
- Cult_Of_Skaro
Cult Of Skaro wrote:
Bubblecamera wrote: Just checked the script. It's definitely Kryuchkov.
I tend to trust the guy with the audio's cover as his profile pic. ;)
- Bubblecamera
Yeah, it's my favorite Big Finish audio. :D
- JagoAndLitefoot
"Urgh. Helpfully, BF doesn't have the full credits for that release on their website, and I don't own it. :("
He wasn't actually part of the cast, just mentioned in the audio.
- JagoAndLitefoot
I've moved the page and updated the links from other pages.
- Tealbird25
I am sure it's Kryuchkov.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:139467
Hello to everybody! In TV: Destiny of the Daleks, the Fourth Doctor mentions a guidebook named Jane's Spacecraft of the Universe. In the wiki I found the Eighth Doctor possessed a similar-titled Jane's Spaceships in his library. According to the policies, have I to consider them to different books, worthy of two different pages, haven't I? P.S. I take advantage of this thread to thank everyone is patiently patrolling and correcting my DWC edits! --HarveyWallbanger ☎ 16:32, August 15, 2013 (UTC)
We don't have any info that contradicts this.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:139537
I'm not going to say anything on this post, but the link is here: http://www.bleedingcool.com/2013/08/16/john-hurt-reference-in-new-doctor-who-comic/
Now these images come from Sky Jacks part four, which was released this month. Obviously this is quite a delicate matter to document coming up, and we have a mandate to document all released media. So how do you think we should deal with the content?
- Mewiet
I made an edit about that on The Doctor page to add the new information and then noticed the post here afterwards. I reverted the edit because of this post (though accidentally hit the Enter button with my pinky as I was typing my explanation for the revert).
I wouldn't really consider this an Anniversary spoiler though. It's a small reference and it's already been released.
- Revanvolatrelundar
Yeah that was my train of thought with it. The story has been released, so there's no violation of the rules there. I've added to pages with the new information given by the comic, but I'm not going to touch the John Hurt page until we've had a discussion of how to handle the new material we have to play with.
- SOTO
Naa, I don't think this falls under T:SPOIL. You see, we treat all media as equally valid, so it's not like the TV show gets priority here. Part from of Sky Jacks is a story which has already been officially released.
Do we consider the so-called "Hurt revelation" in Name a spoiler? Of course not — that development was in-story, a plot development. Likewise, we wouldn't have censored out every "Bad Wolf" reference in 2005 until The Parting of the Ways simply because it references a (then-)future plot development, either.
Just in case I won't name what you think is a spoiler, but what's said in that comic — without reading into it too much and allowing speculation to get in the way — is now an in-universe fact.
The question isn't whether or not it should be censors, but really how far we can speculate. I mean, it's an obvious reference but can we make the link?
- Revanvolatrelundar
I was more hoping this discussion would lead into how to structure the Hurt article. The way we look at the facts now are quite clear, it's just writing the Hurt article without assuming too much.
- Revanvolatrelundar
Now we're a few comments down, I think anyone who wants to avoid spoilers will be far away. Basically, the comic has the Time Lords referring to the Doctor as "The Renegade", so this needs to be discussed as a possible name change for the Hurt article.
The other matter, which is the one I created the page for, was whether we can truly say that this Doctor being mentioned who has rejected his name is actually the Hurt Doctor, as it could easily be any other kind of forgotten incarnation, even McGann/Eccleston, as we don't actually see the face of this Doctor during the story. So if we do get past this, we need to then look at a biography section for the page, maybe starting with the Time War events in the comic, then going onto the events in the Doctor's timestream.
So what's everyone thinking about all this? I kinda get the feeling that I'm talking to myself at the moment. :P
- Shambala108
Keep in mind that I know nothing about this comic...
It all sounds a bit speculatory to me. If we're not sure who/what is being referred to, then isn't it better to wait till we have more info before changing/creating any pages?
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:139800
Taking the rather heavy handed and draconian (I love using that word in a Doctor Who forum) spoiler policy (I'm sorry, threatening people with banning violates the very spirit of Who fandom and this wikia), I assume that articles on DWM 464, which features He Who Must Not Be Named on the cover, and all subsequent issues, will not be allowed until Dec. 25, correct? If not, how can the spoiler policy be reconciled with the fact we'll have articles on DWM that violate it? I assume that's the reason why no article exists regarding the very first worldwide Doctor Who-related simulcast that occurred on 4th August.
- Revanvolatrelundar
DWM isn't an in-universe source. The wikia only details what has been released in an actual Doctor Who story. Things that happen in references sources such as Doctor Who Magazine simply don't belong here until their release date and relevance to an already released Doctor Who story.
All things relating to Capaldi will only belong on the wiki until he appears as the Doctor in December, and until then all news on the matter belongs elsewhere on the internet, and not here.
- 68.146.70.124
You are aware that every article on DWM has its own article, right? Based on what you've written here, they all need to be deleted, along with all 300+ articles on Doctor Who Adventures, too.
- 68.146.70.124
68.146.70.124 wrote: You are aware that every article on DWM has its own article, right?
Gah, meant to type "issue" obviously.
- SOTO
Yes, we do cover magazine issues and will most likely create a page for DWM 464 in the near future, but we will definitely censor any information that contravenes our spoiler policy. Anything completely centred around particular spoilers will not have a page yet obviously, but DWM 464 I'm sure has other, valuable articles in it.
Despite what you might think, this is not just bureaucracy. Some people I know managed to avoid any mention of the next Doctor up until now, and I'm sure they would like to keep it that way.
Besides, as it says every time you edit here now, we care about the Doctor's past, not his future. Would it be so difficult to respect those who are trying their best to avoid spoilers, by not posting them here? Lots of people would appreciate it. Thank you.
Also, you can edit your posts if you want, instead of correcting a mistake in another reply. The button's under "more". :)
- Digifiend
Ravan, a pound in the proverbial swear jar please, there's a reason the thread starter called 12 "He Who Must Not Be Named". T:SPOIL
- 68.146.70.124
SmallerOnTheOutside wrote: Yes, we do cover magazine issues and will most likely create a page for DWM 464 in the near future, but we will definitely censor any information that contravenes our spoiler policy. Anything completely centred around particular spoilers will not have a page yet obviously, but DWM 464 I'm sure has other, valuable articles in it.
There's no point in creating an incomplete article. And what are we going to do, put a black bar across Voldemort's face on the cover? (may as well use that name as I used the other variant already and Houdini was already used by the BBC) As I've stated repeatedly, exercising the spoiler policy to protect against story spoilers is perfectly fine. To censor (and I thought wikis werent's supposed to be censored, or is that just a Wikipedia thing?) in my opinion goes against the spirit of the thing and makes it look stupid, I'm sorry. It's not as if someone's trying to sneak in leaked info (like, say, someone in the fall of 2012 trying to create an article on Diana Rigg based on seeing her on location filming Crimson Horror, or someone posting info taken from the news reports when that script of Nightmare in Silver showed up in a taxi or someplace like that and someone also leaked a character sheet that confirmed Coleman's character name as Clara). This is something that has been reported worldwide, and with this and Doctor Who Answers being the only sites I'm aware of who are not only actively trying to block the information but punishing those who try to post it, really makes this site odd man out. And while I'm all for individuality, this is not a good thing in this case. In fact it's decisions like this that have made me decide not to edit under my registered user name as I don't want to be associated with that aspect.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:139802
We have categories for some characters (eg. Braxiatel, Romana) so why not other major characters?
- CzechOut
Well, Category:Romana is a bit of an exception because we know of three distinct incarnations of the character, and three is the usual number of pages required to start a category. In truth the category should probably be called "Incarnations of Romana" in the same way that there's a Category:Incarnations of the Doctor. But then you'd still have to create category:Romana to match category:The Doctor or Category:The Master anyway. So, category:Romana stays because there's just nothing else to put in the category but the incarnation pages.
There is no Category:Braxiatel, nor Category:Adric, nor Category:Amy Pond, nor Category:Evelyn Smythe, nor Category:Lucie Miller.
This is because naming a category after a person is uncomfortably vague (and both the SJS and K9 categories are actually under review for appropriateness, anyway). Per T:CAT NAME, categories should be about something that is singular and specific.
A category about a person simply begs the question, "What about that person belongs in this category?" It's frankly a big ol' organisational mess. A category like Category:Sarah Jane Smith's items is defensible because you can say, "That item was owned by SJS and so therefore it is one of her items". Category:Sarah Jane Smith itself is much harder to justify because it allows for too much ambiguity. The page K9 shouldn't be in Category:Sarah Jane Smith at all, but rather K9 Mark III and K9 Mark IV should be in Category:Sarah Jane Smith's items. And Luke Smith shouldn't be in Category:Sarah Jane Smith, but rather the as-yet-uncreated Category:Sarah Jane Smith's relatives.
Equally, one could make a list of Category:Sarah Jane Smith's employers, because enough are given in non-televised media to make up a category.
And so Category:Sarah Jane Smith survives despite its "fuzziness", because it's needed to house subcategories that are more precise.
That's the main reason that we have Category:The Doctor and Category:The Master but things like Category:The Rani and Category:Jack Harkness fail. Basically, in order to justify a category about a person, you've got to have clear ideas about sub-categories that are about precise, easily-listable items.
I just can't imagine what you would do with Category:Dodo Chaplet or Category:Flip Jackson.
- SOTO
I saw the original message before he posted this, and I do believe he was referring not to cats like Category:Sarah Jane Smith, but more to those like Category:Sarah Jane Smith stories. (Note how Braxiatel, the original poster's first example, has Category:Irving Braxiatel stories but not Category:Irving Braxiatel)
Why does Sarah get a story category when we don't have, say, Category:Tegan Jovanka stories or Category:Martha Jones stories? And, of course further, Category:Adric novels or even the mere three Category:Erimem short stories? Why is there Category:Bernice Summerfield audio stories, but barely any others.
SpaceTimeWiggles just seems to be much more vague in his post here. The original is at User talk:Shambala108 in response to Shambala's message on their talk page, in which Shambala told them to stop adding categories like Leela audio stories.
In fact, Leela's a perfect example. I think we should create a Category:Stories by companion (and subcats like Category:Television stories by companion), including every single companion with at least three appearances in the given medium. This would be easy to gather, as all the information is on their lists of appearances.
So:
- CzechOut
No. SMW provides a much better way of handling all this. All you're looking to do is create lists of what novels Leela is in. The much more flexible way of doing what you want is to simply change the infobox templates to allow for collection of data about the companions in the stories.
The reason Benny warrants her own category about her publications is because she's a series lead. I mean, it's a fundamental construct of the wiki that you have articles grouped by what "show" they're in. Benny is as much a "show" as SJA, Torchwood, or Doctor Who. (Also, you need that category to run a part of the Game of Rassilon, but that's secondary.)
We absolutely don't want the huge category bloat that would ensue by following the model you've laid out for every single companion.
Unless they physically strip SMW from us — which they haven't, yet — the best plan for finding out which stories Leela appeared in is to do what we currently do with the Doctors and just integrate it all into the infoboxes so that we can ask questions like, "Which PDAs feature the First Doctor?" and get:
- SpaceTimeWiggles
Sorry about the vagueness. I was indeed referring to categories of stories as SOTO suggested.
I now understand that the same information can be easily gathered from the list of appearances pages, but I still don't understand why some characters still have story categories (eg. Irving Braxiatel audio stories). Why do Braxiatel, Romana, and K9 each have their own separate category for audio stories? What criteria are we using to determine who gets a category?
- Shambala108
Bumping this. It seems that CzechOut's instructions have been majorly ignored, as there are now categories for every companion in every medium. All further category creations should now be stopped until/unless this issue is closed.
- Borisashton
The statement about there being categories for every companion in every medium is completely untrue. There are many companions that don't yet have story categories.
- Shambala108
Well, you caught me. I exaggerated for effect. People do that sometimes.
Doesn't change the fact that if I hadn't found this old thread while cleaning, eventually all the categories would have been created.
The reasons for the decision are simple and are as stated in CzechOut's post: the technical reason that SMW is the preferred way of collecting and using this info, and the administrative reason that we are trying to avoid category bloat.
(Incidentally, if someone wants to find stories by a certain companion, it's more likely they will use the appearance pages, which most companions have.)
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:139832
I've been adding plot summaries to the Gallifrey audio series as well as expanding on the characters, locations etc. and I realized that both spellings are used throughout the wiki. I created a page under "timeonic" because I assumed that "time" would be in the name. But I'd like to know which spelling this wiki considers "correct" so I can change the article title and edit when I come across the other version.
Thanks!
- SOTO
They don't offer scripts for Gallifrey, do they? I'm pretty sure it's only for the main range and then only if you subscribe.
Ah well, that method out the window. Since it doesn't appear in text in any BF product and it's (I presume) not spelled out in any of the audios, let's go with phonetics. To me, "timeonic" when read out loud sounds like "timeeonic". I haven't listened to the audio stories in question (yet), but I assume I'm correct in thinking that it sounds like "tie-mone-nic"? That would be "timeonic", then, I think.
Of course, if any in-universe or even official real world source spells the word, we should go with that instead. Barring that, does anyone else have some ideas on this?
- SpaceTimeWiggles
Actually, I just read a Big Finish synopsis that used "Timonic". It's under "Lies", which is the first story of season 2. Well, now that's figured out, I can go fix everything.
- SOTO
Oh, good. That's helpful! :)
While that does confirm the spelling, next time can you just put a {{rename}} tag at the top instead? Non-admins are discouraged from moving pages because it's not a proper "rename" — it simply moves it to a new title and leaves behind a redirect at the old. In this case, I don't think we want a redirect at the incorrect Timeonic Fusion Device.
- SpaceTimeWiggles
Oh I'm sorry, I'm still unfamiliar with many of the rules here. I'll be sure to do that next time!
- SOTO
It's fine, we were all new once. :) Also, if you're proposing a rename that can't possibly be argued per T:NAMING and T:DAB, use {{speedy rename}} instead. More on that at T:SPEEDY.
- SpaceTimeWiggles
Cool. Thanks for the tip :)
- HarveyWallbanger
Hello, everybody,
I resume the topic because of a related doubt. According to unofficial subtitles and transcripts, the barrier/locking device of Type 40 TARDIS is "trimonic". (The Invasion of Time (TV story), first part of The Deadly Assassin (TV story)). Is it actually "timonic"?
- SpaceTimeWiggles
That may be, but I believe these are two separate devices. The Timonic Fusion Device was a secret weapon that almost no one knew about.
- HarveyWallbanger
Sure. I wondered if the author of the audios took the adjective "Timonic" from the serials. I wanted to write something about this on the Type 40 page, but with this doubt about the spelling...
- SpaceTimeWiggles
Hmm, I have to doubt their connection with each other. If they were similar in function then I would say go for it, but because a locking device and a bomb that can wip out swathes of the timestream are two very different things, I don't think that they're related.
- CzechOut
Always best to look for a narrative source for the spelling instead of going off the publisher's summary. In this case, The Banquo Legacy is your friend, wherein the following passage occurs:
The Doctor and Kreiner were already rummaging through the bits and pieces on the wide shelf when we joined them. ‘I wouldn’t have thought he’d leave it unlocked,’ Fitz was saying.
‘No Artron energy for the timonics,’ the Doctor muttered to himself as he leafed through a pile of outstanding bills and invoices. Neither of them seemed to notice us crowded into the doorway. So partly to draw their atten- tion and partly to escape the crush, I went and lifted the bottle of port that I had been holding when Simpson had found me trespassing in his domain before. I didn’t care whether it was crusted or not, I was going to drink it.There are no cases of timeonic in EDA, NA, MA, DWN, PDA, BNA or TN. Possibly might be in some New Series Adventure. But still, the point of the exercise was merely to find a valid source for timonic, which we now have.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:140038
Hello.
I've recently come across the audio of Peter Davison reading the Target novelisation of Earthshock. It's not mentioned on the Earthshock novelisation page, and on the actual Earthshock page there's only mention of soundtrack stuff. I can't seem to find a separate page for this, either.
Presumably, there are more of these Target narrations. Am I being stupid, and missing something obvious, or has nobody added them to the wiki yet? Is there a list somewhere of all these audiobooks? I'd like to get my hands on more, and I'd be willing to add info about the Earthshock one to the wiki if I could get a hint as to where it would go.
Thanks.
- Tangerineduel
Here is the summary page for Audiobooks of novelisations.
As you'll see by following the links on that page, while they are listed on that page not all the audiobook versions of the novelisations have been added to their specific pages.
However, in the case of something like the relatively recent Stones of Blood, a page still needs to be created since it is a fundamentally new and different work. The AudioGO version of The Stones of Blood is not at all the same as either TV: The Stones of Blood or PROSE: Doctor Who and the Stones of Blood.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:140445
As the earlier thread was closed, I need to start a new one. If you're going to apply the spoiler policy to one aspect of the show, you need to apply it to all. Therefore, I must request that the cover for DWM 462 be removed and treated in the same fashion as 464, because it is all about the same topic and references an event that has yet to occur on screen.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:140466
Given that the "Torvald" in most Gallifrey series 1 stories is actually Andred impersonating Torvald, shouldn't the cast pages link to Andred instead of to the real Torvald (probably through a piped link like "Torvald")? And shouldn't Andy Coleman be removed from the infobox at Torvald, and only David Warwick (who voiced the real Torvald) be left there?
- SpaceTimeWiggles
I was thinking about this as I started writing plot summaries for Gallifrey, but because Andred essentially lives as Torvald, I think the links should still go to Torvald's page. However, we might need to clean up both the Torvald and Andred pages in order to make things really clear about who is who. The identity switch should definitely be a main focus of the intro of each article.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Well, the Master impersonates the Doctor in Dominion and yet "The Other Doctor" link goes to The Master. So I think the link here should go to Andred too.
However, Andred's lead does need to be expanded on a bit. It's good that it now says he took on the identity of Torvald, but that sentence lives in mysterious isolation. It's almost too sparse, and could use a bit of explanation as to exactly why that happened. The lead definitely needs to say something about his emotional impact on Leela, which was quite extreme.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:140486
I have this occasional bug on various pages, mostly when I do Special:Random, but sometimes when I'm direct linked, where a page will load, and just the content section is completely empty. I've seen an occasional Wikia bug where div.WikiaPageContentWrapper doesn't load anything, but this is just #WikiaArticle that isn't loading any inner content. I've seen the problem on DWM 124 today, and in the past I've had it happen on several articles. Refreshing the page fixes it every time. I think it may be related to a script used on the wiki, since I've noticed there are a lot of onload events that alter the skin. I'm running the latest build of Chrome Canary at the moment, but the problem has happened in current releases of standard Chrome.
(If this is in the wrong board, please move it. Thanks!)
- SOTO
This was not, in fact, in the right board, but admins must have been busy in 2013. I still experience that issue in 2016, though I always publish and edit (without making changes) to make the article appear. I didn't even realise just refreshing would do it.
- Bwburke94
It's 2016 now, not 2015. Feels weird to be adding one to the current year, but it happens once every 365/366 days.
In any case, it's likely a script error because I haven't seen it on any other wiki.
- SOTO
Bah, I did it three times? I keep on saying 2015 today.
Interesting how you've only experienced that issue here and not on any other wiki. It follows that there's a local error that play, but I can't imagine what.
- Affirmation
Bwburke94 wrote:
It's 2016 now, not 2015. Feels weird to be adding one to the current year, but it happens once every 365/366 days.Yeah, that’s weird. Why do we do that?
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:140507
I'm bearing some doubts about the creation of a new category and I've been suggested to bring here it. The discussion is in Category talk:Sports. Thanks to anybody who will intervene!
- CzechOut
In answer to your questions, roughly in the order you asked them at category talk:sports:
- I've been meaning to create this category for a long time anyway, so it's now been done.
- The best name is the first one you hit upon, category:Sporting events
- It goes directly under Category:Sport, not Category:Sports. Since we prefer British English here, we'll observe the British difference between sport (the whole class of activity in which humans compete physically against each other) and sports (individual types of sport competition)
- Sporting venues are those places where sporting events happen. They aren't the events themselves. So, for instance, the Superbowl is not a venue. The Superdome, however, would be.
- Yes we should have a FTRW version of the cat, and so we now do
- HarveyWallbanger
Thank you very much for your explanations and for your work!
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:140827
I was thinking that you may want to add the final ratings (views) in the episode template. for example for the episode Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS achieved a final raitng of 6.5 million views. So I was asking if I could put 6.5 million views in the episode template. --User:QuestionRules 19:48, September 8, 2013 (UTC)
- SOTO
As long as you or someone else is willing to go through every episode and serial and add final ratings, it sounds fine to me. Of course, there are two major issues aside from the work involved:
- Does this make TV stories seem more significant? Per T:NPOV, we always try to give all media equal weight, so is there something similar we can do for other types of stories, or should we just consider this a TV-only thing?
- What about classic serials? They have separate ratings for each individual episode. So will The Daleks' Master Plan have twelve different rating variables, or will we simply do "average ratings" for classic Who?
- QuestionRules
Hmm... as far as I'm concerned I'll go through every episode (I am already filling out the ratings section for every episode). You make a good point for The Daleks' Master Plan episodes, so I've decided to make a dropdown menu for it. That way it'll display "Ratings" then show/hide. I'll come up with it later.
- QuestionRules
Like this...Ratings
Views
(millions)- Part 1: example
- Part 2: example
- Part 3: example
- Part 4: example
I'll like to add the Appreciation Index too.
- Shambala108
Whoa, hold on there. This matter is up for discussion, and the discussion is in no way finished. It's part of our policy to not make changes that are up for discussion until the discussion is closed. For now, please do not continue to add the things you are adding until/unless it has been approved by an admin.
For your own education, please read Tardis:Changing policy. Thanks!
- QuestionRules
I'm in no way making changes. By filling out the ratings section I mean this http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/The_Name_of_the_Doctor_%28TV_story%29#Ratings. I'm not actually adding the template in every episode yet. BTW the template is called Template:EpisodeTest so its solely for the demonstration purposes of me, smallerontheoutide's, and to anyone who likes to contribute to this idea.
- SOTO
Please don't create templates before anything's decided. You can either write it all out as a user subpage (then link {{:User:QuestionRules/EpisodeTest}} to transclude it), or simply put all the coding in the message itself.
Now. Can you please elaborate on what exactly you're proposing? Adding the figures to the infobox, or simply converting the Ratings section's "prose" into a table?
If the latter, I'm pretty sure it's been said that converting lists to tables doesn't require discussion; it just makes it more visually pleasing.
If you're still going for an infobox inclusion, though, the most that can go there is one variable. So just the final ratings (average of all the episodes for serials) in the infobox, but all the information down below. Remember, the whole point of the infobox is to provide a clear, concise summary of the article below. Summary.
None of this is to say you can just go off and get to work already, of course. Now that you've made this into a discussion, you can't act on anything until the discussion's officially closed by an admin. So please don't create any more templates or anything outside of your userpage and its subpages.
- Mini-mitch
I am confused. What do you mean by episode template? I am getting the feeling that you mean the infobox, in which was a collapsible box won't work.
- However, having one field would - and I would full support the idea for the new series, as well as with Torchwood.
- However, it won't work with the classic series or with SJA - as suggested eariler. And this is where I can't see it happening. In my mind, we can't have a field for ratings in the info box for the new series and TW but not for the classic and SJA. There is no practical way around this, as SOTO brings up.
Also, it makes no sense for us to have a random collapsible box in the middle of a page - if this is what you are suggesting instead.
Now, unless you can convince me otherwise, I think this idea won't work. But it does make way for a discussion on how to handle ratings - as a simple bullet point doesn't work in my opinion.
- SOTO
Woah, that was... Coincidence. Anyway. We could put the average rating for classic Who and SJA, but do we want to? I agree, a collapsible box simply won't work — but maybe a regular table will. Classic Who has ratings for each of its episodes, and NuWho has overnight, final and BBC3. Torchwood, however, only has one rating, at least only one recorded here. Would it work as a table? Let's find out, by creating mock versions of the ratings sections of, say, Smith and Jones and The Seeds of Doom. And Cyberwoman, I guess.
- CzechOut
Sorry, could someone back up and please give the rationale for putting it into the infobox? Why is its location in the body of the article itself insufficient? We need to first settle the simple issue of whether it should go into the infobox before we talk about technicalities.
Just to clarify the above two posts, however, it certainly is possible (and easy) to have collapsible sections in infoboxes. Witness {{tardis manual}}, for instance.
- QuestionRules
Yes I'm with CzechOut on this one is possible to have this on an infobox (sorry for not emphasizing). Again it's not only that I want to put the views but also the Appreciation Index as well. It will be a summary so I suppose for the classic episodes that take a few to a lot of episodes. We'll just average them. It will be a summary because instead of saying "Journey to the center of the TARDIS" recorded 7 million final views and an appreciation index of 85. Well just simply summarize it
- Shambala108
I see nothing wrong with the current placement of this information. TV story infoboxes are busy enough already. It's not something that a majority of users will be looking for.
As for averaging the viewing figures for classic Who and SJA episodes, it seems to me like useless information just to serve the convenience of the infobox. After all, you're not proposing to average the viewing figures for, say, Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead, are you? They're part of the same story.
- QuestionRules
Look I just thought it should be info that should be placed on the info boxes. Since most of you are admins are admins or have a lot of edits ill trust your better judgement. I will just continue adding rating info in their proper place. Thank You for your thoughts.
- CzechOut
I'm not for or against putting it in the infobox. No one has made a particularly strong case either way I do know that the current way we handle ratings and AI information is pretty inconsistent. As Mini-mitch points out, our current way of handling ratings needs improvement.
This thread is, in my opinion, far from closed — though I am going to give the thread name a polish in the hopes of improving user interest.
SmallerOnTheOutside wrote: Please don't create templates before anything's decided. You can either write it all out as a user subpage (then link {{:User:QuestionRules/EpisodeTest}} to transclude it), or simply put all the coding in the message itself.
Actually, it's not against policy to create proposed templates in the template namespace. Putting it in the template namespace means that people can collaborate on it without issue. If you put it on a user page, then there's the question of whether other people are violating T:UVAN to work on "your" user page. When I make a template in my user pages, I absolutely think they're protected by T:UVAN, and if you come in and mess with 'em, I'll not be happy. For instance, my signature is a template in my user pages. You have absolutely no business messing with my sig.
The only stipulations of making a "proposed" template in the template namespace are that you put it in — and only in — Category:Template sandbox and that you not deploy it on a wide scale before getting community approval.
The reason that you want to get community approval for something like this is that:
- the community almost certainly will have helpful additions
- it'll take you hours to manually deploy it and me no more than 400 seconds to remove it
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:140859
"The Great Houses of Gallifrey were the sentient homes of the Time Lords. They were sometimes confused with Chapterhouses."
Looks like they're being confused even on this wiki, since all of the houses listed on the Great Houses page are in Category:Gallifreyan Chapterhouses, while Chapterhouse states that Chapterhouses are the same as Chapters, which are listed in Category:Gallifreyan Chapters.
So, which are which?
- Revanvolatrelundar
As far as I'm aware, Great Houses is a term which has only appeared in the Faction Paradox series. I'm pretty certain that Lungbarrow wasn't called a Great House in Lungbarrow. I know Cat's Cradle give a detailed description of Gallifreyan culture, so the answer may lie there, but certainly nothing from any BBC Book calls them Great Houses.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Are they called Chapter Houses anywhere else, or just Houses? If the former, I'd still say they appear to not be the same as the Chapters as such, as each Chapter seems to be comprised of various Houses.
I'm currently listening to the Gallifrey audio series and so far I've only heard them referred to as "Houses" there.
- Revanvolatrelundar
That I don't know from memory. Most of the time they're definately just called Houses. But the Gallifreyan Chapters and the "Great" Houses are definately different things, so there should be a unique name for them somewhere.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Faction Paradox is not considered a valid story, is it?
- Revanvolatrelundar
Exactly. So the Great Houses page may just be a throwback from the times when FP was accepted on the wiki, thus explaining how it's still around now with different sourcing.
- CzechOut
My first instinct was to go with Revan on this one, but after putting every NA, BNA, MA, EDA, PDA, and TN into the hopper, it appears not to be a FP-only deal. "Great Houses" is definitely a Marc Platt-ism, not a Larry Miles-ism. It appears in Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible. The Time Lord scholar Quartinian gives the history of the whole Pythia thing and concludes by saying, "Thus were founded the Great Houses of Gallifrey that we know today."
Platt's a even a bit more confusing in Lungbarrow, where he at first calls them — wait for it — "Great Chapterhouses". I've not made a typo there. "Chapter" and "house" in one word. But then throughout the book it's often "Houses".
It's also picked up by Terrance Dicks of all people, who wove it into the story of his Great Vampires in Blood Harvest. There, he has Lord Sargon say to Romana, "I am afraid that what you say is all too rue. Many of the Great Houses bore the taint of vampirism. When the vampires were overthrown many Lords over-reacted. They tried to pretend that vampires did not exist, had never existed. Naturally enough, they were not believed … Many Great Houses were as corrupted as the Three themselves … "
But, as far as I can tell, that's it. That is the limit of the term "Great House" in DWU novels. Maybe there's something in the short stories — you'd have to ask Shambala108 about that — but generally Great Houses are indeed more of a Faction Paradox term than a DW one. Problem is, they are a DW term, so we can't just rename the page.
- Incidentally:
- there's an entirely different kind of Great House in Mission: Impractical — nothing to do with Gallifrey — as if all this weren't fun enough
- all this stuff is exactly why RTD wisely killed off the Time Lords; DW is so much better without this crap
- JagoAndLitefoot
Looks like at least some of the Houses (like House of Heartshaven) were affiliated with a given chapter (since it's called a Prydonian house).
Also, there's the question whether all of the Gallifreyan Houses are "Great".
But yeah, between NAs, EDAs and Big Finish, it's probably quite a convoluted mess.
- CzechOut
I think the basic deal is that the categories were confused. There were Category:Gallifreyan Chapters and Category:Gallifreyan Chapter Houses. That's actually the same thing. But someone had put the Great Houses in the Chapter House categories.
Now, though, there are Category:Gallifreyan Chapters and Category:Gallifreyan Great Houses, so that corrects the most obvious flaw with what we had when you opened this thread.
- JagoAndLitefoot
BTW, the house that Andred belongs to is called the House of Redlooms in a novel and House of Deeptree in an audio story. I've added "House of Deeptree" as an alternate name to Redlooms, since I don't think there's much of a point in having two different pages for a House that is mostly defined just by being "the house that Andred belongs to".
- JagoAndLitefoot
"Platt's a even a bit more confusing in Lungbarrow, where he at first calls them — wait for it — "Great Chapterhouses". I've not made a typo there. "Chapter" and "house" in one word. But then throughout the book it's often "Houses"."
What does he call "Chapterhouses" there, though? Prydonians etc. or Lunbgarrow etc.? If the latter then Chapter ≠ Chapterhouse (and it would mean Chapterhouse is basically the same as Great House).
- CzechOut
The other thing in your original post, JAL, was the lead sentence of Great Houses. I think that's fair, especially since the source is Lungbarrow. That's a stripped down definition, of course, but it's hard to argue with it.
- Faction Paradox has gained validity;
- the page Great Houses has become a redirect to Time Lord;
- Category:Gallifreyan Chapterhouses never existed. What had been meant was most probably Category:Gallifreyan Chapter Houses, which has been moved to Category:Gallifreyan Great Houses and is currently empty;
- The House of Redlooms and House of Deeptree have a page each and are not conflated despite different stories claiming the same person to be a member of one or the other;
- To answer JagoAndLitefoot's question from two posts above, there is the "Prydon Chapterhouse" in Lungbarrow and there is the "Prydonian House of Lungbarrow". Other houses, like House of Blyledge are also named as members of this Chapter elsewhere;
- What used to be the lead sentence about Great Houses is now a lead sentence about a Great House. There is a proposal to rename that page to "Chapterhouse" after the contents of the current page Chapterhouse are moved to "Chapter".
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:140866
http://www.sfx.co.uk/2013/09/09/doctor-who-the-simon-clark-story-that-never-was/
According to this interview with author Simon Clark, the cancelled webcast he was working on was actually titled "Blood of the Robots" not "Rise of the Robots".
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:141287
Currently, if you want to get to the real world BBC, you have to laboriously type British Broadcasting Corporation, because BBC means "the Corporation as it's treated in the DWU".
This is plainly silly, because
- The Corporation is known by both names in-universe and out
- The most common usage on the site is to indicate the real world Corporation, so it should have the acronym for ease of typing.
- Many new users don't even know that there's a distinction, and so naturally reach for BBC to mean the real world entity.
This is evidenced by Special:WhatLinksHere/BBC, which shows that most of the links really are meant for the real world page. This distinction is a bit too fine for most users to grasp, since the logical assumption would be that BBC is a redirect for British Broadcasting Company.
So I think we should combine the pages and do an "inversion" of the normal order. Have the page mainly be a real world page, but then have a "In the DWU" section. We already do this kind of thing on a number of pages for people who are normally a part of the production staff, but who end up in the DWU, like John Lucarotti and Sean Longcroft. I don't really see a logical reason why we should handle the people who have this dual existence differently than the company that employed those people.
Does anyone have a problem with merging these two articles?
- Tybort
Not sure either way, but as a side note, back in February, User:SmallerOnTheOutside created the redirect [[BBC (real world)]] as a non-merger way around this problem, which as of right now, 24 pages in the main namespace link to.
- SOTO
I bet I made all 24 links. :P The problem is, no one really knows the redirect's there; no one even responded when I originally suggested the idea a few days earlier.
Now. Merger. First of all, I agree that the names that we currently use for the pages are complete bollocks — it's known as "BBC" and as the "British Broadcasting Corporation" in both the real world and the DWU. There is no way that the current set-up will work.
That being said, I don't feel a merger would really work either. British Broadcasting Corporation is nearly 2,000 bytes (are kilobytes in common usage?), and BBC is over 6,000. And the real world BBC page could really do will some expansion, to be honest — it doesn't even concretely mention that it started DW!
Now I know that, if you look at huge pages like Doctor Who (51 kb), just eight doesn't look like very much at all — but at least our page on DW is very much one article that flows completely throughout all its sections.
Merging the two BBC pages would end with something like this. Note how the DWU section is considerably longer than the real world one, and how the two seem very separate and disjointed, as if they don't really belong together. And that's just it — they don't. The proposed method works just fine with articles like Tom Baker or Sean Longcroft, both of whom only each appeared in one story. The BBC has had a very prominent presence in the Doctor Who universe, which is proven just by the fact that we have more to say on the subject in BBC than in its real-world counterpart.
This is not to say I like it how it is now. We need to at the very least find better names for the two articles, or otherwise work really hard to make a merged article work. Or maybe someone will have a different, and better, idea altogether.
- JagoAndLitefoot
I think the merged version looks alright.
- Tangerineduel
I'm of similar thoughts to SOTO and Tybort.
Both pages I think should remain separate, as SOTO says there's no real flow or combining the pages when they're merged.
We could move both pages and make both BBC and British Broadcasting Corporation redirects/DAB pages. Bending the rules on our DAB policy for this page so we can use the dab pages to explain the difference between the in-universe and real world versions of the two BBCs.
- CzechOut
Well, it seems to me that we're all agreed that the current system isn't working. It's illogical that BBC should lead to in-universe and British Broadcasting Corporation to the real world.
So that's definitely out.
The question is what to replace it with.
I'd have to say that I certainly don't support the Tangerineduel idea of making those two names go to a dab page. The point of dab policy in general is to choose the name that has the least number of characters, but that which remains logical. In fact, dab policy implicitly says that you should do whatever you can to avoid using a dab term, but when you have to use it, follow a standard pattern that people can easily figure out.
Making dab pages out of the terms BBC and British Broadcasting Corporation means that we're unnecessarily putting another click between the search bar and the desired page.
Besides we'd still have to come up with two new names for each article, because logically you'd need [[BBC (dab term)]] and [[British Broadcasting Corporation (dab term)]] for each. That's awkward and quite outside our norms.
You also couldn't make them redirects, because redirects can only go to one page. So BBC could only go to one of the [[BBC (dab term)]] pages. Which means that all we would have accomplished is to complicate the problem, not solve it.
The objection offered by Tangerineduel, Tybort and SOTO is that somehow the article won't "flow" or that it would be "very hard" to write. I reject that roundly, because there's no "flow" to in-universe articles that suddenly have a "behind the scenes" section. The whole point of a section head is that it allows you a clean break to go on with a new thought. The "behind the scenes" section head not only gives you the opportunity to inject a new idea that often has no direct relevance to the preceding section, but it even gives you license to change tense. If you wanted flow, you'd just add a paragraph. Adding a section head means that you're going on to a new topic.
To my mind there is no logic to saying that we can write articles that start in-universe and then have a RW section, but that we can't write articles that start RW but then have an in-universe section.
- SOTO
As of January 2016, the DWU page still lies at BBC and the real world page is at British Broadcasting Corporation.
- Bwburke94
New, off-the-wall idea, which probably isn't a good idea because it involves a transplant:
- BBC is a dab page
- British Broadcasting Corporation is an in-universe page
- [[British Broadcasting Corporation (real world)]] is a real-world page
- Template:BBC is created to link to the real-world page, displaying [[British Broadcasting Corporation (real world)|BBC]]
This assumes, of course, that the phrase "British Broadcasting Corporation" has been used in-universe.
- SOTO
2013 me seemed to think so:
- it's known as "BBC" and as the "British Broadcasting Corporation" in both the real world and the DWU. There is no way that the current set-up will work.
The thing is, we don't do dab pages unless there's at least three articles by that name. (Though I suppose it can be argued that a lot of articles start with BBC...)
And {{BBC}} would certainly be a new one. [[British Broadcasting Corporation (real world)]] is just too damn long, and needlessly so. There's nothing wrong with length in a title, but there is no reason for it to be like that.
One thing we could always do it just:
- BBC is the DWU topic
- British Broadcasting Corporation redirects
- [[BBC (real world)]] is the real world topic
- [[British Broadcasting Corporation (real world)]] redirects
And we don't make any distinction between short form and long form. Just follow T:DAB. Real world gets a dab, and in-universe doesn't.
- Shambala108
bump - this issue was never resolved
- Scrooge MacDuck
Well… never officially resolved, but it appears that SOTO's proposal above was more or less implemented, and I agree that it flows quite well.
- Shambala108
No, SOTO said British Broadcasting Corporation should redirect to BBC, but currently British Broadcasting Corporation is the real world page and [[BBC (real world)]] recirects to it. And the redlink shows that [[British Broadcasting Corporation (real world)]] doesn't yet exist.
And Bwburke94 had a completely different idea. Which also has not been implemented.
So, no, not resolved at all. In the future, let that determination be made by the admins thanks.
Given the in-universe section is much larger than the real world section, the in-universe should be first (in line with the majority of our articles, no need for the exception here). The article should be at BBC with British Broadcasting Corporation as the redirect. And the redirect [[BBC (real world)]] will be deleted.
This way, all the information is on one page, we don't have to worry about dab terms or editors using the wrong one etc.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:141458
Hi guys. I just got into Doctor Who recently, and have been using this website as an amazing resource as I run through the seasons. If I need to check something from a past episode, or if I forgot about some character or species of alien, it's great to have this website to go to, BUT...
When I do a search, there's an "Our Top 7" list that shows up every time on the sidebar, and currently the top article is River Song, and the very first thing you see in the preview is her full name. That is a huge spoiler, and happens to people who aren't even looking for River Song info. Is this something Wikia automatically does and can't be changed, or is there a way to take this feature away or edit the previews so as to remove spoilery material? Again, I appreciate all the work people here have put into the wiki, but this one teensy detail kind of ruined a few episodes for me.
- Eladkse
I'm not seeing this 'Our Top 7' list that you describe. However, I might be missing the obvious - do you mind taking a screenshot of it? Either way, it is unlikely that this content is editable.
I must point out however, that per T:SPOIL, this wiki does not consider any plot-points from officially released stories to be spoilers. We cannot cater to individuals' progress through the series, as that would class every single episode as a potential spoiler.
So even if it was editable, it's unlikely that it would be edited. The best that we can do is probably provide some CSS to hide the list (you'll need a Wikia account to do this).
- Shambala108
I know what 80 is talking about. It's a page that you get when you search for a topic, and it's only really been prevalent while the auto-suggest is currently disabled by work wikia is doing.
However, by Tardis:Spoiler policy, the information on River Song is not a spoiler. On this wiki, spoilers are from unreleased stories. Anything that has been released is not a spoiler, regardless of how many people have not seen/read/heard the episode in question. We can't and won't protect users from seeing info about released stories. Our site wouldn't be the amazing resource that it is if we did so.
- OM107
(I'm the OP. I had to make an account to upload an image)
Here's the screencap. Like Shambala said, it's what appears when I do a search. If this is something temporary, and will be replaced with things that are relevant to the search results, then I have a lot less of a problem. I just want to specify that I didn't mean to suggest editing content of an actual article, only what appears in non-article space.
If my understanding is correct (and to be fair, it could very well be wrong), it would technically be not a spoiler to put information about the latest episode on the main page after it has been released in one time zone, but before it has been released in another. This is an extreme and unlikely scenario, yes, but you can see how something like this would be okay rules-wise, but still a jerk-move. That's kind of how I categorize this. It's not the main page, but it's a page that one often has no choice but to access. If I'm reading an article on Rose Tyler and learn something related to Rose Tyler that I didn't want to, that's on me, but putting plot-sensitive information (if "spoiler" is a taboo word) in a public place you wouldn't expect to see it, or refusing to remove it because it technically doesn't break any rules, just seems to me a bit mean-spirited.
In any case, it does appear as though the point is moot if the whole thing was an unintended consequence of temporary work. I just wanted to clarify where I was coming from.
- Eladkse
No, the module is not the result of temporary work - what Shambala108 meant was that the page containing it is being viewed more, as search suggestions are not currently present (meaning more searches result in showing search results at Special:Search).
As for your understanding of the policy, this is 100% correct. In simple terms, if it's been released, it's no longer a spoiler. Putting newly released content (for lack of a better term) in a more public page where those who haven't watched the latest episode may see it isn't being mean-spirited - it's done for practicality.
Obviously airtime in certain countries will be different, meaning some won't have seen the episode at first airing (usually, whatever time it is on in the UK). However, trying to cater for this would be downright impossible, because where would you draw the line? Hundreds of countries around the world air the show at different times, varying from hours to years. Instead of some arbitrary and convoluted method of determining when everyone can possibly see the episode (and hence it no longer being a spoiler), we just go from the time of the first airing - wherever that is in the world.
While I hope this has been an informative discussion on how the Spoiler policy works, I feel inclined to point out (as you probably obviously know) that the River Song revelation is a two-year-old plotpoint by now. With all due respect (and I am genuinely curious to your reasons either way), do you consider An Unearthly Child to contain plot-sensitive information as well? :D
- OM107
I'll repeat: it's not the content of the article that bothers me, but the placement on the site. I've yet to watch the episode "An Unearthly Child," so I wouldn't read the article unless I specifically did not care to have that episode spoiled. It's clearly marked as an article about an episode, so I go in with some idea of the kind of information I'll find.
Imagine, however, if the first sentence of An Unearthly Child described how the Fifth Doctor died. It's possible that the Fifth Doctor's death is relevant to that episode (I don't know, as I said I haven't seen it), but I doubt it really belongs front-and-center, and I'm sure many readers would be displeased at this placement despite, theoretically, it not being a spoiler. It would both be unnecessary and detracting to the general purpose of this wiki (I'd assume, anyway... you probably know the general purpose of this wiki better than I do).
The counter-example that I'm specifically not complaining about (which is to say, this is okay) is River's presence in the list of Time Lords. Again, a user knows that they're looking for certain information when they click a certain link, and it's their fault for clicking. With the search function as it is, a user could be looking for *anything* and run into completely unrelated information. That's the bit that I have a problem with: that the output has nothing to do with the input, *and* is plot-sensitive. If I'd done a search specifically for River Song, or even something related like Silence in the Library, I wouldn't disagree with being shown River's full name. It's that, in the screencapped case, the input was an episode that occurs a full season before River even appears, has no bearings on her whatsoever, and the output is irrelevant to said episode and simultaneously plot-sensitive to River. It seems to me that, even if this isn't technically a spoiler, it goes counter to the goals of this wiki.
- Eladkse
The goal of this wiki, quite simply, is to:
- ...become the largest, most reliable, and most up-to-date encyclopedia about everything related to the Doctor Who universe.
We can hardly do that if we restrict information about each topic to it's respective page.
As for the 'Top 7' list, it is not influenced by the search terms. The same list appears no matter what you search for.
- Digifiend
Yeah, it seems to be the seven most popular pages on the wiki by number of hits. It's usually called Top Pages.
If it really bothers you, here's how you can turn it off.
- Click here
- Paste the following into the resulting page:
.top-wiki-articles {display:none} - Publish your changes
- Clear your cache, as explained here
- Repeat step 4 as necessary until the thing disappears; it may take up to 15 minutes to take effect
Note that this will only work when you are logged in. If you choose to look at the site when not logged, you'll still see the Top 7
However, the Top 7 module really is only a tiny symptom of the problem you're facing here. You should consider the things Eladkse and Shambala108 have been telling you. Our spoiler policy is tougher than probably any other in all of Wikia Entertainment. But once an episode airs in Britain, or a comic book is released in America, or a documentary comes out in New Zealand: that's it. It's no longer a spoiler.
It's important to understand that an awful lot of our editors — probably the majority — are chompin' at the bit to write about the newest stories. Holding them back is a somewhat Herculean effort that we can only do so long.
The "jerk move", as you put it, would be not to offer a single, consistent policy on when they can edit about new stories. There's gotta be a bright red line in the sand that everyone clearly understands for it to be fair. That means we can only make them reasonably wait for the top or bottom of the hour nearest the end of the global premiere broadcast of the episode.
As for whether information from one story should appear on other pages, I can only say, how could it not? This is a relational database. For instance:
- I touched up the article about Arizona today. There are multiple stories which relate to that location, some of which you may never have experienced. So if you choose to read that page, you might be "spoiled" for those stories.
- If the Doctor uses an umbrella in a new episode, then we're going to add that information to the article at umbrella.
- If there's a two part story, then information in the second part will likely be added to the page about the first part in order for the article on the first part to make complete sense. The article on The Empty Child now contains information from The Doctor Dances.
- Story articles often have a section called "continuity", in which different, recurring narrative elements are explained. There's no way to do that in such a way that doesn't spoil previous stories.
- If you're a fan of the director Euros Lyn, but you want to be surprised when his name comes up, you probably don't want to click on our article, because we're going to list every outing he's had.
See, the whole point of any article on this wiki is to cover its topic to the most complete degree possible, while staying true to the specifics of T:OFF REL.
As Eladkse originally said, we cannot possibly cater to your particular situation. People who watch Doctor Who out of order will certainly have plot-ending details given to them by even casual use of this site. For that reason, the Top Pages module is honestly the least of your worries.
Naturally enough, the site tends to have more information about the new series than the old. It might be a good idea for you to fully catch up on all televised episodes since 2005 before continuing to use the site, just so that you'll be a little better protected from major revelations about current Doctor Who.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:141710
I understand that DWMs 462 and 464 have spoilers in their covers and thus are being excluded because of the spolier policy, but what about 460 and 461? Neither have spoilers or correspond with anything that hasn't been aired yet. Neither does 463, really, or 465 (though on that one we should perhaps wait until the audio comes out?). I would create them but I only have 462 and 463 currently and would only be able to add the most basic information, and I wanted to make sure there weren't other reasons first. I want to work on keeping this wiki all up-to-date and inclusive. Thanks!
- SOTO
DWM 465's cover most definitely does contain a spoiler — the name of a yet-to-be-released story. We here at Tardis treat all media equally, so a spoiler for a BF audio is just as offensive as a spoiler for a future episode. The main reason (for the most part) pages have not yet been created is because we don't all get DWM, and those who do simply haven't gotten around to it yet. Please feel free to create pages, so long as you do not include pictures of T:SPOIL-violating covers, or even mention the names of sections/articles containing spoilers.
Just read through T:SPOIL, and use common sense. If the cover has a spoiler, don't include the picture on the page. If an issue is filled with spoilers, especially if there are spoilers in the section titles, just don't create the page at all. Now I don't own any of the above DWM issues, but from quickly looking online, 463 does contain spoilers within. Two articles in fact.
If this is the case, then just stay on the safe side. Ground rule: if there is any reason to suspect that they may be spoilers inside, there probably is. And if so, don't create a page on the issue. I can't give you much advice specific to those issues as I don't own them, sorry. Just read through Tardis:Spoiler policy — it should answer all your questions.
- Digifiend
460 shouldn't be a problem, as it's cover advertises The Name of the Doctor, which has been released. 461's is related to the Cushing movies, with a small headline related to Nightmare in Silver. Again, safe. 462's cover I'd say should not be uploaded, and neither should 463's, as both speculate about the Twelth Doctor. 464's is a clear violation of T:SPOIL and is banned until Christmas. As SOTO said, so is 465's due to spoiling an unreleased episode title.
- Glimmer721
Thanks for the replies. I mentioned the potential problems of 465 in the original post. I'm going to try to create 460 and 461 based on the listings from other sources. Others can expand if they see fit.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:141840
Hi everyone :)
I'll be in conference with Wikia Staff members at their offices this week. I don't know the full scope of the meetings, but I need your help, anyway. Are there any concerns you'd like me to lay before them?
Some likely areas of discussion are:
- How can we improve our mobile experience? (comments from active users of the MyWikia app are especially welcome)
- Although we haven't fully adapted to Darwin yet, are you basically liking or not liking what you're seeing? Have you run into any particular bugs?
- We've had a thread about this already, but how would you like to promote the 50th anniversary Wikia wide?
- Are there any wikis in the w:c:lifestyle group that you think we might be able to do cross-promotion with — kind of like the ongoing Food Fight?
- Would you like to improve anything about the way videos are integrated into our site?
…and there are probably many more. If you have anything you'd like me to bring up with Wikia Staff, please put your comments below.
Thanks!
- The-Awkward-Timelord
The mobile Wikia could use some major redesign in terms of stability and accessibility.
- Revanvolatrelundar
There are very limited facilities for editing on the mobile Wikia, so that needs to be mentioned.
- Cult_Of_Skaro
I vote capital punishment for spammers.
note: the views presented in this message may not be the actual views of the writer. - CzechOut
Points raised with Wikia staff! Thanks for the suggestions! Please keep 'em coming! :)
- Thunderush
A special banner for the week of the 50th with the John Hurt incarnation would be nice, or at least some unique celebratory wiki logo.
- CzechOut
A rather major thing is in the works. It's getting the full attention of a dedicated team at Wikia. You're really going to love it, but I can't quite reveal it yet. Give us a coupla weeks.
- Thunderush
Awesome :D
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:141903
Upon receiving my copy of the latest Big Finish audio, Fanfare for the Common Men, I noticed that the CDs were specially designed for this release to look like vinyl records, in keeping with the audio's "1960s" theme. Naturally, I thought that this was an interesting piece of information that should go on the audio's page, so I added it and took a photo of the CDs to illustrate the fact.
However, when I went to upload the photo, I didn't see a license that seemed appropriate for it. What license should I choose for the photo? Or is this information trivial enough to go without an illustration?
- Cult_Of_Skaro
Bubblecamera wrote: Upon receiving my copy of the latest Big Finish audio, Fanfare for the Common Men, I noticed that the CDs were specially designed for this release to look like vinyl records, in keeping with the audio's "1960s" theme. Naturally, I thought that this was an interesting piece of information that should go on the audio's page, so I added it and took a photo of the CDs to illustrate the fact.
However, when I went to upload the photo, I didn't see a license that seemed appropriate for it. What license should I choose for the photo? Or is this information trivial enough to go without an illustration?
I think it could probably go without illustration. Everyone knows what a record looks like. (incidentally, I really can't wait for my CD to come. Hurry up, mail!)
- Bubblecamera
Yeah, I suppose you're right.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:141930
Hi, I hope this is the right place to post this. I'm not sure if it's my comprehension error or mistaken entries in the wiki. I have been looking at http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/The_Master_-_list_of_appearances & have seen multiple episodes listed there that the Master is claimed to appear in, that don't match the corresponding page or my memory of the episode. These are: Mawdryn Undead, The Caves of Androzani, Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS, Death of the Doctor. I'm not familar enough with the audios and novels to know if any of them have been included mistakenly.
- Revanvolatrelundar
The Master was shown in flashbacks in Death of the Doctor and Mawdryn Undead. He has a tiny cameo whilst the Doctor is regenerating in The Caves of Androzani, and his voice can be heard in some of the scenes of Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS.
Hope that clears things up! :)
- CzechOut
Hmmmm. Does old footage replayed into a new episode count as an appearance? If not, he doesn't really appear in Death or Mawdryn. I'll give you Caves, because that's a new recording of Ainley.
- Tangerineduel
I think in Mawdryn there's a flashback with the Master in it (I'm possibly mis-remembering).
As to CzechOut's question of what 'counts' as an appearance. We currently count cameos and flashbacks. So, as it stands for example; the Fourth Doctor is listed as appearing in The Almost People and similarly the Ninth Doctor is listed as appearing in The Kingmaker, The Tomorrow Windows and The Eleventh Hour.
- JagoAndLitefoot
I don't recall the Ninth Doctor ever appearing in The Kingmaker. Especially that Big Finish does not have a license to use him.
- CzechOut
Yeah, i think my question wasn't really, "What's current practice?" so much as, "Is what we do now a good thing?" I personally don't think that a character appears in an episode unless the actor that plays them gets paid. I mean, if all you do is show a flashback and reuse a person's appearance non-interactively, I'm not sure why that would be any more important to recognise than verbally recounting a story. Does Liz Shaw appear in Death of the Doctor? No, but we're reminded of her through dialogue. I'm not sure that the Tenth Doctor's later appearance in that story through flashback is more important or notable than the Liz callback. Basically flashbacks that reuse old footage are weird cases where the character appears in-vision, but the actor does not in any sense make a legal "appearance".
Now of course, there's the Trials and Tribble-ations or The Name of the Doctor exception, In those cases you're reusing footage, not paying the original actors an appearance fee, but I think they do count because other actors actually interact with that footage. It's not at all a flashback, but rather the modern characters are experiencing the older events.
- Cult_Of_Skaro
CzechOut wrote: Yeah, i think my question wasn't really, "What's current practice?" so much as, "Is what we do now a good thing?" I personally don't think that a character appears in an episode unless the actor that plays them gets paid. I mean, if all you do is show a flashback and reuse a person's appearance non-interactively, I'm not sure why that would be any more important to recognise than verbally recounting a story. Does Liz Shaw appear in Death of the Doctor? No, but we're reminded of her through dialogue. I'm not sure that the Tenth Doctor's later appearance in that story through flashback is more important or notable than the Liz callback. Basically flashbacks that reuse old footage are weird cases where the character appears in-vision, but the actor does not in any sense make a legal "appearance".
Now of course, there's the Trials and Tribble-ations or The Name of the Doctor exception, In those cases you're reusing footage, not paying the original actors an appearance fee, but I think they do count because other actors actually interact with that footage. It's not at all a flashback, but rather the modern characters are experiencing the older events.
Or for a non Doctor example, the Beatles do appear in Fanfare for the Common Men. Nyssa and the Doctor see them. They just aren't heard.
- Tybort
Under your bit about exceptions, Czech, where does The Wedding of River Song fall with Canton Delaware? I've tried clarifying this unique instance with its use of The Impossible Astronaut's footage further, but I don't think I've seen Wedding since its initial broadcast and I keep confusing myself.
It's especially odd, as I've never found the series 6 arc as over-elaborate as everyone says.And Cult, can you elaborate on the Beatles for those that haven't yet listened to Fanfare? Is it archival footage of contemporaneous fans or crowds or something?
- Cult_Of_Skaro
Tybort wrote: Under your bit about exceptions, Czech, where does The Wedding of River Song fall with Canton Delaware? I've tried clarifying this unique instance with its use of The Impossible Astronaut's footage further, but I don't think I've seen Wedding since its initial broadcast and I keep confusing myself.
It's especially odd, as I've never found the series 6 arc as over-elaborate as everyone says.And Cult, can you elaborate on the Beatles for those that haven't yet listened to Fanfare? Is it archival footage of contemporaneous fans or crowds or something?
Basically, at the very end, the Doctor says, "here they are!" and the audio ends.
- Digifiend
Yeah, how can it be counted as an appearance if Chris Eccleston's voice isn't heard? If they only mention the Ninth Doctor, that doesn't count.
JagoAndLitefoot wrote: I don't recall the Ninth Doctor ever appearing in The Kingmaker. Especially that Big Finish does not have a license to use him.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Looks like they vaugely referenced a letter from the future being delivered by a guy with big ears and a Northern accent (the license wouldn't allow for anything more). This is a reference to the Ninth Doctor, but I wouldn't count it as an appearance.
- Jlk7e
I agree with those who say that purely archival footage or still photographs should not count as "appearances." It's just wildly misleading to say that Susan Foreman has an appearance in The Day of the Doctor just because there's a still photograph of her in the UNIT archives that you can catch if you pause at just the right moment. What's to be done, btw, about "appearances" where an actor returns, but is not actually playing the character. For instance, Caroline John has a cameo in The Five Doctors, but she's playing some sort of illusion made to look like Liz Shaw, not the actual Liz Shaw. Or Billie Piper in Day of the Doctor isn't actually playing Rose, just the Moment making itself look like Rose. Jlk7e ☎ 02:34, January 20, 2014 (UTC)
- OttselSpy25
At the same time, it's our duty to inform our readers on the brief appearances and cameos that characters make in stories, even if it is just stock footage. We just need to make it clear that it IS a flashback. If someone was looking for a list of appearances and archive material used for, say, Susan Foreman, removing all of that would be a disservice to that person.
- CzechOut
OttselSpy25 wrote: At the same time, it's our duty to inform our readers on the brief appearances and cameos that characters make in stories, even if it is just stock footage. We just need to make it clear that it IS a flashback. If someone was looking for a list of appearances and archive material used for, say, Susan Foreman, removing all of that would be a disservice to that person.
Why? See, that's not how I look at the term "appearance" at all. For me, an appearance is only one in which the actor got paid. So, Adric in Caves? Sure. Rose in Let's Kill Hitler? No way.
I don't think it's our "duty" to track non-appearances (in the traditional, legal sense of that term) on a page called "appearances".
However, I have no problem with creating a single page dedicated to these lil re-uses of previous imagery. You could make a table of Doctors, a table of companions, and a table of, I dunno, "species", and then just give a list of the stories where you'll find re-used footage or still images.
Something like this:
Doctor Type Stories where reused Time code Original source Seventh Doctor Video The Name of the Doctor several instances Dragonfire - OttselSpy25
CzechOut wrote: See, that's not how I look at the term "appearance" at all. For me, an appearance is only one in which the actor got paid.
Well, to be frank, that's a very strange description of "appearances." By that logic, no one appeared in DiT (Which I'm sure that you're fine with) and every other charity event also featured no "appearances."
- OttselSpy25
CzechOut wrote:
Doctor Type Stories where reused Time code Original source Seventh Doctor Video The Name of the Doctor several instances Dragonfire You've made quite the jump there, from saying "flashbacks and archive material don't count excluding where it was used in a narrative way" to saying "Yep, it all goes away."
Removing these stories from the appearances boxes would only serve as confusing to users. The simple parenthesis explaining the context of the appearance should be sufficient in making the variety of appearances clear.
- Jlk7e
Firstly, I'm sure CzechOut was not thinking about charity events when he was coming up with his criteria. I'd generally say "only credited cast" should count for appearances, although I imagine you'll pull out some exception where a major character isn't credited. If that doesn't work, what about just "an appearance does not count if it's entirely from archival footage?" I don't see why we can't apply common sense here - for instance, the Fourth Doctor and Romana II could still appear in The Five Doctors because the Shada footage had not previously been seen, and because Baker and Ward are both credited in the episode.
At any rate, I'd very strongly dispute the idea that "removing these stories...would only serve as confusing to users." What is confusing to readers is saying that Polly has an appearance in "Day of the Doctor" without any explanation that this "appearance" is in a still photograph that's barely visible on-screen for a second or two.
- CzechOut
I think that basically sounds reasonable, Jlk7e. If we're talking in terms of setting up a rule about this, it would basically be something like the following.
- For the purposes of "lists of appearances", a televisual appearance by a character is generally one in which their actor is credited. If the actor is credited, the character "appears", regardless of any other considerations. Failing proper crediting, however, a character can be said to have appeared only in the following circumstances:
- The character is obviously present in new footage filmed for an episode, but their lack of speech didn't qualify them for a credit under normal union rules
- The actor declined credit that was ordinarily due, as with Bill Nighy in Vincent and the Doctor
- Archival footage has been re-contextualised to be more than a simple memory of the past. Flashbacks to previous Doctors seen in Day of the Daleks doesn't count, whereas eleven previous Doctors do appear in The Name of the Doctor. Why? because Clara, a character from the current production, is shown to be interacting with the old footage, such that a new meaning for the old footage emerges.
- For the purposes of "lists of appearances", a televisual appearance by a character is generally one in which their actor is credited. If the actor is credited, the character "appears", regardless of any other considerations. Failing proper crediting, however, a character can be said to have appeared only in the following circumstances:
- The following things are never to be considered appearances:
- Characters who appear solely in still images
- Characters who appear only in a flashback using previously-recorded material. The people appearing in the Fourth Doctor's dying flashback in Logopolis don't count, because that's all old footage. By contrast, the people appearing in the Fifth Doctor's dying flashback in Caves do count, because that was all newly shot. (Of course, in this case, all the people in the Caves flashback were actually credited, so they are said to appear by virtue of that. No one from the Logopolis flashback is credited, which makes sense, given the nature of it.)
- The following things are never to be considered appearances:
So what do you guys think? Reasonable?
- Shambala108
I think that this is a very popular topic, judging by the edits I've seen, and I also think that the average casual editor would want to participate but will not necessarily find this topic while it's buried under the title "Page that lists the appearances of the Master errors?", which after all really only applies to the one page.
Maybe it's time to bring this topic to a new thread?
- OttselSpy25
Jlk7e wrote: At any rate, I'd very strongly dispute the idea that "removing these stories...would only serve as confusing to users." What is confusing to readers is saying that Polly has an appearance in "Day of the Doctor" without any explanation that this "appearance" is in a still photograph that's barely visible on-screen for a second or two.
Then add a parenthesis note that reads "(photograph)" next to that episode. A simple solution, and does not go as far as deleting info pertaining to a story. - OttselSpy25
CzechOut wrote:
- Archival footage has been re-contextualised to be more than a simple memory of the past. Flashbacks to previous Doctors seen in Day of the Daleks doesn't count, whereas eleven previous Doctors do appear in The Name of the Doctor. Why? because Clara, a character from the current production, is shown to be interacting with the old footage, such that a new meaning for the old footage emerges.
This seems like a description that is hardly clear - just a moment ago you were arguing that Rose, Donna, and Martha in LKH shouldn't be included, yet by this description, they should; as they interacted with 11 in a way. This also qualifies for the death scene in Logopolis, as the companions seem to be talking to the Doctor.
I for one, think the solution is as simple as adding specifics to the stories that need specifics. Simply adding "(picture)" or "(flashback to TV: ...) would solve nearly all of our troubles, and without the pointless creation of further pages or even the deletion of useful material and info.
If we're to continue this conversation, we should either rename this thread or move to a new one. One too many times on this wiki have extreme decisions been made under completely mundane titles which fail to attract users. If we are to make a decision on this, then "Page that lists the appearances of the Master errors" is hardly a very accurate title.
- SOTO
Shambala108 wrote: Maybe it's time to bring this topic to a new thread?
Or maybe just rename this thread, and possibly highlight it.
- CzechOut
Thread has been renamed to What is an "appearance"? You can't ask for anything simpler than that. However, it should be pointed out that there's no demonstrable relationship between the title of a thread and the amount of discussion it engenders. "Quirkier" titles are just as likely to inspire discussion as are plain ones. And, of course, what is plain to one person is obscure to another, depending upon the level of knowledge they have of the subject.
I've renamed the discussion mainly for future archiving. Two years from now, it'll be easier to find this thread with the present title than its former one. But the weight of evidence of hundreds of forum discussions suggests that it won't impact community participation in the here and now.
- CzechOut
OttselSpy25 wrote:
This seems like a description that is hardly clear - just a moment ago you were arguing that Rose, Donna, and Martha in LKH shouldn't be included, yet by this description, they should; as they interacted with 11 in a way.CzechOut wrote:
- Archival footage has been re-contextualised to be more than a simple memory of the past. Flashbacks to previous Doctors seen in Day of the Daleks doesn't count, whereas eleven previous Doctors do appear in The Name of the Doctor. Why? because Clara, a character from the current production, is shown to be interacting with the old footage, such that a new meaning for the old footage emerges.
Rose, Donna and Martha don't appear at all in LKH. All that's happening in that scene is that the Tardis is throwing up possible holographic interfaces. Those interfaces are the TARDIS; they aren't Rose and company. And again, the proposed rule would require motion. Those are still images, which would never be allowed to count as an appearance.
This also qualifies for the death scene in Logopolis, as the companions seem to be talking to the Doctor.
That is an interesting interpretation of the scene which I've never heard advanced before. I think you may be retroactively applying what happens in the similar Caves scene to what's happening in Logopolis. In Caves, they're definitely talking to him, something confirmed and expounded upon by another work, Winter. One of the easiest ways to note this difference is to observe that in Caves, the "swirling figures" are looking right into camera, which is Graeme Harper's cue to the audience that they're talking to the Doctor. In Logopolis they're never talking to camera; the archive footage is just snipped from wherever in the scene they happen to say, "Doctor". Logopolis is a straight up, wholly conventional flashback: his life literally flashing before his eyes.
- Mewiet
I completely agree that images (like the slideshows Amy and Clara see in the DVD extras of past companions) or drawings (like Rose's face in the Journal of Impossible Things) shouldn't count as appearances. The LKH holograms are just glorified images, with the exception of Amelia, because the voice interface begins talking through that one. (Although the point's moot on that anyway, as Amy gets a credit for appearing in that episode regardless.) No should archival footage, if it's only in "flashback" form, ala Ten thinking of Rose in TRB or Eleven sharing his memories with Craig in TL. Ditto for audio appearances: just because we hear archival audio clips from the TARDIS in JTTCOTT doesn't mean they made appearances.
However, when archival footage is repurposed and intentionally used as "new" footage, that is an appearance: the echo of Clara interacting with the First Doctor in The Name of the Doctor or the past Doctors saving Gallifrey in TDOTD.
What gets tricky for me is when it comes to dreams/hallucinations/shapeshifting/etc... I've always viewed a dream or hallucination to count as an appearance, like Grace appearing in Eight's dream in The Glorious Dead or Eleven hallucinating Amy in The Time of the Doctor. But then when you allow that, you get the argument: "But if a dream or hallucination counts when the character doesn't really appear, then doesn't a character taking on another character's appearance also count as an appearance as they don't actually appear in either case?" So, then what? Do you count Rose and Bad Wolf as appearing in The Day of the Doctor when it's explicitly The Moment taking on their physical appearances? Personally, I never counted Rose as appearing in TDOTD.
- OttselSpy25
The "audio is not an appearance" argument gets very tricky when it comes to audio stories.
While I could see separating these brief images and flashbacks from the direct appearances, it should defiantly be kept on the same page. Perhaps we should cut the appearances section in half, half for direct "appearances" and half for these brief showings through images or flashback. A list of images is certainly a useful tool for users, I could imagine using it myself when looking for footage.
- Mewiet
I got the e-mail reply to this thread, but for some reason my last post and OS25's post are not showing up in the thread. (Maybe they take a while to show?) The last one is CzechOut's from two hours ago. :-/ So I guess I'll quote from the e-mail:
"The 'audio is not an appearance' argument gets very tricky when it comes to audio stories."
If I didn't make it clear, I didn't mean an audio appearance is not an appearance, I meant an archival audio appearance is not an appearance unless it's repurposed as "new" footage. So when you hear the audio clips in JTTCOTT, those are basically just audio flashbacks, the audio equivalent of an archival video or still image.
For example, if they had used Nine's "and now for my next trick!" dialogue in TDOTD, without showing it with his image (in the same context), it still would've counted as an appearance because although it was archival, it wouldn't have been being utilized as a flashback, it would still have been being used to say that Nine is present and helping to save Gallifrey along with all the other incarnations.
"While I could see separating these brief images and flashbacks from the direct appearances it should defiantly be kept on the same page."
That's why I felt the "(dream)" or "(flashback)" or "(archival image)" tactics were useful, because it helped me weed out episodes if what I wanted was a full fledged appearance or what have you. If we weed out archival flashbacks/images, that would eliminate part of the confusion, but things like dream, hallucination, or shapeshifty "appearances" are still a little misleading.
- OttselSpy25
I'm still not sure why we gave up the parenthesis tactics... Furthermore, I haven't been getting ANY emails for months, despite my settings being set to email alerts...
- CzechOut
Technical note: OS25 and Mewiet, please report your problems via this link. That's highly unusual, and nothing to do with any local issues, as far as I can tell. The only way to solve things like that is to send a report into Wikia.
- CzechOut
Back to the conversation. Let's save ourselves some time here.
All thirteen Doctors appear in The Day of the Doctor. We don't even need to go to any of the conditional clauses of the rule. The first twelve Doctors appear by virtue of the fact that they're credited. So that automatically gets them in. We don't need to consider the qualities of the appearance at all. They're credited, so they appear. And Capaldi/Twelve is in because of the first exception: non-speaking extra in new footage for which union rules would generally say he doesn't deserve a credit.
In The Time of the Doctor, Amy appears for the same reason. Gillan is credited as Amy Pond.
Note, however, that the case of Piper in Day is quite different. There, she's credited as Rose — something that had never happened before. She is not said to be playing, as she was on every other occasion, Rose Tyler. So Rose Tyler does not appear in Day.
This is not to say that we should be slaves to the credits. We have to be sensible and note that credits sometimes lie so as not to give the game away in Radio Times or other news outlets. That's certainly why we get the "Rose" credit. It throws Radio Times readers off the scent. They were expecting Rose to appear, so the credits apparently confirm that. But those same credits give ample wiggle room for the production team to creditably claim, "We never said Rose Tyler was appearing."
Equally, we know that credits are manipulated with some frequency. The credited "little girl" in Day of the Moon is actually Melody Pond. "Kalid" is a totally intentional mis-credit in Time-Flight episode 1. And we regularly dismiss 18 years of crediting as "Dr/Doctor Who" in favour of calling the character "the Doctor". We need to realise that sometimes credits do lie. But in general, if a character is credited, they have "appeared".
If we stick to that, almost every case will be taken care of before we even require any of the exceptions.
- Mewiet
So archive footage is officially out now? I see people editing it off the appearance pages citing that it no longer counts.
- Shambala108
Technically, it's not supposed to be changed until the discussion is closed, but based on CzechOut's responses above, it's probably considered closed anyway.
- JagoAndLitefoot
I'd say it should be included but with "(archive footage)" added.
- 104.32.214.184
CzechOut wrote: I personally don't think that a character appears in an episode unless the actor that plays them gets paid.
We have an in-universe view. We don't give a dang if they are credited or paid. That is for out-of-universe
articles.
- Shambala108
Lists of appearances are out of universe articles.
- SOTO
Also, to JagoAndLitefoot, I can never find the relevant discussion, but we decided a while back that we will not include parenthesised notes in appearance lists, whether in "list of" pages or in infoboxes. I think your idea is logical, but as things currently stand at least, that's not the way things are done.
- Shambala108
SmallerOnTheOutside wrote: Also, to JagoAndLitefoot, I can never find the relevant discussion, but we decided a while back that we will not include parenthesised notes in appearance lists, whether in "list of" pages or in infoboxes.
Not sure if this is the one you meant, but I found a brief mention at the bottom of Main aliases where CzechOut mentions parentheticals (and a bunch of other things we don't want in infoboxes).
I'm sure there are other discussions, but offhand I can't think where they are either.
- CzechOut
You're probably thinking of Forum:What is a cameo?
- SOTO
Yep, that's actually exactly the discussion I had in mind.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Still, archive footage is a much less ambiguous term than cameo.
- Shambala108
Archive footage and cameos are not the same thing, but it doesn't matter since we don't allow parenthesised notes either in infoboxes or on appearance pages, as stated in the two discussions quoted above.
- OttselSpy25
If we take out the brief images, the quick shots, the stock footage, and everything else, then we will be removing information that users seek to find. Why would we want to do that?
- Mewiet
OttselSpy25 wrote: If we take out the brief images, the quick shots, the stock footage, and everything else, then we will be removing information that users seek to find. Why would we want to do that?
On the other hand, since parentheticals are out, those things just clog up a user's ability to find, for instance, all major episodes a character is in. I know I hate sitting through an episode waiting for a character only to discover they were a picture on a wall or an archive flashback when I thought I was getting a new footage appearance.
- 104.32.214.184
Mewiet wrote:
OttselSpy25 wrote: If we take out the brief images, the quick shots, the stock footage, and everything else, then we will be removing information that users seek to find. Why would we want to do that?
I don't --104.32.214.184talk to me 22:50, May 8, 2014 (UTC) On the other hand, since parentheticals are out, those things just clog up a user's ability to find, for instance, all major episodes a character is in. I know I hate sitting through an episode waiting for a character only to discover they were a picture on a wall or an archive flashback when I thought I was getting a new footage appearance.
- 104.32.214.184
I maean:
Mewiet wrote:
OttselSpy25 wrote: If we take out the brief images, the quick shots, the stock footage, and everything else, then we will be removing information that users seek to find. Why would we want to do that?
On the other hand, since parentheticals are out, those things just clog up a user's ability to find, for instance, all major episodes a character is in. I know I hate sitting through an episode waiting for a character only to discover they were a picture on a wall or an archive flashback when I thought I was getting a new footage appearance.
I don't!
- 104.32.214.184
Yeah, I find it very important. Although, maybe we should specify episode, not just serial.
- OttselSpy25
Or, we could go back to using parenthesis notation, which would fix every issues that we have right now.
- Shambala108
OttselSpy25 wrote: Or, we could go back to using parenthesis notation, which would fix every issues that we have right now.
It wouldn't fix every issue. Eventually parentheses would creep back into the infoboxes, which would affect the look of countless page layouts.
- Cult_Of_Skaro
I gotta say, I don't really see the point of removing parentheticals from dedicated appearances pages. Infoboxes, yes, but they're incredibly useful on the appearances pages themselves.
- OttselSpy25
Cult Of Skaro wrote: I gotta say, I don't really see the point of removing parentheticals from dedicated appearances pages. Infoboxes, yes, but they're incredibly useful on the appearances pages themselves.
Exactly.
- Bwburke94
Re: Billie Piper in TDOTD
Piper is credited as "Rose" in TDOTD, whereas she was credited as "Rose Tyler" in her other appearances. However, it is not unusual for a character to be credited under another name in a return appearance. If the interpretation stated by CzechOut two and a half months ago were to be applied to the entire wiki, The End of Time would not be listed as an appearance for Martha Jones, because Freema Agyeman was credited as "Martha Smith-Jones".
It is true Rose Tyler did not appear in TDOTD, but it is also true that Piper was credited as "Rose".
I propose completely eliminating the credits as a means for determining appearances in televised stories, and instead judging on whether new footage was filmed or previously-unseen footage used. - 90.216.63.230
Just wondering. Was there a final decision on this topic? I don't want to open a new thread.
- Bwburke94
No, I don't believe there has been.
- Danniesen
What do we do with Bill Pott's mum? Is she a recurring character due to various appearances of photos and later her appearance in person (imagined)? And how do we handle it her infobox?
- Borisashton
Do the appearances of Cybermen, Daleks, and Weeping Angels count? In these scenes the Monks are supposedly defeating them meaning they were used in a different context. For example the Cyberman appearance is not from 3526 its pre-21st century because its one of the invasions the Monks saved the humans from.
- Danniesen
Under normal circumstances I would say no, but in this particular case, I can't tell...
- 31.49.2.154
How about the Fourth Doctor in [[[The Five Doctors]], that clip was taken from the unmade Shada, a story which opens up a can of worms even at the best of times!
- 31.49.2.154
31.49.2.154 wrote: How about the Fourth Doctor in The Five Doctors, that clip was taken from the unmade Shada, a story which opens up a can of worms even at the best of times!
Oh, and the various Doctors in The Day of the Doctor and The Name of the Doctor.
- OttselSpy25
I haven't read through this thread in a while, but this is my stab at it:
- Flashbacks are not appearances if they are representing a story which already exists.
- If a flashback represents a new scene that we haven't seen before, than it is an appearance. The Fourth Doctor's role in Assimilation² is an appearance, while his appearance in Old Girl (where he has no dialogue, and the scene being represented is from TV: Pyramids of Mars) is not.
- Stock-footage, if used to paint a new scene, is an appearance. In this case, as their use in TV: The Lie of the Land represents a new situation (even if a false one) the Weeping Angels and Cybermen both appeared in that story.
- Similarly, a brief "vision" of a character (such as the first 10 Doctors appearing within the Doctor's mind in TV: Nightmare in Silver) is not a proper appearance. Nor is a picture.
- If a vision of a character takes sentience and basically takes the form of the character, there is a case to be made for either side. I'd prefer for Adric - list of appearances to take account of TV: Time-Flight. On the other hand, I'd be more skeptical of Martha Jones - list of appearances mentioning COMIC: The Forgotten, or even Rose Tyler - list of appearances mentioning TV: The Day of the Doctor. Perhaps a good compromise would be to splinter the appearances of IDW-style imitation-appearances to the bottom of the page. See my sandbox. This section would also be where things like clones, or someone stealing the appearance of the Doctor.
- Flashbacks are not appearances if they are representing a story which already exists.
- NateBumber
Here's a radical idea: Just like how the infobox has a "First seen in" box and a "Appearances" box, for the first appearance and further appearances, there should be a "References" box to complement the "First mentioned in" box. It's undoubtedly useful to catalog stories where a character or their image appears in a painting, or in a flashback, but not in actual character roles that would otherwise quality for inclusion on the "List of appearances"; if we used "List of references" or "List of mentions" pages going forward, that would really help fix this issue, as far as I see it.
Then again, I also believe we should use prefixes on stories in lists of appearances and sort them by release order rather than by series, so what do I know ...
- Amorkuz
I would propose to concentrate in this thread on television appearances only. First of all, there is already another thread devoted to appearances in comic stories.
But there is a deeper reason to separate discussions of appearances in different media. Limitations of each media type dictate their expressive tools. It would be impossible to find a general rule that would fit audio without images, images without sound, prose without either sound or images and television episodes.
When we are told that someone is in the room on audio, it is one thing, whereas on video or in a comic story we might check whether they are actually in the frame. A chapter-long narrated flashback in a novel is a different animal from a character recounting from memory for 30 seconds in a TV episode.
Let us avoid comparing apples and oranges if we ever hope to finish the discussion. The question of TV appearances is difficult enough on its own.
- OttselSpy25
I comprehend your point, but surely the idea of splitting the appearances page into multiple sub-sections is viable, but can only really be considered in the context of all appearances?
Either way -- I stand by my point. Just as it is important to catalog the hallucination of Jamie McCrimmon in TV: The Five Doctors, so is it to note when Rose Tyler is imitated in TV: The Day of the Doctor.
In the absence of parenthesis, sub-sections could come in very handy.
- Amorkuz
You misunderstood me. I have nothing against discussing audio appearances or prose appearances. I just think the rules for them have to be decided separately. As you said long time ago upthread: The "audio is not an appearance" argument gets very tricky when it comes to audio stories. That is a joke that is more true than it lets on.
How to organise the appearance page is one question. What constitutes an appearance in a television story is another. The more questions are lumped together, the harder it is to find the consensus. That's all I'm saying. I'm not really participating in this discussion. Just trying to maintain a hope of its eventual closure.
- OttselSpy25
Gotcha, thanks for the clarification.
- Bwburke94
I hate to beat a dead horse, but it's been three years since we last discussed parentheticals. Has anything changed since our last discussion?
- Schreibenheimer
So this thread was referenced as superceding another thread, which brought me here. This is a pretty major thing to be leaving open as, if I understand the policy correctly, no work should be being done on appearance pages until it is closed (at least in regard to TV appearances, which, I agree with Amorkuz, this should be restricted to).
Personally, I think CzechOut's original proposal is pretty on the mark. I too feel that parentheticals would just clutter the lists, and since that particular aspect was decided in another thread, I'm not going to dwell on it.
One aspect that does not seem to have been nailed down is what to do when one character takes the form of another character, the most significant example being the Moment appearing as Rose in "Day of the Doctor." A loophole was provided that the casting for the special says "Rose", when the actual character is always credited as "Rose Tyler", but, in the interest of future-proofing, what if we didn't have that loophole. How would we handle it?
I suggest that an appearance not count if we are certain that the character is not appearing and that it is, in fact, another character taking their form, regardless of how they're credited. That way one character's "appearance" doesn't go on two separate lists.
I make that final distinction because that is where i draw the line: dreams, hallucinations, or visions of characters would count as long as it is not something else impersonating them.
Finally, the thread that brought me here is whether a corpse's appearance should count. My "vote" on that is that it should, as there are a decent number of characters who only appear post-mortem, and it's easier to include all corpses than to only include ones where it is the character's only appearance.
- Bwburke94
As I mentioned above (two years ago by now!), I don't believe the Billie Piper loophole is a loophole at all. Characters' credits in return appearances don't always match their original credit.
- Shambala108
I spent quite a lot of time gathering data from all the different forum and board threads that deal with appearances, trying to get a handle on what has been decided and what still has to be decided.
- Danniesen
It really shouldn't matter what the credit says if the character appearing is not that character credited. Rose Tyler does not appear in The Day of the Doctor, plain and simple, and therefore shouldn't be listed as appearing in that episode, regardless of what the credit says. It isn't Rose. It is that easy. It's The Moment using her shape and form as it was under the Bad Wolf influence. Neither the true Rose Tyler nor the actual Bad Wolf entity actually appeared for any one second of this story.
- Danochy
A recent audio I listened to, Heroes of Sontar, made me wonder about the rules of appearances in terms of a species. In the audio, a Rutan ship attacks a Sontaran ship in Rutan space, however no Rutan is actually heard, or appear in the vision of the characters present. Does this count as an appearance?
- SOTO
Almost the opposite case is Missy's vortex manipulator in Planet of Dust. It is heard near the end, and identified in the following story — but Helen (might have been Liv) only hears it, and does not see Missy or the object. We're given the sound effect, confirmation that a character hears this sound diegetically, but no "visual" confirmation (through techniques like dialogue or narration).
If this were a TV story, there would be no argument, I think: the vortex manipulator does not appear. But in the case of full-cast audio stories, is it more important that we hear the person/object represented in audio (where listeners experience the thing first-hand), or that characters within the story see it (where we can be fairly certain the thing would more traditionally appear in another medium, such as TV or prose)?
- Danniesen
I'm not so certain about your argument on TV stories. Surely hearing the sound of it is enough to determine that the object would appear.
- SOTO
Ah, so it's not a given, then. My thinking was that in a largely visual medium (or a medium which is often treated as such, anyway), that which is out of frame does not appear. Though I suppose thinking in terms of comic stories, it wouldn't seem right to say a character doesn't appear if they're given a speech bubble, even if they're never seen directly within the story.
- Danniesen
I would think so. I would say that if their presence is obvious (in the terms of sound) then it would warrant an appearance.
The Daleks are never seen in the TV Movie, but they are obviously there because of the yelling of "exterminate".
Whereas neither the actual Rose Tyler nor the actual Bad Wolf entity appears in "Day", but it is the Moment that takes on the shape and voice of the character. (The Moment further explicitly states that Rose and Bad Wolf are not one and the same)
- Schreibenheimer
I really think we should restrict ourselves to TV appearances in this thread. Audio will require an entirely different discussion.
The discrepancy between Bwburke and Danniesen's viewpoints is exactly why The Day of the Doctor question shouldn't hinge on the credits. We know the Moment isn't Rose, so the policy should be built to handle circumstances like this.
- Shambala108
We will not be restricting this thread. It's an issue that needs work across all forms of media. And we don't need to add to the already more than half dozen threads about appearances.
- Schreibenheimer
Fair enough. Do you agree, though, that the guidelines for each medium will need to be different, or are we aiming for one unified policy for all media? I personally believe the latter is impossible due to the inherent differences between them, but am certainly open to being shown otherwise.
For the record, my personal thinking had been to get through television first in this thread to establish a baseline, then to move on to other media in other threads only once we had that foundation to build upon.
- Chubby Potato
After reading this thread, I think using parentheses is a good option. I noticed that in the thread referenced earlier it was decided parentheses would not be used on infoboxes, not appearance pages. The reason I believe parentheses are a good option because they indicate to a reader how a character appears. For example, on Adric's appearances list:
- The Caves of Androzani (as an illusion)
As someone else said, someone could see Adric's appearance listed and assume he somehow does actually appear. However, we don’t want to exclude it altogether because it is an active representation of the character. Note I used the word active; the character, despite being an illusion, does something. This would not be the case for a photo, for example. I think photos should not count as appearances but they can of course be mentioned on the respective pages for the character and story.
I would suggest something similar for characters who appear as someone else: only the actual character should be listed. As mentioned, Rose Tyler does not appear in The Day of the Doctor. Billie Piper is credited as Rose because she played a representation of the character, but no version of the real Rose was actually present. And consider this: if we only had the prose version of the story, would we say Rose appeared? We most likely would only say the Moment took her form. (Thus, the importance of the media format.)
And then there's the matter of implied appearances. This also heavily depends on the type of media (e.g. there are no parts played, visuals, or audio to reference in a prose story). An example I had trouble with is: in Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen, there is a scene in which Romana has a conversation with the British Prime Minister. It is heavily implied to be Margaret Thatcher, and this would fit with the time setting, but never explicitly said. Do we assume it is Thatcher, who it certainly is intended to be, or make a new page (I suppose Prime Minister (Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen)) because it isn’t said specifically? Then, do we list the story in her appearances? (Perhaps this related issue belongs in a separate thread? I'm not sure. This one is kind of broad.)
Sorry for the lengthy response, but I felt all of that was necessary.
- Shambala108
We decided long ago to not use parentheses for several reasons (and I'll look for the forum decision and post it when I find it).
- Bwburke94
Now that the parenthetical discussion is out in the open, I'll once again ask whether we ever specifically discussed parentheses on appearance lists?
- Shambala108
OK there has got to be a better way of doing this, but after about three hours of searching, I finally found what I was looking for:
Forum:What is a cameo? states that parenthetical statements are not allowed in either infoboxes or lists of appearances (which, when you think of it, are just extensions of infoboxes).
So no, parenthetical discussion is not out in the open or even being considered here.
- Danochy
Why not? Is there some rule against changing decisions made in past threads? I personally agree (not strongly, mind) that parentheses shouldn't be used, but I don't see why any discussion on the matter should be stifled.
- Bwburke94
Theoretically, we could change the relevant policy if we deem it necessary.
- Chubby Potato
That thread seems to focus more on very specific, unnecessary parenthetical statements, such as "dies" or "joins". I was thinking indicating special cases concerning the manner in which a character appears could be useful. But thinking about it more, I realise if a reader was curious about an appearance, they could simply read about it on the page for either the character or the story.
I still stand by my other ideas: to put those concisely, an appearance should be based on the activity and presence of the character, and figuring out what to do with implied appearances.
- Borisashton
Chubby Potato wrote: And then there's the matter of implied appearances. This also heavily depends on the type of media (e.g. there are no parts played, visuals, or audio to reference in a prose story). An example I had trouble with is: in Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen, there is a scene in which Romana has a conversation with the British Prime Minister. It is heavily implied to be Margaret Thatcher, and this would fit with the time setting, but never explicitly said. Do we assume it is Thatcher, who it certainly is intended to be, or make a new page (I suppose Prime Minister (Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen)) because it isn’t said specifically?
When is Krikkitmen set exactly? The problem I see with implied appearances is that two appearances that reveal the same amount of information could be treated differently. This is because it is my understanding that the appearance should be explicit but not necessarily from the story of the appearance.
Father's Day and Tooth and Claw place our in-universe knowledge of Thatcher's term from 1979 to 1987. So if Krikkitmen was set between those dates the appearance would be allowed as the British Prime Minister from 1980 (for example) is unambiguously Thatcher according to the DWU. However, if Krikkitmen is set in 1989 then the appearance wouldn't be technically be allowed according to our strict current policy as the PM from 1988 to 1995 is unknown in the DWU.
- Bwburke94
I don't want to go down that path, because there's no guarantee all DWU stories are consistent in the matter. (For instance, across the pond, there are multiple simultaneous American presidents at times.)
It's a bit off topic anyway.
- Schreibenheimer
If I understand policy correctly, implied appearances would fall under speculation, which is not allowed on this wiki, and I don't think there's enough continuity between separate parts of the Whoniverse to rely on Borisashton's method.
I don't think parentheses should be used, but I agree that acting like this isn't the forum where that policy can be changed is acting in bad faith.
However, I believe there's a strong technical reason why we can't treat the lists differently from the infoboxes. I admit that I haven't found the specific policy on how many appearances are required before we switch to a list, but it appears to be more than two. If a character only makes one "real" appearance and one flashback (two in total), then a policy that uses parentheticals would have us using them in the infoboxes. Based on that, it makes sense for us to not have separate rules for the infoboxes and for the lists. I believe this is what Shambala meant when they said that the lists are just "extensions of infoboxes".
EDIT: I wish to apologize. It was rude of me to accuse bad faith rather than just a bad argument.
- Danniesen
An appearance is not implied if you actually do know (for example by sound) that it/they are there. If you hear the sound of a Dalek (like in the TV movie) it is not just implied it is there just because you don't see it, it is actually there. Same goes for the vortex manipulator sound
- Borisashton
The issue of implied appearances is a really important issue to nail down, I think. It's all about the distinction between prohibited speculation and common sense interpretations that if ignored would be extremely unhelpful to readers. Finding the balance between the two is vital in determining what are appearances and what aren't.
Since we're already on topic of Thatcher, let's bring up an example from that article. The Ultimate Adventure features a female British Prime Minister called Mrs T. If we were to take policy strictly to the letter we would have an article called something like Mrs T or T (The Ultimate Adventure) separate from the Thatcher article. This would be extremely unhelpful to readers wishing to find references to her and I would go as far to say a disservice to the wiki. Is it speculation to assume a female British PM from the 1980s with a last name beginning T is Margaret Thatcher, is it common sense, or can it be established as fact based on other sources?
That is an example on the more extreme side but if we decide an appearance has to be completely explicit in the story of the appearance tens or hundreds of pages will need to be overhauled and split off from each other.
- Schreibenheimer
"Implied appearances" is referring to what Chubby Potato brought up in #77. It bears no resemblance to the situation you just described.
To address your example, though, under CzechOut's proposal, the Dalek spoke new dialogue, so it appeared. It did not appear on the cast list because the director provided the voice.
- Borisashton
The situation I described was the implication that Margaret Thatcher appeared in The Ultimate Adventure even though it isn't explicit which is the same situation described by Chubby in post 77. I am stating that we need to have a section in policy about how strictly to handle these implications and the question of whether our zero tolerance on speculation is incompatible in some cases with readers of the wiki's best interests.
- Danniesen
Ahh, I misunderstood what you meant Schreibenheimer.
- Danniesen
Borisashton wrote: The situation I described was the implication that Margaret Thatcher appeared in The Ultimate Adventure even though it isn't explicit which is the same situation described by Chubby in post 77. I am stating that we need to have a section in policy about how strictly to handle these implications and the question of whether our zero tolerance on speculation is incompatible in some cases with readers of the wiki's best interests.
I think I'm following. What we need to do is examine behaviour/attitude of Mrs. T., Mrs. T. is already in the position at the same time as Thatcher in the real world, so we need to dig deeper. Is her acting the same as Thatcher's or does she behave in a completely different way? If the behaviour is the same, I think that would be enough to confirm that these two characters are one and same.
- Schreibenheimer
I'm sorry that I can't refer to a specific place in the policies, but I've seen Shambala say in other threads that pretty much any speculation is a no-go. I'm fairly certain the ruling on that would be that Mrs. T cannot be definitively stated to be Margaret Thatcher, just like we can't state that Professor Stream is the Master.
EDIT: Realized we should get back on-track. We should define normal appearances before we talk about something abnormal like this. Does anyone want to continue fighting for parentheticals, or should we move on from that?
- Borisashton
I don't think discussion of these implied appearances is abnormal. In fact, I would say that defining parameters for these implications is even more important than defining normal appearances at this stage.
Look at it this way: if this thread is never closed the wiki will continue to cover appearances like normal (e.g. the Tenth Doctor obviously appears in The Waters of Mars) and debate disputed or unclear appearances on a case-by-case basis at talk pages (e.g. Talk:Grace O'Brien#It Takes You Away appearance). In other words, it won't be the end of the world. On the other hand, if we don't sort the issue of implied appearances out we are allowing tens if not hundreds of articles to contain some degree of speculation that should really be removed and split off into separate pages.
As a sidenote, I am also against parentheticals on appearance lists.
- Schreibenheimer
My view is that we need to define what an appearance is before we define what character an appearance counts as. Basically the policy is to decide if Mrs. T appears in a story. Anything for deciding which character Mrs. T is would be a separate policy.
EDIT: Sorry, just noticed your Grace comment. I previously addressed this by saying we should have an exception in the policy when the story clearly tells us that the cast list is a lie. I'm just saying that stuff like Mrs. T is too gray-area to fall under that.
- Danniesen
I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean? How is the cast list a lie on the topic of Grace? Are you referring to Arachnids of the UK or are you referring to It Takes You Away?
- Schreibenheimer
Borisashton's comment was specifically about "It Takes You Away".
- Danniesen
Sorry, I overlooked that.
- Danniesen
I don't think the cast list is a lie. That IS Grace that we see. Not the traditional Grace, I'll give you that, but she is neither a vision nor a disguise put on by someone/something, but an actual living Grace created from Graham's memory and image of her. Just not Graham's Grace and more a slightly distorted version of Grace, but it is Grace nonetheless.
- Schreibenheimer
Hm. I interpreted it as the Solitract taking her form, but your interpretation doesn't raise red flags for me going from memory.
Regardless of the individual case, would you say that, if it were clear that it were the Solitract and not Grace, that it should not be counted as an appearance of Grace? Any policy is going to have borderline cases requiring discussion (as this very well may be), but would you say that the concept behind that policy proposal is sound? The overall policy is really the point of this thread.
- Chubby Potato
It Takes You Away is a tricky one because the Solitract manifests itself as a version of Grace. While in most cases I would say someone taking the form of someone else would not count as an appearance, I think this one is different because what we see is basically the Solitract being the real Grace rather than just using a disguise.
- Schreibenheimer
We're really getting bogged down on this single case here, when this thread is for an overall policy. Does anyone disagree that the question hinges on whether or not it was an actual version/recreation of Grace or just the Solitract in disguise? Because, if not, then we all agree on the policy and are just disagreeing on an episode's interpretation.
Now if anyone does disagree with that being the relevant question, that would be something we should actually discuss.
- Schreibenheimer
Alright, since there have been no immediate disagreements, I am going to repost CzechOut's original proposal with my edit:
- For the purposes of "lists of appearances", a televisual appearance by a character is generally one in which their actor is credited. If the actor is credited, the character "appears", unless the story clearly shows that it is another character masquerading as that character. Failing proper crediting, however, a character can be said to have appeared only in the following circumstances:
- The character is obviously present in new footage filmed for an episode, but their lack of speech didn't qualify them for a credit under normal union rules
- The actor declined credit that was ordinarily due, as with Bill Nighy in Vincent and the Doctor
- Archival footage has been re-contextualised to be more than a simple memory of the past. Flashbacks to previous Doctors seen in Day of the Daleks don't count, whereas eleven previous Doctors do appear in The Name of the Doctor. Why? Because Clara, a character from the current production, is shown to be interacting with the old footage, such that a new meaning for the old footage emerges.
- The following things are never to be considered appearances:
- Characters who appear solely in still images
- Characters who appear only in a flashback using previously-recorded material. The people appearing in the Fourth Doctor's dying flashback in Logopolis don't count, because that's all old footage. By contrast, the people appearing in the Fifth Doctor's dying flashback in Caves do count, because that was all newly shot. (Of course, in this case, all the people in the Caves flashback were actually credited, so they are said to appear by virtue of that. No one from the Logopolis flashback is credited, which makes sense, given the nature of it.)
- The following things are never to be considered appearances:
Going by this, I would say "It Takes You Away" would be listed as an appearance of Grace. If it's even debatable that it's the character, it's an appearance.
So, does anyone have any further comments on these guidelines?
- For the purposes of "lists of appearances", a televisual appearance by a character is generally one in which their actor is credited. If the actor is credited, the character "appears", unless the story clearly shows that it is another character masquerading as that character. Failing proper crediting, however, a character can be said to have appeared only in the following circumstances:
- JagoAndLitefoot
Wouldn't "It Takes You Away" fall under "unless the story clearly shows that it is another character masquerading as that character"?
- Bwburke94
That depends on whether Solitract Grace is Grace.
- Chubby Potato
Schreibenheimer: This only covers televised appearances. Of course some of it can apply for other media, but we probably should define guidelines for those too.
Focusing on TV stories, the line about "unless the story shows it is another character masquerading as that character" could be problematic, because sometimes it's another story that shows this. Maybe say "unless it is shown”? (There is probably a better example for the following but I can't think of one.) Suppose in The Impossible Astronaut the present Eleventh Doctor did not appear, but the future one, which only later was revealed to be the Teselecta, did. Would we still say the Doctor appeared in that episode? Probably not.
I think a good guideline in general is to depend on if only the character's appearance is taken on, or their personality too. While it isn’t a TV story, I’ll use The Forgotten as an example. Martha Jones and many other companions themselves never appear, but manifestations of them from the TARDIS' memory banks appear, seemingly having the original companion's memories and even their unique abilities. I would say these still count as the character.
- Scrooge MacDuck
So I'm being pedantic here and will make this into small text to signify its irrelevance but actually the Eleventh Doctor would appear in The Impossible Astronaut even if the earlier version didn't come in after the later version "dies"; the real Doctor was inside the Teselecta all along, remember, which is the point, if the Doctor's explanation to Dorium is to be believed. "Time said I had to be on that beach, so I dressed for the occasion." It is crucial that he was still there, just… well-armored.
To answer the wider point, the problem is that if we believe later stories about earlier ones, that brings all sorts of issues like Romana II not actually appearing in Destiny of the Daleks because decades later a short story said it was someone else posing as her, all along, while she experienced a more conventional regeneration offscreen.
At any rate, as concerns the wider issue, I may be biased from the way we do things at other Wikis, but here are my two cents: "appearances" are fundamentally an out-of-universe concept. Metafictional jokes aside, "Doctor Who stories" as clearly-delineated things with a beginning and an end and things that are "onscreen" or "offscreen" don't exist in the DWU.
It follows that whether or not, for complicated in-universe reasons, what is visually an appearance of the character turns out to have been someone else… shouldn't really matter.
I agree that clip-shows that are flash-backs in-universe probably shouldn't count as appearances, and basically with CzechOut's proposal in general. But as to "impersonations", by any sane real-world standard Grace does appear in It Takes You Away; they got the actor back and everything. Within the diegesis it turns out to be a(n almost) perfect duplicate rather than the real thing, but so what?
- Schreibenheimer
Chubby Potato, to address your paragraphs in order, I believe each medium will require its own guidelines and am hoping we can address them one at a time. What I'm thinking is to get a consensus on television, get an admin to give us a "final" ruling just on that issue, and continue the thread onto the next medium (probably audio, since that one will similarly start by going from the cast lists).
I personally would support the Doctor not being listed as appearing in a situation like the one you described. I see no problem with that. If what you're worried about is avoiding spoilers, I would say that situations like this are extremely rare, and people analyzing appearance lists closely enough to catch a spoiler in a situation like this sounds equally rare, so it all comes out to a non-issue in my mind.
Your last point was discussed upthread, and everyone seems to be in agreement with you on it. Visions/dreams/manifestations all count as long as they fit the other guidelines.
JagoAndLitefoot, as we had a debate about it upthread, it is obviously not definitive enough to meet the standard of clearly being another character.
EDIT: Started this before your post, Scrooge. Sorry to ignore you. That's a good point about Romana. I believe other sources contradict that story, so I don't think that would fall under "clearly" a different character.
- Bwburke94
If we word it as "unless the story shows it is another character...", that addresses both the Romana and Teselecta points, because neither the real Destiny nor the hypothetical Impossible Astronaut would specifically show it.
- Chubby Potato
Well, if we only consider what happened in the story in question, then that doesn’t account for the fact that another source says otherwise. With the issue of future stories retconning past appearances, it sounds like we may have to look at some individual cases (like Romana) more closely. Here is my personal opinion on Romana: Even if what we see as Romana in Destiny is the TARDIS matrix taking on her appearance, it appears to have her personality and memories, essentially being a version of Romana herself.
- Schreibenheimer
I still prefer it the way it is (we have a couple ways of ignoring the Romana issue, and I can't think of any others like it off the top of my head), but I am open to Bwburke94's proposal. Those of us who've commented today seem to be split on it 50/50, however. Does anyone else want to weigh in?
- Schreibenheimer
For the sake of moving things along, I will concode to Bwburke's proposal that the individual story must be clear it is another character. So the proposal as it stands now would be:
- For the purposes of "lists of appearances", a televisual appearance by a character is generally one in which their actor is credited. If the actor is credited, the character "appears", unless the individual story clearly shows that it is another character masquerading as that character. Failing proper crediting, however, a character can be said to have appeared only in the following circumstances:
- The character is obviously present in new footage filmed for an episode, but their lack of speech didn't qualify them for a credit under normal union rules
- The actor declined credit that was ordinarily due, as with Bill Nighy in Vincent and the Doctor
- Archival footage has been re-contextualised to be more than a simple memory of the past. Flashbacks to previous Doctors seen in Day of the Daleks don't count, whereas eleven previous Doctors do appear in The Name of the Doctor. Why? Because Clara, a character from the current production, is shown to be interacting with the old footage, such that a new meaning for the old footage emerges.
- The following things are never to be considered appearances:
- Characters who appear solely in still images
- Characters who appear only in a flashback using previously-recorded material. The people appearing in the Fourth Doctor's dying flashback in Logopolis don't count, because that's all old footage. By contrast, the people appearing in the Fifth Doctor's dying flashback in Caves do count, because that was all newly shot. (Of course, in this case, all the people in the Caves flashback were actually credited, so they are said to appear by virtue of that. No one from the Logopolis flashback is credited, which makes sense, given the nature of it.)
- The following things are never to be considered appearances:
Does anyone have any further comments/feedback/objections?
- For the purposes of "lists of appearances", a televisual appearance by a character is generally one in which their actor is credited. If the actor is credited, the character "appears", unless the individual story clearly shows that it is another character masquerading as that character. Failing proper crediting, however, a character can be said to have appeared only in the following circumstances:
- Scrooge MacDuck
I still think Grace O'Brien appears in It Takes You Away. Note the verb "appear". If the Solitract has stolen her appearance then as a matter of fact that is indeed an appearance by Grace O'Brien.
I mean, later retcons aside, the people appearing in the Fifth Doctor's dying hallucination aren't really there either. Why should dreams and hallucinations count, but not if they're illusions/pretense by another character? Seems a bit inconsistent.
But other than that "unless the story makes it clear it's someone else masquerading" exception, that all looks good to me.
- Schreibenheimer
My thinking was that if it's one character disguised as another character, it's an appearance of the disguised character, and I feel like appearances shouldn't double-dip. Dreams, hallucinations, and illusions are not another character, so those would count.
For the record, I conceded on "It Takes You Away" a while ago due to it being debatable and only clear "disguises" being excepted.
- Shambala108
Adding a link to Thread:197933, an abandoned discussion about comic appearances. For those interested, please read through that one and post any comments here.
- Schreibenheimer
Thank you for that, Shambala. Before addressing that, does anyone else have any thoughts on the "masquerading" exception? We could really use more than just two voices.
- Chubby Potato
I think if the character is simply taking the form of someone else, then no, it does not count, even if they use the same actor. It's literally a disguise. We can just write in the plot and references section of the story that they appeared as someone else.
But, if the character whose form is taken on appears with their memories and personalities (like Grace and the Solitract), this is like a manifestation and should count as an appearance.
- Schreibenheimer
You and I are on the same page, Chubby Potato. So that's currently us against Scrooge. Anyone else?
- Bwburke94
I'm worried this may bring up the Osgood/Zygons mess again...
- Schreibenheimer
An interesting point. The only TV story where only one of them appears is Death in Heaven, right? The character is credited as Osgood, and, at that time, we had no reason to believe that Zygon Osgood had stuck around as Osgood, right?
So if I'm remembering all the above correctly, under this policy, it would have to be OG Osgood who is listed as the appearance, as we can't take later works into account, even though Narcissus made it clear that it was actually Zygon Osgood in the episode. There does not seem to be any ambiguity where this could become a "mess".
- Bwburke94
At no point in time could we have stated with 100% accuracy that Death in Heaven Osgood was an impersonator. It's true that we now know she was the Zygon, but we also know that the Zygon wasn't claiming to be the human.
(Yes, there's an easy counter to this claim, but I have to move the discussion along somehow...)
- Danniesen
It might take quite some time before this reveal, if at all, as they said that they'd reveal it when no one will care anymore. And as we know the show is about the current times IRL as new seaaons gets made to reflect the time they are made, this will not be relevant for a hell of a long time.
- Danniesen
Ingrid Oliver HAS said that she does use subtle ways to reveal which one is human Osgood, but that can't really be used in in-universe material.
- Scrooge MacDuck
IIRC there was a whole thread about what the frick to do with Osgood, so I think she ought to remain a grandfathered-in special case no matter what we decide here.
- Schreibenheimer
Bwburke94 wrote: At no point in time could we have stated with 100% accuracy that Death in Heaven Osgood was an impersonator. It's true that we now know she was the Zygon, but we also know that the Zygon wasn't claiming to be the human.
(Yes, there's an easy counter to this claim, but I have to move the discussion along somehow...)
I apologize, but I'm confused. I stated that the appearance would be Human Osgood, but your response makes it sound like I argued that it should be Zygon Osgood.
Could anyone provide a link to this other thread?
- Shambala108
Ok you know what, this post is about how to define appearances across all media in general. Let's NOT get bogged down by specific strange one-off cases which can be dealt with on the article talk pages or separate, specific forum threads thanks.
- Schreibenheimer
I think that's valuable input. Thank you. I believe that we got onto specific cases due to there being a very small number of instances of characters masquerading as other characters, so each case makes up a rather sizable portion of the total number of cases, but people have probably decided one way or another by now on this particular topic.
Since there seemed to be very little criticism of the overall policy aside from my addition of the masquerading clause, let's just come to a final decision on that issue. I still support it. What are the rest of your feelings?
- Shambala108
Admin note: only admins can rule a thread concluded and close it. There seems to be some agreement on tv stories, but what about comic, audio, prose? There are a lot of abandoned "appearance" threads, and we need a policy that can be incorporated into a policy page. I'd rather not have to deal with multiple threads on this issue but instead just take care of it in this one active thread.
And since for many people in the world, this is the Christmas season and things are very busy, I don't have time right now to dig up the old "appearance" threads to clarify what elements of appearances have already been decided and which ones still need resolution.
- Danniesen
I have another case to present. This concerns webcasts. Specifically the agreed-upon 2019 remake of Mission to the Unknown webcast. Characters from that story have an appearance listing that gives the original 1965 version, but not the 2019 remake. Should the webcast be added too?
- Borisashton
Shambala's post from earlier on today specifically told us to not get bogged down by strange one-off cases. Surely the best place for your inquiries Danniesen is Talk:Mission to the Unknown (webcast) or at the talk page of closing admin User:Revanvolatrelundar.
- Scrooge MacDuck
And anyway, I don't see what Danniesen actually means; at Marc Cory, for example, the 2019 version is listed among the character's appearances.
- Danniesen
I didn't mean every character. But Daleks for example.
- Scrooge MacDuck
Oh, well in that case I would chalk this up to sheer oversight — the webcast was released, and its page created, pretty recently all-around.
- Danniesen
Cool. Just wanted to know if there was any agreed-on thing against having them both listed.
- Schreibenheimer
Shambala108 wrote: Admin note: only admins can rule a thread concluded and close it. There seems to be some agreement on tv stories, but what about comic, audio, prose? There are a lot of abandoned "appearance" threads, and we need a policy that can be incorporated into a policy page. I'd rather not have to deal with multiple threads on this issue but instead just take care of it in this one active thread.
And since for many people in the world, this is the Christmas season and things are very busy, I don't have time right now to dig up the old "appearance" threads to clarify what elements of appearances have already been decided and which ones still need resolution.
No worries, Shambala; didn't mean to step on your toes. It would have been more accurate to say "consensus" rather than "final decision."
In regard to other media, I had stated above that I thought the best way to handle it was one medium at a time within this thread, with an admin ruling on each particular one as discussion draws to a close. You hadn't said anything against it, so I, at least, continued with that as my intention. If you don't think that's the best way of handling this, let me know. We may be done with this medium . . . unless anyone else has anything to add or that they want to change?
- Schreibenheimer
Well, It's been over a month, so . . . bump?
- Chubby Potato
Actually, I did think of one more thing to bring up in regards to TV appearances. What about characters who only appear on video? I think this might depend on if it is newly recorded footage or not. For example, I would not say the Daleks appear in The War Games when the Doctor shows footage of them to the Time Lords, as it's comprised of clips from previous serials. But what about footage that was newly recorded for the purpose of the episode, but is seen as a past recording in-universe?
- Chubby Potato
Or what about Rose Tyler's appearance on a screen in Midnight, which is unclear if it is a live transmission or a recording? (It is worth noting Billie Piper was credited for this.)
- NateBumber
I know that nobody even paused to consider this idea, but I stand by it:
NateBumber wrote:
Here's a radical idea: Just like how the infobox has a "First seen in" box and a "Appearances" box, for the first appearance and further appearances, there should be a "References" box to complement the "First mentioned in" box. It's undoubtedly useful to catalog stories where a character or their image appears in a painting, or in a flashback, but not in actual character roles that would otherwise quality for inclusion on the "List of appearances"; if we used "List of references" or "List of mentions" pages going forward, that would really help fix this issue, as far as I see it.Responding to the most recent comments, it is undoubtedly useful for the sake of the wiki to note that the Daleks were shown in The War Games and that Rose Tyler was shown in Midnight. Or that photographs of Susan and River Song were shown in The Pilot. Implementing a "List of references" system would probably be really annoying, but I think it's hard to deny that it would be the best way to resolve this ambiguity once and for all.
- Scrooge MacDuck
I quite agree, you know; similar things have been done in other Wikis. And we've got a |first_mention= field in some infoboxes; wouldn't this be a logical extension of it?
- Shambala108
Just pointing out that "references" has a specific meaning on this wiki. It's only used for references to items on story pages. We don't even use it for real world citations; we use the word "footnotes" instead.
- Scrooge MacDuck
Good point. Although the usage we're considering wouldn't actually be too far afield of what we mean when we use the word for the "References" section, it might be better to find some other terms. Any ideas?
- NateBumber
Based on the existing "first mention" variable, we could use "List of mentions"?
- Scrooge MacDuck
But is stock footage a "mention"? The Daleks are surely more than "mentioned" in The War Games, if we see a moving picture of them.
- Chubby Potato
Perhaps, taking inspiration from what is done on the Marvel Database, "Minor Appearances"? Obviously we are our own wiki but it is just an idea; they in fact have pages for each character's appearances, minor appearances, and mentions, which are automatically categorised by adding a template to a story page. (I'm not saying we should use templates as it would require some programming, but it is another idea.) An example is that if we want to include an appearance where the Doctor (Earth-5556) only appears on a screen, we can write under the list of characters in the story {{OnScreen|[[The Doctor (Earth-5556)|The Doctor]]}} which automatically adds that story to the subpage The Doctor (Earth-5556)/Minor Appearances (although this specific example currently doesn't actually exist) as well as adding a little note next to his name on the story page that says "on screen only". There are also other templates which work for other types of minor appearances (like photos), as well as a separate template and corresponding subpage for mentions.
- NateBumber
That's an impressive display of automation, although I think the introduction of two more types of lists might be too much of a jump from our current state. Reflecting further on the current use of "References" on story pages, I think the term is actually similar enough that "References" would be quite appropriate here; the word is broad enough to encompass both vocal and visual examples.
- Danochy
In the interests of furthering discussion, I have attempted to create a table here which covers all of the cases described in this thread. If there are any cases not covered here, or which should be split on the table, I will edit the table.
The idea here is to ensure we have come to a decision for each case. I have attempted to fill in the cases which we have already come to a conclusion, but I may have missed some out, or may have come to a controversial conclusion. Please not that the table is currently only my current interpretation of the thread. Once we have the table filled out, up to date, and all-encompassing, the table will more fully represent the thread, and we can discuss each case separately, eventually allowing for a clear indication of conclusion of the thread.
I have also continued to use the dichotomy of "appearances list" versus "references", however this will obviously need to be further discussed as to whether we call the page "references", "mentions", something else altogether, or indeed if they deserve their own page at all. It is possible that the references section in the main article is sufficient in most cases. I don't think there is any case where the existence of a separate page for references influences whether or not it appears in the list of appearances.
Finally, in the table I consistently use the word "character", but this is interchangeable with any relevant appearances page. I have also excluded one-off cases, such as Petronella Osgood, which can be examined on separate threads or talk pages. I hope the table is helpful to the discussion!
# Description Type Applies to e.g. 1. General appearances 1.1 The obvious case when the character appears Appearances list Most appearances 1.2 Re-used footage or audio in a new context Video, Audio TV: The Day of the Doctor 1.3 Character speaks, but is off-frame/off-camera Video, comic 1.4 Character is present without being heard Non-narrated Audio Missy's vortex manipulator in AUDIO: Day of the Master 1.5 Character is in the scene, but is never heard or present. All media A Rutan ship in AUDIO: Heroes of Sontar 1.6 Video or audio footage seen on a screen depicting in-universe "past events" Daleks in TV: The War Games 1.7 Retro-regeneration Appearances list Mostly comics COMIC: The Fountains of Forever 1.8 Corpses All media Andred in AUDIO: Imperiatrix 2. Memories and flashbacks 2.1 Newly filmed, recorded, drawn, or written scenes Appearances list All media 2.2 Recreation of an existing scene TV: Twice Upon a Time 2.3 Re-use of existing footage/audio/comic frames/paragraphs References TV: Logopolis 2.4 Hallucinations and dreams (new footage) All media TV: Arachnids in the UK 2.5 memories which are images and provide no new information Comics (I think) Thread:197933 2.6.1 Stories-within-stories - told by a character in dialogue Prose, narrated audio Probably quite a few, such as Companion Chronicles 2.6.2 Flashbacks in real time Prose PROSE: Bernice Summerfield and the Imaginary Example (Scrooge's next post) 2.7 First person storytelling of past events Prose, narrated audio The Companion Chronicles not included in 2.6.1 3. Images 3.1 Photographs, images, and physical depictions such as statues References All media TV: The Pilot 3.2 Still holograms that don't speak or act TV: Let's Kill Hitler 3.3 Artificially constructed holograms Amy in TV: Let's Kill Hitler 3.4 Holographic recordings See: 1.6 The Ninth Doctor in TV: The Parting of the Ways 3.5 Impostors using the image of a character TV: It Takes You Away 3.6 Illusions created to trick other characters Adric in TV: Time-Flight 4. Retcons 4.1 Retcons removing an appearance and was planned right from the start All media 4.2 Retcons by unrelated stories removing an appearance PROSE: The Lying Old Witch in the Wardrobe 4.3 Retcons by later stories adding an appearance in a previous story - Scrooge MacDuck
That's fascinating work — but I feel as though it's still missing a few cases.
Chiefly, I'm concerned with prose here. In prose, you often get stories which, instead of a third-person narrator, are presented as in-universe autobiographical accounts, sometimes with a bit of a frame story in the third person around it. At what point do we go from mentions to appearances — e.g. from "the Doctor spends a significant amount of this story telling his companion an old legend about Rassilon", which goes in References, to "this story is an appearance of Rassilon"? Clearly there's a line — I think no one would argue with the idea that Sherringford Holmes or whoever "appears" in All-Consuming Fire. But where should it be drawn?
Similarly, within a single novel, what about what goes on between chapter breaks? If Chapter 10 of PROSE: Bernice Summerfield and the Imaginary Example ends with Benny telling Jason "hang on, I'll pop over and ask Professor Candy what he thinks about this" and her heading for Luna University, and Chapter 11 skips ahead to Benny returning from Luna, telling Jason in moderate detail (let's say a paragraph or two of expositionny dialogue) how her talk with Professor Candy went…
…well, in this scenario, doesn't Candy appear in Bernice Summerfield and the Imaginary Example? …Really? He's never "on screen", as it were, but if you write a plot synopsis of the book, you'll just say "Benny then goes to see Candy, who tells her X, Y and Z", glossing over the levels of narration at play.
- DiSoRiEnTeD1
i do think that flashbacks should be counted as appearances, but noted as flashbacks. right now it seems a bit random, you have some flashbacks like the Face of Boe's appearance in Utopia counting. but then a lot of those remembered in Journey's End are not (while some are).
- Danochy
Ah, thanks for bring that up. When I was writing it up I did have vague notions of what you're talking about here, but wasn't able to substantiate it, and it slipped my mind in the end.
I'd argue that if a story is being told about the character, then it's an appearance; if it's just a mention that Rassilon did something, then it's a reference. I feel like there is a reasonably clear divide between these two. For example (or examples), in one case you might have the Doctor telling a long story about Rassilon stretching on for paragraphs, while in the second case you'd have the Doctor mention that Rassilon built the Great Tower of Tecteun, and maybe say one or two sentences about it.
There will be edge cases, where the Doctor goes beyond a few sentences, without stretching into paragraphs, but those could perhaps be judged by tone or whether it's more conversation-based or story, and discussed on the talk page if required. it's entirely possible I've unreasonably simplified this, but one thing I know we should not do is attempt to impose the idea of a straight forward flashback on to this case, and we should respect prose as its own method of storytelling, separate from video, audio, and comics.
Anyway, I've added that point as 2.6 on the table, I hope you think that's a fair description? In either case, I've referenced your next post in the examples column.
- Scrooge MacDuck
Well, stories-within-stories per se, and "flashbacks in real time" like the Candy thought experiment, are really two slightly different points? But thank you for the quick answer! I think we're generally on the same wavelength there.
On to discussing other cases… I'm adamant that 4.2 shouldn't allow the later, unrelated story to overwrite the original. Just like we should treat prose with the respect it deserves in regards to it not doing things like TV would, equally, we should recognise that TV doesn't get to have omniscient third-person narrators to confirm everyone's identities in the absolute every five minutes, and this shouldn't matter.
When a TV story features a character who looks like Romana II, is credited as such, and is not hinted to be anything else in any other story from its era or writers, then, I'd argue, this is equivalent to when the omniscient third-person narrator of a novel calls the character "Romana II" in the narration. What we have here is a case of conflicting accounts — IMO Destiny can and should be cited for "Romana II did X, Y and Z". You can then introduce the short story with "According to another account, though a woman resembling Romana II did share this adventure with the Doctor, she was actually the TARDIS…".
- Danochy
Alright, I'll split 2.6 into two parts. As for 4.2, it's my fault (I should have made it more clear) but I meant the story that is being erased should remain on the appearances page, not that it doesn't count. Apologies for the confusion.
- Scrooge MacDuck
Actually, I didn't take you to be weighing in on the issue, so much as pointing out that it was one of the potential areas of contention.
I'm glad we agree that Destiny should remain on Romana II's appearance list — but perhaps a thornier question is whether, if we had an appearance list for Sexy, we should also put the story on that page.
(In the particular case of Lying Old Witch, of course, it's a nonissue because the TARDIS doesn't have an appearance list, and even if she did, she already appears in blue box form in Destiny. But you could easily imagine a similar case where the entity retconned as an impostor is something with an appearance list.)
- Chubby Potato
Scrooge, I was about to ask about exactly that, but you beat me to it.
Anyways, another thing I mentioned up-thread was implied appearances. I also discussed this at Thread:272817, and I think it should be added to the table. That is, when a previously known character is implied to have appeared, but isn't implicitly stated. This is usually either due to licencing issues or a stylistic choice. The clues we are given will depend on the media type, and whether or not it is a real-world or in-universe reference. I explained my stances and how it appears this is currently covered with examples in my comment at Thread:272817#17.
- Scrooge MacDuck
I think the loose current policy with unlicensed cameos like "the Northern chap with big ears" is that we pipe-link it to the obviously correct page ("A norther chap was also present at the gathering…"), but don't put it in list of appearances, which ought to be rather more official than that. This makes intuitive sense to me.
You put this on a level with the Mistress in that debate, but there's a pretty stark difference between a one-sentence cameo — which, I am told, wouldn't necessarily even require a license to mention the DWU thing by name — and a main character of a story, who's implied to be a preexisting DWU character, except the story isn't licensed to use that DWU character.
In the latter case, it's more a matter of whether we merge the pages altogether than a question about list of appearances specifically. But the way it seems to work is that when you've got Concept A owned by e.g. the Beeb, and Concept B owned by e.g. popular VNA writer Writerman D. Exampleson, mere logical inference isn't enough for us to accept A=B, but if a source licensed to use both A and B establishes A=B, we can carry over that identification even to B stories that wouldn't have the license to use A.
So for example, an appearance of the Yssgaroth counts as an appearance of the Great Vampires, because while those are legally different IPs, The Pit establishes that they're facets of the same thing in-universe. But no story licensed to use Romana and the Mistress has yet confirmed them to be the same individual, so that doesn't pass muster with us in the same way.
- Danochy
The reason I did not include that on the table was because the determining factor in these instances shouldn't be this nascent appearance policy, but on whether we actually have enough evidence to say it was that character. If there is enough evidence to include the "appearance" on the character's page, there is enough to then consider whether to include it on the appearances page. If we don't see them or hear them, we can then be referred to 1.4 or 1.5.
Just to respond to your points, my understanding is that if there are licencing issues, then, by policy, we're not allowed to assume the character makes an appearance. If it's stylistic, then, again, it's based on evidence and then either 1.4 or 1.5, or perhaps another number.
Also, I'll remove the "type" from 4.2. I didn't realise it was still being contended. As for Sexy, that would be covered by 4.3. Perhaps I should remove that "type" as well :P
- Chubby Potato
Thinking on your responses that answers the licencing question— I do believe, and it makes sense to me, that we should only say two things are the same (or different) if in-universe evidence corroborates it, not authorial intent. That may seem like a basic rule, to only use in-universe info, but there is some basic degree of inference needed. If we took everything literally, on its face, we might as well say "how do we know that the Third Doctor comes right after the Second Doctor if we never see the regeneration on screen?" Well unless something says otherwise that's obvious— quite like what happened with the War Doctor. It's this basic inference that was confusing me with cases like The Mistress, but I think there is a policy or discussion somewhere that addresses that.
- Shambala108
It's very possible that I missed something, but I could only find one resolved forum thread re appearances. Thread:129125 established that non-valid stories don't go in appearances lists or the appearances section of infoboxes. All the other threads are either still open or were closed as unresolved.
Also, as I posted above a few months ago, the word "References" has a very specific meaning on this wiki: it belongs on story pages and deals with nouns that occur or are mentioned in story but aren't important enough to the plot to get mentioned elsewhere on the page. It's better not to use it in other ways so as to avoid confusion.
- Danochy
@Chubby Potato - Yes, inferencing can be applied, but it's not really relevant to the appearances policy, is it? It's more a case-by-case basis of determining if it is a character being referred to or not.
@Shambala108 - If you're referring to the column where I wrote "appearances list" or "references" - I wasn't trying to to imply that those cases were resolved, just to represent cases where we seemingly have consensus on this thread in that regard. Also, as I said, I was only using "references" as a placeholder for whatever we decide such a page would be called, if indeed we decide to allow for the creating of the page at all.
But I do agree that "references" might not be a good choice of name, as the page will likely include points that (on the main page) would go under the biography heading. "Mentions" also doesn't fit, as was mentioned earlier, as visual cases are hard to define as "mentions". I struggle to think of any other alternatives, if I'm honest.
- Chubby Potato
Danochy: Well, the reason I think it is relevant is determining if the story is listed as an appearance for that character. I do like my example of Margaret Thatcher in Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen, because as Borisashton determined, her description fits in with that of other DWU material, allowing us to list Krikkitmen in her appearances.
As for terminology, I once again advocate for, or at the very least mention, the phrasing "Minor Appearance", as used on w:c:marvel and w:c:dc. I don't mean to "copy" them, but it's a system that works. You can see what they consider a minor appearance here, and I think it covers most of what we have discussed. There is the mention of only a character's voice (add that to the table?) and recaps too. Currently recaps (e.g. the Fourth Doctor in Castrovalva are not considered appearances, but maybe they can be considered minor ones (or whatever we call them).
Of course, this excludes mentions, which aren't really an appearance. I still think they should have another page. Scrooge voiced concern that having two new pages would be too much, and I agree it would be a big change, but I think it would work better than having a "references" page with both minor appearances and mentions— they're simply too different.
- Danochy
I would look at cases such as Thatcher on an individual basis, rather than on a thread such as this one, since it would be asking the question of "who?" rather than the question of "is it an appearance?" Basically, my concern is that there isn't a way of saying this counts as an appearance while that doesn't in policy terms. In saying that, I don't want to be in total control of the table, however I also don't know how I'd add it. If you're still in favour of adding it, how and where would you put it?
There is the mention of only a character's voice (add that to the table?) and recaps too. Currently recaps (e.g. the Fourth Doctor in Castrovalva are not considered appearances, but maybe they can be considered minor ones (or whatever we call them).
The first one is already covered by 1.3, and recaps are pretty much 2.3, by my reckoning. I have found that page useful though, and will add a few from there, such as corpse and expand photos to include other forms of still depictions, such as statues.
On the topic of a minor appearances page, I'm not sure I'd agree with having that. First of all, it's quite likely that some "minor" appearances will still be included on main appearances pages at the conclusion of this thread. Would we just have overlap there? The point of the hypothetical "references" page (which may or may not be given that name) is to cover what we don't count as an appearance. On such a page we could differentiate between verbal and visual references pretty easily, so I don't see a conflict there.
- Chubby Potato
Firstly, it's clear I didn’t look at the table well enough, it covers most things. My point with minor appearances was that we could adopt the terminology and redefine it for our wiki purposes, not use the concept exactly as it is on those wikis. Apologies if that was unclear. However, I suppose having it all on a single page that is organised will work as well. Part of why I like this terminology more is it is a bit more broad— for example, a character being in a recap or even a memory isn't really a "reference" but it is a minor appearance.
- Danochy
After giving it some proper thought, I wondered why I was pushing for having mentions on such a page at all. Surely the main article could contain all that information. With that, I think I'm coming 'round to your idea of a "minor appearances" page, and I'll just create a hypothetical scenario of how this page might turn out. (don't try to refute any of the individual cases, they are just examples)
So in this scenario we might have an appearances page which covers the following:
- All obvious appearances of the character in question, regardless of their length
- Retro-regenerated Time Lords
- New recording of the character, e.g. seen on a TV or holographically
- etc.
and then a minor appearances page, which may have a different name, and may be allowed to use brackets to indicate the type of appearance:
- Photos
- Recaps and reused flashbacks
- impersonations
- hallucinations
- etc.
Is that what you're thinking, more or less?
- Chubby Potato
Yes, that's exactly what I meant.
- Shambala108
OK, going to put an end to the idea of two separate appearance pages per character. It's confusing for new users/viewers to have to check two different lists, especially when the "minor" list would contain things we don't count as appearances, that is, photos and stock footage not used as new material.
We generally try to avoid calling things "major" and "minor" as those definitions tend to get misunderstood and misused.
- Chubby Potato
Shambala, are you opposed to just the minor appearance page specifically or the idea as a whole? What I mean is, I think a page listing... well, references, but we don't want to use that word, for a character could and would be beneficial, as long as we make it clear those aren't appearances. This wouldn't include the likes of recaps, but more things like photos, statues, etc. and possibly other things depending on what this thread determines is and isn't an appearance.
- Najawin
What about just a straight up appearances page, and then a separate section for what was termed "minor appearances" but then a different name. "Allusion" might work? Since it's generally using a particular set of symbols to refer to the character and not the character themselves being present.
- Danochy
To review, the cons having a minor appearances page are
- Probably confusing for users unfamiliar with the format
- Using the word "appearances" conflicts with the fact that it's for things which we aren't considering appearances.
- We have yet to discover a common word or concise phrase which would accurate describe such a page
- Difficult to define what should be included
- Would be a lot of work to create and maintain such a list for every major character on the wiki
Pros
- Would be a useful source of information on readers and writers of the wiki
- Could assist in better defining the main appearances page
While I do really like the idea of such a page, the cons do seem to outweigh the pros, so in the end I think I'm going to have to agree with Shambala here.
Najawan: A separate section on the page would be difficult, considering the fact that the top level heading is already used to designate the media (television, audio, prose, etc.). It also wouldn't be appropriate to integrate it into each section, as that would look even messier.
As to the word allusion, that word would apply to indirect references, but not to e.g. the reuse of footage or impersonations, which are pretty direct.
- Najawin
I think you misunderstand me slightly. I'm not saying that the photograph (etc) is alluding to the character, but rather the episode (etc) is alluding to the character, as opposed to actually containing them. So in this sense an impersonation is still an allusion, just as much as it is an illusion (heh), as the character isn't actually being shown, but is instead being hinted at, referenced. Reused footage seems to work just as well here.
- Danochy
Oh, I see what you mean, sorry. Yeah, that could work, but again only if it is on a separate page. It's still not overly specific, but it's certainly the best we've got. It also still comes with the other issues of having a separate page, but it's still worth considering imo. I guess we now wait to see what Shambala's thoughts are?
- Chubby Potato
I don't think it's necessary for such a page to include everything we decide isn't an appearance (recaps are rather insignificant), but I still think it would be useful to have such a page that includes mentions, allusions, memories, images, and other diegetic instances where the character doesn't actually appear but is still relevant for some reason or another.
- Chubby Potato
Note Danochy's above reply was not yet present as I wrote that.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:142008
If we were to create a team of users whose job it was to welcome brand new editors to the site and mentor them in their initial edits, would you be interested in being on that team? You might think that's the sort of exclusive province of admin, but it could be really valuable for non-admin to reach out to new users and sort of help them find stuff and understand who we are and how we work.
If you're interested, or if you just have questions, lemme know below.
- TARDIS2468
I'd be happy to help in any way I can.
- The-Awkward-Timelord
I'd be glad to help if I'm needed.
- MrSiriusBlack
I'm up for it if I'm required.
- Ethilus
I would really like to
- CzechOut
Hey guys, since there's a fair bit of interest in the concept, there will be more coming out on this in the next few weeks. The goal is, though, that the "Welcome Wagon" – or whatever name ultimately emerges — be comprised of people who have been around for a while. We're looking for a way for experienced users to welcome newcomers. There will probably be some kind of minimal edit count and minimum days-since-account-creation required for appointment to the Wagon.
In fact, that's a question that could be usefully opened up to the community at this time.
- For welcomers, what do you think the minimum number of edits and time-since-account-creation should be?
- MrSiriusBlack
Over a year and over 100 edits ;D
- Shambala108
Time since account creation should be at least a year. Minimum number of edits should be something like 500.
Also, there should be some demonstrable understanding of the basic policies that new users often misunderstand, such as Tardis:Spoiler policy, Tardis:Discussion policy, Tardis:Image use policy, Tardis:In-universe perspective, Tardis:Valid sources, Tardis:No personal attacks and Tardis:Game of Rassilon rules.
- CzechOut
Over a year seems harsh. SOTO and Cult of Skaro haven't been here a year, but I wouldn't hesitate in thinking they could serve as welcomers, at the very least.
Maybe it could be something like
- over a year if your edits are fewer than 500
- six months if your edits are greater than 2000
- four months if your edits are greater than 5000
- two months if your edits are greater than 10000
- admin can disrespect the rules at their discretion if they notice someone of obvious suitability
- Lisa Gates
CzechOut wrote: If we were to create a team of users whose job it was to welcome brand new editors to the site and mentor them in their initial edits, would you be interested in being on that team? You might think that's the sort of exclusive province of admin, but it could be really valuable for non-admin to reach out to new users and sort of help them find stuff and understand who we are and how we work.
If you're interested, or if you just have questions, lemme know below.
Bold textI have a question about the Binary Heart System. In one story, there is a mention that River Song has a Binary Heart system because of her DNA being manipulated, on Demon's Run, by Madam Kovarian. So on the BH System page, there is no mention of River Song has 2 hearts. Can you confirm she has indeed 2 hearts, or is the info wrong? Here is River song's page: Link titlehttp://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/River_Song
- SOTO
He meant questions about the welcoming program. Yours is a great question, but is best asked at The Reference Desk, where you can start a new thread about this. I and others will be happy to answer your questions once there.
- 11thdoctor115
Im here to help as the doctor i am
- Lego Whovian
I'm in! (If I'm allowed?)
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:142058
THE slitheen should make another screen apperance. agree or disagree?
The discussion you started properly belongs in Howling:The Howling. Thanks!
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:142060
As you may or may not know, Wikia have recently partnered with Rotten Tomatoes. This will allow some TV wikis to share their content on the RT site, with a link back to the wiki concerned, so as to encourage further exploration and even the recruitment of new editors.
We've been chosen to be one of the wiki sin the first round of this exciting development. Some details are being worked out with backend stuff, so it'll be a few weeks be\fore you can go to the RT site and see it live. And when it comes, it will initially only concentrate on Torchwood and Doctor Who (2005) (with the possibility that the 1996 movie might be in the mix).
To prepare, we really need editors to concentrate for a few weeks on reviewing the Plot and Synopsis sections on everything from Rose to The Name of the Doctor, as well as every episode of Torchwood. We just need to make sure that language is clear and comprehensible, that the grammar is correct, and that the facts are accurate.
Remember we are the source for Rotten Tomato's basic information will come from us. And it will be a brand new window into our wiki.
So if you're looking for an editing project over the next few weeks, please make the editing of new series plots and synopses a priority.
(An editing track has been enabled on this, but it ain't pretty - yet. So, for those who care, yes, there are points on the line, people.)
- SOTO
Some Torchwood episodes (last I checked, at least) have zero plot sections. I'm guessing we should concentrate on filling those in?
- Tybort
On a quick run through, none of Torchwood's episodes have "to be added" in their plot sections, though I did pick out that The Gathering is rather short.
- SOTO
Oh, you're right. I know there used to be empty sections, but they've clearly been filled in since. From Out of the Rain, for example, was empty until early August.
I might expand on The Gathering's entry when I next get around rewatching Miracle Day, if no one else gets it done first.
- Tybort
I'm probably going to be too busy with the earlier Doctor Who and Torchwood seasons, mostly for in-universe pages, but I can do this too. I've just checked on Rose and The End of the World's sections for factual and spelling errors.
- Shambala108
While you guys are at it (and I will check on this too), I'd appreciate it if you could keep an eye out for plot summaries that may have been plagiarized. The plagiarism usually comes from the Doctor Who Reference Guide, which is linked at the bottom of the story pages for easy checking. This is probably more of a problem with Torchwood than Doctor Who. Thanks!
- Tybort
Rose, The End of the World, The Unquiet Dead and World War Three don't seem to be doing this, but Aliens of London, while not completely word-for-word what's on there, appears to have lots of passages and character descriptions with a clear origin in the DWRG summary. Would that be sufficiently plagiarism?
- Shambala108
Tybort, I'll answer your question on your talk page to keep this thread on topic.
- Tybort
Question about the synopses. Several of the revival ones appear to be verbatim ones from program guides on cable boxes or the BBC website. 1. Is that okay? and providing that, 2. How do we approach ones which are abuses of Tardis:Doctors?
- Tybort
Did a run-through of Doctor Who 1.1-1.11 and all of series 7's sections for spelling, grammar and a bit of fact-clearing up. The rest are a bit fuzzier in my mind to spot the facts.
- SOTO
Well, we do directly quote publishers' summaries for other media, so why not for TV stories? But I think it has to be one way or another. If we quote, we quote all of them and we quote directly. If not, we replaced all the official synopses with original ones of our own.
Which seems to be the majority, the originals or the copied?
- Shambala108
re: synopses
There is a huge difference. When you use a synopsis from a prose or audio, you are quoting a physical piece of writing from the source - dust jacket, CD cover, etc. But when you use a synopsis from a TV story, you are not quoting anything from the TV story. Therefore any summary comes from somewhere else - DVD case, or program guides and websites like Tybort suggested. These quotes are not cited to their proper source.
This is the reason why some media pages have "Publisher's summary" in their template and others don't. If you think it should be all one way or the other, you can bring it up at another forum discussion (though I think it has come up before if memory serves), but for now, if it's not a publisher's summary, it cannot be copied from another source. As stated elsewhere on the wiki, we want to create unique material, not copy others'.
- Shambala108
re: Tardis:Doctors
Publisher's summaries are usually pipe-switched from the specific Doctor to just "the Doctor" because they are quotes and can't be altered. Otherwise, if it's written by our users, like TV story synopses should be, we can use the specific name.
- CzechOut
Guys, I can't thank you enough for your quick response to this. I can't quite do this from where I am now but could someone please:
- create category:Tomato check and put it in category maintenance
- create a cat for yourself using abbreviations so it's quick to type, in this format: category:CZ ok and put it into Tomato check.
- mark which articles you've checked with your category -- your stamp of approval, as it were. That way it'll be clear on the page who has copy edited what. When an article gets two people's approval, it becomes lower priority and you then can ignore that article and move on to the next episode.
On the other questions raised already, we absolutely need our own synopses. Remember RT have partnered with Wikia for the originality of our content. And surely we've all seen these eps enough times to come up wi a three sentence summary.
In the synopsis we absolutely must have the number of the Doctor so no pipe switching. T:DOCTORS is fully in effect. Remember, this is going to be seen by people who have no idea which eps star which Doctor. Synopses must not assume any level of familiarity with the show. So it's not "the Daleks" but "the doctors greatest enemies, the Daleks".
- Shambala108
Category:Tomato check has been created. Feel free to change my wording; I didn't want to leave a blank page but there has to be a better way of explaining the category.
- Cult_Of_Skaro
I think at least for Classic series, we should use the DVD versions of the summaries. For instance the DVD version of The War GamesThe TARDIS has materialised in a world of trench warfare, barbed wire, and poison gas: the Western Front, 1917. In the chaos and paranoia of the First World War, the Doctor and his companions are seperatd from their ship, captured and court-martialed. The death sentence is swiftly pronounced.
But all is not as it seems. As the Doctor finds himself increasinly out of his depth and facing impossible odds, the only solution is the truly unthinkable. He must seek help from those he most fears - his own people, the Time Lords.sounds a lot better than what we currently have on the page. And it would introduce a much greater level of consistency.
- Cult_Of_Skaro
EDIT: Ignore.
- Tybort
This is not a smear against the classic series, and it is admittedly a good way of syncing with the books and CDs' publisher summaries, but as Czech says, the initial concentration is on Rose through The Name of the Doctor.
I suppose that the modern equivalent is the summary on the the Christmas releases or the "Part 1", "Part 2", etc. stuff?
- Cult_Of_Skaro
Tybort wrote: This is not a smear against the classic series, and it is admittedly a good way of syncing with the books and CDs' publisher summaries, but as Czech says, the initial concentration is on Rose through The Name of the Doctor.
I suppose that the modern equivalent is the summary on the the Christmas releases or the "Part 1", "Part 2", etc. stuff?
Ah, I understand now. Though I still think it's a good idea! :P Do the New Series box sets have any sort of summaries? I haven't gotten around to getting them.
- Tybort
No idea. I'm watching...Eccleston and Tennant (can't bear to say the phrase) via Netflix.
- Cult_Of_Skaro
Tybort wrote: No idea. I'm watching...Eccleston and Tennant (can't bear to say the phrase) via Netflix.
No worries, that's how I watch 'em too. ;)
- Shambala108
Just to make things clear: we will not be using any publisher summaries of TV stories. For TV stories we want to have user-created synopses.
- CzechOut
I'd strongly support Shambala108's last statement. Originality is the key.
Cult Of Skaro wrote: I think at least for Classic series, we should ...
Lemme stop ya there. For the moment, the content RT is grabbing has to do with the new series only — and possibly the 1996 movie. Remember that RT is really just in beta with any sort of television coverage, and they don't quite have their act together. They believe that ep 1 of DW is Rose. And, at the moment, they think the McGann movie was released theatrically.
Doesn't matter that that's, of course, an error. What matters is that we get the post-Survival material in shape so they can test how that works on their site. Then, if they're satisfied with that test, they'll move on forward. Or, in our case, backwards. And sideways, if they decide to add SJA to their coverage. (Don't hold your breath K9 fans.)
It's fully expected our content will be online with them sometime in October, so let's make sure the 21st century stuff is polished completely before we take a look at the 1963 series.
- CzechOut
Oh, another thing: it is sometimes the habit to write the synopses and plot summaries with few links. Some even feel that synopses should not have any links.
In this RT exercise, all they're taking from our site are the "plot" and "synopsis" sections. That's it. So we do need to make sure that they are fully linked, even if those words might have been linked in the lead, infobox or surrounding sections.
In other words, allow yourself to "over-wikify" a bit, because in the context of the RT page, it won't come across as "over"-linking, but "OMG, look at all this cool stuff I can click".
We should make sure, though, that there are no red links in these areas, so if you see a red link, create the page, or de-link it.
- Cult_Of_Skaro
CzechOut wrote: Oh, another thing: it is sometimes the habit to write the synopses and plot summaries with few links. Some even feel that synopses should not have any links.
In this RT exercise, all they're taking from our site are the "plot" and "synopsis" sections. That's it. So we do need to make sure that they are fully linked, even if those words might have been linked in the lead, infobox or surrounding sections.
In other words, allow yourself to "over-wikify" a bit, because in the context of the RT page, it won't come across as "over"-linking, but "OMG, look at all this cool stuff I can click".
We should make sure, though, that there are no red links in these areas, so if you see a red link, create the page, or de-link it.
All right, I've been kind of casually doing this for a while, so I'll prioritize it now.
- Cult_Of_Skaro
Okay, started with Rose. I actually totally replaced the summary, as the old one was incredibly clunky. Mine isn't perfect, but it's at least a little better, I think. :P
- Cult_Of_Skaro
By the way Tybort, I know about T:DOCTORS, but shouldn't we keep the one link to The Doctor in addition to Ninth Doctor?
- Tybort
Depends. If it's about the Doctor as a whole, multiple incarnations, an unspecified future, or wording like "the Doctor's fifth body" and "the Doctor's eighth incarnation", then I'm okay, but if it's specifically about Nine, which "the Doctor has to stop it" most definitely is, then I'm less sure.
- Cult_Of_Skaro
Yeah, but if there's two mentions of the Doctor, I think it makes sense to have a link to the individual incarnation and the gestalt being.
- CzechOut
Cult Of Skaro wrote: Yeah, but if there's two mentions of the Doctor, I think it makes sense to have a link to the individual incarnation and the gestalt being.
I wouldn't ordinarily think it makes a lot of sense to do this. But as one of the audiences for the information will now be off-site, yeah, we probably should link to the specific incarnation and the Doctor as well.
- CzechOut
Thanks to SmallerOnTheOutside, the Game of Rassilon track for this little project has now been finished and "prettified".
- CzechOut
Thanks, everyone, for their continued work on this project!
Discovered a little thing today that we should all keep our eyes peeled for. Please make sure there are no indentations or usages of any templates, like {{quote}}, in the plot sections. These will almost certainly not be interpreted correctly by Rotten Tomatoes, so we should make the pages work without them.
- Tybort
Cleaned up the specific instances of {{quote}} through the links to the template. Didn't go thoroughly through any of the plot or synopsis sections, though, just ctrl-fed the quote template.
- CzechOut
This is probably a dumb question, but you left the quote itself intact, right?
- CzechOut
Okay, just so we don't start massively duplicating work, here are the stories you should stay away from.
Every story in this chart has already been touched by two editors and is therefore no longer a priority.
Looks like series 1 of Torchwood and Doctor Who have both been fairly well covered as of this posting. Remember, once two editors give their okay on an article, you should probably move on to a new one.
Note that this list will update as we add our approvals to each article.
- To reproduce the following chart on another page, just type {{tomato check}}.'
CZ SOTO TYB SH SPR SH Self SOTO SOTO has no common stories with CZ Self See above TYB TYB has no common stories with CZ see above self see above TYB has no common stories with SPR SPR SPR has no common stories with CZ see above see above see above self - Tybort
CzechOut wrote: This is probably a dumb question, but you left the quote itself intact, right?
Some were, some weren't. If it was part of a sentence, or continued the previous sentence it stayed, but if it was just a quote on its own right at the very last paragraph like with Ghost Machine and The New World and I didn't think it added anything that wasn't already in the penultimate one it went. Especially The New World's which basically repeats the previous paragraph.
- CzechOut
Okie dokie: sounds cool, Tybort.
- CzechOut
Although the exact date for our material appearing on Rotten Tomatoes hasn't been quite finalised, the basic structure has now been added to the wiki. The site is currently throwing errors originating from rottentomatoes.com, indicating that Wikia Engineering have added the basic infrastructure for linking us in to RT. We're just waiting on Wikia and RT's web team to get to the point where they'll throw the switch.
So keep vetting RT articles, cause this train's still very much moving forward!
- Shambala108
We've got a lot of projects going at the moment, but let's not lose sight of this one. The following is a list of stories that still need one more editor to check.
Thanks to our dedicated team, all stories have at least one check — thanks, everyone! — but ideally we want two checks per story.
- Aliens of London (TV story),
- Bad Wolf (TV story),
- The Parting of the Ways (TV story),
- The Christmas Invasion (TV story),
- Rise of the Cybermen (TV story),
- The Age of Steel (TV story),
- The Idiot's Lantern (TV story),
- The Satan Pit (TV story),
- Love & Monsters (TV story),
- Fear Her (TV story),
- Army of Ghosts (TV story),
- Doomsday (TV story),
- The Runaway Bride (TV story),
- Smith and Jones (TV story),
- The Shakespeare Code (TV story),
- Gridlock (TV story),
- Daleks in Manhattan (TV story),
- Evolution of the Daleks (TV story),
- The Lazarus Experiment (TV story),
- 42 (TV story),
- Human Nature (TV story),
- The Family of Blood (TV story),
- Blink (TV story),
- The Sound of Drums (TV story),
- Last of the Time Lords (TV story),
- The Sontaran Stratagem (TV story),
- The Poison Sky (TV story),
- The Doctor's Daughter (TV story),
- Midnight (TV story),
- The Stolen Earth (TV story),
- Journey's End (TV story),
- The Next Doctor (TV story),
- Planet of the Dead (TV story),
- The Waters of Mars (TV story),
- The End of Time (TV story),
- Cold Blood (TV story),
- Vincent and the Doctor (TV story),
- The Lodger (TV story),
- The Pandorica Opens (TV story),
- The Big Bang (TV story),
- A Christmas Carol (TV story),
- The Impossible Astronaut (TV story),
- Day of the Moon (TV story),
- The Curse of the Black Spot (TV story),
- The Doctor's Wife (TV story),
- The Rebel Flesh (TV story),
- The Almost People (TV story),
- A Good Man Goes to War (TV story),
- Let's Kill Hitler (TV story),
- Night Terrors (TV story),
- The Wedding of River Song (TV story),
- The Snowmen (TV story),
- Hide (TV story),
- Everything Changes (TV story),
- Out of Time (TV story),
- Combat (TV story),
- Captain Jack Harkness (TV story),
- End of Days (TV story),
- Sleeper (TV story),
- To the Last Man (TV story),
- Meat (TV story),
- Adam (TV story),
- Reset (TV story),
- Dead Man Walking (TV story),
- A Day in the Death (TV story),
- Something Borrowed (TV story),
- From Out of the Rain (TV story),
- Adrift (TV story),
- Fragments (TV story),
- Exit Wounds (TV story),
- Children of Earth: Day One,
- Children of Earth: Day Two,
- Children of Earth: Day Three,
- Children of Earth: Day Four,
- Children of Earth: Day Five,
- Rendition (TV story),
- Dead of Night (TV story),
- The Categories of Life (TV story),
- The Middle Men (TV story),
- Immortal Sins (TV story),
- End of the Road (TV story),
- The Gathering (TV story),
- The Blood Line (TV story)
Note that this list is not dynamic, so it will not update as people add their approvals. The dynamic list is at Template:Tomato check.
- CzechOut
Just had a talk with Jenburton today. Things are still very much moving forward on this project, but RT are still playing catch-up. Though we would obviously preferred to have launch before the 50th, this does give us more time to complete our checks of the story pages.
- Masterpwn
I'm watching through the whole series 1-7 again for the 9th time in a row, updating things as I go along. Find the ocasional misquote and things.
Just watched Midnight and kept pace, matching the written plot on the wiki with the episode. Didn't spot anything that needed changing, and didn't spot any grammatical or spelling errors, but I wasn't looking for those as much.
- SOTO
Note that this list is not dynamic, so it will not update as people add their approvals. The dynamic list is at Template:Tomato check.
I was just about to create a dynamic list of all unchecked TV story pages, but DPL tells me there are none except the 2013 specials, which came out after this project began. Great work, team, especially User:Shambala108!
I don't think we've gotten any updates yet on when this will go forward, but I'd still urge people to go through episodes not listed at Template:Tomato check, and give them a second check for when they are finally featured.
To help out:
- Go to {{Tomato check}}
- Use your browser to search for the title of an episode you'd like to work on
- If you find that episode on this page, you're of course free to edit it, but it's not the highest priority for this project. The episodes we need done will not appear on this list.
Remember, what we're trying to do is to make the lead, synopsis and plot sections better, by making the text clearer, more concise and more accurate.
Thanks :)
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:142073
The badges have finally appeared, even if they're recycling the names of the Edit awards. Doctors 9, 10 & 11 will finally gain badges, but what will fill the remaining 5 slots? And come 2014, will there be a change made for the you-know-what?
- SOTO
This is temporary, to encourage editors to fix/correct/flesh out plot sections for NuWho and Torchwood episodes. Please see Thread:142060 for more info.
Our editing tracks are generally used to encourage development of our lesser-edited pages, or when we're trying to emphasise the need to develop a certain part of our more popular pages.
Once the review has been completed, and the pages are working properly on Rotten Tomatoes™, we'll likely pull this editing track down.
So if you want the points from this track join the RT review board, as explained at Thread:142060, and start examining the plot and synopses of modern Doctor Who episodes today!
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:142205
I know it wasn't officially released but we should have page about it. I wouldn't make good page so anybody who wants to make it give me your email and I can send you that book.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:142208
I know it wasn't officially released but we should have page about it. I wouldn't make good page so anybody who wants to make it give me your email and I can send you that book.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:142241
I wanted to create pages for "The Book," the short story written by James Goss to promote his and Steve Tribe's The Doctor: His Lives and Times with BBC Books, then I started wondering how and where I would create these entries. Or if they are valid at all. "The Book" was published on the Doctor Who TV website on September 25, the day before TD:HLAT was officially released. From what I understand, the latter has a lot of short stories or scenes, such as River Song conducting an interview with Tegan Jovanka or the TARDIS describing how she views River and "Thief's" relationship. I think "The Book" is supposed to give an idea as to how the stories in TD:HLAT are told and perhaps hint at its conents. (i.e. "It even knew precisely why Queen Elizabeth I had run screaming from three men and a horse. 'Oh yes,' it giggled, 'and no one is supposed to know that yet.'") TD:HLAT is marketed as:
"He’s made a mark on almost every era of history, and he’s touched millions of lives across space and time. In these pages you’ll find just some of the stories behind those brief encounters, each of them addressing the question that must never, ever be answered: ‘Doctor who?’
This is the story of an impossible life – of a man who borrowed a spaceship, travelled through time and continually saved the universe - as told by the Doctor’s friends, by his enemies, and by the man himself. Letters, journals, trial records, secret government files and the occasional bit of tabloid journalism reveal the never-before-told story of Gallifrey’s last Time Lord."
My first problem was that I didn't know if "The Book" would be considered Online Fiction, like Snowfall, but after I started to work on it, I began second guessing that since it wasn't published on the typical BBC DW site. My second problem is: what is TD:HLAT? It sounds like it's part prose material and part reference material. So, how would it be viewed at by this wiki and does that impact the validity of "The Book" as well?
- SOTO
Okay, TD:HLAT is (probably) totally out. There are many ref books out there that give original information, but these are not valid sources for in-universe material. Now I don't own the book (not yet, at least), but this seems to be the case. If it's genuinely short stories with real-world content in between, it can be discussed. But I don't know enough about it to properly discuss it. When I do read it, I'll get back to you.
The Book, on the other hand, I can see right in front of me. I think it's more of a promotion than a proper story, sorta like Strax Field Report but for prose. It seems to be really, really on the edge of the real world, discussing the big people behind the scenes:
- It knew so many stories that the man himself must never hear – stories told by the clever woman called Verity, the warlock Robert, Terrance (the scribe with a pleasant, open face), and Steven – the Guardian of the Future.
But then Tom Baker expressly appeared in TV Action!, and we still consider that one valid.
- CzechOut
Yeah, this is clearly a case like The Brilliant Book 2011, or The Making of Doctor Who. The whole thing's out of bounds, because it's not genuine narrative. It's just got the veneer of narrative that wraps around a big ol' info dump about the history of televised narratives. It's basically like a clip show, where, to the extent there's new narrative, it serves merely to create a frame around which characters can "remember" events that happened on television.
There's no substantive new narrative here, and what's here is a contrivance to allow the retelling of televised narratives.
In the same way that we do not allow the reporting of the in-universe framing device of The Making of Doctor Who, we won't allow the framing elements from this work, either.
The Doctor: His Life and Times is a non-fiction book, it will bear {{non-fiction}}, and it can be used as a primary source only on real world pages. It is not a valid source for the writing of in-universe pages.
- Revanvolatrelundar
No-ones addressed the main point of what Mewiet was trying to ask. A short story was released alongside the reference book, which, as well as promoting the book, is an in-universe story in itself.
Personally, I would have already made an article for the story myself, but since there's a thread open disputing whether we should cover it or not, perhaps it's better that a discussion should be held first.
Just to put it out there, I'm not talking in any way about including The Doctor: His Life and Times, just the short story: "The Book".
A link to the story can be found here:
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:142281
All the infoboxes have no border, are on the left, and the text doesn't wrap around them. Is this an error, or just a midstage for a new design?
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:142372
Okay, I've noticed something odd that seems to have been overlooked for years. Although some early BFs like Storm Warning have plot summaries, September 2012's Gods and Monsters is (at least in the main range) the last audio to even have a "to be added" plot section. And even that one was only added nearly a year after the fact in June 2013 in this diff!
Why is this? I'd wager because {{audio story/preload}} does not include the section. Tardis:Format for audio stories requires it, but the preload template never had a plot section from the start. Of course, as we treat all media equally, there is absolutely no reason to have plot summaries in other media but not audios.
Because of this, no audio stories from the past year even have that blank section to encourage users to fill them. I'm just about to add plot sections to all of them, but could I request that an admin add such a section to {{audio story/preload}}? Thanks.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:142381
Hello,
I wanted to ask you if this community would be interested in helping us improve search suggestions by participating in a little experiment? As part of our constant effort to improve this facet of our search functionality, we want to try out some alternate methods. If you agree, we will try out these changes here and measure the results.
The testing period will last between two to four weeks.
During that period you will see the following improvements: much faster search suggestions and a different look for the way they appear.
The possible drawbacks are: search suggest will only provide namespace suggestions (no images or categories), and any new articles created during the test will not automatically appear in search suggest (although we can manually add them if that will help).
- CzechOut
Please look for a Special:Contact on this today, as I have to ask a question that undoubtedly crosses the boundaries of a signed non-disclosure agreement. In the meantime, this thread will be temporarily closed.
- Semanticdrifter
Per our discussion, we have gone ahead and included this community. Just a heads up that this experiment will be going live this week and is scheduled to run through the end of the year. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:142564
Although most of the fundamentals of the site's customisation passed a recent Wikia Staff review, one of our more unique elements did not.
Those little tags that appear outside the normal space of the article — {{wikipediainfo}}, {{stub}}, {{ImageLink}}, {{lock}} — these all have to move to another location within the normal content area.
As someone who almost never looks at the site when logged out, I hadn't noticed they were impinging on the background advertisement that logged-out users regularly see.
Most likely these little links will be moved to the bottom of the article, but if you have any ideas for a better location, go ahead and add your suggestion below.
- SOTO
Huh, I was wondering where those went. Curiously, I just opened the site on IE (only because Chrome's frozen), and decided to check if this was true before logging in. Now I don't know if this is just because it's Internet Explorer, but I don't see any advertisements where the page tags were. I see ads only up top and under the search bar. Logged out on IE at least, that spot's free.
Like so:
- CzechOut
Yeah, the full page background ads are intermittent, and are largely there when a company wants to push a big launch. They're frequently there for movie and game launches. It's possible there's not something there today. However, it was the only real Terms of Use note that I got from sannse, who was able to demonstrate the effect instantly for me. it's no biggie, and in fact solving this problem instantly fixes some other issues we're having with those tags in MyWikia and Wikiamobile.
That said, I will of course miss them, because I put a heck of a lot of work into those little buggers and I thought they were damned elegant on the desktop version of the site.
- CzechOut
Hmmmm, looking at your demonstration page there has confused me. Here's the image I got, and you can clearly see they're pushing Sims3 at the moment:
- SOTO
That's odd... I just logged out on Chrome. Same thing. I guess it must be based on region.
Anyway, back to the tags, I'm getting mixed messages. Are we keeping them, but moving them somewhere else? I suppose this also solves another problem, being that the tags (with the sides, obviously) now completely disappear when you have the site open either on a small window, or on a small screen altogether like a phone.
Can't we create smaller, more square-like tabs, and put them in the right hand top corner? That is, somewhere around where the page count is — above the text, but to the right of the title. Putting the tabs as they are sideways just wouldn't fit the space.
- CzechOut
No to your last paragraph, because that's outside of the content area, where Wikia don't want us to tread. It's gotta be between the titles and the languages line.
My initial thought is that we are keeping the tags. But they will probably be rotated 90 degrees so that they're horizontal, as they are in Monobook.
However, I suppose that all options are on the table, and if we need to switch to another format, then I suppose we will.
- Tangerineduel
These tags did indeed not really work on the MyWikia app, but the app has a few odd issues, so I never really considered it a big problem.
Will the tags just be the same size, though horizontal at the bottom of the page? As they're not large that's going to create a bit of dead space around them isn't it?
Could we perhaps place them within the Category area so that it says "Tags:" and then "Category/Categories:", so that they're a little more tidy?
With regard to the image link could a link relating to that go within the infoboxes? Or would the infobox not be the best place for this sort of link?
- CzechOut
These are all really good questions for which I don't have great answers at the moment. It's not super high priority, but it is high-ish priority. I'm thinking that the various types of tag may be handled differently.
Yes, other wikis do indeed incorporate such an image link in their infoboxes, and that's definitely a possibility. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that's the thing that makes the most sense, and this will probably be done, unless someone has an objection.
{{Wikipediainfo}} is a big more of a puzzle, since most of the pages that use that template typically don't have an infobox. Maybe it could be more like {{wiktionary}} — something floated in the body of the text.
{{lock}} and {{protect}} could simply be eliminated altogether, because that's the sort of thing that really doesn't matter to the reader at all. Whether an article is protected is of zero interest to the general consumer of the site, so there's really no point in putting it up. Especially since none of us on the admin side of the street uniformly use the tag — or remember to take it down afterwards.
The stubs I just don't know about. They may have to just be totally reworked. If anyone has an idea about these, please don't keep it a secret.
Now having said all that, I guess another possibility is that I could just create a template that effectively adds another thing shaped just like the category box, and stack it on top of things. So you could have:
Little icons stacked sideways hereC A T E G O R I E S : CategoriesSMW INFO - Tangerineduel
That, the last option with the template looking like the category bar seems like the nicest looking solution. Then we can have all the stub and other tags all lined up at the bottom of the page. Also arranged like links to categories (which is essentially what they are) makes sense from a new user POV.
- Digifiend
I was looking at that stub template just now and came across an issue with the notification header on the edit page when the page is protected.
- CzechOut
Well, that's a little off-topic for this thread, but, still, what's the browser type and long-form version number you're using?
- Digifiend
Chrome Version 30.0.1599.69 m
- CzechOut
Thanks for that bug report. We admin probably don't look at pages from the non-admin perspective enough. It would have taken me ages — and indeed, it's already taken me years — to notice that flaw. You should find it corrected for you now such that you can clearly read the automatically-generated MediaWiki message.
- Shambala108
I like the idea of putting the tags just above the categories. It's a handy location that doesn't obstruct anything.
- Digifiend
Yep, that's more like it, thanks CzechOut. And I also agree with Tangerineduel's suggestion about the tags. Rotate the relevant images like File:StubTab.png 90 degrees and put it at the bottom. Of course, there is the question of how it'd look on Mobile and MyWikia.
- CzechOut
My initial fix to above bug report was too broad. I'm withdrawing the fix until a later time, when I can study it more closely. But it is on the to-do list.
Now, back to your regularly scheduled thread about the future of tags on the wiki.
- Paulisthewalrus
I moved the out-of-borders templates on my Wikia to the bottom, but I imagine that you all would be against that,
- CzechOut
Why would you gather that? That's pretty much what we've been discussing. But all locations are on the table right now.
- Paulisthewalrus
Well, at first I was against the bottom but it works pretty well. It's like those templates you guys put at the bottom of pages for that say like "First Doctor Aliens" and such, it all fits pretty well.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:142592
While I'm liaising with Wikia staff on the structure of the new facelift, there's something that all of you can help with.
What's going to happen with the design is that the front page will link to topic-specific pages called Transmats. These transmits will then offer a range of jumping=off points for various subjects. Each one of these transmits will have one randomised section that will produce a different featured article about that subject on each page load.
And this is where you come in. We need to find 25 of our best articles to populate each of the following templates:
- Template:Transmat:Doctor Who
- Template:Transmat:Torchwood
- Template:Transmat:SJA
- Template:Transmat:K9
- Template:Transmat:Characters
- Template:Transmat:Species
- Template:Transmat:Technology
- Template:Transmat:Locations
Articles for each one of the four television shows — Doctor Who, Torchwood, SJA and K9 — should be a mixture of television stories, crew members, and terminology.
Each one of these templates comes with an example of how to fill it out. But if you get lost, take a look at the instructions at {{feature}}.
For reasons I can't disclose, we've got three days to get 25 articles for each one of the 8 transmats. If you have any questions, feel free to leave them below.
- Thunderush
Planet of the Dead has a very extensively written article that I've personally laboured over. I'll also put Davros into the list.
EDIT: My previous response was made late at night when I was hazy and unable to apparently read the instructions.
- SOTO
I'm fairly sure the implication is that we're supposed to add them ourselves... Hence why he specified that we should respond with questions, and not suggestions. He even gave us instructions on how to add.
So if you want to add those to the templates above, go for it! Obviously, if they're bad decisions, they'll eventually get removed. They look fine to me, though.
- CzechOut
That's exactly right, SOTO. Everyone should feel free to just start adding things!
After a review of what's been done so far, I'd say that first I'm very impressed! Good articles have for the most part been chosen.
If I have niggles they are these:
- The default size of the picture will be 400px in order to handle videos. This means that we're going to need more copy in general than what's been put on offer so far. Aim for 4 or 5 sentences for your leads.
- Make sure you're putting articles in the right template. {{Transmat:Doctor Who}} is only for stories, terminology and crew. Behind the scenes stuff, in other words. Things like sonic screwdriver would go in {{Transmat:Technology}}, companion would go in {{Transmat:Characters}} and Time Lord would go in {{Transmat:Species}}.
Changes to {{feature}} based upon your early usage:
- {{dab away}} has been added to {{{title}}} handling. So you now can enter, say, Planet of Giants (TV story), and it'll strip the (TV story) bit and link correctly as Planet of Giants.
- Template still assumes that you're using a .jpg for {{{image}}}. However, videos are preferred. To use a video, add the variable ext and set it to blank. So,
{{feature|title=whatever|image=whatever|ext=|lead=whatever}}
- CzechOut
Okay, we're getting close to the big unveiling, so we really need people working on finding our best articles.
Just in case the idea was a little abstract over the weekend, you can take a look at the (roughly) finished concept at Transmat:Doctor Who. You can hit reload a few times to watch the main article change That'll give you a better idea of how your work will look.
- CzechOut
I think we probably have enough done on Template:Transmat:Doctor Who. Let's set our sites on getting the other seven at a working level. I think we can reasonably shoot for getting just 10 entries in each of the other seven templates by tomorrow, we'll be able to unveil the whole thing as a genuinely working feature by tomorrow. Thanks :)
- AdricLovesNyssa
Why is it so wrong to have Charley Pollard not on the companion, she along with Hex, Evelyn and Lucie are the most expanded upon audio companions out there, All official media has India Fisher, Philip Oliver, Maggie Stables and Sheridan Smith respectively as their appearance based on, especially in the webcast of real time for Evelyn
- CzechOut
What we're trying to do right now is to illustrate articles very clearly with images that are mainly video, and which are unambiguously that of the character, not the actor.
It is a matter of debate whether any of these audio-only actors actually look like the character they portray, since it is demonstrably evident that:
- Erimem is absolutely dissimilar to her portrayer
- Lisa Bowerman has not been the universal model for Benny
- India Fisher has obviously aged considerably to the extent that she simply can't look like she's portrayed on the cover of her most recent Companion Chronicle, given the time frame of that story
But the real clincher is that we would never accept a current image of Tom Baker or Colin Baker as being the Fourth Doctor or Sixth Doctor, so why in the world do we accept current images of audio-only companions? Indeed, when you get into the guest stars and incidental roles, no one would seriously allege that the actors look like those characters. The covers of Big Finish audios use the images of the actors in order to sell the product. The Black Guardian doesn't actually look like David Troughton, but his face is on the cover in order to attract an audience that knows what his face looks like.
This is sorta the new front page of the wiki. We want it to be bright, bold, uncontroversial — and where possible moving — none of which is really possible with audio-only people. It isn't about being "fair" to all media. It's about creating something visually stimulating that will keep people on the wiki pressing buttons.
- Cult_Of_Skaro
CzechOut wrote: But the real clincher is that we would never accept a current image of Tom Baker or Colin Baker as being the Fourth Doctor or Sixth Doctor, so why in the world do we accept current images of audio-only companions? Indeed, when you get into the guest stars and incidental roles, no one would seriously allege that the actors look like those characters. The covers of Big Finish audios use the images of the actors in order to sell the product. The Black Guardian doesn't actually look like David Troughton, but his face is on the cover in order to attract an audience that knows what his face looks like.
(raises hand)
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:142889
As one of the biggest wikis using SMW, you should be on http://smw.referata.com/wiki/Special:BrowseData/Sites?Public=1&Language=English&Status=Active
And your WikiApiary.com page wants more detail.
Good luck! -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 12:16, October 11, 2013 (UTC)
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:143364
We now have two pages describing the same character: Ferain and Valyes both refer to the unnamed Time Lord seen in Genesis of the Daleks. Obviously, contradictions between stories in different media are nothing new but I think the two articles should be merged in some way or otherwise reconciled.
- JagoAndLitefoot
When was this unnamed time lord identified as Valyes? I know Valyes from the audios but I don't recall him being identified with the TV character.
- Revanvolatrelundar
Valyes was named as him in Gallifrey: Ascension. Personally I don't think we should merge the articles, but should have some kind of behind the scenes note explaining that there are two characters claiming to be the man from Genesis.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Well, it is not impossible for one Time Lord to go by two different names between regenerations, like Straxus/Kotris. Especially if he works for the CIA, so he might use different names as part of his job. I don't really see anything there other than the name that would conflict. And there are other pages on things/persons/concepts that have had more than one name.
Personally, I would merge them at the name used more often (probably Valyes?) and redirect the other there, with both names mentioned in the lead.
- JagoAndLitefoot
This is how I think the merged page could look like: User:JagoAndLitefoot/Valyes.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Also, if we don't merge the pages, we would still need to decide which of them to link to from Genesis of the Daleks (TV story).
If it were a more distinct character with a backstory that would conflict with that of Valyes, I would be against the merger, but the only actual part of the current article on Ferain distinct from the one on Valyes is this sentence:
"He later had Leela arrested after she used Castellan codes to investigate the House of Lungbarrow on Gallifrey. (PROSE: Lungbarrow)"
I haven't read Lungbarrow, but this suggests that his part is quite minor and does not conflict with anything we know about Valyes.
- Revanvolatrelundar
The problem is that Ferain, if you'll pardon my French, is a complete arsehole in Lungbarrow, and is completely different in character to Valyes. Ferain works for the CIA in Lungbarrow, and always has. Valyes on the other hand was part of the High Council.
Ferain does have quite a large part in Lungbarrow, but can quite easily be summed up with the entry you quoted there.
It is really quite difficult to work out what to do with this on normal articles, "Valyes/Ferain went to Skaro" just doesn't look proffessional somehow, yet is the most accurate way of conveying narrative truth.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Couldn't he have become part of the High Council after his service in the CIA? Also, any differences in characterization can be easily explained by the versions in Lungbarrow and in Gallifrey being different incarnations of the same Time Lord. And I found Valyes to be a bit of an arsehole in Gallifrey too (he sided with Darkel and Pandora, after all).
- Revanvolatrelundar
I read Lungbarrow this January, and the character is still pretty fresh in my mind. This is set quite a few years after Genesis of the Daleks, and Ferain claims to have always worked for the CIA, so it makes it unlikely that it is Valyes.
Lungbarrow does contradict Gallifrey in other areas: Leela and Romana first meet in Lungbarrow, yet do the same in Neverland.
Trying to fit Lungbarrow and Ascension together is pretty much impossible in this regard. I wasn't particularly a fan of Gary Russell's insistence on making contradicting Lungbarrow, especially since I'd loved the book. It goes into the realms of speculation to merge Valyes and Ferain. It's the rules of the wiki to keep things as accurate as possible, and merging the two articles would go against that.
It sucks, admittedly, but that's the case with this one.
- JagoAndLitefoot
I've searched through Lungbarrow and the only source for this being Ferain is this quote:
'Do I know you?' said the Doctor. 'Didn't we meet in the trenches of Skaro?' 'Ferain,' said Romana. 'Director of Allegiance at the CIA.'
Ferain doesn't actually acknowledge it himself. I haven't listened to Ascension yet, but our page on Valyes says that Narvin sent him to Skaro in disguise.
Therefore, is it possible to conclude that Valyes was actually disguised as Ferain?
- Revanvolatrelundar
He isn't named for much of the book, I'll grant you.
You are delving in the realms of speculation to presume that Valyes was disguised as Ferain. Without a narrative stating that this is the case there's no way we can write it into the wiki.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Is something like this OK?
"According to one account, Ferain encountered the Fourth Doctor in the trenches of the Dalek homeworld Skaro, giving him a mission to destroy the Daleks. (PROSE: Lungbarrow) However, according to another account, this was actually another Time Lord, Valyes, in disguise. (AUDIO: Ascension)"
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:143558
Wikia are giving us a great opportunity to increase interest in the site at around the time of the 50th anniversary. Not only are they helping us with a Wikia-wide trivia contest, but they're going to help us host a Wikia-wide awards contest next year!
We've participated in these kind of things lately, like the Fantasy Food Fight and the Starship Smackdown contest. But it's always required going to another wiki to play.
Well, now it's time for Wikia to come to us.
Modeled on this contest at the Game of Thrones Wiki, the idea is a sort of "Academy Awards for Doctor Who".
We come up with categories for awards, plus nominees in those categories, and then the good people working with Kate.moon — yep, the same people who helped us spruce up the front page recently — help us design the contest pages and push the contest Wikia-wide.
So let's get on it! What are your ideas for awards categories? Best companion? Best Virgin Adventures novel? Best audio? And who are your nominees?
I don't really have an idea yet of how many categories we can have, so let's just dream big. Put down as many awards categories as you can think of, and we'll choose the best of 'em later!
- Bubblecamera
I don't want to suggest any nominees yet because I feel it's a bit early for that, but here are my ideas for story categories:
- Best TV story per Doctor
- Best novel per range (e.g. NA, MA, EDA, PDA, NSA)
- Best Big Finish audio per range (e.g. main range, Companion Chronicles, Bernice Summerfield, Jago & Litefoot, etc.)
- Best DWM comic story per Doctor
and probably some more that I'll think of later.
- Gallifrey102
- Best Male Character [other than the Doctor.]
- Best Female Semi-regular Character
- Best TV Story
- Best Spin-off Media Story
- Best Female Guest Character
- Best Male Guest Character
- Best Double Act [I can see a lot Bob Holmes pairs here]
- Best Series 7 [Part 2?] Character
- Best Cliffhanger
- Best Individual Villain
- Best New Series Companion
- Best Classic Companion
- Best Season
- Easiest Solution To A Story
- Saddest Moment
- Most Overall Comedic Story
- The Esquire Awards (Sexiest Male/Female Characters)
- The OTP Award
- Best Potential Movie Episode
- Best Example of Cinematography
- Best Costume of Any Character
- Best Director
- Best Special Feature on a Home Release
- Best Example of Editing
- Best Episode Filmed Overseas
- Best Example of Makeup and Hairstyling
- Best Soundtrack
- Best Set
- Best Mini-Episode
- Best Visual Effect
- Favourite Writer of a TV Story
- Best Adaptation [things like Human Nature, etc.]
- Greatest Moment of the Past 50 Years
- Favourite Monster
- Most Desired Missing Story
- CzechOut
Good suggestions, guys! Keep 'em coming!
- CzechOut
I'd just throw in a few myself here:
- Best TARDIS interior
- Brachaki's original for An Unearthly Child (episode)
- Newbery's adaptation of Brachaki, seen in most First Doctor stories
- General Second Doctor
- One of the many Third Doctor designs
- Fourth and early Fifth Doctor
- Season 14 "secondary" console room.
- The Five Doctors (TV story) forward
- Doctor Who (1996)
- Ed Thomas RTD era
- Ed Thomas Eleventh Doctor
- Michael Pickwoad Eleventh Doctor
- Best shade of Tardis blue
- Spearhead
- Robot
- Logopolis
- Fenric
- Doctor Who (1996)
- Father's Day
- The Eleventh Hour
- Best TARDIS not belonging to the Doctor
- Monk's
- The Rani's
- The Master's
- Lady Serena's (World Game)
- Battle TARDIS
- Compassion
- Best companion exit
- Ian and Barbara
- Zoe and Jamie
- Jo
- Sarah
- Rose
- Martha
- Donna
- Amy and Rory
- Best TARDIS interior
- CzechOut
- Best TV story with a social message (category from MTV Awards):
- Best gunslinger
- Best original song
- Best re-use of an existing song:
- AdricLovesNyssa
May I add some Big finish stuff
Best BF Audio Story Best BF Companion Best BF Writer Best BF Villain/Monster Best BF Spin-Off Best BF Range Best BF story arc Best BF Plot Twist/Game Changer Best BF Spin Off Theme Tune
- CzechOut
Probably best if we have questions that allow for Big Finish answers, rather than splitting off things by media. We know by previous polls on our front page that practically no casual visitors know anything about other media, so categories comprised solely of non-TV information won't fly with the general Wikia audience.
- Paulisthewalrus
- Best one-off companion (HG, Rose's mum, Specials, etc)
- Best Sarah Jane Adventure's episode
- Best Spin-off (SJA, Torchwood, PROBE, K9, K9 and Company)
- Best character death
- Best pure-historical story
- Gallifrey102
- "Best Fan Video"? Bit risky as most of them probably aren't licensed. Still going to suggest it, as we can always "just not do it".
- Most Desired Historical Event Not Yet Covered (i.e., things from history the show hasn't "done" yet.)
- Most Wanted Character Reprisal (not counting Sarah Jane, or anyone else that's appeared in both periods of the show.)
- Most Well-Achieved Planet (things like Mars, Thoros Beta, that sort of thing.)
- Most Underrated Story
- Actor Most Desired For The Doctor (basically, which actor do we collectively agree would be the best choice for The Doctor, hypothetically. Or would it seem inconsiderate given the fact that a new one's about to début?)
- What about Best Actress to be the Doctor? Some might say it's a bit silly, but a lot of us might still have one in mind anyway.
- Most Desired Writer (any person who's written/who writes a film/TV show/book that we most want to write an episode. Given that some have been approached in the past...)
- ^The same as above, but for film/TV director.
- SOTO
- Best original song
- Best re-use of an existing song:
The Long Song also has to be under "best original song", if there isn't a limit.
Also, let's not forget Torchwood's great existing-song use, such as "Hope There's Someone" (Random Shoes, I think), and — even better — "Górecki" (They Keep Killing Suzie) Górecki always gets to me, every time I watch the episode.
- SOTO
CzechOut wrote: Probably best if we have questions that allow for Big Finish answers, rather than splitting off things by media. We know by previous polls on our front page that practically no casual visitors know anything about other media, so categories comprised solely of non-TV information won't fly with the general Wikia audience.
Good point, but don't we also want to give other media a chance? When grouped with TV stuff, a lot of casual viewers will simply go with what they know. We certainly shouldn't have multiple questions limited to one medium, but just one or two audio-related questions sounds fine (and the same for every other medium, of course). You know just the basics, like best story of that medium.
We should probably also have three companion categories:
- Best "classic series" companion
- Best "new series" companion
and
- Best companion original to media other than television
(could do with a rewording)
You know what, if some viewers can't answer a small percentage of questions, that's still fine. It might even get them to want to know about the options, maybe even get a few comics/books/audios. We still need a make sure that a large majority of the questions can be answered by your average viewer, but one or two exceptions seems fine to me.
- ROSSYBALBOWER
Best Companion
Best Doctor Best Spin-off Series
- Tangerineduel
- Best pre-1996 audio story
- Best video drams; BBV & Reeltime productions
- Auton Trilogy
- P.R.O.B.E. series
- Everything in the Category:Reeltime Pictures video dramas
- Everything in the Category:BBV video dramas
- Basically everything in the Category:Direct-to-video stories
- Best Toy Range
- Best Category:Doctor Who licensed food
- Big Brother 99
This episode/movie is going to be the saddest one ever, we say good by to Matt Smith as The Doctor and welcome Peter as the new Doctor. But he can always be the doctor due a time paradox mishap and that will give Peter the boot, but fans won't have that, due to it might have fans of Peter.
This is what I am going to have on the anniversary and to have my big and little sister who are fans of the series like I am.
- Chips
- Ice Cream
- Coffee in a doctor who coffee mug
- Doctor who's fish fingers and custard
- Apples
Matt Smith is going to say goodbye to the franchise due to it might have to with the contract he had when it was sign years ago. Plus I do think that Robert Pattinson should be the newest Doctor. Due to it will make the franchise look better but that is my opinion others might say different.
So thanks for letting me rant/get it off my shoulders.
- CzechOut
Just to keep everyone abreast of where we are on this, the awards are likely being pushed back to December by Wikia. Although I can't speak directly for them, the apparent plan is that the Trivia round will happen in mid-late November, and this concept will go as more of a celebration of the new Doctor in December. Nevertheless, it will go forward so please continue sending in your suggestions for categories!
- Gallifrey102
- Most creative use of a concept (things like the TARDIS materialising inside itself).
- Most wanted monster match-up (eg: Weeping Angels/Vashtna Nerada)
- Big Brother 99
- Best Actor/Actress
- Best Character
- Best Bad Guy
- Best Doctor
- Best Director
- Best Producer
- Best Set Designs
- Best Episode Concept
- Best Script
- Best OMG Moment
- Best Drama Moment
- Best Line from an episode
- Best Photography
- Best Remember able moment
- Best Music
- Best Costume design
- Best Action Scene
- Best Companion
- Best Tool (Screwdriver)
- Best tardis design
- CzechOut
Just got word today from Kate[1] that we're pushing this back to 2014. We're going to use it in the fallow first half of the year when Doctor Who slips from everyone's radar between the Christmas special and the start of series 8. We know we're going to get a lot of eyeballs on the site around Christmas. So it makes more sense to use it to try to drum up some business in those "lean months".
And, as it turns out, we're going to need the extra time. Just look upthread. We could go in scores of different directions, so we're going to need some time to whittle this down.
There's also a pretty heavy graphical burden with this thing. If you look at the Game of Thrones example, we're going to have to provide a boatload of images.
So here's the game plan:
- Suggestions for awards categories will be left open until 1 December. We then vote on the categories. Whichever get the highest vote count will make it into final awards contest.[2]
- Once the categories are finalised, we'll then hold nominations. The top six nominees in each category will then become part of the final awards contest. Nominations will close on 7 January 2014.
- At this point, we go to work. We'll need to find pictures for each and every nominee — which will probably be something like 100-200 images, since we'll need to find a picture for the nomination page, and then a different picture for each nominee for the winner's page, in case that nominee wins.
- The whole contest should be presented to Kate by 21 January 2014, allowing her to run it at any point thereafter.
- ↑ Who's Kate.moon? I keep mentioning her, but I've never properly introduced her. She's the community development manager for the Entertainment group. So she's high-ranking in the particular part of Wikia — or to use the fancy word, vertical — that Tardis is in. Put simply, if your wiki has to do with television or film, she's who ya want in your corner.
- ↑ The exact number of categories has not yet been finalised, but will be by 1 December.
- Imamadmad
Just out of curiosity, does that mean that Tardis Data Core won't be doing anything to celebrate the actual 50th anniversary on the 50th anniversary, even just within the wiki itself and not through a special Wikia event?
- Paulisthewalrus
Most wanted Classic Series monster for return
(Raston Warrior, Celestial Toymaker, Mondas Cybermen (?))
- CornettoFan450
- Best Theme (from separate incarnations)
- Best Sonic Screwdriver Model
- Best Planet Design
- Best Monster/Creature Design
- Best Doctor Wardrobe
- Best Regeneration Scene
- Best Doctor (1963-1989)
- Best Doctor (2005-)
- Best TV Special
(And the obvious)
- Best Episode (1963-1989)
- Best Episode (2005-)
I don't feel like making up a nomination list, I truly believe that should be up those of a higher editing power (admins) I just feel like a few of these should see at the least see the light of the cutting room floor
- Dylanboyles
Sorry if someone has already said this, but how about
Best actor with the role of the Doctor Best actor with the role of a companion Best actor with the role of a villain.
- CornettoFan450
That ties into best doctor
- Maiku Wotaharu
Classic series companion or associate who should be revisited in new series
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:144117
Tre is a Matrix projection of a future incarnation of Romana that assists Romana II in Gallifrey VI. While she isn't stated to be Romana III specifically in narrative, she is called "Romana III" in the behind the scenes audio ("Tre" is a name she uses to distinguish between herself and her previous incarnation). Juliet Landau's appearance on the covers also matches Romana III's description in the EDAs (straight, long, dark hair with a fringe). She also actually has green eyes like the EDA Romana III on the cover of Luna Romana. Would this be enough to consider Tre and Romana III to be the same incarnation?
- 86.178.205.75
Dammit, I've definitely read something somewhere recently that said they were different people... SFX? Vortex? Anybody else think they saw this?86.178.205.75talk to me 19:54, November 1, 2013 (UTC)
- Bubblecamera
James Goss said "there have been other future Romanadvoratrelundars (remember Paul Cornell’s brilliantly glacial flapper?)" in October's Vortex when talking about Tre.
So, the author who created Tre considers the official Romana III to be an "other" Romana. I think that's enough to say they're different incarnations, similar though they definitely are.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:144224
In just a few short weeks, Doctor Who fans everywhere will be celebrating the 50th Anniversary episode of the programme. If you’re like me, you’ll want to toast this milestone with a few other like-minded fans.
With that in mind, Wikia is hosting its first Doctor Who inspired Food Fiction challenge, asking the experts within the TARDIS Data Core community to help us create the ultimate Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Party Menu!
Here’s how to enter:[[edit] | [edit source]]
1. You need to be logged into your Wikia account. If you don’t have one, create an account here.
2. Create an original menu, including one dish from each of the following categories:
- Beverages
- Dishes/meals
- Sweets/snacks
- “Alien” foods
We consulted with Shambala108 for these categories, just to make sure we get a nice variety. For ideas on what to submit, check out the food and beverage category.
3. Post your menu in the comments below. Remember, the more realistic and original- the better! If one of the foods listed doesn't have an entry, create a new page for the food.
Here’s my menu:
4. We will accept entries until November 11. Wikia staff members will tally up the top entries and will create a new blog with polls on Recipes Wikia for everyone to vote! The polls will close on November 18 and we will post the winning menu.
Excited to see what you all come up with for your menus!
- CzechOut
Here's mine:
- Bubble Shock! (even if it would bring the Bane down around us!)
- Kronkburgers
- Evelyn Smythe's chocolate cake
- Riverfruit
- Shambala108
- TheThirteenth
- Phant0mqueen
- Tybort
- 75.70.33.109
Fish fingers
Custard
Candy
- TimeLadyoftheTardis
Banana milkshakes
fish fingers and custard jammie dodgers Talefshrew
- SOTO
- Beverage: Cocoa
- Dish: Protein One with just a dash of Three
- Snack: Celery
- Alien food: Brain parasite (hey, I had to be polite!)
- Mewiet
- Fizzade
- Soufflés (could also be a dessert depending on what type you make)
- Tabetha Pond's smiling apples
- Karmine pudding
- Marino312
- Beverage: Broth of Oblivion
- Dish: Potential energy
- Snack:Rolo
- Alien Food: Rakweed
- Atomic Angel
- Beverage: Milkshake
- Dish: Salmon with Jelly blobs on top
- Snack: Fish custard
- Alien Food: Rakweed
- Big Brother 99
Mine would be:
Beverage: Wipply Wopply Timey Wimy Vodka
Dish: Stream Vegetables with Fish and Gravy
Snack: Angel hair and Fish finger's and Custard.
- Violet1394
- TheBrokenDoorKnob
Mine would be:
Beverage: blood meal: human flesh snack: seaweed and fish alien food: (alien chicken eggs:) chuchucluck eggs
- CzechOut
Guys,
Thanks for your enthusiastic response! Coupla points, though, that we may not have made clear in the instructions:
- Please do not nominate what other people have already nominated. Once an item has been chosen it's already in the mix. So make sure you look at what others have chosen!
- Try to pick foods that can be easily illustrated, either by a screenshot from the show, or an image from a comic book. Food primarily on audio or prose might be acceptable as long as it's an ordinary, real life food we can find a picture of.
- Please do not make up items of your own: we're looking for things that have actually appeared in a professionally published story. Chuchucluck eggs don't exist in the DWU.
- Please don't combine foods that haven't actually been combined in DWU stories. Fish fingers and custard is a thing; fish fingers and ice cream isn't.
- 86.182.176.53
Bubble Shock (Invasion of the Bane)
Kronkburgers (The Long Game) Fishfingers and custard (The Eleventh Hour) Blue fruit (The Rings of Akhaten)
- Tim Lemmens
I think Jelly Babies should definitly be on the list. And Jammy dodgers perhaps. Oh, and bananas of course.
- Aochider
- Beverage: Soda (with a Special Straw to add more fizz) (The Impossible Astronaut)
- Meal: Your choice of millions of flavors of compressed food bars from the TARDIS's Food Machine (The Dead Planet)
- Sweets: Jelly Babies
- Alien Food: Specially-Bred Fungus Steak (The Green Death)
- Shambala108
As stated just above, this is a nomination process. Please do not nominate items that have already been nominated. And please put your nominations in the specific categories given at the top of the post.
- Asnow89
The submission period is now CLOSED. You can vote for the final menu HERE!
- Asnow89
Hey everyone! Here is the FINAL MENU! Check it out :)!
- Aochider
The menu is very... interesting. I wouldn't expect anything less from a Doctor Who-themed menu, though!
Glad to see one of my nominations (or a variation of it, I suppose) made it to the voting stage, at least. I apologize for reposting "Jelly Babies," I was confused about the rules. I couldn't think of any deserts that were not posted already, and the rules said we needed one from each category. The rest of mine were original, though!
- Marino312
And now we go about making these delicacies & eating them!
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:144551
Army of Ghosts and Doomsday mostly just refer to the building known in the real world as One Canada Square as "Torchwood Tower" or "Torchwood", but does any DWU media other than Ghosts and Doomsday actually define the area by that name? Obviously in the real world, "Canary Wharf" is an area of London, but the usage in Ghosts, Doomsday and subsequent Torchwood media with the Battle of Canary Wharf is clearly using "Canary Wharf" as a synonym for the skyscraper Torchwood One is based. If other DWU media don't make the distinction between the two definitions of "Canary Wharf", or make note of the other skyscrapers near Torchwood Tower, might I suggest the two be merged?
This is exactly how Army of Ghosts defines it, by the way.
- Yvonne: We've been getting warning signs for years. A radar black spot. So we built this place: Torchwood Tower. The breach was 600 feet above sea level. It was the only way to reach it.
- Tenth Doctor: You built a skyscraper just to reach a spacial disturbance? How much money have you got?
- Yvonne: Enough.
- Jackie: Hold on a minute. We're in Canary Wharf. Must be. This building, it's Canary Wharf.
- Yvonne: Well, that is the public name for it. But to those in the know, it's Torchwood.
- CzechOut
Yanno, I never interpreted that scene in the way you are. I never thought Jackie was naming the building as Canary Wharf. I do that all the time. I would absolutely say, while in the Empire State Building, "This building, it's New York", in the sense that it's emblematic of New York. Not that it's literally the totality of New York.
So I'm not sure that I agree with the entire premise of your question.
But, having said that, I'll look around for more references. I'd think they're around.
- CzechOut
Heh, yeah there's tons of hits for Canary Wharf.
- CzechOut
- EarthWorld
- The Last Resort
- The Tomorrow Windows
- System Shock
- Millennial Rites (significant references, distinguishing between the Wharf and Canary Wharf Tower)
- Burning Heart
- Transit
- Iceberg
- Verdigris
- Tybort
OK. Pulling the request for a possible merger.
CzechOut wrote: Yanno, I never interpreted that scene in the way you are. I never thought Jackie was naming the building as Canary Wharf. I do that all the time. I would absolutely say, while in the Empire State Building, "This building, it's New York", in the sense that it's emblematic of New York. Not that it's literally the totality of New York.
I can see that the wording could mean that. But still, even if you could interpret Jackie meaning the whole of the area, Yvonne seems to confirm in the following line that it's intended to refer to the tower.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:144567
Two pages exist for the same concept of a portable dimension-hopping device: medallion and dimensional transporter. Are either terms used in Doomsday or Journey's End or are both conjectural? If it's the latter, what would we do about that?
- Tybort
I misled. It's actually three. The above and dimension cannon (which I vaguely recall wasn't the same as the disc-medallion things, but I haven't watched series 4 recently enough to prove that).
- SOTO
Okay, first of all, "dimension cannon" is the only non-conjectural title between them. Except it's notably different to the other two/one:
- Basically, we've been building this, er, this travel machine, this, this er, dimension cannon, so I could. Well, so I could [..] come back.
So the dimension cannon was clearly built AFTER Doomsday. This is actually not reflected on the device's page, which treats it the same as the others. The BTS note at the bottom of dimensional transporter actually raises a good point – they have different physics because they're different devices.
As far as medallion and dimensional transporter, they seem to both be the same device used in Doomsday. This one, according to Pete, was developed by Pete's World's Torchwood. It could only transport one person at a time according to Mickey – though managed to do just fine when Pete rescued Rose at the end.
Clearly, between Doomsday and The Stolen Earth (welll, Turn Left), Torchwood tried to create another device – the dimension cannon – that would work in the new circumstances. It didn't work at first until Davros began to break the barriers between worlds with his Reality Bomb.
So we have two distinct devices here, even if one was based on the other. Basically, medallion and dimensional transporter need to be merged, and dimension cannon needs to be rewritten to reflect that it was NOT the device used in Doomsday.
- CzechOut
The best term of the ones we already have is clearly dimensional transporter. That's a literal description derived from the scripts. Mickey, while explaining what the thing does, says:
- "I could transport out of here, but it only carries one and I'm not leaving you."
So it transports between dimensions. Medallion is far too generic a term.
Another viable term, and one I actually like a bit better. is dimension hopper or maybe world hopper. This is derived from the Doctor's own speech to Jake:
- Doctor: "You can't just ... hop from one world to another. You can't."
- Jake: We just did. With these.
- SOTO
Those three pages still exist, and have remained separate into January 2016. What's our final take on this, so {{merge}} tags can be placed, at the very least?
- CzechOut
Medallion needs to be merged with Dimensional transporter, and any links from Medallion need to be actually changed to Dimensional transporter. Medallion is in no way right, and far too generic a term, in any case.
I do not believe "medallion" should redirect at all, in the end, because it has no basis in the script, and the concept of a medallion exists elsewhere in the DWU. (Remember that one link)
The page at dimension cannon, though, should not include information on the series 2 device. It can be mentioned and linked to, but it has been established in this discussion that the "dimension cannon" was a new piece of technology they created after Doomsday and before Turn Left.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:144721
To start with, just to make sure I'm not doing something wrong, we are free to talk about the prequel for the 50th released by the BBC on their official YouTube channel earlier today right? Anyway, just in case the strict rules surrounding the 50th extend to the prequel, and also for the sake of the people who have not yet watched it, I won't mention any specifics. However, the ending (including the credits) seems to have some strong implications for the way articles about the revived series Doctors are written, or should I say titled, especially when viewed with the end of The Name of the Doctor (TV story) in mind. So, in light of this new information, do we need to reconsider the naming of certain important articles on this wiki? This is really hard to explain without giving any of the events in the prequel away just in case, but hopefully you know what I mean.
- Imamadmad
I just saw that you actually embedded the prequel on the front page, so it must be safe to talk about. Ok, so if you haven't seen it, don't read what I am about to say. Basically, at the end we see the Eighth Doctor, Paul McGann, regenerate into what the end credits call "The War Doctor" played by John Hurt. Does this mean that now the pages for Doctors Nine, Ten, and Eleven should now be renamed to Ten, Eleven and Twelve respectively? Or maybe an alternate naming system needs to be used to avoid the confusion because of how everyone referred to those incarnations of the Doctor prior to this new in-universe proof. Or should the current numbering system be retained with Hurt just being sort of slotted in there but called the War Doctor, as he is credited at the end of the minisode?
- Shambala108
First of all, the prequel has been released, and so it does not violate Tardis:Spoiler policy, though it's kind of you to think of others who haven't seen it yet.
Second, if you head over to the talk page for War Doctor, you'll see that any changes will not be made until after the Nov. 23rd special airs. Basically what it comes down to is we don't have enough information to make changes at this point.
Hope this helps!
- Shambala108
Edit conflict: I was typing my answer while you were typing your second post. But basically the second part of my response should answer your question.
- Imamadmad
Thanks Shambala for your quick response! I'll go have a look at the discussion that's already up.
- JagoAndLitefoot
The numbering of the Doctors doesn't change, since the War Doctor didn't use the name "Doctor".
- Imamadmad
He didn't do what he did "in the name of the Doctor", although that doesn't mean his name wasn't the Doctor (it could be equated to doing something in the name of the King or in the name of a religious figure), however both the title card at the end of Name of the Doctor and the credits at the end of Night of the Doctor directly call him the Doctor/the War Doctor. Based on the evidence we have at the moment, it is most logical to conclude he is the Doctor, or at least goes by that name in some form or another.
- Wristwatch
Well, someone has already edited the page The Doctor, listing him as "The War Doctor", so I guess that is what the general public want him to be known as. So since it doesn't mess up the numbering, I am correct in saying that 9, 10, and 11 are still 9, 10, and 11. However, that may change after the 24th.
- 5.206.220.91
10 will always be ten-nant.
- 75.170.166.216
This is a slippery slope, you guys. The DWU is deep and open. Just because we've only seen a little over a dozen actors play the role doesn't guarantee that the writers won't come up with a clever way of working more incarnations in. But to label them by number in order of the actors is pretty confusing too-is Hurt 9 or 12? Do we have any guarantee that there was no incarnation before the one who looks like William Hartnell? Time travel is a strong trope and allows writers a lot of leeway.
- Shambala108
We do have several stories that confirm Hartnell as the first Doctor.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:144907
I've noticed that the monster from The Hollow Men (novel) has been called 'Jerak' on this, and other, entries (Jerak, Malus and Hakolian).
However, the correct name is 'Jerak', as spelled in the book.
- SOTO
Good find. In the future, you can simply add {{rename}} or {{speedy rename}} (instructions can be found in given links) at the top of the page. I added a {{rename}} for you.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:144977
The new "Science of Doctor Who" show, as most of us know, contains a couple of segments with The Doctor and Brian Cox in. These segments were in-universe, and were seperate from the lecture part of the show.
Do you think we should make a seperate, "story" page for this segment. It would go along the same lines as the linking material for Short Trips: Repercussions' linking material Repercussions... (short story), giving the Doctor/Cox segments the name The Science of Doctor Who.
This way we can link to the page better on in-universe articles. Thoughts anyone?
- Revanvolatrelundar
We're gonna end up having the same problem with tomorrow's The Ultimate Guide, which apparently has some Doctor/Clara segments.
- CzechOut
Absolutely not. These aren't meant as serious narrative. They are parodic in nature. This is stuff along the lines of the National Television Awards Sketch 2011 and the little sketch for the BAFTAs.
- Revanvolatrelundar
I really fail to see how The Ultimate Guide sketch was parodic...
- CzechOut
Parodic doesn't have to mean comical. Though certainly that's a common definition, a parody is really something that imitates something else, but obviously falls short of being that something else. You can have an otherwise serious "parody of a wedding" simply by having no one present with the legal authority to perform it.
The Ultimate Guide sketch is a parody of a television episode because it cannot exist without the bit in the middle. The Doctor and Clara are shown to reflect upon the contents of the documentary that comprises the bulk of the show, so it's like a regular episode of Doctor Who, but it's not a regular episode. The plot resolution comes through the conveyance of non-fictional information.
Put another way, it fails Rule #1 of our four little rules.
Here are some additional comments from Talk:The Ultimate Guide (2013 documentary):
- ...the sketch is an invalid source because it could not exist without reference to the documentary. It is thus essentially non-narrative. It's rather like all those puzzles in old Doctor Who Annuals which were introduced in an apparently in-universe way. Or The Making of Doctor Who, which has elements supposedly written by the Doctor. Or Tales from the TARDIS, a comic series in very early issues of Doctor Who Magazine which had the Fourth Doctor introducing a story, like The War of the Worlds or some old back-up comic strip from Marvel US anthological comics — none of whose stories can actually be considered to be a part of the DWU.
- A more recent example of the kind of thing we've disqualified in this regard is the National Television Awards Sketch 2011. Because the "narrative" of that sketch depends on believing the Doctor was somehow involved with the non-fictional awards show itself, we obviously can't include it, because that would logically mean that everyone who was in that awards show was a part of the DWU. In the same way, we'd have to believe that Tovey's narration, the actors who played DWU characters, and every other interviewee were themselves a part of the DWU in order to admit the sketch.
- Orangerichard56
hmmmmmmmm The camera the quality it just doesnt feel real it doesnt feel like a episode
- SOTO
Since this discussion, A Night with the Stars (TV story) was created (not by me, obviously), and not marked {{invalid}}. The discussion above should invalidate it.
- Pluto2
SOTO wrote: Since this discussion, A Night with the Stars (TV story) was created (not by me, obviously), and not marked {{invalid}}. The discussion above should invalidate it.
I completely disagree. That minisode, along with The History of the Doctor (TV story) certainly stand on their own.
- OttselSpy25
My main objection here is that I see no difference between counting Death Is the Only Answer as valid as well as this Night with the Stars mini-episode. Both are mini-in-universe "skits" compacted into out-of-universe sources. Both have their own pages, and are separated from their respective out-of-universe documentaries. The confusion seems to come down the the fact that DItOA is extremely random and has nothing to do with the Documentary it's featured in, while NwtS is well written and relates to the subject at hand.
I believe both should be valid.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:145386
Now that we have seen a glimpse of Peter Capaldi as the Doctor in The Day of the Doctor (TV story), shall we call him The Doctor (The Day of the Doctor) for now, or shall Twelfth Doctor be unprotected? Unless him being the twelfth Doctor would be too speculative for now, based on the aired episodes?
(not a spoiler - just asking whether it would be OK to assume that the incarnation is the Twelth Doctor or not based on what's aired)
- 68.146.70.124
If nothing else, the general prohibition on Peter Capaldi has to be lifted. I suppose someone might want to wiggly around and only refer to him as "a future Doctor" (unless the official BBC cast list for the episode says otherwise) instead of specifically calling him Twelfth, but there's a lot of stuff we no longer need to wait until Dec. 25 to include on this wiki now. 68.146.70.124talk to me 22:14, November 23, 2013 (UTC)
- Tim Thomason
"All thirteen" lives of the Doctor are referenced, and we then see new and archive footage of the twelve known Doctors (1-to-11, plus War), and an uncredited cameo by Peter Capaldi. So, Capaldi is playing a Doctor, and one of the first thirteen lives. So that means he's either the Twelfth Doctor, or a version of the Doctor who is not usually acknowledged (like the War Doctor). Since the first eleven regenerations are accounted for now, that would push him post-Eleven.
I see no reason to dispute, based on The Day of the Doctor dialogue, that Peter Capaldi is playing the Twelfth Doctor.
- GhastlyKhaos
Well, here's an image if anybody plans on adding one. Just got this off iPlayer.File:Capaldi.jpgThe Twelfth Doctor
- CzechOut
Hey guys :) Good to see that this is all generating discussion. However, there are good technical and administrative reasons why, for the purpose of keeping the wiki running smoothly, we need to simply declare:
- the Hurt Doctor is War Doctor
- Capaldi is playing the Twelfth Doctor
An announcement, going into further details, is available for your perusal at Thread:145487.
- CzechOut
68.146.70.124 wrote: If nothing else, the general prohibition on Peter Capaldi has to be lifted.
Actually no. One glimpse of Capaldi's eyes does not evaporate T:SPOIL. We know nothing about him, other than that he helped shove Gallifrey into a pocket universe. So, sure, Twelfth Doctor is created, but it's been immediately locked to prevent editing, since there's obviously nothing more to say. It probably will not be off lockdown until series 8 actually begins.
- Tim Thomason
But the Capaldi page needs to be edited sometime to include more information (biographical), a RW image, and a reference to him playing a future Doctor in Day of the Doctor.
It shouldn't stay locked and unedited until 2014 when everyone knows he's played more than the two characters and is lacking basic information. This has nothing to do with Spoilers (bringing that up is a spoiler itself, btw), but more with having full and necessary information on the show's cast (as of this date).
- Biennale
Nevermind this: saw other thread. Disregard.
Wouldn't he correctly be the 13th Doctor - as;
01 - William Hartnell
02 - Patrick Troughton
03 - Jon Pertwee
04 - Tom Baker
05 - Peter Davison
06 - Colin Baker
07 - Sylvester McCoy
08 - Paul McGann
XX - Jhon Hurt
09 - Christopher Eccleston
10 - David Tennant
11 - Matt Smith (later considers himself the 12th)
13 - Peter CapaldiBecause the 11th Doctor considers the War Doctor to be a "true" Doctor as they even discussed - but the 10th (and the War Doctor himself) won't remember that so they retain their numbers of ignoring the War Doctor?
I am not suggesting the War Doctor be considered the eighth Doctor by himself or any other Doctors except Matt Smiths' Doctor...
- Mewiet
Sardeth42 wrote: Wouldn't he correctly be the 13th Doctor
Thirteenth incarnation (of the same body that is; I still believe the meta-crisis used up a regeneration and Eleven is the last of this cycle), but his title/alias remains the Twelfth Doctor.
- Biennale
^Yes but because he would see the War Doctor as a true Doctor as of what the 11th Doctor said - and won't forget unlike the other incarnations; he would call himself the 13th by alias/title? - not that it matters as:
from http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Thread:145487 "So Nine and Ten truly believe themselves to be Nine and Ten their entire lives, and Eleven thinks he is Eleven until what's basically his "Eleventh Hour".
If the narrative situation changes as we get into the Capaldi era — like, if he starts telling people that he's Thirteen — then we'll adjust accordingly. " - emphasis mine
(Oh and i know many people say that about the meta crisis - but isn't that still conjecture/theory - which goes against the 13 regeneration limit (hence i like to think that it either didn't count or that the 8th doctor taking the potion to become the war doctor didn't use up a whole regen if that makes sense... but ah well conjecture either way so i tend to just go with conjecture disregard until further info...)
- Mandrillo
I personally don't like the term: "<number> Doctor" because it's a mental shortcut. It can have multiple meanings:
1) The actor who chronologically played the Doctor (it was good until now)
2) The incarnation that used the title (because now there's one who used another title... and then went back to original one)
3) The chronological incarnation
I personally understand it as 3) but a lot of people understand it as 2)
- CzechOut
Yeah. I hear ya. Unfortunately, we're kinda left playing the hand we're dealt by the BBC. And since the show came back — though not really before — they've consistently turned incarnation number into a name, which wasn't really the case in the classic era.
And now the BBC have officially refreshed their character page — even updating their Tenth Doctor pic to be from Day — it does appear as though "War Doctor", "Tenth Doctor" and "Eleventh Doctor" are going to be the terms that stick.
- Biennale
"&$%")£ didnt post properly. i think (£&%^(
THe issue would be that whether we like it or not (and i understand where your coming from), BBC seems to be going via point 2, although as the 11th by what they call, later considers himself the 12th, this creates an issue for Capaldi's Doctor (which is where MEWIET and others spectacularly missed what I was trying to say), if they don't skip 12. then it won't match any of your 3 points...
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:145607
I added clara oswald, amy pond and rory williams to the primary charecters of series 7 why are they put as secondry
- Shambala108
This is something I've been meaning to address. A while back, someone started changing season/series pages to primary and secondary casts, seemingly based on whether they played in the full season. This seems a bit arbitrary to me, and is (as far as I know) not supported by any production information.
This is probably a good place to discuss this situation. So I have re-titled your thread to more accurately describe the point in question.
- Orangerichard56
Primary cast is about the main charecters
Amy wasnt a guest or recurring she was intended to appear in 5 episodes of part one meaning she is a primary charecter.
Jenny strax and vastra are minorothers such as kizlet, Great Intelligance or the moment are guest cast
- SOTO
How about we use the opening credits as the defining factor? So s7's primary cast is:
Are Vastra, Jenny and Strax in the opening credits for any of their s7 appearances?
- SOTO
Of course, this would also make Craig Owens part of the primary cast of s6, even though he only appeared in one episode.
So, alternatively, we can use number of appearances in the season. If they appear in three or more episodes, they're primary.
So:
- Orangerichard56
Hmmm i think we should base it on emphasis a one off is not considered primary even if they are a companion.
Even though amy didnt have many it was all one part of a season - Orangerichard56
No the great intelligance isnt a main
vastra and jenny and strax are recurring
main charecters are people who appear in nearly every episode of the season or split season
T - JagoAndLitefoot
How about we consider people "main cast" if they appear in the opening credits more than once? This would exclude one-episode companions like Craig Owens.
- Shambala108
That might work for Nuwho, but classic Who doesn't have opening credits. There's a lot of inconsistency across those season pages.
Some have just a primary cast, some have primary and secondary, and then there's season 18, which has primary, secondary, recurring, and introducing, or season 8, which has regular and semi-regular. Most of these seem to have been done based on one person's opinion as to who is primary /regular and who isn't.
- Orangerichard56
leave the old who as it is
lets go with jago - Shambala108
Nope, we need to fix all or none, not just pick and choose.
- Orangerichard56
The Multi episode companions should be primary
and the recurring seconry
and the others guest
- CzechOut
The words "primary" and "secondary" should not be used. It requires a value judgment. All characters appearing in more than one story are "recurring". All characters appearing in only one story are "guests".
- Shambala108
Thanks for that. It's been bugging me for a while (though apparently not enough for me to do something about it until now).
What about special cases like Victoria in season 4 or Zoe in season 5?
- CzechOut
...Or indeed the Sixth Doctor in season 21. The key is that they have recurred at some point. They needn't recur within that season to be classed as recurring. So the Brig in season 13 and season 26, or Cassandra O'Brien.Δ17 in series 1 and 2 are "recurring characters".
- Digifiend
^There's six stories in season 22, I assume you meant season 23, Trial of a Time Lord.
- CzechOut
Sorry, meant season 21, where Sixie is in only one story. Post corrected.
- Orangerichard56
I think it should be the companions (who appear in the titles) (Rory in series 5 is no denying it a companion because he appears in series 6 doing the same thing and is in the titles) but rory doesnt appear in many episodes so i think he is under secondry (for series)
The moment should be listed as a companion because of her appearance in the opening credits.
Solution: People in opening (frequently) are companions so only companions and doctor should be in primary. General: companions in primary.
also when john sim appear in opening he is not a companion because he is bad (DUH)
- Digifiend
Orangerichard, you've been told already, there's no such thing as primary or secondary cast.
CzechOut wrote: The words "primary" and "secondary" should not be used. It requires a value judgment. All characters appearing in more than one story are "recurring". All characters appearing in only one story are "guests".
And as for "Rory doesn't appear in many episodes", yes he does. He's recurring in series 5, and main cast (he's in every episode) in series 6 and 7a.
- Orangerichard56
So what do we use for the mainest main charecters
- CzechOut
Orangerichard56 wrote: So what do we use for the mainest main charecters
Again the word main requires a value judgment. The word recurring doesn't, as it's simple matter of whether the character appeared in original footage in more than one story.
There will only be two sections under the Cast heading: Recurring and Guest.
The bot has done most of the work of this change, but there will still need to be a bit of manual editing. The goal is to get pages looking like Series 6#Cast.
Now that I'm spending some time in these season pages, there will be some other changes coming up, most notably the long-deferred season infobox, which is clearly required for these pages.
- 79.153.68.192
Recurring characters are characters who have appeared more than once but are not regular characters, so if The Doctor and the companion are on the list of recurring characters, that means that they are not regular characters, which is incorrect.
- Digifiend
No it isn't incorrect. You didn't read what CzechOut said properly:
CzechOut wrote: The words "primary" and "secondary" should not be used. It requires a value judgment. All characters appearing in more than one story are "recurring". All characters appearing in only one story are "guests".
- Bwburke94
If we need to define "regular" as compared to "recurring" in the context of BBC Wales' Doctor Who, can't we just use the opening credit sequence? Any character whose actor is listed in the opening credit sequence in three consecutive stories within the series in question is a regular.
- Shambala108
I"m not sure why this thread is still open, because the matter has been settled. CzechOut was very clear in the statement from his previous post: "There will only be two sections under the Cast heading: Recurring and Guest."
Defining "regular" v. "recurring" won't work because it doesn't apply to classic Who. We need something that works for all seasons/series, or we will have constant back and forth editing from new users who won't understand the difference.
To sum up:
- There will only be two sections under the Cast heading: Recurring and Guest.
- All characters appearing in more than one story are "recurring". All characters appearing in only one story are "guests".
- The words "primary" and "secondary" should not be used.
Any attempts to add "primary", "secondary", or "main" (or any other similar words) to any season/series pages will be reverted.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:145858
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Template:The_War_Doctors_Companions
- CzechOut
Thanks for your enthusiasm in undertaking a more difficult edit. However, I've deleted your template, as its contents are debatable – Clara isn't his companion but quite clearly Eleven's — and the Moment was a weapon with a conscience.
It's also somewhat unlikely we'll get stories with this Doctor that has proper "companions" in the sense we're used to with other Doctors — if indeed we get any more stories at all.
When we do, though, your deleted template could well be resurrected and used as a basis for future edits.
- Orangerichard56
You deleted it i want it back wheather its on any page or not
- CzechOut
We encourage editors to try their hand at creating templates. But if you're going to be creating templates that have no likely use anywhere, we ask that you stick them on a sub-page of your user page. I'll restore the template, but put it on to User:Orangerichard56/WarDoc. You can continue messing with it there — but, please, don't put it on any main article page. Also, please do not put it within any other category except for Category:Template sandbox.
The War Doctor remains with us. And despite not allowing to be called "the Doctor", as always, he inspired companions. The template has since been created and can be found at Template:Companions of the War Doctor.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:146091
Hmm i think someone comes under a companion if they appear in the opening credits and are not a villain
Bille piper was in the opening credits
Exeptions: rory was quite clearly a companion in cold blood and amy's choice
Rory started his full companionship in the pandorica opens and vampires in venice since he travels in it for the whole thing theres no denying : Plus he does the same sorta stuff when he is in the opening
The Moment is quite clearly a companion but to the war doctor so they're might need to be a use of this http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/User:Orangerichard56/WarDoc
im not changing a thing until a community descision is made
all in favour of the moment being a companion please tell me
- CzechOut
John Simm is in the opening credits for The End of Time and he's not considered a companion. Sorry, there's not a 1:1 correlation between appearing in the opening credits and being a companion. Also, Billie Piper is listed as "with", so she's not quite in the same position as a companion — as, well, Jenna Coleman — is. She's quite clearly a featured guest star, not a companion. Another point: this episode doesn't even have title credits.
- 71.212.250.47
I would argue that no, she is not for two reasons.
Reason 1: The moment doesn't just claim to be using an interface, like the Tardis does in "Let's Kill Hitler," but to actually be emulating a person of significance in the Doctor's timeline. To me that makes "The Moment" and "Bad Wolf" synonymous. We also know so little about the Moment - it's entirely possible that in Bad Wolf's tampering with time and space, she would have seen all that happened with Gallifrey and Rose's eventual fate, and chosen to leave some of herself "laying around." The Time Lords say that the Moment "developed" a conscious. Bad Wolf may have taken the opportunity to simply possess it. In this case, the Moment is already a listed companion: Bad Wolf herself.
Reason 2: While initially abducted by the Doctor, the Doctor essentially becomes HER companion. She initiates all his travel, determines who and what is he is able to witness and interact with, and nudges him in the right direction. At no time does he have any initiative over the movements of the Moment. Not by suggestion, manipulation or direct order. He simply acknowledges when he is ready for her to take him back to his own time, which she had essentially said she was going to do.
- 108.238.228.50
IS-err, isn't, well...
- Orangerichard56
There is no proof the moment is bad wolf it just takes the bad wolfs form (not rose because it has glowing eyes)
The moment is not bad wolf it says in this form im called bad wolf
- 108.236.90.188
What?
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:146214
For anyone who is familiar with the Big Finish Gallifrey series, can you check the name of the actor playing the Time Lord Elbon? It's either Paul Gruert or Paul Grunert. We currently have two pages for the actor, and one of these pages needs to be deleted.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:146315
I was going to start an article about the version of Bromley from the parallel universe in "Inferno" but the name of the page for the normal Bromley is "John Bromley (Inferno)" so as to distinguish him from a real life writer of the same name. Since "character name (Inferno)" is the format for parallel universe characters from that universe, I'm at a loss as to what to call the page while keeping it relatively consistent with others of the same general subject matter. Any suggestions?
I feel that it's worth pointing out that "David Mitchell" refers to the character from "Image of the Fendahl" while "David Mitchell (actor)" refers to the Mitchell and Webb star. The same is true of "Brian Cox" (the physicist, who appeared in the series as a character) and "Brian Cox (actor)". To keep the naming styles consist, should "John Bromley" be changed to "John Bromley (writer)" and "John Bromley (Inferno)" to "John Bromley"?
- SOTO
Well first of all, may I point out that the way things currently are is totally contrary to our disambiguation policies. T:DAB states that in-universe articles always get the preference. So John Bromley should definitely be the Inferno character, and John Bromley (writer) the writer.
So that's cleared up. The next thing you may want to investigate is whether or not John is used in relation to the parallel version at all. If so, John Bromley. If not, Bromley (Inferno).
Lastly, a dab page is likely in order now that there's three of 'em. This should be at... John Bromley (disambiguation)? Or maybe the dab page should be John Bromley, then have John Bromley (writer), John Bromley and John Bromley (parallel universe).
- CzechOut
So here's what's going on. Alternative realties aren't really contemplated by T:NAMING, but it's clear they must be an exception. In practice we have the example of (Pete's World). We're therefore going to be creating a new dab term of (Inferno Earth).
So:
- John Bromley is the character from the normal universe. This page has already been moved.
- John Bromley (disambiguation) is unnecessary, since {{you may}} takes two variables. Please do not create John Bromley (disambiguation) at this time.
- John Bromley (writer) is the writer, and the page has already been moved.
- John Bromley (Inferno Earth) would be the parallel version of John Bromley
I'll be moving the various pages in Category:Parallel Earth (Inferno) and Category:Parallel Earth (Inferno) individuals in due course.
- GusF
I'm a bit vague on where the first name (for either version) comes from. I don't remember it being mentioned in the story. Is it from the novelisation?
Within the dab term of "Inferno Earth" on the way, I am wondering whether "Ailla (The Face of the Enemy)" and "Koschei (The Face of the Enemy)" need to be changed as well for the sake of consistency even though neither of them appeared in "Inferno" and neither of them are from Earth.
On the topic of "The Face of the Enemy," I'm planning on creating pages for the parallel universe versions of Stalin and Hitler mentioned in the novel. Should I call the former "Joseph Stalin (Inferno Earth)" rather than "Joseph Stalin (The Face of the Enemy)" and the same for Hitler?
- JagoAndLitefoot
I'd use disambig by story first, and if two versions of a character appear in a given story (like with Bromley in Inferno) I'd use disambig by alternate world.
- CzechOut
GusF wrote: I'm a bit vague on where the first name (for either version) comes from. I don't remember it being mentioned in the story. Is it from the novelisation?
Within the dab term of "Inferno Earth" on the way, I am wondering whether "Ailla (The Face of the Enemy)" and "Koschei (The Face of the Enemy)" need to be changed as well for the sake of consistency even though neither of them appeared in "Inferno" and neither of them are from Earth.
On the topic of "The Face of the Enemy," I'm planning on creating pages for the parallel universe versions of Stalin and Hitler mentioned in the novel. Should I call the former "Joseph Stalin (Inferno Earth)" rather than "Joseph Stalin (The Face of the Enemy)" and the same for Hitler?
To your first paragraph, I dunno. I haven't researched Bromley closely enough to tell you definitively. It's likely, though, that the novelisation at least confirms "John".
As to the second and third paragraphs, yes, that's exactly the implication: everyone who's a member of the alternate universe would get the (Inferno Earth) tag, in the same way that there's Peter Tyler (Pete's World) and Harriet Jones (Pete's World). Thus there's some bot work that needs doing.
Your case of Stalin is the perfect example of why disambiguation for parallel world people should be by the parallel world first. The implication of Joseph Stalin (The Face of the Enemy) is that Stalin was first introduced in The Face of the Enemy. That's probably not true, and it's certainly true that Hitler was introduced to the DWU in another story.
Disambiguation by alternative existence thus brings much greater clarity. In fact, in the process of breaking up T:DAB into the new manual of style format, this very topic has its own chapter.
- GusF
Thanks for clearing that up, CzechOut!
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:146712
I'm planning on writing an article about the in-universe exposé book Who Killed Kennedy referred to and featured in the real world novel of the same name but I'm wondering what I would call the page so as to adequately distinguish it. Should I just call it Who Killed Kennedy? I figured that "Who Killed Kennedy (James Stevens book)" might be the most appropriate title to prevent confusion with "Who Killed Kennedy (novel)" but any suggestions as to a better title would be much appreciated.
- SOTO
The article should rest at Who Killed Kennedy, per T:DAB. In cases like these, the in-universe article goes straight, and the real-world thing named after it gets the dab term.
The best example of this, of course, is All-Consuming Fire, another book-within-a-book. In the same vein, The Pandorica Opens — the painting — and The Pandorica Opens (TV story), which contains the painting. Or Castrovalva. Or even The Five Doctors, which has nothing to do with the serial.
Now before you create the article, I would love to point you to the forum discussion where we discussed just how to write these articles, but I can't seem to find it myself. I do believe, though, that the general consensus was to write it much like a real-world novel page, with a general plot section but of course without notes, references, continuity, etc. But make sure you stick to what's written in the text of the book itself as read... in the book.
Another thing to consider is links. I can run my bot to change all instances of
[[PROSE]]: ''[[Who Killed Kennedy (novel)|]]''to[[PROSE]]: ''[[Who Killed Kennedy (novel)|]]''if you like, but the rest will have to be done manually through WHL. Remember, we want people to be directed to Who Killed Kennedy (novel) when we mean the real world book. - CzechOut
Well, I agree on the naming. Who Killed Kennedy should be the in-universe novel. But I don't dunno that I agree with the third graf there.
It's an in-universe article. Therefore we're bound by only what the story tells us about the topic. I don't think a section called "plot" is at all appropriate.
The article is about what the thing is. Yes, sure, you'll give a brief overview of its contents, if known, but it's not like a book report or anything.
I'm unaware of a formal "plot" section on any of our pages about fictional books. There's not really a way to write a plot section using the past tense voice that we have to employ in in-universe articles.
What you do, practically speaking, is something like this:
''Who Killed Kennedy'' was a book written by [whoever]. It was a non-fictional account of [whatever]. Published by [whoever], it [did whatever else]. Its popularity and influence weren't well understood, although [whoever] had a copy of the work in his/her library. ([[PROSE]]: ''[[The Dying Days (novel)|]]'') == Behind the scenes == ''Who Killed Kennedy'' was the fictional book-within-a-book of the [[Who Killed Kennedy (novel)|novel of the same]]. Most of the events of the novel can be assumed to be within the fictional book, but the novel certainly contains things that weren't in the fictional book. It's a bit hard to separate the two with any degree of specificity, however.
- Shambala108
Apologies for hijacking the thread, but does this mean I can do the same with The Dead Men Diaries?
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:146722
Shambala108 writes:
Apologies for hijacking the thread, but does this mean I can do the same with The Dead Men Diaries?Well, I dunno. I'm none too sure that The Dead Men Diaries has the correct name. Isn't it actually Bernice Summerfield and the Dead Men Diaries? And in the fictional diaries, is the name The Dead Men Diaries or just Dead Men Diaries?
- Shambala108
The name of the novel/anthology appears to be Bernice Summerfield and the Dead Men Diaries, but that's not what the creator of the article named it.
Benny's autobiography is titled The Dead Men Diaries.
- CzechOut
So, just to be clear, you've actually seen the frontispiece for this thing and know that we've got the wrong title?
As for the fictional book, yep, The Dead Men Diaries should be reserved for it, and not the anthology. At a minimum, the title for the anthology should be The Dead Men Diaries (anthology), but, if we can confirm it, Bernice Summerfield and the Dead Men Diaries (anthology).
- Shambala108
Looking at it more closely, there is a tiny "Professor" on the cover before Benny's name. So the cover and the title page call it Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Dead Men Diaries, while Amazon.com calls it Bernice Summerfield and the Dead Men Diaries.
- Digifiend
Not according to this link: http://www.amazon.com/Professor-Bernice-Summerfield-Dead-Diaries/dp/1903654009
Amazon calls it Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Dead Men Diaries too. That's clearly the correct name.
- Tybort
"Bernice Summerfield and..." is on a LOT of novels and CDs, for what it's worth, though the title on the Big Finish website drops the "Bernice and", and simply refers to it as The Dance of the Dead and so forth. Everything from the second to the sixth series of the audio series (apart from Death and the Daleks) follows that pattern on the covers.
...in fact, Big Finish's page simply says Dance of the Dead, though the physical disc (the only Benny audio I have on hand) says The Dance.
- Tangerineduel
Indeed.
Big Finish are somewhat inconsistent with the naming and reference to their early Benny audios and books.
If you look at the titles of The Doomsday Manuscript (novel) to The Glass Prison (novel) they are all "Professor Bernice Summerfield and the..."
The same, as Tybort points out for the audios, starting with The Secret of Cassandra (audio story) and going through to The Crystal of Cantus (audio story) with the exception of Death and the Daleks (audio story) follows the same pattern.
The only question I would have about these stories, is the "Professor Bernice Summerfield" a logo akin to the Doctor Who logo, with the "and the" just a bit of fluff between the logo and title – as Big Finish's own removal from their site suggests? Or is it a genuine part of the title like the "Doctor Who and the..." novelisation titles?
- Shambala108
For now, I've renamed the page The Dead Men Diaries (anthology) so that I could create the in-universe page.
I've done a bit of digging, and I've found that all three titles — The Dead Men Diaries, Bernice Summerfield and the Dead Men Diaries, and Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Dead Men Diaries — are used in various places, most of which don't count as valid sources here. It doesn't seem to be on Big Finish's page, and I couldn't find it on Paul Cornell's official page either.
- CzechOut
Have pages been moved yet? You don't want to start new un-dabbed article without making sure current un-dabbed links are moved to (anthology. Otherwise things will get confused.
- Shambala108
Of course I moved all the links first.
- CzechOut
Cool. Didn't know if there were enough that it needed a bot run, or if it could easily be done manually.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:146761
According to its page, this story takes place in 2944 but I'm not sure where that comes from. I'm nearly positive that it isn't mentioned in the story itself. It's implied in the story that it takes place shortly after the events of The Robots of Death, which is based in the 23rd century rather than the 30th century.
- CzechOut
Minor issues like this are best placed either at Board:The Reference Desk, or – even better — the article talk page.
If you go to the Talk:Robophobia (audio story) page, you'll find helpful notes about this issue. Tangerineduel removed the "math" that gets you to that 30th century date, but probably didn't think to look in the infobox. Until an edit by user:Claude North, who also added the bit TD removed, the box said 23rd century.
So I'll go ahead and finish TD's job there. But, just to be clear, this isn't the sort of issue that needed much discussion or admin intervention. It's a pretty cut and dried case of speculation by a single user and a slightly incomplete cleanup on aisle 2944.
- GusF
Thanks, CzechOut. To be honest, I realised that I should have posted this on the "Robophobia" talk page soon after posting this.
Yes, that does mean that sometimes questions about a topic can languish until someone drops by a talk page. But in the long run the issue tends to get settled and stay settled if it's attached to the article page.
One way that you, or any user, could flag talk page discussions that haven't generated a response is to come to Board:The Reference Desk after, say, a week has passed since you've asked your question and just say, "Hey, take a look at this question I posted on this talk page."
That way, you can use the dynamism of the forum environment, but still keep discussions in the right place.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:146820
Do you think we should grant general amnesty for all people currently banned from the wiki and allow everyone to return at 2030 25 December 2013, right after the broadcast of the Christmas Special?
- NuleTakulCWA
I don't know. Perhaps if you want.
- Shambala108
I vote no.
- Geek Mythology
I would say consider each on their own reasons, but I'm guessing that would take too long (and where would you draw the line)?
- CzechOut
Shambala108 wrote: I vote no.
Any particular reason?
- Xensyria
If you're willing to, I'd be happy to help patrol the edits. It would definitely separate the hardcore vandals from those who've grown up since!
- CzechOut
- Mini-mitch
It's a reluctant yes from me.
It should happen to those who we think have changed and deserved another chance, a prime example for me would be OS25. I should not be every person who has been blocked - as some of the reasons have been for offences where they should not given a second chance.
Also, I think if we do go down the road, those Users who have been blocked, which has now expired, should be notified as well. People might have forgotten, or not known when their block was over, so to tell them "you can come back" may bring them back. I am thinking of Bob here...
Either what would be said to these Users? And how would we contact them, via their talk page of email?
- Digifiend
Well if you notify by talk page, they will get a notification when they visit ANY Wikia wiki. So the only deciding factor is whether you want the welcome back message to be private (in which case use email) or not (in which case talk page would be fine).
- GusF
I agree with Geek Mythology about deciding on a case by case basis. Considering Christmas is still 18 days away, that gives you plenty of time of decide. There can't be that many banned people.
- CzechOut
Mini-mitch wrote:
It should happen to those who we think have changed and deserved another chance, a prime example for me would be OS25.But what grounds would we have for believing someone has changed, if they've not been here to demonstrate a different behaviour? I'm not sure I'd be using the case of OS25 as your poster boy of change, since he's been blocked twice for the same offence.
It should not be every person who has been blocked - as some of the reasons have been for offences where they should not given a second chance.
See, to me, the amnesty should be general and without exception, or not at all. I don't have time for a case-by-case review, and even if I did, we have no rules, as a wiki, which assesses scale to offences. Is two instances of swearing actually worse than two? Which words are worse than others? Is it worse to break T:ATTACKS or T:VID? We really haven't worked such things out, and I personally have no enthusiasm for doing so.
The proposal here is a simple one: it's Christmas, so shall we wipe the slate clean and start over?
Also, I think if we do go down the road, those Users who have been blocked, which has now expired, should be notified as well. People might have forgotten, or not known when their block was over, so to tell them "you can come back" may bring them back. I am thinking of Bob here...Technically incredibly difficult. There is no wiki-wide list of expired bans, unfortunately. We'd have to check each user's page for their block history to determine whose bans are now expired. Or we'd have to comb through Special:Log/block, reading every single entry carefully and doing the math to determine if their block had expired.
So — that's obviously not happening. This Santa Claus ain't spending his time checking that particular list.
The truth is that most people who have been blocked have probably received an alert to check their talk page, as the bot has made several visits to all talk pages, which would have tripped their message alert. The last was on 1 September 2012. There have been a number of other partial runs of talk pages since then, as well as a number of runs that would have hit large numbers of user pages, which most people follow by default. Most registered editors who have been banned before have had a message alert within the last 6 months.
As for Bob specifically, I personally made an edit on his page on 13 February 2013, after his block expired. However, he hasn't logged into Wikia at all since 8 August 2012, so he wouldn't have received the message.
Either what would be said to these Users? And how would we contact them, via their talk page of email?
Well as a matter of general internet safety, we certainly wouldn't email them directly. You never want to give your email directly to someone you don't personally know, or to a party who has no legal responsibility to protect your email address. So, fine, give your email to a company like Wikia or Amazon, but not to some random Wikia user. Wikia does, of course, offer an anonymous email forwarding service, which is safe to use. Unfortunately, most people don't have email enabled in their Special:Preferences, so that's not a way to go.
What we would do would be a blanket talk page announcement by bot, where we placed a message on everyone's talk page that wished them a happy holiday season and incidentally mentioned that everyone who had been blocked was "let out of jail" for Christmas. So all our users would get a little bit of Christmas cheer and possibly "come home for the holidays".
- CzechOut
GusF wrote: I agree with Geek Mythology about deciding on a case by case basis. Considering Christmas is still 18 days away, that gives you plenty of time of decide. There can't be that many banned people.
When you factor in IP addresses, there are indeed a prohibitive number of cases. Remember, we've been around since 2004, so we've got about 400 active blocks. Our oldest ban goes all the way back to 28 March 2006.
But the big problem isn't really numbers. Its that even if there was admin enthusiasm for some kind of parole board — and there's definitely not — there simply is no mechanism for deciding who's been "extra naughty" and who's been "kinda nice".
The proposal here is very definitely an all or nothing thing. It's about Christmas cheer and fresh beginnings since we have a new Doctor and we've passed a major milestone in Doctor Who. It's not about re-litigating various cases right up until the Christmas break.
- GusF
Didn't realise that it would be that complicated, to be frank. In that case, I'd have to give a somewhat reluctant "yes." It is nearly Christmas, after all. I can see the logic of granting an amnesty with a new Doctor and a new year on the way.
- SOTO
Hmm. Yeah, I can agree with this one. Great bit of Christmas spirit. Especially for those users who have been banned for a while, they may embrace the second chance and come back as proper, helpful, rule-abiding users. If any of them do offend policy again, obviously they will be reblocked. Over all, though, I can only see this as more positive than negative. A clean slate, as it were.
- Mini-mitch
Based on what you said CzechOut, I agree. I'm in.
But how many chances do they get? One? Two? Or is this a completely fresh start, forgetting their past blocks? Or given them as many blocks as a new user would get (i.e a few days, then a few week etc)
And I just used OS25 as an example because it is the only one I can think of.
So let's do it. In the spirit of Christmas :)
- CzechOut
Oh no, it's not a completely fresh start. Perhaps it should be called "Christmas parole" rather than "Christmas amnesty". Block records can't be expunged with any tools available to local admin — and possibly not with any tools available in MediaWiki at all.
In any case, their previous blocks will be there for us to see if that user comes to our negative attention again, and will form a part of the decision for the next blocking. OS25, for instance, is one T:ATTACKS block away from permanent banning, and he'll remain so.
- Shambala108
Well I had a long answer ready to post, but the "all or none" approach simplifies my answer, which is still no.
Yesterday I just gave a second block to a user who has violated Tardis:Plagiarism three times. Today a user has been blocked for vandalizing at least two pages. There are many users who have been blocked for repetitive vandalism - meaning they tend to make the same kinds of vandalistic edits on random pages whenever they are freed from blocking.
We have a lot of new users that joined at the recent 50th anniversary special, and we will no doubt have many more join for the Christmas special. The last thing we need when trying to educate new users is to have violators of Tardis:Vandalism, Tardis:No personal attacks, and the like free to edit.
- Josiah Rowe
I say "yes", not least because it's Doctor Who's jubilee year, and in Jewish and Christian tradition the jubilee year was an occasion for general amnesty.
- SOTO
Josiah Rowe wrote: I say "yes", not least because it's Doctor Who's jubilee year, and in Jewish and Christian tradition the jubilee year was an occasion for general amnesty.
Can't argue with that:
"This fiftieth year is sacred. It is a time of freedom and of celebration when everyone will receive back their original property, and slaves will return home to their families."
Not to bring religion into this, but it's a nice ideal.
- CzechOut
Shambala108 wrote: Well I had a long answer ready to post, but the "all or none" approach simplifies my answer, which is still no.
Thanks for clarifying your position. You make some good points. Some people are simply repeat offenders. I think there's a reasonable case to be made that someone banned in the first week of December 2013 isn't likely to have changed their outlook by 25 December. But a lot of our blocks are much, much older. Some blockees would have potentially been banned in their first year of high school but now are in their first year of college.
Since Josiah has tied jubilee years into this, would it address some of your concerns if we said that we would parole anyone blocked on or before 23 November 2013? That way, your most recent blocks would stand, but we'd still be able to easily and truthfully communicate a message of renewal.
We're also not saying by this act that we're gonna stop blocking new offenders. I don't care if it is Christmas: if you come here and post a spoiler about the next episode, you'll still get blocked. We're not throwing the rules out the window for the sake of good will. We've had to block at least one person during Christmas week every year since 2008. There's no reason to expect this year to be different, so this "parole" wouldn't prevent ordinary security precautions.
Don't forget, people's records don't go away. This isn't a pardon; it's just early release. So if you find yourself having to ban someone again, you still have the option of throwing the book at 'em, if they've obviously learned nothing.
- Rob T Firefly
I'd say go for it. In the long run, it will probably gain us more constructive users than still-destructive ones, and those who re-offend will just get banned again. I'd say it's worth the risk to welcome back some folks who might, after whatever length of time since their ban, have something positive to contribute.
- CornettoFan450
It sounds risky, but at the same time worthy. I'd just look into who you banned, and why. If someone just persisted on a bad edit or photo; yes. If someone slammed the whole series, other users, and intentionally made bad edits; no.
Just be careful who you let in. But hey, it's basically your wikia
- CzechOut
Yeah see it's that kinda value judgment I would want to stay away from. Forgiveness is forgiveness.
- Digifiend
At the end of the day, if someone makes constructive edits, then unblocking them is worth it. If they violate the rules, you can just re-block them. There's only one way to find out if people have learned their lesson. But if someone's been blocked several times already, especially if it was for the same offense, that person would probably never learn and I wouldn't bother unblocking them.
- IrasCignavojo
CzechOut wrote: See, to me, the amnesty should be general and without exception, or not at all. (...) What we would do would be a blanket talk page announcement by bot, where we placed a message on everyone's talk page that wished them a happy holiday season and incidentally mentioned that everyone who had been blocked was "let out of jail" for Christmas. So all our users would get a little bit of Christmas cheer and possibly "come home for the holidays".
While being new here, I think this is a very nice idea which could have beneficial pay-off effects in renewed activity by former would-be editors.
- The Messenger John Tyler
I'm fairly new here and I haven't made any edits because of the reputation here. I've been told its fairly strict.
I'm all for it! However, they would be on some sort of probation. After a month or 2 of grace time, you see what they have contributed and make your decision. I would select a couple active members to watch their profiles and see what kind of edits they are making.
All for 2nd chances, but I have a feeling most banned members wont care enough to come back.
- 24.63.12.207
As a Whovian who doesn't consider himself a member of this wiki's community, I thought I'd say that no matter what you decide is practical to do the fact that you're having this conversation as a wiki earns you major props. :)
- 108.236.90.188
Xensyria wrote: If you're willing to, I'd be happy to help patrol the edits. It would definitely separate the hardcore vandals from those who've grown up since!
I think patrolling is also a good idea. I was blocked for six months a month or two ago, and now i'm back. I don't know how. I'm not even sure what I did because it wouldn't tell me which page.
- Digifiend
Hmm, not logged in I see. Could be that your IP wasn't blocked for some reason when your username was?
- SOTO
Well, all we can block is a user's IP. If you just happened to connect from a different network, then you're officially a different IP user, essentially. Could you maybe figure out what IP number you went by that you think was unfairly banned?
- Tangerineduel
I also disagree on a case by case basis.
If there's to be an amnesty, then it should cover everyone.
I think we as admins upheld the policies of the wiki hard in the lead up to the 50th anniversary and The Day of the Doctor. I think those policies helped maintain an integrity of the policies and the wiki.
However, I'm also of the philosophy that everyone deserves a fair go, even if they make a few mistakes along the way.
I agree that we should't "wipe the slate clean" (and can't in any case).
I'm not sure that Christmas is the time to do it, as Shambala108 points out Christmas is when we'll be getting a lot of new users, and very likely a lot of speculation (or maybe just squeeing, who knows). So maybe Christmas isn't the time to be opening the doors and removing the padlocks.
How about we parole everyone blocked from the start of 2014, new year and all that jazz?
- TARDIStraveler
I vote no, but I've had some bad experiences with an unregistered user who liked to vandalise and singled me out because I would always revert his edits, so I'm a little biased.
- CzechOut
Tangerineduel wrote: How about we parole everyone blocked from the start of 2014, new year and all that jazz?
Because the point of the amnesty would be to allow everyone back in at the moment they most want to be here: the changeover of Doctors. Also we want people to be here when they actually have time to be here: Christmas holidays. If we wait until 1 January, what we're effectively saying is, "Welcome back — on the eve of the day you have to go back to work or school."
The timing of Christmas Day, is, in my view, critical. Yes, sure we'll have a lot of bad edits during Christmas — as I pointed out, we always do — but we'd also be delivering a message of renewal and goodwill when the greatest possible audience between now and the start of series 8 can hear it.
- Tangerineduel
I understand.
Although, as we've seen in the past with multiple IPs and blocking people will often edit from school (and likely work), so date wise I don't think is a huge concern.
I'm still in favour, as at the moment we have more admins, more active users and as has been said we're not and cannot wipe the slate clean.
I don't disagree with the idea this parole bringing in / back new and past editors with a message of renewal. But I think if some editors have issues with this idea being done during Christmas the new year is also a great time to have a renewal and fresh start. New year, new Doctor etc. Those 6 days would allow time for the dust to settle and passions/squeeing to subside and cooler heads prevail.
- Eighth doctor 14
I think so until 9:00 or so then put them back on ban
- Chaos Locust
with the coming of the twelfth i think we should forgive all but the worsted of the banned(trolls and such)
- Shambala108
Please note that CzechOut states above that amnesty will cover all or none. No admin is going to sift through all the bans and weed out which ones are allowed back. It's a case of bring everyone back or bring no one back.
- 108.236.90.188
Digifiend wrote: Hmm, not logged in I see. Could be that your IP wasn't blocked for some reason when your username was?
I don't have an account, so no.
- 108.236.90.188
Of course that's a bit off subject.
- Chaos Locust
Shambala108 wrote: Please note that CzechOut states above that amnesty will cover all or none. No admin is going to sift through all the bans and weed out which ones are allowed back. It's a case of bring everyone back or bring no one back.
good point also the worst vandals would not bother checking if they are still banned
- Embem5
I say no.
- ValerieVain258
If you want. It's not up to me
- CzechOut
Embem5 wrote: I say no.
Care to elaborate?
- Stickmanville
I don't think we should. If we give access to everyone, we are letting trolls and vandals back in. The people who were banned were banned for a reason. We can't just let them back in, not even for a day.
- CzechOut
Stickmanville wrote: I don't think we should. If we give access to everyone, we are letting trolls and vandals back in. The people who were banned were banned for a reason. We can't just let them back in, not even for a day.
You've only been around for 15 days. Any reason why you're so adamantly opposed? Have you had bad experiences here already, or are these feelings generated from things that happened on another wiki?
- 108.236.90.188
Stickmanville wrote: I don't think we should. If we give access to everyone, we are letting trolls and vandals back in. The people who were banned were banned for a reason. We can't just let them back in, not even for a day.
We aren't saying we should let them back unconditionally. If they break the rules again, they get blocked agian, even if it is Christmas. It's just saying, 'In the spirit of Christmas, you don't have to serve your full sentence.' It's like bail. But I agree the admins should be watching the pages extra carefully. I vote yes.
- Tangerineduel
Taking a different look at this;
Unblocking everyone is something that's generally not done, anywhere.
More editors on the wiki is a good thing, that's how the wiki improves by having multiple editors.
Many of the editors who were blocked would have come afoul of enthusiasm and ignoring policies designed to protect the wiki against spoilers. I don't begrudge editors the enthusiasm, and it's something we need.
Age also factors into this, the age you need to be to have an account is 13, there's probably been younger than that edit here without an account, but everyone will have gotten older since they were blocked and with that comes maturity and perspective.
On the subject of trolls and vandals, wikis are always going to have them, it's just part of the internet. That is not a reason to not do this. We have admins and policies in place to take action if they turn up. But not everyone who's been blocked in the past is a troll or an (intentional) vandal.
- 24.119.205.100
Age also factors into this, the age you need to be to have an account is 13, there's probably been younger than that edit here without an account, but everyone will have gotten older since they were blocked and with that comes maturity and perspective.
On the subject of trolls and vandals, wikis are always going to have them, it's just part of the internet. That is not a reason to not do this. We have admins and policies in place to take action if they turn up. But not everyone who's been blocked in the past is a troll or an (intentional) vandal.
What do you mean probably? That's probably the one of the main reasons people don't get accounts. I'm turning 12 on the 27th (28th British time), so I didn't get an account. Also, a lot of people lie. Just check the studies they did on Facebook users. I vote, again, yes. I'm 108 using a different computer.
Tangerineduel wrote: Age also factors into this, the age you need to be to have an account is 13, there's probably been younger than that edit here without an account, but everyone will have gotten older since they were blocked and with that comes maturity and perspective.
On the subject of trolls and vandals, wikis are always going to have them, it's just part of the internet. That is not a reason to not do this. We have admins and policies in place to take action if they turn up. But not everyone who's been blocked in the past is a troll or an (intentional) vandal.
What do you mean probably? That's probably the one of the main reasons people don't get accounts. I'm turning 12 on the 27th (28th British time), so I didn't get an account. Also, a lot of people lie. Just check the studies they did on Facebook users. I vote, again, yes. I'm 108 using a different computer, by the way.
Sorry, the formatting got messed up. :(
24.119.205.100 wrote: I'm 108 using a different computer, by the way.
It's true.
Admins and regular editors already monitor the Special:Recentchanges page. Any vandalism that might arise from this would simply be reported and action taken against whoever vandalised the pages, just as we do now.
This thread was originally highlighted on 7th December, and then renewed on the 14th. We've retained heavy page views in the intervening time. I note the presence of several first-time posters. It seems to me fair to say, then, that the motion has had a reasonable opportunity to attract attention, and that it has actually done so.
Most respondents have given the green light to this proposal, but Shambala108's reasonable caution is naturally worth heeding. The original proposal shall therefore be modified such that amnesty shall not extend to anyone blocked since 24 November 2013, inclusive of the 24th itself.
Amnesty shall begin at 2030 GMT 25 December 2013, and the decision will be highlighted through bot communication on user talk pages, a blog post at Community Central, and possibly elsewhere, as time allows.
Thanks again to all who participated in this important discussion!
Once those names are removed, what's left is this final list of people who will be unblocked as of 2030 UTC Christmas Day.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:146860
Throughout this wiki it seems as though the 50th anniversary episodes (which includes The Night of the Doctor and The Last Day as well as The Day of the Doctor) have been included in series 7. I have to admit that I've been guilty of this as well, but am currently wondering why this is.
I can not remember seeing any BBC source which considers it to be part of series 7, in fact considering it is not included in the "Complete" series 7 DVD/Blu Ray boxsets, surely this would point to it being considered separate by the BBC.
Much like The Five Doctors, which is not considered to be part of any specific season, I am therefore wondering if this wiki should consider the 50th Anniversary stories to be separate from both series 7 and 8? I realise if were to do so that it would require some back tracking and altering of several pages, but nonetheless think it is a discussion that should be had.
Geek Mythology ☎ 20:19, December 7, 2013 (UTC)
- CzechOut
There's no help from the clapperboards. which simply call this thing "50-05", or the shooting script cover, which calls this just the "50th Anniversary Special".
Unfortunately, though, this is an extraordinary situation and we know there was extreme security involved. A part of the reason for the odd markings is that they're actively trying to hide things from the public.
What matters is not the DVDs (the last two Christmas specials have been released separately from the supposedly "complete" DVD boxssset) but behind the scenes knowledge of how they were commissioned. I'm not sure we know for sure that they were commissioned separately from series 7. I just have a hard time believing that this 2013 Christmas special is truly standalone.
If I had to bet right now, I'd say the 50th is, financially, a part of series 7, and the Christmas special is "episode 0" of series 8.
- CzechOut
Okay this proves that the 50th Anniversary Special was a standalone commission. Article says nothing about the Chritmas special.
- Geek Mythology
I agree that the forthcoming Christmas special will be episode 0 of series 8, but as I said, the 50th shouldn't be part of any series.
Like Five Doctors, the series number should be left out on the infobox, should be given its own status on Template:DWTV, etc.
- CzechOut
Also, this would seem to prove that the 2013 Christmas special was not a part of series 7 commissioning.
Wikipedia have done a page called Doctor Who (2013 specials) and I would tentatively favour that approach. We're not likely to get hard behind the scenes facts for a few months yet, so as a temporary measure an "invented" page gives us a place to put Night, Day and the Christmas Special.
- Geek Mythology
That would work for a temporary measure, I was wondering more about a page like "50th Anniversary Specials", and then when the Christmas special has been broadcast, start a Series 8 page.
Or has series 8 not been officially announced yet?
- CzechOut
Series 8 has been officially announced, but given no specific definition. At issue is whether it includes the Christmas special. The best we know now is that Moffat has publicly committed to 13 episodes in 2014. Does that mean that 2013 Christmas is episode 1 of another 14 episode commission? I dunno.
One piece of evidence is Matt Smith's now infamous quote from 18 May 2013 about whether he was in the next season:
We come back and shoot the Christmas special over the summer, then we go on to the next series, which will either start filming at the end of this year or at the start of 2014.
If you take him literally — and we all learned that this statement needed to be really, really closely examined to be regarded as true — then he seems to be suggesting that 2013 Christmas special is a thing apart from series 8.
But he's just an actor, and one who turned out to have one foot out of the door. It's unlikely he really knows, or cares, what the precise funding and commissioning details are. And we know he crafted that statement to at least allow for deception, so we should take it with a whole bag of salt.
The page can't be "50th Anniversary Specials", because the Christmas special wouldn't reasonably be regarded as part of the 50th anniversary by most fans, I don't think. Rather, it's just the ninth in an as-yet-unbroken string of 21st century Christmas specials. It's barely "special" for Doctor Who to appear at Christmas these days. If the 50th anniversary were in June, we wouldn't even think about calling the Christmas special a "50th anniversary special", would we? It's just an "accident of the calendar" that Doctor Who began its run within a month of Christmas.
- Geek Mythology
Sorry, obviously didn't explain myself well enough. What I meant was have a page called "50th Anniversary Specials" in the same vein as Series 1, Series 2, etc. This would include Night, Day, and Last Day. This could be done whenever.
Separate from this, we would start a Series 8 page with the Christmas special, after it had been broadcast.
Obviously this may not be the case if there is some doubt as to whether the Christmas special is part of series 8, however.
- CzechOut
No, I understood you. :)
I'm just saying that it's less controversial to use the language 2013 specials than 50th Anniversary Specials. Technically there's only one thing called "50th Anniversary Special", as confirmed by seeing the front cover of the shooting script of The Day of the Doctor.
But there are many things that could be uncontroversially considered a "special that happened in 2013".
- Geek Mythology
Fair enough. Maybe just something like "50th Anniversary", but as I said in my original point, separating it from series 7 is something I believe should be considered.
- SOTO
...And here I think we're starting to edge back into the discussion on a page on 50th anniversary celebrations. Like a series page. We've gone through this before, and I do believe we decided we'd give it a rest until 2014, then figure out what to do.
At this point, though, we're close enough to 2014 to know just about everything there is to know about 2013 releases, so can we put that option back on the table?
- CzechOut
No.
- CzechOut
Sorry to be so short above, but I'm desperately trying to wrangle the CSS of this page. I'll amplify later.
- 50.88.57.194
Perhaps the entire reason the Time Lords wanted to time travel in the first place was because they were trapped in a pocket of time and wanted to break out of it.
- Lego Whovian
Personally, I consider the 50th anniversary special and this year's Christmas special to be a part of series 7, despite me having not seen any of them.
- SOTO
I'm just gonna bump this discussion. I totally agree with the 2013 specials proposition; it could include Day and Time, as well as Night, The Last Day, AAISAT, Five(ish) Doctors, The Light at the End, Destiny of the Doctors, Prisoners of Time, the Puffin eshorts, The Doctors Revisited... anything that we have official confirmation was made "specially" for the 2013 anniversary. We just have to draw a line between things released in 2013 and 2013 specials.
- Digifiend
Yeah, for example, Doctor Who The Official 50th Anniversary Annual (2014) is really Doctor Who The Official Annual 2014, and would've been released anniversary or not. It was released in 2013, but despite the title, was not released specifically due to the anniversary. Obviously, issues of IDW Doctor Who (except for the last one), Doctor Who Magazine, and Doctor Who Adventures are also things which would've come out anyway, and so also are 2013 releases but not 2013 specials.
- SOTO
Well some cases we might have to look into individually. For example, Hunters of the Burning Stone — or another DWM comic in its place — would have come out anyway were it not for the 50th, but the inclusion of Ian, Barbara and the Tribe of Gum were very clearly part of the celebrations. So is Hunters a 2013 special, or just DWM jumping on the bandwagon to use the 50th anniversary for extra publicity?
Sure, the entirety of s7B had nods to the past, and were in a sense celebrating the 50th... but they're not 2013 specials. They just have elements celebrating the anniversary.
What I think it should come down to, in the end, to determine whether or not a story/release goes under 2013 specials, is what the writers/production team/etc say about it. Prisoners of Time's publisher summary explicitly describes it as a 50th special, as does Light at the End's. So too with Destiny of the Doctor: "For the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, Big Finish Productions has produced a special range of audiobook titles..." Only story or release where we're told this can count as 2013 specials.
- 62.87.129.224
How about the "1963" Big Finish trilogy?
- Tangerineduel
The problem is, while the 2013 specials solves the TV related problems, I'm not sure if that title would adequately allow us to cover all the other non-TV related things like The Light at the End, Destiny of the Doctos, the Puffin eshort and things like Big Finish's 1963 trilogy or Hunters of the Burning Stone. These latter examples are thematic 50th celebrations/references rather than the direct ones that the above stories/series cover.
I think the 2013 specials would help us sort out the TV based stories.
Anything thematic and 50th related I think needs to be covered on the Doctor Who which is oddly lacking information relating to the 50th anniversary.
- CzechOut
Tangerineduel wrote: Anything thematic and 50th related I think needs to be covered on the Doctor Who which is oddly lacking information relating to the 50th anniversary.
It's not that odd, since I locked that page indefinitely instead of setting it to be unlocked on 23 November. It's been unlocked for a few hours now, but, yanno, "Whoops, butterfingers" and all that.
- Digifiend
And when did you last check Doctor Who anyway, Tangerineduel? One of SOTO's first acts as an admin was to update that page, and that was two days ago. It now mentions Day of the Doctor, Time of the Doctor, and Peter Capaldi, all of which were banned from mention under T:SPOIL before the page was locked.
- SOTO
Well, I did a quick job of it. Could be greatly expanded.
Anyway, to bring the discussion back to the topic at hand, I might as well note that wikipedia:Doctor Who (2013 specials) has a "50th Anniversary" section with other televisual and radio productions that could be construed as part of 2013's 50th specials. Considering that we coverway more, I don't see why we couldn't do something similar, but also include prose, comic and CD/digital audio releases. Discussing them at Doctor Who might be a good idea, too, though.
- Tangerineduel
Digifiend wrote: And when did you last check Doctor Who anyway, Tangerineduel? One of SOTO's first acts as an admin was to update that page, and that was two days ago. It now mentions Day of the Doctor, Time of the Doctor, and Peter Capaldi, all of which were banned from mention under T:SPOIL before the page was locked.
I briefly checked it when I wrote my above post. Or are you asking when I last edited it? That'd be May last year. Or are you asking something else?
- Digifiend
You said it didn't mention the anniversary, but it did, so I figured you must've last checked the page prior to SOTO's edit.
- CzechOut
Digifiend wrote: And when did you last check Doctor Who anyway, Tangerineduel?
Ouch. Bit 'arsh. Do be fair to TD.
The page at Doctor Who was in a state of lockdown for the last half of 2013. It was only re-opened to editing on 1 January in a way that wasn't publicised. TD wouldn't have expected great changes to that article from its late 2013 state. I mean, it's not like people generally sit around reading articles that have been on long-term lockdown. We generally assume that if we read it on 15 December, and it was locked indefinitely, that it'll probably be the same on 4 January.
As I said upthread, if there is any source for the confusion here, it's me, not TD. I should have set the block to expire automatically on 23 November, but didn't.
Oh, and it wasn't "one of SOTO's first acts as an admin". It was one of SOTO's many acts as an editor. No administrative skills were harmed in the making of that edit. :)
Closing thread as having adequate discussion to arrive at this decision.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:147187
Why does printing this on the home page not constitute a major plot spoiler since its meaning only makes sense if we take information given from publicity material about an unreleased episode as canon? It's a great pun but I thought that was the definition of the site spoiler policy.
- CzechOut
I put up the headline without any knowledge of the Christmas Special. I haven't seen trailers, so nothing is influencing that headline's presence other than
- the obvious pun
- pre-existing narratives
- the relevance of the Silence to the Eleventh Doctor
- the fact that the front page's layout now demands a pithy headline
That the Silents (and indeed the Silence) might be present for the final episode of this Doctor's life has been an obvious possibility since The Eleventh Hour. That episode suggested that "silence will fall", but I think most observers would agree that we haven't actually seen such a thing, despite the ubiquity of the Silents in series 6.
Without knowing a damn thing about the contents of the episode, it can easily asserted that the episode is Moffat's last chance to make the whole storyline with the Silents/Silence make some kind of sense. It's obviously the "Silents' Night" if they're in it. But it's also their night if they're not. Both eventualities would be noteworthy. The fate of the Silence story arc is most assuredly one of the things that will be in the lead of the episode's article on this wiki.
All of that is a long way of saying: it really is just a pun. And a way of avoiding the phrase you see on every DW website this season. I mostly just didn't want to use a variation of "fall of the Eleventh".
- 12.94.131.110
I heard that this years Christmas special is supposed to have the Cybermen, Dolleks, Silence, and weeping angles all in it at once.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:147452
I noticed there wasn't a page titled 'Song' and, seeing how it's probably necessary, I created it. However, I'm not very good at the big stuff, so I need help.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:147608
Is there a particular reason why there is no article on this major book release? The Vault has one. I know there's debate over whether the contents should be counted under canon, but that shouldn't disqualify the book itself from having an article as other non-fiction books have been featured, including The Vault.
- Digifiend
Does it make any reference to the Twelfth Doctor or the 2013 Christmas special? If so, then T:SPOIL is the reason.
- 69.230.163.62
The Time of the Doctor has aired!
- SOTO
To answer the original poster's question — a month late, no less — no, there is no particular reason why an article has not yet been created at The Doctor: His Lives and Times. In fact, there are already a good amount of redlinks to there. Even if it does contain information on The Time of the Doctor — which I doubt — that episode's now already aired, as has been pointed out.
So please do feel free to create the page, and put it in category:Doctor Who reference books.
- MystExplorer
I've been pouring through this book and the Eighth Doctor section has me baffled. It describes him in "a giant ballon with a girl who is so bright and clever". It also describes "a girl who stands by the school gates and waits for adventures". Other oddities: "a man of shining crystal", "a woman with a goldfish bowl for a head", "a bleeding skull". Does anyone have the faintest idea what any of these images could refer to? There's a picture of Shayde on the same page but that doesn't really tell me anything. Slughorn42 ☎ 16:22, January 17, 2014 (UTC)
- Revanvolatrelundar
The girl in the baloon is Charley during "Storm Warning", the girl at the school gates is Sam Jones during "The Eight Doctors". A man of shining crystal is a member of the Council of Eight, and a woman with a goldfish bowl for a head is Fey after she merged with Shayde. Hope that helps, I had fun working all that out when I got the book back in November. :)
- MystExplorer
Thanks! I knew these had to be references to his adventures in the spin-off media (which I know a fair amount about but still had trouble deciphering these passages). I got the reference to Shada straight away. Could the bleeding skull be Faction Paradox? Also, there's a description of a creature with shark's teeth. Any idea who that is?
- Revanvolatrelundar
Yeah the skull's most likely Faction Paradox. The shark's teeth thing is probably obvious but I can't think of what it is. From what I remember, there's also a reference to Destrii as a "fish girl" or something, if you hadn't noticed that one already.
It's quite a nice passage, though. The way it words it all is so that they all could have happened, and it's all kind of a jumble, with no clear order.
- MystExplorer
It is a nice passage although it was clearly written without knowledge of The Night of the Doctor which implies that only the audios have "happened". I can see why Moffat would consider them to be the true continuation of the Eighth Doctor's adventures since they actually involved Paul McGann. Also, most of the novels and comics are long out of print whereas the audios can still be downloaded from Big Finish's website.
- 2.31.167.81
To be fair, the audios themselves at times confirm the books and the comics to be in the same universe (the company of friends and Lucie Miller and the Zygons, for example) so, if the audios are canon, doesn't that make all of it canon?
- JagoAndLitefoot
The Doctor doesn't mention all of this audio companions in Night either (he doesn't mention Mary, nor Samson and Gemma), so him not mentioning the novel and comic ones doesn't mean they're not considered to be part of the continuity.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:147820
I'm happy to announce that we'll be closing out 2013 with an admin nomination. If the community approves, SmallerOnTheOutside — or SOTO — will be our first new admin of 2014. Please drop by his nomination page and have your say!
But be quick! As is the general case with admin nominations, this one will only be open for about a week.
[Please do not give your opinions here, as the forum software isn't particularly good for this kind of discussion. Only a "regular" page will let us group the responses together in a meaningful way.]
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:147955
time of the doctor states kovarian created the silence meaning she must of led it and at no point i ever saw a priest lead the silence since there are so many of them.
- Timppali
I understod it s that madame Kovarian created a side-group from the Church which wanted to prevent the Doctor from reaching Trenzalore and that she didnt create the Silence, she just put up a group of religious people.
- Orangerichard56
The Silence IS the group with kovarian and silence and gantok and stuff
The Papal Mainframe is led by Tasha Lem but became known as the Church of the silence not The silence - Citizen Erased42
So did her prejudice and even hate of the Doctor derive from the church link? And what happened to her as she only died in a fractured, collapsed alternative timeline caused by River?
- The Nth Doctor
If Kovarian is still around, she would have thought her mission was a success and returned to her present, then found out that the Doctor was still alive, and that she had failed after all. After that, it's possible the Daleks got her.
- Orangerichard56
Kovarian must have no need since silence did fall and the time lords didnt return
this means the silents may return
- Digifiend
Yes, the Silence can return, but they're no longer a threat to the Doctor. They fought on the same side during Time of the Doctor.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:147956
Wasnt silent a name applied to them by Captain Williams and the Priests was there Actual name
- Coop3
I thought this as well. I did post it on the silent talk page but no one has replied. I think so to as this was their official designation whereas like you say silent was a slang term given to them by humans. No one else called them that, Kovarian just said the silence.
- SpeedyTARDIS
They are called the Silents throughout season 6 and season 5; Confessional priests is just what they really are...I just got sounded confusing >.< OH. They have another role as in being confessional priests.
- TheMostBoringManInTheWorld
- Xx-connor-xX
I think it is very likely that "Silents" is the name of the species, even before the Order of the Silence was created as their whole existence was to stay i the dark and be forgotten.
To completely dissuade all doubts, it should be noted that the audio anthology Silenced does use "Silent" as their designation by UNIT.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:148061
Was this forum removed? I can't find a link to it which is disappointing.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:148276
I just want to know, if the Doctor was known as 'Dr.Who' in the Classic does it mean all the Classic Doctors officaly called Dr.Who in the episodes castings will have to be changed from "The Doctor" to Dr.Who?. I mean as in casting wise like: The Doctor, Sara Jane,etc. Sorry if I may sound confusing, but I am confused myself. .0.
- Orangerichard56
since he was reffered too as the doctor and never doctor who in the DWU then he is the doctor
- Shambala108
In the stories themselves, he is (mostly) only ever referred to as "the Doctor". Therefore, we call him "the Doctor". The only exception is for credits in televised stories, which sometimes credit him as "Dr Who". When we list credits, we list them exactly as transmitted, and if necessary pipe-switch to the name we use on the wiki. See Tardis:Cast lists for more info.
- SpeedyTARDIS
Thanks for explaining! :D Now it makes sense. @Shambala108
- Digifiend
If necessary? In a cast list, The Doctor or Dr. Who would always be pipe switched, without exception, as the link would need to be to First Doctor, Second Doctor, etc, and that's never used in the credits.
- Shambala108
My "if necessary" was referring to other characters, such as pipe switching "Staff Sgt. Arnold" to "Arnold (The Web of Fear)", to name one out of hundreds of examples.
Sometimes my answers go beyond what was specifically asked.
- CzechOut
Shambala's answer is of course correct for the original poster's question. But I did want to pick up on this point:
Orangerichard56 wrote:
- ... and never doctor who in the DWU ...
That's absolutely not true. He is regularly and predominantly called "Dr. Who" in annuals and comics from 1964-1979. "Doctor Who" is certainly implied to be his name by most novelisation titles (See here.) Of course The Bells of Saint John actually has the Doctor contemplating the name, and appearing to go for it.
And colloquially, most Britons do consider the character name to be "Doctor Who".
So is the name "Doctor Who"? Eh, yes and no is the best answer that can be mustered.
- Orangerichard56
they only say doctor who when he says " im the doctor" and they say "doctor who" they dont adress him as that not in the tv at least
- Digifiend
Like CzechOut said, the 60s and 70s comics did erroneously call him Doctor Who, and haven't you heard of WOTAN? A computer from the TV story The War Machines, who is the only entity ever to call him Doctor Who on screen. That means what you just said isn't quite true.
- Orangerichard56
well he is mostly reffered to as the doctor
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:148280
if the doctor survives we must take into account that the tomb wasnt an Alternate timeline but just was there for unknown reasons since if it never existed then clara would of never met the doctor and the doctor would of never left gallifrey
discuss here
- Doctor777
Clara specifically says to the Time Lords "Help him change the future," that future being the Doctor's death on Trenzalore. Since he didn't die, then the Doctor's tomb never existed; therefore placing it in an alternate timeline.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:148380
if the doctor survives we must take into account that the tomb wasnt an Alternate timeline but just was there for unknown reasons since if it never existed then clara would of never met the doctor and the doctor would of never left gallifrey
now czechout plz dont delete since i need to dicsuss more about this topic
it is possible the grave somehow exists from the alternate timeline but here i am only here to talk about the editing and not the speculation i think we can go to the howling
since if the grave didnt exist then the whole thing in the doctors life would collapse wouldnt it there would be no claras and no doctor in his tardis
discuss here
- Digifiend
You already asked this: Thread:148280
- Orangerichard56
yes and it was locked
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:148443
I've noticed that the "Theories" page is only limited to essays and discussions regarding continuity. Shouldn't there be one for, say, I don't know, personalities or unexplained parts of the way things work in the DWU?
- Shambala108
I'm not completely sure what kind of thing you have in mind, but we do have a place for speculation and theories of the DWU at Howling:The Howling.
If you mean to write something that is not up for discussion — but which does involve speculation — then Theory is probably an appropriate venue. The Howling is meant to be a true discussion area, a forum where spoilers are allowed. Theory is meant for well-considered statements that contain speculation.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:148474
On the Eleventh Doctor page, one of the undated events is the part about inventing a boyfriend mentioned in the Christmas special:
At some point, the Doctor created an android boyfriend for himself but had significant difficulty getting rid of it. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)
It was my understanding that this was a reference to Kamelion, the Fifth Doctor's robotic (and probably male) companion. Can I have some confirmation whether I'm wrong or right?
- Shambala108
Haven't seen the Christmas special, but the Doctor did not invent Kamelion, if that helps.
- ThatOneLink
Oh, alright. A few YouTube videos (hunting for references in Time of the Doctor) also agreed to this reference, so I was just wondering.
- NarnianAslan1
The Doctor had a boyfriend? But he's not gay?
- Josiah Rowe
He's had relationships with women (and married several), so if we want to take the "boyfriend" line seriously, then at the very least he's bisexual or pansexual, if we really want to go there.
- CzechOut
As the Ninth Doctor said, "you can assume that [he's] danced."
The Eleventh Doctor page no longer mentions the android boyfriend line. There is nothing in the episode which suggests it was something that happened to the Eleventh Doctor, and so its placement on Eleventh Doctor is unjustified.
That article is the biggest one on the entire wiki. Most of what's there needs a trimming. So it definitely shouldn't include things that aren't, specifically, tied to Eleven.
By the way, welcome to the wiki ThatOneLink! Note that links to articles can be created simply by placing them in square brackets, like so:
[[page name]]
- The Wikia Editor
Is it possible the Doctor was referring to Catherine Broome? She was an android companion created by the Seventh Doctor.
- TheMostBoringManInTheWorld
Catherine Broome was a "female" android, or at least one made to believe it's a human female, while the Eleventh Doctor said he had constructed an android boyfriend. If he was talking about Broome, he would have said he had constructed a android girlfriend. So she's out of the question.
- Josiah Rowe
If you want to get really wacky, you could say it was Antimony.
- TheMostBoringManInTheWorld
Hm, that does seem to be a possibility.
- 98.212.204.159
This almost made me wonder if events mirroring the events of Shalka in an alternate universe sort of way had happened to the canon Doctor at some point, with the android boyfriend in question being that version of the Master.
- POMfannumber1
Not Kamelion. Just no.
- OttselSpy25
Didn't Czech just make it clear that this didn't happen anyways?
- Josiah Rowe
No, he made it clear that if it happened it could have happened to any Doctor up to and including the Eleventh.
- Redcatie7
It couldn't have been Kamelion. The Doctor didn't invent him. He didn't even originally have him. The Master stole him from Xeripheus. Besides, he wasn't really an android. He was alive and sentient to some extent. I think they meant the android Master from Shalka (even if it's not canon).
- OttselSpy25
Eleven never said that he had a robot bf. No Doctor ever said that.
- SOTO
No, Eleven most definitely did at least imply it in The Time of the Doctor.
Clara: So, I may have accidentally invented a boyfriend.
Doctor: Yeah, I did that once — and there's no easy way to get rid of an android. - 98.254.244.84
Er
Wasn't he referring to Handles?
- OttselSpy25
SmallerOnTheOutside wrote: Clara: So, I may have accidentally invented a boyfriend.
Doctor: Yeah, I did that once — and there's no easy way to get rid of an android.That's a very vague joke, not to mention the fact that he clearly could have meant a girlfriend.
- MystExplorer
I hadn't considered the possibility that he was talking about a girlfriend, in which case Catherine Broome is the only one who vaguely fits that description.
Also, to everyone, again, the reference in Time was honestly to no one in particular. We can speculate, but since the Doctor doesn't expand, and may have been joking altogether, the android boyfriend may have been any of the above, or anyone he built/encountered off-screen or indeed off-page or off-MP3-file as well.
And these boards are not for speculation. To answer the original question directly, no we cannot confirm or deny that Eleven is referencing Kamelion, or anyone else. As has been said, though, he didn't invent Kamelion, and (as far as we know) they had no sexual or otherwise romantic relationship — so that's unlikely. And, just bevause it's been brought up so many times, Scream of the Shalka is in an entirely different continuity, so, again, unlikely.
Question asked and answered. Thread now closing.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:148494
The continuity section of "The Time of the Doctor (TV Story) incorrectly states that it is the second story to feature a narrator. It is actually the third, as the episode "Cold Blood" in Series 5 also featured a narrator, revealed to be Eldane. Additionally, the article does not specify that it is the third use of narration in the revived series specifically (Tom Baker narrates a short passage at the beginning of the classic serial "The Deadly Assassin").
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:148629
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Template:Realworldint
I came across it when looking in the history of a page and I think it would be good to put on The FDR page.
What we need to convey with the tophat — that's what these type of templates are called, because they sit like a hat on top of the page — is that the story is not a part of the DWU and therefore cannot be used to write in-universe articles.
You might think that point is incredibly obvious, but it's not to every fan. It's important to specifically say, "this thing ain't a valid source".
By the way, you can create links to templates by typing:
{{tlx|template name}}
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:148630
Should she be featured in infoboxes.
- Shambala108
AOTD?
- Reversinator
Asylum of the Daleks, I think. In any case, Oswin is pretty much Clara, so I don't think it's necessary.
- CzechOut
She's at the Asylum of the Daleks infobox in exactly the right capacity: as a featured guest. She is not a companion, and there is no other infobox in which she could plausibly appear.
- Reversinator
I think he's referring to the Companions of the Eleventh Doctor template, and it's just badly worded.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:148948
Season 23 does essentially cover The Trial of a Time Lord, but technically the season and the story are separate things. We've individual pages for audio anthologies like 1001 Nights (audio anthology).
I know we treat The Trial of a Time Lord as 4 distinct stories, but there are instances where it's more accurate to treat it as a single story. Each of the intros for the stories that make of Trial start with "this was the unofficial/unbroadcast title".
Having a separate page would let us link and deal specifically with Trial on its own terms.
- CzechOut
I've always found this one vexing, too. It's like we make an exception for Trial because it's television or something.
Currenlty The Trial of a Time Lord redirects to Season 23 — which is the opposite of the WP:DW solution. There, they have wikipedia:Doctor Who (season 23) redirecting to wikipedia:The Trial of a Time Lord.
Thing is, neither approach is wholly satisfactory. It would be really useful to have a page about the story of the trial itself. That gets a bit lost when you instead focus on the individual sub-serials.
So I basically think we should have a separate page, as long as we're very clear that The Trial of a Time Lord is about the story, while season 23 remained pretty much as it is — a behind-the-scenes explanation of the season. Thus it would be a story page without story notes, since those notes would likely already be on the season 23 page.
- Lego Whovian
Yes but, I think we shouldn't have individual pages for The Mysterious Planet, Mindwarp, Terror of the Vervoids & The Ultimate Foe because they're not BBC-approved titles.
- CzechOut
Lego Whovian wrote: Yes but, I think we shouldn't have individual pages for The Mysterious Planet, Mindwarp, Terror of the Vervoids & The Ultimate Foe because they're not BBC-approved titles.
The work involved in un-doing this aspect of the wiki will not be undertaken. Not only would it be extremely tedious, it would mean that we would be citing things with less specificity.
Indeed, now that you've mentioned that, I begin to worry that if we were to create a TOATL page, people might start citing very broadly. That would be a reduction in the utility of our information. This happens already with the audio anthologies mentioned — people do cite AUDIO: Circular Time when they really mean AUDIO: Autumn.
Might have just talked myself out of supporting this notion.
- Tangerineduel
Damn, should've created the page yesterday!
I think on the page it will explain the differences between the Trial and the stories and why there's a distinction.
But let me ask / propose a radical side step. With Trial the trial elements frame the first 3 stories.
Those stories essentially exist on their own, with the Trial pieces being told around them. We could cover the Trial elements on the Trial page and link back off to Mysterious Planet/Mindwarp/Vervoids/Ultimate Foe from that page. As the Trial is basically its own story with those three as evidence.
I only propose this as, if you're concerned about people citing Trial as one big thing...maybe they should. If we're imposing an unofficial name on these stories why not treat them as they are in the stories, as elements of the trial.
The Trial is one story with all of it played out in the Trial room. Mysterious Planet/Mindwarp/Vervoids/Ultimate Foe are separate elements of that story. Admittedly if you just watched the trial scenes it's a story where the Doctor calls the Valeyard names and they watch a bit of TV, but that's basically how any clip show works, it's just that this clip show is of stuff that hadn't been seen before.
This is why I used 1001 Nights (audio anthology) as my example above, because it too uses a framing narrative with stories being told leading from it, exactly like Trial. It has an anthology page and a story page for the framing narrative.
- Shambala108
Tangerineduel: "I only propose this as, if you're concerned about people citing Trial as one big thing...maybe they should. If we're imposing an unofficial name on these stories why not treat them as they are in the stories, as elements of the trial."
Apologies if I'm misunderstanding you, but it seems like you're saying that citations to, say, Mindwarp, should be cited to the Trial page? Because that's what CzechOut was concerned about and I agree with him on that. I don't have a problem with a separate article for the linking material (there are several short story anthologies that have them in addition to the audio anthologies you mentioned) but I don't think references to the individual stories should link to the Trial page.
- CzechOut
I just wanna highlight one element:
Tangerineduel wrote: If we're imposing an unofficial name on these stories why not treat them as they are in the stories, as elements of the trial.
In what sense are they "unofficial"? The BBC's episode guide uses them. The reverse of the 30th anniversary VHS box set clearly gives the sub-serial titles. The Making of The Trial of a Time Lord documentary series on the DVDs uses the titles, as in The Making of The Trial of a Time Lord: Part Four - The Ultimate Foe. The stories are novelised separately; there's no sense in which Terror of the Vervoids (novelisation) is an incorrect title. And in the broader sense, the assignment of production codes to the individual parts means that the team thought they were distinct serials: Mindwarp is 7B, not 7A like its predecessor.
So the titles and the concept of the 14 parts being four serials are "official".
The worst you can say is that contemporary audiences didn't call the first four episodes The Mysterious Planet. But then, contemporary audiences would have no idea what would be meant by An Unearthly Child (TV story) or The Daleks (TV story) or The Edge of Destruction (TV story).
The only reason that resistance to giving 7B a name persists is because of the influence of Andrew Pixley and DWM in general, who refuse to use the name "Mindwarp" in places like DWM 249 and DWMSE 3. There, they've influenced fan opinion away from the BBC's apparent desires, and firmly chose to call Mindwarp "Serial 7B" and, worse, "The Trial of a Time Lord Parts Five-Eight".
Obviously fans listen to DWM, and they should. It's a great mag that tries to get to the truth of things. Here, though, they're being ever so slightly anal. The BBC themselves have been pretty comfortable using names — and not just episode numbers — for the four constituent serials of the season since at least 1993.
- Tangerineduel
Apologies, I was going from the article's intros, that CzechOut's corrected now from 'unofficial' to 'unbroadcast'.
Yes, Shambala108, I think there should be a page for the linking material to cover Trial as a whole. But no, the citations should still go to Mindwarp.
DWM are always slightly anal, 100,000 BC' for example.
So to return to the original proposal, Trial page for the story, mostly the linking material with links off to the 4 stories.
Season 23 remains as is, behind the scenes and information concerning DW's hiatus around that time and the aborted season 23.
- Shambala108
Ok, thanks, I just wanted to make sure I understood you.
- CzechOut
Tangerineduel wrote: Apologies, I was going from the article's intros, that CzechOut's corrected now from 'unofficial' to 'unbroadcast'.
For clarity, they'd mostly said unbroadcast forever but a user changed them for about a day. Apparently, the firs serial had been changed to unofficial soon after it was changed yonks ago, leaving a confusing disparity, which the recent user picked up and ran with.
- OttselSpy25
I think that Trial should be its own story pages, and that should be used for the descriptions of the events of the whole story, and not the individual parts.
- 74.192.30.122
I know this is off topic, but does anyone know where I can watch the classic episodes and seasons of Doctor Who? I did find a really good website a long time ago, but now I can't find it.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:149101
Hi. I think that the page List of Doctor Who television stories should be moved to List of Doctor Who television episodes because it would be easier to navigate and to mark which episodes are missing or not. DWM 468 comes with a poster called "Doctor Who: 50 years, 800 episodes". The Doctor Who episode count would be much better that the TV story one because it is often disputable which episodes make up which stories but 800 is such a solid number!
- SOTO
When is the placement of episodes disputable? Do you have any examples to back that up?
First of all, the page would be unnecessarily long (in fact, around three times the current length) if each episode got its own line. Also consider, of course, that individual episodes don't have their own names from 1966 to '89. So what, we'd be entering in The Creature from the Pit 1, The Creature from the Pit 2, The Creature from the Pit 3, The Creature from the Pit 4?
I think it works just fine as it is, split up by serial with the number of episodes incorporated into the table. It's great that you love the number 800, but, not too long from now, it's gonna be 801, then 802, then 803, and so forth. So having a "solid" number would only be a temporary situation anyway.
- Lego Whovian
I could make "List of Doctor Who television episodes" a user sub page until I've completed it and then you could see it for yourself.
- Shambala108
Lego Whovian wrote: Hi. I think that the page List of Doctor Who television stories should be moved to List of Doctor Who television episodes because it would be easier to navigate and to mark which episodes are missing or not. DWM 468 comes with a poster called "Doctor Who: 50 years, 800 episodes". The Doctor Who episode count would be much better that the TV story one because it is often disputable which episodes make up which stories but 800 is such a solid number!
I don't see a need for specifying which episodes are missing on this simple list page. Specific missing episodes are listed on pertinent story pages as well as the Missing episode page.
Also, like SOTO, I want to know which episodes of which stories are in dispute.
- CzechOut
Lego Whovian wrote: I could make "List of Doctor Who television episodes" a user sub page until I've completed it and then you could see it for yourself.
While I appreciate your enthusiasm, I don't want you to waste your time, either. Thing is, we won't be moving the page in the way you suggest under any circumstances. "Stories" is the word that this wiki uses to cover all major narrative formats used in Doctor Who. It's served us for a number of years, and it'll continue to do so. It's necessary to have a word which can, as it were, knit the three production eras of Doctor Who together. Story works whether you mean the primarily serial-oriented era of the original run, the tele-movie of 1996 or the episode-driven era that we're in now.
- Lego Whovian
This is a bit of what it would look like: User:Lego Whovian/Episodes. I know it would make the page a lot longer but, I think that it would make it look a lot neater.
Also, is there really any need for an invalid section, List of Doctor Who television stories#Invalid?
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:149118
The image upload page, Tardis:Image use policy, Help:Image cheat card, and other areas of the wiki stress the use of widescreen aspect rations on everything except video/book covers, where tall aspect ratio is unavoidable.
I'm wondering what folks here think of the rule's effect on actors' promotional headshots, which are traditionally made in portrait orientation. The headshots are often great for adding to actors' pages, but should they be cropped wide (which is not always actually possible to do while retaining the actor's features) or should an exception to the rule be made for them? — Rob T Firefly - Δ∇ - 02:02, January 5, 2014 (UTC)
- CzechOut
The rule doesn't change contextually. Widescreen it really must be, especially in light of Wikia's presence on mobile devices. If you don't do it in widescreen, you end up with something like this completely unacceptable picture in MyWikia:
- CzechOut
And this is what your own recent upload looks like in MyWikia, Rob:
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:149260
Usually, the way we deal with naming novelisations is dabbing them if they have the exact same name as the serial they're based on, and leaving them plain if they start with "Doctor Who and" instead. After all, you're not gonna find another "Doctor Who and the Invisible Enemy", are you?[1]
- ↑ Technically, the DW production team prefixed story titles with "Doctor Who and" on official documents and scripts until around Doctor Who and the Silurians, so if you want to get overly technical, you will find another Doctor Who and the Ice Warriors, for example.
Then, though, I came across Doctor Who and the Stones of Blood (novelisation). It being the only of its kind, my first thought was of course to nominate it to be {{rename}}d, or maybe just move it myself. But then I saw the rename summary user:CzechOut wrote when he moved the page on 14 March 2012: "forgot to dab term these novelisations; doing this one for now; will come back later for the rest".
It's of course been a year and a half since then, and clearly no action ended up being taken on the others, but I think he's raised a valid point. So here's the question: does Forum:Story names should be automatically disambiguated apply to novelisations?
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:149266
I have noticed a lot of events being put under the "alternate realities" sections of character pages when, in fact, they should just be under the normal biography sections in the time which they would have occurred anyways.
Things like The Light at the End (audio story), which has its' events reverted at the end but still has a narrative place in the Doctor's timeline, don't need to go under the "alternate timelines" section. It's no different from the events of Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS or that of the River universe. Even if it didn't happen, it still happened, per say. In the same way, the events of Light at the End still happened and deserves to be in the narrative section.
Timelines that are more "what if" and we see more of effects of it rather then when it happened are what need to go in those sections, like The Time & Time Again First Doctor.
- CzechOut
Not sure what you're on about. Care to amplify?
- TheMostBoringManInTheWorld
I think he's trying to say that events like those of Last of the Time Lords and other stories where the events at the end get reverted like they never even happened deserve to placed in the narrative section and not in alternate realities section.
- CzechOut
No, I understand that, MBM. What I'm trying to figure out is why these don't count, in OS25's mind, as alternate realities. Doomsday tells us that "every single decision we make creates a parallel existence, a different dimension". The fact that some of these decisions might get a "redo" doesn't obviate the creation of a parallel existence. The events of Last of the Time Lords "count" for the individuals who lived through "The Year That Never Was", even if they're not remembered by the vast majority of humanity.
Unless I'm missing something pretty major, I really don't see that there are different levels of alternativeness. There's the main timeline, and then there are the alternatives.
I think the distinction between Time & Time Again and The Light at the End is a completely arbitrary one. An alternate timeline is an alternate timeline. Neither how you got into it or out of it matters. What matters is only that it got created.
- TheMostBoringManInTheWorld
Oh, I see the problem! It's basically what people think is an "alternate timeline". One account tells us that time can rewritten, meaning that you can always change time and the events in it. (TV: Father's Day) Another one though tells us that alternate or parallel universes are created when an event occurs when there are many possible outcomes so time gets separated into two universes with two different timelines with different outcomes of the same event. (TV: Doomsday) I think we should create a distinction between the two, since both of them result in an alternate timeline.
Here's my definition of alternate timeline and alternate reality.
- Alternate reality or alternate (parallel universe)
- A reality created when an event with several possible outcomes leads to the creation of multiple realities or universes with their own timeline and different outcome to the same event, like branches if a tree.
- Alternate timeline
- A timeline created when time gets rewritten.
See what I mean?
- CzechOut
Actually, I'm not able to find support in DWU fiction for your assertion. The general distinction in the DWU is between “alternate” and “parallel” — not between “timeline” and “reality”. Pick up The Face of the Enemy or Imperial Moon or watch Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? and you will see a distinction being made between “alternate” and “parallel”.
What is usually asserted is that an alternate timeline creates an alternate reality. For instance, in The Eye of the Giant, we get this little ditty by the Third Doctor:
- The intruders faded away because we must be in alternate timelines, separated by that interface, and they simply did not belong in this one. Some interpenetration is possible, but clearly only for a limited time. The alternate lines are each trying, so to speak, to shape the same fundamental building blocks to different patterns. The patterns of those soldiers, or whatever they were, did not exist in our little bubble of reality, so they simply vanished.
Equally, Reckless Engineering, which is all about the Eighth Doctor flipping through different realities, gives this helpful exchange:
- Fitz: Hold on — how many alternate realities are there? I mean — are we going to spend the rest of our lives going from place 'restoring' the right version of history?
- Eight: I sincerely hope not. Could be one or two, could be hundreds. Or an infinite number. If it's just the one or two, then we're more or less OK, we can go back and fix things, but if it’s a great number the Time Vortex will collapse and, well. It's the end.
In other words, the alternate realities are caused by messing with time — alternate timelines.
From The Eye of the Giant, we get this little ditty by the Third Doctor:
- "The intruders faded away because we must be in alternate timelines, separated by that interface, and they simply did not belong in this one,’ the Doctor explained. ‘Some interpenetration is possible, but clearly only for a limited time. The alternate lines are each trying, so to speak, to shape the same fundamental building blocks to different patterns. The patterns of those soldiers, or whatever they were, did not exist in our little bubble of reality, so they simply vanished." In other words, an alternate timeline is a reality.
The distinction that DWU fiction gives is generally between alternate and parallel, not between timeline and reality. And that makes sense. In a show about time travel, timeline ought to equal reality.
Alternate realities are the result of altering the timeline. The general message of DWU fiction, however, is that parallel universes are a distinct kind of alternate universe. As Eight in War of the Daleks puts it, a "parallel timeline" was formed when the Dalek Prime used "time travel abilities to attempt to change the results" of an event. In other words, the two histories were the same, up to the point of a particular, and more or less singular, change to the timeline. The broader implication would be that a parallel timeline would be created if Lincoln wasn't assassinated or Germany won World War II. And though these could be described as an "alternate reality", generally "alternate" is reserved for when the changes are much, much bigger. The DWU generally seems to assert that all parallel universes are alternate, but not all alternates are necessarily parallel.
The Eighth Doctor implies a connection between the two in Time Zero. When he's asked, "Is that like alternative realities? Quantum theory and all that?" he responds, "No. You're thinking of universes parallel to our own, split off at some decision point in the past."
Then there's the reaction of the ordinary, non-scientifically-minded, human companion. Sam says in Interference - Book Two that she once had sex with Fitz but "Not properly. It was a parallel-universe-alternative-reality kind of thing." To some important characters in the DWU, the distinctions that we're trying to make here are completely irrelevant. It's all just other reality.
And finally, it should be noted that Terrance Dicks completely throws the cats amongst the pigeons with his odd definitions. He called E-Space "a smaller universe that exists parallel to our own", and then has Flavia actually call it, in dialogue in The Eight Doctors, a "kind of parallel universe". This is completely beyond the normal conception of what E-Space was, as depicted on TV. I don't think anyone thought that E-Space was formed by some meddling with a timeline. It feels much more like a "bubble universe" or "pocket universe" — something like where House lives in The Doctor's Wife. I mean, there's an entire serial dealing with the fact that there's a literal gateway between N-Space and E-Space. And Adric is charting a return journey there in Earthshock, so E-Space is a physical location, not a different reality.
- TheMostBoringManInTheWorld
Okay then. Then that means:
- Parallel reality or alternate timeline
- A reality created when an event with several possible outcomes leads to the creation of multiple realities or universes with their own timeline and different outcome to the same event, like branches if a tree.
- Alternate reality
- A wholy different reality whose origin has little connection to our own universe's.
There's one problem though - if changing the timeline results in the creation of another one, doesn't that actually remove all the issues the Doc has with time travel in The Angels Take Manhattan and his inability to save Amy and Rory?
- CzechOut
No it doesn't mean that at all. Again, the distinction in DWU is between the word parallel and the world alternate. Alternate timelines create alternate realities. A timeline is a reality.
But also, and quite importantly, there are major characters in the DWU who don't make any sort of distinction between these things at all.
It's a bit like that old chestnut, "What year starts the 21st century?" You can find support in the DWU for both 2000 and 2001. Equally, there are times when DWU characters struggle to define a difference between "parallel" and "alternate", and there are times when not. But what you never find, I don't think, is a distinction between an alternate timeline and an alternate reality.
- TheMostBoringManInTheWorld
I see. Thanks for clearing that up!
- OttselSpy25
This went to an interesting place quickly. My issue was with "reverted" stories not being placed in the narrative section, particularly when from a non-TV source. I noted how stories like The Sound of Drums or Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS were in the narrative sections for those characters, while stories like The Light at the End were put in their own section. I think that there is a strong difference between "this and this happened and then it was reverted so it never happened" and "look at this what-if timeline!" That was all really.
- OttselSpy25
I would be one for removing the alternate realities section all together, but like I said, stories which don't give such a strong connection for how they work in the alternate timeline may just fit better there. Like the Time & Time Again First Doctor.
- OttselSpy25
Take how a lot of pages have entered info from LatE.
It usually starts
- In an alternate timeline created by the Master
Except the events of the story are not an alternate timeline created by the Master. They're a thing the Master did that later were reverted by the Doctor so that they never happened. Further baffling is what usually ends the bit -- "The main timeline was put back in place." The article seems convinced that what the Master did was the events of Turn Left -- go back and make changes that create a different world which was later reverted. But that is not what happened, what happened was that something happened and then it was reverted through time travel. An alternate timeline created by tampering with the past and an alternate timeline created by going back and reverting something that happened which otherwise did not involve much changing of history are two different things. That's all I was trying to say.
- BananaClownMan
But Journey is listed under alternate timeline because, not only did the Doctor find away to warn himself in advance to raise shields and negate the events of that day, he later points out that it did happen in an alternate timeline while being chased by Whisper Men in Name.
- BananaClownMan
Also, the Master did go back and change time, he just did it without actually traveling in time; too wit, he plants a bomb device in Bob Dovie's head that causes the TARDIS to be erased from time, trapping the Doctor on Gallifrey and undoing what he done after he left.
When the First Doctor deactivates the warning lights that caused the Doctors to fall into the trap, they pause for a moment and then go about their business, with, aside from a brief trip to Dovie's house, no evidence that the events of the day are recalled by any of them.
- OttselSpy25
BananaClownMan wrote: Also, the Master did go back and change time, he just did it without actually traveling in time; too wit, he plants a bomb device in Bob Dovie's head that causes the TARDIS to be erased from time, trapping the Doctor on Gallifrey and undoing what he done after he left.
When the First Doctor deactivates the warning lights that caused the Doctors to fall into the trap, they pause for a moment and then go about their business, with, aside from a brief trip to Dovie's house, no evidence that the events of the day are recalled by any of them.
Yeah, but the actual events weren't an alternate timeline created by the Master, but something that was reverted by someone else. Also, if they remember isn't relevant.
- BananaClownMan
Okay, now I'm confused, 'cause the way I read it, the first statement was all about them remembering it and thus it being part of their timeline.
- OttselSpy25
That's really irrelevant. The point is that as this is something that happened to them and then was reverted later on, there is not reason to separate into an alternate section. The alternate timelines seen in Four Doctors all feature "what-ifs" which are alternate events based off of choices that the Doctor could have made. Thus they deserve the alternate section placements. The two are completely different concepts.
- I ate a sandwich with rye, but then I went back and time and told myself to eat it with ham.
- I ate a sandwich with rye, and ten years later a machine showed me a possible timeline where I hate it with ham instead.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:149583
I have noticed that when selected from the (classic) editor screen, there is not an infobox for writers. Is there a reason for this? If writers are not meant to have infoboxes, then why does writer come up as an option? If they are meant to have them, is it ok to use the actor/crew member box? Geek Mythology ☎ 16:59, January 11, 2014 (UTC)
- Digifiend
Wouldn't the writer count as crew?
- CzechOut
Last time I checked, writers were people. Try {{Infobox Person}} if "retrofitting" an infobox to a page. If you're using our pre-loadable formats to start a new page, use the actor or crew member pre-loadable format.
But please be aware that infoboxes are not required on pages about crew members. Infoboxes are a graphical element. Per T:GTI, you really shouldn't use an infobox if it's significantly taller than the article's text. And you should never put information in {{Infobox Person}} that isn't in the body of the article itself. Don't use an infobox as a substitute for writing the article. It's meant to highlight the contents of the article.
- Geek Mythology
Thanks for the feedback, I've gone through and given Una McCormack an overhaul and added an infobox, let me know if doesn't comply with any of the policies.
- CzechOut
Yeah, that's an appropriate use of an infobox on a real person's page. In fact, it really might serve as my example from now on of good infobox usage. You've got a fabulous ratio there between infobox size and article size, which looks great in all browser widths and on everything from a phone to a desktop computer with dual monitors.
- 88.105.10.210
You're welcome. :D
- Geek Mythology
Sorry, that was me.
You're still welcome.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:149600
I'm not sure if this is just happening on my computer but I've noticed that the usually tiny images on the wiki activity page have suddenly become gigantic. It makes it very hard to see what the recent changes are. Is anyone else having this problem? If not, is there anything I can do about it? Slughorn42 ☎ 22:44, January 11, 2014 (UTC)
- SpeedyTARDIS
Same here, it's been like that for...4 hours.
- MystExplorer
I tried emptying my cache but that made no difference. Slughorn42 ☎ 22:53, January 11, 2014 (UTC)
- SOTO
Don't worry, it's not just you. The same thing is also happening with redirect icons (ex. The Doctor Dances), and with user icons, like on this very board. I've also noticed that any images with "center" specified are also being stretched to maximum capacity.
Still, do not be alarmed. I have a feeling this is to do with the Darwin maintenance CzechOut announced in Thread:149241. I'm sure everything will be either back to normal — or even better — soon enough.
- CzechOut
Indeed, guys. I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but I'm trying to do stuff with the code that's not really been attempted on other wikis yet. It's proving more daunting than initially imagined because, well, no one on Wikia has really tackled this stuff before. I would have normally tackled this kinda stuff on my own wiki, but that would have required pulling a lot of resources from here to there. I need to see videos working on pages with text and infoboxes. It'll all come together soon enough though.
- CzechOut
Also, I should point out that editing CSS and JS is not like editing a normal page. When you edit an article and change "thier" to "their", you see the change immediately upon publication. When you make a change to CSS or JS, you have to wait for sometimes a long time to see that change reflected in the code, due to the way that Wikia uses caching.
It's a painstaking process.
- CzechOut
The exact problem that the original poster mentioned in this thread has now been fixed.
- MystExplorer
I see that now. Thanks!
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:149786
Each time Doctor Who has been celebrated by the BBC Proms (2008, 2010, 2013) it has featured in-character appearances from various actors. I'm not talking about Music of the Spheres which was pre-recorded and was therefore a separate entity. I'm talking about the appearances by Davros, the Eleventh Doctor, Clara Oswald, Vastra and Strax. I understand that the Proms are different from the Doctor Who stage plays in that they were broadcast on television. However, I'm having a hard time seeing how these characters' appearances can be said to take place in the DWU. If I remember correctly, Vastra mentions The Robots of Death and Attack of the Cybermen by name. This alone places the Proms squarely outside the DWU. Therefore, I think the Non-DWU tag should be applied to those articles and the reference to the Proms should be removed from the relevant character appearances pages. The same goes for The Science of Doctor Who.
- NarnianAslan1
since clara says its a prom about him indicating its about doctor who the show i think no
- MystExplorer
I'm afraid I don't understand your comment. You think it should be labeled Non-DWU or it shouldn't?
- Orangerichard56
Well since no one would make a prom about him and also the prom is celebrating the show and the show doctor who doesnt exist in universe
so its not dwu
- MystExplorer
All right, there's another vote for Non-DWU. Anyone else want to weigh in?
- NarnianAslan1
No discussion needed it was never DWU in the first place.
- MystExplorer
I just thought there should be a discussion before the Non-DWU tag was placed on those articles.
- MystExplorer
Apparently, this discussion is still ongoing. Anyone have anything they want to add?
- Shambala108
Two important things:
Please note that votes do not determine what is DWU and what isn't. Instead, we use our four little rules to determine what is DWU. You must make your arguments on that basis.
Second, there is to be no changing related to this issue while the discussion is ongoing. This policy is spelled out at Tardis:You are bound by current policy.
Thanks.
- MystExplorer
I think I should point out that Davros' article says his appearance at the Proms isn't considered canonical and his list of appearances likewise does not include it. So why should the others be any different?
- MystExplorer
Going by the wiki's four little rules, I'd say that these in-character appearances are not "stories" and the references to story titles means that they were never intended to be set in the DWU. That is my argument in a nutshell.
- Bwburke94
We cannot definitively state that the programme Doctor Who does not exist in the Whoniverse. It is suggested to exist in some form in TV: Remembrance of the Daleks.
Doctor Who also exists, under a different name, in AUDIO: Jubilee. However, this incarnation of the programme is significantly different from the Doctor Who of our universe, and in any case Jubilee is in an alternate timeline that is incompatible with the in-character appearances at the Proms.
In order for the Proms to be within the DWU, the referenced stories would have to exist within the in-universe Doctor Who as well, and furthermore the canonical characters would have to refer to the events by their associated story titles. This is far too implausible a theory, given that it is highly unlikely that, say, Daleks would agree to participate in the making of such stories.
Alternatively, the Proms could take place in an alternate universe (i.e. our universe). Matt Smith/the Eleventh Doctor does make one comment in the 2013 proms that supports this theory, but again there is no confirmation that this was intended to be canon within the DWU. This is a grey area within Rule 4 of our canon policy: do we take it as canon because it hasn't been stated as non-DWU, or do we take it as non-DWU because of the narrative issues that making it canon would present?
The Science of Doctor Who is not a story and cannot be conceivably presented as one, so it cannot be covered as canonical under the four little rules.
While we're on the topic, An Adventure in Time and Space is non-DWU, except that Matt Smith's appearance at the end could conceivably be the Eleventh Doctor. As AAITAS is effectively a story set in our universe, it should be considered to be Matt Smith (and as such non-DWU) unless proven otherwise.
- CzechOut
Suggestion is not the same thing as statement. Doctor Who does not exist within the DWU, except inasmuch as there have been occasional stories which are set in the "real" universe and the real universe is somehow connected to the DWU. Remembrance is not proof of the existence of Doctor Who in the DWU, but there are about three comic stories where it's suggested the Doctor makes it through to the real universe in order to talk to the actors Tom Baker and Matt Smith, and the writer Sean Longcraft. But in all cases it's clear that the Doctor has travelled to a different universe than the one he regularly inhabits.
And please, people, there is no such thing as canon. So there can't be "canonical" anything. The only question this wiki deals with is whether we're going to cover a subject or not — can x story be used to write an in-universe article. That's what we talk about. Is it a valid source according to our four little rules?
- MystExplorer
I'm not asking whether the Proms are "canon" or not. I'm asking whether they should be labeled Non-DWU.
- OttselSpy25
The proms certainly seem to break rule #4.
- Quest?on
They also break rule #1. Don't think it is a story.
- Mewiet
I doubt it changes much, but I noticed tonight that the Hyperscape Body Swap Ticket that the Doctor uses to get himself and Clara into the 2013 Proms is shown on Clara's bookshelf in Dark Water.
- 68.146.52.234
So what's the decision on this? I just had a minor edit war occur with something I tried to include in the article on Dark Water regarding the ticket. DWU or not DWU?
- Shambala108
Please read T:NO WARS to learn the definition of "edit war". Having an edit reverted because it runs against current policy is not an edit war.
This wiki does not use the word "canon" to decide whether something is a valid source or not because the BBC has not defined a canon for DW. The articles Canon and Tardis:Canon policy can give you more information about that.
There's been no decision on this as yet; it is still under discussion. Feel free to leave your thoughts on its validity, keeping Tardis:Valid sources in mind.
- MystExplorer
I wouldn't read too much into the Hyperspace Body Swap Ticket's appearance in Dark Water. It's like when the Eleventh Doctor mentioned Snow White and the Seven Keys to Doomsday in Night Terrors. It's an inside joke. Nothing more. If Clara had said to the Doctor, "Remember that time we went to the Proms and swapped places with people in the audience?" that would be one thing but she didn't. So I stand by my argument for why the Proms should be labeled invalid sources.
- NarnianAslan1
yes because it breaks the fourth wall
- Danniesen
It's not so much because of the fourth wall break. If this was the case then "The Feast of Steven" would be invalid too, as William Hartnell's breaks out a toast of happy Christmas "to all of you at home."
- OttselSpy25
More because it's a real-world documentary with in-universe clips splintered throughout. So basically The Science of Doctor Who and other 2013 Documentaries that talked about how the sets wobbled in the 80s and featured 11 going about all confused.
- Mewiet
OttselSpy25 wrote: More because it's a real-world documentary with in-universe clips splintered throughout.
Putting it that way, yeah. We don't allow things like The Doctor: His Lives and Times even though it's interspersed with in-universe bits, so I don't see a reason to allow the Proms.
- Danniesen
So even if we can use a pic of a Swap Ticket from the Proms their first in-universe relation is a mention in Dark Water.
- MystExplorer
So you all agree they should be marked invalid then?
- OttselSpy25
I do
- Danniesen
What about "Music of the Spheres (TV story)"? Is this story invalid too? It's technically a part of the Proms, but the story itself appears to be valid. Please respond.
- OttselSpy25
That one's simple. It was first released by itself as an awkward skit where the Doctor talks to the camera for two minutes without any sound. It appears in the Proms and by all accounts that's the version worth watching where you can see all the action and the interactive element, but that's not the version that we consider valid.
- Danniesen
Thanks. :)
- MystExplorer
So would anyone object if I added the Invalid tag right now?
- Shambala108
MystExplorer wrote: So would anyone object if I added the Invalid tag right now?
Yes, I object. This discussion hasn't been closed by an admin yet.
- OttselSpy25
Anyone have objections to voice?
- Danniesen
Not me.
- Mewiet
I have no objection to the Proms being labeled non-DWU.
- Danniesen
Alternatively, we could create a new tag that in a brief way describes the DWU breaking into real-world?
- OttselSpy25
We could, but needing to do that would suggest that we're making some exception to the rule there. It's better just to use the NOTVALID tag (as a reminder we've abandoned 'NOTDWU')
- Sabovia
http://share.pho.to/7kAJ5 This might be beneficial to the discussion, although it's a behind the scene shot, the words "Hyperscape Body Swap Ticket" were shown on a sticky note in Dark Water.
- OttselSpy25
And the Graske appear in many SJA episodes. Means little to our validity rules.
- Pluto2
Here's my opinion:
The scenes in which actors are in-character are valid, but nothing else.
The appearance of the Doctor in the 2010 Proms and of Clara and the Doctor in the 2013 Proms should be considered valid, the former being a non-issue in my opinion - it's not even acknowledging the existence of Doctor Who as a series. The Doctor just shows up, has a kid help him defuse something, and leaves. For that, we have a home video version - the one on the DVD release of A Christmas Carol.
Under this suggestion:
1. The scenes where the Eleventh Doctor appears (rather than Matt Smith out-of-character) of the 2010 Proms are valid. 2. The scenes where the Eleventh Doctor and Clara appear (rather than Matt and Jenna out-of-character) of the 2013 Proms are valid.
Any thoughts?
- OttselSpy25
We can't go splitting up the special into different scenes; saying "Oh, from timecode 20:22 to 24:23 it's valid, but 24:24 to 33:36 is invalid."
The only version of Attack of the Graske we accept is the stand-alone internet release where it's the Doctor yelling into silence for the final half. We don't consider the actual live performance valid because it was never released on its own.
Furthermore I find it hard to imagine that the creators of that wanted it to be taken seriously as actualized lore. I doubt they wanted people in the following decades to write out "Davros invaded the London Proms for 15 mins once in 200X" on our little fan databases. It was clearly meant as good ol' fun and nothing else.
Furthermore, you could consider the in-universe parts of the Proms a play, and I believe that we have a solid policy against those.
- Shambala108
OttselSpy25 wrote: We can't go splitting up the special into different scenes; saying "Oh, from timecode 20:22 to 24:23 it's valid, but 24:24 to 33:36 is invalid."
OttselSpy25 is absolutely right. Splitting it into valid and invalid creates too much of a mess. It's either all-in or all-out.
Furthermore, you could consider the in-universe parts of the Proms a play, and I believe that we have a solid policy against those.
We do, at Forum:Why do prefixes link as they do? Not an obvious title, but the policy came about during the prefix discussion.
- SOTO
OS25 is absolutely correct about these Proms, but I do have to correct some fine points about Music of the Spheres. First off, here's an excerpt from the lead: "...Other versions of the short, such as the one broadcast by BBC One, captured audience reaction. These shots made it clearer that the Doctor was only interacting with the Albert Hall audience. From the perspective of the home audience, the Albert Hall audience was a part of the narrative, and the fourth wall remained intact — if a little battered."
The version of Music of the Spheres that we cover /does/ include the interaction with the Royal Albert Hall; we cover the version broadcast on BBC One, not the version in which the Doctor breaks the fourth wall by addressing the camera the whole time, to silence—as has been explained to me in the past by CzechOut, who I believe was the one who really cemented Music of the Sphres in as a valid source. Not the live event either, per se, but the broadcast version only.
But the later Proms are a totally different "story", so to speak. By which I mean, they are not stories. The Doctor sticks around, or Matt Smith does anyway. Even if there are skits, they're really just that, and as has been said we can't just pick which bits we want to count and which we don't.
- OttselSpy25
I stand corrected.
- WJDTwGL
CzechOut wrote: Suggestion is not the same thing as statement. Doctor Who does not exist within the DWU, except inasmuch as there have been occasional stories which are set in the "real" universe and the real universe is somehow connected to the DWU. Remembrance is not proof of the existence of Doctor Who in the DWU, but there are about three comic stories where it's suggested the Doctor makes it through to the real universe in order to talk to the actors Tom Baker and Matt Smith, and the writer Sean Longcraft. But in all cases it's clear that the Doctor has travelled to a different universe than the one he regularly inhabits.
But you can't say "previous stories haven't definitively mentioned a show called Doctor Who, and this one does, so it isn't valid." By that logic you could exclude any story that introduces a new concept. Yes, it's a little metafictional. But in-universe it just means that the show Doctor Who might exist. Hospitality also mentions Doctor Who, just not in a context where characters from the show might complicate things. Just like A Big Hand for the Doctor mentions Blake's 7 as an in-universe TV show, Corpse Marker and Kaldor City feature actual characters from the show, and The Dead Men Diaries refers to both the show and the real Blake's 7.
- 86.174.105.135
Fwhiffahder wrote:
CzechOut wrote: Suggestion is not the same thing as statement. Doctor Who does not exist within the DWU, except inasmuch as there have been occasional stories which are set in the "real" universe and the real universe is somehow connected to the DWU. Remembrance is not proof of the existence of Doctor Who in the DWU, but there are about three comic stories where it's suggested the Doctor makes it through to the real universe in order to talk to the actors Tom Baker and Matt Smith, and the writer Sean Longcraft. But in all cases it's clear that the Doctor has travelled to a different universe than the one he regularly inhabits.
But you can't say "previous stories haven't definitively mentioned a show called Doctor Who, and this one does, so it isn't valid." By that logic you could exclude any story that introduces a new concept. Yes, it's a little metafictional. But in-universe it just means that the show Doctor Who might exist. Hospitality also mentions Doctor Who, just not in a context where characters from the show might complicate things. Just like A Big Hand for the Doctor mentions Blake's 7 as an in-universe TV show, Corpse Marker and Kaldor City feature actual characters from the show, and The Dead Men Diaries refers to both the show and the real Blake's 7.
Also, what about Doctor Who (In the Forest of the Night) which links to The Doctor (In the Forest of the Night) and Clara Oswald (In the Forest of the Night)? Surely that's an example of Doctor Who existing in N-Space?
- OttselSpy25
It's not about the coherency of it working as an in-universe story, it's about the purpose that the creators put into it. I'd need proof that it *was* meant a serious, in-universe event.
- WJDTwGL
OttselSpy25 wrote: It's not about the coherency of it working as an in-universe story, it's about the purpose that the creators put into it. I'd need proof that it *was* meant a serious, in-universe event.
Of course. So any indication in previous stories that "Doctor Who does not exist within the DWU" isn't evidence against this being valid.
- OttselSpy25
Just as much as evidence that Doctor Who does exist within the DWU doesn't provide any evidence for this being valid.
- WJDTwGL
I know. I didn't mean it as evidence that this is valid, just as proof that CzechOut is wrong that Doctor Who-in-Doctor Who in any way indicates invalidity.
- Scrooge MacDuck
I know this discussion is old, but I would like to add my two cents and dispute the above allegation that it breaks Rule 1 by "not being a story". I have my doubts about its breaking Rule 4, though it's a defendable point, but how it's "not a story" I can't imagine.
It's a pretty amorphous sort of story, in that it doesn't play by the usual three-act structure most stories have, but there is a narrative at play. E.g., Davros has led the Daleks to take over the Hall, then comes to the forefront to gloat at his audience/captives, explains his plans, and then the Daleks badger the conductor into playing Dalek music — this isn't a random assortment of events, an actual story has been conveyed. Before and after, we see more of this concert which Davros & Co. are interrupting — we see much more of it than regular narrative pacing would advise, but it's still more events happening chronologically before and after Davros's invasion.
- Scrooge MacDuck
That being said… (good golly, has it really been most of a year?) whilst I certainly like to think that it happened, and I stand by my Rule 1 argument above, there's no honest retort to the fact that this is very clearly not intended as a serious narrative about the DWU.
The references to Doctor Who existing aren't even really the problem, in my opinion, so much as the general attitude of throwing in Vampires from Venice, Judoon, Cybermen and what-have-you walking around the Royal Albert Hall snarling, not doing much else, and then retreating because someone played some music at them. They're here to look cool, not for any reason that makes logical sense, and how there can even still be any Vampires from Venice isn't even addressed.
So in short, my third cent: it probably passes Rule 1, but Rule 4? Nah.
These are not stories, they are concerts. They have the real world tag because they are real world articles, but since they aren't stories they don't need the invalid tag, which is just for stories (and their elements).
That being said, these Proms should never be linked/cited in the in universe sections of articles. They are not stories, and we only cite stories on in-universe pages. So the removal of any of these Proms cited in-universe will have to be done.
Now, if anyone wants to question the validity of any of the filmed mini episodes from these proms, they should really be part of a separate inclusion debate.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:149894
people being disgusting and randomly insulting they also dont like me because they think they are the only chat people.
i want them removed
- Scixer
NarianAslan1 is the person that is actually ruining the chat. He is constantly swearing and cursing at people. Please ban his account.
- NarnianAslan1
No im not
- Scixer
NarnianAslan1 wrote: No im not
False.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:149995
The idea of a network connecting the various Doctor Who wikis on Wikia has been proposed by Me of the Doctor Who Fanon wiki, which would in theory include TARDIS. Please have a read through what is proposed at w:c:doctorwhofanon:Thread:10685 and express your thoughts on having TARDIS join the alliance below. I personally support the idea, but we cannot join together without the support of the TARDIS. So, what are your thoughts?
This thread is closed. There are far too many of these threads popping up all over Wikia's DW wikis. If you want to participate in this discussion, please go to the DWF thread.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:150430
The BBC have revealed Capaldi's costume. Would I be right in thinking that it shouldn't be added to the wiki (the Twelfth Doctor page is protected anyway) until it debuts on TV, per T:OFF REL and T:SPOIL?
- Revanvolatrelundar
Yeah, we can't put anything on any articles until his debut episode airs. Sorry! :)
- OlieRendch
But the BBC officially released it. So why cant it be added to the wiki?
- Lego Whovian
You can talk about it at the Howling.
- Shambala108
Blathereen, Lego Whovian is right that you can talk about it at Howling:The Howling, but the short answer to your question is that it would violate our Tardis:Spoiler policy. I strongly suggest you read it.
- Cynical Classicist
I agree it is unfortunate, but we have to follow the rules. Anyway a fan can easily find the costume.
- 86.147.116.185
I think the policy said usualy press releases are vauge and misinturptlreted e.g. "it is discovered" was the grave and not the name. If we put the outfit in it could turn into a Saxon theory thing. They haven't even finished filiming yet.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:150740
There's a pilot for what is ostensibly a Doctor Who prequel series that is being spearheaded by Yee Jee Tso. It's called A Wild Endeavor: http://www.awildendeavour.com/. It's apparently named after the continent of Wild Endeavour. It was originally called Sons of Gallifrey but they changed it because it sounded too much like Sons of Anarchy (also probably for legal reasons). They're currently holding auditions for the pilot and will be funding the project through Kickstarter. As of now, this clearly fails Rule #2. However, they've said that once the pilot is complete, they'll be sending it to "the network". I don't know if this means the BBC or a US network. If it's the latter, I don't see how such a series could move forward without the BBC's blessing. We don't need to worry about this right now but I think it's something to be aware of. Slughorn42 ☎ 18:11, January 31, 2014 (UTC)
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:152204
Given that we now know where the Macqueen Master is placed in his timeline (after he was given a new regeneration cycle by the Time Lords in order to fight the Daleks and other threats on behalf of the CIA, but before "Utopia"), can we rename the "Impersonating the Doctor" section on The Master page to e.g. "A new lease of life"?
- CzechOut
Is there a particular reason "impersonating the Doctor" no longer works? That's the starting point of the character still, right? So why is going with the ending (or latest) point better than the starting point?
I normally don't care too much what happens to section heads, but since this one is tied to a template, and that template to various links, I'd rather not change it unless there's a compelling reason why "impersonating the Doctor" is actually inaccurate.
That's not to say that we would never change it. But this seems to be a preference for one part of his story over another.
- JagoAndLitefoot
It's the first appearance of this version of the character, but he's not impersonating the Doctor on his latest nor probably further occasions. So "A new lease of life" would be more general in reference to this generation, instead of just to a scheme he came up with in one story. "A new lease of life" by the Time Lords was actually the starting point of this incarnation, according to his own words.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:152431
Following on from the In-universe websites fails the four valid source rules? and inspired by Tybort's responses on the Talk:Abzorbalovian page, do the Monster Files fail our four little rules?
None of the Monster Files appear to present information narratively. They would seem to fall into the same category as the biographical or "historical information" that is in annuals. As T:VS states "Fictional information presented non-narratively", making it fall afoul of number 1 of the four rules in that it's not a story.
- SOTO
Is there no story at all to them? I've never given this much thought in the past, but if they really are just DWU characters presenting information, then they're pretty much the video equivalent of those reference books masked as narratives.
- Tangerineduel
No.
It's read by Barrowman / Kingston as Jack / River. But there's no narrative to speak of, it's just them narrating the information. There seems to be a mix of stock footage and new graphics in the Monster Files.
- OttselSpy25
Well, there sometimes is some sort of plot behind the info, like Jack looking through info or such. Cyber bits.
- CzechOut
Well some of them are Jack/River telling the story of something. So they're narrative in the sense of someone reading you a bedtime story.
- Tangerineduel
I've not watched them all (as they remain geo-locked), so I may have missed some that did illustrate this better than the half dozen I looked at.
Are those stories that OttselSpy25 and CzechOut have mentioned really stories? Those that I have seen might fall into the loose category of a story. But it still seems more like someone reading with pictures than something which has a structured narrative.
- SOTO
Just to note, some pages like Abzorbalovian Rebels — why the plural anyways? — have only the Monster Files as a source, and should be deleted if we decide not to take them as valid.
If we do decide to accept them, though, I'd recommend creating individual pages for each edition — possibly MF 1, MF 2 or CJMF 1, CJMF 2...RSMF 1 — so that specific episodes can more easily be linked to and sourced.
- OttselSpy25
We definatley need a page for each story.
- SOTO
Actually, come to think of it, it could be, for example, Judoon (MF episode).
Also, even if the rest are rejected, I would maintain that A Ghost Story for Christmas very much has a solid storyline, unlike the others, and should definitely be considered valid.
- Mewiet
I've never understood why they didn't have their own pages. I asked about creating them on the talk page back in May, but never got a response. Since they were webcasts I don't see why it wouldn't just be the title it was given in the video plus its designation as a webcast. For example, Monster Files: Vampires (webcast). None of them repeat monsters except for the sort-of-similar Weeping Angels MF and A Ghost Story for Christmas (also labeled a webcast), which have two different titles and stories anyway.
CzechOut wrote: Well some of them are Jack/River telling the story of something. So they're narrative in the sense of someone reading you a bedtime story.
Yeah. In the case of the Weeping Angels entry, for example, she tells the story behind the Weeping Angels book from The Time of Angels. This is something we hear in the voiceover and see in the extensive entries she's made in her diary.
- SOTO
Mewiet wrote: In the case of the Weeping Angels entry, for example, she tells the story behind the Weeping Angels book from The Time of Angels. This is something we hear in the voiceover and see in the extensive entries she's made in her diary.
Is it like this in the Jack ones too? Also, good call on the dab term; not sure why I automatically jumped on a new one.
- Mewiet
SmallerOnTheOutside wrote: Is it like this in the Jack ones too? Also, good call on the dab term; not sure why I automatically jumped on a new one.
Jack's MF are a little different: the information comes from Torchwood's classified file archives and are explained by Jack, usually in voiceover (but I think he might physically appear in some of them too). He also talks about things that weren't in the episodes, like how baby Adipose created by Ms. Foster were taken into the care of the Shadow Proclamation and in the Ood MF, he gives a little more background info on the Ood trade. (It's been a while since I've watched all the Jack files though. I should go refresh my memory.)
Edit: And I think the Vashta Nerada MF is similar to the A Ghost Story for Christmas design in that it has a little boy's story being shown while Jack's voiceover is explaining the monster in a throwback to River's bedtime story from Forest of the Dead.
- TheLorax
They're presented as Torchwood info in the Jack ones, which ties into the main plot. But other than that, they're pretty much reference books narrated by the characters, as someone above said.
- Tangerineduel
Would this be a case where we would have to look at each one, rather than blanketly say they're all 1 or the other then?
I do agree, however we go that moving forward they should all have their own pages.
- OttselSpy25
I don't like the idea of saying "well, episode one is valid, but episode two is not." It's all or none. Preferably all.
- OttselSpy25
Just a note, as I have explained to Czech before, the book Cybermen also features an in-universe explanation of how all info was collected...
- CzechOut
There's a big difference between a framing device that's fictional wrapped around non-fictional guts (a la Cybermen and The Making of Doctor Who) and someone who is telling a story and providing exposition. The entire work must be a narrative for it to be a valid source, not just part of it.
So that means we actually do have to review each episode of Monster Files and make individual determinations.
- Tangerineduel
While I can see that an 'all or none solution' might be preferable I don't want use to compromise our policies just to allow these pieces.
Also if we have individual pages for each of the Monster Files it won't matter much if we decide on them individually because each page will carry a not-DWU banner or not. The overview page would simply explain the differences.
- CzechOut
↑This.
- Bwburke94
The only definite "yes" is A Ghost Story for Christmas, which is not labelled as a MF episode but is styled as one.
All other MF episodes (except possibly the Vashta Nerada one mentioned above) are not "stories" per se. However, if we consider the Vashta Nerada one to be within the DWU and, say, the series 5 Weeping Angel one to be non-DWU, that unnecessarily complicates the picture.
In addition, I personally believe that "Abzorbalovian" is the adjectival form of "Abzorbaloff".
I propose the following:
- A Ghost Story for Christmas will be considered to be within the DWU, but all other MF episodes will be considered invalid sources as they fail rule 1.
- The articles for MF episodes (MF 1, MF 2, and so on, with AGSFC not counting towards the numbering) will be created, with the normal rules on real world invalid sources applying.
- The Abzorbalovian Rebels page must be deleted, having never appeared in a valid source due to the reclassification of MF as invalid.
- The Abzorbalovian page will be edited to remove references to the MF episode. The title must be changed to Abzorbaloff, the species' only given name within a valid source. The existing article at that name will be moved to Victor Kennedy, the character's alias. The Abzorbaloff and Victor Kennedy articles will both use the {{retitle}} template to indicate that both names are aliases.
- OttselSpy25
For one, all MF stories I believe already have titles. For two, I'm still questioning the whole "no Mf stories are non-valid.
- Bwburke94
Did we ever come to a ruling on this? Here's my revision on what we should do.
- A Ghost Story for Christmas will be considered to be within the DWU, but all other MF episodes will be considered invalid sources as they fail rule 1.
- The articles for MF episodes (titled after their species; Adipose (MF episode)) will be created, with the normal rules on real world invalid sources applying.
- With MF being ruled non-narrative, "Midnight" is no longer a valid alternate name for the Midnight entity.
- With MF being ruled non-narrative, the Abzorbalovian Rebels page must be deleted, as non-narrative characters do not get articles. The Abzorbalovian page must be moved to Abzorbaloff, the species' only name given within a valid source. The article currently titled Abzorbaloff will be moved to Victor Kennedy, the only known name for the individual. The Abzorbaloff and Victor Kennedy articles will both use the {{retitle}} template to indicate that both names are aliases.
- Shambala108
Bwburke94 wrote:
- With MF being ruled non-narrative, the Abzorbalovian Rebels page must be deleted, as non-narrative characters do not get articles.
Not sure what you mean by this; several NOTDWU characters have their own articles, as can be seen at Category:Non-DWU individuals.
- Bwburke94
Shambala108 wrote:
Bwburke94 wrote:
- With MF being ruled non-narrative, the Abzorbalovian Rebels page must be deleted, as non-narrative characters do not get articles.
Not sure what you mean by this; several NOTDWU characters have their own articles, as can be seen at Category:Non-DWU individuals.
Yes, but are any of them non-narrative? Looks like the category is full of stuff like A Fix With Sontarans, Dimensions in Time, Attack of the Graske, and the various Unbound audio plays.
- Mewiet
I still don't see how A Ghost Story for Christmas is valid when River's Weeping Angels Monster File would not be. In both cases Jack and River are narrating backstories for Julia Baker and Rastan Jovanich, respectively.
- OttselSpy25
We might as well discuss those Sarah Jane Adventures mini-files while we're at it. Those, certainly, seem to tell a more clear story with each video, but on that hand I would argue that the Monster Files tell at least some story.
- 217.42.246.107
Was there ever any consensus reached on this 3-year old thread? If so, it should be shut down now. If not, then I would like to point out that Monster File: Christmas also tells a story, with a family sitting down to watch the Queens speech, but Jack hijacks the transmission to warn them of the dangers of Christmas. The story ends with the family being attacked by various threats from previous Christmas specials.
- OttselSpy25
The meat of the debate, as I can recall, was a discrepancy over how much of something has to happen before it is a narrative. In most of the specials, there's some in-universe show or explanation of how this information is being presented.
I strongly recall a Harkness-narrated Cybermen file featuring a stand-in for Barrowman running around a set and tumbling his hands over a keyboard. At the end of the segment, we see a Cyberman head be re-activated, suggesting that the Cybermen are still alive. The question becomes, is this enough for it to be said that there is narrative? That being, could we create a page about that specific Cyberman information video and confidently detail those parts exclusively without Jack's information dump? Writing not about what Harkness says, but instead about what happens in the original video segments?
The issue is that some segments try much harder than others. For instance, the SJA episodes with Mr Smith discussing the various monsters with the main characters are difficult to illegitimise as a narrative. They are fully-acted out discussions amoung SJA-characters, which just happen to also be information dumps.
Take, for instance, the recent TARDIS Index Files segment (look at that, we give that name up, and the BBC grabs it!) Who Is The Master?. Arguably, the plot features Missy interacting and "hacking" the Index File, which is worth documenting on its own.
This topic gets even more rigid when you start looking at more of these "information resources" that happen to have their own "plots." A Brief History of Time Lords, for instance, both has a plot and is almost certainly written by someone checking our own website for details about the show's canon.
Here's what it really boils down to: as writers of a Doctor Who database, we want to be able to cover other "informative narratives" only in the context of the narratives within those publications, but not the information provided. So we want to be able to document the time that Luke Smith talked about the Mona Lisa with Mr Smith, or when Missy hacked the TARDIS Index File, but we don't want to say that Susan Foreman was the daughter of the President of Gallifrey just because Steve Tribe insists that she is in a random information dump (while also saying that she might not have been the Doctor's actual Granddaughter). We either need to find the line where these "stories" start being reasonable to write about, or we ban them all.
- RingoRoadagain
Something that could be relevant since it seems to boil down to a debate about the definition of "narrative" is to kown if they were intended to be so: Do we have any statement about that ?
If not, since at least one is unambiguously considered valid, and the others are debated to varying degrees (with none being rejected outright) then I think we should accept them all for objectivity sake.
- Schreibenheimer
I can't see where intention would come into it. I doubt they went into these saying, "We're creating/not creating a narrative" because that's not something someone who's not trying to make an encyclopedia cares about. If they DID care about it, I doubt they would have made them so borderline.
- Shambala108
But we do consider author/publisher intent when looking at something new. Please see Tardis:Valid sources for the reasoning.
- Schreibenheimer
I apologize if I was unclear. I was not saying that intent doesn't matter, but rather that their intent was unlikely to be specifically oriented in regard to the work being narrative or not, which does seem to be the sole deciding factor in this debate. Always a good point to bring up, though!
- Scrooge MacDuck
Yeah, I agree with User:Schreibenheimer on this point.
It's possible to get something out of professionals on whether it takes place in the Doctor Who universe, but Tardis's criteria on what counts as "narrative" are too specific to have much chances of a professional sharing them, let alone giving clear statements based on said standards about every webcast series ever.
I mean, we can't just simplify it as "Is this intended to be a thing that happens to the character?", because the authors of And Introducing… would probably say "yes", and yet And introducing isn't considered narrative enough by Tardis.
At any rate, I second User:Shambala108's above confusion (ever so long ago) regarding the potential deletion of Abzorbalovian Rebels in case we rule the Monster Files invalid. Why shouldn't we have pages about characters from invalid non-narrative sources? What purpose would that serve?
- Schreibenheimer
Since it seems like this stalled again, I'll actually state my overall opinion this time that I agree with some of those who spoke before that these should be decided on an individual basis.
Closing this with no change to current policy: all the concerned stories remain valid until further notice.
If anyone believes any specific episode of this series should be deemed invalid, they are free to open an exclusion debate, if they have specific evidence to present regarding Rule 1 or Rule 4. If anyone's planning to do so, remember that "story" on this Wiki doesn't mean "three-act structure", it means "does this depict a series of events in the DWU".
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:152687
I'm writing a review listing the top 10 best anniversary stories of 2013. I was, understandably, surprised when I discovered that the categories which had served as immensely useful in the previous work on this article and the sorting of the wiki wee now deleted. May I ask why? It makes writing my article about a billion times more impossible and seems to serve absolutely no purpose. Why were these categories deleted and how low must I get on my knees to get them back? Is there a list elsewhere on the wiki??
- SOTO
You can see the edits CzechBot made to remove pages from that category here.
I think the thinking behind deleting [[:Category:Anniversary stories]] and [[:Category:50th Anniversary stories]] was that you don't necessarily always have actual proof that said story was made specially for the anniversary. Most, or at least quite a few, of the stories in those categories weren't really such; either they just happened to be released on 23 November or in 2013, or they had elements related to AUC and the show's beginnings, but weren't actually intended to be anniversary specials. Some people also seem to have confused anniversary with multi-Doctor. Heck, even The Three Doctors wasn't really an anniversary story — which anniversary was it released on, starting in December 1972?
- CzechOut
The reason they were deleted was because they violated T:CAT NAME. As that rule states, "category names must not be open to multiple interpretation, and must be free of any bias or value judgements".
What "counts" as an anniversary story is a huge can of worms, and the category would obviously create edit wars, with relatively little benefit for our troubles.
We have agreed, at Thread:146860, to create an article that covers some of this ground at 2013 specials. If you'd like to work on that OttselSpy25, that'd be very helpful!
- OttselSpy25
CzechOut wrote: The reason they were deleted was because they violated T:CAT NAME. As that rule states, "category names must not be open to multiple interpretation, and must be free of any bias or value judgements".
What "counts" as an anniversary story is a huge can of worms, and the category would obviously create edit wars, with relatively little benefit for our troubles.
We have agreed, at Thread:146860, to create an article that covers some of this ground at 2013 specials. If you'd like to work on that OttselSpy25, that'd be very helpful!
While that does sound like something that I would love to work on with more time permitted (In recent time I have gained a life outside of the internet, sadly), it does not particularly help the problem I see here. That is, where can I go for an assortment of the anniversary stories of 2013 and beyond? That page would cover the specials for sure - but would miss the comics, the web games, and the books that were also released.
I do see your point on the title of the category, "anniversary" is a bit broad and could encompass multiple entities (Rise of the Cybermen [or the other one maybe] was released on the anniversary of The Tenth Planet, for instance). Perhaps "Stories celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who" or "Stories which celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the first episode of Doctor Who. Whether or not a story is an anniversary story would fall doesn't to simple discussion. One or two quotes from the creators would likely patch that up.
Perhaps we could make a "List of stories celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who" page to help out there.
- CzechOut
No, our version of 2013 specials would include stories from other media. No need for a secondary "list of" page.
- OttselSpy25
Ah, well, quite well then.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:153234
I'm not quite sure if this is the right place to ask or not (though at the top it does say, "Don't understand why we do things as we do? Notice the same problem across several pages?"), but why are fathers the only parents that get to have their full names recognized in the infoboxes? Spouses, in-laws, and children get full names but mothers' last names are always cut off, regardless of whether or not they have a different last name than the child and/or the child's father (which really shouldn't matter anyway, as women are just as entitled to be recognized by our full names as men).
Is this some kind of infobox glitch and is there any way to fix it?
- Tangerineduel
Can you give an example of a couple of pages?
I've looked at examples like Sylvia Noble and Geoff Noble, Brian Carstairs and Bess Carstairs, John Frobisher and Anna Frobisher. They're all displaying the mothers' last name.
- Mewiet
No, I'm talking about the actual infoboxes. For example, on the Clara Oswald page the infobox shows:
Mother: Ellie
Father: Dave OswaldEven though the coding in the editing view for the page reads:
|mother = Ellie Oswald
|father = Dave OswaldThe coding visually cuts off anything other than the first name of the mother (but still links to the page) and it's the only section to do so.
|spouse =
|in-law =
|child =
Those codes will all show a characters' last names, but mother won't. - Tangerineduel
That's the {{Infobox Individual}}, it was a minor coding issue in the code for the infobox.
It's fixed now, as you can see if you go to Clara Oswald.
- SOTO
That wasn't actually a "coding issue" or "bug" of any kind. Some time in the near future, all the family parameters will likely have {{fn}} cutting off their last names, but before that can happen we need to compile a list of exceptions, like Rory's mother, which would end up being Rory's.
Now the template was only added to {{{mother}}} — and not even {{{mother 2}}} — by Czech back in early February as a test to see if the coding behind it was successful. It was, but again, more work might have to be put into compiling an exceptions list at Template:Fn. For this reason, I guess this is on hold since we're all to busy to deal with that. Still, Fn's not locked, so anyone feel free to add exceptions as you find them.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:153249
(Sorry, but idk if this belongs here) Didn't anyone else notice that in The Day of the Doctor, the 12th Doctor did fine with flying the TARDIS, but in The Time of the Doctor, he asks Clara if he happens to know how to fly it?
- TheLorax
Good question. I think that the whole flying thing was that he forgot because he just regenerated. Just for a moment, he forgot. Things like that have happened before. The Tenth Doctor spent his whole first episode ill and asleep until the very end. The Sixth Doctor acted violently after regeneration, and the Fifth Doctor was also not quite well. I think that it was just like that, a moment of amnesia since he had just come into existence. I hope that this helps.
Also, no, I'm not sure that this discussion belongs on the Panopticon. It would fit in much better in the Howling section of the wiki.
- Shambala108
If you have a question that can be answered by the stories themselves, you can ask it at Board:The Reference Desk. If, however, your question can only be answered by speculation, theorizing, or guessing, it goes to Howling:The Howling, like TheLorax suggested.
- B4stinks
Twelve couldn't fly the tardis in the time of the doctor due to memory loss because of his regeneration, this happens sometimes. In fact in the TV movie he forgot entirely who he was for quite a bit of the film. Obviously by the Day of the doctor he got his memory back.
- Gokcebayr
In my opinion, Twelve, as Eleven, stayed in Trenzalore to age and he was about to die of old age. Thus, he spent hundreds of years in Trenzalore without using the Tardis. I think it's safe to say that he forgot how to fly it since he hadn't use it for years. It does makes sense, right?
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:153349
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:153505
Srsly, guys put one up. there a hundreds over thousands of Whovians who wish to roleplay a Doctor Who scene with their fave incarnation
- CzechOut
This is an encyclopaedia. It's specifically against our rules to allow for role-play, which would essentially be fanfic.
It is possible to use the MediaWiki software (that is, the stuff running this site) to role play, and there have been some attempts to create DW-based RP at Wikia. Unfortunately, none of these has had sustained success.
- Jameson Dolneaz
Ah, i see. The more you know. Anyway, thanks for the info.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:153720
As the discussion concerning this is spread out over two talk pages the Template talk:DWTV page and the Talk:The Night of the Doctor (TV story) page I thought it best to bring it here.
To summarise the discussion thus far:
A discussion was begun on the Template talk:DWTV page by User:Ben Paddon on 08:02, November 16, 2013 concerning including The Night of the Doctor on the template.
User:Bold Clone stated on the page at 01:14, November 30, 2013 "No. This template is fundamentally based on the premise of the respective Doctor's original run." adding that "The Three Doctors and The Five Doctors to the First Doctor's section of the template. Nor do we add Time Crash to the Fifth Doctor's part."
At 19:51, December 7, 2013 User:Geek Mythology contended that "Multi-Doctor stories aren't a proper comparison for the Night of the Doctor, as they feature previous Doctors in a current Doctor story".
On 10:25, 16 December 2013 Geek Mythology made an edit to the template adding a note about The Night of the Doctor into the section at the bottom of the template used for not covered stories like The Pilot Episode on 03:21, 20 December 2013 Bold Clone undid this edit stating "That section was for -non-valid- stories only.".
A request was made by User:TARDIStraveler on The Night of the Doctor talk page to add it to the {{DWTV}} template. The request was again revived on 13:10, March 14, 2014 by TARDIStraveler which is where I intervened.
I added The Night of the Doctor at 01:37, 15 March 2014 to the DWTV template.
At 02:14, 15 March 2014 User:Bold Clone undid my edit to the DWTV template stating "No. That's not how this template works."
Then at 15:17, March 14, 2014 Bold Clone left a message on the Talk:The Night of the Doctor (TV story) explaining his actions. Bold Clone's contention a repeat of his previous DWTV discussion contribution "Even if 8 is the primary Doctor in this story, it is still not part of his original run, which is the only content we list on the template".
The template page itself doesn't actually affirm what content it covers. But we can infer that based on the link to List of Doctor Who television stories it is a template representation of that page. Just as the other Category:Season navigation templatess are a template pages of their respective pages.
- Digifiend
As I said on the talk page there, you're an admin, and he's not. So who is he to decide what does and doesn't go on that template? I'd say you have the authority to overrule him. In fact, if this happened on a wiki I was in charge of, Bold Clone would be blocked now for reverting an administrator's edit. I don't see why you should tolerate someone who ignores authority.
- CzechOut
I don't think Tangerineduel or I particularly view ourselves as having more authority. More responsibility, perhaps. But we tend to at least participate in conversations when they arise — and to start quite a few of our own accord.
In this case, I'm honestly not terribly bothered either way. As Geek Mythology has pointed out, this is a very odd occurrence. The Night of the Doctor really doesn't have any sort of clear precedent, although I think The Two Doctors is something kinda close, in that I've never heard anyone assert that either Doctor forgets the adventure. If that be true, then the story is not clearly either a Second or Sixth Doctor story. IT happens to both of them, from differing perspectives.
But Night is quite different. It is the end of the Eighth Doctor's run. Disallowing it would be, it seems to me, like trying to consider the Fourth Doctor's era while ignoring Logopolis. I think we can allow our shortest-changed TV Doctor one more tiny story without breaking {{DWTV}}.
- Tzvi
I think the problem here (and the point of contention) is that the template categorizes based off of two major things, the broadcast period (Season/Series) and Doctor Number. So far they have always meshed well together. Now we have one that doesn't fit the mold, and hence the question is which of those two items is the true purpose of the list. If its broadcast period, then Night of the Doctor belongs with Series 7 (which unfortunately would list it under the Eleventh Doctor). If its by Doctor number, then it belongs with the Eighth Doctor.
As it stands right now it is somewhat confusing. I think it would be best for a consensus to be reached and the template groups modified to remove the other.
i.e. - If it is supposed to be by broadcast period, then remove the Doctor number as it has no purpose in the header. Conversely, if it is by Doctor number, then the Season/Series should be removed from the group title as it would have no basis.
Please give this some serious thought, as the current layout seems to be at odds with itself, especially around the transition from Peter Davidson to Colin Baker, Season 21.
- Tangerineduel
CzechOut sums up my feelings on this, which is why I didn't just roll edit back.
My own thoughts on this are in line with Geek Mythology's, that this isn't like multi-Doctor stories where the other Doctor are dropping into the main Doctor's adventure.
The Night of the Doctor is a new Eighth Doctor TV story that's been made. It doesn't feature any of the other Doctors dropping into the action. So it should be under the Eighth Doctor heading.
Tzvi does raise notable points though. I don't think that Night should be placed under Series 7 as it's not a Series 7 story.
Removing the season/series numbering would help our Night problem, but I think removing them would lower {{DWTV}}'s on-glance read/navigability.
- SOTO
Just to put it on the table, we could alternatively split it by Doctor and then by year of release. That'd fix the Night problem (1996: Doctor Who; 2013: The Night of the Doctor), but I think a season split is easier to navigate — that's just how we're used to splitting up groups of stories.
- Tzvi
Perhaps it might make sense to reorder the wording in the groups. For example, the first group is labeled "Seasons 1-4: First Doctor", perhaps reverse it to "First Doctor: Seasons 1-4" as it appears that the Doctor number is considered the more important thing.
Again, this is just my 2¢ and I won't take offense if my ideas are discarded. I just want to help this wiki be the best it can be.
- CzechOut
That's an elegant solution, Tzvi. If the Doctor were put first, hen we could make the Eighth Doctor label read:
- Eighth Doctor: Specials
cause he's a Doctor with our a regular season. We'd then be able to uncontroversially put Doctor Who and The Night of the Doctor inside. And we wouldn't have to touch the organisation of the rest of the template — just the section labels.
- Tzvi
So, how do we proceed at this point? Does this need to be put to a vote?
- Revanvolatrelundar
I'll just throw my two pence in. I'm behind the decision to add it to the template. No surprise there. ;)
- SOTO
CzechOut wrote: That's an elegant solution, Tzvi. If the Doctor were put first, hen we could make the Eighth Doctor label read:
- Eighth Doctor: Specials
cause he's a Doctor with our a regular season. We'd then be able to uncontroversially put Doctor Who and The Night of the Doctor inside. And we wouldn't have to touch the organisation of the rest of the template — just the section labels.
I'm not entirely sure what's being proposed here. I totally agree with putting Night under Eighth Doctor, and maybe under a label called "Specials" with the TVM as you suggest, but the current formatting is basically, for example:
Doctor Who television stories- >Seasons 1-4: First Doctor
- >Season 1: 1963-1964
- An Unearthly Child, The Daleks, etc
- >Season 1: 1963-1964
[...]
- >TV Movie: Eighth Doctor
- >TV Movie: 1996
- Doctor Who
- >TV Movie: 1996
- >Seasons X-Y: Nth Doctor
- >Season A: Year
- Episodes
- >Season A: Year
Where in all this is "Eighth Doctor: Specials" going? There's no "Specials: Eighth Doctor" or even "TV Movie: Eighth Doctor" in the template as it stands now. I'm fine with the idea of switching, but are you referring to a "class 1" label, or a "class 2" label? Or, as the coding is actually written, a group of the larger navbox, or of the child?
- SOTO
Okay, I feel like an idiot now. There is a "TV Movie: Eighth Doctor" there, staring me in the face — it's the main heading for the Eighth Doctor! *facepalm*
In that case, I'm totally for "First Doctor: Seasons 1-4", "Eighth Doctor: Specials", etc. :)
- Bwburke94
The Night of the Doctor and The Last Day are prequels to The Day of the Doctor, in the same way that She Said, He Said is a prequel to The Name of the Doctor.
Prequels are not listed in Template:DWTV. Furthermore, Night is not a television story by the rules this wiki uses, having originally aired as a webisode.
- 104.32.214.184
I agree The Night of the Doctor is not a television episode, as it was aired as a webisode. However, it does mark the end of the Eighth Doctor's run.
The Watcher was introduced before the end of the Fourth Doctor's run. The Valeyard was introduced before the beginning of... well, the Next-to-Last Doctor's run. (Yes, he is an incarnation, not an image, because the Great Intelligence said he was a future name.) The Warrior was introduced after the beginning of the Eleventh Doctor's run, but that was semi-worked out.
The Night of the Doctor has sent any wiki that even covers Doctor Who into complete chaos.
Moffat!!!!! <shakes fist>
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:153800
I just would like to draw attention to the way in which The article about Trenzalore writes off The Doctors Tomb as an "Alternate Timeline." For yours and my sakes, I will not repeat my wall of text here, but I would very much like have that pages description of the events of "The Name of The Doctor" reviewed, and perhaps when we know more after season 8 starts, reworked.
- Tybort
I think at some point in The Time of the Doctor, Tasha insinuates that the Doctor's future is being changed or attempting to be changed. Not sure if that's enough to go on. That said, I don't think anything new about Trenzalore will appear in series 8. It's very much Matt's arc.
- 104.32.214.184
It has not been stated specifically of screen, so it is no more an alternate universe than The Forgotten and The Day of the Doctor to each other.
- Bwburke94
It is being judged as an alternate timeline because the events of TTOTD prevented the Eleventh Doctor from (permanently) dying at Trenzalore.
- CzechOut
Let's say you have a house at 100 Tottenham Crescent. If you're shown the beginnings of a fire there, and then the edit fades to its smouldering ruins, the dialogue doesn't have to say, "100 Tottenham Crescent burned down" for us here at Tardis to say, "100 Tottenham Crescent burned down".
A better example is the regeneration from Eight to War Doctor. Now, if all you have is The Night of the Doctor, you actually don't have enough evidence to allege that Eight turned into War, because you aren't shown the regeneration using the traditional visual language used by these events. Every other regeneration is a direct transformation from outgoing actor to incoming one, with the face more or less in a locked-off close-up. Night wasn't like that. McGann drops out of shot, and all you see is a reflection of someone who might, sorta-kinda be Hurt. So, with just Night around, it's possible to imagine that something else happened — that there was a narrative reason for the odd editing.
But once you get to The Day of the Doctor, it becomes clearer that nothing else could reasonably have happened but that Eight turned into War, who turned into Nine — and that the reason for the odd visual language of regeneration was down to practical, behind-the-scenes issues: Moffat needed to allege that Hurt was young upon regeneration, but Hurt himself wasn't young at the time of filming.
So, although we want to be careful in not going too far away from the source material, it is possible for us to assert things that have not been specifically relayed through dialogue. And it's possible, as certainly was the case with much of The Rings of Akhaten for dialogue to add confusion, rather than resolve it.
If in doubt, it's always a good method to make a plausible account of things you see on screen — never going beyond what is in the sum of the dialogue and visuals — and then to make a behind the scenes notes in which you explain why there might be some doubt attached to your explanation of events.
- 104.32.214.184
Bwburke94 wrote: It is being judged as an alternate timeline because the events of TTOTD prevented the Eleventh Doctor from (permanently) dying at Trenzalore.
He could still go back during the War.
- 104.32.214.184
I would like to point out that my previous comment was not just some fan theory, it is entirely plausible, and therefore, as they have both been established as the Doctor's death, we cannot ignore the possibility and say it isn't so. I shall reply (hopefully).
- Bwburke94
It is true we cannot rule out the Doctor's permanent death being on Trenzalore, but the specific circumstances from the timeline seen in Name were negated when the Doctor received a new regeneration cycle. The Doctor can still die on Trenzalore, but it will no longer be the Eleventh Doctor that dies, and it will no longer be where no living creature can speak falsely or fail to answer the First Question.
- 104.32.214.184
Bwburke94 wrote: It is true we cannot rule out the Doctor's permanent death being on Trenzalore, but the specific circumstances from the timeline seen in Name were negated when the Doctor received a new regeneration cycle. The Doctor can still die on Trenzalore, but it will no longer be the Eleventh Doctor that dies, and it will no longer be where no living creature can speak falsely or fail to answer the First Question.
The Name of the Doctor and The Time of the Doctor do not specifacally say that it was the Eleventh Doctor that died. I know that this is getting Howling-ish, but the Wiki must not assume that it did not happen that way.
- 207.181.249.206
In the Wedding of River Song, Dorium refers to "The Fields of Trenzalore," "The Fall of the 11th" and the "The Question," etc. Of course, Moffatt and other DW writers could play writing magic to change the implied story by stringing all those phrases together.
Doubt they would, though. With the rapid shot resolutions that they threw out in The Name of the Doctor and the fan frustration with all the hanging plot lines, I feel like Moffat wants to dust off his hands and move on.
I personally hate that there are Alternate Timelines there, too, because it calls into question a lot of story logic. What occurred that change the sequence of events for this alternate ending? Heck, in some ways, the eventual set up of the Name of the Doctor doesn't match the graveyard in The Time of the Doctor.
It can't be the Great Intelligence, even though he's probably one of the few entities to have the power to make such a change. But it can't be him because the Eleventh met iterations of Clara in this iteration we watched and encountered the graveyard of Trenzalore from our perspective at that point.
The only other entity we've seen powerful enough in modern Who to possibly make such a change without "outside timeline" sources is The Moment. Takes incredible power to bring three iterations of the Doctor together without triggering some kind of Universe-shattering Blinovitch-limiting effect. We've only seen Timelords successfully pull that off.
Maybe they'll provide some kind of resolution in the future. MOffatt has expressed many times, though, that he has no problem violating canon and such because it's violated itself so many times already. I would say, though, from the perspective of the show, the Fields of Trenzalore is an alternate timeline until proven otherwise within the show.
- 207.181.249.206
Also Clara DOES ask the Timelords to help change the future when spoke through the crack to them. If she had met the 12th Doctor when she went into the Doctor's timeline, she would likely not have said that.
But I guess I may have also answered my question about what caused the Alternate Timeline. This break could actually be an instance of Parallel Universes rather than an Alternate Timeline. Since the Timelords have narrative-God-like abilities, they could have allowed for Parallel Universes here instead of an Alternate Timeline, allowing a Parallel Universe to bleed through to the Universe that we're watching to allow the desired end result to have occurred.
- CzechOut
Also Clara DOES ask the Timelords to help change the future when spoke through the crack to them. If she had met the 12th Doctor when she went into the Doctor's timeline, she would likely not have said that.
But I guess I may have also answered my question about what caused the Alternate Timeline. This break could actually be an instance of Parallel Universes rather than an Alternate Timeline. Since the Timelords have narrative-God-like abilities, they could have allowed for Parallel Universes here instead of an Alternate Timeline, allowing a Parallel Universe to bleed through to the Universe that we're watching to allow the desired end result to have occurred.
- 104.32.214.184
Except they couldn't have 'changed time', because the Twelfth Doctor helped save the Gallifreyans/Time Lords/Chronarchs (which was not a change)!
- 104.32.214.184
Clara could have thought or assumed that they were changing time in The Time of the Doctor. And if Trenzalore in The Name of the Doctor and The Time of the Doctor don't match up, remember the War.
- 104.32.214.184
Let me walk you through it:
In PROSE: Alien Bodies, Interference, and The Ancestor Cell, the Last Doctor is said to have died during the War, being led by Romana III, blah bla bla. In The Wedding of River Song Dorium speaks of the fall of the Eleventh. In The Name of the Doctor we see the Doctor's grave. In The Day of the Doctor the first thirteen incarnations (including the Twelfth Doctor) saved Gallifrey. in The Time of the Doctor the Chronarchs grant the Doctor a new set of regenerations, leading to the creation of the Twelfth Doctor.
How could The Time of the Doctor change time if the Twelfth Doctor is in The Day of the Doctor?
- MystExplorer
I think it may be a similar situation to what happened with Charley in the audios. She was originally supposed to die aboard the R101 but the Doctor saved her. This caused damage to the Web of Time but when Charley helped save the Web of Time, that resolved the paradox. Maybe the Twelfth Doctor helping to save Gallifrey meant that the Time Lords had no choice but to grant a new regeneration cycle.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:153802
I was adding information about masters of war to Alastair Gordon-Lethbridge Stewart (Sympathy for the Devil)'s page, but I was wondering-as Sympathy isn't his only story, should the pages' name be changed to Alastair Gordon-Lethbridge Stewart(unbound)? same with the other unbound characters?
- SOTO
No, T:DAB stated that "characters are named according to the story (or episode) they first appeared in, even if they appear in subsequent stories for which they are arguably more famous." Can you give us examples of pages with the dab term (unbound)? I don't see any at all in cat:Non-DWU individuals or its subcats.
- BrigadierBenton
Thanks for clarifying.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:153935
On the dropdown categories for the Companion Chronicles, I have a question to ask. Why is Tales from the Vault in the Fourth Doctor>Romana I category? I wouldn't say that Romana is the main character. If anything, it's Matheson & Sato's story. Should it be moved to other adventures? or should a new dropdown be created called Multi-companion stories?
- SOTO
I say it should go in "Other adventures" at the bottom, like The Three Companions, which is actually a similar case.
- BrigadierBenton
You're probably right. multi-companion stories would have to include every Amy/Rory or Ian/Barbara story.
Should we put it in a line labelled 'The Vault?'
- SOTO
- BrigadierBenton
Hmmmm I'm still unsure. Matheson & Sato, aren't companions, but then again, neither is the Master. We'll use that template for now. I was thinking of having a CC template having Ian's line have every CC Ian appears in, no matter who he appears with, same for Jamie,Turlough, etc, but that may result in a lot of 'Doubles'. Maybe we should base the sections on who narrates the story?
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:154261
Hello Wikians!
Please excuse me if I've posted not there, but I want tell to users at Wikia (and users Doctor Who Wiki too, of course), that there is and Russian version project. If you want to get information about the series of Doctor Who in Russian, you can do it!
P.S. This is message created for Russian speaking users with the permission of staff.
Привет, участники Викия!
Прошу извинить меня, если я написал не туда, но я хочу сообщить пользователям Викия (и этой вики в частности), что существует также русская версия этого проекта. Заходите на неё, если вы хотите получить информацию о сериале Доктор Кто на русском языке!
P.S. Это сообщение опубликовано для русскоязычных пользователей с разрешения сотрудника.
- POMfannumber1
Umm...
- Just-A-Whovian
....
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:154865
The articles on both versions of Rose's father are currently located at Peter Tyler - however, he is primarily referred to as Pete Tyler. Would this not fall under the same principle as naming Amelia Pond's article Amy Pond?
- SOTO
Yep, you are correct in that local Tardis policy dictates that the most common name for the character should be used in nearly all cases. This point has been brought up on the talk pages for both versions of Pete in 2011, and three admin agreed here.
I also agree; he is definitely most commonly known as Pete, and I think both pages should be renamed to reflect that.
- Bwburke94
Bumping this discussion, we need a consensus before moving the pages.
- Shambala108
No need for a consensus if it's policy. I'll try to work on it tonight. It's going to take a bit of work so I can't get to it any earlier.
- SOTO
Are my bot services needed here? :)
- CzechOut
SmallerOnTheOutside wrote: Are my bot services needed here? :)
Absolutely not. This isn't a complicated move at all. There's no reason to get rid of existing references to "Peter", because, yanno, that's his name. I personally think the move isn't even worth making, which is why I've never taken action on Talk:Peter Tyler (Pete's World). After all, it's a minor, one word contraction of a name, and we have redirects up at Pete Tyler and Pete Tyler (Pete's World) anyway.
But very technically I suppose T:NAMING applies — and, quite incidentally, the character is credited as "Pete Tyler" in the Doomsday credits.
So if you're going to make the change — and only an admin can, at this point — please just move the page and leave a redirect behind. Correcting links isn't at all necessary.
- SOTO
That's what I was thinking as well, which is why I was confused when Shambala said it'd take some work.
- Old Smithy McNoName
CzechOut wrote:There's no reason to get rid of existing references to "Peter", because, yanno, that's his name.
By that logic you would have Jackie Tyler renamed 'Jacqueline Tyler', "because, yanno, that's her name". If Jackie stays Jackie then Pete says Pete, especially seeming as that was his listed name in the credits, as you yourself stated.
- SOTO
He wasn't proposing we rename articles to characters' full names; he was just saying he didn't find it necessary to change things are they were, because the current name is not technically incorrect. I for one mostly disagree; as I've stated above, T:NAMING does sort of lean towards Pete Tyler in this case, as the most common name.
- CzechOut
And I concur with that, SOTO. There is, very technically, a rationale under T:NAMING to go to Pete Tyler. However, this is truly an edge case because it mostly makes no difference to either searching or link-finding, since the only difference between "Pete" and "Peter" is the terminal -r. "Jacqueline" and "Jackie" are comparatively much further apart, as are "Peri' and "Perpugilliam", or the especially distant "Amy" and "Amelia". (The search engine requires three letters to begin its matching, and so typing "Ame" would in no way lead you to "Amy".)
So, while I'm not opposed to the move, neither do I think it very urgent, since there's no real evidence that it's hard to find an article at "Peter" if you believe the name is actually "Pete".
- 104.32.214.184
Let's just rename the page (due to whatever policy it is), leave behind a redirect, change a link whenever we see one, close this discussion, and get on with life.
- 104.32.214.184
104.32.214.184 wrote: Let's just rename the page (due to whatever policy it is), leave behind a redirect, change a link whenever we see one, close this discussion, and get on with life.
Sorry for my rashness.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:155065
I don't know if this is the right place to post this, but an article on Wikipedia, List of Doctor Who serials by setting, is being seriously considered for deletion. I just wanted to inquire if this wiki would be interested in receiving it via a transwiki before it's deleted. 72.12.95.130talk to me 23:48, April 24, 2014 (UTC)
- SOTO
While that page does have some interesting data, I just want to say off the bat that we treat all media equally (and we're also not Wikipedia), so from our standpoint it would be wrong to have a page like that focused entirely on television stories when there are so many other stories out there, each of which obviously has their own settings.
The lead clearly states, "This list does not cover audio dramas such as the extensive number of Big Finish Productions, novels, short stories, nor comic strips." That's very much not acceptable on our wiki. Of course, there'd be no point to having this and expending it to other media because that's basically just category:Dates — follow that category tree, and you'll find all the "settings" of almost every story people have edited based on. Even just that TV-centric page at WP is ridiculously long; imagine all of cat:Dates on one page.
In short, it's unlikely that this wiki will be having a page quite like that, but you're of course perfectly free to save all that data to a user subpage here if you want it to be readable once it's deleted there.
You may also be interested in taking a look at Deletionpedia or, more locally, w:c:speedydeletion.
- CzechOut
Additionally, we have plenty of geographic categories that will allow you to produce similar pages, but with the added benefit of being, as SOTO rightly points up as important, pan-media.
Heck, our category structure alone — regardless of whether it's emplaced in an article — assures much greater coverage of the subject than the Wikipedia article could hope to achieve.
Begin your exploration at stories by location.
- 104.32.214.184
We could move it and change it to conform to Tardis policy.
- Masterpwn
Saving it to a subpage sounds like a good idea, and possibly later integrating it into the TDC would be good as well.
- Quest?on
Sounds like integrating with Tardis policy could be quite tough, though.
- Masterpwn
It may be difficult, but it's a possibility. Still, it would be good to save it now just in case someone would like to have a go at it later.
- Shambala108
The title of this article is a little misleading. It's not setting by geography, but setting by time. In other words, it's just a big, carefully researched timeline.
We got rid of timelines in the main namespace back in Forum:Timeline sections on pages; instead, all timeline info is in the theories namespace, at Theory:Timey-wimey detector. This article would help in the research for those pages, but as things stand now, we don't allow any sort of timelines in the main namespace.
- Quest?on
It also seems to be at least somewhat speculation.
- Masterpwn
In that case, maybe not.
- 104.32.214.184
transfer page account sandbox link discuss act before deleted
- 104.32.214.184
Too late, closed discussion, deletedpage. chec out
- 104.32.214.184
[late.]:(
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:155629
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:155672
Umm... I'm only putting this here because the Talk Page is closed.
What is the Eighth Doctor music on the Main Page? I mean, does it come from the BBC? BBV? Big Finish? Virgin Publications? Or is it just a fan's work, which has absolutely no business on the Main Page.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Big Finish.
- CzechOut
If you click on the title of the work on our front page, you'll be taken to Jamie Robertson's official page on SoundCloud, where you learn that it's called "There's a Man I Know", and that it came from The Light at the End and some other recent stories.
- 104.32.214.184
Thanks... it's embarrassing now.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:155685
The Bronte sisters (Emily, Charlotte, and Anne) all have a page in this wiki. On their pages, they say 'X Brontë was an English novelist and poet....' making it sound like the page is about the actual person, and then at the bottom they mention that there are robot duplicates of them in the Museum of Lost Opportunities. So the pages appear to be very clearly about the real people. However, the three pages are in the category 'Robots,' which they shouldn't be unless the page is actually about the duplicates. Should the 'Robots' category be removed?
- GusF
I think that it would be best to create three "X Brontë (robot)" pages to distinguish the genuine article from the robots.
- Shambala108
The way the articles are currently written, the robot categories should not be on the pages. The robots are just a mention on the articles of the writers.
I've removed those categories for now until the rest of the issue is resolved, whether we create robot articles or rewrite the current articles.
- Skittles the hog
Articles for the robots would certainly be in line with other instances of this. Fourth Doctor (android) and Fourth Doctor (clone), for example.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:155865
What happened to our ability to edit pages? Now whenever I click edit that blasted Visual Editor comes in and I just get an "internal server error". 68.146.52.234talk to me 15:57, May 15, 2014 (UTC)
- SOTO
If you create an account, you can essentially disable VisEd in Special:Preferences. Otherwise, you should find an option for the classical editor in the edit menu dropdown. See Help:VisualEditor Beta Release#What if it doesn't work? for more details.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:156239
Where can I find the source for ?" overrides earlier display title "The Panopticon/Can no longer edit pages due to Visual Editor".
- Shambala108
What do you mean by the source?
- 104.32.214.184
I mean, the pre-formatted version.
- 104.32.214.184
I mean the pre-formatted version.
- Shambala108
- 104.32.214.184
Thanks!
- 104.32.214.184
Close discussion please.
- CzechOut
Just out of curiosity, though, what do you want it for?
- 104.32.214.184
CzechOut wrote: Just out of curiosity, though, what do you want it for?
I don't know really.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:156655
Where can I find the source for ?". There is a problem when referring to the Doctor's regenerations. Because of the revelation of the War Doctor's regeneration and Ten's aborted regeneration counting, the way regenerations are now numbered is really confusing and inconsistent. Examples of this are on the Regeneration article. Sometimes Tenth regeneration refers to the Tenth to Eleventh Doctor's regeneration, and sometimes it refers to the Ninth Doctor's regeneration. It get's confusing and annoying. I suggest we label the Doctor's Regenerations to refer to the Doctor that is regenerating. For example the War Doctor's regeneration wouldn't be referred to as the ninth regeneration, but instead War's regeneration or the War Doctor's regeneration. The Eleventh Doctor's regeneration would be called Eleven's regeneration. Also we would call the Tenth Doctor's aborted regeneration the Metacrisis regeneration. We could still count it as using a regeneration of his cycle, it just wouldn't be numbered. This would make referring to the Doctor's regenerations a lot less confusing.
- Shambala108
We've actually already addressed this issue in several forums: Thread:144721, Thread:145487 and Thread:145998. In particular, 145487 spells out the wiki policy and how we are to deal with the numberings. Thanks.
- 174.96.199.98
Shambala108 wrote: We've actually already addressed this issue in several forums: Thread:144721, Thread:145487 and Thread:145998. In particular, 145487 spells out the wiki policy and how we are to deal with the numberings. Thanks.
Ok, thanks.
Terrance Dicks was really the first to tackle the issue narratively, and he clearly used "nth regeneration" in a way different to fans. Fans usually believe that Peter Davison was the "fifth regeneration" as much as he's the "Fifth Doctor". But that's not narratively true, because the First Doctor didn't result from regeneration. Thus, when asked, "What regeneration?" in The Five Doctors, Davison's character replies, "Fourth".
So
- "doctor number"
- is actually
- "regeneration number + 1"
- where the resulting incarnation believes himself a unique incarnation, and chooses to use the name of the Doctor
But the average fan, and especially the casual viewer, doesn't stop to think about this "math". So it's always good practice to be very specific when talking about regeneration events as opposed to Doctor numbers. And it always has been since this wiki opened in 2004.
Still, the "Moffat addendum" to the "Dicks rule" has seemingly muddied the waters. So as Shambala108 has usefully pointed out, we've had good guidelines in place since the airing of The Day of the Doctor, and editors here have simply gotten on board with them.
Those guidelines, however, were mostly talking about the number to apply to the individual Doctors, rather than the regeneration that spawned them. Whenever you're talking about the regeneration event, it is now, as ever, good practice to simply be as clear as possible. Often, this means saying something like "the regeneration from the Third to the Fourth Doctors", or "the regeneration forced by the Time Lords" or "the regeneration caused by spectrox toxaemia". And if the statement is properly cited — i.e. (TV: The Caves of Androzani) — then doubt is firmly eliminated. Well, until and unless two regenerations ever occur in the same episode.
As with almost every statement that could possibly be made in any of our articles, confusion is typically reduced by clarity of expression and a good citation. As you've more or less suggested, it's probably wise to avoid applying numbers to regeneration events altogether, unless quoting a character who's using numbers to refer to them. Might the article at regeneration need a cleanup with this in mind? Very possibly. But it's really nothing to do with The Day of the Doctor. It's just that fans have always had difficulty separating the regeneration event from the resulting incarnation's number.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:156762
Just to be clear, what was the consensus at the previous discussion?
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:156983
In a previous discussion about the Doctor's timeline being negated from The Name of the Doctor was closed before consensus was reached.
- Shambala108
I'm going to quote User:CzechOut's reason for closing the second thread: "When a thread is closed, it's not a great idea to immediately open another one about exactly the same topic. Please proceed to The Howling if you wish to discuss this further."
If you want to continue this discussion, you must take it to Howling:The Howling. If you attempt to open another thread on this discussion prior to any answers series 8 might reveal, it will be deleted.
It is possible for the consensus to be 'no consensus', as has long been observed on Wikipedia. And, although we are not Wikipedia, the Wikipedia notion of "no consensus" seems applicable here.
Basically what that means is that no agreement has been achieved on how to edit the article with respect to the question raised — thus the article shall not be edited in the manner proposed.
It might be unsatisfactory to you, but that's just how the cookie crumbles sometimes. While we do occasionally revisit topics, we don't do so in quick succession.
When a discussion is closed, it needs to remain closed until some time has passed and/or there's some compelling new insight to bring to the table. Otherwise you're kind of in violation of T:BOUND and T:FORUM. Since the IP has twice reopened a closed discussion, I have now blocked the IP for a month, the longer-than-usual ban length given because of prior blocks on that IP address, and the high likelihood that it was the same user on both accounts.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:157537
Is this anthology considered part of the Doctor Who range, Bernice Summerfield range or both? The issue is with respect to the categorization of the guest cast. The category "Big Finish Doctor Who voice actors" states that anyone who appeared in an audio that went out under the Doctor Who label should be included. But should the guest cast for this anthology also be included in "Big Finish Bernice Summerfield voice actors"? Or should it only be one or the other?
- Tybort
Given that its full title on the Big Finish website is Doctor Who: The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield, it's definitely Big Finish Doctor Who. So I'd gather it's either the Doctor Who range or both. It's not a tiny "from the world of BBC TV's Doctor Who" label on the cover (like with Dalek Empire, Cyberman or UNIT) either. It's pretty prominent.
- CzechOut
It's definitely not the Benny range at all. It doesn't employ the Big Finish Benny logo, and it's prominently marketed with the Doctor Who logo on their site. A good rule of thumb for the audio cast and crew categories is that if it's full cast and includes the Doctor and Doctor Who logo, it's Doctor Who. Yes, the Doctor is de-emphasised in these stories, but this is no different to several novels including Benny in the original NA range. Indeed that's rather exactly what they're going for, here — the flavour of middle-of-the-range New Adventures books.
Put another way this is Doctor Who with an umbrella subtitle of The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield.
The stories themselves would get a new category, Doctor Who - The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield audio stories — but the actors wouldn't.
- JagoAndLitefoot
"It's definitely not the Benny range at all."
You might believe it's not, but there's nothing definite about it.
Big Finish does categorize it under the Benny range on its website and its forum, and the behind the scenes extras also refer to it as such (e.g. "previously on Bernice Summerfield we tended to do more standalone stories...").
It doesn't employ the Big Finish Benny logo from the previous box sets, but they also didn't employ the logo from the single Benny releases, and it does employ a new Benny logo.
I'd say that it's both a Benny story and a Doctor Who story, same as with Voyage to Venus is simultaneously a Doctor Who story and a Jago and Litefoot story (it even comes with a variant J&L cover). Actually, same with Love and War (audio story) - on one side of the cover it is styled as a Doctor Who release with no number, and on the other side it is styled as part of the Big Finish Bernice Summerfield series, again with no number. And these, despite the double covers, were actually categorized on the BF website under "Doctor Who Special Releases", while "New Adventures..." is under the Benny Range.
- CzechOut
There's a difference between "marketing" and "website navigation". Yes of course they make it navigable under the Benny side of their site. But I wouldn't go so far as to say they actually market it as a Benny story.
The main logo that they're using to promote the story is a Doctor Who one. Even if you opt to look at the story on the Benny side of their site — as you've linked to — you see the Doctor Who logo in their page header graphics. And it doesn't really employ a new Benny logo at all. It uses what amounts to the original Virgin New Adventures logo, with "Bernice Summerfield" substituting for "Doctor Who". The whole project is clearly meant to evoke the NA "feel".
Categorically, on this wiki, the phrase "Bernice Sumemrfield audio series" means the main line, period — not Love and War, or A Company of Friends or this new box set. If the Doctor is involved, it's Doctor Who. It's not the "Bernice Summerfield series" just because it happens to include the character of Bernice Summerfield. Note the following message, which has been atop our Benny categories for years.
The Categories of Bernice SummerfieldThe character of Bernice Summerfield is a complicated one. She started as a companion of the Seventh Doctor in the Virgin New Adventures series and then became the lead character in that novel series after Virgin lost the right to publish stories featuring the Doctor. She then jumped into audio over at Big Finish Productions, where she's their longest-running series. She's also done a fair amount of crossing over into other lines that Big Finish run. And she's been featured in Doctor Who Magazine comic strips and a number of Big Finish-published books. Thus, unlike many other characters, it's not possible just to leave the categorisation at Category:Bernice Summerfield stories. No, something more complex has been arranged here. In order for the categories to remain useful, please try to adhere to this scheme.
- Bernice Summerfield sources. The main category. Everything is underneath this one.
- Bernice Summerfield audio stories. This contains all the audio stories. Since the audios have only been done by Big Finish Productions, this category is the same as saying, "All of Benny's Big Finish appearances."
- Bernice Summerfield audio series. This contains all the releases in Big Finish's main Benny audio series (both single releases and box sets). It is a subset of the above category. All entries in this category will also be listed individually in Category:Bernice Summerfield audio stories. But this category doesn't include things like Benny's appearance in The Company of Friends or other releases that aren't actually a part of the main BFBS line, such as releases from The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield.
- Bernice Summerfield prose sources. This is a meta-category for housing the categories below. No individual pages are stored here.
- Bernice Summerfield short stories. Short stories.
- Bernice Summerfield novels. This has all of the Benny novels, regardless of publisher or whether she's the main character.
- BFBS novels. This has all of the Big Finish Benny novels.
- Bernice Summerfield anthologies. This has all the Big Finish anthologies, but since only Big Finish have published anthologies, there's no need for it to be preceded with "Big Finish".
- BNA novels. This has all of the Virgin Bernice Summerfield New Adventures. It does not include the Virgin New Adventures featuring the Seventh Doctor in which Benny was a companion.
- NA novels with Bernice Summerfield organizes those Virgin New Adventures in which Benny is a companion to the Doctor.
- Bernice Summerfield features. This contains any features starring Benny.
- Bernice Summerfield comic stories. Because Benny's appearances in comics are few, there's no need to distinguish by publisher.
- Bernice Summerfield audio stories. This contains all the audio stories. Since the audios have only been done by Big Finish Productions, this category is the same as saying, "All of Benny's Big Finish appearances."
Note that a secondary hierarchy exists to categorise just the Big Finish output. All of the above BF categories are also organised under Big Finish Bernice Summerfield stories. This category should only be used to organise other categories; individual pages can only be underneath it if they both do not fit any existing subcategory and are not numerous enough for a new subcategory.
That said, Category:Doctor Who voice actors is getting quite unwieldy, and so if this turns into a series rather than a one-off box set, I could certainly support a category like category:Doctor Who - The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield voice actors. I think it would be extremely ill-advised for these actors to end up in Big Finish Bernice Summerfield voice actors as that category has long been understood to be the main range only. And no matter how you squint at it, this box set is not a part of Benny's main range.
- Bernice Summerfield sources. The main category. Everything is underneath this one.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Actually, it pretty much is the new Benny main range currently, as the previous story arc has been finished. It's not just it's navigable from the Benny part of the site - it's categorized unambiguosly as part of the Bernice Summerfield range even if you click on it from the DW part of the site (unlike, say, Love and War, which is under "Doctor Who Special Releases"). On the BF website it's described as "the adventures of archaeologist Bernice Summerfield and her friends the Doctor and Ace", not the other way around.
And yes, given the double reversible covers with both of the ranges' logos, I'd definitely describe both "Love and War" and the two "Voyages" as being part of both of their respective ranges at the same time. Unlike, say, The Justice of Jalxar, which does not have an optional Jago and Litefoot cover and is pretty unambiguously part of only the Fourth Doctor range. Or unlike "Shadow of the Scourge" which was never marketed nor marked in any way as a Benny story either.
"If the Doctor is involved, it's Doctor Who."
Not necessarily. Death of the Doctor (TV story) isn't a Doctor Who story, it's an SJA story. The Hourglass Killers (audio story) isn't a Doctor Who story either, it's a J&L story, despite an appearance of the Doctor. And either way, I never claimed that Love and War or the New Adventures box aren't Doctor Who. Just that they're part of BOTH Doctor Who AND the Bernice Summerfield range.
I'd say that Big Finish definitely does market it as both a Doctor Who story AND a new chapter in their Bernice Summerfield range.
- JagoAndLitefoot
From an interview with Lisa Bowerman in the latest Vortex:
"We touched on this before, but in a series run as long as the Benny stories for Big Finish, does this new set require a lot of knowledge of what’s come before?"
This pretty clearly shows that they consider it part of the Benny "series run".
"just because it happens to include the character of Bernice Summerfield"
I'm not saying that Benny's Story is part of the Benny range in any way. Just like The Hourglass Killers is not part of the Doctor Who range. I AM saying that Love and War is part of both, though, because it specifically features a reversible alternate cover for this story as part of the Benny range.
- CzechOut
I don't think you understand what I'm saying, perhaps because I haven't expressed it well. I'm not telling you what to believe for your own purposes. I'm talking about the technical requirements of adding categories, as well as providing information about the way we've handled Benny's stories for years.
To put the actors in this boxset in both Doctor Who and Bernice Summerfield categories unnecessarily complicates categorisation. We define the Bernice Summerfield audio series as that regular series of audios which feature Benny but not the Doctor. Thus the actor category that companions that series cannot logically include stories that have the Doctor in them.
This isn't really about what you think the series is or what I think the series is, but rather what is a categorical definition that's easy to administrate. And as this rather protracted conversation has proved, there is debate over whether this box set is the regular series or not — from Big Finish's point of view. Big Finish are trying to have their cake and eat it, too. On http://bigfinish.com/ranges/released/doctor-who-the-new-adventures-of-bernice-summerfield, it's portrayed as Doctor Who — with none of the language you've quoted, above — and on http://bigfinish.com/releases/v/the-new-adventures-of-bernice-summerfield-1039 there's an emphasis on primarily Benny — with "her friends the Doctor and Ace".
There is, however, no debate about its status under the guidelines already established here at Tardis. It is definitely not the Big Finish Bernice Summerfield main range. The fact that Bowerman compares the experience to previous runs is immaterial. Of course she would make such a comparison, because that's a part of her past experience. I'm sure Harry Morgan at some point gave an interview of how AfterMASH was different to MASH — but they're still different shows.
As I indicated earlier, a useful compromise might be to call it its own range, give it separate actor categories, and therefore get even more precise categorisation. It also seems to honour Big Finish's stance, since they have it hard coded into their website that this is a new range, not just a new release.
- JagoAndLitefoot
"We define the Bernice Summerfield audio series as that regular series of audios which feature Benny but not the Doctor. Thus the actor category that companions that series cannot logically include stories that have the Doctor in them."
I'd define the Bernice Summerfield audio series as the audio series categorized as such by Big Finish, which they certainly do on their website. And what about Many Happy Returns which does feature the Seventh Doctor (even if it's a cameo), despite being specifically part of the Benny series? Or Love and War, which was explicitely released with a double cover, marking specifically it as part of BOTH series at once?
Anyway, the "Benny Range" is actually comprised of three distinct ranges by now (not just one "main range") - the original 11 seasons (which can be compared to, say, the Doctor Who main range), the box sets from Epoch to Missing Persons (which are like, say, the Dark Eyes range), and now New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield which is being released as something that is explicitly both a Bernice range and a Doctor Who range at the same time.
- Revanvolatrelundar
Just popping in to point out something:
The boxset has been renamed "Doctor Who - The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield", which on the Big Finish website is the series name, the boxset itself is just named "The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield".
Need proof - pow: http://www.bigfinish.com/ranges/released/doctor-who-the-new-adventures-of-bernice-summerfield
I'm gonna change the name for the boxset back and create a series page under that name.
- CzechOut
Um, hold up Revan. This initial box set and whatever range there might be are both called Doctor Who - The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield. It's just that on the DW side of the website, the "Doctor Who" is in the name as printed, but the "Doctor Who" goes cleverly "missing" when on the Benny side of the website. Perhaps the more influential rendering of the name is on the pre-release video, where it's very clearly "Doctor Who - The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield".
Like you, I was going to create a series page, but let's hold off until there's actually more than one thing in the series so that we have a clearer idea of what to do. After all, there are some "ranges" which turn out to be nothing more than the single release. If this thing gets no significant sales, it won't warrant additional entries. Calling it a "series" at this point is basically a violation of T:OFF REL — it hasn't happened yet.
- JagoAndLitefoot
"Dark Eyes" was also categorized under "Eighth Doctor Adventures" before it was separated into its own range on BF website when Dark Eyes 2-4 were announced.
- CzechOut
Hmmm, Revan, you know I think you're right. Something seems to have changed on the BF website. The "Doctor Who" has been dropped from the listing at http://www.bigfinish.com/ranges/released/doctor-who-the-new-adventures-of-bernice-summerfield. I'm fine then with the name change you just did, but for consistency with other things, it should have an (audio series) afterwards.
And I guess since they've done that, we really should now make category:Doctor Who - The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield audio actors and be done with this.
- AdricLovesNyssa
In an interview with Scott Handcock the Director of this box set, he says that James Goss the producer made this a fresh jumping on point in the on going Bernice Summerfield range, and instead of creating a new set of characters he brought back Ace and the Doctor.
http://www.kasterborous.com/2014/06/big-finish-bernice-scott-handcock-interviewed/
- CzechOut
Well I think we can all agree from long experience of Big Finish that they're not doing their stuff for our categorical needs. They're all about multiple marketing tracks, which makes it hard to categorise some of their stuff as one thing or the other. And they're masters of inventing "ranges" out of thin air.
Still I think this series is profoundly ambiguous, and the best way forward with the original question — where do we put the actors — is simply to create a whole new category for it.
Incidentally, I wouldn't take that interview very seriously in terms of what it's saying about the series. The interviewer's questions were obviously leading in that direction. If the questions were instead Doctor-centric, I'm sure Handcock would be able to characterise the very same stories as "showing a side of the Doctor we've never seen before" and "a series that doesn't require you know anything about the Seventh Doctor's previous adventures in audio". You hit the ball that's bowled to you, man.
- MystExplorer
I've already created a new category.
- AdricLovesNyssa
Just listened to the most recent podcast (if you count this as a good source of information, which I do) and David Richardson says it's part of the Bernice Summerfield series around 34minutes in
- CzechOut
Eh, the blurb in this month's DWM is very middle of the road in its description. To paraphrase, it says that if you're a DW fan, you'll be able to enjoy the Benny bits, and if you're a Benny fan, the Doctor and Ace don't steal the limelight. But overall it seems to aver that it's its own thing.
- Tybort
I have to second Czech on the DWM blurb thing. Also, the magazine basically calls the anthology both a Doctor Who and Bernice Summerfield title.
"Now, under the hybrid banner of Doctor Who: The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield, Benny is reunited with the Doctor and Ace."
- MystExplorer
Big Finish have just announced that <spoiler to an as-of-yet-unreleased story redacted>. So does this mean we would have to consider his Doctor valid, along with the other stories he appeared in? BF say he's from a "parallel dimension" but that's a separate issue from validity.
- TheChampionOfTime
I think this topic deserves a different discussion.
- AdricLovesNyssa
yeah lets wait until release
Opening a new discussion based on this thread will not violate Tardis:Do not disrupt this wiki to prove a point. If someone wishes to open a new thread to discuss it, please provide a link back to this thread.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:157814
Almost a month ago, I was told that Tardis:List of cast and crew by age and Tardis:List of deceased cast and crew by longevity would soon be deleted. That hasn't happened yet. Can someone please tell me why?
- Shambala108
Probably those responsible are too busy in their real lives at the moment to take care of it.
In this case, I'm sure that the community would either not care or actively prefer to keep these pages. But it's not possible, so it was important to give time for people to read why the pages must be deleted.
Since Slughorn, one of these pages' curators, now appears to be ready for action to be taken, these pages have now been deleted for the technical reasons given at Thread:156099#11.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:158553
I'm starting this discussion so that we can make a list of every page that has been renamed, to help with the task of moving links to the new title.
- Bwburke94
Prentice has been renamed to Prentice (Army of Ghosts) because he shares a name with Prentice (Bide-a-Wee).
Any links pointing to "Prentice" should be pointed to the correct page. Links pointing to "Grandad Prentice" don't need to be changed, as it is already a redirect to the correct page.
I've taken care of the Prentice links.
In the future, please do not rename pages without moving the page links first. It just creates more cleanup work. If it's a simple, non-controversial move, just add the speedy rename tag. Thanks.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:158614
Lately, when I try to edit a page on the wiki, it works fine, but it cuts off most of the bottom part of the page, meaning I can't save it! I know it at least applies to most TV stories.
If so, I'm fairly sure you have to scroll down all the way to the bottom to reach the edit button -- which I agree is a bit of a hassle with longer pages like TV stories.
If you create an account, you can use Special:Contact to bring this issue to the relevant staff's attention, so that they can maybe find a way to make the edit button more accessible in mobile editing. If you really can't, just let me know, and I can send in the report for you. :)
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:158623
Not only have the scripts for episodes 1 through 5 been leaked, thus revealing 2 through 5's titles, but apparently so have some mp4s of full episodes, including the new OP! Nobody's attempted to add this info to the series 8 page yet, but I think you should lock down the season page for now. The leak was on Gallifrey Base, but the admins there nipped it in the bud by locking and hiding the spoiler thread. Personally I've only seen the episode titles, one of which was previously rumoured.
Summarily, as you suggested, I'm now locking series 8 to admin-only status; if you would like something added that has been officially announced by the BBC or any other official entity (see T:VS), please leave a message at Talk:Series 8 (Doctor Who), and one of the admin team will determine whether or not it qualifies addition. Same goes for minor wording/spelling mistakes — let us know on the talk page.
For those wondering why these steps are necessary, citing that "series 8 says at the top that it may contain spoilers", yes that page may contain information about stories yet to be released, but that does not mean we can include information not intentionally revealed to us by the BBC or other relevant players. Even more importantly, this should not have happened. We will not further encourage the spreading of information we should not have access to in the first place.
So if you reveal information about these first five episodes in any way, or upload images of the leaked scripts or of these supposed MP4s, or do anything to reveal unreleased information about these stories before they are broadcast, you will be blocked — same as with the 50th anniversary special, same as with The Name of the Doctor. So just throw the BBC a bone, and don't make the existing problem worse. An official announcement on this subject is soon to come.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:158734
As it stands currently, a real-world person (such as an actor) typically gets their IMDb link, Twitter link, and official site link in the "External links" section at the foot of the page. They also, assuming the Person infobox has been correctly implemented, get those same external links in their infobox on the side of the page.
I'm wondering if this doesn't overcomplicate things. Especially on small articles, like Alexander Armstrong or Velile Tshabalala, the duplicated info is noticeably cluttering the page up.
Should we continue to present and maintain the same info twice on everyone's pages, or should we decide on either the infobox or the article proper as the correct place to present the links?
- Shambala108
Sorry, I just noticed this post.
If a cast/crew page is short enough, it doesn't even need the infobox. If the infobox merely repeats the actor's name, birthdate, and IMDB/twitter links, then it's not needed.
If an article is rather long, I can see putting info in both places, though I think it's better to keep it out of the infobox, since infoboxes are not supposed to be too long for the article.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:158757
A discussion at Shambala's talk page is probably driving Shambala a bit mad, since she is undoubtedly getting a message alert every time one of the two main respondents posts something. For that reason, it seems sensible to move the discussion here, to a public forum.
A few matters are at issue, so I'll take them one-by-one.
Edit conflicts and how to survive them =[[edit] | [edit source]]
The first question in this discussion was, "What is the proper response to an edit conflict?" Shambala108's advice on her talk page was right — in general, the person who encounters an edit conflict message has the burden of starting a discussion to explain why they overrode that message, or why they think their original edit should stand — but lemme go ahead and expand on it a bit.
A lot of times, you'll find that you can avoid a discussion altogether and come up with a solution that pleases both parties. Though Wikipedia is our evil twin, WP:EDC is nevertheless instructive to that question. Basically, if you get an edit conflict warning, you should try to integrate material from the first editor's edit into yours before you publish. If that's not possible — perhaps because it's fundamentally opposed to what you're writing — you should open a discussion on the talk page, or on that user's user page, or — if it's an issue that affects more than just that one page — here at Board:The Panopticon.
However, don't get too worked up about which version has the "right" to persist while a discussion ensues. It kinda doesn't matter whether you go ahead and public your edits, as long as you preserve the other person's edits for the ensuing discussion. Alternately, you can not publish your edits and then share your edit on the talk page. As long as a discussion happens, it doesn't matter who temporarily "wins" the edit conflict. Truth is, edit conflicts often happen when you don't know the other person is editing. And Bob can publish 1 second before you do — hardly the stuff of which decisions are actually made.
No, the danger with edit conflicts is that they will turn into actual edit wars, and that should never happen. Bob edits once. Jane edits to correct Bob. Meanwhile Bob has realised he's made another mistake and tries to correct it, whereupon he encounters an edit conflict. At this point, Bob should either go ahead and publish — but Jane shouldn't change Bob's edit — or Bob should withdraw to the talk page without publishing his second edit. As long as it doesn't get into Bob's third edit from either party, all is well. If it gets into a fourth, you can probably expect to be temporarily blocked.
Who's a companion?[[edit] | [edit source]]
The second question, though, was the more important one. "Who counts as a companion of the Doctor?" is, as Shambala pointed out, one of the oldest and most intractable things this wiki has ever dealt with.
The reason is simple. As Companion#Behind the scenes points out, there is no in-universe definition of companion. Therefore, when Bold Clone speaks derisively of including companions on the basis of out-of-univeerse notions, two questions naturally arise:
- What else is there?
- Why would any reader think that a navbox which appears underneath the "behind the scenes" section of the article is a part of its in-universe content?
See the thing is, navboxes just aren't in-univese. Most of them contain story titles or actors names or real life years or series numbers. They are absolutely immune to the general strictures of Tardis:Point of view. They are, as their title suggests, a navigational aid only. They aren't a part of the article. For this reason companions listed in {{Companions of the Tenth Doctor}} aren't offered as the "definitive word" on who gets the moniker of companion. Rather, they're intended to include everyone who could reasonably be considered a companion by a definition that's broad, but not ridiculously inclusive.
Obviously there are going to be a fair few judgement calls to make. And in that case, the inability of this community to come up with a working definition leaves it in the hands of admin to essentially flip a coin. That's not a power grab. It's literally being a referee on a dispute that is as basic — and as unresolved — to Doctor Who fandom as "Which team gets to receive first?" is to American football.
Believe me, it's not a position admin like to be in. I tried to get other senior editors to answer this question this afternon, but no one would touch it with a ten foot pole.
And it's easy to see why: fandom as a whole has been arguing over the definition of companion since the 1970s. And there's never been a clear definition, because there can't be. No producer of Doctor Who, in any medium, is going to waste their time with something that's both so trivial and so narratively constrictive. Even Big Finish, when they had a story called Situation Vacant that was expressly about defining the role of the companion, shied away from specifics.
So the matter of determining which characters go into a navigational comes to a series of common sense questions, both in-universe and out-of-universe.
- Is there a press announcement that introduces their actor to the world as a "companion", "assistant", "regular" or "semi-regular"?
- Does the publishing company refer to them as a "companion" or "assistant", if not a televised character?
- Do their actor's names appear before the title of the programme on television, and are they not also a main antagonist?
- Do they occupy a narrative space equivalent to Wilf or Christina de Souza in a non-televised story in which no other, more obvious, companion also appears?
- Do they travel in the TARDIS in a single story when there's no other, more obvious companion in the story?
- Does the Doctor refer to them as his companion, assistant or maybe even friend during the course of the story, particularly, but not exclusively, when there is no other, more obvious companion in the story?
- Does any reference work refer to them as a companion or assistant?
- Were they under contract to appear as a regular or semi-regular in at least one series on TV, and are they protagonists?
If the answer to any of these questions is yes, chances are they belong in a companions of the nth doctor navbox. The point of a navbox, after all, is merely to guide people from one page to another. It's to suggest, "This person could well be considered a companion, particularly given the text at companion". The point is to get you to read the article and make up your own mind as to whether you'd call that person a companion.
Is this system perfect? No. Are there always going to be a few people in these navboxes that are going to make you scratch your head? Of course. But given that the source material gives us nothing to hang our hats on, and that fans have been arguing about whether the Brig is a companion for forty years now, it's as good as it gets.
Narrative ambiguity[[edit] | [edit source]]
Finally, there's the question of how to use the "narratively ambiguous" thing. To be honest, this wasn't a big policy decision. I never really envisaged it being used outside the case of Chang Lee, who is certainly a one-off on television. A lot of people do consider him a companion, but he is for a time the companion of the Master as well. It was a way to get him on the navigation template, for the benefit of those people who do think he's a companion. Such believers have a strong case, after all. The TARDIS does restore him to life, and at the end of that story he does exactly what Grace does — not travel with the Doctor.
I didn't really think it would be used in other circumstances, and I would far rather see it retracted from {{Companions of the Eighth Doctor}} than expanded for use elsewhere. If we start using it more broadly, tonnes of people might get moved around — Katarina, Liz and the Brig for a start.
- Bold Clone
To clarify my position on OOU sources--per this wiki's policy, they are not considered valid sources. Additionally, notice that I still chose to leave the "companions" in question on the companion template. What I am arguing is that aside non-valid OOU material, there is minimal IU evidence as to whether the Doctor himself considered those characters to be companions. Hence why I left them on the template. Clearly, some people believe them to be companions, and are willing to fight over it. I was simply trying to clarify that those characters' companion status is looser and more questionable than others.
- CzechOut
That's not an accurate statement of wiki policy. Again, a navbox is not subject to the strictures of writing an in-universe article. And a navbox about companions is doubly exempt because there is no in-universe definition of the word companion.'
- Bold Clone
And if there is no in-universe definition of the word "companion", now can you even create a template for companions? It's nothing more than bogus speculation on your part. Would you have us rename the templates to "associates" or "allies of the Doctor", since we can't even define "companion"? (Which might work, IMO)
I am not against using OOU material; I am just saying I do not find it sufficient or consistent. I feel we need some sort of consistent in-universe guideline or general inferences, or at the least some sort of authoritative DW reference book. In-universe inferences (even without having a definition), there are some factors that most companions have in common:
- They travel with the Doctor in the TARDIS.
- They are invited to travel in the TARDIS by the Doctor, or are allowed to travel in the TARDIS with him.
- Mewiet
CzechOut wrote: So the matter of determining which characters go into a navigational comes to a series of common sense questions, both in-universe and out-of-universe.
- Is there a press announcement that introduces their actor to the world as a "companion", "assistant", "regular" or "semi-regular"?
- Does the publishing company refer to them as a "companion" or "assistant", if not a televised character?
- Do their actor's names appear before the title of the programme on television, and are they not also a main antagonist?
- Do they occupy a narrative space equivalent to Wilf or Christina de Souza in a non-televised story in which no other, more obvious, companion also appears?
- Do they travel in the TARDIS in a single story when there's no other, more obvious companion in the story?
- Does the Doctor refer to them as his companion, assistant or maybe even friend during the course of the story, particularly, but not exclusively, when there is no other, more obvious companion in the story?
- Does any reference work refer to them as a companion or assistant?
- Were they under contract to appear as a regular or semi-regular in at least one series on TV, and are they protagonists?
If the answer to any of these questions is yes, chances are they belong in a companions of the nth doctor navbox. The point of a navbox, after all, is merely to guide people from one page to another. It's to suggest, "This person could well be considered a companion, particularly given the text at companion". The point is to get you to read the article and make up your own mind as to whether you'd call that person a companion.
Is this system perfect? No. Are there always going to be a few people in these navboxes that are going to make you scratch your head? Of course. But given that the source material gives us nothing to hang our hats on, and that fans have been arguing about whether the Brig is a companion for forty years now, it's as good as it gets.
Narrative ambiguity[[edit] | [edit source]]
Finally, there's the question of how to use the "narratively ambiguous" thing. To be honest, this wasn't a big policy decision. I never really envisaged it being used outside the case of Chang Lee, who is certainly a one-off on television. A lot of people do consider him a companion, but he is for a time the companion of the Master as well. It was a way to get him on the navigation template, for the benefit of those people who do think he's a companion. Such believers have a strong case, after all. The TARDIS does restore him to life, and at the end of that story he does exactly what Grace does — not travel with the Doctor.
I didn't really think it would be used in other circumstances, and I would far rather see it retracted from {{Companions of the Eighth Doctor}} than expanded for use elsewhere. If we start using it more broadly, tonnes of people might get moved around — Katarina, Liz and the Brig for a start.
I don't like the "narratively ambiguous" category either. If tight reigns are kept on it, it might occasionally be useful. But used as Bold Clone has used it on the Tenth Doctor's Companion Template, it's very messy and just muddles up some fairly obvious one-off companions. Jackson, Christina (who is being mentioned as a gauge for companion status in non-TV stories alongside Wilf in the above quoted post), Astrid, and Adelaide all act in the companionate role in their episodes and the actors who play them are credited in the pre-title sequence. Georgia Moffett is credited for the seven animated minisodes that makeup Dreamland. Cassie and Jimmy both take one trip (and a second is implied) on the TARDIS. Not to another time or planet, but simply from one place to another, equivalent of Wilf's TARDIS trip in The End of Time. In the case of Astrid and Jenny, both are invited to be full time companions and accept, but both die (or "die") before they get to step in the TARDIS. In Jenny's case, she acts in a companionate status equivalent of Donna's role in the episode and the plot of Prisoners of Time is about all of the Doctor's companions getting kidnapped by Adam and among those companions is Jenny, indicating that the narrative does consider her a companion. Christina (and many others) fills the same narrative role Rose, Martha, or Amy fill in their debut episodes. She just does it for a single episode instead of a season's worth. It's absurd to say that's ambiguous.
Now characters like Rosita, River, and Jimmy are a little more complicated. In the questions posed above, their actors don't have their names in the opening credits, for example. (I'm not sure how they were marketed, as I was much newer DW at the time and didn't track DW news so I can't speak to how many of the other questions they may answer a yes to.) Donna, the seasonal companion, spends most of Forest of the Dead in The Library, leading River to act in the companionate role at Ten's side for that episode. In Dreamland, Jimmy and Cassie fill a two-companion role just like Rose and Mickey do in The Girl in the Fireplace or Amy and Rory do in The Vampires of Venice, even though only Piper, Gillan, and Moffett get pre-title credits.
- Mewiet
Now Bold Clone is no longer just moving names around, s/he is removing companions from Template:Companions of the Eleventh Doctor who have been on the template for over a year and a half.
Vastra has had at least one unseen encounter with the Doctor prior to the events of AGMGTW, she's been picked up by Eleven and traveled in the TARDIS far outside her time period, she repeatedly refers to the Doctor as her "friend" or "old friend" when talking to and about him, a claim that he never disputes. She's also been a recurring character since season six, having appeared in three out of the thirteen episodes of season seven (one less than River Song in season five, but season five had two-parters while season seven did not) and has had an increasing presence in non-TV media.
Nearly everything for Vastra also applies to Strax, though the circumstances of his first meeting with the Doctor were different than Vastra's. The Doctor also says this of Strax, Vastra, and Jenny in The Name of the Doctor: "I have to save Vastra and Strax. Jenny too, if it's still possible. They, they cared for me during the dark times. Never questioned me, never judged me, they were just kind. I owe them. I have a duty." It speaks of a very strong bond and that's only reinforced by the fact that the Whispermen and the GI also refer to them as the Doctor's friends and hold Strax, Vastra, Jenny, and Clara under the threat of death to force Eleven into opening his tomb.
The Doctor's friendship with Jenny isn't as strong as the one with Vastra or Strax as evidenced by the quote above, but she's been in just as many on screen/page media as the other two, she's taken part in the same adventures/TARDIS trips, and still nevertheless has a friendship with the Doctor and certainly fills a companionate role while Clara's incapacitated in The Crimson Horror.
Dorium has been picked up in the TARDIS by Eleven on at least two different occasions, he played an important role in the Doctor's Army in AGMGTW, and given the Doctor's action of taking his head onto the TARDIS the second time and then planning to pick up the Brig, it implies Eleven had plans to keep Dorium on the TARDIS for a while.
Madge, Lily, and Cyril were also added at the same time. The Doctor spends most of the episode with Lily and Cyril acting in the role of companions even more than Madge, but Claire Skinner is the one with her name listed before the title.
I see that Bold Clone last edited the page in June and did not take any time to remove these characters at that time, but now that I've reverted edits that I recently noticed removed these characters that have been longstanding on this template (and answer yes to multiple of the above questions), they've suddenly become something s/he insists on removing from the template.
- Digifiend
Well, doing that without community consensus is just plain vandalism, I would've thought. You did the right thing reverting it. The big problem is that the show itself only rarely calls characters by the name "assistant", "companion", or something similar. This isn't going to be an easy one for you guys to solve.
More broadly, arguing over who and who isn't a companion is counter-productive. It might "fun" in a "ain't it great to be a part of DW fandom" sort of a way. But it's wasting time we could be using to edit about things that are much more cut and dried. And, worse, it creates these little edit wars, which also are against policy. (Remember, guys, when you edit pages that are currently under discussion, you violate T:BOUND and risk blocking.)
Worse, it really doesn't matter. These are navboxes, not articles. It doesn't matter if they contain information that is dubious, so long as it's reasonably defensible.
So, again, we're basically at this point: we can't agree who counts as a companion, so who decides? By default, the answer is admin. Now, I don't like that answer. I'd rather find a way for the community to decide. But it is just not going to happen. Not on this issue. Not in this fandom.
So the best I can offer you is an evolved stance that is tempered by the discussions we've had over the years. In other words, I've read the comments of everyone who's ever participated in this debate, and to one extent or other, their thoughts are incorporated into the way companions are chosen for these navboxes.
Mini-mitch once proposed:
- I think a companion is a person who travels with the Doctor on more than one adventure. Unless the BBC state that they are companions.
And frankly that's pretty much it. But because I like lists and a little bit of amplification, I'd throw in this.
- As long as the answer to one of the following is "yes", the character in question is likely a companion:
- Is there a press announcement that introduces their actor to the world as a "companion", "assistant", "regular" or "semi-regular"?
- If the character isn't on television, does the publishing company refer to them as a "companion" or "assistant"?
- Do their actor's names appear before the title of the programme on television, and are they not also a main antagonist?
- Do they occupy a narrative space equivalent to Wilf or Christina de Souza in a non-televised story in which no other, more obvious, companion also appears?
- Do they travel in the TARDIS in a single story when there's no other, more obvious companion in the story?
- Does the Doctor refer to them as his companion, assistant or maybe even friend during the course of the story, particularly, but not exclusively, when there is no other, more obvious companion in the story?
- Does any reference work refer to them as a companion or assistant?
- Were they under contract to appear as a regular or semi-regular in at least one series on TV, and are they protagonists?
- If their actor's name is above the credits, did their character receive and accept an invitation from the Doctor to travel in the TARDIS?
And, really, that's what Mini-mitch was saying back in 2011, just much more economically than me. :)
Now, that said, I'm going to additionally move to end all this. From this point, the navboxes are off limits to all but admin. As we can see upthread, leaving them open to editing makes people come dangerously close to violating T:NO WARS, and it's just not worth it. I mean, we could honestly not have these templates at all, and the pages wouldn't be much the poorer for them. So, to stop this issue from continuing on into August and potentially ruining the start of series 8 for me and the rest of the admin team, all those "companions of" templates are now locked.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:158760
Recently, several scripts have emerged on the internet that detail Series 8 episodes. And unfortunately, so has an entire rough cut of the first episode premiere. Piracy has struck again.
Beware spoilers online. They are tempting, but inadvisable. I chose to pass on this news so all of you listening will know that we need to be on guard. There really has been a whopping breach in the security for these releases.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:158949
I tried uploading new pictures of Benny and Evelyn for the tops of their respective pages. I felt that the ones that are there now were outdated and photographs would look better than drawings. It seemed to work but then they suddenly disappeared overnight. Did someone delete them? I was planning to do the same thing with Irving but I'm holding off on that until the situation is resolved.
- Shambala108
I deleted them because you didn't include a license, which is required of all images uploaded to the wiki. Please take a look at Tardis:Image use policy (which includes a tutorial), and then you can re-upload them with the proper license.
- Tybort
Also, I think there's a rule that screenshots, illustrations and comic scans are preferred by our rules to fit at least infobox images.
This is what the image cheat card says regarding cover images (which I'm assuming is where these deleted Benny and Evelyn images come from). We're also against publicity images in general to illustrate TV characters, and I believe that this is an extension of that.
- Acceptable as illustration of last resort. When there are no other images of a thing — because the thing exists solely in audio or prose stories — a cover image may be used.
These characters are not solely illustrated or photographed on audio and prose covers.
Evelyn exists in webcast illustrations (and from what I can gather, Irving Braxiatel is also from an animated webcast), while Benny appears in-narrative in Pureblood and other DWM stories. Per our own policies, we cannot use photographic images of the audio play actors just because they look "better".
And being outdated isn't an especially good justification. The Ice Warrior page uses a photograph from the black and white TV era in its infobox because it's a tight close up and representative of Ice Warriors as a whole with the "mask" (which Ice Warriors are rarely seen out of), not to mention that it's not in a really dark submarine set.
- MystExplorer
OK. Never mind then.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:159042
I noticed that the infobox for the comic stories doesn't have a section for comic Designers, which is one of the credits given to Rob Farmer for After Life. Farmer is credited twice: first as a Designer, second as a cover artist for the photo variant of the cover. I'm trying to figure out what to categorize the Designer credit under because I realized there's a distinction between illustrators and comic artists.
- CzechOut
No need to categorise it as anything other than what it is. Just set the variable
designerequal to the name of the person:| designer = [[Rob Farmer]]
For the time being that's a non-automatically-linking variable, so you'll need to add the brackets.
- Mewiet
That's what I initially did but it didn't take. Just tried it now and it worked. :-/ Maybe I hit an extra key or something the first time. Wouldn't be the first time messed up an infobox edit with a typo. Anyway, thanks for the reply!
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:159149
Is there a reason for Mark Seven and [[Mark Seven (The Destroyers)]] being considered two different individuals on different pages? Given that he's an android, it's feasible to assume that Mark Seven simply went from being an SSS agent to being and ADF agent, even if it took place over different centuries. Sure, Terry Nation reused a character he created for a different story, but it's no different than Sara Kingdom being used in both The Daleks' Master Plan and The Destroyers. There's nothing in either of the stories that indicates they can't be the same character.
- Shambala108
Is there anything that indicates that they definitely are the same character? If so, a merge tag can be slapped on one of them.
- JagoAndLitefoot
For me, it's Occam's razor. A Dalek-fighting android with the same name appears in both stories by the same writer, so I'd assume they are the same character unless otherwise specified. Just like there's no reason to assume Sara Kingdom isn't the same character in TDMP and The Destroyers, despite some slight differences in characterization.
- CzechOut
No, they're materially different characters.
- JagoAndLitefoot
How so?
In a case like this where you have a fairly generic name, but significantly different settings and character traits, it's up to the person asserting they're the same to find positive links. You have to prove how they're not different characters, using the text of the adventures in which they appeared. In other words, deductive reasoning ain't enough.
Think of it this way. Dr. Who is not the same as the First Doctor despite the fact that they both have white hair and granddaughters named Susan, and are both occasionally referred to as "Dr. Who", and they both went to Skaro to fight the Daleks. Why? Because generally there's no narrative connection between the two, other than a vague similarity of events. Barbara can't be both the Doctor's granddaughter and Susan's unrelated schoolteacher. That's just obviously too big a difference.
Indeed, K9 Mark II may look like K9 Mark I, may be played by the same actor, may have the same incarnation of the Doctor as his master, and may be thought of by the general public as the same character. But we know they're not the same character because we've seen the last scene of The Invasion of Time. We know there are extenuating facts which make an otherwise apparently similar character quite different.
In the same way, there is more than enough in the written stories featuring Mark Seven to make us believe he is likely different from the Big Finish version. I'd even go so far as to say that there could be enough of a difference between the 60s Dalek Annuals version and the 70s Dalek Annuals version to say that there are two prose Sevens, and possibly enough difference between the Nation version of The Destroyers Seven and Briggs' version of The Destroyers Seven to call those different.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:159178
I recently noticed that Sarah Jane Smith and Jack Harkness are in the Multi-adventure section (one story, multiple adventures) when they should be in Multi-story (multiple stories).
I don't know if this is intentional, but the decryption down the bottom of the template implies they should be in Multi-story.
Thanks for listening (reading)
Member of the ARC
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:159182
Now, as The Crystal Throne has established, the 2010 redesign of Silurians stretch into South Africa, and not just the North Wales setting of Alaya and Restac's tribe, or the group of Vastra's people who were killed by London Underground workers.
I respect that the use "Wenley Moor" and "Wales" may have worked in describing the differing subspecies or tribes or whatever you want to call them of Silurian at the time The Hungry Earth and Cold Blood, but as the modern version of the Silurians are very clearly shown in separate parts of Great Britain (and even outside), could it be possible to refer to the "classic" and "modern" Silurians into different (or more generalised) terms?
There's one thing alleging that the group beneath North Wales and the one who was with Vastra are part of the same tribe, but the Silurian in that flashback in The Crystal Throne is literally thousands and thousands of miles from Great Britain (and the origins of the Silurians other than Vastra from A Good Man Goes to War aren't described either way, seeing as her people were killed?). Also, presumably, visual and prose media would describe Silurians other than the ones in Doctor Who and the Silurians living away from the north of England, but still close to the Silurians and Warriors of the Deep look.
- Tangerineduel
We could use the in-universe technical names of Psionosauropodamorphae and Homo reptilia to describe the "classic" and "new" looks respectively.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Maybe simply two-eyed and three-eyed Silurians?
- SOTO
I'd agree with TD; use those technical species names as proper titles for the pages, and keep other variations (including dabbed names like "Silurian (Wenley Moor)" or "Silurian (The Hungry Earth)") as redirects.
- Mewiet
The proposed Psionosauropodamorphae and Homo Reptilia work for me.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:159467
I looked up the name of the first episode of series 8 today, and I just got all sorts of pages that had similar names. Why doesn't series 8 come up?
- Shambala108
If you are looking for the title of the first episode of series 8, you won't find it on this wiki because even listing the title is a violation of Tardis:Spoiler policy. If that's not what you meant, could you please clarify?
- DarthKnah
Let's say the title of the first episode of series 8 was called "Waffles and Pancakes." If I typed "waffles and pancakes" into the search bar, the results of the search would just be a lot of articles that have similar names. I understand that we can't have an article for the first episode of series 8, but why doesn't series 8 come up as one of the results for the search "waffles and pancakes"?
- Shambala108
OK I get you now.
Because the title "Waffles and Pancakes" is a spoiler, it is not allowed anywhere on the wiki, and therefore will not show up in any search for series 8. The search function is not that sophisticated. If you want series 8, you have to search for that instead.
Your suggestion doesn't even work for existing stories, for example, putting "The War Games" doesn't bring up season 2. A while back we were beta testing a more sophisticated search engine, but it's been a while since I've heard anything about it.
- CzechOut
The short answer to your question is that our spoiler policy is working. We don't want you to be able to type "Waffles and Pancakes" into the search bar and come up with anything relevant. Not if the story hasn't been released yet.
Also, we're helped by the algorithms the search engine uses, which tends to preference similarity in titles, rather than information in the body of articles. So even if there were a "waffles and pancakes" on the page series 8, series 8 wouldn't be a top hit for "waffles and pancakes" unless there weren't many other pages with that term.
I think you'll find that the words which comprise the real title to the series 8 premiere are so common in other titles that series 8 doesn't stand a chance.
- DarthKnah
Thanks.
- Digifiend
Shambala108 wrote: Your suggestion doesn't even work for existing stories, for example, putting "The War Games" doesn't bring up season 2.
Why would it? The War Games is the final story of season 6, not 2.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:159512
There seems to be no cohesive style for the lists of appearances. For example, should the title heading be "Audio" or "Audio stories"? Short story formats are a major offender. Should it be "Title" or "Title (Anthology)" or "Title (in Anthology)" or something else entirely? There are loads of inconsistencies across the two-hundred-odd appearance lists. Basically, is there a style guide for appearances, and if not, can one be created?
- CzechOut
Since you clearly have some passion for the subject, why don't you review the pages and come up with a style guide that will require the least number of changes? Then come back here and give us your findings, and we'll "kick the tires on it" and then put it into a our style guide.
- PicassoAndPringles
That is a project I'm willing to take on. By the way, Czech, I left you a message on your talk page about a week ago and you never got back to me.
- Shambala108
Since this post is almost two years old, and there's been no apparent progress on this issue, I'm opening this up to the wiki members to give suggestions for standardizing articles on lists of appearances.
Some of the questions would be:
- order of media
- how to post stories from anthologies
- whether or not to include NOTVALID stories
- names of headings
There are some standards to keep in mind. Please see Tardis:Lists of appearances and Thread:141930.
- Dr Pengin
Here's my opinion on the 4 questions from Shambala108
1. TELEVISION, PROSE, AUDIO, COMICS, HOME VIDEO, VIDEO GAMES (like the In-Universe section on Tardis:Prefixes
2. Each story be listed separately.
3. No. I'm not sure if I've seen an example of a a NOTVALID story listed?
4. Same as the list above.
- RingoRoadagain
Maybe it's been stated elsewhere but how many appearances should be requisited to create its own separate list page?
To answer Shambala I would say:
1) using the order suggested by Dr Pengin since it is used elsewhere, followed by NOTVALID.
2)same as Dr Pengin
3) I think we should list NOTVALID stories in their own separate section after GAMES to reuse the Tardis:Prefixes order. I think that would strange to say that the Seventh Doctor does not appear in Death Comes to Time or that the Master does not appear in the Curse of Fatal Death, for example. Any these lists are out of universe so it should not pose any issue to do so.
4) same as Dr Pengin suggested and then the NOT VALID STORIES section.
- 50.80.12.65
dildo
- Dr Pengin
The Master (The Curse of Fatal Death) does appear in The Curse of Fatal Death (TV story) but The Master doesn't. If you see what I mean. They are different characters. IF we did list NOTVALID stories, then I suggest the heading to be NON-DWU. But I strongly oppose.
- TheChampionOfTime
The only problem with listing all the stories as NON-DWU is that some of them are. David Tennant is just playing the regular Tenth Doctor in Attack of the Grask. The choose-your-own-adventure books are the about the "real" Doctors. The only reason these are invalid is that their stories are fluid.
As for the Cure of Fatal Death, a Master definitely appears. Does THE Master appear in The Infinity Doctors or Sympathy for the Devil? No, but a Master sure does. All of these Masters are different shades of the same person, the same character.
My views are exactly the same on this matter as RingiRoadAgain's.
- Follow the order given in Tardis:Prefixes
- Stories in anthologies should be listed separately
- Oh yes, listing NONVALIDs would be the best thing since sliced bread!
- I agree with everyone that we should just keep the prefix headings we have now
My one wonder is this: if we list NONVALID appearances in lists, would they also be put into the infoboxes of characters/species without lists of appearances?
- RingoRoadagain
I guess that the CoFD Master was not the best example I could give. What I said about Death Comes To Time and TheChampionOfTime's examples are better.
Another way would be to create a new character page for every Not-DWU appearances of a DWU character, like Davros and Davros (Masters of War). DrPengin, would you like this second possibility better? Personally I like my first proposition better because I am not sure each of the not-DWU character are significantly different from their main incarnation to need their own page.
Yet another possibility would be to separate each of these character pages (like my second proposition) but to unify the list of appearance (the way stated in my previous comment) and to also link to the other incarnations of each character in its infoboxes
To answer ChampionOfTime, I would say to put NOTVALID for everyone if we do so for those with their own appearance page. Maybe their would be enough NOTVALID entries to create a new appearance page for some of these characters.
- Dr Pengin
No way. NOTVALID stories are not part of the DWU therefore should not be on list of appearances pages.
- RingoRoadagain
Dr Pengin wrote: No way. NOTVALID stories are not part of the DWU therefore should not be on list of appearances pages.
I don't understand the issue: These lists are from a real world point of view and not an in-universe one, are they not?
If indeed they are from a real world POV, then it should not be an issue to mention NOTVALID stories. Or is there something else that I don't see?
- Dr Pengin
It is a list of appearances of an In-Universe character
.
- 2.26.183.190
The ting is the infobox on the master dose include a non dwu section but the list of aperranses and I think including a non dwu section when they are the Same charecter and just the story is not a valid surse
- Dr Pengin
I haven't thought about this recently, but thinking about it again. Yes as they are real-world articles. I think the heading should be INVALID STORIES. How should this be put into action?
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:159660
When you edit any page on the wiki, you get a message that says "this site is about the Doctor's past; don't include information from stories that haven't been released" and all that (which is good for reminding people). However, spoilers are allowed in the Howling, and the message still comes up. Is it possible to change that behavior for the howling, or would that be extremely difficult/impractical/useless?
- CzechOut
Done. May change in future, because I've done it with a really broad brush approach. But, hey, it had the virtue of being a quick fix. :)
- Natasyajung
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Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:159990
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Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:160406
Inspired by Into the Dalek, I realized it would be useful a category about miniaturisation technologies. As far as I know, that would include the following: molecular nanoscaler, dimensional stabiliser, minifier, Genesis III, compression field, molecular nanoscaler, matter condensation, Tissue Compression Eliminator.
My concern is: what title should be used? Category:Miniaturisation devices, Category:Miniaturisation technology, both or other options? Thank you. --HarveyWallbanger ☎ 12:42, September 1, 2014 (UTC)
- Shambala108
I prefer the word "technology", as "device" is too vague and should rarely be used.
- PicassoAndPringles
I am also in favor of "technology". Also, Harvey, you don't need to sign your posts on the forums.
- HarveyWallbanger
Ok, thank you for everything :-)
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:160419
Why do we have Romana II but the Second Doctor? What makes the Doctor's incarnation labeling any different from the other Time Lords? Why don't we call Romana II the Second Romana?
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:160600
AudioGO ceased production in October 2013, and forwarded all inquiries to Downpour.com. As of the end of August 2014 the residual website (AudioGO.com) has been handed to other owners.
We have a lot of reference links to AudioGO's listings - mainly in entries for their products - none of which point to anything anymore.
Example:
Should these be eliminated, or redirected to... where? Downpour? BBCShop? Amazon?
- CzechOut
Oh did AudioGO links finally stop working? They were good as late as last month, I think. It's probably best that these be fixed with Internet Wayback Machine links, where possible. Big Finish have official pages for some of these products as well, since they've become the legacy purveyor. Please do not link to retailers other than BF.
- Gousha
The Wayback Machine isn't going to be of much use. Most of the pages it has are partial saves, none of which are in a presentable condition, and as you've noted a lot of the titles aren't on Big Finish, either.
As an example, there's The Nemonite Invasion (audio story):
So we're left with little to no uniform replacement. Luckily I only count 28 instances where template:audiogo is actually used, so my vote is to simply eliminate them.
- Digifiend
Your Wayback save #2 there is definitely unusable. save #1 is missing only the cover art. That's a shame, so close, but not good enough.
Since the point of those links is that you can go there to buy the stories in question, and this is no longer possible, I too think that template and any links it creates should be binned.
- CzechOut
That's not really the point of the links. The point is primarily to provide further information on the stories. But Big Finish are the de facto official site for AudioGo. Try replacing as many as possible with links found at http://www.bigfinish.com/ranges/released/audiogo-doctor-who-audiobooks
- Tangerineduel
I agree, use Big Finish to replace the AudioGo links, and also try and find other sources to go in the link section.
I've added a BBC press release to The Nemonite Invasion (audio story) which gives pretty similar information to the Wayback Machine version of the AudioGo site.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:160905
I was under the impression that in-universe sources were preferred to out-of-universe sources (including television credits).
The short story The Thief of Sherwood uses the spellings "Marion" and "Will Scarlet". Yet both these spellings have been corrected to match the end credits of Robot of Sherwood.
Which is correct?
- PicassoAndPringles
This is kind of a complicated case. The Thief of Sherwood isn't actually a straight story, but a collection of fake articles from DWM, Radio Times, The Discontinuity Guide, etc, about a fake Hartnell episode called "The Outlaws", including a plot summary and dialogue snippets. An argument could be made that its NOTDWU.
Thief gives the spellings as "Scarlet" and "Marion" and Robot gives "Scarlett", Marion being credited as "Quayle's Ward". However, the spellings in Thief are kind of just as out-of-universe as the credits in Robot because they are from a fake cast listing.
- CzechOut
Um, that's not The Thief of Sherwood we're talking about here, PicassoAndPringles. We're talking about an unambiguously in-universe short story from Short Trips: Past Tense.
Which makes this not at all complicated. In-universe wins. Move the pages to the spelling in Thief, but leave redirects for the spellings used in the end credits of Robot. Then write a little BTS note for each of these characters explaining the situation.
Done.
- CzechOut
Oh and you'll probably want to lock the pages to the spelling of Thief, Shambala, because people are going to want to trust the more modern story as "correct", and therefore try to move it back.
As for usage in articles, it honestly doesn't matter so much, since the articles will have a BTS note explaining things.
- PicassoAndPringles
Its the same one. Aside from the fact that I've read the story, the Notes on its page also say its a collection of articles.
- Shambala108
In your argument that Thief of Sherwood is NOTDWU, which rule does it break?
The credits are not OOU because they're not real credits, they're not real articles. There's no such tv story as The Thief of Sherwood. It's just a storytelling method, a chance for Jonathan Morris to get creative. The Short Trips anthologies are littered with stories told in non-traditional fashion.
The notes section doesn't say it's a collection of articles, it says, "This story is written in the form of various summaries, reviews, and commentaries". There's a difference.
There's also the fact that many of the stories in Past Tense, Thief included, form a part of the last story, That Time I Nearly Destroyed the World Whilst Looking for a Dress, in which Polly travels to various settings in other Past Tense stories, changing events. Thief is meant to be a real story, just like the other ones that are referenced in That Time.
One last point is that Marion (spelled with an "o") also appears in That Time as the exact same character under the exact same circumstances as in Thief.
- PicassoAndPringles
I would say that it breaks Rule 1, that its not a story. It is similar to one of the examples at T:VS, "Fictional information presented non-narratively":
Sometimes, publications... will present “biographical” or “historical” information about characters and situations in the DWU in a non-narrative style.
Theif is definitely written in a "non-narrative style".
- Shambala108
I disagree that rule 1 applies here. I think it's a valid storytelling technique that is used in several stories, including, but not limited to, I Was a Monster!!!, Apocryhpa Bipedium, The Northern Heights, and Jealous, Possessive.
From his further description in chat, it sounds like the story is essentially parodic. The story is not chiefly about what happens to the Doctor and his companions. Rather it's the story of the hunt for a fictional missing episode, complete with descriptions written up in the Radio Times and DWM. So it seems to me like it wouldn't be a valid source, any more than An Adventure in Space and Time is.
However, without access to this anthology, it's really hard for me to judge the impact of this story on the others in the collection. And that's where, it seems to me, there might be a way to establish the "story within a story" as being a part of the DWU. So I'm going to bow out of this one. I would just ask those of you with access to the volume to read these other stories with an extra critical eye.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:161063
Given that Gwen is confirmed to keep her last name Cooper, if we don't have a definitive source on Anwen's last name, we cannot assume either way. It's likely that one of the novels or audios included the name, but as I do not have access to them at the moment, I need your help finding a definitive source.
- CzechOut
Actually First Born has many references to Gwen being called "Mrs. Williams". It says that in the time between COE and MD, when living in that remote cottage, she did use "Williams" — to throw people off the track, so she would almost certainly have gone with "Williams" for Anwen, too. It's written in first person, alternating between Gwen and Rhys, so this is something the character directly states.
Here's the quote:
- 'Yes?' I said. Just at the moment I was going about under Rhys's name. We'd figured the whole hiding- in-plain-sight thing would be easier that way. After all, you couldn't have an alarm go off every time a couple called Williams moved into a Welsh village, could you now?
- CzechOut
Another relevant passage about Anwen:
- 'Oh, I didn't say that, now,' huffed Constable Brown, all outraged dignity. 'I just said...' He slowed down, and looked at me, then glanced across at Anwen. 'Is she yours?' he asked, suddenly.
- I was a bit startled. 'Yes! Of course she is!'
- 'The local celebrity, she is.' He sucked his teeth. 'Forgive me, Mrs Williams. Gwen. Stupid thing to say. But it's nice to know. And a pleasure to meet her mother. A real treat.' His voice dropped, and his complacent smile suddenly became something else. Something odd. It was a look I couldn't quite... couldn't quite pin down.
I think this proves that it would have been extraordinarily odd for Anwen to have had the last name of anything but "Williams".
- Bwburke94
It's not a direct source on Anwen's name, just on her parents' name, but if they were both using Williams at the time, it's a reasonable assumption that Williams was Anwen's last name at this point. Using "Anwen Williams" instead of "Anwen (work name)" also prevents the discussion of whether Shrouded or The New World is her "first" appearance.
(Then again, two Williamses have had a non-Williams child before...)
- CzechOut
I wholly agree with your first paragraph, but I think your parenthetical is stretching things just a bit. It's probably not that that "Melody Pond" was a name derived from a birth certificate. There's just a bit of a difference between a birth engineered by a breakaway sect of the Silence that happened on a space station, and a perfectly ordinary one that happened in Wales. :)
- Bwburke94
The parenthetical was not intended to stretch things. It's simply a note that there is indeed a case of a child in the DWU not sharing their parents' surname.
- Mewiet
I agree that under the circumstances, it would have been what she was called while in hiding, but as with Gwen, not necessarily her real surname.
- Bwburke94
Well, we have a source that she was called Anwen Williams at one point. So this discussion is settled.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:161579
I've created a new hidden category: http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Pages_with_Behind_the_Scenes_sections. However, when I turn off hidden categories under "Preferences" I can still see it listed among the other categories. What am I doing wrong?
- Shambala108
I strongly suggest that you ask User:CzechOut about this category before you do any more work on it. It's always best when trying to add in a major new category to ask first. This saves you unnecessary work if your category is later deleted.
- MystExplorer
It's been determined that the category is unnecessary so we might as well close this discussion.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:162148
Shouldn't Courtney Woods be now included in the companion templates etc.? She traveled with the Doctor, even if just once (might be just one-story companion, but still).
- CzechOut
While there are no in-universe definitions of a companion, it would be chaotic in the extreme if we as a wiki started calling any person who travelled in the TARDIS a companion. There are hundreds of characters who have done this. Let's hold off on making any determination about Courtney until the end of the series, at least.
- Maskatron
Maybe Courtney is a failed companion, or a hitchhiker? Perhaps a rider.
- JagoAndLitefoot
I think after today's episode we can safely add her as a single-adventure companion, just like the Maitland kids.
- OttselSpy25
Czech, I believe that you have always wanted to categorize a companion as anyone who travelled with the Doctor twice or more. Thus she is one now.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Yes, the topic was started before today's episode, when it wasn't clear if she would travel with the Doctor again.
- Mewiet
I would definitely class her as a companion as of Kill the Moon.
- 86.150.37.141
But she travelled with him in the Caretaker too, right? That's what made her throw up hehe. Therefore she has travelled with him twice so far. Therefore she's a companion. Surely?
- Thefartydoctor
That comment was made by me btw. :)
- OttselSpy25
Yes, and don't call me Shirley.
- CzechOut
OttselSpy25 wrote: Czech, I believe that you have always wanted to categorize a companion as anyone who travelled with the Doctor twice or more. Thus she is one now.
That's not really my position, no. I think "companion" is a title that's bestowed largely of out-of-universe. I believe Lady Christina is a companion, because that's what the pre-title credits imply. We've had no out-of-universe proclamations about this character, to my knowledge, so we're going strictly on in-universe factors. To me, the only "dead cert" there is in terms of in-universe definitions is when characters actually say, "This is my companion," or "I'm his assistant", or the like.
When such declarations are unavailable, then we have to read the tea leaves and make an arbitrary determination. Does the character occupy the narrative space of a companion? And in this case, I wouldn't say that she doesn't, quite yet. At this point, Courtney is merely in the TARDIS because of her relativity to Clara. And Clara just served eviction notice to the Doctor. If Clara has just given her walking papers, will there be any cause for Courtney to travel on the TARDIS? If not, that really means that Courtney is just Clara's student who happened to have a few adventures with the Doctor, much like Tish Jones, Elizabeth I, Liz Ten — or to be in a two-parter, like Nasreen Chaudhry or Joan Redfern or Nancy.
Actually, the closest analogue to this character is DI Patricia Menzies, who appears in a handful of non-consecutive Sixth Doctor audios. She's fully aware that the Doctor is a time traveller and participates in adventures in a very similar way to Courtney, but most don't consider Menzies a companion so much as a recurring character. That could be all we're looking at here, particularly if her time travelling comes to an end when Clara's does.
There is no rush to put her in a category or on a navbox somewhere. Although I'm very glad this discussion is going on — it'll give the wiki something to point back to a couple of years from now when people wonder why we've classed Courtney as a companion, or not — there's no need to take action until the series is over and we can look back on it as a whole.
- There is obviously the possibility that some of you are operating with knowledge from spoilers revealed by the press or fan sites. Keep in mind that I don't know any of that, nor should any of that make its way into this thread. I'm only going by what has so far been in episodes that have actually aired.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Well, if the Maitland kids are categorized as companions, I don't see how Courtney isn't one.
- Skittles the hog
I don't think they should be. The Doctor took them out for the day to a theme park and then took them home - there wasn't even a hint of it being companionship. He didn't have any heartfelt connection with them and they spent most of the story under Cyberiad control. They're not a good comparison.
With Courtney there's the whole "am I special" aspect and she does enough to warrant the Doctor's praise. That's not to say I think she's a companion either, at least not yet.
- Silence Must Fall
I personally think she is. She traveled with the Doctor in not one, but two episodes so far. Though not an official companion like Clara, she should definitely be put in the template I think.
- Skittles the hog
There's nothing definite about it. Travelling in the TARDIS doesn't make you a companion anymore than going on a cruise makes you a sailor.
- JagoAndLitefoot
What about Adam Mitchell? I'd say she's more of a companion than he is. At the very least, she should be classified as a "narratively ambiguous" companion in the navbox, like Jackie Tyler or Jackson Lake are for the Tenth Doctor. Or Chang Lee for the Eighth Doctor. And the Maitland kids are currently classified as companions on the wiki.
- Skittles the hog
Why?
Adam was a companion - he was taken along to travel with the Doctor and then given the boot as he fell short of the mark.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Adam was taken reluctantly because Rose asked the Doctor to take him along. And then booted after only one adventure. That's less than you could say about Courtney. We also classify Thomas Brewster as a companion despite him starting with stealing the TARDIS and generally getting the Doctor and himself into trouble...
And what makes her less of a companion than Chang Lee?
- Joshey Dubs
I feel like I'm still not over Jenny but I will just say I think Courtney won't be a companion until she's around 19 or 20 but I really want to see a new companion after Clara.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Currently, we also categorize H.G. Wells and Sabalom Glitz as Sixth Doctor companions, even though I'd say Courtney is more of a companion than they are.
- Skittles the hog
Why? You still haven't explained why you think Courtney is a companion. Travelling in the TARDIS is not enough.
And it certainly doesn't matter whether they were taken reluctantly or stole the TARDIS. Leela, Frobisher, Adric; the list of dubious entries goes on. Turlough spends his morally grey moments trying to kill the Doctor. All that is irrelevant. What matters is if they're fulfilling that companion role, and I don't think Courtney does.
- Silence Must Fall
Well, can you give me a reason why the Maitlands are qualified as companions and Courtney isn't?
- Skittles the hog
In this very conversation I've already said I don't think they should be.
- Silence Must Fall
Oh right, didn't catch that before.
- 47.20.73.6
Courtney should be classified as a companion. I don't see why not!
- CzechOut
JagoAndLitefoot wrote: Currently, we also categorize H.G. Wells and Sabalom Glitz as Sixth Doctor companions, even though I'd say Courtney is more of a companion than they are.
Yeah, that was a mistake that's now been corrected. Neither of those gentlemen are companions. We locked down "Companions of..." templates in July, and some changes had been made in the top half of the year that should have been reverted before locking down.
In other words, for years the wiki didn't consider them companions (Glitz wasn't even in the "companions of" categories), then a user snuck them in and we didn't notice their sudden inclusion in the navbox templates.
So that's a clerical error. Pay it no mind in the discussion of Courtney.
- OttselSpy25
Since we're on the topic of people listed as companions who shouldn't be, what's up with Jackie Tyler? I recall Czech once telling someone that she's listed as a Tenth Doctor companion because "I want her to be." She defiantly less a companion than Welles or Courtney (or freaking Adam, who was noted at every stage to not be 9's companion at all), and she doesn't even begin to even start to build up any of the characteristics that a companion needs to have.
- Thefartydoctor
Personally, I count Jackie as a companion for one simple reason- regardless of whether she showed willing to travel with him, she travelled with him on more than one occasion- Army of Ghosts and Journey's End to name the only episodes I can recall atm. And although she was "kidnapped", she obviously liked the Doctor and enjoyed her time with him to a certain extent.
- OttselSpy25
If that's the logic, than surely Courtney fits all of that criteria.
- Thefartydoctor
That's just how I see it. Travel with the Doctor more than once but enjoy it and you're a companion. Jackie rarely saw eye to eye with the Doctor at first but due to the fact that she was very amicable with him by the end of the second series and onward, I would say that refined her into the term companion rather than "kidnapee". haha
- Thefartydoctor
And that's my opinion, of course. :D
- Skittles the hog
I really don't think that going into a box, going to another location, and enjoying it makes you a companion.
I wouldn't say Jackie or Brian Williams are companions, but that's clearly been discussed elsewhere. A lot of users would disagree, and it's a battle for another day (or never, as the case may be).
For now, for Courtney, I think best course of action has already been suggested: leave it to the end of the series and then come back here and make a decision.
- CzechOut
OttselSpy25 wrote: Since we're on the topic of people listed as companions who shouldn't be, what's up with Jackie Tyler? I recall Czech once telling someone that she's listed as a Tenth Doctor companion because "I want her to be."
You recall quite wrongly. The question of "companiondom" has always flummoxed Doctor Who fandom. We at Tardis are no more immune to that than any other fan outlet. Since we have never been able to come to a consensus, as even this thread — much less earlier ones — quite obviously shows, there is little point in re-litigating it every year. It always ends up the same way: this editor believes person X is a companion, while person Y obviously isn't. Another editor believes just the opposite. So there's never agreement, only argument.
And it's an argument that has no real impact on the wiki. See, companion status matters only to two things: the navbox at the bottom of the page, and the categories in which the page is placed.
Thus to save the wiki bother over a truly minor matter and to help get our editors usefully working again, we have long observed that the community consensus on the matter of "who counts as a companion" is that there is no consensus. That being the case, the admin lock the navboxes in order to prevent edit warring between users, and then take on the responsibility of making a lot of arbitrary decisions.
In other words, "no consensus" means the matter is thrown back to admin, who grudgingly wade into these murky waters on an annual basis. Being reluctantly forced to look at companion navboxes from time to time is not at all the same as saying Jackie counts "cause I want her to'. Neither I nor any admin here wants anything when it comes to companion status — other than the whole question to just go away.
Guys, when this thread was about the specific question of Courtney, I was happy to let it continue. But in the past day, I've begun to sense a shift back into familiar ground. And I have to say that we're not going to re-open this forum thread, that forum thread, and this other forum thread.
Please keep this conversation to Courtney Woods only. Remember, unless you have something actually, materially new to offer to a discussion that's been tried before, you are bound to accept the judgement of past discussions.
(But please, if you do have something new — really, really new — to offer on the subject of finding a way to define who counts as a companion, do start a new thread. Read the forum discussions referenced above. Ponder them. And if you see a trick we've actually missed, tell us!)
- Skittles the hog
JagoAndLitefoot wrote: At the very least, she should be classified as a "narratively ambiguous" companion in the navbox, like Jackie Tyler or Jackson Lake are for the Tenth Doctor. Or Chang Lee for the Eighth Doctor. And the Maitland kids are currently classified as companions on the wiki.
Well, if it's not up for debate, there we have it. Those in the above quote are all companions, so yes, Courtney is undoubtedly a companion.
Wait before making the change if you like.
- Bwburke94
Courtney has appeared four times in a single series, placing her in a similar situation to Angie and Artie - both Courtney and the Maitlands appeared multiple times in a single series, have a student-teacher relationship of some sort to Clara, and acted as "guest companions" for a single episode, which immediately followed the episode where they learned about the Doctor.
As for Danny Pink, his exact status can't be determined until the end of the series, but it appears he is "narratively ambiguous" at this time, in the same manner as Mickey is to the Ninth Doctor.
- Shambala108
Those of you using the "narratively ambiguous" phrase might want to check out Thread:158757, where the original intent of that phrase is explained and its usefulness is debated.
- Bwburke94
I do apologise for bringing Danny Pink into the debate, but my intent was to show that Courtney's status is dependent on Angie and Artie's status just as Danny's status is dependent on Mickey's (with Nine) status.
- Smeg Head
In my humble opinion, Courtney should indeed be included as a Companion as she has taken several trips on the TARDIS and assisted the Doctor in working out problems - notably in Kill The Moon.
Why not just have a line in her entry that says something along the lines of "With her appearance in Kill the Moon, Courtney fulfils all requirements of a Companion"? There - job's a good one
If you want to be pedantic about things, you could claim that the TARDIS herself is a companion of the Doctor - or the Doctor is a Companion of the TARDIS (depending on who stole who).
- OttselSpy25
Smeg Head wrote: In my humble opinion, Courtney should indeed be included as a Companion as she has taken several trips on the TARDIS and assisted the Doctor in working out problems - notably in Kill The Moon.
Why not just have a line in her entry that says something along the lines of "With her appearance in Kill the Moon, Courtney fulfils all requirements of a Companion"? There - job's a good one
If you want to be pedantic about things, you could claim that the TARDIS herself is a companion of the Doctor - or the Doctor is a Companion of the TARDIS (depending on who stole who).
Cudos on the good name.
- Smeg Head
Thank you
- Joshey Dubs
I kind of want Gwen cooper to return.
- Shambala108
Avatar thoyrn wrote: I kind of want Gwen cooper to return.
This forum discussion is for debating whether or not Courtney should be considered a companion. If you want to discuss Gwen, please start a thread at Howling:The Howling. Thanks.
- 198.86.54.130
I think that Courtney Woods should be considered a companion after all Angie and Artie Maitland are considered companions and they only had one TARDIS trip, as well as Adam Mitchell and Wilfred Mott (correct me if I'm wrong or if I left anyone out).
- Imperial Wyrm
I agree with the guy above me and with JagoAndLitefoot. Courtney should be added to the Single Adventures companions on the template, then, if she comes back (she probably won't) it will be updated and changed.
- Smeg Head
But she's not a One Trip Only person... She's had Kill the Moon plus at least one previous trip before that
- Imperial Wyrm
The only other trip she had was going into space with The Doctor, and just looking out into space, in The Caretaker. That doesn't exactly count. But anyways, if Angie and Artie can be on companions list of Eleventh Doctor, why can't Courtney be on Twelfth Doctor Companions list?
- Smeg Head
It counts
It was a trip into space - okay, I grant the fact it was a brief trip in all likelihood, but a trip nonetheless...
The moment in Kill the Moon the TARDIS took off with Courtney still aboard, I immediately considered her a Companion
Now, if single trips do not count at all, then lets remove Katarina from the list as she had the single trip
- CzechOut
Again, guys, there's really no relationship between a trip in the TARDIS and companion status. That's something made up by fans that bears no actual scrutiny.
- Smeg Head
Then, CZECHOUT, pray tell why Katarina had but a single trip in the TARDIS and is considered by this Wiki as a Companion and yet Courtney has had at least two trips (one of which is just a 'Trip Around The Block') and yet is not?
- Shambala108
Katarina was intended by the production team to be a companion.
As for trips in the TARDIS, Katarina has had more than one trip. There's at least one short story adventure in which Katarina participates. Therefore, she's not really a valid comparison to Courtney. Anyway, as both CzechOut and Skittles the Hog state above, travelling in the TARDIS is not what defines a companion on this wiki.
- Smeg Head
Well there is only one way to settle this
I am emailing the production staff
- CzechOut
Smeg Head wrote: Then, CZECHOUT, pray tell why Katarina had but a single trip in the TARDIS and is considered by this Wiki as a Companion and yet Courtney has had at least two trips (one of which is just a 'Trip Around The Block') and yet is not?
Again, number of trips in the TARDIS has zero impact on whether a person is considered a companion. Otherwise, "Strike me pink!" guy from Black Orchid, and lots of people in Earthshock and, wait for it, Time and the Rani would be "companions". People travel all the time in the TARDIS; that alone isn't and cannot be the marker for "companiondom".
Please don't misunderstand me, though. I've never said Courtney wasn't a companion — merely that we needed to wait to see how the series played out.
Why is Katarina a companion? It's largely because the production staff did originally tout her as one, and later production staffs have maintained her as a companion. She's also been on several lists of companions endorsed by the BBC.
- Imperial Wyrm
If Artie and Angie can be considered companions, why not Courtney? Seriously...why not?
- OttselSpy25
CzechOut wrote: Why is Katarina a companion? It's largely because the production staff did originally tout her as one, and later production staffs have maintained her as a companion. She's also been on several lists of companions endorsed by the BBC.
Then why is Rose's mom a companion then? I've seen no list ever describe her as one, and she doesn't even start to fill the criteria of being one. HG at least served the purpose of a companion, Jackie did not.
- Imperial Wyrm
Courtney needs to be on the companions list under "Single Story Companion". Who agrees?
- Bwburke94
As Series 8 is almost over, we can resume this discussion after Death in Heaven airs.
- Fireball99
Since series 8 has ended already can we resume this conversation. While I personally am not fond of Courtney I think she defiantly is a companion given the fact that she traveled with the doctor more then once. She could even return if the writers wanted her to.
- OttselSpy25
Skittles the hog wrote:
JagoAndLitefoot wrote: At the very least, she should be classified as a "narratively ambiguous" companion in the navbox, like Jackie Tyler or Jackson Lake are for the Tenth Doctor. Or Chang Lee for the Eighth Doctor. And the Maitland kids are currently classified as companions on the wiki.
Well, if it's not up for debate, there we have it. Those in the above quote are all companions, so yes, Courtney is undoubtedly a companion.
Wait before making the change if you like.
I basically agree that Courtney at least should be under a label of ambiguity on the template.
- Bwburke94
As I've mentioned, Courtney is in the same situation as Angie and Artie. If the Maitlands are companions, Courtney is; if they're not companions, then Courtney's not.
- EpicWarrior72
Well, hopefully she won't be a companion in anymore episodes.
- Fireball99
Well they are counted as companions so Courtney defiantly should in that case
- Bwburke94
Fireball99 wrote: Well they are counted as companions so Courtney defiantly should in that case
"Definitely", not "defiantly" – apparently you need to fix your autocorrect.
Anyway, I personally believe Courtney is a multi-adventure companion by this wiki's definition thanks to her brief TARDIS trip in The Caretaker and her guest companion status in Kill the Moon... though "multi-adventure" seems to be stretched a bit in the opposite direction. Should we make a separate thread on what "multi-adventure" actually means?
- Fireball99
so can we count Courtney as a companion now?
- Smeg Head
I should certainly think we can.
I've always thought of her as a companion the moment she remained on the TARDIS after it took off in Kill The Moon. However, as others have mentioned, the Maitland children are counted after a single trip - so that must mean that Courtney MUST be counted. In addition, she has to have had at least one additional trip between "Caretaker" and "Kill The Moon" as implied by Clara's line about her stealing the Doctor's Psychic Paper. On that basis alone, she has seniority over the Maitlands for Companion Status and should be included
- Fireball99
okay im gonna add her
- Smeg Head
Good...
I wonder if people overlooked that line where its very much implied Miss Woods had at least one other trip on the TARDIS prior to Kill the Moon. Besides, in said episode, she actively aids the Doctor, helps him to realise whats going on with the situation and partially pilots the TARDIS - albeit carrying out an instruction from the Doctor to turn on an automated program, but "piloting" it nonetheless.
At the end of "Caretaker" as she's on the TARDIS, I would have to guess the Doctor did indeed invite her onboard and not Clara - though she does seem to be aware of the details of the end of that trip.
Regardless, its good to see Courtney getting her rightful place
- Shambala108
I've removed Courtney as a companion for now because nothing has been resolved. Please do not add her back until this discussion is ruled as complete by an admin. Thanks.
- Smeg Head
And back we go again... You know, we've got better chances of Russia apologising for the Crimea crisis...
How do we get confirmation one way or the other? Would, perhaps, an email from the DW production team asking one way or the other for their decision?
- Shambala108
First of all, Fireball99's question, "so can we count Courtney as a companion now?" was only asked 20 hours ago, and he/she waited only 19 hours for any reply. That's not how it's done here. We allow enough time for discussion before enacting new policies. It might be useful for new users who are unfamiliar with our forum and discussion policies to read Tardis:You are bound by current policy.
As far as Courtney goes, both User:CzechOut and User:Skittles the hog, admins with a lot of experience in companion debates on this wiki, have stated several times that the mere act of traveling in the TARDIS does not automatically make one a companion.
In addition, the argument that Courtney should be a companion because the Maitlands are is irrelevant. One character's status shouldn't affect another's. Sometimes characters are added to companion status by new users who don't know our guidelines, and the error is not always caught.
Lastly, the "narratively ambiguous" phrase was originally meant to apply only to Chang Lee and has been overused. There is already a forum discussion on that topic, as I posted above for anyone interested in reading/taking part.
Please keep these points in mind when making arguments about Courtney's companion status.
- Smeg Head
Bugger that then...
I'll keep the email to myself then
- Fireball99
The reason why I did it so quickly is because for the past few months this discussion has been going on and like 99% thinks she should be counted as a companion. And btw she is more a companion than Chang Lee because she traveled in the TARDIS with the doctor multiple times and aided him on an adventure(s). Chang Lee didn't do anything to count as a companion at all besides giving the Docotr his stuff back at the very end.
- Fireball99
Neither are the matilands
- Quest?on
Since this wiki's policies on who is a companion is a more inclusive one, Courtney should probably be placed as a companion.
- CzechOut
Personally, I think the fact that she completely dropped off the radar means she's not the clearest case of companiondom out there. But I don't really care one way or the other, since we're talking about her inclusion in navboxes. Navboxes aren't really a part of the article proper. So if you guys want to include her there, I really don't mind one way or the other.
That said, it would be deeply inappropriate, I think, for her article proper — and especially the lead — to suggest that she was a companion. If the article starts with something like
- Courtney Woods was a companion of the Twelfth Doctor...
that would go beyond the scope of this discussion, and would likely be deleted. Her lead should definitely reflect the fact that she is primarily a student of Danny and Clara's at Cole Hill School who had a few adventures with the Twelfth Doctor. To me, that's the least controversial way to describe her. And we do this for some single-adventure comic companions. I think it works to say that they traveled with/had a few adventures with the Doctor and then slap the companion navbox at the bottom of the page.
- Smeg Head
And that, my dear CzechOut, is all we have ever wanted.
That was harder to get then asking a Dalek not to shoot you
See, there's only one brief moment where she appears to be a willing passenger in the TARDIS — and she throws up while doing so. In her second trip, she is quite literally kidnapped. And in her other appearances, she's really just an incidental student — little more than a featured extra.
If she'd made anther appearance after Moon in which she definitively rejected an offer to travel with the Doctor — or maybe have been a willing agent of the Master — I think it'd be harder calling her a companion.
Waiting lets us know more about her and allows us to proceed on surer footing, after useful discussion and deliberation.
See, five years from now, when series 8 is a half-remembered thing, and Courtney is long forgotten, some new user is going to come along and ask why we've put her in the navbox. They'll say something like, "She's even less important to plots than Jackie!"
But because we waited and talked about it, we can turn to that new user and say, "She's in the box because most of the editors of the site who were around during the transmission of series 8 wanted her there."
That's incredibly valuable to the administration of a wiki.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:162971
Why is no one making pages for the Doctor Who Extra episodes, they did that for Deep Breath and I think it stopped there. They even stopped including their existence on the episode pages. :S
- JagoAndLitefoot
Well, you can always be the one who makes them. :)
There is no rush to create something if we don't have the information for it. This wiki is an encyclopedia, not a news service.
As the question has been adequately answered, this thread will be closed.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:163309
Just give me a little help with the wikia. I'm only new, after all!! THANKS!!!
- Shambala108
There are a couple of things you can do to become familiar with the wiki. You can browse articles by hitting the "random page" button located at the top of every page. This will give you an idea of what kind of articles we have and give you some information about the Doctor Who universe. Also, you can browse Tardis:Tardis Manual to see what some of our editing policies are.
In addition, there is a huge box of info on your user talk page. In particular, it links to a lot of our most important policies. That's also a good place to start.
- Charlemagne Paladus Wilkers
Thanks!!! I recently edited an article on LEGO!! (How obvious)
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:164029
Is there any way for me to change my username or am I stuck with it?
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:164173
Currently, TV: Let's Kill Hitler is listed as part of a two-part story alongside TV: A Good Man Goes to War. However, TV: Flatline has been widely acknowledged as the 250th Doctor Who story by many sources, including the Radio Times; our numbering places it 249th.
- Shambala108
Do your sources count Shada? Some do; this wiki doesn't. So that might be the cause of the discrepancy, not the two parter you mention.
- Bwburke94
Shada may be the reason, but that would also push Planet of the Dead to 201 and the Radio Times counts that as 200.
Question: Why does the Radio Times count Let's Kill Hitler as a separate story?
Conjecture: Let's Kill Hitler aired months after A Good Man Goes to War, which is unprecedented among two-part stories. - Skittles the hog
There is already an inconsistency in numbering between list of Doctor Who television stories and some episode articles, such as The Power of Three and Flatline.
- Shambala108
Occasionally an editor will change a story number without referring to the list of Doctor Who television stories, and it doesn't always get caught and corrected.
- Bwburke94
List of Doctor Who television stories numbers AGMGTW/LKH as two stories, but also lists them as Part 1/Part 2 similar to other two-parters with separate titles. We may need to create a page such as Tardis:Story numbering to clarify what is and isn't a two-parter.
- Tangerineduel
The question of story numbering comes up every so often, usually every time DWM or the Radio Times announces something like the Xth story.
There are plenty of inconsistencies because of how we count/define stories. By pages we have, by story numbers given, by production codes. They all leave you with different numbers of stories.
- Lvsxy808
I see no reason to think of "Good Man" and "Hitler" as a two-parter. Other two-parters are clearly one story cut in half, with the same setting, the same guest characters, the same villains, the same tone. Think "Impossible Planet"/"Satan Pit", "Human Nature"/"Family of Blood" or "Rebel Flesh"/"Almost People".
By contrast, "Good Man" and "Hitler" are two completely separate stories with different settings, different guest characters etc, and only the loosest connection via the question of "Who is River?" They are not a two-parter.
- Bwburke94
So are we reviving this discussion, or should we just close this?
- Shambala108
Only admins can close a discussion.
- Quest?on
This may be a little late, but I agree that the two are separate. A Good Man Goes to War's story effectively finished by the end of the episode, while Let's Kill Hitler was its own separate story.
- SOTO
I've gotta agree; I think they're two separate stories. Calling them one two-parter would be akin to saying The End of Time and The Eleventh Hour are together a three-parter, or Parting of the Ways and The Christmas Invasion are one story. Actually, you have even less of a case with this one, because the plot of one doesn't even continue in the other.
- Tangerineduel
I believe that for the new series unless a story actually contains the in-titles titling of "Part 1 / 2" as occurred with The End of Time then all should be treated as separate stories.
As all the others are presented with separate titles and are covered separately.
- Mewiet
AGMGTW and LKH are not a two-parter.
- Bold Clone
Disagree. I consider Good Man and Kill Hitler to a be "loose" two-parter, as opposed to a "regular" two-parter. Reason: The stories are loosely connected via the thematic element of Amy's daughter = River. However, after considering the other opinions voiced above, I do wonder: why do we currently consider Good Man and Kill Hitler a two-parter? In other words, what is our original source for them being a two-parter? Radio Times? Moffat?
- Tangerineduel
Using words like "loose" and "regular" to describe two parters does not help this discussion. What you're describing is a story arc.
I agree in part, that we need sources in order to describe stories as a two parter, but maintain my above point that unless a story is actually titled Part 1/2 etc it should have its own page.
- Bold Clone
Hardly. My point is that if Moffat said that Good Man and Kill Hitler are a two-part story, then they are a two-part story, regardless of anyone else thinks or how loosely they are connected.
And I'm assuming we listed Good Man and Kill Hitler as a two-part story because Moffat or an authoritative source described them as such.
- Mewiet
I wouldn't assume that. Unless we can find such an authoritative source and cite it, I do not believe they should be listed as a two-parter.
- Bold Clone
From the very beginning, we have assumed Good Man and Kill Hitler are a two-parter. Check the page's history if you don't believe me. Since the page's creation Kill Hitler has been listed as story 218b. Why? What was that first source? Unless we can find an authoritative source and cite it, I do not believe we should go against four years of history and break the stories apart just because "you don't think they should go together".
- Mewiet
Yes, assumed, when we should be basing it on facts. If there is credible evidence that says they are a two-parter, then we need a citation for it, not your assumption.
- Bwburke94
So the question is: what is our citation for this being a two-parter? I don't see one anywhere on the wiki.
- Bold Clone
Mewiet wrote: Yes, assumed, when we should be basing it on facts. If there is credible evidence that says they are a two-parter, then we need a citation for it, not your assumption.
My assumption? How about this wiki's assumption? I'm following the wiki's lead here, mind you.
- OttselSpy25
Still, BC, we do need some citation. Can someone dig through old DWM issues to try and find some reference to the episode's number or something? As I recall it, everyone on the wikia presumed that the new episode would be a two-parter when before the second half of the series aired, and that just stuck around after it did air.
- Shambala108
Does A Good Man have a "to be continued" at the end? And do our other two parters (Aliens of London & World War Three for example) have a "to be continued"?
- Bwburke94
The first episode of all two-parters from Series 2 to Series 4 (including Utopia) had "to be continued" at the start of the end credits.
Series 5 and 6, with the sole exception of The Pandorica Opens, did not have "to be continued", so we cannot use this to determine whether A Good Man Goes to War is part of a two-parter.
Series 8 had only one two-parter, which used "to be continued", muddling this even further.
It's also relevant to note that Turn Left did not have "to be continued", unambiguously placing it as standalone given the credits of the RTD/Tennant era if we use "to be continued" as proof.
- Mewiet
Bwburke94 wrote: The first episode of all two-parters from Series 2 to Series 4 (including Utopia) had "to be continued" at the start of the end credits.
Series 5 and 6, with the sole exception of The Pandorica Opens, did not have "to be continued", so we cannot use this to determine whether A Good Man Goes to War is part of a two-parter.
Series 8 had only one two-parter, which used "to be continued", muddling this even further.
It's also relevant to note that Turn Left did not have "to be continued", unambiguously placing it as standalone given the credits of the RTD/Tennant era if we use "to be continued" as proof.
The Name of the Doctor also has a "to be continued" at the end, though I have not seen that we count it and The Day of the Doctor as a two-parter.
- Bwburke94
Mewiet wrote:
Bwburke94 wrote: The first episode of all two-parters from Series 2 to Series 4 (including Utopia) had "to be continued" at the start of the end credits.
Series 5 and 6, with the sole exception of The Pandorica Opens, did not have "to be continued", so we cannot use this to determine whether A Good Man Goes to War is part of a two-parter.
Series 8 had only one two-parter, which used "to be continued", muddling this even further.
It's also relevant to note that Turn Left did not have "to be continued", unambiguously placing it as standalone given the credits of the RTD/Tennant era if we use "to be continued" as proof.
The Name of the Doctor also has a "to be continued" at the end, though I have not seen that we count it and The Day of the Doctor as a two-parter.
Every BBC Wales series finale, including AGMGTW but excluding Part 2 of The End of Time, has "The Doctor Will Return on [date]" or a variant thereof - it's worth noting, however, that AGMGTW was the only such message advertising a regular episode rather than a Christmas or anniversary special.
- Mewiet
Bwburke94 wrote:
Mewiet wrote:
The Name of the Doctor also has a "to be continued" at the end, though I have not seen that we count it and The Day of the Doctor as a two-parter.
Every BBC Wales series finale, including AGMGTW but excluding Part 2 of The End of Time, has "The Doctor Will Return on [date]" or a variant thereof - it's worth noting, however, that AGMGTW was the only such message advertising a regular episode rather than a Christmas or anniversary special.
I'm not talking about Name having a generic return card, I'm talking about specifically a "to be continued" card. File:The Name of the Doctor TBC.JPG It is the only series finale to end with a TBC (and with the exception of TEOT:P1, where the title itself clearly designates it as the first part of a two-parter, none of the specials ever had a TBC card either).
As for the other finales, no, not all of them have return cards. Doomsday, The Big Bang, and Death in Heaven don't have them.
Series (and mid-series) finales
The Parting of the Ways: "Doctor Who will return in The Christmas Invasion"No return card for Doomsday.
Last of the Time Lords: "Doctor Who will return at Christmas in Voyage of the Damned"
Journey's End: "Coming Christmas 2008 the Return of the Cybermen"
No return card for The Big Bang.
(A Good Man Goes to War: "The Doctor will be back in Let's Kill Hitler Autumn 2011")
The Wedding of River Song: "Doctor Who will return Christmas 2011"
(No return card for The Angels Take Manhattan.)
The Name of the Doctor: "To Be Continued November 23, 2013"
No return card for Death in Heaven.
Specials
The Christmas Invasion: "Doctor Who Coming Soon..."The Runaway Bride: "Doctor Who Coming Soon..."
Voyage of the Damned: "Coming Soon..."
The Next Doctor: "Doctor Who will return in Planet of the Dead"
Planet of the Dead: "Later this year The Waters of Mars"
The Waters of Mars: "Doctor Who Coming Soon the biggest adventure yet The End of Time"
The End of Time: Part 1: "To Be Continued..."
No return card for The End of Time: Part 2.
A Christmas Carol: "Coming Soon"
No return card for The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe.
No return card for The Snowmen.
No return card for The Day of the Doctor.
No return card for The Time of the Doctor.
Last Christmas: "The Doctor and Clara will return next year in The Magician's Apprentice"
There seems to be no rhyme or reason for applying them. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.
- Bwburke94
As for the original Series 6 (Doctor Who 2005) page:
- This edit by User:MichaelDowney (October 2010) added the Pt.1/Pt.2 labels, but none of the provided sources stated that the two episodes are a two-parter.
- This edit by User:GhastlyChaos (February 2011) added "Conclusion" to the episode 8 listing, but did not provide a source that this was a two-parter.
- At no point during the period of time in which Series 6 actually aired was a source provided that stated this was a two-parter.
I'm willing to say we jumped the gun here. There is no source, so I don't see how we can claim this is a two-parter, especially given that the Radio Times and similar sources count it as two stories.
- Bold Clone
Seems reasonable. However, are there any DWM issues someone could access which could help the matter one way or another?
- OttselSpy25
I can get any DWM issue to look through, but I have no idea where to start. Any suggestions for issues that would have the answers?
- Shambala108
- OttselSpy25
Early on, DWM 30 references episode 8 of the 2011 season (then unnamed I guess) as the conclusion of the mid-series cliffhanger. Despite this, it does not go as far as to say that the pair are a two parter -- while it lists episodes 1 & 2 and 4 & 5 together, 8 is not listed with 7.
- OttselSpy25
DWM 38, dedicated to the episode, does not reference it being the second part of a two part story but instead considers it the first episode in the second part of the series. It also states that the episode concludes the cliffhanger from the previous episode, which seems to be the main confusion in my eyes. This pretty much seems to be that a reader of the magazine likely misinterpreted that statement and added it to the pages. But by the logic qualifying these stories as one, The Parting of the Ways and The Christmas Invasion are also a two parter.
- Mewiet
Mewiet wrote: There seems to be no rhyme or reason for applying [TBCs]. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.
There's also a TBC on The Almost People, which I certainly don't count as part of a two-parter (or even more outrageously a three or four-parter considering TAP is already the second half of The Rebel Flesh) with A Good Man Goes to War and have never seen anyone else count them that way either.
So at this point I'm still not seeing anything to prove AGMGTW and LKH are a two-parter and don't believe they should be listed as such.
- SOTO
I agree that AGMGTW and LKH should not be considered a two-parter, because there is no basis for that.
Mightn't it be more sensible, though, to simply do the count based on the number of stories with separate titles? Even two-parters are composed of two individual stories. For classic Who, of course, a serial was collectively one story, and each episode was simply a part of that. The only example of one story spread out across two episodes in modern Who, though, by a certain logic, is The End of Time, which is explicitly one entity in two parts. If considering two-parters one story means us squabbling over what is a continuous story and what is a true two-parter, maybe that's not a good way of going about things. If the show runner decided in series 15 to make every episode continue on to the next directly, we would not be counting that entire series as one story, would we?
- Bwburke94
SOTO wrote: Mightn't it be more sensible, though, to simply do the count based on the number of stories with separate titles? Even two-parters are composed of two individual stories. For classic Who, of course, a serial was collectively one story, and each episode was simply a part of that. The only example of one story spread out across two episodes in modern Who, though, by a certain logic, is The End of Time, which is explicitly one entity in two parts. If considering two-parters one story means us squabbling over what is a continuous story and what is a true two-parter, maybe that's not a good way of going about things. If the show runner decided in series 15 to make every episode continue on to the next directly, we would not be counting that entire series as one story, would we?
The problem with that is the First Doctor's era, which used separate episode titles for a good period of time. We don't count An Unearthly Child as four stories, do we?
- SOTO
I should have specified. I meant separate titles as a rule for NuWho. Obviously within the classic seasons, even back when episode titles existed, the serial was the story unit, and episodes made up that unit. From the RTD era on, the episode is the unit, and considered an individual story in its own right. With TEOT, the episode unit is actually split up into two. We would not make separate articles for each part and link to them as separate episodes. We do, however, consider Utopia, The Sound of Drums and Last of the Time Lords separately.
- Side Rat
But however one considers "Utopia" and "Turn Left," how can it really be sensibly argued that at least "The Sound Of Drums"/"Last Of The Time Lords" and "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End" aren't single multi-part stories?
- CzechOut
It's been established since 2010 that a "to be continued" on BBC Wales DW does indeed automatically make it a two-parter as far as we're concerned. So LKH and AGMGTW are a two-parter. Also, as Tangerineduel has long pointed out, DWM make mistakes. We are definitely not in lockstep with them; else, K9 would be K-9, despite the clear wishes of the guy who owns K9.
- CzechOut
Oh and we don't give a rat's ass about the Radio Times, either — else we'd probably give higher credence to their origin story about the Daleks than we do Genesis of the Daleks and, by extension, The Witch's Familiar.
- Bwburke94
CzechOut wrote: It's been established since 2010 that a "to be continued" on BBC Wales DW does indeed automatically make it a two-parter as far as we're concerned. So LKH and AGMGTW are a two-parter. Also, as Tangerineduel has long pointed out, DWM make mistakes. We are definitely not in lockstep with them; else, K9 would be K-9, despite the clear wishes of the guy who owns K9.
Problem is, A Good Man Goes to War wasn't a "to be continued", it was a "the Doctor will return".
- Mewiet
Bwburke94 wrote:
CzechOut wrote: It's been established since 2010 that a "to be continued" on BBC Wales DW does indeed automatically make it a two-parter as far as we're concerned. So LKH and AGMGTW are a two-parter. Also, as Tangerineduel has long pointed out, DWM make mistakes. We are definitely not in lockstep with them; else, K9 would be K-9, despite the clear wishes of the guy who owns K9.
Problem is, A Good Man Goes to War wasn't a "to be continued", it was a "the Doctor will return".
So A Good Man Goes to War is the end of a three-parter due to The Almost People's "to be continued," but not a four-parter as it does not have a "to be continued" linking it to LKH. But if "the Doctor will return" and other variations count as TBCs, we'll have a lot more revisions to make than we thought.
- Bwburke94
Where is this "established policy" that CzechOut cites?
And if it's established, why aren't "The Almost People"/"The Name of the Doctor"/etc. following the established rules?
- OttselSpy25
I've never heard of that before, and it does make me raise an eye brow. I thought that this discussion alone proved that adding 'to be continued' qualified no story to be anything consistently.
- Mewiet
I'm looking for it right now. I would like to know if it states "the Doctor will return"/"Doctor Who will return"/etc are to be counted the same as "to be continued." I don't think they should be. Those generally only occur when there's a long wait about to take place like at the end of a season/mid-season/Christmas special. We would be pairing all kinds of strange combinations like The Next Doctor and Planet of the Dead if that's the policy.
- OttselSpy25
Is it a written down policy or just something that "we" agreed on in a forum?
- Mewiet
OttselSpy25 wrote: Is it a written down policy or just something that "we" agreed on in a forum?
The 2006-2012 Panopticon Archives are here if you want to check through them as well. Since we know we're looking for something from 2010, that helps narrow things down quite a bit.
- Bwburke94
I skimmed the archives but did not find anything. May have overlooked it if the title had nothing to do with "To be continued" or similar.
- Bwburke94
Found it. Oddly enough, that debate was started by someone who noticed a DWM/Radio Times numbering discrepancy, but in the other direction from this thread.
The big problem I see here is that a strict "TBC = two-parter" policy doesn't make sense with "The Almost People" and "The Name of the Doctor" using TBC for arc cliffhangers rather than story cliffhangers. Basically nothing connects "The Almost People" to "A Good Man Goes to War" other than the arc of Amy's pregnancy.
- OttselSpy25
I would say that few people would argue that Name and Day are a part of a two-parter. I know that we apparently have a precedent here, but keep in mind that 2010 was a time when the site debated 'canon' and when the Eleventh Doctor was being introduced. I feel no issue with changing policies of a debate before my time.
- Mewiet
Bwburke94 wrote: Found it. Oddly enough, that debate was started by someone who noticed a DWM/Radio Times numbering discrepancy, but in the other direction from this thread.
Are you sure that's the right one? It's labeled under "Discussions without clear resolution" which doesn't really sound like a definitive policy.
- Bwburke94
Mewiet wrote:
Bwburke94 wrote: Found it. Oddly enough, that debate was started by someone who noticed a DWM/Radio Times numbering discrepancy, but in the other direction from this thread.
Are you sure that's the right one? It's labeled under "Discussions without clear resolution" which doesn't really sound like a definitive policy.
It's the closest we have to a policy.
- OttselSpy25
CzechOut wrote: It's been established since 2010 that a "to be continued" on BBC Wales DW does indeed automatically make it a two-parter as far as we're concerned.
Uh, guys... We're gonna look like idiots for this, but Czech linked to the discussion in question in his post
- Bwburke94
OttselSpy25 wrote: I would say that few people would argue that Name and Day are a part of a two-parter. I know that we apparently have a precedent here, but keep in mind that 2010 was a time when the site debated 'canon' and when the Eleventh Doctor was being introduced. I feel no issue with changing policies of a debate before my time.
I'm against the idea of AGMGTW or the 50th being anything other than a standalone, because the only thing linking them is a vaguely defined "to be continued" in the previous episode.
- Bwburke94
OttselSpy25 wrote:
CzechOut wrote: It's been established since 2010 that a "to be continued" on BBC Wales DW does indeed automatically make it a two-parter as far as we're concerned.
Uh, guys... We're gonna look like idiots for this, but Czech linked to the discussion in question in his post
So it is the right "policy" then, which isn't actually a policy?
- OttselSpy25
I don't know if he said it was a policy... I think he just said that we agreed on it... Which we didn't?
- Mewiet
OttselSpy25 wrote: Uh, guys... We're gonna look like idiots for this, but Czech linked to the discussion in question in his post
Collective facepalms everyone. It's times like these I wish the links in here would show up with an underline or different color. I'm so used to that on a lot of sites I forget to check on sites that don't do that.
But I guess that discussion answers my question: this only briefly discusses "to be continued" and not "the Doctor will return"/variations. Since AGMGTW does not end with a TBC, that still leaves the original question posed in this thread unanswered. I'm also surprised that we would use an unresolved discussion between two people over six posts (three if you consider that that "I just answered my own question), Utopia, The Sound of Drums and The Last of the Time Lords all end on to be continued don't they?" doesn't even come up until post #4) as a precedent for something like this.
- Bwburke94
OttselSpy25 wrote: I don't know if he said it was a policy... I think he just said that we agreed on it... Which we didn't?
He said it was established, which it appears to not be.
- Bwburke94
Mewiet wrote:
OttselSpy25 wrote: Uh, guys... We're gonna look like idiots for this, but Czech linked to the discussion in question in his post
Collective facepalms everyone. It's times like these I wish the links in here would show up with an underline or different color. I'm so used to that on a lot of sites I forget to check on sites that don't do that.
But I guess that discussion answers my question: this only briefly discusses "to be continued" and not "the Doctor will return"/variations. Since AGMGTW does not end with a TBC, that still leaves the original question posed in this thread unanswered. I'm also surprised that we would use an unresolved discussion between two people over six posts (three if you consider that that "I just answered my own question), Utopia, The Sound of Drums and The Last of the Time Lords all end on to be continued don't they?" doesn't even come up until post #4) as a precedent for something like this.
LOTTL is actually a "the Doctor will return" card, which doesn't appear to count.
- OttselSpy25
So, what I can tell so far is...
1) If the discussion did set the precedent, it was for 'To Be Continued' and not for 'The Doctor will return in...'
2) If the discussion did set the precedent, it is still open for change and discussion as it has not been talked about for five years
3) The discussion did not any precedents.
- Bwburke94
OttselSpy25 wrote: So, what I can tell so far is...
1) If the discussion did set the precedent, it was for 'To Be Continued' and not for 'The Doctor will return in...'
2) If the discussion did set the precedent, it is still open for change and discussion as it has not been talked about for five years
3) The discussion did not any precedents.
That's the big one here. The discussion did not set any precedents. It was an officially unresolved discussion based on a flawed standpoint, as the original discrepancy was probably the result of Shada or something.
- Mewiet
Bwburke94 wrote:
That's the big one here. The discussion did not set any precedents. It was an officially unresolved discussionOttselSpy25 wrote: 3) The discussion did not any precedents.
So if we're interested in establishing new policy regarding the TBCs and "the Doctor will return"/variations issues, which I think the posts in this thread indicate are needed, do we need to create a brand new Panopticon thread for it or can we change the title of this one since the topics are related and so much discussion has taken place here already?
- Shambala108
Rename the title.
- CzechOut
Please do not change the title. The majority of this discussion is about AGMGTW and LKH, and really they're the only two things at issue. If you want to change policy, you need a new thread. You can't hijack this one after it's been open for a month.
What's more, the central push to change this thread into a policy-changing thread is built on a false foundation. It's been alleged that somehow Forum:Numbering stories (Turn Left and Planet of the Dead problems) didn't write policy simply because it was put into Category:Discussions without clear resolution.
A discussion can produce some agreement, even if it doesn't resolve everything. If the discussion had failed to achieve any agreement, it would have been placed in Category:Failed proposals.
The topic of that discussion was page-specific in that it named Turn Left as relevant to Planet of the Dead. Essentially, it was asserting that if POTD was number 200, then Turn Left must therefore be part of Journey's End and The Stolen Earth. This question was never definitively resolved by the thread because there are other ways to get to 200. As we would later discuss and absolutely resolve in Forum:Story Numbering, Shada "counts" for numbering, something that had not been resolved at the time of the earlier discussion. Taken together, the two discussions actually do achieve resolution. It's very important when reading forum archives to understand relative time of discussions.
What was not controversial at the time was this notion that a "to be continued" message indicated a multi-part story. That notion is never seriously rebutted in the thread, so it is deemed to have been agreed to. After all, that thread was open for 1.5 years — plenty of time for additional, contradictory discussion to have occurred. And decisions are made by those who participated, so long as a reasonable period of time is allowed for discussion.
As for what "we agreed to" means, it's a truism of this, and really any other long-lived community, that you are bound by existing policy, even if you personally didn't vote on that policy. You can try to change the policy, of course, but you can't just ignore it until it's been changed.
So, here's where we are in terms of the history of discussion on this matter:
- Prior to 2005, the counting unit is the serial, not the episode, excepting the TVM and the so-called "one-part serials" of The Five Doctors and Mission to the Unknown.
- Shada counts. (But it didn't really count here at Tardis until 2012, so you will still find some vestiges of counting where it appears not to count. These are wrong and should be changed, if encountered. It is, in fact, wrong that the List of Doctor Who television stories skips Shada, which is the true story 109.)
- New series stories that end with "to be continued" are multi-part stories.
So, as far as this thread is concerned, we are left with only one question: is "the Doctor will return" truly, materially different than "to be continued"? Personally, I think you'd be splitting truly fine semantic hairs to think so. After all, "to be continued" on Doctor Who necessarily means that "the Doctor will return".
And remember another truism of proposals on wikis. If it's agreed to, someone has to make the change. This isn't something that can be done by bot. So if you argue in favour of splitting these two episodes, please think realistically about how much time you personally can commit to making the change.
- Bwburke94
Where exactly was it established that "to be continued" unambiguously meant it was joined to the next episode? As has been repeatedly pointed out, the 2010 thread is labelled as not having a clear resolution.
Also, counting "the Doctor will return" as a clear indication of a two-parter would result in various series finales and Christmas specials being joined to the preceding and/or following episodes, with "Utopia" through "Voyage of the Damned" being a four-parter, "The Stolen Earth" through "The End of Time" being a seven-parter, and "The Rebel Flesh" through "Let's Kill Hitler" being a four-parter.
So here's my personal opinion: anything that does not place "A Good Man Goes to War" as standalone is not an option. There is absolutely no source within production that states AGMGTW is anything other than standalone, and the only way to join it to another episode is to interpret an unresolved policy thread from 2010 in a manner it was never intended to be interpreted.
- Mewiet
Bwburke94 wrote: Also, counting "the Doctor will return" as a clear indication of a two-parter would result in various series finales and Christmas specials being joined to the preceding and/or following episodes, with "Utopia" through "Voyage of the Damned" being a four-parter, "The Stolen Earth" through "The End of Time" being a seven-parter, and "The Rebel Flesh" through "Let's Kill Hitler" being a four-parter.
So here's my personal opinion: anything that does not place "A Good Man Goes to War" as standalone is not an option. There is absolutely no source within production that states AGMGTW is anything other than standalone, and the only way to join it to another episode is to interpret an unresolved policy thread from 2010 in a manner it was never intended to be interpreted.
I absolutely agree with you and raised the same point about the havoc that would cause by making it a precedent in Thread:183627, which I created specifically to address the policy issues concerning the TBC and return cards.
- OttselSpy25
I'm shocked that we can't debate the issue here because it was made policy by another discussion just like this one where two people agreed on it and it was never fully completed. But if we have to let's all hope over there I guess.
- KingOrokos
From what I've seen here and elsewhere, there doesn't seem to be a definitive litmus test for what makes a certain episode categorically part of a two-parter. The 'To be continued/the Doctor wll return' argument seems to have played out as far as I can tell - they're used way too inconsistently to be used as the basis for policy. As for production intent, that's been ignored in the past in this regard - i.e. Utopia being counted as part 1 of 3, despite RTD's opinions and intentions.
When it comes down to it, the only way to establish a definitive stance on ambiguous stories like AGMGTW/LKH might be to discuss them on a case by case basis. I'm fairly certain that the first story to be similarly uncertain in terms of classification since LKH is Face the Raven - that's a four year gap, so this is hardly a regular occurence. It wouldn't be ridiculously time-consuming to have problems like this solved by group debate, rather than with a standard policy of classification, would it? Posting this in two seperate threads since I'm not sure which one is 'correct' for this discussion.
Nevertheless, I'm going to rule against my own stated position and the previous 2010 debate, and say that LKH is not a part of a two parter -- largely because my sense of the consensus here is that most participants don't believe it is.
But at the same time, this whole debate had only one practical outcome: changing a single variable in an infobox. This is way, way, way too much debate for such a small result. We must seek a way to avoid having such debates in future. See also Thread:183627.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:164539
Hey guys! i was in search of a long coat for my formal dressing which i want to wear in my office and hangout with friends in coming winter season. I have searched so many online store but i can't find such nice outfit except angeljackets.com.Is there any other store for that??
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:164874
Because the Gomez incarnation of the Master does not personally refer to herself as "the Master", there are a large number of articles where we would use {{Gomez|n = Missy}} to refer to this incarnation. Would it be possible to create a separate {{Missy}} template, which is functionally equivalent to the other Master templates, but displays the name "Missy" instead of "the Master"?
(The same goes with {{Mr Saxon}}, by the way.)
- Shambala108
If the information you've posted here is a spoiler per Tardis:Spoiler policy, it will have to be removed. If what you've posted has already aired, it is not a spoiler.
- CzechOut
We're going to be holding up on this decision until the series concludes and it's obvious that she's not lying. After all, one of the consistent themes of the series is the nature of truth, so there's no reason to accept her statement in episode 11. For the moment, we're going to be operating with our usual caution and therefore believing she's not what she purports to be.
- Bwburke94
Shambala108 wrote: If the information you've posted here is a spoiler per Tardis:Spoiler policy, it will have to be removed. If what you've posted has already aired, it is not a spoiler.
Our spoiler policy states "there are multi-part televised stories, and we allow each individual episode to have a page before the entire story has been broadcast" indicating that the first part of a two-parter ceases to be a spoiler at the normal time. So it's not a spoiler... however, as CzechOut stated, it isn't necessarily true.
So let me rephrase this question. If Missy is the Master, would Template:Missy be created as stated above?
- CzechOut
- Bwburke94
So if I want to link to Missy, I'd use [[Missy (Deep Breath)|Missy]]?
(Also, just a heads-up... while it is not confirmed she's the Master, it's confirmed she has two hearts, as the Doctor felt her heartbeat at one point in Dark Water and there was dialogue about the two-hearts thing.)
- CzechOut
Well, you don't actually have to type all that. You can just type
[[Missy (Deep Breath)|]]. And of course you don't even have to literally type even that much: auto-suggest will give you a viable link after just a few characters. - JagoAndLitefoot
CzechOut wrote: Well, you don't actually have to type all that. You can just type
[[Missy (Deep Breath)|]]. And of course you don't even have to literally type even that much: auto-suggest will give you a viable link after just a few characters.Either that, or this:
{{Gomez|n=Missy}}will work as well. - CzechOut
Nope, that won't work right now. That template has been deleted and can't be recreated until at least next Saturday. At that time, if she really is the Master, then the template will be restored, and the above advice will be valid.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Sure, I'm saying that if it's confirmed that she's the Master, and if we want to link to the article with the "Missy" or "the Mistress" name rather than "the Master", that would probably be the best way to link to her section.
- CzechOut
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
- CzechOut
By the way, yes, we're aware that everything the BBC are doing right now points towards Gomez being the Master. We've seen the Doctor Who Extra and seen the extensive section on the Doctor Who website.
Again, though, a strong theme of this series is "lying". We even see that in this episode on a post-it in Clara's home. So we have to admit, out of an abundance of caution, that all of this could be misdirection.
So it's probably a good idea, and certainly one that takes less effort than making changes and reverting them, to just wait a week and make sure the Beeb aren't lying to us.
- HarveyWallbanger
Since you followed the policy of fully protecting "Missy" and "the Master", it would be coherent and useful to protect regeneration (see the chronology) and The Master - list of appearances, among the others.
- Shambala108
The Master - list of appearances has been protected due to extreme edit wars, but I see no need at the moment to protect Regeneration.
- Skittles the hog
I removed the series 8 episodes from that list.
It depends what sort of information people start putting on the regeneration page. If they cite Dark Water as a source for regeneration facts, then it may need to be protected.
- HarveyWallbanger
They already have referenced Dark Water in Regeneration: [2]
- 90.196.60.87
This is a classic of putting subjective biased opinions before content. You hope the characters lying. What you have right now is this page - Missy linking the Master, whereby there's 0 content about Missy in the article re-directed too. The logical thing to do would be to put a Missy section in the Master article, with a spoiler template above it, that takes a neutral tone saying the "character claims to be the Master" or something to that end. There are lots of people who might want to know more about this Missy character. They won't find anything on this Wiki about it without great difficulty and so these potential new editors are unlikely to be very eager to contribute to this Wiki. A wiki that's out of date on the basis of a subjective opinion a few editors playing the system have. Suppressing good content about characters on the off-chance something depicted is a lie, or some sort of Dallas style dream is the most absurd thing I've ever read in regards to a Wiki in over ten years. Easily.
- Shambala108
This isn't a matter of hoping, it's a matter of experience. Experience has shown us that what we see in the first episode/story of a multiple-part story isn't always what ends up happening. It's far easier to add information later when we know more than to comb through the wiki looking for things that need to be changed when the writer(s) fooled us.
It's only for less than a week, and this wiki has always been an encyclopedia, not a news source. There are dozens if not hundreds of articles on this wiki that are lacking and need work, but that hasn't deterred new editors from joining us anyway. This situation is no different.
- Skittles the hog
There is no point in making a premature decision. The content can easily be added after the series finale. That's Saturday; six days away. I'm sure you can wait.
A pragmatic decision was taken to avoid any issues that may arise should Moffat perform a u-turn.
I fail to see how it is logical to include a Missy section on the Master page and then say "claims to be", instantly undermining its existence. The finale will provide answers that will allow for an informed decision.
- 90.196.60.87
There's plenty of content about this character you don't have in any of the articles. When this character has been kicking around for an entire season. For example if you're not committal on it being the Master then why does Missy link too the Master (second embedded link down) and not a separate article on verified information about the Missy character? Which then of course can easily be moved around depending on what happens in the final. It's very likely to be easier to do that then start from scratch. I dunno...you guys do what you want. But to stop any sort of content being written on one character goes against pretty much every good principle a wiki should have. It's especially bad when new articles/information are the key draws to get any new editor, for any wiki, ever. (As opposed to niche articles on niche things, for example).
- Skittles the hog
Of course we want new users to come in. That much is obvious. However, I expect you'd agree that those users wouldn't be inclined to abide by the decision to wait before adding content on her being the Master.
The Dallas comparison is a poor one - these aren't entire story lines we're omitting - it's a single line of dialogue, and then only for a few days.
- Skittles the hog
In fact, it's not even that. We're just not accepting it as fact.
- TheTARDIScontroller
Well the BBC has confirmed her to be the Master, per this link (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/xCgpqKWg8nj5BS2LJ6DRV0/missy). I don't think they would go to the trouble of doing that if Steven Moffat was writing a deception.
- Skittles the hog
I know, and that was convincing enough for me personally, but to err on the side of caution, I don't think a few days delay will harm our user base. And if it is a deception, then, you're right, whoever wrote that page is certainly committed.
There are plenty of pages open for editing related to Dark Water anyway. Why not focus on them?
- Shambala108
TheTardisController, I suggest you take a look at Tardis:Valid sources, so you will understand where we are coming from. The BBC is not considered a valid source for in universe articles on this wiki.
- Skittles the hog
I think his post was suggesting that Moffat won't do a u-turn, not that it was a valid source.
- Gallifrey102
Dark Water (TV story)'s introduction says "Missy is revealed to be the Master".
If other relevant articles (like The Master and Missy (Deep Breath)) can't make the assumption that her claim's necessarily correct, how come the episode's own article itself can?
- Rob T Firefly
As the other relevant pages are locked from the "Missy" stuff, the disambig page at Missy should be included in the lock.
- Danniesen
Well I have to tell that I constantly revert the "the Master" stuff from all those related pages, and I even tell why, but someone keeps reversing it to say that Missy IS the Master; that Chang was killed by the Master, that Missy is revealed to be the Master (I reverse back into 'claims to be'), that the Master is the main enemy of Dark Water. It even have been added twice to "Aliases of the Master" that she is him. I reversed all of them but the two obvious back to say Missy, but they might need to be protected pages too.
- Umishiru
Talk about being in denial.
- Danniesen
Listen here dude, this is an agreed upon thing that we keep it seperate, and if you don't like it, then leave.
Also, it could EASILY be a loop around as Moffat is known for, such as Missy next time saying something like she was kiddding or that she just wanted to see his reaction. But the point stands that until this Saturday we keep them seperate, like it or not.
- Skittles the hog
Please do not tell people to leave. Users are entitled to their opinions and we encourage them to express themselves (provided they adhere to Tardis:Discussion policy of course).
To reply to Umishiru: we are denying that a single line of dialogue is enough at this point - that's all. It's a cautious approach. We had a similar case with the Nethersphere. If we had put 'it is the afterlife' on every page, as some may have done, we'd have egg on our faces and a clean-up operation on the to-do list. That can be avoided this time.
It's now four days until the finale, and still several users are complaining. If the reasoning you'll find on this page doesn't satisfy you, then don't leave, just come back in a few days and slap the Gomez template on everything that moves.
- Danniesen
I just told him that this seperation was an agreed upon thing, and he told him it was denial. That is not denial, it's taking precations in the case it turns out that Missy happen to be lying or something.
- Skittles the hog
Danniesen wrote: Listen here dude, this is an agreed upon thing that we keep it seperate, and if you don't like it, then leave.
The last two words are what I was writing about.
- Danniesen
Well, I was talking about him not liking the agreement. I never meant the Wikia as a whole.
- CzechOut
Hey guys :)
As Skittles said, above, let's keep this civil. Let me take a moment to further clarify what's going on. No one in the administrative staff is "in denial" over the apparent "truth" of Gomez' character. We all have seen the episode, seen the Doctor Who Extra and gone to the website. We know that everything in the world is pointing towards Gomez being the Master.
[And indeed, speaking quite personally, nothing would make me happier than Gomez turning out to be the Master. I've been a big fan of her work since Green Wing, and think the possibility of her as the Master is one of the more extraordinarily exciting notions of the Moffat era.]
But.
We've been here before. The end of the cliffhanger of the final story of the series is pretty much never what it appeared to be. Did David Tennant regenerate at the end of The Stolen Earth? Not really. (Well, not until we learned otherwise five years later.) Was The Army of Ghosts genuinely "the story of how [Rose Tyler] died'? Only metaphorically. Could we state with any authority what the true nature of the Toclafane were at the end of The Sound of Drums? Absolutely not. Did we know what the Pandorica was at the end of The Pandorica Opens? Of course not; otherwise the teaser to The Big Bang didn't work.
With two part finales, the first part pretty much always misleads in some substantive fashion.
And though the out-of-universe indicators are super-strong for Gomez being the Master, the narrative ones are fairly murky. Since series 1, we've been told that the Doctor would know if there were other Time Lords around. (Heck, since the old series, he's been able to instantly recognise old friends, despite intervening regenerations.) He doesn't appear to this time, at all. Remember how he literally sniffed his way to the Master in The End of Time, part one? The Master's standing right in front of this time — he's actually in intimate contact with her — and yet there's not the faintest hint of recognition. Because we have a long view of Doctor Who around here, we have to ask why that is. And we also have to say that it would probably be unwise to trust anything during a series where the theme is quite clearly "lying". Narratively, there are genuine issues here that give us reason for caution.
So this tiny little roadblock is indeed rooted simply in a desire to make sure that we really are getting what the production team tell us is happening. Remember, in-unverse articles are built only on narratives. So we have to pay attention to the story, and take heed of things that don't seem to make sense when considered against other recent stories.
Please do not mistake our caution for any kind of emotional reaction.
- CzechOut
Oh I should also point out that the matter of adding Gomez' picture to {{Masterpic}} is a technical one. We want to make sure that the timing of the CSS works out well there, so even after Saturday, there may be some delay in getting that pic up, should Gomez actually turn out to be indisputably the Master.
- Danniesen
Exactly. Missy might very well say she's the Master in Dark Water, but the truth could be "turned around" in the next episode.
- Bwburke94
CzechOut wrote:
We've been here before. The end of the cliffhanger of the final story of the series is pretty much never what it appeared to be. Did David Tennant regenerate at the end of The Stolen Earth? Not really. (Well, not until we learned otherwise five years later.) Was The Army of Ghosts genuinely "the story of how [Rose Tyler] died'? Only metaphorically. Could we state with any authority what the true nature of the Toclafane were at the end of The Sound of Drums? Absolutely not. Did we know what the Pandorica was at the end of The Pandorica Opens? Of course not; otherwise the teaser to The Big Bang didn't work.- Army of Ghosts: "This is the story of how [Rose] died" is the opening narration, not the cliffhanger, though you are right in saying it was an implication in the first part that was proven false in the second.
- Utopia: You didn't address this one in your post, being that it wasn't the penultimate episode of the series, but "Yana is the Master" was more-or-less definitively proven by the end of the episode. The clear difference between Utopia and Dark Water is that Dark Water was a one-line throwaway that could conceivably be a lie.
- The Sound of Drums: We could not definitively determine what the Toclafane were, but we could define them as "vaguely robotic spheroid life-forms working for the Master"
- The Stolen Earth: The clear implication of the cliffhanger (and lack of a Next Time trailer) is that Tennant's Doctor would regenerate into a Doctor played by someone else. This did not turn out to be the case, though it's a lie of omission rather than misinformation.
- The End of Time, Part 1: The Donna cliffhanger was outright misdirection, in the style of a classic series cliffhanger. However, the return of the Time Lords was clearly not intended to be taken as misdirection.
- The Pandorica Opens: The cliffhanger had two "parts": one, Amy died, and two, the Doctor was imprisoned inside the Pandorica, causing the universe to have never existed. The first was proven false, while the second was true. This is the biggest reason we can't call Gomez's character the Master yet, as BBC publicity claimed Amy was permanently dead, in the same way they claim Missy is the Master. (As for the nature of the Pandorica, it was a prison of some sort meant to contain the Doctor. The Big Bang did not contradict this, though it did reveal extra information we did not know.)
- Closing Time: The reveal that the astronaut was adult River rather than child Melody is completely true, but the Doctor didn't actually die. (@CzechOut: How did we handle the Doctor's "death" prior to the airing of TWoRS?)
- CzechOut
We used the word "apparently" a lot. But the thing is, no one believed that the Doctor actually died, because, after all, that would be the end of the programme, and series 7 had been commissioned. :)
- Danniesen
To be fair, before his new regeneration cycle and, well, before Twelve was shown in The Day of the Doctor it could very well have been the end of him at the 2013 Christmas special.
- 199.167.99.214
So, the finale happened!
- Jonizaak
^The last one was me not signed in.
- DarthKnah
Now that the finale has aired, you guys are all accepting of Missy's identity. Regardless of your reasons, you guys have been very biased in deciding what statements to question. Basically anything in the entire show could be a lie. If I wanted to, I could easily come up with a thousand conspiracy theories of the like. If I said "The asthma girl isn't dead! She was transported to a marshmallow planet!" you guys would say that there was no evidence to suggest that, but if I said that Missy was the Master you would say that Moffat's probably lying. That's pretty biased.
Really, I think we should follow a policy of innocent until proven guilty. Regardless, you have to treat all statements the same. You can't be skeptical of Missy=Master but not of Kate Stewart=Brig's daughter.
Another good idea would be to believe whatever the Doctor believes. If the Doctor didn't believe Missy's identity, we would have legitimate grounds to question it. But he did not. He believed it, so we should too. Basically this entire wiki is based on the Doctor's views.
No matter what, there was no reason to doubt Missy's statements except for Moffat's history. We only doubt something if we have an in-universe reason to do so.
- Danniesen
Really? Are you still upset about the TDC's decision to have the pages seperated and locked... after the episode aired...?
- Skittles the hog
CloneMarshalCommanderCody wrote: Now that the finale has aired, you guys are all accepting of Missy's identity. Regardless of your reasons, you guys have been very biased in deciding what statements to question.
Kate being the Brigadier's daughter would only be mentioned on a few pages. Missy being the Master, because you're linking to the Master, would cause a more widespread problem, had it turned out to be false. That's the essence of it.
We knew the finale would clarify, so waiting a week seemed like the best decision. It was a purely pragmatic choice.
- Shambala108
CloneMarshalCommanderCody, I think you've missed the point of this entire discussion. Changing the Missy page to Master is not a simple process. It requires a merge, which is fairly complicated and which only certain admins can do. Undoing a merge is even more complicated, so we decided to err on the side of caution and wait until the second part aired, which was less than a week later.
You said, "Basically this entire wiki is based on the Doctor's views." Please point to the forum or policy page that states this. Because Tardis:In-universe perspective suggests otherwise.
- DarthKnah
Ok. I didn't think merging was that complex. Your decisions make sense now.
As for "based on the Doctor's views," you misunderstand me. I understand In-universe perspective. What I'm saying is that much of the information on this wiki was said by the Doctor and is not verifiable on-screen. For example, in The Time Warrior (TV story), the Doctor says for the first time that his homeworld is Gallifrey. There was no way to verify that he was telling the truth until later, when novels confirmed it.
By "based on the Doctor's views" I don't mean this wiki's articles are based on the Doctor's opinions; I mean this wiki's articles are based on information the Doctor gives, and that information may be incorrect. Thus no "The Daleks are evil." What I mean is that many facts' only source is the Doctor.
- Bwburke94
CloneMarshalCommanderCody wrote: You can't be skeptical of Missy=Master but not of Kate Stewart=Brig's daughter.
Now that the episode has aired, we are no longer sceptical of Missy=Master. I personally believed there was enough evidence after Dark Water to outright state Missy=Master, but a lot of the people here disagreed with me.
As for the Kate Stewart=Brig's daughter thing, there is no evidence in any medium that implies Kate was lying about her parentage. In addition, we treat Downtime as valid, further reinforcing that Kate is the Brig's daughter.
- Danniesen
As to Missy=Master I think it was pretty good to wait for Death in Heaven because as of Dark Water things could still be twisted around.
To the Brigadier/Kate thing: why would Kate lie about it, why would she have any reason to lie about her parentage. Just think about it a little, why would ther be 'any' reason to lie about it?
- Bwburke94
Kate's parentage is confirmed by Downtime anyway, the only reason we're discussing her is because of Clonemarshalcommandercody trying and failing to make a point.
Back to the topic of Missy. To bring back the Pandorica argument from earlier in the thread, at the conclusion of The Pandorica Opens we could not know the full extent of what the Pandorica was, which was later revealed in The Big Bang. The same applies here, as all we know of Missy after Dark Water is that she is, or claims to be, an incarnation of the Master. Death in Heaven cleared this up by clarifying she was post-Simm.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:165251
An IP user has posted info claiming that Ellen Hunt and Venessa are the same person. Part of his reasoning in the edit summary says, "The different names describe the same person. Possibly an inconsistency in the story telling."
Can someone who has seen Children of Earth confirm or refute this claim?
If they are the same, the pages might have to be merged. If they're not the same, the info will have to be removed.
- Lewody1
They are both the same person, Venessa was Hunt's undercover name during the 1965 flashbacks.
- Shambala108
Thanks for the info. Before I put a merge tag, I want to be clear. Hunt is her real name and Venessa is an alias — is that correct?
- Lewody1
Yes
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:165416
- "The Time of the Doctor": In the next episode, Strax's scanning confirms that Clara has aged three years since "The Bells of St. John". Taking into account her breaks from the TARDIS, that puts "present day" scenes on December 25, 2016.
- "Into the Dalek": A new school year has started at Coal Hill, placing it near September 2017.
- "Listen": Clara and Danny are on their fist date, so still 2017.
- "Time Heist": Either late 2017 or early 2018.
- "The Caretaker": Danny was present at a previous Parents' Evening. Since he joined the school in "Into the Daleks", this means a whole year has passed, so 2019.
- "Kill the Moon": Courtney is still interestd in TARDIS travel, so still 2019.
- "Mummy on the Orient Express": It's been at least a few weeks since "Kill the Moon", but still seems to be the same year, so still 2019.
- "In the Forest of the Night": Still seems to be 2019.
- "Dark Water" / "Death in Heaven": Clara has had enough time to decide to tell Danny to whole truth, so still seems to be the same year, 2019.
- PicassoAndPringles
This is a lot of supposition. We really shouldn't say a date unless one is directly given.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:165479
I took the liberty of starting to integrate the two versions of Cybermen into one proper article at Cyberman rather than having them as two entirely separate versions even though the Moffat era version is by now pretty clearly a merger of both the classic Mondasian Cybermen and the Cybus Cybermen, so the distinction is more of a historical one than anything that has any bearing on the Cybermen as a whole.
In Nightmare in Silver (TV story) we can actually see that the Mondas Cybermen came across at least the remains of the Cybus Cybermen (which were stored in Hedgewick's World of Wonders). In Assimilation² (comic story) we can actually see Cybus and Cyber-Legion Cybermen working together, even if it was originally a production error. Even if some far-future versions of the Cybermen from the comics etc. were meant to be purely Mondasian in origin initially, we can't really make the assumption in-universe at this point that they are not descended from both groups.
I've seen this discussed before on the wiki, but not actually done yet, so I attempted to (starting with their history) but User:Shambala108 told me to discuss it here first. My version was reverted, so you can see it here now. I'm sorry for causing trouble if I did. I think that the Mondas and Cybus distinction can be kept in separate articles, but they should now be purely "historical" origin articles, e.g. "Origin of Cybermen on Mondas" and "Origin of Cybermen on Pete's World".
I think it's better than debating ad infinitum which "main" article the Moffat-era Cybermen (and probably any future Cybermen) belong to, as they share characteristics of both previous versions and so will likely any future ones, so we'll end up with basically three different articles, with "Cybermen of unknown origin" section of the Cyberman article growing with every episode. I think having one "main" article and two "origin" articles is less messy.
- Bwburke94
Given that the Dark Water Cybermen could reasonably be argued to be of a different origin than both the Mondas and Pete's World Cybermen, I partially support this idea.
Pre-2006 (real world) Cybermen can be assumed to be at least partially Mondasian in origin, but most non-televised Cybermen cannot be definitively proven one way or the other. The best way to do things is to merge the articles, given that it spares us the headaches of qualifying the Moffat era's Cybermen as one or the other.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:165490
An anonymous user edited the Amy Pond article and added wording saying it was "unfeasible to think Amy was not converted into a Cyberman" during the events of TV: Death in Heaven. Obviously, such speculation doesn't belong here, because it was not stated on screen. Also, it would seriously clog up all the Cyberman-related categories to have thousands of possibly Cyber-converted humans included without any narrative evidence.
Would it be possible to clarify the wiki's policy on this kind of stuff, to state that events encompassing an entire species or planet should not be included on the pages of individuals unless their actions during the event are known?
- JagoAndLitefoot
Indeed, we should only list confirmed convertees as Cybermen. As far as we know, they didn't manage to convert all the dead people on Earth before their plans were thwarted.
- Danniesen
Literally all the people from the series that have died a normal death, meaning they have a body to get buried, could have been Cybermen... We don't know how many of the Cybermen we see on that graveyard that actually could be a previous known character. But we really should stay with the thing that only confirmed people from the past that we've been told of in the episode having been converted, should be mentioned.
- MystExplorer
I agree. Plus they couldn't convert people who were cremated. And we don't know how many dead characters were buried versus how many were cremated.
- CzechOut
Death in Heaven makes it crystal clear that only a firm minority of the dead — Kate says "only a handful" of all tombs — have converted to Cybermen. That makes it statistically unlikely that Amy and Rory were converted to Cybermen.
Thus, for the purposes of the wiki, there is absolutely no reason to go around marking dead characters as Cybermen. Nor is there any utility in a category that suggests "possible" Cyber-conversions, because most of the dead weren't converted.
- Danniesen
Yes, that's part of the point we were trying to make. We shouldn't add people we don't know as Cybermen. However I disagree with the unlikelihood of Amy and Rory. It could in fact be that they were too. That is a 50/50 chance.
- Bwburke94
They were or they weren't, but that doesn't make it 50/50. Most of the dead weren't converted.
- Stryzzar
Yeah no, people died before the belief of an afterlife, and people died after that episode who weren't cybermen. Dead people and cybermen are 2 very different things.
- Danniesen
BWBURKE94, I think you know what I mean. I'm trying to point out that it can't be said that it was "unlikely" that they were converted. No one can know it, so nobody can say it's 'unlikely'.
- Stryzzar
This a wiki and it's only for canon facts, if it isn't confirmed then it's nothing more than speculation.
- Danniesen
Do you think I'm trying to disagree with it? If you read my first post on the thread, you'll be surprised. I hate when I say something and people understand it the opposite way.
- Stryzzar
Oh sorry, I wasnt arguing with you. I was just adding on.
- Danniesen
Oh ok. It just seemed like it.
- Digifiend
Yeah... the only ones we know were converted are Danny Pink and The Brigadier.
JagoAndLitefoot wrote: Indeed, we should only list confirmed convertees as Cybermen. As far as we know, they didn't manage to convert all the dead people on Earth before their plans were thwarted.
- Danniesen
Yeah... Some of the converted people are heard talking, but since they were Cyber-voices we can't tell them apart.
- 0551E80Y
i wonder if she and rory was convereted i mean when the angels killed them they had a tombstone but its unknown if they were buried under it so that remains a mystery if they were converted or not when moffat holds a Q and A someone should ask him if amy and rory were converted or not
- Danniesen
That would be the same as asking whether Elizabeth I was converted, or if Tupac was converted or something like that.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:165958
Should Courtney Woods be added as his companion, as she has travelled with the Doctor more than once?
On a side note, should Psi and Saibra (from TIME HEIST) be added to the Narratively Ambiguous section?
- Skittles the hog
Go to Thread:162148 to discuss Courtney's companion status.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:165997
Do we go on a case-by-case basis for deciding if Time Ladies/Lords get new pages for each new incarnation? Big Finish released part one of the The Rani Elite which debuts Siobhan Redmond's new incarnation of The Rani, but part one doesn't reveal if she's definitely the second incarnation of The Rani or not. So do we just edit the original Rani page until and unless Redmond's incarnation is given a number?
- Tybort
I believe it is case by case. I think only the Doctor and Romana currently have pages for multiple incarnations (plus a the Doctor and Romana overview page). I know that the Master was merged into a single page around 2012, and I don't know if that was the reason, but the Master's only real numbering was that Pratt and Beevers (and Delgado, according to Legacy of the Daleks, possibly) were number thirteen.
- Bwburke94
I'd go with a single page for the Rani.
- SOTO
If you can't think of individual page titles for each incarnation, they should likely be merged into one. If we don't have a real number for this incarnation and the numbering's actually pretty fluid (as with the case of the Master), then I'd definitely say it should all be on one page.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:166007
I stumbled across a category for charity anthologies subcategorized under the NOTDWU category this afternoon. I think the most recent was The Cat Who Walked Through Time II from 2008. Does this wiki still allow pages for charity anthologies that have strong connections to established DW contributors?
- CzechOut
No. It hasn't for years, but we never finished the job of deleting them.
- MystExplorer
So does that mean the upcoming charity anthology Seasons of War won't be allowed? I know it's not a valid source but can't we at least have a page for it?
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:166151
Recently, Big Finish has started to release first episodes of some of its upcoming releases for free on its website. Given that it's not really different from first episode of a multi-part story being broadcast, does this mean that the content of the first episode (and a page for the story) can be added to the wiki then, or does it still fall under the spoiler policy?
- Shambala108
The key points from Tardis:Spoiler policy are: "A spoiler is any information — in-universe or behind-the-scenes — coming from a story which has not yet been officially released in its entirety," and "For Big Finish audios, the moment of public release is when a story is made available to download by the official Big Finish website."
So while these stories are not yet released in their entirety, the first episodes are available from the BF website. A special exception to the spoiler policy is made for comic stories, so hopefully CzechOut and/or Tangerineduel can give us their interpretation of the policy and let you know.
- JagoAndLitefoot
How is it different, though, as far as the rules are concerned, from TV two-parters, which are being added to the wiki once the first part is broadcast? Or Big Finish EDA/FDA two-parters?
"For Big Finish audios, the moment of public release is when a story is made available to download by the official Big Finish website."
The free episodes are certainly being made available for download, and aren't much different from a single comic issue or the first part of a TV two-parter.
Anyway, even if we decide these still fall under the spoiler policy, I think it'd be a good idea to update the policy page to account for this.
- Shambala108
Please note that I am not disagreeing with you. Personally, I think the pages could be started.
All I'm saying is that the policy currently states two opposite positions, so it's a matter for CzechOut and Tangerineduel to decide.
- JagoAndLitefoot
I'm not saying you're disagreeing with me, I'm just pointing out how it would make sense given how we treat separate installments of larger comic and TV stories. These are not trailers or previews after all, but full episodes.
- CzechOut
The key word in the spoiler policy is story. That word is consistently used throughout to distinguish between the whole and the part.
The whole audio story must be published/released. Not just individual episodes.
Why do we allow the publication of pages about BBC Wales TV episodes as they arrive on TV? Because that's the basic narrative unit. And TV episodes in the modern era are very different than audio episodes which are trying to emulate the feel of a "classic" serial. BBC Wales episodes are at once standalone, part of a discrete story, part of a story arc, and meant to be consumed one week at a time. There's also ambiguity as to whether certain episodes are part of a larger story or not, as with the case of the relationship of Utopia to The Sound of Drums and Last of the Time Lords.
The usual method of release of BF audios is as complete stories. By contrast with BBC Wales episodes, you really can't just look at a single episode in isolation from the rest. Part 3 of The Fires of Vulcan doesn't mean a whole lot unless viewed against the backdrop of the other episodes in that story.
The freebie episodes are essentially advertisements for the larger whole. I quite disagree with you, JagoAndLitefoot: these freebie eps are precisely previews. Their sole purpose is to get you to buy the larger story, and therefore they precisely meet the definition of the first and last bullet points under T:SPOIL DEF.
So, no, you cannot start a page on an audio story based solely upon the early release of a single, constituent episode. Please wait until the full story has made its way to release.
Multi-part TV stories don't exist in the way that they did in the classic era, which is essentially what Big Finish mirrors.
Them releasing a preview is an advert to entice you to buy the rest. It doesn't exist on its own as a story. If Big Finish released a whole story for free then we could create a page because it'd obviously all exist. But as it stands no, they're just previews.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:166176
22nd century Dalek invasion deals with the classical invasion stopped by the First Doctor. No mention is made about their second one, set in 2190s (=same century), from Lucie Miller/To the Death. Should it be included in the first voice, under a section "Reprise", or under a "Second Invasion"? Or should it deserve its own page, with a proper disambiguated title?
- Bwburke94
If the events of the audios deserve their own page, a possible is to use "2157 Dalek invasion" and "2190s Dalek invasion", but as it stands now no change needs to be made.
- HarveyWallbanger
Ok, thank you! I'll start a section by now.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:166881
Some random instances.
Botany and Botanist, Biology and Biologist, Chemist and Chemistry etc... lead to the same page, but:
- we have Astronomer, but Astronomy is a "wanted page";
- Dance and Dancer are both among the most wanted pages;
- Architecture and Architect are different pages (that is my fault).
Have we got a policy about this or should we have one? My humble point of view is that we should have a single page dealing with the "science"/"art" and the "scientist"/"artist", like the ones opening the thread.
- Shambala108
We don't have a policy to cover this (as far as I can determine) — hence the inconsistency.
I do like your idea of one page for occupations, and the doers of the occupation are pipe-switched to the occupation page.
However, my concern is we would end up with something like this on the occupation pages —
"The following people were biologists:" followed by a nonsourced list of biologists. That's lazy writing, and we already have lists of occupations at the category pages. It's better to have a short description, followed by a source.
- HarveyWallbanger
I agree, of course. Luckily, until now there aren't any bulleted lists in the pages I've linked. We could "patrol" them to avoid this kind of approach.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:167022
As I brought up on Bruce's talk page, I don't see why the surname/given name of a character, when given in the novelized adaptation, shouldn't be included in the article's body and chosen as title. Of course, I'm well aware that novelizations often have elements that contradict what is seen on screen, and we're encouraged to dismiss them as apocryphal. However, the key word here is "contradict." When a piece of information is exclusive to a book but doesn't contradict what's on screen, I don't see why it shouldn't be included. After all, it is a novelization's work to expand on the filmed material.
- Bwburke94
This isn't a contradiction, so I see no policy that EXPLICITLY bans elements introduced in a novelisation from being used in the title of a page. Had Tangerineduel's proposal passed, they would have been declared behind the scenes only, but because of the lack of a resolution, no official policy was declared.
Under normal circumstances, we treat all media as equally valid sources. However, we treat novelisations differently due to the potential for contradiction. As there is no contradiction between the source story and the novelisation in this case, and the novelisation does not fail our four simple rules, under current policy Bruce and Miranda's articles MUST be located at Bruce Gerhardt and Miranda Gerhardt as those are their full names as given by a valid source. However, being that the status of novelisations has been debated in the past, I recommend that no page moves are made until an explicit policy decision is made on their status.
- CzechOut
Not so fast :) See Talk:Miranda (Doctor Who). While Bwburke94 is mostly right, this is an instance where T:CHAR NAMES prevails.
- By forum consensus, the titles of articles about individual characters should be the name by which the character was most commonly known in the Doctor Who universe.
Nobody knows these characters' last names, because novelisations are really quite secondary sources. So they're better located at Bruce (Doctor Who) and Miranda (Doctor Who).
- JagoAndLitefoot
Well, but then we have Vicki Pallister, even though her last name is rather obscure. And the last names for Bruce and Miranda might not be widely known among fans, but surely they were known under these names in the Doctor Who universe.
I think it would make sense to use a less known last name instead of disambiguation in parenthesis when the latter is otherwise needed. And even if the title stays as is, then surely the last name should be used in the main body of the article, and not just the "behind the scenes" section.
- CzechOut
The case is a bit different with Vicki, as the name doesn't just come from a novelisation, but actual, original narratives like Byzantium! and The Eleventh Tiger. Vicki is much more like Polly, whose last name is commonly given in multiple stories in other media.
With Bruce and Miranda — two extraordinarily common names — parenthetical inclusion of the story that they come form is likely to be of much more help than giving their last names. T:CHAR NAMES cases are always a bit arbitrary, but the likelihood is that even huge fans of Doctor Who won't know that these characters were give surnames by the novelisation — because many people don't even know there is a novelisation of the TVM.
So disambiguating on their story name, yet including redirects at their names-with-surnames, allows both the hyper knowledgeable fan and the newbie to meet somewhere close to the middle.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Still, can we at least agree that the name should be included in the main body of the article, and not just the "behind the scenes" section?
- CzechOut
Oh, sure! That's specifically what T:CHAR NAMES would call for.
However, the title of their infoboxes shouldn't include the longform name. That is, infobox names should match the page title, minus parentheticals. So, "Bruse" and "Miranda" on the infobox title. In these two cases, though, the behind the scenes info shouldn't be removed. People will want to know where the heck the surnames are coming from, so the BTS notes are still useful.
I would caution people, though, not to extrapolate much from these two cases. Just because we reject the use of surnames-derived-from-novelisations here does not mean that we universally do so. The TVM novelisaiton is such a footnote in the history of DW, that it's a pretty easy to call to say that almost no one will be looking for these characters by that surnamee.
Target novelisations, however, are quite different. For many people, they are the primary way that some classic serials were consumed. So you will find that character surnames included in the novelisation of sixties and seventies stories are used here as page titles, without particular controversy.
The interaction between our general practice to allow non-conflicting novelisation information, and the need to title articles in a way that makes them easily discoverable, is complex. And we need to look at it on a case-by-case basis. It unfortunately does not easily allow a one-size-fits-all approach. But we do at least know that when we decide these cases we're doing so on the basis of two questions:
- Is the novelisation name in conflict with the televised episode? If no, then proceed to the second question.
- Which name is the most helpful for people to find in an auto-suggest drop-down? And the basic, but not universal, way that we determine here is that if it's a novelisation of a missing episode, we assume that more people will know the novelisation than the audio/transcripts.
- Names given in novelisations and not contradicting the original story should be considered for the page title on a case-by-base basis, following T:CHAR NAMES mandate to find a name that is most easily discoverable.
- Redirects from the alternative names are encouraged.
- Full name is to be given in the lead of the article.
- BTS note should explain the origin of the full name from the novelisation.
- In the current version of inboxes, the infobox variable "name" should not be entered at all. The infobox code handles it by itself and will strip the dab term in the name atop the infobox.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:167204
So, having recently reread Legacy of the Daleks, it doesn't actually state that Delgado and Pratt are the same incarnation of the Master. Page 226 sees Susan using the TCE on the Master's device, while he's still holding it, and Susan running back into the Master's TARDIS, seeing an explosion of energy on the scanner, and assuming the Master has died. Page 241 then sees Goth on Terserus, running into the Master, now described as he was in Deadly Assassin, as played by Pratt.
The policy right now is that Legacy of the Daleks "definitively and unambiguously" states that Delgado and Pratt are the same incarnation. This is not the case, and I think that the page for The Master should be adjusted accordingly. All that this would really entail is the removal or adjustment of the "It's all about Delgado" box, as well as separating out the Delgado and Pratt/Beevers sections.
Cousin Zagreus ☎ 18:40, December 11, 2014 (UTC)
- Revanvolatrelundar
I've just had a trawl through the Panopticon archives and the archived talk pages for The Master and have been unable to find the original discussion about moving Delgado and Pratt to one incarnation.
Regardless of what was said in previous years, this does really need looking at. I thought at the time that it was wrong to merge Delgado and Pratt, as Legacy of the Daleks gives no argument to whether Pratt and Delgado are the same incarnation, or even if they're not. The basis just seems to come from the fact that they both appeared in the same book! The book leaves a gap between Delgado holding the superweapon as Cousin Zagreus said, and Pratt being found on Terserus by Goth. That does leave a gap where Delgado could have tried regenerating, but doesn't state it, but neither does it state that no regeneration took place at all. At best we should be using Occam's Razor here and leaving Pratt/Beevers as a seperate incarnation to Delgado.
- Bwburke94
There is a gap, but is there any confirmation that they aren't the same incarnation? What reason are we given for Pratt's Master looking the way he does? The best choice here may be to keep everything as is for now, lest we find another story that backs up the "Pratt is fried Delgado" thing we've been going with for the past few years.
- Cousin Zagreus
The Deadly Assassin novelization has the Doctor making the supposition that an incident occurred that caused the Master to rapidly burn through his remaining regenerations. Susan blowing up the Master's energy manipulation device in his face in Legacy fits that bill.
My main point was that, contrary to what the current policy of this wiki is, there's no actual evidence to suggest that they are the same incarnation, and that the a large chunk of The Master's page is currently structured around such a vague reading of the text in question.
Professor Stream is given a separate page even though there is clear and present intent and real world interviews that say he's The Master. Why is The Master page saying that Delgado and Pratt are the same incarnation of the character when there's so much less evidence supporting it?
Cousin Zagreus ☎ 00:30, December 12, 2014 (UTC)
- CzechOut
According to longstanding practice here at Tardis, novelisations are essentially second-class citizens. Material within is considered only valid if there are no other sources that contradict it. This is because novelisations, particularly ones within the Hartnell and Troughton eras, are liberal adaptations. The Romans and Doctor Who and the Romans are told in entirely different ways, with the latter using essentially unreliable narrators. The Daleks and Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks are almost wholly different stories, particularly when it comes to character development. The Enemy of the World is factually wrong in several places, but that wouldn't have bothered Ian Marter in writing the novelisation, since he never saw the original (as far as we know) and he certainly never expected the original to become widely available to the public.
The fact that the Deadly Assassin novelisation speaks of burning up regenerations is thus a fact contradicted by Legacy of the Daleks — and therefore discounted.
Note that novelisations are the only source we treat in this manner, and it's entirely due to the fact that they are retellings of stories.
So novels > novelisations.
An on page 153 of Legacy, the text describes what Susan does to him thus: "There was no respite for him now, no way to regenerate from such a death." Then season dumps the Master out of his Tardis on the planet Terserus, leaving him to die. And finally in the epilogue, it's revealed he's not dead but described as he was in the Pratt version. At this point, Goth finds him and we're more or less where we are at the start of Deadly Assassin.
So it's not vague at all. He's Delgado at the start of the novel. Susan uses his Tissue Compression Eliminator, fed through the transmuter on the TARDIS console to zap him. She believes he's dead, and dumps him out on Terserus. Goth finds him and you see the point at which the crispy Master casts his spell on Goth, all ready to start Deadly Assassin.
Based on the level of certainty in these primary sources — "no way to regenerate" — it's hard to imagine how else to write the article. However, the wrinkle from the novelisation of Assassin is an interesting one, which — because it's a secondary source – should go into the behind the scenes section, if it's not there already.
- Cousin Zagreus
She doesn't dump him out on Tersrus, they're already there. And it's not "no way to regenerate", it's that she thinks that regeneration can't save him. Additionally, Susan only sees the explosion of energy second-hand, through TARDIS scanners, and assumes he's dead. He's not. We can thus assume that her thoughts re:regeneration not saving him are also less than accurate. We see him as Delgado before the blast occurs, and when we next return to him in the text, he's as he is in Deadly Assassin. It's very ambiguous, and hardly "definitive".
Interesting note about the novelizations though. I shall endeavor to find further evidence within the text of Legacy itself. On page 141, the Doctor tells someone that he's meeting the Master out of order (and the description of the Master makes clear that this is the Delgado version we're encountering), and that he's met him in "two and a half bodies since he since this one", referring to Pratt/Beevers, Ainley, and Roberts, since the MacQueen incarnation wasn't yet a thing at this point and the EDAs were still distancing themselves from the continuity of the Virgin NAs and MAs. He also muses elsewhere in the book (page 235) on how he knows the Master was on Tersurus when his final regeneration occurred, telling us that the events some ten pages prior did indeed include a regeneration.
I'd suggest that article could be rewritten to treat them as separate incarnations, as the BBC does, and make a note down in the bottom under trivia or something about the fan concept that Delgado and Pratt/Beevers could be the same incarnation. It wouldn't even require a whole lot of cleaning up. Just comment out the "It's all about Delgado" box, and give from Deadly Assassin through Keeper of Traken its own section header.
Cousin Zagreus ☎ 02:13, December 12, 2014 (UTC)
- CzechOut
It's not Susan thinking that there's no way for him to regenerate. It's the omniscient narrator saying that, flatly. Besides, he doesn't regenerate. That's the point. At no point in the book does it suggest that he in anyway regenerated when he went from being Delgado to being Pratt. They are very much the same incarnation of the Master at different points on his quite singular timeline.
- CzechOut
Oh and I think you're misreading the bit on 235. In this passage, regeneration means incarnation. It's quite common practice throughout prose Doctor Who to use regeneration to mean both the physical act of regeneration (the regeneration of the Third Doctor into the Fourth), as well as to mean a particular incarnation ("the fourth regeneration of the Doctor surveyed the landscape before him"). These days, we don't like that kind of imprecision, and a lot of people will argue strongly that regeneration and incarnation are not the same. But all you have to do is read almost anything by Terrance Dicks involving Gallifrey or multiple Doctors and you'll soon see that it's perfectly commonplace.
- Master of Spiders
From Legacy:
Long hours passed. The information started to come through, and as he read it the Doctor paused.
Tersurus...
And then the track of an unshielded TARDIS, which then reshielded itself and left the dismal planet.
His fingers hovered over the controls, and didn't descend.
Tersurus...
He aborted the sequence, with a mixture of relief and reluctance. Of course, he already knew that the Master had hidden on Tersurus when his final regeneration had been used up. Some devastating force had ravaged his body and left him a crippled wreck.
But his TARDIS had left the world.
And that could only mean that Susan had been the one to trigger the Master's grotesque change. And that she had taken his TARDIS and gone on alone. There was no need for him to go to her aid, then. She had acted swiftly and certainly, and solved the last remaining problem.
So, the Master had already used up his last regeneration before he went to Tersurus. Susan had been the one to trigger the change into the decayed Pratt version, and then Goth meets up with the Pratt Master on Tersurus leading into The Deadly Assassin. So what happened on Tersurus is not a regeneration, but rather something that should have killed the Master, but instead just left him badly putrified.
Oh, and the Target novelisation of The Deadly Assassin actually says:
'And the Master's own death?'
Spandrell shrugged. 'You might almost say natural causes, sir. The body was extremely decayed. It's a wonder he stayed alive so long. Pne can only presume that he had come to the end of his regeneration cycle prematurely.'
Borusa frowned. 'I understand he was relatively young-not much older than the Doctor here.'
The Doctor was standing by the window, brooding over the lights of the Capitol City, far below, 'He was always a criminal, sir, throughout all his lives. Constant pressure, constant danger. Accelerated regenerations used as disguise... He was simply burnt out.'
...so the Master's burning through regenerations has nothing to do with what happened in Legacy of the Daleks. Delgado was already the 13th Master, because the Master had forced himself to regenerate into new incarnations as part of his schemes. Master of Spiders ☎ 04:36, December 12, 2014 (UTC)
- Cousin Zagreus
I still think the stronger and more supported interpretation of the wording, which apparently what we're now debating now, supports a regeneration actually having occurred, especially with the Doctor's words on page 141 about the Master having "two and a half bodies" after the Delgado incarnation at that time (being Pratt/Beevers, Ainley, and Roberts). That line makes no sense if Delgado and Pratt are the same incarnation of the character.
The fact that this discussion is even happening shows that the Legacy is neither "definitive" or "unambiguous", as the current policy states.
Cousin Zagreus ☎ 04:53, December 12, 2014 (UTC)
- Master of Spiders
Did you read Czechout's quoted text, stating that the Master was unable to regenerate, and that what happened when Susan shot him was not a regeneration? Or my quoted text stating that the Master had used up all his regenerations before he ever set foot on Tersurus?
And I always took the "two and a half bodies" to mean Ainley, Roberts and Beevers.
We can also not overlook the fact that you made false statements about the narrative in the Target novelisation of The Deadly Assassin(here) and The Harvest of Time(on the Master talk page).
However, let's hypothetically say that you are right. How would you propose that there is another incarnation between Delgado and Decayed Pratt? You don't even need to quote narrative text, or comments from interviews.
Because Legacy of the Daleks leaves us with a decayed Pratt Master on Tersurus with no more regenerations, who is hatching a plot with Goth against the Doctor. And The Deadly Assassin starts with a decayed Pratt Master with no more regenerations, who has just come from Tersurus with Goth. Yet, you claim that these two Masters are different incarnations, and there's at least one(or two-and-a-half) incarnations between them? Master of Spiders ☎ 05:53, December 12, 2014 (UTC)
- CzechOut
I'm not understanding your point, I don't think. To me, the passage — in my version it's actually on 93 — is further proof of the fact that Delgado/Pratt/Beavers are the same incarnation.
The way I see the math is this:
- Roberts is one body.
- Ainsley is the second body.
- And the half body (so still part of the same regeneration) is Pratt/Beavers. Because it's not a different regeneration. It's the latter half of the original Delgado.
Alternately, the passage could mean:
- Delgado/Beavers/Pratt is one
- Ainley is the second
- Roberts is the half, because he's sorta half slug creature
Or:
- Delgado/Beavers/Pratt is one
- Roberts is the second
- Ainley is half, because he's literally the combination of Delgado/Beavers/Pratt and Tremas.
Any way you slice that math, 2.5 doesn't allow for Delgado/Beavers/Pratt to be two distinct entities. If it were 3.5, you might have something. But not 2.5.
I think it's probably helpful to try to read this book as contemporaneously as possible. The modern interpretation of regeneration as the physical act only is just that: modern. It's not what was commonplace before the new series returned. Regeneration routinely meant body or incarnation, and that's, in my opinion, what's the case here. Forget about everything else: it would be internally inconsistent for this novel to — in one place — say that regeneration wasn't possible under these circumstances, but then suggest elsewhere that regeneration in fact occurred. Isn't it reasonable to assume that the writer remembers what he wrote a few dozen pages before?
- Cousin Zagreus
I did see your quotes, and I disagree with your interpretation of them. And they weren't even accurate. It doesn't say he can't regenerate, it says that regeneration wouldn't be able to save him from death. Since he's not dead, the "omniscient" narrator is obviously unreliable, so my original point still stands that there very well could have been a regeneration. As for the "when does regeneration mean incarnation instead of regeneration?", that's entirely subjective and open for debate, so, again, isn't supported within the text and is a semantics/intent debate that leaves the matter neither definitive or unambiguous.
Beevers is the same incarnation as Pratt, so saying that he's one of the "Two and a half" bodies means that so is Pratt, and therefor that Pratt and Delgado are different bodies; IE: different incarnations.
I made misinformed statements about the Deadly Assassin novelization, yes. Since the novelizations had already been dismissed from the debate, I'm not sure what your point is though in regards to that fact.
At no time did I ever say that there was an incarnation between Delgado and Pratt, just that Delgado and Pratt are the different incarnations. I still think the evidence supports that there was a regeneration after Susan blew up his device in his face. The "Two and a Half Bodies" line is from the Eighth Doctor, talking about how many incarnations of the character he's run into since Delgado, being Pratt/Beevers, Ainley, and Roberts. I think there's been a misunderstanding somewhere on your part over what I'm trying to say.
Finally, what is the wiki's policy in regards to newer sources contradicting older ones? I ask due to the fact that An Earthly Child (and other audios) renders much of Legacy of the Daleks no longer in continuity, so am wondering how much of the book can be taken as "fact" since there's now new continuity in play.
Cousin Zagreus ☎ 06:10, December 12, 2014 (UTC)
- Cousin Zagreus
And in response to Czechout, as his reply came as I was typing my previous one up:
I count 1: Pratt/Beevers, 2: Ainley, and 2.5: Roberts (since he's so shortlived). Pratt/Beevers was a long-term incarnation, despite its degenerate nature, and Ainley was a long-term body. Roberts was less than a week.
And, again, it doesn't say that regeneration wasn't possible, just that he would die despite it, which is obviously shown to be not wholly accurate. Again though, I'll admit that there's room for interpretation in the way the wording plays out.
Cousin Zagreus ☎ 06:18, December 12, 2014 (UTC)
- Master of Spiders
About the Target novel...you made a statement that the narrative supported your argument that Delgado and Pratt are not the incarnation, whereas the narrative says nothing of the kind. You also stated that Harvest of Time lists Delgado and Pratt as two different incarnations, when it does nothing of the kind. My point in regards to that fact is that you have made false statements, claiming that certain books back up your position, when they do not.
Now, the two-and-a-half bodies after Delgado(as the Master doesn't see Pratt in Legacy of the Daleks)....first the "half", the decayed body, literally "half a body". Then two bodies....Ainley and Roberts....thus two and a half bodies.
And regardless of how you interpret 'regeneration', Legacy of the Daleks does in fact say that the Master had used up his regenerations before he ever went to Tersurus.
When Susan shot the Master, he was already on his thirteenth incarnation, and he decayed into putrified Pratt. The only question that Cousin Zagreus could use for his argument is that the Master at the beginning' of Legacy of the Daleks, the one calling himself 'Estro' is Delgado, or a non-putrified Pratt. Master of Spiders ☎ 06:36, December 12, 2014 (UTC)
- Cousin Zagreus
I still don't see what your point is about the Deadly Assassin novelization (and now Harvest of Time), since we've specifically been talking about just Legacy for the last several posts.
Your last paragraph isn't nearly as supported or clear cut as you seem to believe. All that's certain is that Pratt was portraying the 13th incarnation, as per Deadly Assassin.
It says that Tersurus is where his last regeneration was used up. Interpret how you will. The wording of "used up", as well as the bit from your quote about "triggering the Master's change" both could be read as in support of the idea that he regenerated after Susan blew up his device with the TCE, since they both use language associated with the act of regeneration.
At the very least the Master page should be adjusted to reflect the ambiguity.
Cousin Zagreus ☎ 06:48, December 12, 2014 (UTC)
- CzechOut
Well, Cousin Zagreus, I really don't want to squash your desire to contribute to the debate of the wiki. But I've also got a need to honour the discussions of the past — discussions that lasted literally for years. And I feel bound to say that in those discussions, no one advanced your interpretation of Legacy before. Indeed, outside the wiki, the general interpretation of the book is that "it's the one where we see how the Master changed from Delgado to Pratt".
And since the passage where Delgado turns into Pratt does not include a regeneration scene, we can't reasonably assume that it happened "off screen". I mean, when in Doctor Who history do writers ever deprive us of at least a discussion of regeneration? It's probably not logical to imagine that any Doctor Who writer would just throw away a regeneration. Your argument is not that a regeneration positively occurred, but rather that it wasn't definitively denied. Sorry, but that just doesn't fly in this franchise. Regenerations are Big Damn Deals. They're the bread and butter of Doctor Who. If you have to say that it's possible the regeneration happened, it just didn't. That's not the way Doctor Who works, except in the very most experimental of stories. And Legacy is amongst the most prosaic of novels out there.
Hey, I get that it's confusing that regeneration has two distinct meanings in Doctor Who. But it just does. And you have to be able to pick out the meaning contextually. We can't just go around saying that if a word has two meanings, it's impossible to make definitive statements about text. Given the number of English words that have radically different alternate meanings, that would obviously invite madness 'round here.
In this case, it's absolutely possible to figure out which definition of regeneration applies, because the author has helpfully disqualified one of the two.
- Cousin Zagreus
Well, I don't agree with you, but thanks for actually taking the time to listen to my arguments.
Cousin Zagreus ☎ 17:36, December 12, 2014 (UTC)
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:167331
In part 1 of The Instruments of War we have a German field marshall in the North African campaign in 1941 called Rommel who works for Hitler and whose immediate superior is known as Kesselring.
Is it within our policies seeing as how they're actual historical figures to name their pages Erwin Rommel and Albert Kesselring, even though neither the words "Erwin" or "Albert" appear in the comic strip as of yet? Or is that reaching out?
- Bwburke94
See T:NO RW for why we don't do that. (Rommel's page is currently located at Erwin Rommel - I don't have The Instruments of War on me, so I wouldn't know whether his first name is used in the source.)
- JagoAndLitefoot
We could always mention their full names in the behind the scenes section, and make a redirect from it.
T:NO RW is used to prevent us from adding info that doesn't come from stories, especially since they could easily be contradicted in the DWU (see Marco Polo for an example). However, it doesn't work to apply it so strictly that an author's meaning is ignored.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:167524
While surfing through the wiki lately, I've noticed that a vast amount of pages are dedicated to the actors of minor characters. What's worse is that most are just single sentence pages: "x played y in z" I think we should delete these pages, and change any links to that actor's IMDb page, which will already have more information anyway.
- CzechOut
Hey RoryPond :) Thanks for dropping by. I hate to come down hard on a new voice here, but that's really never going to happen. the goal is to flesh out these pages, not to delete them. IMDb pages sometimes don't even exist for these "minor" actors, and when they do, they often don't include information which would be of relevance to us. For instance, sometimes "minor" televisual actors have an extensive list of credits in audio, which iMDB doesn't cover.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Indeed, given how many audio stories this wiki covers, IMDb won't have more information than even a stub article for a vast number of them.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:167642
Given that the Short Trip The Piltdown Men is written in first person from the perspective of H.G. Wells, does it count as Hugh Ross (who reads the story) portraying Wells, or not?
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:167643
I believe that this should be the next category created, with sub-categories such as
- Individuals killed by the Doctor
- Individuals killed by the Master
- Individuals killed by the Daleks
- Individuals killed by Jack Harkness
- Individuals killed by natural causes
- Individuals who sacrificed themselves
and so on
- MystExplorer
We've already had this discussion. It was decided that there are too many ambiguous cases for these types of categories to be any use. Sorry.
- BananaClownMan
Only if you look to deep into it. I mean, what's so ambiguous about, say, Solomon being killed by the Doctor?
- MystExplorer
Ask CzechOut. He's the one who decided this last summer. Seriously, I thought this was settled.
- SOTO
Some of those categories were created in the past; the matter was discussed in around June (yes, CzechOut was part of that discussion), and we decided that those categories are too ambiguous and thus fail T:CAT NAME.
I mean, define killed. So many of the articles that were in that Doctor category when it briefly existed weren't necessarily "killed" by the Doctor. He might have influenced their deaths, and some people might argue he killed them, but that's just the thing — if it comes to the point where we have to argue about which articles merit inclusion on a case-by-case basis, that category just shouldn't exist. We can't simply monitor it as people continually add people that don't strictly fall under the category description. The Master has countless times "killed" people indirectly, say through other people he controls or manipulates. There are far too many individual cases in the DWU where we'd have to ask, "Okay, did he kill him? Was that really murder?
Even apart from all that, "Individuals killed by natural causes" is a definite no-no. What does that even mean? There is nothing more "natural" about dying from a virus or from heart failure than being eaten by an alien or falling off a spaceship. Besides, you'd have editors saying that, I don't know, Amy and Rory should be in it, when we really don't know what happened at their deaths at all.
- SOTO
Here's what CzechOut said about it at the time: http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/User_talk:BananaClownMan#Death_in_science_fantasy
Your only option now would be to start a forum discussion to change/remove the policy itself, and I can tell you right now that there is no chance of that happening. Our category system is already too bloated and cumbersome; the last thing we need is categories that are open to interpretation.
Since this matter has been explained at User talk:BananaClownMan, there is no need for this discussion to remain open.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:168145
Is Shada]] a valid source? I know the home video version isn't, but could it be argued that anything in the book that doesn't violate the webcast and audio versions is valid, with the Eighth Doctor instead of the Fourth Doctor, of course. Or is it invalid because it novelises the home video version, which is invalid?
- Shambala108
This was addressed in Forum:Versions_of_Shada_(again), where User:CzechOut stated:
- After thinkin' about this for a while, I believe the order of precedence goes:
- Shada (webcast) - clearly at the top because it's the only BBC broadcast version, even if the original channel was BBCi, not BBC1
- Shada (audio story) - derivative of webcast, but officially released in its entirety. Anything which does not conflict with webcast is valid.
- Then, considered separately, there's:
- Shada (novelisation) — Since it's not a novelisation of the valid forms of the story, it's its own deal. This is to the webcast what PROSE: Human Nature is to TV: Human Nature. This is the closest the would-be televised version comes to inclusion.
- Not valid sources at all:
- Shada (TV story), since it's a giant deleted scene. We've ruled at this discussion that deleted scenes aren't valid sources.
- After thinkin' about this for a while, I believe the order of precedence goes:
- JohnSmith5000100
Thanks.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:168321
I know that "Romana I" and "Romana II" are the common fan names for the two incarnations, but shouldn't we rename them to First Romana and Second Romana respectively, given that these names have actually been used in-universe? Trey calls her previous selves "First Romana" and "Second Romana" within the narrative of Luna Romana (audio story).
- SOTO
First of all, I should point you to T:ROMANA and Forum:Romana's Incarnations' Names. This has already been discussed, and we made a decision back then.
...That said, a case could be made for "First" and "Second" simply because of Luna Romana. I have done any research personally on this, but T:ROMANA quite clearly states that the current names are never used in-narrative. If indeed these are, that might change matters. But I could do with some quotes here for context — are we sure Trey is truly referring them by the titles "First Romana" and "Second Romana", and not simply calling them the "first Romana" and the "second" one? Is there a "the" preceding those titles in dialogue? Are those names used consistently within that story? In other words, what's your case for changing the system that's already long in place?
- JagoAndLitefoot
If not changing then at least there should be redirects and alternate names should be mentioned in the articles. And Trey is actually the narrator, she talks about when she was the First Romana and Second Romana. And well, it's not as if there's much difference between when the Doctor or someone says "first Doctor" or "First Doctor", the capitalization is just a convention.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Here's a quote:
"I miss being me. Being my original self. The First Romana."
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:168451
According to K9 Mark I page and Mark 2 page, K9 Mark I somehow survived from his destruction in AUDIO: Imperiatrix and had further adventures. Later, this version of K9 regenerates into Mark 2.
But shouldn't we consider K9 Mark 2 has nothing to do with K9 Mark I? I mean, the only evidence supporting this idea is Bob Baker's Forum and there is no in-universe evidence.
According to our valid source policy, behind-the-scences informations can't be included in in-universe portion of the articles. I think relationship between Mark I and Mark 2 should be included only in behind the scenes section.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:168455
I still don't get...
After reading the comic book for a second time, I can't find any clarification that The Glorious Dead takes place six months after the Doctor regenerated. At best, the Master says he's been following/controlling the TARDIS that long, but he had to go through screaming in the Time Vortex, talking to Esterath and being in his new body before he realised his link to the TARDIS.
Furthermore, after becoming the new centre of the Omniversal Spectrum, Kroton removes the Master's essence from the TARDIS, so how can he appear to the Doctor from the TARDIS in the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures?
- CzechOut
Not sure what you're asking here. The article about The Glorious Dead doesn't assert anything about the six month gap you're talking about. Did you edit it out? Or are you talking about Theory:Timeline - Eighth Doctor. If the latter, please take your discussion to Theory talk:Timeline - Eighth Doctor, as that article is not a part of the "regular" wiki and shouldn't be discussed in these forums.
- Shambala108
He's referring to an edit he made at Eighth Doctor, regarding placement of information, [[3]], that Revan undid and he added back again.
- BananaClownMan
But placed in with the timeline that was agreed upon, I might add.
- Revanvolatrelundar
Why the Master is in the TARDIS in the EDAs is a discrepancy which can't be reconciled with anything but speculation, but the placement of the comics (at least up to The Glorious Dead) can be asserted as taking place near the start of the Eighth Doctor's life. That was my argument about it all, really.
- BananaClownMan
Could you please elaborate on that, like saying which part of The Glorious Dead (or a previous strip) clarifies the six month time passage? It would help me understand better.
- Revanvolatrelundar
I've read over The Glorious Dead again, and have found myself to be partly in error. There is a passage during the fight between the Doctor and the Master where the Master says "In the past few months alone you have warped the Holloway woman's future...". I and a user I was talking with on the timey-wimey detector page took that as a reference to the TV Movie, where just as easily it can be a reference to The Fallen, as both involve the Doctor altering her future, by him first talking to her about it in the TV Movie, to him actually participating in it in The Fallen.
Through reading again, however, I have seen the passage you referenced earlier on, where the Master claims that his echo in the TARDIS is used to control the ship, and Kroton does purge that essence from the TARDIS at the end of the story. Given this revelation that has been overlooked in the past, it's pretty clear that The Glorious Dead must take place after the books, where the Master still does have a presence within the TARDIS.
- BananaClownMan
In that case, I shall move the information on the Eighth Doctor page to the newly appointed position tomorrow, after a good night's sleep and my college hours are done. Unless anyone else finds an objective before then of course.
- CzechOut
Eh, I dunno, guys. People are always trying to make a nice, tidy bow out of the Eighth Doctor's time, and it's basically impossible. The production staffs of the various media were in direct and sometimes explicit contradiction with each other.
In this instance, you can't really reconcile The Glorious Dead, published in 2000, with The Gallifrey Chronicles, published in 2005. Chronicles says the Master is still inside the Eighth Doctor's TARDIS' Eye of Harmony, due to the events of the TVM. Also, you've got interior TARDIS meetings between the Doctor and a questionably corporeal Master in Sometime Never... and The Deadstone Memorial (both published in 2004) — so it's best not to be definitive about anything Glorious is saying.
It's problematic in the extreme to say that Glorious was set after books that had not yet been written. Not impossible, I guess — but pretty difficult.
- BananaClownMan
Counter-theory: Since the books came out after the Magazine, it could have been easier to say they happened first due to knowing that the Doctor would travel with Izzy at some point, hence why The Eight Doctor happens immediately after San Francisco.
- BananaClownMan
I probably didn't word that right cause my next class starts in 5 mins, but I hope I got my point across.
- CzechOut
BananaClownMan wrote: Counter-theory: Since the books came out after the Magazine, it could have been easier to say they happened first due to knowing that the Doctor would travel with Izzy at some point, hence why The Eight Doctor happens immediately after San Francisco.
Ahh but they didn't, did they? They came out contemporaneously. It's literally a case of the one production team intentionally ignoring — indeed disrespecting, in the true meaning of that word — the work of the other. That's why it's significant the Master is still in the TARDIS as of The Gallifrey Chronicles. By that point, The Glorious Dead was around five years old. So BBC Books deliberately ignored DWM, and DWM couldn't have known in 2000 what BBC Books were going to do in 2005. That's why I say it's effectively impossible to rectify the two.
- BananaClownMan
How do we know it was ignored, I mean, "the Master in the TARDIS" mini-arc was left unresolved in BBC Books, but by then had been resolved in the Magazine. Maybe that was the writers' intention; have the Master still be in the TARDIS for Kroton to remove. Come to think of it, the Master's essence in the TARDIS was introduced via Magazine, the movie only indicated the TARDIS ate him.
- 86.26.222.62
All we know about what Kroton did is that the events of The Glorious Dead were undone. The Doctor even wonders aloud where Kroton put the Master. So maybe we can assume that he rewound time putting the Master back into the Eye of Harmony, thus setting up future appearances and his subsequent escape in Mastermind.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:168898
I may be jumping the gun a bit but I want to alert you all to an upcoming release from Big Finish: http://www.bigfinish.com/news/v/new-release-announced---the-worlds-of-big-finish Given that it was decided not to include Vienna on this wiki and the stated policy of not including Sherlock Holmes or Dorian Gray either, what might this mean? Will we only include the Bernice Summerfield, Iris Wildthyme and Graceless parts of this boxset? Quite frankly, I'm not sure that's a viable option. I know this might open a can of worms as far as the other ranges are concerned but I'd like to hear what the community thinks.
- Shambala108
Since this seems to be an inclusion issue, this topic should be discussed at Board:Inclusion debates.
- MystExplorer
I've moved it to the inclusion debates forum.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Given that it's an interconnected story, I'd consider the appearances of Sherlock, Dorian and Vienna to be crossovers with the DWU just like their appearances in All-Consuming Fire, Shades of Gray and The Shadow Heart. Basically, one big crossover event that won't mean their whole individual series are part of the DWU, even if individual episodes might not feature Benny, Iris and the twins.
- 184.147.8.78
So, now that the story is out and the characters all interact in various ways, shouldn't this retroactively validate Dorian, Vienna and Sherlock?
- JagoAndLitefoot
No. (although I do think that Vienna should be included anyway, but it's another matter)
Just because DWU characters have a crossover story with non-DWU character doesn't make the latter's whole biography part of the DWU. Just like Assimilation² doesn't make the entire Star Trek franchise part of the DWU.
- CzechOut
This is such a minor release, in my mind, that we could basically skip it and do no serious injury to the quality of our encyclopedia. My first preference would simply be to ignore it.
It has nothing to do with the Doctor — unlike Assimilation² — and involves characters that are clearly from different universes. I really don't want to start down a path where the Big Finish Dorian Grey and Sherlock Holmes are extensively catalogued here. I mean, forget about the in-universe baggage that attends these characters — how in the world would we have a sensible Sherlock Holmes page, for instance? — I don't want to have the argument every year about why we can include this one Sherlock Holmes/Dorian Grey story but not the rest of them.
From an administrative standpoint, it's much easier just to rule them all out, and spend our energies on bettering other pages.
- MystExplorer
Well, we already have pages for it, so we're not ignoring it, CzechOut. That ship has sailed.
- Shambala108
MystExplorer wrote: Well, we already have pages for it, so we're not ignoring it, CzechOut. That ship has sailed.
Well, no, since those pages were created without a ruling on the inclusion, it's still possible to decide against inclusion. If that happens, all the related pages will be deleted.
I agree with CzechOut that, from an administrative viewpoint, it's not worth covering these stories if it will lead to questions about other ranges that have already been ruled non-valid (e.g. Vienna). We don't want to have to constantly undo edits made by new users who think that covering this range means we cover all the others.
- CzechOut
MystExplorer wrote: Well, we already have pages for it, so we're not ignoring it, CzechOut. That ship has sailed.
Echoing Shambala108, we've absolutely had "pruning parties" before as the result of discussions. For instance, at one point we had tons of pages covering the non-DW elements of BBV Productions. Ships that sail can definitely be returned to port.
- JagoAndLitefoot
I'd say that given that half of the main characters involved are definitely covered by this wiki, this should still be covered, even if these characters are not the Doctor but Benny, Iris and the Graceless twins, whose inclusion has been argued extensively already.
To reverse CzechOut's argument, we would have arguments each year on why we include all properly licensed adventures of Iris and Benny, but not this one.
The crossover with Dorian and Sherlock is not much different than "Shades of Gray" (which also doesn't include the Doctor) or "All-Consuming Fire" and "Diogenes Damsel" (which already establishes that Sherlock Holmes exists in the DWU too, and furthermore, it has the David Warner Mycroft, like WoBF, while Mycroft is played by a different actor in other BF releases). In the extras, they actually mention that they used the Warner Mycroft specifically to tie it more to the Benny series.
And the appearance of Vienna is no different from the one in "The Shadow Heart". It actually has no references to her previous adventures in her own range.
- MystExplorer
I agree with JagoAndLitefoot. Plus, we could only remove it if it violated one of our four rules. It clearly doesn't violate Rule 2 and, as far as I know, no one has said it's intended to be set outside the DWU. So it doesn't violate Rule 4 either. We can't just get rid of it because we don't feel like covering it or because it might encourage people to add pages for Sherlock, Dorian and/or Vienna stories. That hasn't happened yet and I don't expect it to happen.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Each of these non-DWU characters (in the exact same Big Finish version) already crossed over or soon will with the DWU in other releases.
- David Warner's Mycroft Holmes in The Adventure of the Diogenes Damsel
- Alexander Vlahos's Dorian Gray in Shades of Gray
- Vienna Salvatori in The Shadow Heart
- Nick Briggs's Sherlock Holmes in the upcoming audio adaptation of All-Consuming Fire
So it's not as if including Worlds of Big Finish changes their status in the DWU in any way.
- CzechOut
Are you really sure about that? The Sherlock Holmes of All-Consuming Fire (referred to hereafter as the ACF Holmes) can't be the Sherlock Holmes that Briggs is playing in Big Finish's Sherlock Holmes range (referred to hereafter as "the BF Holmes"). I mean, the ACF Holmes well predates the existence of the BF Holmes. And the Mycroft Holmes of Diogenes is the brother of the ACF Holmes — as established in dialogue — not the BF Holmes.
So is it your contention that Worlds is using the ACF Sherlock Holmes and his brother Mycroft? That frankly doesn't make much sense, given that the volume is called The Worlds of Big Finish. I would have thought they were using the Sherlock Holmes created by Briggs for Big Finish. — a version of the character that has never previously existed in the DWU. Just because you use the same actor doesn't mean that you intend the same character.
As for Vienna she specifically fails Rule 4 because it is the official line of Big Finish that she exists outside the DWU.
The Dorian case has already been specifically decided at Thread:118228. The wider Dorian series is something that it's writer doesn't feel is a spinoff of DW, so we don't either. Instead, we grant that he exists only as a character within Shades of Gray.
That was a decision arbitrarily taken just to get that multi-year thread finished. At the time, I in no way considered that an additional out-of-copyright character would ever be hurled at the DWU.
So in truth, it's not that Rule 2 is satisfied here. It's that Rule 2 doesn't even apply. Rule 2 is about having a proper license for copyrighted characters. It is not meant to implicitly allow the use of characters so old they have passed out of copyright.
As this case proves, it is impossible to write a good set of rules that works in every single case. Our T:VS rules have stood us in good stead, as they make determination easy in more than 99% of cases.
But there are occasional moments where you have to go beyond the strict letter of the rules and make a decision for the individual case at hand. So, while this discussion isn't over, do be aware that we absolutely can decide to just throw this release out.
At the end of the day, it's important to remember that The Worlds of Big Finish is a stunt that BF are trying. The goal is obviously to see if they can get more traction out of the ranges that are more profitable for them to make.
But we don't have to buy into it and try to make some tenuous connection to Doctor Who. This is not, after all, the Big Finish Wiki. Worlds is of such extremely marginal interest to Doctor Who fans, that its inclusion here doesn't meaningfully improve our encyclopaedia.
- MystExplorer
CzechOut wrote: Are you really sure about that? The Sherlock Holmes of All-Consuming Fire (referred to hereafter as the ACF Holmes) can't be the Sherlock Holmes that Briggs is playing in Big Finish's Sherlock Holmes range (referred to hereafter as "the BF Holmes"). I mean, the ACF Holmes well predates the existence of the BF Holmes. And the Mycroft Holmes of Diogenes is the brother of the ACF Holmes — as established in dialogue — not the BF Holmes.
So is it your contention that Worlds is using the ACF Sherlock Holmes and his brother Mycroft? That frankly doesn't make much sense, given that the volume is called The Worlds of Big Finish. I would have thought they were using the Sherlock Holmes created by Briggs for Big Finish. — a version of the character that has never previously existed in the DWU. Just because you use the same actor doesn't mean that you intend the same character.
As for Vienna she specifically fails Rule 4 because it is the official line of Big Finish that she exists outside the DWU.
The Dorian case has already been specifically decided at Thread:118228. The wider Dorian series is something that it's writer doesn't feel is a spinoff of DW, so we don't either. Instead, we grant that he exists only as a character within Shades of Gray.
That was a decision arbitrarily taken just to get that multi-year thread finished. At the time, I in no way considered that an additional out-of-copyright character would ever be hurled at the DWU.
I think we're really splitting hairs if we're arguing over which version of Sherlock Briggs is playing. This will no doubt come up again when the audio version of ACF is released. As far as Big Finish is concerned, they're the same character and that's good enough for me.
If Vienna exists outside the DWU, should we also exclude The Shadow Heart? That's the first story in which she appears. And if she ever appears alongside the Doctor again, would we have to exclude that story as well?
And why can't Dorian exist in other stories? Where did this policy of certain characters only being allowed to exist in one story come from?
- JagoAndLitefoot
I'm pretty sure that the Big Finish adaptation of ACF will be made consistent with the Big Finish Sherlock Holmes range in general. Just like all adaptations are changed to an extent.
And the Mycroft of "Diogenes" is played by the same actor as the one in "Worlds", while he's played by another actor in the Sherlock Holmes range.
As for Vienna, even if we assume that the Vienna series takes place outside the DWU, the character itself first appeared in a DWU story, and her WoBF appearance actually doesn't make references to the "Vienna" range itself.
Likewise, the Vlahos version of Dorian Gray has crossed over with the DWU before, and this is another instance of this. It doesn't mean that all the Dorian stories are set in the DWU.
- 184.147.8.78
This really doesn't seem too difficult to sort out.
Sherlock in this release is a divergence from the main BF line due to David Warner playing Mycroft.
I can't see why vienna is specifically singled out as not DWU as Graceless is essentially in the same situation (both originated in the Main range, spun off into their own range, and both are stated to be outside the DWU by their line producers) yet Graceless is in and Vienna is out?
Likewise, this particular version of Dorian distinguished himself in Benny's range, but the stories of his past are somehow in another universe?
This isn't the Star Trek and Fantastic Four issue, Dorian and Sherlock, these are new adaptations of the characters, distinct and separate from our real world ones. Their stories wildly diverge from the originals by their original authors.
Vienna and Graceless are from the DWU yet have been shunted out on this wiki because the producers wanted to do something different with them?
The wiki doesn't discard everything already established just because a new DW producer changes things in the show. We didn't delete the Stolen Earth page when Moffat retcon'd it away.
These characters and ranges add a wonderful touch of depth and diversity in the DWU, there's something for everyone with these characters, and to exclude them because of one persons opinion, (which their actions had contradicted by setting them in the DWU in the first place) frankly robs this wiki of another opportunity to grow and better itself.
- Shambala108
184.147.8.78 wrote: I can't see why vienna is specifically singled out as not DWU as Graceless is essentially in the same situation (both originated in the Main range, spun off into their own range, and both are stated to be outside the DWU by their line producers) yet Graceless is in and Vienna is out?
See Thread:125464 for the explanation for why Vienna is not included on the wiki. I also suggest you read Tardis:Valid sources for an explanation of the wiki's policy on what we include.
- Quest?on
I thought the debate over Vienna's inclusion was still going on.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Regardless of that, my arguments in this thread do not change whether the Vienna series is included or not. Vienna herself first appeared in a DW story, and the one in WoBF does not reference any events in the Vienna series proper.
- SOTO
Bump. This box set is not currently considered {{invalid}} on the page, and all stories within are currently covered. This discussion died, but never came to a conclusion.
- Schreibenheimer
So this has been sitting for almost four years. Since this thread started, All-Consuming Fire was released and made the boundary between the Big Finish Sherlock and the Whoniverse Sherlock much less defined. I don't particularly have any stake in this, but I don't believe anything new is going to be brought to the discussion, so a decision should probably be made.
- Scrooge MacDuck
I agree that if nothing else, the presence of the David Warner Mycroft should make it clear that the non-DWU characters are being temporarily merged into the DWU for this story, not the reverse. So Rule 4 seems fulfilled.
- NateBumber
I think the fact that we’ve covered these stories as valid for several years without the sky falling indicates that there’s nothing wrong about them being covered on the wiki.
- Schreibenheimer
I just remembered another factor: this set featured the debut of Edwin Turner as a companion to Iris Wildthyme, and he continues on into her next box set. So, contrary to CzechOut's earlier assertion, I would claim that this is not a minor release for her range.
- OttselSpy25
We now have precedent for this issue in another forum. Thread:213311 clearly covers this topic pretty thoroughly. Crossover stories that mix DWU elements with content we don't cover should be covered in full, otherwise our pages frankly become incomplete. As mentioned in that thread, it would be like trying to cover the trial sements in Trial of a Time Lord without what they're watching, it's impossible. Czech's argument that we should just skip the story because it doesn't feel super important is also without precedent in literally any debate we've ever had, with total respect to him.
- Schreibenheimer
Yeah, that does seem pretty applicable to this case. Does anyone have a dissenting opinion?
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:168912
Without going into spoilers, Big Finish is going to release a crossover box set similar to "Worlds of Doctor Who" next year, but with non-BBC owned characters this time.
So, how do we approach it? Across 6 connected episodes, it will feature Benny, Amy i Zara, Iris Wildthyme (characters who fall entirely under the scope of this wiki), but also Sherlock Holmes, Dorian Gray and Vienna Salvatori, whose individual series are not within this wiki's scope (although I still think Vienna's should, but that's another thread).
So, question is - do we include all of it, and consider the appearances of Sherlock, Dorian and Vienna to be crossovers with the DWU just like their appearances in All-Consuming Fire, Shades of Gray and The Shadow Heart? Or, if their episodes don't include the other main characters, we don't include them in this wiki?
Personally, I'd include them all even if the Dorian and Sherlock episodes don't feature Benny, Graceless and Iris, as otherwise it would probably make it more of a mess than it's worth.
- Shambala108
This topic has already been started. It's located at Thread:168898, since it seems to be an inclusion debate.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Sorry, you're right, please delete this thread then. :)
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:169408
I was recently trying to edit Artefacts of Rassilon into a proper article instead of a list-based article.
We have both the Artefacts of Rassilon page and the Category:Artefacts of Rassilon.
Surely to be in either the category or on the article they should actually be named an "artefact of Rassilon" or least have the Seal of Rassilon and said to be "one of the artefacts"?
But looking at some articles like Rassilon's gauntlet it seems to be in that category because Rassilon used it / created it.
Even more vague in the assignation of the category is White-Point Star which is only linked to Rassilon by way of him using a specific one.
So, I propose that to be an "Artefact of Rassilon" it actually needs to be named as such.
- Quest?on
Makes sense to me.
But my guess is that it's not going to turn out to be that clear. I don't think we have a good, working definition of "artefact of Rassilon", which is why there's this confusion in the first place.
More research is clearly indicated.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:169439
We currently have two pages for the same item: Olveron Cluster and Overon Cluster. Does anyone have a definitive spelling for this item? They need to be merged (or one needs to be deleted), but it can't be done until the correct spelling is determined.
- Tangerineduel
Olveron Cluster is linked to The Caretaker (TV story) page while Overon Cluster isn't.
I've watched it back and you do need to listen to it twice but the Ol is there.
- PicassoAndPringles
The iPlayer subtitles use "Olveron".
- Shambala108
Not sure what you mean by Overon not linking to The Caretaker, but it has the same content as Olveron and uses The Caretaker as its only source.
- Tangerineduel
The Caretaker links to Special:WhatLinksHere/Olveron_Cluster.
Whilst Overon has no links except to this discussion Special:WhatLinksHere/Overon_Cluster.
In any case, I've now placed a {{merge}} tag there so we don't ultimately forget again.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:169488
We currently have two pages for the same character from The Fires of Pompeii (TV story): Rombus and Rhombus. Does anyone have a definitive spelling for this character? The articles need to be merged (or one needs to be deleted), but it can't be done until the correct spelling is determined.
- DrWhoFanJ
Rombus should be kept, and if Rhombus is the right name, it should be renamed.
- Shambala108
I'm afraid I need more of a reason than "should be kept". Do you have any valid source that says Rombus is the correct spelling?
- Rob T Firefly
Since the name only comes from dialogue, I think the only way to settle this is if someone puts in the episode with captions and sees which spelling has been "published" in that manner.
- DrWhoFanJ
I mean it's got more content. Rhombus could redirect there for now. If Rhombus is right, they'll swap.
- Shambala108
DrWhoFanJ wrote: I mean it's got more content. Rhombus could redirect there for now. If Rhombus is right, they'll swap.
The amount of content is not at all a reason for keeping one over the other. Why create more work for later? We want to get it right now, not just make an assumption and expect someone to fix it later if/when someone remembers.
Per Thread:127706, when other sources fail to give a correct spelling, the DVD subtitles are used. I've checked the other sources and there is no spelling given, so it's up to the subtitles now.
- CzechOut
Yep, agreed, this is exactly the sort of situation that Thread:127706 was trying to solve. It's really important to have a clear hierarchy of authority for such cases, because it's well known that the Red Bee (i.e. UK) subtitles are different from the ones done stateside for BBC America, and these may differ again from the official DVD/BR release. Since home media is the best shot the whole planet has to seeing the same thing, they must take precedence. So, has anyone checked their DVDs for season 4 so that we can declare a winner and close this thread?
- Shambala108
Region 1 DVD subtitles spell it "Rhombus".
- Mewiet
U.S. Netflix subtitles spell it as "Rhombus" as well (for what little that's worth), but unfortunately I don't have the boxset to double check it against.
- DrWhoFanJ
Don't forget:
If a name sounds like a word, the subtitles will automatically spell it as the word unless specified otherwise.
- DrWhoFanJ
I've just watched the relevant section of the Region 2 DVD, and it shows Rombus (no 'h').
- Digifiend
CzechOut wrote: Since home media is the best shot the whole planet has to seeing the same thing, they must take precedence. So, has anyone checked their DVDs for season 4 so that we can declare a winner and close this thread?
So much for that then. So if I understand right, Region 1 and Region 2 DVDs don't match up? I thought the only differences between US and UK DVDs for the exact same thing (in this case, new series 4) would be NTSC vs PAL and region encoding. Not content.
- 80.252.65.157
Digifiend wrote: So much for that then. So if I understand right, Region 1 and Region 2 DVDs don't match up? I thought the only differences between US and UK DVDs for the exact same thing (in this case, new series 4) would be NTSC vs PAL and region encoding. Not content.
So which one are we going to use?
- Shambala108
It's not a simple matter of deleting one page, as both pages have content and page history. We therefore need to merge the pages, and we just need a ruling from CzechOut as to whether to go with Rombus (as spelled by the region 2 DVD subtitles).
- SOTO
Would it be helpful for me to check the region 1 subtitles in the interval? I suppose we may as well just wait for someone with the region 2 DVD, since that's going to be the determining factor anyways.
- Shambala108
Both the region 1 and region 2 subtitles are already posted in this thread.
- SOTO
Ope, you're right, must have missed that when I scanned the thread. So it would seem Rombus is the correct spelling here. I'm cool with waiting longer for another opinion, though.
- Digifiend
- Rob T Firefly
If Region 2 says "Rombus" while Region 1 says "Rhombus," it would make sense to me to give the R2 release's version priority. The show comes from the BBC which lives in Region 2.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:169531
Trey really only called herself that once, to distinguish herself from then-present Romana II in Renaissance (audio story). In other stories, especially in her now first story as the ONLY Romana there, she's just "Romana". Therefore maybe we should rename her to either "Romana (Trey)" or "Romana (Renaissance)", at least until we know for certain what's her incarnation number.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:169815
Has a category like this been considered? Something like:
Category:Planets visited by Bernice Summerfield
Since she's more than just an average companion. Thoughts? ----Ebyabe (talk) 17:21, February 9, 2015 (UTC)
- Shambala108
I'm against it. I don't see that it's a necessary category. In addition, if we allow this, then we'd have people asking for Category:Planets visited by Sarah Jane Smith, Category:Planets visited by the Brigadier, and so on and so on. Our category system is already quite complicated and cumbersome. Our time as editors is better spent on creating and expanding articles (as you've been doing for example), rather than further organizing the pages we already have.
That being said, I appreciate that you brought the subject up here first, instead of just creating the categories, to allow for discussion. I'm sure there are several users who will disagree with me.
- PicassoAndPringles
I support the creation of this category. Bernice is really the most prolific interplanetary adventure in the DWU other than the Doctor. The only other person I can think of who has gone to a large number of planets independent of the Doctor is maybe Iris Wildthyme. So I don't think there will be a snowball effect, and there are no policies against the category.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Indeed, Sarah Jane Smith and the Brigadier didn't really have any interplanetary travels without the Doctor, unlike Benny.
- Tangerineduel
I'm in two minds about it.
I agree with Shambala108. Our category system is already massively over complicated. I would ask why we need this category? Benny's page while long is not as lengthy or as complicated as any of the Doctors'. Will having this category assist us in the future, will it create an information source or assist us in creating further pages/content?
Next, where is our threshold for this type of category creation? I don't think we need a policy as PicassoAndPringles suggests. Just because we don't have a policy preventing its creation is not an argument for it to exist.
I do agree with JagoAndLitefoot that unlike most other companions who were prolific after they left the Doctor Benny is the exception that she travelled (and had her own series) after she left the Doctor's travels. So by this metric Iris Wildthyme should also get a similar category as Benny, if we're going down this path.
- CzechOut
I'm for it. And, as Tangerineduel has noted, we should also have one for Iris. And if there were a snowball effect and you did one for all the companions, I personally wouldn't have a problem. I think the old categorical guideline applies: as long as your category has (the potential for) three members, then it can be created. Now, I'm not saying that every 3-member notion should be put into a category, but as we've no objection to the "planets visited by the Doctor" categories — and because there's no graceful way to collect this data through an SMW template — I don't have a problem with "planets visited by <whoever>" for any long-serving recurring character, really.
- SOTO
I'm in favour as well. I'm interested as to why this hasn't been done yet. Have we simply forgotten?
Also, would this mean a broader category:Locations visited by Bernice Summerfield as well, as we have for the Doctor, or would this branch be restricted to planets?
- Tangerineduel
Probably forgotten as we're swinging around to almost 12 months since this was discussed.
If we're going to mirror the Doctor's categories then we should go the whole hog, the category data might be useful in the future. It'll also function as an upper level category for the 'planets/moons etc visited' for Benny.
- SOTO
Yes, I agree. If we're going to do this, it can't be inconsistent.
- TheChampionOfTime
Yesterday, AdricLovesNyssa added planets visited by River Song as a category for Syra. Seeing as River is now the star of her own spin-off, I think this category should be kept. What do you think?
- TheChampionOfTime
It's been over two years since this discussion began. Any chance an admin could sign off on the creation of category systems for locations visited by Iris and Benny? Those two are seemingly uncontroversial.
At this point, I'd say a different discussion should be opened for propositions of categories for other characters who visited a great deal of locations without the Doctor. (ex. Honoré Lechasseur, Emily Blandish, Erimem, Jack Harkness, Henry Gordon Jago, George Litefoot, etc) It's already been far too long.
- Thefartydoctor
Just to throw my two pence in, as I wasn't aware of this discussion, I also agree with the proposal. Both Bernice and River should have their own planets categories. It's clear that what connects these companions (and maybe Jack too) is that they're well known for their space travels beyond the TARDIS. Someone mentioned Sarah Jane and the Brig. The reason they're not comparable here is those characters are extremely Earth based. It wouldn't be appropriate.
- TheChampionOfTime
I got the impression from the first two posts of 2016 that this would be more than just the planets visited by _______.
Category:Locations visited by Bernice Summerfield would contain similar subcategories to Category:Locations visited by the Eighth Doctor. I think the thing that should matter is that a character has visited a great number of places without the Doctor; whether these places are on Earth should not matter.
- OttselSpy25
The proposal truly makes sense, more for Benny than the others arguably, because BS has had a long series of stand-alone adventures. She's easily the star of her own series at this point.
Consequently, it is reasonable to create Category:Locations visited by River Song, etc. for each of these three titular characters, complete with all the appropriate subcategories that already exist for the thirteen incarnations of the Doctor (pruning away subcategories lacking three members).
However, this decision should not be construed as a blanket ruling affecting every character who visited three locations in their life, which after all applies to almost everybody. While there is no harm in adding three leads to thirteen Doctors, swamping category lists with dozens of longish category titles like Category:Planets visits by Blon Fel-Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen would make bottoms of the pages significantly less readable and, hence, less useful. In general, creation of such categories should better be decided on a case by case basis.
It should be noted that at the moment we know of much fewer travels of River than of Benny or Iris. This should not be viewed as a reason to wait with categories for River until she catches up. Rather, it gives us an advantage as the more she travels, the more effort will have to be put into creating her categories from scratch.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:169867
On the 16th February 2005, the 'TARDIS Information System' wikicity was founded by Freethinker1of1. Celebrating a decade of Doctor Who Wikia!
Names of the wiki over the years:
TARDIS Information System (Feb 16, 2005 - Feb 21, 2005)
TARDIS Index File (Feb 16 2005 - Mar 6, 2010)
TARDIS Data Core (Mar 6, 2010 - present)
- Digifiend
The wiki has only been called Tardis Data Core since 10 January 2013. See the history at File:Wiki-wordmark.png
- President Borusa
I found an edit of the main page with the Data core logo from March 6 2010.
Also, strictly speaking, the wiki was founded on 11 November 2004 by user:Mantrid, and the date you give was in fact the first edit. It is not necessarily known who was the IP user who made this first edit, but it may well have been user:Freethinker1of1. He is not, however, the founder, despite what he may have claimed when he was around. See Tardis:About for more information.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:170312
Okay, so a few years ago I was able to reverse engineer which character in The Mind of Evil was meant to be James Stevens, the character from the novel Who Killed Kennedy. My findings and images were swiftly deleted by Czech, however, who I'm sure presumed my postings to be wild, unfounded speculation. Fast forward to present day, and I now have a colour copy of episode one, where I originally found Stevens (thanks Babelcolour) and I have decided to post about my findings and attempt to show that what I discovered, and to show that it was more than over-zealous speculation.
Now, when people in the past have attempted to spot James, they have started with the early chapters, where James is at the press conference from Spearhead from Space (TV story). The only issue with searching through this section is, as others have noted, that James is pretty vague about where he is at the press conference. He just recounts what happens (with an odd among of clarity, mind you. Anyone else ever bothered by the fact that everyone in the Whoniverse has 20/20 memory) and takes claim to dialogue that obviously belongs to other characters. There's nothing to point to his identity or even where he is in the room. Everything after this initial scene is just a vague description, meaning that this path is a dead end.
Now, this leaves only one other scene in the book where James claims to be in action during a scene that we actually saw on television, and that is during Chapter Nine, where he sneaks into the initial public test of the Keller Machine - which parallels the same scene in The Mind of Evil line by line.
At the start of the scene, James recalls studying the machine, and comparing it to soemthing more familiar.
"On a low metal trolley sat a squat, upright cylinder made of some opaque plastic or glass, topped with a dark dome. The cylinder was set into a control unit the size of a briefcase. A series of spiralled wires led from this unit to a white plastic dome over a padded leather chair with metal arm rests. The dome's positioning over the chair was not unlike that of a hair dryer in a beauty salon, but there was something altogether more sinister about this contraption. Eventually I realized what the assemblage of machinery most reminded me of - an electric chair."
Note that at the beginning of the scene in Mind, we get a quick shot of a man in a brown coat with long sideburns eying up the Keller machine. This may seem like conjecture at this point, but very quickly it will become clear that this character follows the actions described by Stevens, down to the letter.
"Several prison guards in their black uniforms lurked at the sides of the room to dissuade us from taking a closer look at the device, so I took a chair against the wall and sat down to wait. The seats around me quickly filled up, leaving only two chairs in the front row empty. After a few minutes two latecomers entered, looking slightly flustered. The woman was small, mousy and had a pleasant face. But the man accompanying her was instantly recognizable to me from the times others had described his appearance - it could only be the Doctor!"
Now, here Stevens claims that he took a seat in the back row, and was quickly surrounded by his peers. He then asserts that the Doctor and his assistant sit down in the front row in the only two available seats. Looking at the source material, we can note that when Pertwee and Jo do indeed sit down, and that directly behind them in the same man noted before.
In WKK, James notes down everything that both the scientists and the Doctor says during this scene. We can note that the brown-coated figure does seem to take very close notice of the Doctor whenever he speaks, and that he glances at the Doc and Jo far more often than anyone else in the room.
"Again, he was interrupted by an impertinent voice from the audience, speaking in rich, fruity, rounded tones. I caught sight of the person making the interjections - it was the Doctor. ‘People who talk about infallibility are usually on very shaky ground!"
This basically runs like this up to after the use of the Keller machine. Now, up to this point I think it's clear that everything that I have pointed out is mere speculation -- indeed, with the evidence that I have pointed out, any man in that room could have been James Stevens, just as before. The descriptions in the book make only a vague connection to the scene at all.
However, it is the final part of the scene which concretely proves that this man is indeed Stevens. In WKK, after the experiment is done, everyone in the room but the Doctor, Jo, and the Keller representatives leave. James, however, decides to stay behind to ease drop, pretending to look at the Keller machine.
Around me the audience of observers got up and began leaving the room, whispering excitedly between themselves. Noticing the Doctor and his companion were advancing towards Kettering and the governor, I hung about just within earshot, doing my best to look knowledgeable as I examined the Keller Machine close-up."
Now, let's look at MoE, and examine what the brown-coated man does. As you can see to the right, he stands awkwardly after the others leave, and seems to stare at the Doctor and Jo. After a moment, he walks up to the Keller machine, and seems to bow down to "examine" it. At this point, he is the only person left in the room, and constantly lingers in the background of the shot. After the Doctor leaves, Kettering looks as if he is about to say something, until he stops and finally notices the lone man studying the Keller machine.
"At this point the governor moved to stop the disagreement becoming more heated. Noting my presence in the chamber, he suggested they continue their discussion later."
This makes it abundantly clear that this man noted above continuously in The Mind of Evil was, in fact, meant to be James Stevens. He is the only person studying the machine at the end of the scene, and the only person who sticks around after staring at the Doctor for some time. For conclusive proof that this is meant to be something you can piece together, here is the author's commentary on Chapter 9:
"Much of the chapter is devoted to the events seen in The Mind of Evil. Stevens blags his way into the demonstration of the Keller Machine at Stangmoor Prison and gets his first sighting of the Third Doctor. Much of the dialogue in the middle of this chapter is cheekily lifted from the TV story. If you own a copy of The Mind of Evil, see if you can spot which of the observers is Stevens."
The author of Who Killed Kennedy was a huge Pertwee fan, and multiple parts of the book tie into other scenes in other episodes, including a phone call in Spearhead which Stevens receives in the book. So it's no surprise that he would watch this scene so closely and would try so hard to put in these clues as to which reporter was, in fact, Stevens.
I don't think that there's much discussion to be had on whether this is purposeful; it clearly is. I think the question is if we should count it as totally legitimate. Should we put images from this scene of this person on the James Stevens page? Should we try to figure out what extra this is, and credit him as JS's actor? Should we add a definitive appearance to his page for MoE?
My opinion? I think we should. I think that we should treat this scene as a novelization and take this background character as being one in the same with Stevens. But as there has been some discrepancies in the past, I'll open this discussion to the forum. Is this enough textual evidence to support the idea? Should we take this seriously?
- CzechOut
Extrapolation is disallowed in in-universe sections, as are notes from commentaries. As you've put it, you're "reverse engineering", which isn't what we do here. It's interesting speculation, and I think it does have a place in James Stevens#Behind the scenes, but I would be wholly opposed to any of these images being used as the infobox image, or claiming that the extra depicted here was playing James Stevens.
We don't know for certain that this is Stevens, either through a credits list or dialogue in the episode, nor any in-universe portion of WKK.
What you're trying to do here is the equivalent of calling The Woman (The End of Time) "the Doctor's mother", just because that's what Julie Gardner says in the commentary to TEOT.
And that's just not cricket.
- OttselSpy25
We don't know for certain that this is Stevens, either through a credits list or dialogue in the episode, nor any in-universe portion of WKK.
Except we do. As I said. I didn't just choose a random man and say that he must be stevens because he was there. In WKK, Stevens says
Around me the audience of observers got up and began leaving the room, whispering excitedly between themselves. Noticing the Doctor and his companion were advancing towards Kettering and the governor, I hung about just within earshot, doing my best to look knowledgeable as I examined the Keller Machine close-up... At this point the governor moved to stop the disagreement becoming more heated. Noting my presence in the chamber, he suggested they continue their discussion later.
And in the episode, there is only one person who only one person who is "studying" the keller machine at the end of the scene, and that's this man. It's like a novel, it's pretty easy to figure out which person he's meant to be. Yes, I did say that the things that I was noting were irrelevant and conjecture-y, but only up to this part, because this is pretty conclusive, and it's pretty clear that this is meant to be him. So, yes, we do know that this is for certain James Stevens. I would suggest reading the brief scene and then watching the scene in the episode, there's not a lot of room for confusion.
- At this point the governor moved to stop the disagreement becoming more heated. Noting my presence in the chamber, he suggested they continue their discussion later.
Not one bit of that occurs. The governor doesn't move to stop the disagreement becoming more heated. The presence of the mystery man you're calling Stevens isn't noted. And no one, least of all the governor, suggests that the discussion between the Doctor and Kettering be continued later.
And our rule on novelisation (and by logical extension, novels that contain elements of novelisation) is is that, in the case of discrepancies, the scene as recorded is the one we go with.
Beyond that, the guy you're talking about is Arthur Linwood. TMOE is pretty clear on that point, naming the body of the guy you've taken all these screenshots of.
WKK, as far as I can tell, appropriates the televised Linwood and tries to insist that whom we're seeing on screen is Stevens, or at least that both Stevens and Lindwood were on screen. But it doesn't appear so. Instead, what happens is that Linwood is the one lurking around the machine, and the one who's found dead on the floor later, and the one on whom an autopsy is carried out.
Sorry, but there really isn't anyone who could plausibly be Stevens that's actually on screen.
It's really important to remember that TMOE was first released to home video in 1998, whereas WKK was released in 1996. So David Bishop likely was working off his memory of the episode — or, more likely, the novelisation — not the kind of careful study that we can do today.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:170367
Is there a way for any of the following to be de-linked on the pages they are on so as to no longer appear on the list of wanted pages?
- Shambala108
It's not that big a deal for these things to be on the wanted pages list, because that list will never be empty — there will always be new redlinks created.
Since we don't know what these redlinks are for, it's better to leave them alone. Making quality articles should be our priority.
Unfortunately, there's no way to create demonstrative redlinks without having them appear in the list of wanted pages.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:170576
Well, it's done. It took 3 months longer than expected, but I have completed my objective of cleaning up the Doctor pages to suit the new wiki format, as well as adding necessary character information and removing unnecessary natter.
Now, it's time to take a vacation and focus on my college studies.
Goodbye, and you're welcome TARDISWiki
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:171578
There's an interesting merge debate going on in the talk pages of Romana III and Trey which leads to a larger issue about Romana incarnations.
Basically, we have the Romana III character from the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures. She was created by Paul Cornell, modelled in prose descriptions on actress Louise Brooks, and she was an antagonist to the then-current TARDIS crew. She appeared in The Shadows of Avalon, The Ancestor Cell, and The Gallifrey Chronicles.
Much later, we were given the character of "Trey." Played by Juliet Landau and first appearing as an illusory Matrix-projected future self of Romana II (Renaissance, Ascension) who named herself "Trey" (which happens to mean "three" and is a standard nickname for anyone whose name bears a III suffix), Landau's portrayal of Romana later appeared as a genuine future incarnation reminiscing about her former two (Ward and Tamm) incarnations in Luna Romana. The Landau Romana then took the lead in the Gallifrey story Intervention Earth.
James Goss (writer of Renaissance, creator of the Trey incarnation) said on page 17 of Vortex #56:
Big Finish has let me have the most fun. Every time, it’s something amazing. Would you like to write for Servalan? Fancy giving Liz Shaw a mother? Sticking Celia Imrie in a nuclear bunker? And now, ‘Would you like to create a future Romana’?
Well, yes, durr. Of course, there have been other future Romanadvoratrelundars (remember Paul Cornell’s brilliantly glacial flapper?), but still. Creating someone who can stand up to Lalla Ward took a lot of thinking about. And the answer in the end was obvious. When I worked at the BBC it was full of a certain kind of manager – very friendly, very powerful, very deadly.
Lady Trey (as she becomes known, for simplicity’s sake) had a lot to deal with, many tough choices to make, and a universe to save – and yet she’s done it all with a big smile, and one eye out for her next meeting. And it’ll be a tough one – because it never stops being tough for Lady Trey.
So, according to Goss Trey is definitely not the same incarnation as the Brooks version. But on the other hand, we have Scott Handcock (writer/director of Intervention Earth) and Gary Russell (director of Reneaissance and Ascension) expressing their own intent that Trey is the third incarnation of Romana, on the Big Finish Forum Handcock writes "In our minds, she was always intended to be the third..." and "I seem to recall I got the 'Trey' gag and Gary didn't... so who knows what we intended collectively! :P" Russell follows that with "I always thought she was the one who replaced the Lalla Ward version..."
So, we need to figure out how to set this all up in this wiki. Fandom has long called the Brooks incarnation "Romana III," and that's who is in the article by that name on this wiki, but her III-ness is now being brought into question by the presence of the Landau incarnation.
So, how do we figure all this? I don't think we should merge Trey with Romana III because, as above, they are definitely different characters, but should we do something about calling one or the other of them the third Romana? T:ROMANA would seem to favor us calling at least one of these Romanas "Romana III" if we can solidly cite either of their III-ness; have either of them been specifically referred to in-universe as the third Romana in any of their media? If not should we sidestep the number three instead, perhaps by renaming the pages to "Romana (Shadows of Avalon)" and "Romana (Luna Romana)"?
- Mewiet
Just because Goss says one thing and Handcock/Russell say another in interviews doesn't make either correct. If Handcock and Russell have shown in-universe that they are the same character, then it doesn't matter what Goss said, the pages should be merged. The fact that she calls herself "Trey" in and of itself is a pretty big check under the in-universe Romana III evidence column.
- JagoAndLitefoot
This is my proposed merged version: User:JagoAndLitefoot/Romana III
I think Goss has been misinterpreted, and meant simply that he didn't base his version on Cornell's, not that it's not the third incarnation. And even then, the two versions of Romana III ended up being quite similar anyway (any differences in characterization are no greater than with other recurring characters with different writers). If there end up being major discrepancies, we can always say that "according to one account..." etc.
- Rob T Firefly
This is still more speculation and inferring than actual content. We simply don't have any in-universe information to suggest that the Landau and Brooks incarnations are meant to be the same character, and a lot of behind-the-scenes data declaring that they aren't. The fact that they are both thought of as the third Romana by their respective creators in separate media ranges doesn't warrant merging the two distinctly-crafted and portrayed characters into one in this encyclopedia.
- OttselSpy25
Do we even have any info to suggest that what we call Romana III was every literally called the third Romana, or is that just fan foddler? Either way, I'd say combining them is not the answer. They appear to be completely different characters made years apart, and it would be much more logical to simply keep them separated.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Well, they are the same character in that they are the third incarnation of Romana. Similarly to how we have various accounts on the late life of the Brigadier, we can have different accounts on the third incarnation of Romana, but I don't think it makes sense to keep them separate. We can simply state that "one account states this" and "another account states that".
If we do establish that they are both the third incarnation, I see no reason for separate pages. If all incarnations of Romana were on one page, these would similarly go under one heading, with different paragraphs saying that "this account says that..."
- OttselSpy25
What's happened is that two different sources have created a third incarnation for Romana. We can't put one over another, that's against policy. However, we also can't pretend that they don't contradict and are the same character, because that's also against the rules. It would be like combining this Ninth Doctor with this ninth Doctor and this Ninth Doctor because they're all "Ninth Doctors" technically.
- Rob T Firefly
JagoAndLitefoot wrote: Well, they are the same character in that they are the third incarnation of Romana.
But so far as I can tell neither are explicitly stated in-universe as the third incarnation, just post-Lalla. The idea that either is meant to be the one who directly follows the Ward incarnation may have been intended by their respective creators, but I don't believe this has ever been set in stone in the actual prose or audio. We shouldn't be calling Landau or Brooks "III" for the purposes of this wiki, unless/until some citeable in-universe source for that information exists.
I really think we need to just move them to "Romana (Shadows of Avalon)" and "Romana (Luna Romana)", perhaps keeping the "Trey" entry strictly for Landau's portrayal of a Matrix projection of Romana in the Gallifrey stories Renaissance and Ascenscion (who isn't actually the same character as the flesh-and-blood Landau incarnation of Romana from Luna Romana onward.)
- OttselSpy25
Rob T Firefly wrote:
JagoAndLitefoot wrote: Well, they are the same character in that they are the third incarnation of Romana.
But so far as I can tell neither are explicitly stated in-universe as the third incarnation, just post-Lalla. The idea that either is meant to be the one who directly follows the Ward incarnation may have been intended by their respective creators, but I don't believe this has ever been set in stone in the actual prose or audio. We shouldn't be calling Landau or Brooks "III" for the purposes of this wiki, unless/until some citeable in-universe source for that information exists.
I really think we need to just move them to "Romana (Shadows of Avalon)" and "Romana (Luna Romana)", perhaps keeping the "Trey" entry strictly for Landau's portrayal of a Matrix projection of Romana in the Gallifrey stories Renaissance and Ascenscion (who isn't actually the same character as the flesh-and-blood Landau incarnation of Romana from Luna Romana onward.)
Completely agree.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Fair enough, until there's an in-universe source that says that either of them follows Ward directly, probably neither of them should be at III at this point.
- OttselSpy25
JagoAndLitefoot wrote: Fair enough, until there's an in-universe source that says that either of them follows Ward directly, probably neither of them should be at III at this point.
I would argue that even if both sources clearly identified them as III that they're still 'not' the same incarnation, and thus should not share the same page.
- HarveyWallbanger
I agree with JagoAndLitefoot (whose work of merging is remarkable).
1) Both Romanas are involved in stories set in the main timeline, aren't they? If both mean to be the third incarnation of Romana, they are one character with conflicting accounts about her, to report on the same page. Moreover, I listened to Intervention Earth and, even if no one gives indisputable details, there is a clear hint to the previous incarnation of "Trey" as the Romana II we know well.
2) I would agree to keep two different pages for the incarnations only if we erase any reference to "third incarnation", replaced by "a future incarnation". If we can't find any in-narrative evidence.
- OttselSpy25
I think this conversation is starting to go in loops.
I suggest that someone drag out some text specifics. Anyone wanna look into the older book where this character comes from? Comparing the two directly might be useful in noting key differences. I have a feeling that isn't so, the descriptions sure don't seem to add up.
Reminds me of all those odd-ball Short Trip Doctors. Usually dark little stories with strange alternate Doctors, but still valid to us. If one of those Doctors had been called the "Twelfth Doctor," we wouldn't merge the two pages because one is still this odd little thing with red hair and sandles. They would both be "Twelfth Doctors," but surely not the same one. We don't even have the Shalka Doctor and the Cabinet of Light Doctor combined, despite both being around at the same time with similar descriptions, because the author of the later said they're not the same. So they're not. Simple as that.
- AdricLovesNyssa
As I've said on the Talk page both Renaissance and Luna Romana also say that Landau follows Ward, Ward's Romana in her regeneration scene says My time is over and Trey's has begun and also in Luna Romana Landau's incarnation says that says that she was directly influenced by Ward's incarnation as she is her predecessor.
- OttselSpy25
Okay, so Trey is defiantly III then. What about the other one? Can anyone find proof that she is directly meant to be the first Romana past II?
- JagoAndLitefoot
Even if they weren't originally meant to be the same incarnation, some minor differences in physical description aside (not any more than with early book Benny vs. Lisa Bowerman, both are young women with dark hair and a fringe), there isn't really any information on the two third Romanas that is actually in conflict. Not any more than between book Romana II and "Gallifrey" Romana II characterization-wise. So I still don't see much of a reason to have separate pages for the two if they are found to both directly follow Lalla Ward.
I know that the *creator* of Trey didn't intend her to be the same Romana III as the one in the books, but in the end, she turned out to be similar enough that any discrepancies aren't really on the level of a red-haired Twelfth Doctor or Shalka Doctor and Eccleston.
- OttselSpy25
JagoAndLitefoot wrote:
Even if they weren't originally meant to be the same incarnation, some minor differences in physical description aside (not any more than with early book Benny vs. Lisa Bowerman, both are young women with dark hair and a fringe), there isn't really any information on the two third Romanas that is actually in conflict. Not any more than between book Romana II and "Gallifrey" Romana II characterization-wise. So I still don't see much of a reason to have separate pages for the two if they are found to both directly follow Lalla Ward.Once again, a solid comparison here is between the Shalka Doctor and the Cabinet of Light Doctor. Both amazingly similar, to the point that most fans just presumed them to be the same, but not, as the creators have explained. In the same way that neither of the astronauts from Moon Landing are Neil Armstrong, we can't just presume that we're dealing with the same characters because we're trying to make it seem that all of these different stories don't contradict each other. They do, and each are painting completely different images of their own takes on the worlds. What will almost certainly happen in the future is that Big Finish will continue this Romana on a path that does not match with the other Romana at all, and then we're gonna have to split them up again because we really needed to have one page for two separate creations. Suggesting that these two could be the same character despite the fact that they're not is nothing more than speculation, and thus does not hold anything on this site.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Well, even if she continues on a separate path, this doesn't mean they cannot share one page. Just that we'll have to say that "this account" states that, and "another account" states a different thing. Similarly to how we deal with the late life of the Brigadier, which has lots of varied accounts of it.
If they are both confirmed to be the third incarnation of Romana, they are the same character, even if the accounts differ substantially (but so do Cyber-Brig and rejuvenated Brig from the books). The Doctor is a special case because he is the only character where a completely different version of an incarnation throws a story out of the "main" continuity for us, unlike Romana.
In fact, maybe we should simply merge Romana on one page, as we do with all the other Time Lords except the Doctor himself already? This would make it easier to make sense of differing accounts past her 2nd incarnation than the current version does.
- OttselSpy25
Oh, hardly. The many different incarnations of the Doctor aren't caused by confused timelines and schewed reality. They're just different writers going a bit crazy with what they can get away with at the time. If two different stories introduce two different Ninth Doctors or two different Tenth Doctors, we do not combine them because well technically...
Once again, we have two incarnations who do not look the same, do not act the same, and do not follow the same timeline. The creators say they are not the same. Nothing suggests that they're the same. So they're not.
- Rob T Firefly
They are different iterations of Romana, even if both are intended to be the third. We wouldn't mix the Richard E. Grant Doctor and the Eccleston Doctor into one just because both were intended to be the Ninth by their respective creators, even if one did subsume the other in the currently-produced line of Doctor Who. Mixing both Romanas into one article is really not the way to go.
If we do classify Landau as III, I believe the right move is still to move the Brooks incarnation to Romana (Shadows of Avalon) and keep the pages separate in the name of peace and sanity. The merged "in one account" / "in another account" stuff only really works if it's the same single character we're talking about, and this wiki has always treated different incarnations of Romana as their own character. These two are quite definitely not the same Romana incarnation, before or behind the scenes.
- HarveyWallbanger
I still think your line of reasoning is against our policies, because it gives priority to out-of-narrative statements and judgements. Our Wiki is full of uncompatible accounts about anyone and anything.
Uncompatible? Both Romanas, both Presidents, both "third incarnation" (if it is stated so for Romana III), both involved in and/or prepared to significant conflicts, both with black hair, a fringe and green eyes (!!!)... Maybe I don't understand why they must be different characters because I haven't read the "War" arc.
- OttselSpy25
Again, it isn't about that. Once again, imagine this. It'll be me making stuff up, but you'll get the idea.
Let's say that in a 2001 a short trip short story was published we were introduced to a "Twelfth Doctor". He is noted as being tall and thin, reasonably old, and with grey hair. It's said in the story that he has a Scottish accent. Very similar to the 12th Doc created years later. The story deals with him creating the Valeyard to attempt to live past his 13th life. When questioned about it, Moffat says that he had never heard of the story and that they are not meant to be related. On TARDIS we have a huge chat about if we can combine the two characters. But of coarse we can't, they aren't meant to be the same incarnation. Even if both are exactly the same in looks, voice, character, and number, they were created years apart by separate people during times when the franchise was much different.
Here the case is even more disparaging that that would be. Here we're dealing with a character meant as an antagonist vs one meant as a protagonist. Combining them is going against the wishes of their creators and is wildly speculating.
- HarveyWallbanger
There lies the problem: in your imaginary case, I would report the account in the Twelfth Doctor page.
But I do see your point, so I won't answer back. :-)
At least, under the evidences brought by AdricLovesNyssa, I hope we'll rename "Trey" as "Romana III" (Trey is a temporary nickname, after all).
- Rob T Firefly
"Trey" was the nickname used by a projection of a possible future Romana; important to note she was a construct of the Matrix, not Romana herself. The actual incarnation of Romana played by Landau who appears later is not "Trey" and did not herself do all that stuff in the Matrix, the Matrix just based its creation of Trey upon her.
Given all the discussion in this thread, I propose the following:
- Move Romana III to Romana (Shadows of Avalon)
- Move the info about the main Landau incarnation (appearing in Luna Romana onward) from Trey to Romana III
- Keep the Trey article for the Matrix projection of Romana from Renaissance and Ascension.
We can of course note all the relevant citable behind-the-scenes stuff in the articles' "behind the scenes" sections; this will be the place to note that Shadows Romana was informally known by fandom as Romana III and intended at the time to be the third, that Landau's Romana was intended by Big Finish to be the third while James Goss acknowledged Cornell's Romana to be a different future incarnation, etc.
Thoughts?
- HarveyWallbanger
Ok, but why shouldn't we leave Trey as a redirect to a sub-section of "Romana III"?
P.e. Sara Kingdom had a comparable fate (see "Legacy") but we still treat everything under the same page.
- JagoAndLitefoot
I'd keep Trey simply as part of the Romana III article. Just like we don't have articles for every projection/android double etc. of the Master, for example.
- Rob T Firefly
I think the difference between Trey and Romana is comparable to the difference between Land of Fiction Jamie and actual Jamie. One was a copy based on the other, but they are distinct characters with separate origins rather than one character and their own avatar, double, or disguise.
- OttselSpy25
Rob T Firefly wrote: I think the difference between Trey and Romana is comparable to the difference between Land of Fiction Jamie and actual Jamie. One was a copy based on the other, but they are distinct characters with separate origins rather than one character and their own avatar, double, or disguise.
By that logic, shouldn't the projection be known as Trey (Matrix)? Is that incarnation only known as Trey within the Matrix?
JagoAndLitefoot wrote: I'd keep Trey simply as part of the Romana III article. Just like we don't have articles for every projection/android double etc. of the Master, for example.
Well that's different really.
- Rob T Firefly
At this time the name "Trey" has only been used by the Matrix construct, not Romana proper.
- OttselSpy25
Okay, so I think that we've nearly sorted this out. However, before we can say that the Big Finish Romana III get the main title, we have to make sure that the novels do not say that their Romana is the third incarnation. Can anyone check their novels for proof?
- AdricLovesNyssa
just checked through the three books she appears in, is that on page 215 of the Shadows of Avalon it says The Doctor stepped between them. ‘Her name is Compassion. And you’ve regenerated. You look like my mother. How worrying.’ and nowhere mentions that she is the third incarnation in any of those books. So in that case there is not proof of the assumption that the book incarnation is the third incarnation, so shouldn't be presented as such on this wiki.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Looks like there's more in-story proof for the Big Finish Romana as Romana III than for the book one being the third version, if we discount out-of-universe sources.
- OttselSpy25
Certainly seems so.
- CzechOut
Yeah, not so fast.
You guys are proceeding from the false presumption that there's a way for the two not-televised Romanas to be rectified versus one another. You forget that BF delights in just ignoring book continuity and writing stories that are fundamentally incompatible with each other.
I think it's more likely that they're both intended as Romana III.
This is because The Ancestor Cell does, I think, make it plain that the Romana there is III. Indeed, we at Tardis didn't invent the term "Romana III"; that's been around since, IIRC, the introduction of the Cornell version in the 90s. And this what seems to be confirmed by the character of Kristeva, who tells the Doctor:
‘You left your friend Romana once,’ continued Kristeva. ‘She thinks she learned from you how to distinguish what to fight for and what to fight against. Directly from that, she started on her path to becoming President. She even invoked the right of challenge against the incumbent President, Flavia, for the first time in two hundred generations... '
Importantly, the occasion of this quote is the run-up to Romana's Reaffirmation Ceremony, where she reconfirms her oath of office. The implication is pretty obvious — Romana II came to power after Warriors' Gate and has been in power so long and so continuously that she's regenerated, become the Cornell version of III, and now has to reaffirm her oath of office. This is the successor of Romana II.
Indeed, this isn't just speculation. The Doctor explicitly says the Reaffirmation Ceremony is necessary because she's been in office for 150 years.
So in contrast to AdricLovesNyssa, I think there is strong narrative proof that the post-Ward Romana in the books is the third incarnation.
Thus, there are two ways to handle the situation that I can see.
We could do it like Rob has suggested and go with Romana (story name) and Romana (story name).
Or, and I think I prefer this, do it like we do where there are other contradictions between (comic) books and Big Finish: put it on the same page. After all, there are irresolvable differences in so many things:
- the way Six regenerated to seven
- the way Six encountered Mel for the first time,
- the way that Mel and Evelyn met for the first time
- the way that Ace was clearly and indisputably killed in the comic books, but alive elsewhere
- and tons of other stuff, both subtle and gross
By putting both characters on a page called Romana III, we're better able to reflect authorial intent, and explain the situation in a single behind-the-scenes section. And it's more truthful: BF and BBC Books are writing the same character, as far as I can tell: the direct successor to Lalla Ward.
- OttselSpy25
Well on that hand, I suppose that one page on Romana III explaining the different visions of the third incarnation of Romana but making it clear that they are not compatible is a viable choice.
- OttselSpy25
Just as long as we're not talking about the two incarnations as if they're compatible.
- CzechOut
Well, see, I'm not even sure, really, why this forum is necessary. Not that I want to discourage people talking, but this sort of thing happens all the time in Doctor Who. We don't create separate pages for Mel or Six or whoever just because stories give fundamentally different opinions about them.
I mean, one of the biggest things is the basic nature of the Doctor, as a gestalt character, himself.
Is he a sexual creature or not? Some books say one thing, most stories say another. Whether he's sexual or not is obviously fundamental to his character. But we don't really hold forum discussions on whether we should have First Doctor (An Unearthly Child) or First Doctor (Lungbarrow).
And, yanno, some authors have gotten the basic physical description of characters wrong/different. But if one author says the Fourth Doctor has green eyes and another says blue, we don't really say that there are two different Fourth Doctors.
My point is just that there might be a number of ways in which these two interpretations are compatible, no matter what the creators say. Cases like this are exactly why we stress narrative evidence on this wiki.
- AdricLovesNyssa
I agree with what CzechOut said and just merge the two pages into one page as that makes the most sense, and just have the usual One account say that .... and another says that .... etc because it does make sense that they are the same incarnation (possibly just at different points in her timeline). So maybe until Big Finish give us narrative evidence that they are different incarnations then merge, as all they have said in universe is that Landau immediately follows Ward.
- OttselSpy25
AdricLovesNyssa wrote: I agree with what CzechOut said and just merge the two pages into one page as that makes the most sense, and just have the usual One account say that .... and another says that .... etc because it does make sense that they are the same incarnation. (possibly just at different points in her timeline)
That's not really... They're-
ehhhh
- JagoAndLitefoot
They may be written differently, but it's not much different from the differences in characterization of other characters in non-televised media, as CzechOut said. I don't always agree with CzechOut in these kinds of discussions (in fact, more often than not, we tend to disagree e.g. on inclusion debates), but in this case it looks like we're in agreement.
- 64.119.149.98
Trey is the more likely third Romana incarnation.
The Romana is Shadows of Avalon was so much of a distortion of Romana, that it can't be taken seriously
Also the current story arc is compatible with lost Gallifrey
- AdricLovesNyssa
Some more evidence from relistening to Renaissance, II says that she will have to get used to her new Body, and that she stares her own death in the face.
Anyway should we have a vote on the merger? so that this can be sorted once and for all.
I vote for merging the two pages.
- Revanvolatrelundar
But how would Romana II have any idea that Trey is the incarnation after her?
The pages should be seperate, even if they are both intended to be Romana III they are both different iterations of the character. Trey gives us a nickname to call the page, so there really is no other reason to merge the pages other than speculation and neatness. The other other possibility is to do without the incarnation pages and have one large Romana article like we do with the Master.
- OttselSpy25
I'm only fine with the merge if we make it absolutely clear that the two are not meant to be the same and that the sources contradict each other. No attempting to pretend that it all makes sense and works together. Sense this does not seem to be the way we are going with this right now, I am against.
- AdricLovesNyssa
Revanvolatrelundar wrote: But how would Romana II have any idea that Trey is the incarnation after her?
In the same way that the Sixth Doctor knows that the Seventh Doctor is his next incarnation, which happens in Light at the End. Oh Scott Handcock in the Extra's also says Juliet is Romana 3 so maybe rename Trey to Romana III and Romana III to Romana (Shadows of Avalon) as suggested by someone earlier. About to relisten to Intervention Earth in my Gallifrey runthrough I'll see if there are any mentions in that.
- Revanvolatrelundar
But the Romana from Shadows of Avalon is Romana III, she states in that and The Ancestor Cell that she regenerated from Romana II to have a personality more suited for war. Just because the Landau Romana is more recent doesn't give it more precedence.
The reason we did away with the Master's incarnations was because they conflicted like this. It does seem more reasonable to me to just have the one Romana article, giving each incarnation their own header.
- AdricLovesNyssa
Reven where in The ancestor cell does it say that? (in case I missed it on my read through)
- Revanvolatrelundar
The bit I was remembering (It's been 10 years since I've read The Ancestor Cell) was where the Doctor notes the change in Romana, going so far as to say the Romana he knew had died. I recalled that the Doctor then makes references to Romana's direct predecessor, when in fact they both begin to talk about Romana I. There is reference to Romana being in office for 150 years by this point, but that's all it actually gives.
So yeah, there actually is nothing saying that the War Queen Romana is Romana III, which really further supports a one page article.
Going back to Trey, again there is nothing in-universe directly specifying that she is Romana III either. The more recent argument for Trey being Romana III in this thread comes from what Romana II says in Renaissance, leaving out the fact that Romana II would have as much idea as us what Romana III would look like.
So in conclusion, neither Romana actually has any in-universe claim over the title of Romana III. The most accurate we can be (the remit of this wiki, I might add) is to include each Romana on the main Romana article under headings such as "Trey" and "As War Queen of Gallifrey" or similar. That way we are attributing neither to being Romana III, whilst still remaining as objective as possible to what the stories tell us.
- AdricLovesNyssa
Ah ok, didn't see that when I read it recently. Also referring to info in Luna Romana it does say that Landau follows immediately from Ward, also in Intervention Earth, Narvin says that Trey is more ruthless than Romana II aligning the character towards Romana III in the books also since Narvin is also still CIA coordinator in this lifetime it also suggests this. (One last thing in my opinion is to be confirmed in the next Gallifrey release but that's not released so isn't allowed to be mentioned on here )
- Bwburke94
In my opinion, neither "third Romana" should be located at Romana III. Romana has two contradictory third incarnations within valid sources, similar to the various post-Survival incarnations of the Master.
I suggest Romana III (The Shadows of Avalon) and Romana III (Renaissance) for the page titles, which follows both T:ROMANA and T:ONE NAME. While I acknowledge that the version of Landau's Romana in Renaissance was a Matrix projection, the character of Romana as played by Landau made her debut in Renaissance, so T:ONE NAME obliges us to use that story if disambiguation is needed.
- OttselSpy25
I concur with... Bwurke? Bwurke.
- Bwburke94
OttselSpy25 wrote: I concur with... Bwurke? Bwurke.
BwBurke. There's another B in there.
- AdricLovesNyssa
Just so there is some conclusion to this debate so some action can be made, we have four situations that can happen.
1) Rename Romana III as Romana III (The Shadows of Avalon) and Trey as Romana III (Renaissance) (suggested by Bwburk94)
- Both have evidence that they are Romana III, no evidence that they are the same
2) Rename Trey as Romana III and Romana III as Romana (The Shadows of Avalon)
- More support (in that more appearances of Trey)
3) Merge Romana III and Trey into one account.
- There is no evidence that they aren't the same character
4) Do nothing
I shall rank my preferences, 3) 1) 2) 4) anyone else I shall place a message on Czechout and Rev's talk page to see if we can get a conclusion
- HarveyWallbanger
My rank is 3, 2, 1, 4
but, for Rassilon's sake, let's take any decision :-)
- OttselSpy25
Another choice is 5, combine all incarnations of Romana pages.
I rate the options 1, 5, 2, 3
- Bwburke94
I proposed option 1 because none of the other options seem satisfactory.
- Option 2: According to what Revan said above, there is in-universe evidence that prose Romana regenerated from Ward's Romana, so having the page "Romana III" switch from covering one to the other could be confusing. Furthermore, this would be indicating that we treat audio stories as more valid than prose stories, which is not the case.
- Option 3: We did not merge K9 Mark 2 with any other K9 article, despite it sharing its number with K9 Mark II. Why would we do this for Romana but not for the tin dog associated with her first two incarnations?
- Option 4: I admit that "Trey" is a valid name for Landau's Romana, per Ward's Romana referring to her future incarnation as Trey. However, the character is commonly known as Romana, and the name "Trey" is not unique in meaning "the third" within the DWU because of Trey Korte. Furthermore, this would continue to indicate that we treat prose stories as more valid than audio stories, which is not the case.
- Option 5: This is similar to the approach we take with the Master, but in the case of the Master we have no numbering to fall back on.
The other thing I'd like to bring up at this time is that whatever decision we make should become official policy. This may also be an opportunity to rewrite T:ROMANA and T:DOCTORS to cover the issues brought up by the two "third Romanas" and the War Doctor.
- Shambala108
Seems to me like a good time to make Romana's article like that of most other Time Lords. That is, combine all the pages into one. Only problem is the work involved (and it took a long time to get the Master article sorted out). Any of the other choices could at any time be turned upside down by the next published story. At least if the info is all on one page, then there would be no need for deleting or creating new articles with each published story.
- Revanvolatrelundar
We've done it with the Master and we've done it with River, I don't see why Romana should be any different. One article removes all off the obstacles of conflicting sources and we still have an accurate article. It's gotta be that for me.
- HarveyWallbanger
One single article.
- AdricLovesNyssa
Ah ok that sounds like a sensible way of doing it. Should we point a time limit on decisions say the 24th of October and see which has the most votes? Will merging the pages as we do for the master mean we would create the template things such as <nowiki>the Reborn Master<\nowiki> for each incarnation but what would we use for the book incarnation?
- OttselSpy25
I would say the 31st. Two weeks is the ideal time limit when our traffic is high. :p
- JagoAndLitefoot
I vote for merging all Romana articles. And for merging Romana III and Trey as second choice.
- Bwburke94
If we're merging Romana, let's kill two birds with one stone and also merge K9.
- OttselSpy25
- Shambala108
Bwburke94 wrote: If we're merging Romana, let's kill two birds with one stone and also merge K9.
Please stay on topic.
- Bwburke94
I propose that if we merge the articles:
- Romana I and Romana II should redirect to the appropriate sections of Romana's article, not to the lede of Romana's article
- Romana III should be a disambiguation page
- A new template, Template:Romana, should be created to make linking to the various Romanas easier (similar to the various Master templates, but technically only one template transcluding another template into itself)
- T:ROMANA should be rewritten to explain how the template works – I'll handle this part myself in a sandbox
- SOTO
I'm a bit confused about what you'd want to do with a single template. We need templates for the Master because in all cases (save Missy), he (again, save Missy) is to be referred to simply as "the Master", but needs linking to different sections of the article. An important question, should we do the Romana merge, is how we'll require linkage to be done. Right now, it's Romana I and Romana II, sure...but what about the others? If they're in separate sections on the merged article...how would policy dictate we link to them?
Also, and this may have been definitively answered upthread (I'm sorry if it was), but is there any actual proof that the incarnation we currently call Romana III is the third? It seems as though Trey definitely is, but is it clear that "Romana III" immediately follows Romana II? If not, then shouldn't both Trey and Romana III link to the section dealing with Trey, and the incarnation we currently understand as Romana III be in another section entirely, since the incarnation number is unclear? Is the incarnation number, in fact, unclear?
- Bwburke94
We allowed an implied (non-)regeneration in the Delgado/Pratt/Beevers debate, and according to what Revan said above, The Ancestor Cell at least implies and possibly confirms that prose Romana regenerated directly from Romana II.
As for your first question, T:ROMANA obliges us to use Roman numerals for Romana when disambiguating, so the first two are "Romana I" and "Romana II" and both thirds are "Romana III" - though it may be confusing on articles that involve both of them.
- OttselSpy25
The solution there is simple -- we note the discrepancy on the page. Once more, we can not try and suggest that these two sources don't contradict each other because they do.
I doubt that a dab page pointing to two different parts of the same article will stand. I say have Romana III redirect to the 'Trey' incarnation since it clearly is post-Ward and pre-novels, or not have the redirect at all
- SOTO
I'm still unclear on what you wanted to do with a Ronana template. In any case, is audio Romana confirmed to have directly regenerated from Romana II, or are we simply inferring from out-of-universe interviews for that assumption? If both are truly confirmed to be the third Romana, then I suppose you are right: both would be Romana III in the current policy.
- OttselSpy25
According to what Czech has pulled up as evidence (which I don't think is enough but whatever) there is a page where it's said that Romana had to be restated in office after her regeneration. Since it's said this only happened once (or is only mentioned as happening once) she must be one regeneration after the Lallamana.
Personally I'd say a redirect would do it's job. We needed a template mainly because of the fact that we didn't have decisive name for any Master and because of the difficulties of 'the Master' vs 'The Master.' Romana I, Romana II, and maybe Romana III all work.
- AdricLovesNyssa
In Luna Romana, Trey says she is the next incarnation from Ward, and in Renaissance when Romana II is regenerating she say my time is over and Trey's has begun.
- Bwburke94
AdricLovesNyssa wrote: In Luna Romana, Trey says she is the next incarnation from Ward, and in Renaissance when Romana II is regenerating she say my time is over and Trey's has begun.
That's the reason we treated "Trey" as a valid name for Landau's Romana.
- AdricLovesNyssa
yeah it's an Alias, but is it in universe proof that its Ward->Landau though Trey is a bit more ruthless witch fits the books as well
- Bwburke94
Other than myself, does anyone oppose the idea of a single Romana page?
- Mewiet
Bwburke94 wrote: Other than myself, does anyone oppose the idea of a single Romana page?
Yes. I think a multiple incarnations on a single page look cluttered and troublesome to edit. I've always hated the Master's page and I don't want the same for Romana.
- OttselSpy25
I'm mixed myself. I have often considered the Master's page to be a huge mess and possibly one of the biggest mistakes we've ever made on the site -- particularly in terms of listing appearances which is now a mess. On the other hand, it could help a lot in this case.
- AdricLovesNyssa
It could help, I personally would prefer just merging Trey and Romana III as there's no in universe explanation that they are not the same
- OttselSpy25
But combining two characters as one without in-universe evidence that they're the same and with out-of-universe evidence that they're not is total speculation. Not to mention the fact that Big Finish will eventually go places with this character that will undoubtedly not that seen in the novels.
- Bwburke94
AdricLovesNyssa wrote: It could help, I personally would prefer just merging Trey and Romana III as there's no in universe explanation that they are not the same
*headdesk*
We don't merge characters because there's no in-universe evidence they are separate. We have to take out-of-universe evidence as well for something as major as this, and out of universe these two third incarnations of Romana were not intended to be the same.
- SOTO
We have no evidence to support that those two incarnations are certainly the same, so unless such evidence comes out, merging the two post-II Romanas but not the others is not a valid option. The only real options here are either to have them all separate or to merge all the Romanas into one article, as we did with the Master.
- AdricLovesNyssa
yeah, the final evidence I need will come in the next gallifrey release but I can't use that yet. Merging it all will probably be the best way to do it.
- Bwburke94
There's still a lot to discuss in terms of redirects and sections on Romana's page.
- Bwburke94
It appears this discussion is stalled. Is a merger of the pages the final decision?
- Rob T Firefly
I maintain that merging the pages would be an entirely ludicrous thing to do for the very different Landau and Brooks incarnations.
- Bwburke94
Rob T Firefly wrote: I maintain that merging the pages would be an entirely ludicrous thing to do for the very different Landau and Brooks incarnations.
How is this any different than merging the Master onto one page?
- OttselSpy25
I think that he's confused. BWBURKE means murging all Romana pages, not just the two
- JagoAndLitefoot
We also have somewhat conflicting accounts of the Master post-Survival, and having one page for them all helps with that (even if it tends to be messy, I still believe it solves more problems than it creates). I think the same would work for Romana.
- OttselSpy25
Bwburke94 wrote: It appears this discussion is stalled. Is a merger of the pages the final decision?
I would say so, but it's still a little hard to say that definatively when we had less than three clear votes. Despite this, the fact that Rob was the only person to say it was a bad idea and that he seems to be confused on what we're voting on means that we can likely move forwards with the plans.
- Shambala108
In order to move forward with the plans, you would need the approval of User:Tangerineduel, who is the admin that performs mergers.
Just a reminder for those who don't know or who've forgotten, only admins are permitted to move pages, and only certain admins have the power to merge pages.
- Brianpanda
As a newcomer having looked through this thread it looks like we have in-universe evidence that Landau is Romana III. The BBC Books Romana seems to be vaguer, so I would prefer having an entry for Romana III that covered the Big Finish version (with a sub-section about Trey and a footnote about the BBC version which may or may not be the same incarnation) and a separate incarnation page for the BBC Books version with a note this is a post-II incarnation and that it is unclear whether it is just a different interpretation of III or a different, later incarnation. Unless of course Big Finish produce something which firmly ties Landau to the BBC books, which is unlikely to happen.
- Bwburke94
Before any official action takes place, can anyone back up the claim that prose Romana specifically states she regenerated from Ward's Romana?
- OttselSpy25
Here's what Czech says:
Importantly, the occasion of this quote is the run-up to Romana's Reaffirmation Ceremony, where she reconfirms her oath of office. The implication is pretty obvious — Romana II came to power after Warriors' Gate and has been in power so long and so continuously that she's regenerated, become the Cornell version of III, and now has to reaffirm her oath of office. This is the successor of Romana II.
Indeed, this isn't just speculation. The Doctor explicitly says the Reaffirmation Ceremony is necessary because she's been in office for 150 years.
Now he's suggesting that the need for the ceremony is that she's regenerated, yet he also claims that 8 suggests that it has to do with how long she's been in office period. In fact, despite him claiming that this is definitive proof and far from speculation, I'd say that there's still no in-universe evidence of it.
- Bwburke94
We used similar evidence to this for the "crispy Master = Delgado's Master" decision, and in any case if there's one article we can have them both be separate third Romanas similar to the post-Survival Master timeline.
- Constonks
You know, in-universe, I think they're the same (third) Romana. I really do. In my head, reading the opening to The Shadows of Avalon, I hear Juliet Landau's mostly-English accent.
But I don't think that we should treat them as the same on a non-speculative wiki unless (very unlikely) they are explicitly treated as the same character in and out of universe.
That being said, I'd say either a single Romana page or four separate Romana pages - Romana I / Romana II / Romana (Shadows of Avalon) / Romana (Renaissance) - neither is explicitly called the Third Romana even if both are heavily implied to be, so I think "Romana III" is right out at this point - in fact, for a while I was labouring under the assumption that Trey came later. She says that Romana spent "several lifetimes" rebuilding Gallifrey, after all.
Ultimately, I don't think it's clear enough to state as fact. We can go nuts in the Behind the Scenes sections - so should we.
Personally, my vote would be for four Romana pages, with only Tamm and Ward receiving the Roman numeral treatment. I say this because it seems cleaner and it's less of a massive undertaking. Failing that, a single Romana page seems like a good second choice to me.
- Bwburke94
A single Romana page seems like the option most of us support.
- HarveyWallbanger
May anyone/I set out in a sandbox the single Romana page, outcome of the multiple merging "most of us support"?
- SOTO
Feel free if you didn't already.
I think we should revisit the option of a merged Romana III, and simply describe the two versions there. One merged Master page was only necessary because we could not be sure about numbering. Both Romana IIIs appear to have been proven in this thread to follow Romana II, so for technical reasons, they should both be housed together at Romana III, I think, where we go into both accounts of the incarnation to follow her second.
- AdricLovesNyssa
I agree with your solution there and that's what I've always wanted to happen
- Constonks
There's no in-universe proof for either, though. Just implications. Never is it outright 100% stated that Brooks or Landau directly follows Ward, except outside the narrative. Any claims for either being "Romana III" should be relegated to a behind-the-scenes section, shouldn't they?
If we're agreed that they're two different incarnations, split them into "Romana (Renaissance)" and "Romana (Shadows of Avalon)". Treat them the way that future/unknown Doctors (ie. Cabinet of Light, Good Companions) are treated.
If we don't agree on that, the merged page for all Romanas makes a lot more sense than creating a vague "these two future incarnations that may or may not be the third Romana" page.
- SOTO
That could be sensible, as well. Do you not feel the narrative evidence given upthread is enough to claim them both to follow Ward's Romana?
- Bwburke94
Constonks wrote: There's no in-universe proof for either, though. Just implications. Never is it outright 100% stated that Brooks or Landau directly follows Ward, except outside the narrative. Any claims for either being "Romana III" should be relegated to a behind-the-scenes section, shouldn't they?
If we're agreed that they're two different incarnations, split them into "Romana (Renaissance)" and "Romana (Shadows of Avalon)". Treat them the way that future/unknown Doctors (ie. Cabinet of Light, Good Companions) are treated.
If we don't agree on that, the merged page for all Romanas makes a lot more sense than creating a vague "these two future incarnations that may or may not be the third Romana" page.
Romana II explicitly says that "my time is over and Trey's has begun" in Renaissance, indicating that at the very least she believed that Trey directly regenerated from herself. Similarly, prose Romana is implied to be the third incarnation in The Ancestor Cell.
- RingoRoadagain
Actually, why do T:ROMANA use roman numerals anyway? Simply because it's a fan convention, right?
Please do anything but fuse all Romana's pages (i don't want it to be as tedious as the Master's page).
My humble opinion is:
Prose Romana is implied in the story as following Romana II, and explicitely stated as the third one by the author, which should be enough for our name convention.
If Cornell literally called her "Romana III" (a source would be nice), then we should use that name, explicitely being the third one or not, the same way we use credits-only name (like we did for Arthur Candy for exemple).
Anyway we use Romana II, but going stricly by TV naration, we could also call her Romana VI, given the infamous regeneration scene of Destiny of the Daleks.
Trey is currently implied as the audio Romana III, but we should wait for the next Gallifrey release before doing anything. Maybe Romana will adopt Trey as her new name, maybe Trey was just the name of the Matrix manifestation, maybe audio Romana III will be portraid as someone else. Maybe Trey is something like The Watcher. We simply don't know.My suggestion is that we don't have enough information at the moment, so let's not do something hasty. But we should keep the III for prose Romana, since these numbers are non-narrative anyway.
- AdricLovesNyssa
RingoRoadagain wrote: Anyway we say Romana II, but going stricly by TV naration, we could also call her Romana VI, given her infamous regeneration scene of Destiny of the Daleks.
We couldn't say that in Luna Romana Trey says Ward that is her second body. And in Gallifrey Ward says she's only regenerated once
- RingoRoadagain
Yes but it's irrelevant, i'm merely pointing out that, not considering any Romana III, going by TV and ignoring anything else, then the very name "Romana II" is actually debatable but we all use it anyway as a convention.
From this observation, I wonder why prose Romana would be called anything else than "Romana III" as another convention (if Cornell indeed called her Romana III).
Maybe we should change T:ROMANA to reflect these conventions clearer.
(I noticed that my answer is kinda rude, that is not my intention)
- Bwburke94
Roman numerals for Romana have no in-universe basis, but it is so prevalent in fanon that T:ROMANA states that we use them.
As a sidenote, has Landau's Romana ever referred to herself (not Matrix-herself) as Trey?
- SOTO
According to statements made above, no she has not.
- AdricLovesNyssa
Nope she doesn't in either Luna Romana or Intervention Earth
- WJDTwGL
Here's a breakdown of information on Juliet Landau's character(s), hopefully helpful.
- In Renaissance, she goes by Trey for simplicity because there are two of her.
- She says she's spent several lifetimes rebuilding Gallifrey, which is a vague metaphorical statement that does not prove she's spent several regenerations.
- It turns out that she's been deliberately lying and manipulating everyone, making her information worthless.
- The name "Trey" was supposedly chosen as a reference to her being the third Romana, but that's non-narrative information.
- It is increasingly implied as the story progresses that Ward will soon regenerate into another Landau, culminating in an apparent regeneration cliffhanger.
- All of this becomes meaningless in the next chapter, Ascension, where another writer says that "Trey" was a matrix projection, still deliberately manipulating Romana.
- When Gallifrey VI was still the release with Juliet Landau, and therefore nothing was determined beyond the fact that Romana had a future incarnation of that appearance, James Goss made comments in Vortex that referred to Landau as separate from Paul Cornell's incarnation.
- In the framing narrative for Luna Romana, the real Landau incarnation talks about gearing up for Gallifrey's latest darkest hour. However, she's not specific as to whether this means the War or something else entirely.
- Paul Cornell's Romana is described as similar to Juliet Landau's appearance, and they are both written as more ruthless than Ward's Romana.
- Big Finish unambiguously treats the real Landau incarnation as the successor to Ward, but even Intervention Earth didn't make it absolutely explicit.
- The situation is nothing like that of the Shalka Ninth Doctor, because neither of these "Romana III's" is in anything NOTVALID.
- Someone mentioned the regeneration scene in Destiny of the Daleks as evidence that the Romana II designation isn't necessarily correct, however The Lying Old Witch in the Wardrobe says that that scene was the TARDIS rather than Romana.
Personally, I think that with continuing Big Finish releases the position that Landau is anything but a third incarnation can only become more untenable and that a combined Romana page is the best option. The Shadows of Avalon et al. and Luna Romana et al. are written to feature the third Romana, so except in the case of an outright contradiction (according to one account her eyes were blue vs green) and in the Behind the Scenes section should the difference be mentioned.
- Bwburke94
I doubt the two versions of Romana III can be reconciled with each other. As I mentioned earlier, this is similar to the post-Survival Master in that a single page would help with the headache.
- RingoRoadagain
On another note, everybody is saying that prose-Romana is based on the actress Louise Brooks but nobody has given a source.
I also don't think they can reconciled, like the Master post-Survival or Davros post-Remembrance, and since they are in continuities that largelly contradict each other then they are basically different characters (unless explicitely stated otherwise).
I still think that we should have a page for prose-Romana III, one for Trey, and one for the real audio-Romana III (given Fwhiffahder's narrative information).
- Revanvolatrelundar
I am completely in agreement with Fwhiffahder's post here. To say that one is the third incarnation over the other or that they are the same incarnation is completely speculatory at this point. Maybe one day we will get a firm answer on the subject, perhaps in the next Gallifrey release. Until then the most accurately we can portray this is to have a one-article Romana page, seperating the Landau and prose Romanas, mentioning their disputed placements in the BTS section.
- HarveyWallbanger
Either we have different pages for the different incarnations (and relative different sub-continuities) of the Master or we must have a unique page for Romana too.
- RingoRoadagain
The difference between the Master and Romana is that we can't have a good name for the pages of the incarnations of the master, even if we include the first story each appear since sometimes two first appear in the same story.
It is not the case for Romana.
- WJDTwGL
Can someone explain what it is that makes the two depictions so different? I keep seeing "impossible to reconcile" but I don't know of any contradiction other than eye color (covers aren't good sources anyway) or why the contradictions would be worse than any other multiple accounts thing.
Of course, I don't think the post-Survival Master is difficult to reconcile either.
- Bwburke94
We aren't trying to pretend prose Romana III and audio Romana III are the same, because they are not the same.
- RingoRoadagain
About the multiple accounts, I see at least 2 possibilities:
1) We make a Romana/Romana III page which fuse the multiple accounts with each its own section, like the Master and Davros.
2) Or, and I like this option better, we make a different page per account and when necessary (like Romana and Romana II's pages) redirect each account to its proper Romana III page. I think that would less of a mess.
It's getting off topic but I don't see how you can reconcile post-Survival Master:
According to Big Finish Tremas' half is destroyed, he turns back into the crispy Beevers, is later given a new regeneration cycle by the Time Lords and becomes MacQueen.
According to the novels he changes Tremas' half into full Time Lord and creates a new regeneration cycle withou the Time Lords and regenerates into a Basil Rathbone-look-alike.
- WJDTwGL
RingoRoadagain wrote: The stories are very different and contradict each others, I see at least 2 possibilities:
1) We make a Romana III page which lists the multiple accounts with each its own section.
2) Or, and I like this option better, we make a different page per account and when necessary (Romana and Romana II pages) redirect the multiple accounts to its proper Romana III page.
It's getting off topic but I don't see how you can reconcile post-Survival Master:
According to Big Finish Tremas' half is destroyed, he turns back into the crispy Beevers, is later given a new regeneration cycle by the Time Lords and becomes MacQueen.
According to the novels he changes Tremas' half into full Time Lord and creates a new regeneration cycle withou the Time Lords and regenerates into a Basil Rathbone-look-alike.
According to the PDAs Ainley stays cheetah-infected for a while. According to New Adventures the cheetah-infected Ainley regenerated into a 14th incarnation. The contradiction is one statement from him, to the Doctor, that he's just come from the cheetah planet. His new Tzun-sponsored body starts to break down. According to Big Finish he was reverted to his Beevers body (it does NOT specify if that's from Ainley or "Rathbone") and then it became routine for him to possess a body, only for it to break down/turn into Beevers. (the TV movie being a case of this) Master (audio story) is steeped in NA lore, rather than trying to contradict it. Admittedly this is getting off topic. Maybe I should make a new thread for it.
- WJDTwGL
Bwburke94 wrote: We aren't trying to pretend prose Romana III and audio Romana III are the same, because they are not the same.
Can you give details?
- Bwburke94
Fwhiffahder wrote:
Bwburke94 wrote: We aren't trying to pretend prose Romana III and audio Romana III are the same, because they are not the same.
Can you give details?
I was a bit too CzechOut-ish there. There is ample evidence that they are not the same, as detailed earlier in the thread.
- WJDTwGL
Bwburke94 wrote:
Fwhiffahder wrote:
Bwburke94 wrote: We aren't trying to pretend prose Romana III and audio Romana III are the same, because they are not the same.
Can you give details?
I was a bit too CzechOut-ish there. There is ample evidence that they are not the same, as detailed earlier in the thread.
I've read the thread. I still don't see anyone mentioning any contradictions.
- JagoAndLitefoot
"Enemy Lines" again confirms that "Trey" is Romana III. We definitely need to merge the pages.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Instead of actually merging the "Trey" and "Romana III" pages, I took the liberty to move some information to Romana III while keeping Trey for the Matrix projection only. I think this should do at least for now, given that I used the "in one account..." model this time.
- Bwburke94
JagoAndLitefoot wrote: "Enemy Lines" again confirms that "Trey" is Romana III. We definitely need to merge the pages.
Instead of actually merging the "Trey" and "Romana III" pages, I took the liberty to move some information to Romana III while keeping Trey for the Matrix projection only. I think this should do at least for now, given that I used the "in one account..." model this time.
What exactly does Enemy Lines confirm?
(Also, are you sure T:BOUND doesn't prevent such a page merger without consensus?)
- JagoAndLitefoot
Enemy Lines confirms that Landau is the third incarnation. However, given that it also involved a change in Romana II's timeline, it actually explains how there could be two different third incarnations of Romana.
I think a consensus to merge the pages to some extent was reached anyway, and I didn't merge the pages as such, as both pages still exist, I just moved some information between them, technically (and Trey only calls herself that when she's a projection).
- JagoAndLitefoot
In Enemy Lines, Braxiatel prevents Romana II from regenerating on the Moros in order to prevent the events of Intervention Earth from happening. And when asked, Romana is now not sure if she will ever regenerate again into the same third incarnation after all. This means that both versions of Romana III are now consistent with the Big Finish continuity, with the War Queen one being the postEnemy Lines one.
- WJDTwGL
I've edited the page for Romana III some more, so that it avoids imprecise use of "according to one account" but hopefully also avoids any specific speculation. It might be tempting to say that after Enemy Lines is The Shadows of Avalon's Romana, but Romana has lost her position after Enemy Lines and there's nothing to indicate she'll get it back.
- Bwburke94
Is this all just speculation?
- WJDTwGL
Bwburke94 wrote: Is this all just speculation?
That's incredibly vague. Is what all just speculation?
- JagoAndLitefoot
My version had no speculation at all - Romana II stated that after the timeline was changed she was not sure if she would eventually regenerate into the same third incarnation that sent Braxiatel back in time, as he directly prevented her from regenerating.
- Bwburke94
So this is speculation on the part of Romana, not on the part of yourself. Good to know.
- WJDTwGL
JagoAndLitefoot wrote: My version had no speculation at all - Romana II stated that after the timeline was changed she was not sure if she would eventually regenerate into the same third incarnation that sent Braxiatel back in time, as he directly prevented her from regenerating.
I actually didn't mean to get rid of that part entirely, sorry. Just meant to avoid implying that that was supposed to be an explanation and kind of lost it.
Enemy Lines doesn't actually work as an explanation anyway, though. Taken at face value, the causal intervention from the future War that causes Romana to regenerate into version from The Shadows of Avalon is chronologically before Enemy Lines, when Romana is in her second incarnation and President.
- Bwburke94
So what do we actually have to explain this? This kind of situation is exactly why pages shouldn't be merged without discussion.
- WJDTwGL
You're being vague again. What do we have to explain what? The pages haven't been merged. Romana III describes both depictions of her separately, without trying to fit them together. There's no contradiction between them, because Juliet Landau's incarnation has been mostly relegated to an aborted timeline. Trey is now only for the matrix projection that was actually called by that name, which existed outside of the aborted timeline.
The only confusion is whether the dates of the War arc are chronologically earlier or later than the dates of Enemy Lines. The easiest to understand option is that Romana becomes president again sometime after Enemy Lines, and then regenerates into Cornell's incarnation - but there's no in-universe evidence for that until/unless Big Finish makes Romana President again. The more complicated but possibly technically "correct" option is that Enemy Lines rewrote Intervention Earth out of time, and the War arc rewrote Enemy Lines out.
- WJDTwGL
JagoAndLitefoot wrote: In Enemy Lines, Braxiatel prevents Romana II from regenerating on the Moros in order to prevent the events of Intervention Earth from happening. And when asked, Romana is now not sure if she will ever regenerate again into the same third incarnation after all. This means that both versions of Romana III are now consistent with the Big Finish continuity, with the War Queen one being the postEnemy Lines one.
I've just listened to Enemy Lines again to be totally sure, and (a) Romana never says anything about whether she'll regenerate into the same incarnation again, and (b) Romana is definitely not President at the end of Enemy Lines, so we can't assume the EDAs are after that.
- Bwburke94
So we're back to square one, then. What is Enemy Lines confirmed to change regarding the Romana III status quo?
- WJDTwGL
Bwburke94 wrote: So we're back to square one, then. What is Enemy Lines confirmed to change regarding the Romana III status quo?
Juliet Landau's appearances don't have to have anything to do with Romana III as seen in the EDAs, because all the times she's appeared properly have been rewritten away.
- Bwburke94
Fwhiffahder wrote:
Bwburke94 wrote: So we're back to square one, then. What is Enemy Lines confirmed to change regarding the Romana III status quo?
Juliet Landau's appearances don't have to have anything to do with Romana III as seen in the EDAs, because all the times she's appeared properly have been rewritten away.
Ah. I'll make my point later on, but it's night time where I am and I need to get to sleep.
- AdricLovesNyssa
Having just listened to enemy lines, the only things It has clear is that Landau plays the third incarnation, both said by Romana's and Brax's dialogue, and that she is not sure that she would regenerate into the same Third incarnation which may or may not mean that The Book's Third Incanation could be explaned away as happening via a different type of regeneration
- WJDTwGL
AdricLovesNyssa wrote: The books' third incarnation could be explained away as happening via a different type of regeneration
No "explaining away" is necessary. There's no guarantee that she'd regenerate into the same incarnation in the first place, or even that The Shadows of Avalon comes after Enemy Lines instead of before.
- AdricLovesNyssa
That's what I meant to say, I chose the wrong words
- Bwburke94
So, in other words, Enemy Lines clearly states that prose Romana is not Landau's Romana?
- AdricLovesNyssa
It doesn't say either way whether the prose Romana is Landau or not it just says that Landau regenerates from Ward. There is a suggestion as quote that she may not regenerate into the same version of III that Brax saw, which could suggest she means the Prose version, but that speculation from within the source not from us outside the universe
- WJDTwGL
Bwburke94 wrote: So, in other words, Enemy Lines clearly states that prose Romana is not Landau's Romana?
It depends on what you mean by "Landau's Romana." Look at Paul McGann's Doctor from Klein's Story. He's the Eighth incarnation of the Doctor, he's even the same Eighth incarnation in body and personality, but he's from an aborted timeline. Enemy Lines establishes that we may be in a similar situation: Romana-as-played-by-Juliet-Landau regenerated because of the Moros, not as a deliberate choice to prepare for the War, and has now had her existence undone, so I think it's pretty safe to say the two are from different timelines. As to whether Romana-as-played-by-Juliet-Landau and Romana-as-written-by-Paul-Cornell are physically identical the way the Doctors of the movie and Klein's Story are, no progress has been made. However, I don't think it matters. The situation has worked itself out. Both are definitively Romana III, and go on the same page.
- AdricLovesNyssa
Agreed with Fwhiffahder they are both Romana III just different timelines
- Bwburke94
I have never said Landau's Romana is not Romana III. The question here is whether they should go on the same page.
There's the precedent of K9 Mark II and K9 Mark 2 for putting multiple same-numbered "regenerations" on different pages.
- WJDTwGL
Those K9s are completely separate, and a whole other situation.
- Bwburke94
- WJDTwGL
Have you actually looked at the pages you linked? One's a replacement for the first K9, the other is the first K9. Both Romana IIIs, regardless of the exact extent to which they're the same, regenerated from Romana II.
- Shambala108
Bumping this, we need to go forward with making all the Romana pages into one page.
- Bwburke94
By which you actually mean "all the Romana pages", correct?
- Shambala108
Yeah, by "all the Romana pages" I meant "all the Romana pages".
- NateBumber
Yknow, I wasn't aware of Thread:168321, but that page seems relevant here, if we're serious about merging all the Romana incarnations into one page (which I think would be very silly).
- Scrooge MacDuck
Very true, that. Considering that the OP of that thread did provide a quote proving that "First Romana" (with capital letters and all) was used in-universe, I think it might have been somewhat rash to lock that thread with no changes to T:ROMANA (EDIT: to be clear, what I mean is that the discussion should have carried on — of course, the locking of the thread was a reasonable enough decision since it had been long abandoned)
And if we do merge the pages it would certainly make sense to name the relevant sections "As the First Romana", "As the Second Romana".
- Shambala108
Yeah, that quote comes from an audio story, so the capital letters were the user's.
And the thread was closed because, firstly, the original question was answered, and secondly, the latest post was almost four years ago. When/if this thread gets resolved, we can then address the issue of changing an actual policy, but hopefully with more to claim than just one quote.
- NateBumber
If the posts in that thread were sufficient grounds for it to be rightfully closed, and if the rules were consistently applied, then this thread should be closed as well. (However, since in my opinion at least, those "if"s don't apply in this case, that's a purely hypothetical statement. I'm fully aware of the rule against calling for closure.) Since the OP post, Enemy Lines made it abundantly clear that "Trey" was the third incarnation of Romana, and Trey is now a redirect to Romana III. Prior to the post in September, there hadn't been any discussion in over two years; personally, I'm not sure what else there is left to discuss.
- Scrooge MacDuck
There's no doubt that both Romanas are meant as the third incarnation of Romana. The problem is that they are meant as different third incarnations of Romana — like if the Ninth Doctor and Shalka Doctor were both valid, if you will — and not everyone agrees that they should go on the same page.
…Also, isn't there some mixed-up business about "Trey" only being given as the name of an avatar in the Matrix who resembled the "other Romana III" but wasn't her, and thus would be deserving of a page which would occupy the "Trey" page?… I seem to recall an unresolved issue of that nature upthread.
- Scrooge MacDuck
There's no doubt that both Romanas are meant as the third incarnation of Romana. The problem is that they are meant as different third incarnations of Romana — like if the Ninth Doctor and Shalka Doctor were both valid, if you will — and not everyone agrees that they should go on the same page.
…Also, isn't there some mixed-up business about "Trey" only being given as the name of an avatar in the Matrix who resembled the "other Romana III" but wasn't her, and thus would be deserving of a page which would occupy the "Trey" page?… I seem to recall an unresolved issue of that nature upthread.
- Shambala108
OK, let me stress this for new users and those who can't seem to remember: it is the admin's job to decide when enough information has been presented to close a thread. Non-admins constantly asking for thread closure merely disrupts the thread and gives new users the impression that a matter is closed and therefore can be acted on.
Any remarks calling for thread closure or stating that a consensus has been reached will be removed.
- NateBumber
- There is nothing in-narrative indicating that these are separate incarnations of Romana. They both regenerated from Romana II, they serve identical roles as Lady President of Gallifrey, and there's nothing distinguishing in their physical descriptions. The only "evidence" we have that they're separate is the quote from Scott Handcock, but that's purely out-of-universe and cannot be considered as a valid source for this wiki, just like how Handcock's comments about Trey being the third Romana weren't enough and we had to wait for Enemy Lines to make that identification.
- "Trey" is a Matrix projection of Romana III in the exact same way that Zagreus and The Tides of Time involve a Matrix projection of Rassilon. Technically that projection isn't the real Rassilon we see in The Scrolls of Rassilon – that guy is dead, this is just a copy – but they're covered on the same page regardless, and I think it would be silly to separate them. The same logic applies to this scenario.
- NateBumber
Shambala108 wrote: OK, let me stress this for new users and those who can't seem to remember:
That's fair. But in the future, please refrain from "subtweeting" me in this way. I'd much rather that you just directly say my name or quote my comment. As they say: I'm in the room, you know!
In any case, I've edited my post to clarify my intent and make sure it doesn't violate that rule. For future reference, could the anti-"calling for closure" policy be codified in Tardis:Discussion policy or elsewhere, to prevent misunderstandings? This just isn't the first time I've come close to falling afoul of it: in particular, I'm thinking of Thread:237423#56, where I was reprimanded for calling for closure due to rule violation, which seems notably distinct from calling for closure due to apparent consensus. If someone posted a nonsense or offensive thread on these forums as vandalism and I asked for closure, would that be violating the rule? Does that extend to requests for deletion of vandalism on the wiki? I just want to make sure I understand it fully so I don't break it in the future.
- Scrooge MacDuck
NateBumber wrote:
- There is nothing in-narrative indicating that these are separate incarnations of Romana. They both regenerated from Romana II, they serve identical roles as Lady President of Gallifrey, and there's nothing distinguishing in their physical descriptions. The only "evidence" we have that they're separate is the quote from Scott Handcock, but that's purely out-of-universe and cannot be considered as a valid source for this wiki, just like how Handcock's comments about Trey being the third Romana weren't enough and we had to wait for Enemy Lines to make that identification.
It's sort of a fine point in editing philosophy, but some have argued (and I'm tempted to agree) that if we have conclusive evidence that two characters, who may or may not be identical in practice, were created separately by people who didn't know of each other's work, then they shouldn't be considered the same character. If there were a 1964 novelisation which namedropped a member of the same species as the Doctor as having a beard and being called "the Master", but the later creator of the actual Master went on record to say he'd never read the novelisation in question… then I would say that the two "Masters" should have separate pages.
NateBumber wrote:
- "Trey" is a Matrix projection of Romana III in the exact same way that Zagreus and The Tides of Time involve a Matrix projection of Rassilon. Technically that projection isn't the real Rassilon we see in The Scrolls of Rassilon – that guy is dead, this is just a copy – but they're covered on the same page regardless, and I think it would be silly to separate them. The same logic applies to this scenario.
Rassilon's complicated, since no one can agree on whether his resurrected Time War self was retrieved from the Matrix, or if he'd never been really dead (just "sleeping") and the fact that he had a Matrix duplicate was irrelevant. Similarly, Auton-Rory merges with Rory in Big Ban II and blah blah and it's all very confusing, so we just have Rory Williams. But in cases where it's clear that the duplicate and the main person are separate, where there's no suggestion that they rejoined, the precedent is to keep both — I'm thinking of Twelfth Doctor vs. Twelfth Doctor (Shadow World).
The problem with "alternate third Romana" vs. "Trey" is this: can we say for sure that it's not a name the Matrix-version chose for herself after she was copied from the prime Romana? If the Eleventh Doctor (Ganger) had chosen a name for himself, we wouldn't consider that an alias of the Doctor, would we?
- RingoRoadagain
For those wanting to use "Second Romana" and so on, I am positive that in the Gallifrey audio series, when lalla ward's character sees her future incarnations, she names them 'romana one, romana two, romana three' etc up to 'romana eight' (it was set in the matrix during the Imperiatrix story arc iirc)
If someone has the scripts maybe they could check out if it was written with roman numbers like we do on the wiki or not.
- NateBumber
Scrooge MacDuck wrote: It's sort of a fine point in editing philosophy, but some have argued (and I'm tempted to agree) that if we have conclusive evidence that two characters, who may or may not be identical in practice, were created separately by people who didn't know of each other's work, then they shouldn't be considered the same character. If there were a 1964 novelisation which namedropped a member of the same species as the Doctor as having a beard and being called "the Master", but the later creator of the actual Master went on record to say he'd never read the novelisation in question… then I would say that the two "Masters" should have separate pages.
I definitely agree with you here, but that's not the case we're being presented with. Goss is pretty explicitly familiar with Cornell's Romana III, at least according to the quote in OP!
Scrooge MacDuck wrote: The problem with "alternate third Romana" vs. "Trey" is this: can we say for sure that it's not a name the Matrix-version chose for herself after she was copied from the prime Romana? If the Eleventh Doctor (Ganger) had chosen a name for himself, we wouldn't consider that an alias of the Doctor, would we?
Here, I think the quote in OP is again illustrative. It comes from 2013, before Luna Romana or Intervention Earth, when Landau's Romana's only appearances were the "Matrix projection" examples in question. And there, it's incredibly obvious that, when Goss was writing the scenes with Trey, he believed he was writing an incarnation of Romana. It's no mistake that the non-projection version we hear in later stories has the exact same personality. And Trey is by no means some sort of "manifestation" of the Matrix in the sense that the TARDIS has used various companions' forms in Zagreus and Let's Kill Hitler: she's an independent agent with her own goals, and she is clearly a future version of the Romana that's running around during the stories.
Since the Matrix works by uploading the brain of a Time Lord at the moment of their death and allowing them to live on in non-physical form, I think a better example than the Ganger Doctor or the Shadow World Doctor is what happens to the Twelfth Doctor in Heaven Sent. In that story, the "original" Doctor dies, either when he was first teleported or at the end of the first loop, and a "copy" walked off in his shoes. Either way, the effect is the same: the Twelfth Doctor of series 10 is "just" a copy of the one in Face the Raven. However, since there's a continuity of consciousness between the original Doctor and all of his copies, and at no point are multiple Doctors walking around at the same time, it's more useful (for our wiki's sake) to think of the Twelfth Doctor as one person, rather than one who died + several thousand copies, one of which escaped. This explains our treatment of Rassilon, whose Matrix copy appears in multiple stories completely independently of any physical existence, all of which have been catalogued on the same page, since long before we knew that he was resurrected during the Time War.
I hope this helps to explain my position.
- Scrooge MacDuck
Again, Rassilon is a weird, weird case, since depending on who you listen to (Steven Moffat, for example) he may not have ever been dead while he was in the Tomb of Rassilon, meaning there's at least that one precedent of a Time Lord being copied into the Matrix even as their original self is still around.
And I'm unfamiliar with the relevant stories, as you have already surmised, but please enlighten me: is it implied by the Matrix-Trey's appearance that Romana died in that third incarnation? Because if not, then it's another, even firmer example of a version of a Gallifreyan being uploaded into the Matrix even though their original self isn't dead.
- NateBumber
I'm going to relisten to the relevant stories and try to pick out some relevant quotes :)
- RingoRoadagain
As I mentionned above, I am pretty sure Romana saw at least up Romana VIII in the Matrix, so Trey could not be the last one. Sadly I stil haven't found the episode where it happened.
Does anyone else remember when it was ?
(also, i vaguely remember that all living presidents were copied inside the matrix. Didn't it happen to the 4th Dr in the invasion of time ?)
- Shambala108
Everyone please read and abide by Thread:223085. This thread is already long enough without the reposting and re-reposting of comments.
- Scrooge MacDuck
If there were copies of Romana up to Romana VIII in the Matrix, then the Matrix's Romana Trey had to have been copied long before Romana died, and had all the time in the word to diverge (and possibly choose a new name for herself). This goes double if Romana somehow meets the Matrix-Romana(s). That alone makes it seem to me like they should be treated like different characters.
- RingoRoadagain
Okay, my mistake. It was in Fractures (audio story):
Ward's Romana is engaged in a mental fight witht the Sentience of the anomaly vault, the later trying to split her into billions of copy of the same.
During it, this dialogue occurs (i am typing it without a script so don't use the formatting as an evidence of anything):
ROMANA: I am RomanadvoratreludarSENTIENCE: Nut which one my dear ?
ROMANA: Too (pause) many Romanas. Romana one. Romana two. (pause) Romana three. Romana four, Romana five, Romana six, Romanaseven. (painful) Romana eight...
So hearing it again, although this is obviously written to imply future incarnations to the listener. It is not about Romana seeing her future selves. Sorry for the mislead, earlier. - Scrooge MacDuck
…
…puzzled, is what I am.
First, why would the Lalla Ward Romana know about all the future Romanas, if she has not encountered them somehow (if only as Matrix projections)?
Second, is it me or did the dialogue you quote just use "Romana Three" instead of "Romana Trey"?
Third, if all there is is this mention of Romana II somehow knowing about her selves up to Romana VIII while she's inside the Matrix… where the heck did this notion of an independent Matrix-projection going by "Trey" come from?
- NateBumber
To address your second and third questions: The phrase "Romana Trey" has never been used. When Romana II and Romana III were working together in Renaissance, rather than in both of them being called "Romana", which would be confusing, Romana III volunteered to go by the next syllable of their name, "Tre". This led to her being named in the cast as "Lady Trey". Only in the next story, Ascension, is it revealed that Trey is a Matrix projection.
All this has nothing to do with the events of Fractures, which Ringo was investigating as part of a separate question, that of whether we have a solid in-universe foundation for calling the pages "Romana I" etc. Sadly, the moment Ringo was thinking of actually concerns Romana counting copies of herself created by the Sentience of the Anomaly Vault.
For what it's worth, I really hope we don't come to the point of merging Romana I, Romana II, and the rest into Romana; I'm wholeheartedly against the move. With Time Lord characters as important as Romana or the Doctor, mergers like those unnecessarily obfuscate useful information. Just look at the mess that is The Master! It's so big that it takes forever to load or edit; the "Personality" and "Appearance" sections are horrifically convoluted; and there's heaps of redundant information for every multi-Master story – for instance, the same nearly-identical paragraph about The Battle of the Bands Beyond the Stars is repeated five times on the same page. I would absolutely hate for that to happen with our Romana pages just because there isn't a sufficiently convincing case for calling Romana I "Romana I". (And besides, do we even have an in-universe source for the title "Thirteenth Doctor" yet? I'd love to hear the case that all the incarnations should be merged into The Doctor!)
- Scrooge MacDuck
Thanks for clearing it up, Nate.
Alright then, this new information does cause me to reiterate my question: how can it be that Romana's Matrix-ghost (that is to say, "Trey") is a copy of Romana III, even though Ringo's quote shows that Romana lived well beyond her third incarnation? Without the extremely speculative notion that Romana's Matrix-ghost would have willingly reverted herself to the appearance and personality of her third incarnation (a la The Curator), this must mean that Trey was copied from Romana well before her death — meaning there are two simultaneous Romanas from her inception forth, one who lives in the Matrix and one who remains to run around and regenerate into Romana IV. And so a separate page would, in my view, be needed just like the “Shadow World” pages.
Also, random question: when you lot read "Romana I" or "Romana II", would you render it in English as "Romana the First" and "Romana the Second", or as "Romana One" and "Romana Two"? The first would be the obvious version (since Roman numbers after a first name are usually read so), but I'm getting the feeling that this is not the case for everyone…
- RingoRoadagain
My quote has nothing to do with Trey or any sort of future incarnations. I misremembered the context and typed out this extract to try and clear any confusions.
I agree with Nate's sentiment about the pages being separated, and for the same reasons. Plus, I would add that we allow ourselves to use the more common IRL names instead of in-universe one for some pages. (E.g. "War Doctor" instead of "Doctor of War")
As to your side question, I never thought about how people should pronouce "Romana II". To me, it was "Romana Two" but I'm afraid it is getting off-topic.
- Scrooge MacDuck
Oh, I agree too — merging all the Romana pages would be a cheap trick to shove the issues of the two "third incarnations" under the carpet, and little more. And yeah, we do, though your example isn't the best ("Doctor of War" isn't particularly the name of the War Doctor either: the most memorable use of the epithet, in Twice Upon a Time, makes it clear that it applies to all the Doctors, save, perhaps, the First).
But your quote does mention several future incarnations, no? Or else what do "Romana Three, Romana Four," etc. mean, if they are not the names of future incarnations here?
- NateBumber
I think Ringo is saying that the "Romana Three, Romana Four" etc were Romana counting copies of herself made by the Sentience, rather than anything related to her incarnations.
- Scrooge MacDuck
Ah, alright. Then are we back to the assumption that Romana must then have died in her third incarnation, for the Matrix-Romana to be a copy of Goss's Romana III? In which case, even though it's become clear that only the Matrix-Romana chose the name "Trey", she had continuity of consciousness with the original Romana with no duplicates around. So I'm okay with calling her Trey.
Provided we all agree on the above, that leaves the issue of whether Goss's Romana III/Trey is to be considered the same character as the earlier Romana III. Let me bring up what you wrote earlier, because I have found an answer to it:
NateBumber wrote: I definitely agree with you here, but that's not the case we're being presented with. Goss is pretty explicitly familiar with Cornell's Romana III, at least according to the quote in OP!
Well, he knows, but… let me quote from Bubblecamera on Thread:144117:
Bubblecamera wrote: James Goss said "there have been other future Romanadvoratrelundars (remember Paul Cornell’s brilliantly glacial flapper?)" in October's Vortex when talking about Trey.
So, the author who created Trey considers the official Romana III to be an "other" Romana. I think that's enough to say they're different incarnations, similar though they definitely are.
And Bubble really put it best. Goss may know about the E.D.A. Romana III, but he explicitly refers to her as "another future Romanadvoratrelundar" in relation to his Romana-III-whose-Matrix-self-calls-herself-Trey. The authorial intent couldn't be clearer that those are different characters, just as surely as in my "1965 Master vs. Delgado Master" thought-experiment.
That leaves us with the question of what naming scheme to adopt. We could use dab terms by first appearance, or we could decide to refer to Goss's Romana III as "Trey" to distinguish her from Cornell's Romana III.
- SarahJaneFan
Actually we do have an in-Universe source for Thirteenth Doctor. The recently released book The Secret in Vault 13 has Yaz acknowledge that the Doctor has had other bodies and that the current one is the Thirteenth.
But aside from that, I agree that the Romana pages shouldn’t be merged. The page for the Master is difficult enough to navigate as it is and seeing as both iterations Of Romana III come pretty explicitly following Ward, we should use the old “according to one account” trick.
- Scrooge MacDuck
The question was not whether the fact that the Thirteenth Doctor was #13 was disputed — the question was whether the name of "Thirteenth Doctor", with capitals and all, had been used in a valid source.
- Scrooge MacDuck
So, we know for sure that the two Romana IIIs were intended to be different, even if they end up describing "the same thing" within wider Doctor Who continuity. Not only do I think this means they ought to get two separate pages, but this is the precedented procedure. Any arguments?
There remains the separate matter of whether “Trey”-the-Matrix-Projection was made before, or upon, Romana's death, as in the first case she ought to get a page of her own that would get to keep the Trey namespace while "Romana III ([First Appearance])" would be used for the incarnation of which she's a duplicate. (It's the difference between Bill Potts (Shadow World), and Bill Potts (Glass Avatar), who's just plain Bill Potts.)
- Scrooge MacDuck
Hello? Anyone? Is this thing on? Please refer to the post right before this one to know where we left off.
But at present Romana III remains a mix of the two Romanas III, and what's more I really can't make heads nor tails of the "Death" subsection of Romana II, which throws around two different regenerations like that ain't nothing to worry 'bout. But we can't really fix any of it until we properly decide what to do here.
- NateBumber
Scrooge MacDuck wrote: So, we know for sure that the two Romana IIIs were intended to be different, even if they end up describing "the same thing" within wider Doctor Who continuity. Not only do I think this means they ought to get two separate pages, but this is the precedented procedure. Any arguments?
Here's one: What exact precedent do you think was established in Thread:231584? Czech and I had some back-and-forth, but that never came to a resolution; the final decision was the result of a completely independent conversation between Revantrelundar and me, which fixated on the details of the specific scenario at hand. I'm really not sure what you're trying to generalize out of that discussion.
All that said, a few months have passed, and I think I'm in favor of splitting up the pages: or, more accurately, moving all info about the Juliet Landau incarnation to a separate page, dab termed per T:DAB OTHER to indicate that she comes from another reality (specifically, the aborted timeline where Intervention Earth happened and Braxiatel didn't stop Romana II from regenerating: the name for this timeline would need to be determined by further discussion). All information about Trey would go on this page as well, now that we can acknowledge that the incarnation who regenerates in The Tomb of Valdemaar is different from the one in Incarnation Earth. Information about the Shadows of Avalon incarnation (and her regeneration into Romana IV) would remain on regular old undabbed Romana III.
I believe this is the best path to resolving the discrepancies in this thread. Thoughts?
- SOTO
Wait, there's potentially three versions of Romana III?
- NateBumber
Right now, on our page for Romana III there's
- Romana III, who appeared in the books The Shadows of Avalon, The Ancestor Cell, and Tomb of Valdemar;
- Romana III, played by Juliet Landau in the audios Luna Romana and Intervention Earth before getting wiped from time in Enemy Lines (specified by creator James Goss to be different from the books one); and
- "Trey", a Matrix projection of Romana III, also played by Juliet Landau, who appeared in Renaissance and Ascension. Uncle Scrooge has raised some concerns above about whether Trey should be covered on the same page as the regular Juliet Landau Romana III or on a separate page, since Bill Potts (Shadow World) etc etc.
Welcome to the headache of this thread. I'm hoping my latest suggestion (ie leave #1 on Romana III and combine #2 and #3 on a dab termed page to reflect their erasure from time) will be an agreeable plan for moving forward, but looking over the last three and a half years it's kinda unlikely lol
- SOTO
I apologise for not now re-reading this thread for full context, but from what I'm gathering (as someone who hasn't gotten around to Gallifrey yet), the Landau incarnation belongs entirely to an alternate timeline, which was reverted within the series, Trey is a projection of that original future third Romana, and Gallifrey does not clarify that Romana will in fact regenerate into the same third incarnation (as played by Landau). In comes the book version of Romana III, which was the first one we knew about, and is, in fact, the only version of Romana III which exists outside of an aborted timeline, and therefore the definitive main universe incarnation as of Feb 2019. Is that about the gist of it? :P
- NateBumber
Bingo!
- JagoAndLitefoot
We do keep the Matrix copy of Rassilon on the same page as Rassilon proper (although I guess with him it's even more complicated)
- SOTO
Does the Matrix projection have all the memories of the Landau Romana?
- NateBumber
In the stories she's being very deceptive about her past, so it's not really clear. I'll try and find the time to give Ascension a much-needed relisten later this week to find out for certain. Much of this has already been hashed out above, though, in the lead-up to the pages being merged.
- SOTO
Well new series Rassilon (Time War on) is a Matrix projection (onto another Time Lord) according to the latest Gallifrey releases, right? We're not about to move him to Rassilon (The End of Time) or Rassilon (Matrix projection). We also don't cover the resurrected Bill Potts as a separate character. From where I'm standing, if we were introduced to a Matrix projection of the Sixth Doctor -- providing he doesn't find a way to run off and have his own independent adventures, we would cover it somewhere on the Sixth Doctor's page (probably "Post-mortem").
- SOTO
Oh apparently Matrix projections of the first 10/11 Doctors do appear in COMIC: Dead Man's Hand, and they're dealt with exactly as I just described.
I'm also seeing, above, that some of the recent debate around Trey brings up the importance of whether she is, in fact, a "post-mortem" projection, or indeed a projection created before Romana regenerates into that version of Romana III. I would say, either way, (based only what I've learned from this thread) it's the same character depicted. But I'd have to actually listen through these stories to be sure.
(I also think it would be hella confusing to have three pages for a third Romana, so in part, I'm inspired by an editorial goal of "not confusing the hell out of our readers unnecessarily", if it can be truthfully avoided. And do we have a category for Matrix projections?)
- JagoAndLitefoot
The Don Warrington version of Rassilon was also a Matrix projection that got out.
- Scrooge MacDuck
The difference with other Time Lords in the Matrix is as I've sketched out earlier that the Matrix usually acts as the afterlife of Time Lords; they're uploaded post-mortem. So a Matrix Time Lord isn't any more a different person than the various Testimony humans. Ergo if "Trey" is the result of the Landau Romana III dying and her mind being uploaded, there's continuity of consciousness and we treat her as a single character, like we do Bill Potts and her Glass Avatar self.
On the other hand, if the Landau Romana III is meant to have lived past the point at which her mind was scanned and copied into the Matrix, we end up with two divergent individuals who past this point are free to form new memories separate from each other. Like Bill Potts (Shadow World), who has all of Bill Potts's memories up until the events of Extremis, but at this point diverges by living (and eventually dying) through the whole "our world is secretly a simulation run by the Monks" while the original flesh-and-blood Bill Potts up there is having a completely different adventure with the Doctor. Hence, a separate page.
(As concerns Rassilon and particular… he's complicated, okay? As documented in that crazy article in the Doctor Who Essential book on Time Lords, not everyone involved with The Five Doctors agrees quite what was up with Rassilon, and Moffat and Davies have yet again different ideas. One of the opinions is that Rassilon died, having decided not to use the cursed immortality he had discovered; that his mind was uploaded to the Matrix, and projected the big mustachioed head from The Five Doctors; and that he got resurrected for the Time War into Timothy Dalton. If so there's continuity of consciousness and so we cover Rassilon on the one page. On the other hand, there's others who opine, and Moffat agrees with them, that Rassilon was never dead, merely sleeping à la Sleeping Beauty; the floating head was his spirit, ascended to a higher plane of existence while his body slept, temporarily manifesting itself back in his tomb to deal with the intruders; and for the Time War he only had to be awakened (Moffat claims the "Rassilon the Resurrected" line in Hell Bent refers to a different death that happened during the Time War). In this second scheme, and only then, the Rassilon in the Matrix would be a copy deserving of his own page. But we don't know for sure which of the two things happened, so we're not getting involved. Ergo, just the one Rassilon page.)
- AdricLovesNyssa
I don't see why we need to seperate the pages, as to me in causes more confusion. To me it would make sense to have it on one page with either Landau's Romana 3 as an alternative timeline part of the page or as it is. Landau's Romana does happen as part of the established timeline, though both times Ward's Romana regenerates into her gets aborted.
- Scrooge MacDuck
AdricLovesNyssa wrote: I don't see why we need to separate the pages, as to me in causes more confusion. To me it would make sense to have it on one page with either Landau's Romana 3 as an alternative timeline part of the page or as it is. Landau's Romana does happen as part of the established timeline, though both times Ward's Romana regenerates into her gets aborted.
Poppycock. Even if we finally got in-universe confirmation that the Shalka Doctor occurred in an aborted timeline, as one of the Time War's many temporal anomalies, and even though if you squint Shalka could pass for a young War Doctor, we wouldn't merge him with the War Doctor. They're two different characters.
With the two Romanas III it's even easier: we have a direct statement from the Landau version's creator that she is a different character, distinct from the novels’ future Romana. We might personally choose to believe it's the same incarnation and the slight differences in appearance and behavior are negligible. But in such matters I think authorial intent must prime over potential "confusion" in readers.
The real question is whether the Matrix Trey should be kept merged with the Landau Romana III, or given her own page. (This question hinges on whether we consider that the Matrix Trey is the continuation of Romana III following her death, à la Testimony-Bill or Data-Ghost-River; or that she was more probably copied earlier in Romana III's timeline than the moment of death, in which case she splits off from the original and becomes her own person, à la Shadow-World-Bill or Ganger-Eleven. Again, not on whether it's "confusing".)
- NateBumber
Scrooge MacDuck wrote: This question hinges on whether we consider that the Matrix Trey is the continuation of Romana III following her death, à la Testimony-Bill or Data-Ghost-River; or that she was more probably copied earlier in Romana III's timeline than the moment of death, in which case she splits off from the original and becomes her own person, à la Shadow-World-Bill or Ganger-Eleven. Again, not on whether it's "confusing".
The fact is that we simply cannot judge this: there is nothing in the stories that suggests either way whether the Matrix copy is from RIII's death or from before it, so us concluding either way is complete speculation. The only conclusion we can have is that we can't have a conclusion!
And in light of that, "whether it's confusing" becomes the main priority (not poppycock at all). The usability of this site is a huge priority, and there have been plenty of times where the rules have been bent to maintain usability. Thankfully, that's not even necessary here, since the ambiguity means no rules need to be bent. I say we take advantage of it.
- Scrooge MacDuck
Fair enough. To be clear, the "poppycock" comment referred to the suggestion to continue treating the two Romanas III as one incarnation; I think this thread has moved on from that at least. The question of what to do with "Trey" was another question, which I admitted was thornier.
Anyway, yes, your assessment seems quite sound to me. I did want to make sure we had no information on the subject, though; recall the earlier discussion of a quote which seemed like it said that Romana had lived on into an 8th incarnation at the least. But it looks like there isn't.
This is a very pleasant result, because if "Trey" and the Landau Romana are one and the same, then I believe we get to name the Landau Romana page "Trey", preserving the "Romana III" page for the novels' version. No cumbersome dabbing required. Correct?
- NateBumber
Glad we agree!
As for "Trey", personally I don't think it's a great name for the Landau incarnation, since it was specifically only used by the Matrix projection when trying to differentiate herself from Romana II; in Luna Romana, Intervention Earth, and Enemy Lines, she only called herself regular old "Romana". It'd be a fine name for the page, so I'd support it, but personally I think a dab term would be better.
- Scrooge MacDuck
That's one side of the issue, but another is that Romana [X] isn't in-universe. Per T:ROMANA we use it nonetheless for Romana I and Romana II, because that's what everybody else does; but for the two Third Romanas we have considerably more freedom, what with them being relatively obscure, and thus not really having any established usage about them.
Therefore, there is the fact that she only used the name Trey sparingly, yes; but there is also the fact that it is the name she chose, in-universe, to tell herself apart from another incarnation of hers. Whereas she's never gone in-universe by "Romana III", a name we're making up to, well, tell her apart from other incarnations.
I'm not married to it, mind you. But I think there's enough behind the idea to make it a pretty attractive proposal.
- SOTO
I agree (again, as an outsider to this discussion) that if a character gives us a name specifically to differentiate them from other characters or incarnations, we should seriously consider using that name for the title. That said, since this version of Romana III was only known to go by Trey as a Matrix projection, the main body of the article concerning this alternate Romana should still only refer to her as "Romana".
- Bwburke94
SOTO wrote: I agree (again, as an outsider to this discussion) that if a character gives us a name specifically to differentiate them from other characters or incarnations, we should seriously consider using that name for the title. That said, since this version of Romana III was only known to go by Trey as a Matrix projection, the main body of the article concerning this alternate Romana should still only refer to her as "Romana".
Well said.
Read it.
This post has 200 comments already; let's try not to add unnecessary quoting.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:172062
On the infobox on comic strip pages, should the "Printed in" entry list reprints, or just the first run? Most of Titan's material is getting reprinted in the Doctor Who Comic that launched last month, and I was wondering how it should be handled.
- Shambala108
In my opinion (and this falls in line with the idea of keeping the infoboxes short and simple), only the first run should be listed in the infobox. Anything else can be listed in the story notes.
- CzechOut
Well actually for comics, provisions have been made to list the reprints. That sort of information is actually important to people who care about comics, so a lot of care was taken to make sure the infobox could handle it. Please see Template:Infobox Story/doc/comic story for additional details.
Long and short of it is that {{{publication}}} is for the original publication only. {{{reprint}}} through {{{reprint9}}} are for the reprints.
We're actually trying to do kinda the opposite of what Shambala said and get the reprint stuff out of the article and into the infobox, so that the data there can be leveraged by data mining tools like SMW. Yes, it makes the infobox longer, but it makes the data more useful, so it's worth the length. If it turns out that the boxes are getting super long we can always do things like collapse portions of the infobox.
- Digifiend
OK, thanks. I've added the relevant info to the infoboxes for the content of DWC 1 and 2, except for one back-up strip I haven't found the page for. It's an untitled strip written by Colin Bell and drawn by Neil Slorance, and while they have several strips listed, this one doesn't match the descriptions of them. It shows the Doctor and Clara on the Tardis roof in space, first panel has the Doctor saying "Question! How do we know that what we taste is the same as that which someone else tastes?" The last panel reveals that he's talking about chips: "Come Clara, let us name a galaxy after this deep fried potato!" Sound familiar?
- Digifiend
Nobody knows?
I see someone made a Doctor Who Comic page, but it uses the Infobox Story template. Of course, it's not a story, it's an anthology magazine. I see no infobox on the DWA and DWM pages, so I'm guessing DWC shouldn't have an infobox either?
- TARDIS2468
Hey,
I made the DWC page. I used the Story infobox to provide basic info about the magazine, as with the pages for the individual Titan series.
On the subject of the untitled back-up, I'd forgotten about that one. I'll make a page for it now.
- Digifiend
We have a new problem. The latest issue of Doctor Who Comic is Volume 2 Issue 1. The first eight issues have the page name DWCT 1, DWCT 2 etc (Doctor Who Comic Titan - DWC was already taken by another comic series, Doctor Who Classics). So would Vol 2 Issue 1 be DWCT 9, or DWCT 2.1 (which is the number used on Titan's website), or something else?
- OttselSpy25
Digifiend wrote: OK, thanks. I've added the relevant info to the infoboxes for the content of DWC 1 and 2, except for one back-up strip I haven't found the page for. It's an untitled strip written by Colin Bell and drawn by Neil Slorance, and while they have several strips listed, this one doesn't match the descriptions of them. It shows the Doctor and Clara on the Tardis roof in space, first panel has the Doctor saying "Question! How do we know that what we taste is the same as that which someone else tastes?" The last panel reveals that he's talking about chips: "Come Clara, let us name a galaxy after this deep fried potato!" Sound familiar?
- OttselSpy25
Digifiend wrote: We have a new problem. The latest issue of Doctor Who Comic is Volume 2 Issue 1. The first eight issues have the page name DWCT 1, DWCT 2 etc (Doctor Who Comic Titan - DWC was already taken by another comic series, Doctor Who Classics). So would Vol 2 Issue 1 be DWCT 9, or DWCT 2.1 (which is the number used on Titan's website), or something else?
2.1 seems to be standard on most sites based off of my memory.
- SOTO
Wait, why are these DWCT when T:MAGS calls for DWC15? And should what's currently DWC 1 be DWC07 1 (or DWCI in keeping with DWCT)?
- Digifiend
Because DWC was already in use for Doctor Who Classics. Someone just went ahead and made the first issue's page using DWCT for Doctor Who Comic Titan. Strange that nobody brought up that policy page until now.
The same question needs asking for DWA. It's renumbering caused the first issue of the second volume to be called DWA 1 (Panini) - are you saying this should be DWA15 1?
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:172753
Who was the highest TimeLord ever to live (or otherwise) on Gallifrey (or elsewhere) at any time (or outside it)?
- Ebyabe
Depends on how you define 'highest. I'd say probably Rassilon, though Omega and the Other are right up there.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:172772
You're going to need a new naming convention for DWA issues - it's restarting from issue 1, which means DWA 1 will require some sort of disambiguation.
Sources:
- SeaniesBeanies
How about we distinguish the issues using the publisher in brackets
For Example:
DWA #1 (Panini)
And for the previous issues (if anyone can be bothered):
DWA #1 (Immediate Media)
- Digifiend
^Can't have # in a page name. In addition, Immediate Media only took over relatively recently, so the original issue 1 was actually published by BBC Magazines. Thus, it would be DWA 1 (BBC Magazines)
- Digifiend
For now, I've updated the main DWA page and the DWA 2015 page, including red links for DWA 1 (Panini). The copyright template for DWA covers needs an update to mention Panini.
Per T:MAGS, the name of the first issue of this run would be DWA15 1. We distinguish by adding two numbers representing the first year of publication, as with DW84 1. Parentheticals are to be strictly avoided in the naming of individual issues, as this makes it hard to do calculations with the page names.
In other words, for technical reasons, naming should remain with an acronym and a simple integer — XXXX 2 — wherever possible.
Please suspend naming with (Panini) from here on out. The previous issues of the Panini run will be renamed. The original run will, for the time being, remain at DWA 1, and the like. Since there are only two "DWA"'s, only one need be dabbed.
Remember, when naming comic issues on this site, it's important to go to the indicia, not to the cover or a website, and find the legal name of the magazine. Then take an acronym of that title and add the issue number.
There may occasionally be exceptions to this rule, but those exceptions would never involve a parenthetical.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:173146
Should we make a page for every game that is played by the Celestial Toymaker.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:173216
I have recently started to look into some of my most anticipated Big Finish audios, and I have not been disappointed, by neither the stories or the bonus material. However, I have noted that these bonus stories, sometimes twenty to frothy minutes in length and fascinating, have no current page basis on this site. I've checked out a few of the discs that I have as well as the sleeves, and I have noted no names or labels other than "Bonus." Should we make pages for these extras? And how do we tell them apart? And what would we call the pages?
- Digifiend
I suppose that the page name would be Bonus (story name).
- Shambala108
We could follow the precedent set by the Virgin New Adventures preludes, and call each page Bonus story name (audio story).
But we will have to wait for either Tangerineduel or CzechOut to attend this thread and make a decision.
- SOTO
For the record, we do also have Prequel (story name), on the wiki: Prequel (The Wedding of River Song) and all the others without names. I'm not saying that's necessarily right either; just pointing out that the naming scheme Digifiend suggests has in fact been used on the wiki before for a similar circumstance.
- SOTO
Does each audio story only come with one singular bonus story? And there are definitely stories, right? If they are indeed narratives, then they're fine by rule 1 of the four little rules and should definitely be created per T:VALID.
As far as the title goes, I have a feeling but cannot confirm that in the title for the NA preludes it actually does in some form say Prelude Story Title, possibly on two lines or something.
- SOTO
Test.
- SOTO
Another test.
- SOTO
Urgh, none of that actually went through. I'll just summarise this time.
I can indeed confirm through the mighty power of Google Images that above each NA prelude is the following:
Prelude
Nightshade (or whatever story is might be)I would share said images, but I don't think we as a wiki endorse the distribution of super-high-quality photos of copyrighted DWU material, even if it would be for purely "academic" purposes here.
The point here being: the preludes were named as such because "Prelude Storyname" was the only title given to them in the magazines, and in this case the only name given is "Bonus". Bonus, and not Bonus The Chimes of Midnight, if I understand correctly. And given that there are multiple such stories called Bonus, they should have dab terms added to specify which story they came with--therefore Bonus (The Chimes of Midnight) in this example. I don't believe there is any precedent for Bonus The Chimes of Midnight in this particular case.
- Tangerineduel
Can’t this information just be included on the story page under the Story notes section?
I presume OttelSpy25 you’re talking about the CD Extras or “Extended Extras” as it’s titled on BF’s download page.
For the bonus stories like String Theory (audio story) that’s already covered with a page of its own, covered like any other story.
I don’t think the extras need their own page as it’s almost entirely behind the scenes information and insight into recording.
Specific releases like “This is Big Finish” (as it’s listed in the The Light at the End special release book) or “This is Doctor Who at Big Finish” as it’s listed on BF’s website could have its own page as it’s not connected to a single story, although it was released with one.
Looking through the “bonus content” sections of my BF account page I can’t see anything that would fall outside of how we deal with pages / content here.
For those who don’t subscribe to BF the bonus content falls into the following categories which are a separate download to what is released on CD or for download.
- PDFs of the script
- Extended extras (these are longer extras than are released on CD).
- Subscriber bonus (such as a Short Trip audio story)
- High resolution cover art or other artwork like wallpaper
- Additional content released as either a podcast or other (such as with the Brood of Erys included all of BF’s audio stories produced for DWM like The Ratings War.
- OttselSpy25
There are a lot of audios which basically include mini-documentaries on the production of the segment or the background of the story. If the same thing were on a DVD it would have its own page.
- Tangerineduel
Which are titled as I said "extras".
They're a collection of interviews and unedited audio clips I think calling them mini-documentaries is pushing what they are somewhat.
As I said there are outliers like "This is Big Finish". But that's really the exception rather than the rule.
If there's a real need for a dedicated page for these (and I'm not yet convinced there is) then the Extras page could be a sub-page of the audio story's page. As is done on the Doctor Who video covers pages (like Doctor Who video covers/VHS UK covers) or the various years of Doctor Who Magazine (like Doctor Who Magazine/1986).
- OttselSpy25
These aren't just uncut interviews though, they're edited to tell a narrative and to serve as a documentary. Thus they deserve at least some page on the site.
- OttselSpy25
I mean, to clarify my point, some extras are just a bunch of interviews, and some are basically documentaries. That of Light at the End, for instance.
- Tangerineduel
What makes The Light at the End's doco any different from the other behind the scenes documentaries that have appeared on other Big Finish boxed sets over the years?
They're all around an hour long and they're all pretty much just a bunch of interviews.
In fact, if you divide any of the behind the scenes discs' running time amongst the releases it works out to be in general about 15-20 minutes per story, which is what the extras / extended extras are.
The issue with saying some extras are just interviews and some are documentaries is if say we do make pages for these (I'm still not in convinced) we need to have a firm definition of where the threshold lies.
If we were to pursue a page for the extras (be it the extras or the behind the scenes docos from The Light at the End or any of the boxed sets), then we'd need to apply it consistently.
There's I see no difference between The Light at the End doco, or the Counter-Measures S3 doco or the Dalek War bonus disc doco, they're all an additional disc / programme in addition to the story and they're all essentially longer versions of the extras included in the audio story. Nor are they really separate from the CD extras / extended extras, they're just longer.
The exceptions are things like "This is Big Finish" and Big Finish's Talks Back series they released some years ago which sit apart / cover multiple stories.
Anyway, I agree we need to be consistent. If we allow any of those unnamed extras to have pages, we'd have to make all of them pages, and consider them all documentaries in an equal light. If the requesting user does not feel comfortable doing that, then I agree, they should just be covered in a subsection.
Alternatively, there could always be some sort of Bonus (Big Finish) page with subsections for different audio releases, and you could link to a story's section from its main article, perhaps even the infobox.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:173886
The count for the disambiguation badge doesn't appear to have been updating for a while. I'm thinking about making some new disambiguation pages, but I want to make sure I get the badges for it, doncha know. :)
- Shambala108
Weird. I tried a few random badges and the dab one is the only one that didn't work for me. I've moved this thread to Board:The Drax Cave since it seems to be some kind of bug.
- Ebyabe
Thanks! I thought it was only me.
- CzechOut
The Game of Rassilon is just a game, which we can't guarantee will work at all times. Indeed, any of the editing tracks can be turned off at any time, and they'll always be turned off and on without notice.
While I will look into the issues with this one track — and I thank you for bringing this matter up — I'd strongly recommend that you edit as if the game weren't even in play right now.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:174366
How many Doctors will there be?
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:174831
I was looking up The Five Doctors (which I just watched having acquired a second hand DVD of it yesterday) and noticed that some of the VHS covers were missing. Checking the filenames, knowing they must have been deleted, I noticed that two of the file pages were in fact redirect pages, and had been edited after file renames to link to different files. By reverting those file page edits, I was able to restore two of the covers, though a third is still missing. I wonder if this same problem has affected other classic era serial articles?
I've reversed a couple of these edits as they replaced images with a sub-standard image (such as File:The Five Doctors VHS Australian folded out cover.jpg) which you can see in the page's history.
If the pages have been moved then why it's been moved should be in the page's history, and if another image has been uploaded that too should be in the page's history.
However looking through some of SOTO's page edits / moves I can't really discern a reason for the multiple moves / renames of files, especially as they've been left as redirects rather than changing the pages that link to them as well.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:175347
well once again we have more unsolvable clues.
4 across - a nurse : ??n?? 6 down - the doctor told the author of this book that he'd read it to prove he was his number one fan : ??i??r????? 17 down - actor who appeared alongside two, or possibly three, doctors (6,5) : ?????p ??d?c
if i can't solve this rubbish, then i don't know how anyone else can, but if any can it would be greatly appreciated.
thanks
- 165.228.133.90
sorry,but should have mentioned that 6 down is 2 words - (6,5)
thanks
- 165.228.133.90
i have now solved two of the three clues.
4 across - pinto (from the faceless ones in case you were wondering)
6 down - oliver twist
still need the answer to 17 down though.
thanks
- 165.228.133.90
it seems i've wasted my time starting this discussion because i've now solve the last clue.
17 down - philip madoc
thanks anyway
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:175420
I know it's a load of work to do, but I'm wondering why a lot of novels and audios are missing the plot on their pages. This is because not actually featuring the plot on the pages of these stories renders the page fundamentally useless.
This is especially weird, as the pages themselves contain details about obscure references to other works and characters in the DWU.
I am posting this because it is our job as a wiki to fill in these plot sections, otherwise how else will people understand the plot arcs of stories, whether it's because they're delving into a series midway through, or because they want to enjoy a story they can never experience themselves because of rarity etc?
I will be adding the plots to stories that I know in the near future, but my collection of novels is limited. I am therefore appealing to those of you on the wiki to edit in what you know too.
Don't feel too overwhelmed.
Thanks guys, means a lot.
- Shambala108
There are two main reasons the plot sections are not filled out:
- There aren't many people who edit on the wiki that have many/any of the novels.
- It's hard. I do the plot sections for short stories, and that's hard enough, but novels are much longer and therefore more difficult.
I want to stress, however, that we do not allow the copying of plots (or anything else) from Wikipedia, the DW Reference Guide, or anywhere else. Please see Tardis:Plagiarism for more on this policy.
As Shambala101 said, writing plots is hard. Especially for something as long as a novel. Doubly so for the sometimes complex NAs and MAs. I have occasionally tried and it is a hard balance between basically retelling the novel and being detailed enough to provide a summary without doing the former.
I however disagree about the job of this wiki to be the be all and end all location for plot summaries. Yes they play their part, but I don't believe a plot on an article is a substitute for the story itself.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:175460
Someone who has the issues in question needs to go back through DWM issues from 1991 and check the page counts. Several pages indicate a page count of 43, which is physically impossible - printed publications cannot have an odd number of pages.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:175625
When I search "8th Doctor," Eighth Doctor does not come up, as I did not spell out the number. (Actually, it does, but it is the 50th result or so.) Could we somehow change this behavior? Like by creating a redirect at 8th Doctor? It doesn't really matter to me, as I'm aware of it now, but I think it would be beneficial to the casual user of the site.
- Shambala108
I don't think what you suggest is going to happen, because it would cause some users to use the redirect, e.g. 8th Doctor instead of Eighth Doctor, on pages, which we don't want and violates Tardis:Doctors.
- DarthKnah
Ah. That makes a bit of sense. Do you know why Wikia's search engine works this way? When I search "8th Doctor" here, Eighth Doctor comes up as the 50th result, but if I search it on Google, that page is the second result.
I've passed it on to Wikia colleagues who deal with the search engine more regularly, and the basic deal is that our algorithm doesn't equate the cardinal English word (eighth) with the cardinal number (8th), whereas Google's does.
We're always striving to make our algorithms better! I strongly doubt it will always be the case that search will fail on the cardinal number.
If you see any more "weird" search engine fails, please feel free to pass them along directly to Wikia through a Special:Contact!
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:175632
Such as "For the Doctor, this story is set between ________ and _________" and so on.
- Shambala108
Basically, the decision was that timelines require too much speculation, which we don't want on the wiki. You can read more about the decision at Forum:Timeline sections on pages.
We do have a separate namespace for timeline info. You can find it at Theory:Timey-wimey detector.
But the vast majority of Doctor Who stories have no obvious connection to other stories, and temporal placement would be highly speculative, arbitrary, or, as they do over at the otherwise excellent Doctor Who Reference Guide, based upon the clothing or hairstyle that someone is wearing.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:176450
hello, and here we go again with yet another unsolvable crossword clue.
7 down - the doctor died trying to save her
answer - ?a??
if anyone can help it would be much appreciated.
thanks
- Shambala108
Might be Cass from The Night of the Doctor.
- 86.165.194.214
i put rose from when the 9th regenerated to save her when she looked into the time vortex
- 162.201.117.199
Could be Peri as well
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:176588
Given that The Light (1963: The Assassination Games) has now reappeared as the main antagonist of Counter-Measures series 4 (and retroactively series 3 too), can The Light be moved to The Light (The Twilight Streets)? The Big Finish one has the most appearances at this point, so either it should be made the main article, or the disambiguation page should.
- SOTO
There must be three pages by that name to call for a disambig page, though I suppose(?) redirecting
The LighttoLight (disambiguation)might be an option. You're right, though, both should have dab terms. - SOTO
While we're on the topic, don't you think Light should be dabbed as well, leaving room for an article on the actual phenomenon of light?
- Tybort
I think so. Both the type of radiation and the idea of lightbulbs and lamps definitely exist in the DWU (along with torch mentioning both electric and fire-based torches), and I'd imagine it's referred to far more often than the character in Ghost Light.
- JagoAndLitefoot
Well, Light (The Dark Planet) was also referred to as The' light (not sure if always). But generally, I think making "The Light" a redirect to the "Light" disambig is the best idea.
- Shambala108
We currently have two articles titled "Light" (with a possible third to cover the electromagnetic radiation), and three articles titled "The Light". There is a dab page for "Light" but none for "The Light".
Here is my suggestion (which pretty much sums up what has been said above): all these articles (with the possible exception of the electromagnetic radiation one) should be dabbed, and all should be listed on the dab page "Light" (as they all are). There is probably no need for a separate dab page at "The Light".
- SOTO
This has not yet been implemented. The Light should redirect to Light (disambiguation). Article currently at the Light should be the Light (Twilight Streets). Speedy rename has been placed at the Light.
Light has already been moved to Light (Ghost Light).
- DENCH-and-PALMER
Light (video game) could also be included.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:176596
Looks like the majority of this wiki has been plagiarised (34,670 pages out of 46,552). There's even the message about Monobook not being the skin you're supposed to use. They even copied talk pages - that's how I found out, I got an email notification of a reply on a wiki I had posted on in the past, and from there was told I had a message on my talk page at http://dwwiki.shoutwiki.com/ which I didn't previously know about - the message turned out to be a complete copy of my talk page from here. It was created on 23 January 2015 and the only things they don't seem to have copied are javascript and images.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:176987
SJA Templete Bannerman Road Gang
In the revision history of the SJA Templete Bannerman Road Gang I saw the following comment: "if you wish to suggest changes, please do so at forum:panopticon" and that is what I am going to do.
I think Santiago Jones should definitly be listed in there he took part as much in their adventures as Jo Grant (Jones) or Toby Silverman and even took a short trip in the TARDIS together with the gang.
SJA Uncredit cast
There are some characters listed as uncredited cast in the SJA that definitly don't exist:
- Rosaline Evans - Emily Head (Eye of the Gorgon), doesn't exist, is neither mentioned in the episode nor the novelisation + the only female characters that appear in the episode (besides the credited cast) are nuns. So it isn't even possible that an agency invented a name for a woman that only appeared for a second on the screen, because that name would be Sister ...) + if you look at the IP's previous edits you see that the IP had already added several other fake actors, where the edits later had been reverted. Like this one, or this one, or this one) (btw. here is another edit by the same IP which wasn't reverted, maybe the name Jason Etheridge is wrong as well, maybe it is right.)
- Wendy (Warriors of Kudlak): a pupil named Wendy is neither mentioned in the episodes nor the novelisations. I guess someone mixed it up with the headministress.
- Melissa Scriven - Lucy Clarkson (The Eternity Trap) is neither mentioned in the episodes nor the novelisations. (& was added without explaination: Link)
- Shambala108
Are these two separate questions? If so, addressing the second one, I know you've been doing a lot of work on the SJA stories, and if you can't find any evidence of these characters, please put a {{Delete}} tag on them so the pages can be removed by an admin. If you're unfamiliar with how to use the "delete" tag, please see Template:Proposed deletion. For the "reason for deletion" you can just put the title of this thread, Thread:176987.
(BTW, I fixed the Jason Etheridge link, after verifying on the BBC website that it is incorrect.) Thanks!
- Dynara
Thanks yes this are two seperate question, I can't edit Template:Bannerman_Road_Gang, otherwise I would have added Santiago there myself, that is why I've asked the first question.
About Second Question: I have removed the unsourced characters and actors from the episode pages and added the proposed deletion tag to Emily Head.
I feel a little bit sorry for putting a delete tag to Wendy though. Someone put a lot of work into writing it and it could be used for other characters. The text for the episode Warriors of the Kudlak fits to three other characters, just the names could be changed. Maybe the page can be moved and be named "Children (Warriors of the Kudlak)", because there are one boy and two girls (none of them are named Wendy, appeared in Revenge of the Slitheen, or were in Luke's and Clyde's class) to which the WotK text fits too. I can change the text if it's moved.
Suggestion for the page move (the text would almost be the same, it should be mentioned who wrote the text in the first place, so it wouldn't be nice to just delete the page and copy the text there - I would only changed a few things):
Children (Warriors of the Kudlak) In 2009 a boys and two girls begun to play Combat 3000, a game of laser tag, in Manchester, Leeds and Inverness. Unbeknownst to them....
- Shambala108
If you want, you could put a {{rename}} tag on Wendy, and link to this discussion or start a discussion on the talk page.
- Dynara
Okay I put a rename tag on this and changed the text. The only discussion that needs to be made is if either to delete or to move the page. I am 100% sure that the name Wendy is wrong.
There is noone in the series that the text, that was added there before fits to. None of the two girls in WoK appear in Revenge of the Slitheen. Before it was written that Pamela Merrick was playing her which is wrong. Pamela Merrick played a Wendy, but this Wendy was a headministress and she also didn't appear in WoK, even though she was listed on the episode page before: See
- SOTO
Is that page really necessary? In any case, Wendy should be a dab page. The article currently at that title needs to either be renamed to something, or deleted.
- Dynara
You are right. I've seen that there are other similar pages. The article isn't needed anymore. I think you can delete it.
However I still think that Santiago Jones should be added here: Template:Bannerman Road Gang (Associates).
- Bwburke94
Dynara wrote: However I still think that Santiago Jones should be added here: Template:Bannerman Road Gang (Associates).
We don't want another Maitlands situation, do we?
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:177109
As is widely known, the broadcast order for Seasons 25 and 26 was altered by the producer from the originally intended production order to accomodate real world timing into the broadcast schedule. Therefore, Season 25 was rearranged so as to allow an episode of Silver Nemesis to air on the 25th anniversary, and Season 26 was rearranged so that the stories were seasonably suitable: The Curse of Fenric was to air in the Autumn near Halloween, due to its horror themes. However, the chronological order of these stories was unchanged: the productions still reflected the originally intended broadcast order, and therefore the in-narrative continuity reflected this original order also.
On this wiki, most Real World lists correctly list the stories in broadcast order. However, numerous in-universe summaries also list the events in broadcast order, ignoring the inaccuracies and dramatic purpose of the original order.
In order to debate the most sensible system of ordering in a democratic way, I am creating this thread to help the community come to a definitive decision on the ordering of these stories.
- Digifiend
Don't the story pages have notes about the errors in continuity caused by them airing out of order? Filming on season 26 was over before it started airing, that's why they weren't fixed. The only thing changed in post was the addition of Seven's monologue at the end of Survival, since the show had been cancelled.
- Bwburke94
There is onscreen evidence that the stories did not take place in the same order in which they aired. In-universe, from the perspective of the Doctor, the events of The Greatest Show in the Galaxy happened before Silver Nemesis, and the events of The Curse of Fenric happened before Battlefield.
As a result, our in-universe articles should reflect this order of events.
- RogerAckroydLives
I entirely support Bwburke94's sentiment.
- CzechOut
What do you mean by "in-universe summaries"? Which in-universe articles are specifically being knocked for six by using broadcast order? We'd really need a list of articles that are impacted to make a fair assessment.
Regardless, I'm not inclined to back this proposal, even though there was a time several years ago when I probably would have.
Let's imagine the article, Ace, has events listed in broadcast order. The usual way of handling this in the past is to accept broadcast order as true, and then to make a note in the behind the scenes section as to the problems created by airing out of intended order. In other words, the airing schedule creates production errors, such as Ace wearing a particular item in one episode that she receives in a later one.
Who amongst us is really brave enough to correct Doctor Who for production errors! No, just accept things as they are, and then note the production errors only if they're truly relevant to the page on which you're working.
- RogerAckroydLives
No articles are being "knocked for six" by their system of ordering. It's just simple housekeeping-making the wiki's in universe information as accurate as possible. This is a minor correction, most likely only applicable to the Seventh Doctor and Ace pages. No Real World pages would be reordered-order of production and order of broadcast will remain separate as they always have and should be.
Why is this perfectly sensible idea so problematic? Television story pages will continue to list notes and production errors as are required for viewing in broadcast order. Instead, these various stories will be set at their intended points in chronology. Would we place stories like ATCM incorrectly to reflect broadcast order, or rearrange Dark Eyes 2 to reflect listening order? Real world and in universe matters are completely separate, so until a Big Finish release can be placed by the costumes worn by principle characters on the cover, the broadcast order should have no dictate over in-universe placement.
- CzechOut
Ahhh, but there's the rub. It's not in-universe information. You're using out-of-universe information — what you've read about the intent-during-production for broadcast order — to undergird your belief about the in-universe "facts". And you really can't do that.
Believe me, we've talked about this very thing before, and then I was making your arguments. But if you sit and think about applying this sort of logic to Doctor Who as a whole, you rather quickly run into problems.
In the first place, JNT signed off on broadcast order, so production intent goes out the window. Maybe at one point a certain order was intended, but ultimately the Doctor Who production office shuffled the deck. So you can't establish the order you'd like as what was intended by the producers, even though there appear to be very solid clues supporting your view.
But in the second, we're talking about a show that's riddled with production errors. And the problem becomes how do you establish any sort of intent in any situation that seems suspect? Fine, we can say with certainty that boom shadows shouldn't have existed (when they did), and Tardis doors should have opened smoothly (when they didn't), but that's about as far as you can take it.
Did, for example, William Hartnell intend to fluff as many lines as he did, or was he, at least some of the time, deliberately getting the lines wrong so as to create a character trait? We don't really know, so we deem the script-as-written — which presumably would be devoid of at least some of the fluffs — a lesser source than the show-as-aired. In other words, we believe the Doctor said things as Hartnell said them, not some other way that might make better sense.
Equally, we don't ignore Tom Baker's well-known penchant for ad-libbing in favour of the script.
And should we say that The Greatest Show in the Galaxy really didn't take place largely in tents because we know that it was filmed in tents because of an asbestos scare at Television Centre? No, the proper interpretation of the story is that the planet on which it takes place simply has a lot of tents. Neither do we note the myriad CSO errors in Underworld on an article about one of the characters from that story, because we are meant to believe that the CSO is working to wholly suspend our disbelief.
And we certainly don't say that Troughton's TARDIS walls in Tomb of the Cybermen were made of paper — even though they most evidently were. Did the production team intend those walls be made of paper? Yes. That's what the budget ran to. But they certainly didn't intend us to believe the walls were made of paper. And now that we can see The Aztecs in much better resolution, we can see that the background is actually just a cyclorama. It's screamingly obvious that it's just a bit of canvas. But we still suspend our disbelief to say that the story took place in Ancient Mexico, and not on a soundstage at Lime Grove.
Same thing applies here. The production team signed off on broadcast order, and that's the order that we're meant to believe the stories happened in. Clues to the contrary are production errors arising from that decision, and thus should only be placed in behind-the-scenes sections.
- Side Rat
With all due respect, CzechOut, it seems to me that you are trying to have it both ways. Ace acquiring Flowerchild's earring in Greatest Show is in-universe information. Her rucksack being destoryed in Silver Nemesis is in-universe information. The production team signing off on the broadcast order is out-of-universe information.
What in-universe evidence is there for your statement that "we're meant to believe the stories happened in" broadcast order? That certainly isn't stipulated in the show. On the new series there are a number of events that occur chronologically in a different order than the airing of the episodes in which they occur. You wouldn't say it's simply a continuity error that River Song is alive in Series 5 when she died in Series 4. Would you say it's a continuity error that Rory leaves his phone in Henry VIII's bedroom in "The Power Of Three" after being said to have done so in the previous episode "A Town Called Mercy"?
- BananaClownMan
Well, I'm back from my university retreat (by-the-by I have now been made a Bedfordshire University student of the Theatre and Practice, so yay for me!)
Now I can reply to R.A.L.'s invitation to take part in this little debate. And before I do, I believe User:RogerAckroydLives is owed an apology for my harsh words while I was stressed out by the accounts of my university applications. However, at the same time, you invited my wrath when you messaged me when you knew I was busy. And as for questioning my maturity; I'm a 20-year-old Autistic student with an above average IQ. Maturity is not on my resume.
Now, enough prelude, it's time I told yoy my stance with this subject, and I side with User:CzechOut. If this subject was dismissed years ago, why should it be permissible now?
- RogerAckroydLives
Thank you for replying. I apologise for upsetting you, but I could not have known that you were busy, only that you had been busy in the recent past. I do not question your maturity, I only ask you to maintain the high standards you obviously have, especially when communicating with a much less experienced user than yourself. As to the debate, I feel some of my points are made especially clear by User:SideRat's post. If these can be invalidated, I will happily return to being a more active contributor to this debate.
- Bwburke94
All in-universe evidence points toward the stories not taking place from the perspective of the Doctor in the order they were broadcast in. Saying "they took place in broadcast order because the production team signed off on it" is out-of-universe evidence.
Also, Side Rat has a point. If we determine broadcast order to strictly be the Doctor's order of events for the Season 25/26 stories, we cannot break this policy for "A Town Called Mercy" and "The Power of Three", as we treat the classic series and revived series as equals for the purposes of policy.
- BananaClownMan
Expect there is in-universe evidence about "ATCM" AND "TPo3"; The Doctor talks about Rory dropping his phone charger in Henry IV's dressing room during "ATCM" and we see it happen during the "anniversary montage" in "TPo3".
- RogerAckroydLives
Except there is in-universe evidence about Seasons 25 and 26, such as Flowerchild's earring, Ace's rucksack, Ace's 'spooky old house' and juvenile misbehaviour... You make no point.
- Bwburke94
I hesitate to bring this up again, but the issue isn't that the stories were shown out of order - the issue is that the stories were shown out of order without any edits occurring to reflect the change.
In Season 15 and Series 6 (and a few other instances in the BBC Wales run) the episode order was subtly shifted around but edits were made to accommodate this, while in Seasons 25 and 26, there were no such edits made.
- SOTO
Could we not simply regard these as production errors, though? I think if no statements are made to that effect in a DWU source (even retroactively in a novel, for example), we should assume the stories take place in the order as broadcast, as they were intended to be. Any incongruencies can be seen as production errors made as a result of the change of order, but the change of order is definitive.
If a story says it takes place before or after another story from the perspective of at least one of the characters—as for the Eleventh Doctor at the start of series 6—obviously that takes precedence. Otherwise, we do not speculate. We do not piece things together. We write based on what we're given.
As for ATCM and TPOT, I think that might be speculation as well, to put the stories in that order, for example on Rory's page. Is it possible they encountered him twice? Does that montage scene actually show Rory losing his mobile phone? I'd have to rewatch it.
- Bwburke94
SOTO wrote: As for ATCM and TPOT, I think that might be speculation as well, to put the stories in that order, for example on Rory's page. Is it possible they encountered him twice? Does that montage scene actually show Rory losing his mobile phone? I'd have to rewatch it.
The supposition that Rory encountered Henry VIII twice is much more speculation-based than simply reordering certain events would be.
- SOTO
Do we see him lose his mobile phone charger, or are we just supposing that happened in that timespan because they encountered Henry VIII?
- Bwburke94
SOTO wrote: Do we see him lose his mobile phone charger, or are we just supposing that happened in that timespan because they encountered Henry VIII?
According to B.C.M., we did see it, but he might be misremembering.
Now, here's the problem. Why is this even being debated? We're going off a slippery slope argument of "if Ace's article is in air date order, then Amy's and Rory's articles must also be in air date order" without considering the context of why the events aired in that order.
- SOTO
Hmm. I suppose if the events of Mercy take place during TPOT, it would make sense that given the narrative, they'd release the adventure-within-the-adventure first, so that the end of Power of Three could follow on immediately to the Ponds' exist in the mid-series finale.
If it does truly take place during, then that's a different case to reordering the stories. The Power of Three goes over a long period of time, between sometime after Dinosaurs, and Angels Take Manhattan.
Indeed, The Wedding of River Song takes place before, during and after the opener of the same series, for the various people involved.
- Bwburke94
As for the Seventh Doctor ordering that launched this debate:
Within the episodes as aired, there is no evidence either way, but there are hints toward Greatest Show happening before Silver Nemesis. What is the difference between this situation and ATCM/TPO3, given that in both cases the Doctor and companions have a different order of events than the viewers?
- SOTO
What I was pointing out is that for the series 7, it's not quite a different order at all. Rather, the start of TPO3 may very well take place before ATCM. The bulk of the story, where the actual plot takes place, still takes place after ATCM. It merely starts a little earlier, and gives us some context on the perspective of Amy and Rory on their travels with the Doctor.
I do not think there is any indication in-universe, taking production errors into account, for the Seventh Doctor serials you mentioned taking place out of order. "Hints" are not enough to justify going specifically against broadcast order. As you've stated yourself, the issue at hand is that they shifted around the order and did not make edits to accommodate this, leading to inconsistencies. Those inconsistencies are nothing more than production errors, remnants of the original intended order of the series which was not the final one.
- RogerAckroydLives
Bwburke94 wrote: As for the Seventh Doctor ordering that launched this debate:
Within the episodes as aired, there is no evidence either way, but there are hints toward Greatest Show happening before Silver Nemesis.
There are no "hints" whatsoever. If that was what this debate were based on, I would never have started it. The reasoning behind the discussion was never to "restore" stories to their originally intended order, it was to an attempt to point out how in-narrative evidence places a couple of Seventh Doctor serials.
Production errors are production errors: when something was never intended to happen but accidentally did. This, on the other hand, is to do with with broadcast scheduling, marketing and other out of universe factors. Yes, Curse was supposed to open Season 26, but didn't. Yes, Nemesis was supposed to conclude Season 25, but similarly did not. This has got nothing to do with in-universe narrative. However, this is not the case with what I originally attempted to highlight.
In Nemesis, Ace possesses an earring and her rucksack is destroyed. In Greatest Show, she gains that earring and possesses her rucksack. In Ghost Light, Ace visits the house in Perivale which scared her, and finally resolves her feelings about it. In Curse, Ace refers to a haunted house in Perivale that scares her. These aren't hints, these are facts, and they are in the stories as broadcast, final edits rather than earlier versions.
Yes, we could reason away how all of this makes sense if events occur in broadcast order, but that would be pure speculation. Instead, like all visual or dialogue-based references, I argue we should place them accordingly. Nothing to do with production order or originally intended broadcast order, and not even consistent with either. All to do with final edits of stories and the continuity therein. There is no conflict, no additional references which establish broadcast order as the in-universe order. Taking broadcast order as first preference is fine, but using it to contradict in-universe references I can't justify. Yes, technically they are production errors, but that is completely and utterly outside the narrative. All contradictions and mistakes can be construed as such, so I fail to understand you, SOTO, when you say "I do not think there is any indication in-universe, taking production errors into account, for the Seventh Doctor serials you mentioned taking place out of order." Surely then you are suggesting production overrules narrative, and that whenever there are any contradictions between order of release/intended placement and the ongoing narrative into which the stories slot (production errors) we should look to intention rather than use in-universe info to determine where best to place it. But we've never decided that production information trumps the story itself. What would we do when Big Finish released a story them claimed took place before Kinda, but included direct references to the Mara and had no in-universe evidence to place it before the aforementioned serial? If this thread is any indication, I would imagine we would ignore the story and agree with the statements of real-world individuals. Surely that's against everything we say about canon, continuity and RW?
- RogerAckroydLives
SOTO wrote: I do not think there is any indication in-universe, taking production errors into account, for the Seventh Doctor serials you mentioned taking place out of order. "Hints" are not enough to justify going specifically against broadcast order. As you've stated yourself, the issue at hand is that they shifted around the order and did not make edits to accommodate this, leading to inconsistencies. Those inconsistencies are nothing more than production errors, remnants of the original intended order of the series which was not the final one.
I fail to understand what you are suggesting. If you wish to rule out "production errors" as determining factors of continuity, then surely every story ever takes place in release order. We have no in-universe justification for it, but given how I feel you suggest that production trumps narrative continuity, surely all BF main range stories take place in order, with the rotation between actors and characters simply "production errors". TWORS does not occur put of order for any of the characters, rather TIA takes place out of order for the Doctor. But surely by your ruling, this is also a production error. The Doctor does indeed die, come back to life for no reason, and everything stated by River about how he must be from earlier in his timeline is similarly wrong.
What I'm trying to get at is the fact that production cannot take precedence over narrative continuity. I get the point many of you are making: therefore, production ordering cannot take precedence over final airing order, and I accept that. But that was never my argument. What I argue is that when stories clearly make narrative sense in one order and not another, they should be represented as such on this wiki. While both the VNAs and BF's Lost Stories attempt to give us a Season 27, the only in-universe ordering ever presented for Greatest Show is prior to Silver Nemesis, and likewise with TCOF and GL. My narrative based order mirrors neither production order nor the originally intended broadcast order. It simply follows in-narrative referencing in order to make placements, and therefore rearranges the ordering of certain stories as compared to he (out of universe) broadcast order.
- Bold Clone
If I may drop my two cents (or is it shillings?) on the matter, RogerAckroydLives, I think you're overreacting to SOTO's comment. SOTO isn't talking about continuity/production errors with BF, but only TV. Besides, I'm not sure he's even talking about production order. He's arguing that regardless of production order we should always go with broadcast order for the TV show. And I'm with SOTO, although he can argue the case much better than myself.
- BananaClownMan
I would like to re-open this discussion, seeing as it has no definite conclusion. As some of you may have noticed, I have recently taken to scouting out information on different timeline theories to find a definitive timeline that lines up with the facts presented in each theory.
At present, I'm currently adding the final touches to a potential Sixth Doctor timeline and am about to move on to the Seventh. Now, having skimmed through some books and audios' information, I have found no evidence that contradicts User:RogerAckroydLives's proposition of the production order proposition, like how many Second Doctor stories are chronicled by Jamie's statement in Last of the Cybermen.
Taking into his account of the facts of the earring and the handbag, I have decided to pull a Black Widow and switch my allegiance on this discussion to "Team Production".
- Bwburke94
I'd use out-of-universe release order only if all the following are true:
- 1. The stories were released in the same medium
- 2. If televised, the stories were released as part of the same series run (same definition of "series run" as in the ongoing two-parter discussion)
- 3. If the Doctor appears in both stories, he is in the same incarnation
- 4. There is no in-universe evidence, including "incidental" evidence such as clothing, to suggest the stories take place outside release order
- Shambala108
BananaClownMan wrote: I would like to re-open this discussion, seeing as it has no definite conclusion.
It seems to me that User:CzechOut's comments were pretty definitive as a conclusion.
The attempts to order stories on Doctor pages will always be futile because no author cares about his own continuity, much less another author's. There will always be disagreements among editors over story placement, and that leads to edit wars, something that is to be avoided.
There is so much other work to be done on this wiki, and story placement is impossible to get definitively, so the attempts to order stories should be abandoned.
- SeaniesBeanies
It doesn't actually matter because story order is always the broadcast/release order on TV pages. The only thing we can do about this is append a note in the behind the scenes section or move the order of the stories on the Timey-wimey detector.
- Bwburke94
This discussion is primarily about in-universe pages, not real-world pages.
- SeaniesBeanies
Okay, then since when has broadcast order defined story placement? If we go through with that idea, then technically The Night Of The Doctor would have to take place after The Name Of The Doctor, which is just categorically wrong.
Just because the stories were meant to be viewed in that order, it doesn't mean that they were meant to take place in that order, because, let's face it, by and large, it didn't matter what order you used to watch serials in, as only fans would really notice and not the Joe Public.
I'd also like to add in that if these stories were intended to be broadcast in this original order, then that should count as authorial intent. For example, with The Infinity Doctors, I don't particularly recall Lance Parkin shouting from the heavens that it was set in a non-DWU universe, but we regard it as such due to what he said in interviews after it was published. Hence, we should probably carry out the intent of the writers and production team in this case, instead of the schedulers or JNT.
- Bwburke94
SeaniesBeanies wrote:
Okay, then since when has broadcast order defined story placement? If we go through with that idea, then technically The Night Of The Doctor would have to take place after The Name Of The Doctor, which is just categorically wrong.That's not what's being argued. Besides, "before"/"after" is hard to define, given the nature of the programme.
This debate is about which real-world order to use if there is no in-universe option. I see no reason the debate needs to continue, because we're arguing over something that's impossible to solve.
- 2.26.183.190
Just to point out the intention in the power of three was that they where meant to be retrieving Rory phone charger and there's no evidence that they left it behind on screen.
- Bwburke94
2.26.183.190 wrote: Just to point out the intention in the power of three was that they where meant to be retrieving Rory phone charger and there's no evidence that they left it behind on screen.
Can you back up this assertion with in-universe evidence?
- 2.26.183.190
its not staterd in universe but the sean was witan to show what hapend when they tried to retrieve the charger and was inspierd by the line in a town called mercy also the doctor was holding the charger in the Sean not Rory the best rule when ordering tv story the best rule is probley to go by broadcast order unless there is compelling evidans other wiss
- BananaClownMan
Gonna agree with our anonymous friend here. I've recently done research on all the Seventh Doctor expanded universe articles, and there is nothing to suggest that the serials were experienced in broadcast order.
- 166.137.244.127
Please specify exactly what you used for research.
- BananaClownMan
Well, it would take to long to list them here, but I did leave all my notes and references on the timeline theory page.
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Theory:Timeline_-_Seventh_Doctor
- Shambala108
166.137.244.127 wrote: Please specify exactly what you used for research.
I posted this, and I am repeating my request. I do not have the time to sift through all your notes and edits. Please specify what sources you used for research.
- BananaClownMan
Well, if its resources you interested in, I used Doctor Who - The Complete Adventures as a template, made first altercation by reading this wiki's pages on the entries, looked further into them with Doctor Who Reference Guide, The Whoniverse, The History of Doctor Who, The Discontinuity Guide, and Clive Banks databanks, and then visited the Big Finnish forum to get others observations into the mix. And, from what I could find, there weren't any stories explicitly saying, for example, that Curse of Fenric lead into Survival, expect the Survival novelisation, but the rest of the wiki pages were ignoring the altercation in the novel, so I figured there was no point taking it into account.
- Shambala108
- Doctor Who the Complete Adventures - not a valid source
- Doctor Who Reference Guide - not a valid source
- The Whoniverse - not a valid source
- The History of Doctor Who - not a valid source
- The Discontinuity Guide - not a valid source
- Clive Banks' site - not a valid source
- Big Finish forums - not a valid source
- Survival novelization - if it doesn't contradict the televised episode, is a valid source
Since you used these invalid sources for your timeline on Theory:Timeline - Seventh Doctor, you are not allowed to use any of that information on any in-universe pages.
- Bwburke94
It appears the only valid source we can find for Season 26 order is the novelisation, provided it is not seen as contradicting the televised version of the story.
I don't want to be seen as dragging myself back into the discussion, but what is the specific wording of the passage from the novelisation? If it merely mentions Fenric has already happened, it does nothing order-wise.
- BananaClownMan
Here's what User:C.O.T sent me.
- "This particular trap was devised by a guy I know. He was a commando in World War Two. They used it very effectively in a raid into occupied France in 1942. He told me about it himself." Last week, [Ace] added to herself, in 1943.
- [Ace] was thinking of her last visit to Earth: it had been 1943 and she had seen her mother. But then her mother was a helpless baby that Ace had come to love without even knowing it.
- BananaClownMan
You know what, we've all been arguing our cases, and it's not getting us anywhere but in circles. I say, we take a vote, like with the Titan Backup comics.
No arguing points. No replying to anything. No going off topic with rules or validity. All in favour of Broadcast order say "Yes", all in favour of Production order say "No". Whichever has the most votes in their favour by the end of next month (August 31), that's what will be used on the Seventh Doctor's page, no ifs, buts or complaining.
I'm cool with whatever result comes up, so I'm forfeiting my vote.
- Shambala108
There will be no vote. As I have said multiple times, there is no need to include chronology on in-universe pages. Keep it to the theory namespace.
BananaClownMan wrote: I say, we take a vote, like with the Titan Backup comics.
The situations are considerably different, so the one fails to be predictive of the other.
Or to put it more simply, Shambala was right. There won't be a vote.
See, the Titan Backup comics were new. And their inclusion was an arbitrary decision. A simple up/down vote -- given that there had already been significant discussion -- was as good a method as any for determining an issue that was never going to have that much impact on the wiki as a whole.
That's not the case here.
In the past, we've had a number of discussions about this kind of thing. In fact, on this very thing. And we've maintained that you can only use in-universe proof, as Shambala has been pointing out.
It does not matter what the production team have said about the earring. It certainly doesn't matter what reference books written decades after transmission have said. What matters is what we can discern from the episodes as televised, and initially transmitted on BBC One.[1]
That's it, really.
Writing an in-universe article is really simple at Tardis. You watch the episodes. You take notes. You work from those notes. And only those notes. You never let yourself fall into the trap of confusing behind-the-scenes information with in-universe matters. And you really never try to use narratives to prove an out-of-universe fact.
If you keep this in mind then you'll be able to properly identify the thing about the earring a production error not "proof that the proper timeline is something other than broadcast order."
See, I used to be on the side of people who wanted to restructure the McCoy era. But then Tangerineduel made me stop and reconsider the wisdom of that. There are any number of serials which have absolutely no connective tissue between them. That's even more true with stories in other media.
One of the easiest televised eras where this phenomenon occurs is once K9 Mark I has joined Leela and the Fourth Doctor. There's really nothing preventing the assertion that The Sun Makers occurred before Image of the Fendahl. In fact, the only stories of Season 15 that need to be where they were broadcast are the first and last ones. Leela's eye color changes at the top of the season, and she leaves at the bottom -- but otherwise there's nothing much that mandates the middle stories be in any particular order.
So if we were to allow this reordering of stories in the McCoy era as you suggest, we'd be opening ourselves up to different people having different ideas about proper narrative order -- throughout the history of Doctor Who. And we just can't have that kinda chaos. Since it is a general television convention that broadcast order does equal narrative order, that's what we have chosen after lengthy discussion.[2]
- ↑ The primacy of the BBC One premiere has been long established in our notions of what it means for a televised story to be "officially released". Thus, Story B comes after Story A if that's how they were released on BBC One.
- ↑ We have to make some sort of choice as to what the order is, by the way. If we didn't, some would assert we could use production codes. Or production dates. Or whatever. And we can't have whatever, because it would confuse the hell out of readers. Therefore, any novelisation that asserts anything other than the BBC One premiere order is in conflict with the televised episode. And novelisations can't do that. Televised episodes always win. So any effort to use novelisations to assert an inequality between broadcast and narrative orders fails before it starts.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:177875
While I was away on an educational retreat, User:Tybort replaced the links for the early William Hartnell serials with their individual titles. While I am not against this per say, I do question ifs this is the right move to take? To go over all pre-The Savages serials and replace the links to the individual episodes? And where is the line drawn; should all the character page's for those serials get replaced with links for the individual episodes they were in?
- RogerAckroydLives
I feel that User:Tybort's change is for the better. No longer referencing out of universe titles is impossible, but improving the wiki to remove titles which are subjective, tentative or even inaccurate cannot be for anything but the better. As the evolution progresses, hopefully it will reach the point where characters/events/settings featured in single episode will no longer feature a serial title given in production documents, but instead an on-screen title.
- Shambala108
BananaClownMan, can you post a couple of examples here? I'm not sure I understand what your concern is, and I'd like to see what you mean. Tybort's been making a lot of edits lately and I don't have time to search through all his contributions to look for the areas that concern you. Thanks.
- BananaClownMan
Well, for example, he replaced links to An Unearthly Child serial with links that link directly to the individual episodes, e.g. "Cave of Skulls".
What confuses me is A) if this was a decision that was voted for while I was AWOL, and B) how far this extends to. If the Doctor strokes his lapels in two episodes on serial, do both episodes get mentioned? And what about episode recaps on the biographies?
- Shambala108
A) If you look at enough pages, you'll see that we've been doing this for a long time, perhaps even before I started editing here. So it's nothing new, just something you may not have seen before.
B) If something happens in two episodes you would link to the serial as a whole.
What do you mean by episode recaps?
- BananaClownMan
In the biography sections, like "Meeting Ian and Barbara" recaps the "Beginnings trilogy" from the Doctor's perspective.
Should each individual episode of this trilogy be separated in the biography sub-section?
- Bwburke94
RogerAckroydLives wrote:
I feel that User:Tybort's change is for the better. No longer referencing out of universe titles is impossible, but improving the wiki to remove titles which are subjective, tentative or even inaccurate cannot be for anything but the better.
All Hartnell-era television stories on this wiki are titled according to their official names given by the BBC. In no way are these names subjective, tentative, or inaccurate.
BananaClownMan wrote:
In the biography sections, like "Meeting Ian and Barbara" recaps the "Beginnings trilogy" from the Doctor's perspective. Should each individual episode of this trilogy be separated in the biography sub-section?
Since it's all one story, it should be cited as one story to lessen the number of citations.
I suppose it's possible that citations of An Unearthly Child the serial can be split into citations of "An Unearthly Child" the episode and the following three episodes, but in the general case if you're citing multiple episodes from a single serial, just use the serial's name.
- Tybort
Pretty much agree with what Shambala108 said about the segment (i.e. lapels) spanning multiple episodes. If this is referring to my recent edits on Creation of the Daleks and Thousand Year War regarding The Daleks, however, my rationale is that these are small snippets of scenes several episodes apart from one another referring to distinct elements of the subjects (i.e. the Thals' account vs what the Daleks said).
If it can be argued that (TV: The Daleks) is a more suitable way of citing the episode on those two pages than, say, (TV: "The Survivors") and (TV: "The Expedition") at two different points on a paragraph, then I probably won't resist too much. I consider those to be borderline myself.
Another thing, in the case of Ian Chesterton, only the first episode covers Ian's curiosity of Susan and finding the police box mentioned in the page's At Coal Hill School section, hence the (TV: "An Unearthly Child"), while the rest of what Ian does mentioned in the Travels with the Doctor section involves information from all four episodes, including the first one, so it has (TV: An Unearthly Child) in italics. Hope that rationale makes sense.
Personally, I prefer it because it's more precise. It's not necessary, strictly speaking. But it's certainly allowable. And you probably shouldn't change the citation from something which is more precise, like "An Unearthly Child", to something which is less precise, like An Unearthly Child.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:177877
Where does this wiki stand on the "canon-ness" of Backup Titan comics and WeLoveTITANS stories?
- RogerAckroydLives
Please see Thread:177099 for details.
- Mewiet
On the topic of Tardis:Canon policy:
This wiki's canon policy is pretty simple: Doctor Who and its related programmes have no canon.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:178134
Categories should be clear cut, but as of now there are a lot of different beliefs as to what constitutes a story's inclusion under a story arc category.
For instance, the Category:Bad Wolf arc is the second largest story arc category with 29 stories. Rose is included in this arc, but The End of the World specifically states:
The story also introduced recurring characters Lady Cassandra and the Face of Boe, and featured the first mention of the ubiquitous phrase "Bad Wolf".
So why is it included? Is it merely due to Rose's presence even though the actual "Bad Wolf" clues don't start appearing until The End of the World?
Then we find out what the arc means in The Parting of the Ways, which aired June 18, 2005. According to some users, this means because we found out the mystery behind the arc, the arc is officially concluded and no more stories published after that date can be added to the category. However, we have many stories under this category including Tooth and Claw because of the "something of the wolf about you" line to Rose and Turn Left due to the fact that it picks the arc up again by having Rose invoke "Bad Wolf" as a significant message to the Doctor about reality collapsing.
Complicating matters further, Shambala has noted in the past that some editors also think that repurposed footage makes stories retroactively part of an arc, as in the case of various shots repurposed to include Clara's echoes in The Name of the Doctor and then old TV stories were added to the Category:Clara Oswin Oswald arc. Looking at the category presently, those stories appear to have been removed again, but I feel the fact that this occurred in the first place (I think Shambala's comment was that it was a very abused category, although I can't remember which talk page she mentioned this on) still illustrates the need for clarification regarding story arc categories.
Category:Story arcs isn't helpful in that regard, but story arc says:
"Story arc" is the term that refers to a common thread in a series of stories, forming an overall "arc" throughout them. This can be a central subject that holds the stories together, such as Season 16 of Doctor Who.
I would conclude that revealing the mystery of the arc doesn't exclude stories published afterwards. If the arc is invoked/expanded at a later date, then that story becomes part of the arc due to the central subject. The Bad Wolf arc in Turn Left or the Clara Oswin Oswald arc in Blood and Ice are examples of this: they may have occurred later, but they're nevertheless connected by the subjects of Bad Wolf and Clara's echoes, respectively.
Similarly, if a story is intended within the time period of an arc and directly references it, such as Weapons of Past Destruction being a Nine, Rose, and Jack story and including a Bad Wolf Bargains sign arc reference at the bazaar, it should also be included in the category.
- Mewiet
And now we've just had the Category:Knock four times arc added to the third installment of Four Doctors.
- Mewiet
The Time of the Doctor is included in the Category:Cracks arc, three-and-a-half years after it "concluded" in The Big Bang.
Revolutions of Terror and The Fountains of Forever are also included in the Knock four times arc category.
- CzechOut
Story arc categories are generally a violation of Tardis:Category naming conventions precisely because they're not clear cut.
- Digifiend
So are you removing those categories then?
- Mewiet
Digifiend wrote: So are you removing those categories then?
It sounds like they should be.
- BananaClownMan
While I can't speak for Rose, it would seem that the Bad Wolf arc was counted on due to Season 4 incorporating it into it's finale.
Besides, I don't think the Story arc categories should be deleted due to their names being open to interpretation. Would it not be less time consuming to merely explain how a story is linked to the arc in the sub-category descriptions?
- Shambala108
Tardis:Category naming conventions is clear: "Above all else, category names must not be open to multiple interpretation, and must be free of any bias or value judgements."
It is not merely enough to define a category on its page. Most users don't even know such pages exist, much less check them before adding categories.
- BananaClownMan
Shambala108 wrote: Tardis:Category naming conventions is clear: "Above all else, category names must not be open to multiple interpretation, and must be free of any bias or value judgements."
It is not merely enough to define a category on its page. Most users don't even know such pages exist, much less check them before adding categories.
Touché
- Mewiet
Shambala108 wrote: Tardis:Category naming conventions is clear: "Above all else, category names must not be open to multiple interpretation, and must be free of any bias or value judgements."
It is not merely enough to define a category on its page. Most users don't even know such pages exist, much less check them before adding categories.
I nominated Category:Story arcs for deletion the other day. Should I also add proposed deletion tags to all the arcs/subcategories themselves or is simply nominating the main category all right?
- Shambala108
Up to you, if you want to do all that work, but it's not necessary. I'd like for CzechOut or Tangerineduel to formally declare this discussion closed, and once it is, then I'll do the deletion work for all, whether they all have delete tags or not.
- 50.170.171.79
how come in episode turn left the earth doesn't blow up when the titanic crashes like was said in the previous time upon the boat?
- Paracelsus666
good question?!!!
50.170.171.79 wrote: how come in episode turn left the earth doesn't blow up when the titanic crashes like was said in the previous time upon the boat?
- Mewiet
This thread has fallen to the wayside and we have people continuing to make and add sub categories like Category:Confession arc which is just creating more work to do upon deletion.
- Shambala108
I will take care of it either tonight or tomorrow.
- OttselSpy25
Since we've deleted the cats, would it be okay to add a category for the Bad Wolf meme? I'm thinking Category:Stories which feature the Bad Wolf meme
- Bwburke94
That would restart what we just stopped.
- OttselSpy25
No it wouldn't. That would include stories that have Bad Wolf featured as an Easter egg on a wall or as a part of the plot. We can definitively list those, which story arc cats are based on speculation and incorrect presumptions. Totally different.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:178191
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't the Four Doctors page, like Prisoners of Time, be split up into multiple issues, like FD 1, FD 2, etc... If I understand this all right, Four Doctors is the comic series, in the same light as Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor, and each issue's page is where we should be putting continuity, plot, and character lists... I figure we should take care of that before it gets too complex to easily do so, like in the case of Assimilation².
- Digifiend
The Four Doctors is the name of both the story and the comic series. Terrorformer (comic story) is the first two issues of Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor and part of the first two issues of Doctor Who Comic. The story has one page, and the comics don't have individual issue pages. Giving each issue it's own page would be like giving each part of Genesis of the Daleks it's own page. The rule is one page per story, not per issue or episode.
- OttselSpy25
Digifiend wrote: The Four Doctors is the name of both the story and the comic series. Terrorformer (comic story) is the first two issues of Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor and part of the first two issues of Doctor Who Comic. The story has one page, and the comics don't have individual issue pages. Giving each issue it's own page would be like giving each part of Genesis of the Daleks it's own page. The rule is one page per story, not per issue or episode.
Yeah, but that's just the thing. Terrorformer was the story in the first two issues of Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor, in the same way that Hunters of the Burning Stone was the story from DWM 456 to 461. But when the series that the stories are printed in is also the story in general, we have a precedent for splitting them up into multiple pages per issue, each page containing info on that issue. Other pages seem to have the underlining suggestion that they're supposed to be this way, but have developed too far to complete this easily. If we need to do this (which I'm fairly sure we do) we should do it while it's just two issues.
- CzechOut
Well, the deal is this. American comic books should have a page for each of the following:
- the story
- each individual issue (see T:MAGS)
- any trade paperbacks which collect it
Because most of DW comics aren't American, we often haven't done a great job of observing point 2, but we should.
This is because we took a firm decision quite a number of years ago that we would continue cataloguing memorabilia, despite the existence of another wiki that concentrated on merchandise. That being the case, we actually need the pages for individual issues to be complete in our coverage. Issue pages simply make a better and more logical place to house cover variants, rather than some massive gallery at the bottom of a single page about the whole story.
And while the (comic story) page is the usual one that would be cited within an in-universe page, there are definitely times where it would make more sense to cite a particular issue — particularly if trying to catalogue, say, an artist's work and they only work on a portion of a run. This kind of thing happens all the time — and maybe even every time — in American comics. Very few runs, even if short, have exactly the same crew in every single issue.
As to where the plot should fall, I don't think we've definitively hashed that out. But I think in an ideal world, the plot on the (comic story) page would be a fairly broad overview, while the one on the individual issue pages would be more specific with the events of that issue. We should't use the same, lengthy style on an American comic book story page that we do on a British comic book story page. Remember, DWM stories are very much shorter than most American comic book stories, so we'd be setting ourselves up for monster plots if we tried to put everything on an American (comic story) page. The plot of the Assimilation² page is unnecessarily huge for this reason, as I recall.
- Digifiend
Does that mean that pages like Terrorformer (comic story) need splitting up as well, with seperate pages for DW12D 1 and DW12D 2? After all, the Titan comics, like their IDW predecessors (such as the previously mentioned Prisoners of Time), are American. And I suppose each issue of Doctor Who Comic ought to have a page as well (i.e. DWCT 1, DWCT 2, etc - DWCT is short for Doctor Who Comic Titan, as DWC is already used for Doctor Who Classics)?
- OttselSpy25
Digifiend wrote: Does that mean that pages like Terrorformer (comic story) need splitting up as well, with seperate pages for DW12D 1 and DW12D 2? After all, the Titan comics, like their IDW predecessors (such as the previously mentioned Prisoners of Time), are American. And I suppose each issue of Doctor Who Comic ought to have a page as well (i.e. DWCT 1, DWCT 2, etc - DWCT is short for Doctor Who Comic Titan, as DWC is already used for Doctor Who Classics)?
I don't think so -- because again, it's not Terrorformer issue 1, it's The Twelfth Doctor #1.
- HarveyWallbanger
In my opinion, we should have had all the narrative information (plot, references, continuity) on the main page Four Doctors (comic story) and the technical, "merchandising" details of the single issues in each issue page (FD 1, FD 2, etc.).
Instead, like we are doing, when we put a reference to the storyline, we link to an umbrella-page with no narrative information, nor clues in what issue that reference refers to.
- OttselSpy25
I think that it is possible to have a plot description on the main page, but a less detailed one than on the sub sections. Sorta like the descriptions you'll find on the early DWM comics right now. Only a few paragraphs that cover the whole story. As for references and continuity, I'm more prone to keep those on the desperate pages. It forms a lot more organized environment and makes it seem a little better in the long run.
- SOTO
Well if we did cover them in that manner, we could have a standardised template to put at the top of the plot section, which links to the plot sections of the individual issues for more information.
- Amorkuz
Just for the record, it appears that Supremacy of the Cybermen should be given the same treatment as Four Doctors? I don't own the former story myself, so cannot help. But it is called Supremacy of the Cybermen #1", suggesting that each issue should get a separate page.
- CzechOut
For our personal sanity, please don't hijack long-slumbering discussions by trying to take them off into another -- if similar -- direction. Removing links to Supremacy of the Cybermen. If you want to discuss Supremacy, please open another thread, per T:FORUM.
- Amorkuz
Sorry, will do.
But let me pick out a sentence from the original post for further examination.
If I understand this all right, Four Doctors (comic story) is the comic series, in the same light as Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor, and each issue's page is where we should be putting continuity, plot, and character lists.
No. It's in the title really. If the page is called (comic story), then it's about the story, not the series. And a story page is where the narrative information lives. Plot, continuity and references should definitely not be on an issue page. A (comic story) page should be as equivalent as possible to an (audio story) or (TV story) page.
The issue page serves mainly as documentation of a piece of merchandise: the issue itself.
However, and this is a big however, the creative team and character lists should also go on the individual issue pages, wherein they are tailored to just what applies to that issue. Comic creators often change from issue to issue, and it's extremely unlikely for a 6-issue series to have the same characters in each issue. To be of greatest utility to our readers, we really should try to give issue-specific information about cast and crew.
Lastly, American comic books have brought in a third type of page: the (comic series) page. It’s important to have such a page, because there is a difference between the series and the story. Obviously, ongoing series have more than one story in them, so you need a series page to tell you all the stories that were published therein. You also need a series page when trying to distinguish between two similar things — like The Ninth Doctor v. The Ninth Doctor (ongoing). Or the opposite, as when a title called Doctor Who was reduced from being an ongoing series into what became retitled-when-collected as Agent Provocateur. The series page is also the appropriate place to put dates of publication for the entire series, and background notes about the series. For instance, there’s probably a tale to tell about why the limited-run The Ninth Doctor turned into an ongoing series, so the series page would be the place to explain that.[1]
Are you going to find that we’ve followed this issue/story/series separation everywhere on the wiki? No. Or, rather, not yet.
The notion of original, American Doctor Who comics only dates to the turn of the decade, long after this wiki was set up. Obviously, Doctor Who comics were originally just strips in TVC, DWM, and DWA — and these (still) require a different approach. So you will find some confusion about how to handle IDW/Titan comics.
However, this basic distinction between story, series, and issue pages is what we should be striving towards with respect to American comics.[2]
- ↑ See Doctor Who (1984) for one example of a series page, and how covers can be used to link to individual issues.
- ↑ As explained upthread, there's also the case of the trade paperback/graphic novel. And, yes, we should have a separate page for these, as well. But that case applies only to a minority of comics that happen to lend their names to the collected edition.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:178473
About a year ago a created a category for the real world individuals by Doctor they met. It was quickly put up for deletion because the title was open for interpretation. About a year has passed since, and instead of being deleted, people have actually been adding context to it. So, should the category stay, or should it go?
- OttselSpy25
I would say delete it.
- MystExplorer
I would too. We have enough "People from the real world categories" as it is.
- Shambala108
The original discussion is located at Category talk:Real world people encountered by the Doctor, for anyone interested in seeing some of the other arguments for and against deletion.
- SOTO
I did not notice this discussion was up when I renamed the lot. The discussion can now be found at Category talk:People from the real world encountered by the Doctor.
My own personal opinion is that the categories should stay. There's tonnes of precedent for finding more specific ways to categorise people from the real world.
I disagree with MystExplorer, who said "we have enough" of those categories—there are a lot of people in the DWU from the real world, and if we don't have enough more specific categories, we're left with hundreds and hundreds of pages directly in category:People from the real world. I say, if there's at least 3 pages for it and it's more specific, go for it!
If your concern is for the quantity of subcategories directly in the parent category—one thing that can definitely be worked on is a more streamlined system of categories within PFTRW, where a lesser amount of categories are directly in there, with more specific ones within. It's also important to create more subcategories within those subcategories so that, again, we don't end up with too many pages in one large category when it's simply not necessary for it to be so.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:178546
Should "Alternate Twelfth Doctor" receive his own page? Like "Twelfth Doctor (Four Doctors)" or any form of identification that he receives in a future issue?
- Shambala108
You have brought this up for discussion, and per policy, that means you should wait for discussion before actually creating the page. As User:OttselSpy25 said on the talk page for the article you created, "I kinda presumed that we were gonna avoid making this page until the next issue explained who this guy is. I mean, everything we know could be a lie at this point." With comics that haven't been completely released yet, you have to be careful about presuming too much.
Please see Thread:124276 for how we handled a similar situation.
- CzechOut
To forcefully echo Shambala, we absolutely wait until the comic series is concluded before doing anything with this guy.
- OttselSpy25
Now that the comic series is done, I'm still not sure he deserves his own page. Seems more like something that deserves to go on the "alternate timelines" section of Twelfth Doctor.
- Ebyabe
Can the page be locked so it is not created until the discussion is done?
- Digifiend
You mean Creation protected? Sure it can, if the admins choose to.
- OttselSpy25
For those who don't know -- in the story, the villain of the piece is revealed to be an alternate timeline version of the future Twelfth Doctor. This incarnation discovered the pocket universe created by the Voord, who he chose to lead as if they were his people to be new Time Lords. He soon discovered, however, that his timeline wasn't concrete and that other events could occur instead.
To fix this and to stop himself from other lives finding the real time lords, he tricked 10, 11 and 12 into his trap, where they fell into a continuity bomb and soon chose to make his timeline concrete (the changing point between the Series 9 future 12 and the Four Doctors future 12 is weather he forgives Clara for betraying him. It's suggested in the story that the Doctor tells Clara to "go to hell" as in the real story, and then leaves her on Earth, where she is suggestively then killed). This 12 then took the group to the Voord city (under the guise that he was helping to find who was behind all of this) where he captured the Doctors and Clara and prepared to send them back to their own times with their minds wiped of the events of the story and submissive orders placed into their minds to not look for Gallifrey and for the real 12 not to forgive Clara. However, while capturing the four, the 10th and 11th Doctor's companions (Gabby and Alice) escaped, where they tried to help the Doctors. In doing so, Alice was brutally murdered and Gabby was cornered by guards. She frantically opened the 11th Doctor's comics which she had ended up with, which (much to her shock) was a weeping angel, which grew and sent her back in time.
Gabby landed back in her own timeline, where she warned her past self as well as Clara and Gabby of the events of Timeline A above. Trying to find a solution, the Doctors and companions eventually decided to choose a different timeline in the continuity bomb, instead going for one where 11 had stayed in River Song's World instead of returning to the real one. There, they found the "all time at once" version of Marinus, where they discovered the Voord stealing technology from a stolen Dalek ship that they would later use to build their pocket dimension. "Our" Twelfth Doctor pretended to be his future counterpart, where he mended with the Voord hive mind. There, he distracted the Voord and met his future counterpart. The two had a battle of the minds, which "our" Twelve was loosing until he brought the other Doctors and companions into the mind as well. There they distracted the "alternate" Twelve for long enough for the real 10 and 11 to shut off the Voord's force field, where acid began to break through and bake the city. Thus the "alternate" 12 was given two options -- let his city and his people die or use the stolen Dalek tech to return it to how it was before the Time War began. Speaking with Clara for the last time, he chose the later option, reverting his own creation, the Voord's rapid evolution, and the continuity bomb's changes to the universe.
So what do you guys think? I'm pretty sure that this should go on the "Twelfth Doctor" page under "Timelines" and not have its own page. Not a separate incarnation, not an alternate dimension -- just another reverted timeline.
- BananaClownMan
I think it's a similar situation with the Burner Doctor; two timeline versions of the Doctor who are so radically different that they each need their own page.
- OttselSpy25
But Burner is an alternate dimension. "Alt Twelve" is just a mildly different timeline for our Twelve, and thus those usually just go on the pages.
- Shambala108
Since Ottselspy25 has given us the most information about this character, and he recommends keeping it on the Twelfth Doctor page, that's what would get my vote.
- BananaClownMan
Then how would we account for the two timelines Alt.12 gets?
- Bold Clone
I agree with Ottsel; the alternate 12 Doctor is just that: an alternate timeline variant. Any into about him should just go on the main Twelfth Doctor page.
- BananaClownMan
I think I've cracked it; What is Alt. 12 is the end result of the cliff-hanger of Part 4, when he succeeds in altering everyone's memories and then sends them on their merry way. A sort of bootstrap paradox is you will.
Then, with the mind implant in place, the Doctor leaves Clara after Dark Water and the events of Four Doctors happen. To me, it all fits together.
Anyone else got an opinion on this?
- Bwburke94
BananaClownMan wrote: I think I've cracked it; What is Alt. 12 is the end result of the cliff-hanger of Part 4, when he succeeds in altering everyone's memories and then sends them on their merry way. A sort of bootstrap paradox is you will.
Then, with the mind implant in place, the Doctor leaves Clara after Dark Water and the events of Four Doctors happen. To me, it all fits together.
Anyone else got an opinion on this?
Too much theory, not enough evidence.
- OttselSpy25
No, that's pretty much what the story says.
- BananaClownMan
OttselSpy25 wrote: No, that's pretty much what the story says.
So, does this mean that the "Victory timeline" can go with the "Multi-Doctor alt. timeline", and a seperate timeline can go to the "Voord Defeated timeline?"
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:178601
Hi folks,
On one of my computers (Windows 8), I'm seeing what I assume is a new design for tardis.wikia.com. It's not bad, although so optimized for mobile that it has some problems on a desktop browser.
One of the problems is that the headlines of each page get cut off at the top.
But the biggest problem is that you cannot CNTRL+click on a link to open it in a new tab. You have to remember to RIGHT CLICK and select "Open in a new tab" every time. If you forget, you lose the page you're on because the new page opens in the same window, even though CNTRL+click should ALWAYS open in a new tab. Worse, when you use the Back button, you're not taken to the same place on the previous page, but taken to the top of that page.
This is annoying, but it's also bad for the Wikia because it discourages browsing around. If you're reading about a particular story and want to open tabs in the background about some of its characters, you have to remember to right-click instead of the much simpler and faster CNTRL+click.
Please fix.
- Shambala108
Control click works for me. What browser are you using?
- 100 Watt Walrus
Chrome on Windows 8.
But are you looking at the NEW site design? The mobile-friendly version with the gigantic headlines? Control-click still works fine for me on the old design. It's just the new design where it misbehaves.
- Digifiend
This problem is global and is better off being discussed at Community Central rather than here.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:178629
I would like to put up the argument that stories where the Doctor regenerates in reverse are not Multi-Doctor stories. By definition they do not feature multiple incarnations crossing paths in one story, but rather the Doctor briefly aging back to previous incarnations. So basically they're nothing but regeneration stories in reverse. So if The Tenth Planet isn't a multi-Doctor story, than I argue neither is Timeslip.
- MystExplorer
I should point out that there are stories that feature multiple Doctors who don't cross paths. For instance, Wonderland. Are those Multi-Doctor stories or not?
- OttselSpy25
That's another question worth looking into. A Religious Experience is another example, where the Seventh Doctor arrives many years after he arrived in the first part, and it's more of a gag-ending if anything. 7 and 1 don't meet, they aren't around at the same time, and it's more than Seven returns years later. Not really what we usually qualify as the such. Stories like Heart of TARDIS, where the Second Doctor and Fourth Doctor events are occurring at the same time but they never meet (kinda) are a lot more excusable.
Also, what about stories like COMIC: Under Pressure or Day of the Tune, where a Multi-Doctor event occurs in a flashback told by the current Doctor. Can we really include 7 in the former and 12 in the later on the Multi-Doc list when in each case they're just telling a story which involves Doctors meeting each other?
- Shambala108
Yet another question, why does List of multi-Doctor stories include flashbacks, but Category:Multi-Doctor stories does not? Our category system is confusing enough without this kind of contradiction.
I'm not going to repeat them all here, but several relevant points that might help in this discussion are made at both Talk:List of multi-Doctor stories and Category talk:Multi-Doctor stories.
- OttselSpy25
What about those weird 90s novels where different Doctors work as different parts of the Doctor's mind?
Also, shouldn't we include Valeyard stories? They always play like really dark Multi-Doctor stories...
- Rob T Firefly
This is a complex issue. On the one hand, in the stories where past Doctors have appeared solely as echoes in the story's current Doctor's mind, it might be said that shouldn't qualify as a multi-Doctor story because those past Doctors are not really present during events. On the other hand that would disqualify Zagreus, as the past Doctors in that story are initially Zagreus' warped recreations of the past Doctors taken from the Doctor's biodata, and later their aspects in Eight's mind; could we justify not counting Zagreus as a multi-Doctor story?
- Mewiet
Shambala108 wrote: Yet another question, why does List of multi-Doctor stories include flashbacks, but Category:Multi-Doctor stories does not? Our category system is confusing enough without this kind of contradiction.
There's also the Multi-Doctor story page:
In common fan parlance, a multi-Doctor story is one that involves more than one incarnation of the Doctor.
It's so vague it can be interpreted as supporting the list or the category parameters.
OttselSpy25 wrote: Also, shouldn't we include Valeyard stories? They always play like really dark Multi-Doctor stories...
There are a lot of listings under the Category:Incarnations of the Doctor. The incarnations of the Doctor box alone includes the Watcher, the Valeyard, the Meta-Crisis, and the Dream Lord. If you include one, why not include them all? It gets messy. I prefer the way we have it now with 1-12 and then an Other category for anyone else. If the Valeyard were to be included, I'd prefer him in the Other category.
- CzechOut
Our category naming conventions are supposed to stop us from going down these rabbit holes. Multi-doctor stories is a vague concept. Probably the best thing we could do to aid reader understanding would be to:
- remove the category
- remove List of multi-Doctor stories
- improve the quality of the page multi-Doctor story so that it demonstrates different things that could be considered a multi-Doctor story, try to find quotes from a valid reference work that demonstrate the confusion, but draw no real conclusion about what a multi-Doctor story is.
We definitely shouldn't be using categories or list pages as a way to "validate" a story as a multi-Doctor story.
- OttselSpy25
Eh, I'm not really for deleting categories or lists in these sort of issues. The problem comes about when someone is trying to read about the stuff and there's nowhere to go to find a list of stories because we deleted the categories and lists under the pretense that an expansion of the third page would be done by someone one day.
- HarveyWallbanger
A less severe decision would be defining together a criterion to put in the description of the category, for instance: a multi-Doctor story requires the interaction of at least two regular incarnations of the Doctor.
In my eyes, deleting the category at all would make our Wiki poorer.
In the pages about the multi-Doctor stories (List of multi-Doctor stories and Multi-Doctor story, that could be merged), we could include and specify any other case (not-regular incarnations such as the Valeyard and the Dream Lord, flashbacks, Doctors not meeting one each other...)
- OttselSpy25
Even changing the title of the category would be more fitting than deleting it. Stories where more than two different incarnations of the Doctor meet is preferred to not having the info at all.
I could agree with a merge and expansion of the page. Different sections explaining different stories that could be interpreted as M-D stories. On that note, I do resent placing the Dream Lord and Valeyard stories together as they are totally different.
- MystExplorer
HarveyWallbanger wrote: A less severe decision would be defining together a criterion to put in the description of the category, for instance: a multi-Doctor story requires the interaction of at least two regular incarnations of the Doctor. In my eyes, deleting the category at all would make our Wiki poorer.
When you say "regular" do you mean numbered incarnations? Or "regular" in the sense of incarnations that are part of the regeneration cycle? The first definition would exclude the War Doctor while the second would include him. I'm not sure about the Meta-Crisis one since he's the result of an interrupted regeneration and doesn't have the ability to regenerate.
- HarveyWallbanger
MystExplorer wrote: When you say "regular" do you mean numbered incarnations? Or "regular" in the sense of incarnations that are part of the regeneration cycle? The first definition would exclude the War Doctor while the second would include him. I'm not sure about the Meta-Crisis one since he's the result of an interrupted regeneration and doesn't have the ability to regenerate.
The second definition (thanks for expliciting it so well!) - which should exclude the Meta-Crisis.
- OttselSpy25
War Doctor is still an incarnation of the Doctor, he just isn't a Doctor himself. Confusing? Yes.
Meta doesn't count because he's, by definition, the Tenth Doctor. If a clone is the same incarnation, it isn't a Multi-Doc story. But what if the clone isn't the same incarnation? such is the case with this little fellow and his meetings with Doc #4.
- Shambala108
HarveyWallbanger wrote: A less severe decision would be defining together a criterion to put in the description of the category, for instance: a multi-Doctor story requires the interaction of at least two regular incarnations of the Doctor. In my eyes, deleting the category at all would make our Wiki poorer.
Except that very few users ever read the category definition pages before using the categories. And, as this forum thread shows, different users have different ideas of what the definition should be. This is a classic example of a category that violates Tardis:Category naming conventions.
- OttselSpy25
I have added some footnotes to some stories on the list and removed some Doctors. One person I've removed is the War Doctor from Four Doctors, who only appears on covers and in one brief flashback. If anything, his appearance appears to be an attempt to fool audiences into not expecting the reveal of the alternative Doctor as the fourth Doctor in the title.
- Bwburke94
My personal belief is that a multi-Doctor story is one where multiple adult incarnations of the Doctor play a part in the narrative, and the reason for the appearance of multiple incarnations is not the Doctor's regeneration. For the purposes of this rule, "incarnation" is defined as the numbered Doctors plus the War Doctor.
This is worded specifically to exclude Listen and the retro-regeneration stories, while allowing Deep Breath.
In addition, this wording counts the Meta-Crisis Doctor as if he were the Tenth Doctor because the two are the same incarnation, so Journey's End is not multi-Doctor, but a hypothetical meeting between Meta-Crisis and any other incarnation of the Doctor would be multi-Doctor.
- OttselSpy25
Once again I think a clear issue is that we need a better category name.
- Bwburke94
The term "multi-Doctor story" is established in the fandom, we're just trying to define what it means.
- Shambala108
Bwburke94 wrote: The term "multi-Doctor story" is established in the fandom, we're just trying to define what it means.
The clearest definition in the world doesn't help when users don't read them. Very few users even know category definitions exist, and thanks in part to the badge game, new users will add categories to pages without ever considering that they're wrong.
From an admin standpoint, it's easier to toss the whole category than have to constantly clean up after it.
- OttselSpy25
But from a user point of view, removing the info completely is removing info that potential readers WILL want to look into.
- Commander Awesome
Bwburke94 wrote: My personal belief is that a multi-Doctor story is one where multiple adult incarnations of the Doctor play a part in the narrative, and the reason for the appearance of multiple incarnations is not the Doctor's regeneration.
This is worded specifically to 'exclude Listen and the retro-regeneration stories, while allowing Deep Breath.
I don't understand how the young First Doctor wouldn't count, unless if you're going by the idea that he wasn't "The Doctor" then, but that reasoning would also exclude the War Doctor.
Other than that, I agree with your stance.
- Bwburke94
My point is that "Listen" is an oddity among stories in which multiple incarnations of the Doctor appear, because there is no clear evidence in the story itself that the boy is the young First Doctor. He's only confirmed to be the Doctor by implication, unlike all other such stories which outright state that multiple Doctors are playing a part.
- Danniesen
I say it's only a multiple Doctor story if the actor himself shows up, meaning flashbacks/projections/echoes don't count. (one exception being Eleven phoning Clara in The Time of the Doctor/Deep Breath)
- Danniesen
Bwburke94 wrote: My point is that "Listen" is an oddity among stories in which multiple incarnations of the Doctor appear, because there is no clear evidence in the story itself that the boy is the young First Doctor. He's only confirmed to be the Doctor by implication, unlike all other such stories which outright state that multiple Doctors are playing a part.
It can also be argued that this story is not a multi-Doctor one because back then at that time of him being a boy he wasn't the Doctor yet. He wasn't even given his Academy name "Theta Sigma".
- SOTO
I think the very fact that we can debate whether different stories are multi-Doctor is proof that the concept is not actually defined, and thus the category is in clear violation of T:CAT NAME. As Czech said above, it'd be fine to have a page on the concept, detailing the different ways that the term can be interpreted, and examples of them—
But to have a category purporting to be all "multi-Doctor" stories when such a concept is not really defined, and then say "well, maybe not Listen or Time Slip, and no regeneration stories, but let's squeeze Deep Breath in there. . .This is not a category we should have if we have to debate on every story, and come to no conclusion at all in the end. "Multi-Doctor" has no clear definition and seems just as subjective as category:Sad Doctor Who television stories. Where did people get this idea that Doctors have to meet in a story for it to be multi-Doctor, anyway? Why aren't regeneration stories where two Doctors appear multi-Doctor? It does not seem like we have any unified rule, and creating one to fit what we want to be multi-Doctor is simply not the way to go, and would require constant monitoring too. I say, from the point of view of policy, off with its head!
- Bwburke94
Even if we don't keep the category, we should still define the term.
- OttselSpy25
Or we could do as asked and expand the Multi-Doctor page. However, removal of content under the pretense that someone will finish doing it over later is not an option.
- Commander Awesome
How about this: We expand the Multi-Doctor page, as OttselSpy suggested, and have the category contain only stories which are indisputably Multi-Doctor (Such as The Day of the Doctor), with the page covering story which are only arguably Multi-Doctor (Such as Deep Breath or Listen, "Semi-Multi-Doctor", if you will).
- OttselSpy25
What I say we should do is expand the page to include different interpretations of what counts as a Multi-Doctor story. A section on stories where the Doctors meet, stories where the same incarnations are near each other but do not interact, stories which feature multiple Doctors across the same narrative, stories with the Valeyard, stories with multiple versions of the same incarnation, those weird 90s stories where different Doctors are part of the Doctor's mind, etc.
If we keep a category, it needs to have a more specific less vague title. Category:Stories in which multiple incarnations of the Doctor interact or something.
- Commander Awesome
Agreed.
- SOTO
Yes, we should definitely expand the Multi-Doctor story page. To Commander Awesome, whose awesomeness commands, I don't see how some stories are indisputably multi-Doctor but not others. Is it marketing?
To OS: would Category:Stories featuring multiple incarnations of the Doctor, the broadest definition of multi-Doctor stories which would include regeneration stories where a new Doctor is revealed, really be that un-useful, if a category must exist at all?
Better yet, we keep it out of the category system, and simply have a page with a list of multi-Doctor stories, divided into sections like "regeneration", "Doctors interact", etc. I might (might) even be for a navbox to go at the bottoms of story pages if it was all divided clearly, with each section having its own clear definition. In this, no attempts would be made to include or exclude certain stories or classes of stories from the concept of multi-Doctor; any story with multiple incarnations of the Doctor appearing would go under multi-Doctor, in its respective section regarding the way in which multiple Doctors appear, interact, etc.
- Commander Awesome
By 'indisputable', I mean stories where multiple normal incarnations interact.
I think we should have categories, but split of into several other more specific ones. Such as:
- Category:Stories in which multiple incarnations of the Doctor interact
- Category:Stories featuring flashbacks of previous incarnations of the Doctor
- Category:Stories featuring alternate versions of the Doctor
- Category:Stories featuring multiple instances of the (insert incarnation here)
...you get the picture. Of course, each of these would have subcategories of each medium. (IE Category:TV Stories in which multiple incarnations of the Doctor interact)
- Mewiet
SOTO wrote: To OS: would Category:Stories featuring multiple incarnations of the Doctor, the broadest definition of multi-Doctor stories which would include regeneration stories where a new Doctor is revealed, really be that un-useful, if a category must exist at all?
Better yet, we keep it out of the category system, and simply have a page with a list of multi-Doctor stories, divided into sections like "regeneration", "Doctors interact", etc. I might (might) even be for a navbox to go at the bottoms of story pages if it was all divided clearly, with each section having its own clear definition. In this, no attempts would be made to include or exclude certain stories or classes of stories from the concept of multi-Doctor; any story with multiple incarnations of the Doctor appearing would go under multi-Doctor, in its respective section regarding the way in which multiple Doctors appear, interact, etc.
These are the most palatable solutions I've seen so far.
- OttselSpy25
Category:Stories featuring multiple incarnations of the Doctor itself suggests the inclusion of stories that have flashbacks in them. I don't think that Assimilation² is a multi-Doctor story in anyone's eyes.
- OttselSpy25
Even that category is vague enough to include stories like Assimilation² as Multi-Doctor stories.
- Mewiet
OttselSpy25 wrote: Category:Stories featuring multiple incarnations of the Doctor itself suggests the inclusion of stories that have flashbacks in them. I don't think that Assimilation² is a multi-Doctor story in anyone's eyes.
That's the cause of this entire debate. You seem to be defining "multi-Doctor" as "two different incarnations interact with one another" while others are defining "multi-Doctor" as "two different incarnations are in the same story." In fact, the term "multi-Doctor" can even be seen as including Last Night where multiple Doctors (albeit the same incarnation) interact with each other. At least with the specification of "multiple incarnations" we can eliminate that last one since they're both the Eleventh. According to the second interpretation, the situations of Four's flashback and One's appearance in Assimilation² and Listen respectively (which is also probably why people might assume regeneration/degeneration stories count) absolutely fit in many people's eyes.
- Mewiet
Clicked quote when I meant to click edit.
- OttselSpy25
The scene in Listen is not a flashback. They land in the Doctor's past. That's not a flashback at all. A story which is a multi-Doctor story by this logic would be The Girl Who Died.
And my suggestion was not to more easily qualify it and leave it alone, but to instead to change the same of the category. If others want to expand it to include stories that no one would ever consider a multi-Doctor story that's fine with me, but it seems to be just a bit too much to me.
- Danniesen
If we count flashbacks into multi-Doctor then we might as well also count flashbacks and archive footage as appearances.
Listen can be said not to be multi-Doctor, as I said before that he wasn't the Doctor (not even Theta Sigma) at that point.
- PicassoAndPringles
Why don't we handle this the same way we do Doctor-lite? Skip the category because it's too hard to define and just have an article with an overview, a history of the concept, and examples in different media?
- OttselSpy25
No, Listen most likely is a Multi-Doctor story, as it's still the Doctor even if he isn't using that name. It's just one of those weird ones that slip by even if most don't consider it one.
But yeah, if flashbacks in comics count so archive footage clips.
- Mewiet
Danniesen wrote: If we count flashbacks into multi-Doctor then we might as well also count flashbacks and archive footage as appearances.
Why would we could archive footage? I think it was CzechOut who used the analogy in the past that archive footage--unless it's used in a new way that's specifically meant to be seen as "new material" (i.e. repurposing old clips to have the Clara echo and the First Doctor meet in The Name of the Doctor or the reuse of old clips to make it appear all the Doctors have gathered to save Gallifrey in The Day of the Doctor--it's essentially just a reference, no different to namedropping a character or showing a photograph of them. But if it's new content in the style of a flashback, that's completely different.
Danniesen wrote: Listen can be said not to be multi-Doctor, as I said before that he wasn't the Doctor (not even Theta Sigma) at that point.
Sorry, I don't agree at all. It's the same character no matter what name he's going by.
- Danniesen
That wasn't the point I was getting at. Sorry if I didn't say. If it's archived footage that is not meant as a new appearance, was my point. The same with flashbacks (if it has been seen in a previous story).
- SOTO
We are not going to be able to define multi-Doctor. As has been proven in this forum, different people have different opinions on what it might mean. I therefore do not think the category can stay. As P&P said, we should work on expanding the article to discuss the many interpretations, as with Doctor-lite. What do people think about the possibility of a list with sections, or a navbox with section?
- OttselSpy25
We could do both. I was gonna go with a section of lists, which I guess is the same thing as a list of sections. However I wouldn't say that stories with regenerations or stories with flashbacks apply in any way.
- Mewiet
I'm happy with a list with sections.
- SOTO
OS, the whole reason behind the sections is not to have to exclude anything, while keeping all forms of multi-Doctor stories separate. At its most broad definition, a multi-Doctor story might be any story which features more than one incarnation of the Doctor. Different sections would contain stories that contain multiple Doctors in different ways. Regeneration stories, as well as stories with flashbacks, wouldn't just "not count" because you feel they don't fit into your definition. The moment we start excluding and trying to define it ourselves, we are going beyond information based on sources, and into subjective opinion central. We are an encyclopaedia (or encyclopedia, depending on where you are on the site), and it is therefore our job to record all definitions of the term, and present the information without judgement.
The whole point here is that everyone has different opinions on how this term might be defined—lots of people will look at the list, and decide that certain sections do not go under their understanding of the term multi-Doctor. And that's okay. That's precisely why we're making it into sections, in fact.
Do we have any objections to a navbox as well? Let's start a conversation.
- Our category naming conventions are supposed to stop us from going down these rabbit holes. Multi-doctor stories is a vague concept. Probably the best thing we could do to aid reader understanding would be to:
- remove the category
- remove List of multi-Doctor stories
- improve the quality of the page multi-Doctor story so that it demonstrates different things that could be considered a multi-Doctor story, try to find quotes from a valid reference work that demonstrate the confusion, but draw no real conclusion about what a multi-Doctor story is.
- We definitely shouldn't be using categories or list pages as a way to "validate" a story as a multi-Doctor story.
Suggestions #1 and #3 will be implemented. Per the discussions above, this category blatantly violates Tardis:Category naming conventions.
However, suggestion #2 will not be implemented. This is to address User:OttselSpy25's concern that users will want to find this information. The article Multi-Doctor story defines the term, and should have a link to List of multi-Doctor stories.
As for the definition, we should use the simplest one: a multi-Doctor includes appearances by more than one Doctor. It doesn't matter if they don't interact. However, flashbacks and archive footage should not count, because in general we don't consider those appearances.
Any further questions/clarifications should be addressed on the talk page for Multi-Doctor story, since this thread needs to be closed.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:178778
Okay, without giving anything away (because I have nothing to give away really) the upcoming movie screening of the end of the last season is said to include a Series 9 prequel. Now, are we gonna look at that as the shorts' premiere (with no images obviously) or are we gonna see it as a prescreening of a short that will be released later by other means?
- JagoAndLitefoot
If it's not an exclusive showing but available to people who can simply buy tickets for it, I'd treat it as the premiere, personally.
- Mewiet
JagoAndLitefoot wrote: If it's not an exclusive showing but available to people who can simply buy tickets for it, I'd treat it as the premiere, personally.
Agreed. I don't see why it wouldn't be treated as a premiere. And last I heard, places in the UK had the option to show it too and chose not to, so it wasn't as if this was a selective showing like the recent screening of TMA.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:179340
Does anyone know a way to find out who else doubled for the past Doctors in The Name of the Doctor, besides Chris Lauren as the Sixth Doctor?
- OttselSpy25
I haven't found a way. We know all of the cast for the trailer for Day of the Doctor, and it is thus possible to compare behind the scenes photos of the trailer to the unedited final shot of the episode (printed in DWM) to find out if the actors are the same. According to what I can tell, the Ninth Doctor actor is the same in the episode and the trailer, whilst the Fourth and Third Doctors are most certainly not. I have not found any behind the scenes images of Night of the Doctor, and thus it is impossible to compare the cast.
Interesting to note that if both Night and Day have the same stand in 8s (which is, of coarse, impossible to judge currently) that actor has played the role on screen the same amount of times as Paul McGann...
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:180239
Hi. In addition to 'Format', for video and audio stories, it would be very useful to have the story length listed, perhaps to the nearest minute. Knowing how long (certainly for me) an audio story actually lasts would really help when trying to fit one into a specific amount of time. Quite a task, I know, but it would be very useful, and it doesn't appear to be listed on any other sites; not even Big Finish's for many of their stories. Inquizitive ☎ 22:10, September 14, 2015 (UTC)
- PicassoAndPringles
As a general rule of thumb for audio stories, each CD is one hour. The number of CDs is usually listed on the Big Finish website under the "Technical Details" tab.
- Inquizitive
Thanks. I know that is a general rule of thumb, but there are quite a few instances where Big Finish episodes considerably overrun 'the expected' 25 minutes/half hour format (or 'the expected' hour format in some cases). And the TV episodes occasionally over- and under-run the 'standard' 25 minutes/45 minutes format.
As is often the case for me, if I have exactly half an hour to fit in an episode, I'd like to know if it's going to be 25 minutes (which would be fine) or 45 minutes (which would mean I'd be late for my next appointment!). Big Finish tends not to have the number of episodes listed on its 'Technical Details' tab, and just an approximate length, whereas here, the no. of episodes is listed, but without a specific length of time. Of course it's something which I could easily research (and indeed may end up contributing to if this gets the go-ahead) for each episode, but having an easily accessible source, in the form of this wiki, that defines it in advance, would be really helpful. Inquizitive ☎ 22:37, September 14, 2015 (UTC)
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/The Panopticon/Thread:180396
I think to avoid confusion we should change the NOTDWU prefix. Right now the suggestion is that it stands for "Not within Doctor Who Universe." The issue is that something being "in universe" is a concept which basically means "is canon," both of which are not what the invalid policy goes for. We're not judging if something goes within the Doctor Who Universe, but rather if it's a valid story. Universe-checking is a final step in the process, but it's far from the entire concept. When we say that the TV version of Shada is not valid, for instance, we're not saying that it doesn't fit within the universe but rather that (as others have agreed on the site) it's not really a story, per sey. Same for P.S. and Dr Who and the Turgids. Another good example is the charity books, which mostly do fit within the universe, but are still unofficial fan works. Same for Faction Paradox and some of the BBV works. Then there's the role playing books and games, including Worlds in Time which we don't consider valid due to the difficulty in writing the concrete events, but still clearly have placements within the universe than each fan can interpret for themselves. Keeping the NOTDWU prefix just confuses our policies to new users. I would suggest INVALID.
I also realize that this would mean the reworking of categories as well, but I think that we still need to do it.
- TehDash
I agree with your points but I don't honestly see the need for a rework, after-all this prefix only encompasses three things. Honestly I'd argue that this prefix doesn't need to exist in the first place.
Honestly I cannot understand it's purpose. It seems, at it's core, to be a prefix that denotes a piece third-party of work that has been de-canonized by something considered to be canon or something that was never supposed to be canon in the first place. But if that's the case then there are a tonne of other books, BFAs and other spin-off media such as Zygon: When Being You Just Isn't Enough that should be in this category.
- OttselSpy25
That's just the thing, that's not the point of the prefix at all. The point is to denote a difference between stories which we have deemed invalid. Z:WBYJIE is still a valid story because they had the rights to use the Zygons, as discussed in a previous forum. We don't dabble in canon on this site anymore because it's a complex concept which isn't what we're looking to cover for many stories we discount.
- TehDash
OttselSpy25 wrote: That's just the thing, that's not the point of the prefix at all. The point is to denote a difference between stories which we have deemed invalid. Z:WBYJIE is still a valid story because they had the rights to use the Zygons, as discussed in a previous forum. We don't dabble in canon on this site anymore because it's a complex concept which isn't what we're looking to cover for many stories we discount.
Well I suppose all of this just furthers your argument then, honestly. I'm not exactly a "newcomer" to the site as suggested in the OP but this was still the first time coming across that prefix and that is what I assumed it to mean aha.
- OttselSpy25
Another point to make is that there are many stories which are set within different universes but are still valid stories. Further confusing the prefix.
- Sabovia
Another issue: There are a lot of stories that aren't technically set in the Doctor Who universe (although I suppose it depends on how TARDIS defines "Doctor Who universe") such as, Rise of the Cybermen and Infeno. So the "NOT DWU" prefix being used for "invalid" stories is rather confusing, and probably should be changed to "INVALID".
- Thefartydoctor
Sabovia wrote: There are a lot of stories that aren't technically set in the Doctor Who universe (although I suppose it depends on how TARDIS defines "Doctor Who universe") such as, Rise of the Cybermen and Infeno.
I would argue that in Rise of the Cybermen, there are scenes set in the original universe too, such as the scene with Jackie in The Age of Steel. Furthermore, in both of the aforementioned stories, the characters originate from the DWU. That is enough to make them valid stories. A story being set in another universe but with DWU characters in it definitely does not exclude them from being a valid source. If that's the case, we'd have to nitpick things like The Doctor's Wife, which is set in a pocket universe... it's attached to our universe (hurray!) yet it's officially not our universe (boo!).
- Sabovia
Thefartydoctor wrote:
I would argue that in Rise of the Cybermen, there are scenes set in the original universe too, such as the scene with Jackie in The Age of Steel. Furthermore, in both of the aforementioned stories, the characters originate from the DWU. That is enough to make them valid stories. A story being set in another universe but with DWU characters in it definitely does not exclude them from being a valid source. If that's the case, we'd have to nitpick things like The Doctor's Wife, which is set in a pocket universe... it's attached to our universe (hurray!) yet it's officially not our universe (boo!).
I wasn't questioning whether or not those stories should be counted as valid — they obviously are. I was questioning why the "NOT DWU" prefix is being used for non-valid stories.
- Thefartydoctor
You're confusing what DWU actually means. It does indeed play a part in the setting of a story but it also entails the main characters. However, let me give you a non-Doctor Who example:
There was once a collaboration between Casualty and Holby City fittingly called "Casualty @ Holby City". The majority of the episodes were set in the A&E (the setting for Casualty) but the attending medical people were from the series Holby City. If we were to place the occasional Holby City scenes to one side, let me ask you: is that a valid story from a Holby City point of view?
Of course it is, because although it's not set in their usual setting, the characters still originate from their own respective time and space. Let's link this with the story Inferno. We're not using "NOTDWU" as the prefix because the Doctor and other main characters originate from the DWU. The setting here is irrelevant in categorising this story.
It's a bit of a random way I went around this but that's how I see it.
- Thefartydoctor
It's also not a brilliant example because Casualty and Holby are set in the same universe but it makes my point hehe ;D
- OttselSpy25
I just wrote a well-structured response to the latest posts, and when I clicked post the whole thing just dissapeared. Holy Rassilon is that amazingly frustrating. Ugh...
- OttselSpy25
The concept that stories being valid can relay entirely on if they are set within our Doctor Who universe or if they feature characters from our universe is an interesting one, which of coarse quickly begins to collapse like swiss cheese being poked by a child.
The problem is that we do occasionally allow pages on this wikia which are not meant to be set within our universe, but are still valid stories. "Yes," you retort, "but all of those feature characters from our universe. So they are DWU centered." At first gland, that might appear true, but there are exceptions.
Imagine, for instance, there was a prequel to stories featuring universe hopping which were set in the alternate universes. A prequel to Inferno or Battlefield set in the "other world" without hints of the Doctor or his universe. That's not a theoretical example, we do have a story like that: Tardisode 5. Set in Pete's World, it featured Ricky Smith as its only main character. That's not the only example either -- Prelude Blood Heat is also like this. Then there's The Infinity Doctors, set in an alternate timeline according to our policies. Those are just a few examples, but there are many.
In fact, the Doctor Who Unbound series came very close to being valid on this wikia. There is a Doctor Who Sixth Doctor audio, The 100 Days of the Doctor, which featured a mention of one of the Unbound Doctors by the Sixth Doctor after he and Evelyn accidentally slip into an alternate universe. At the time of the discussion, it was not known if this scene was actually depicted, and it was agreed that if it was, that meant that every Doctor and story in the series had to be "alternate universes" instead of "invalid." As it was just a throwaway line in the end, our policies did not change. Despite this, that shows the thin line here: something can be set in an alternate universe and still be valid on this wikia, and there is a strong difference between an invalid and "alternate universe." In fact, you could argue that the Cushing Doctor, the Unbound Doctors, the Curse of Fatal Death Doctors, and the Shalka Doctor are all one Titan Comics cameo away from being "valid" sources (which would be a game changer as our "invalid" template features an image from one of those stories).
Furthermore, and this is an important note, not all of our invalid stories are the way they are because of their universal classification. It is pretty clear that Shada, P.S., Worlds in Time, The Dark Dimension, The Monsters Are Coming!, Whoisdoctorwho.co.uk, Dr Who and the Turgids, Mission to Venus, Judoon Monsoon and even some of the #WeLoveTitans comics are clearly meant to be set inside the Doctor Who Universe. They're not alternative timelines or dimensions, few of them were disqualified due to story, and all of them are invalid and thus marked by the prefix proclaiming that they are not set within the Doctor Who Universe.
Let me repeat that one more time. Our policy states that there is no Doctor Who canon. We don't care about if something is "canon" or "non-canon" or contradictory or silly or old -- it's all about if it's a valid story or not. We don't argue if something fits inside the universe, because that's not our bother and we will never have the answers. That's something that fans themselves have to decide for themselves.
And yet our prefix loudly declares "this isn't set in the DWU. We decided this, we know better than you." And that's the opposite of our policy, what we've worked for years to back away from. So let's change it.
- OttselSpy25
Looking over the pages, I'm not actually even convinced that we need a template for invalid stories. I feel like the template at the top of the page covers it, I think that we can call Daleks Versus the Martians a COMIC and sleep at night. It would make for far less obnoxious layouts.
Of coarse, we would still need to fix the categories...
- Thefartydoctor
I think what you're saying is just common sense. But I don't agree that things like TARDISODE 5 are difficult to classify. There's a reason it was accepted it as a valid source and that's because it's a prequel to a valid source. The Doctor, Rose and Mickey soon pop into that parallel world and make everything better. Prequels are no problem here. In which case, my "retort", as you so kindly put it, would still ring a true analysis of a true source.
What I'm saying is this: use common sense. Rise of the Cybermen is a valid source because a Doctor and companions from the DWU have specifically entered/fallen into a parallel universe. It's one of the first things that happens (and is explained) in the episode. Furthermore, since TARDISODE 5 is a prequel to one of these Pete's World stories, it's therefore attached to the episode and counts as a valid source. It's common sense. Never has the saying "mountain out of a molehill" been more valid haha.
We need the NOTDWU prefix for stories like the Unbound series that feature Doctors not related in any way to the real Doctor's timeline. They do not originate from our universe, nor do they habitate within it. If there were a story set entirely in an alternate reality and without any DWU characters, then it comes under the NOTDWU category. This is because it's not in the DWU. If RTD's planned spin-off Rose Tyler: Earth Defence went ahead and we saw Rose and team battling alien threats on Pete's World, that would be allowed as a DWU story, simply because Rose, Jackie and TenTwo originate from the DWU.
It's not that difficult, it really isn't. Getting rid of or altering this little prefix is just going to cause more confusion haha. It does a pretty good job as it is without us meddling and changing everything.
- OttselSpy25
Thefartydoctor wrote: I think what you're saying is just common sense. But I don't agree that things like TARDISODE 5 are difficult to classify. There's a reason it was accepted it as a valid source and that's because it's a prequel to a valid source. The Doctor, Rose and Mickey soon pop into that parallel world and make everything better. Prequels are no problem here. In which case, my "retort", as you so kindly put it, would still ring a true analysis of a true source.
Your missing the point entirely. What universe the story is set in has noting to do with its classifacation as valid or not. If the writer of The Infinity Doctors has said "it's an alternate universe," the book would still be as accepted as valid as it is now. NOTDWU stories are not, according to our policy, stories that aren't set in our universe. They're stories we don't deem valid, sometimes because the writers didn't mean for it to be set in the Doctor Who continuum whilst not clarifying it to be an alternate reality/dimension. And, as mentioned above, if any of the "NOTDWU" Doctors were to be clearly clarified as "alternate dimension Doctors" in an audio or comic, then that Doctor would be pulled to a valid position, meaning that a Doctor not from our universe would still not be a NON DOCTOR WHO UNIVERSE Doctor. Not all invalid stories are meant to be set in an alternate continuum, and not all of our alternate dimension stories are invalid. That means that, practically, the prefix and the category are just always going to be wrong the way that they are.
The fact that you continuously reference the universal setting of a story as the primary function of invalid stories means that it's just more clear that this prefix is confusing, and yes, difficult. And if wanting our prefix to represent our policies is "meddling" and "changing" too much, then I guess you can call me a renegade.
- Thefartydoctor
Okay, I see your point. So under this tag, Unbound would be AUDIO rather than NOTDWU because it's a licensed work. I get your point now. It is a fair point that it's evidently confused me.
It seems to me that there are two meanings to "Doctor Who Universe". There's the actual setting of the "Whoniverse", and the actual œuvre of work that is valid. I see that now. In which case, there's a decision:
- Change the entire NOTDWU and go through the whole rigmarole of updating everything.
- Accept that people will use it wrong from time-to-time and have others correct it.
I work for the Welsh Wiki and I tend to follow your regulations.
- OttselSpy25
I think that if something's wrong we should fit it, no matter how much changing it takes. Most of the issues can be fixed with a bot.
Weather we remove the prefix and just use the AUDIO/COMIC/TV prefixes in it's place is another worry I suppose. Either way, the various categories (NOTDWU stories, etc) would have to be fixed.
- Shambala108
TheFartyDoctor: "Accept that people will use it wrong from time-to-time and have others correct it." And who do you nominate for that troublesome job?
- Thefartydoctor
Actually I was inferring that it is all of our responsibilities to take the good work that has been done by other contributors and make it better, whether that be through rephrasing, or grammar checks... and so on. It's not one person's job, it's all of our jobs. Every now and then, we all stumble across something a bit squiffy that doesn't sound right hehe.
- OttselSpy25
Well, yeah, of coarse that's true. But I don't see how that hinders us trying to fix this obvious problem, is the thing.
- Thefartydoctor
I was only adding my two pence worth because evidently I misunderstood what you meant but it'd be nice to see the resolution so that I can carry it over to the other Wiki. :)
- Quest?on
I would say that using the tag INVALID would be best, as it describes precisely what these stories are- invalid.
- OttselSpy25
Moved to Thread:182006
- MystExplorer
I think it's mainly about consistency. We consign anything deemed invalid to the Non-DWU Material section of the wiki. Everything else is fair game.
- OttselSpy25
Moved to Thread:182006
- Shambala108
Please start another thread on that issue. This one should just be about the NOTDWU prefix.
- Tangerineduel
I agree with Ottselspy25 in their first post.
NOTDWU is a somewhat counter-intuitive name for a prefix / template.
I also agree that Doctor Who Universe is a term that's used elsewhere synonymous with "Doctor Who canon" and using the NOTDWU could be confusing for new users and could lead people to look for DWU to work out the difference. And while the Doctor Who universe page is fine in itself, it doesn't really explain the difference between what we do on this wiki and the Doctor Who universe term in general.
So as INVALID, while straight to the point, it does have multiple definitions, I'd suggest NOTVALID. That way there is a clear distinction between Valid and NOTVALID.
- Revanvolatrelundar
NC - not covered? UNBOUND even?
- Quest?on
NC could also be seen as saying "not canon", which is not what the intention is.
- Thefartydoctor
I quite like 'UNBOUND'. It sort of gives the idea that they're adventures that are floating in the Who-sphere out there completely detached from the Whoniverse. I really like it.
- OttselSpy25
That's the one of the problems with UNBOUND tho -- our policies still don't have anything to do with the 'Whoniverse,' and furthermore it again connects itself with a series based in "alternate continuums." There are many complex ideas and reasons that go into our policies, and I think that we should just go simple: 'INVALID' or 'NOTVALID' are the best choices in my eyes.
Also I should note that this prefix is obviously taken from the series Doctor Who Unbound. I would suggest against naming the prefix after a story or series -- stories in or out of our invalid grouping are constantly fluctuating, and we could see a day that any story we consider invalid suddenly becomes valid on the site.
- Thefartydoctor
If you were to choose 'INVALID', I think INV would look quite cool.
- "When the Doctor's attempt to communicate with the Master was discovered, he was shot by a Dalek energy beam and regenerated into his next incarnation. (INV: The Curse of Fatal Death)"
Don't you think? :)
- OttselSpy25
That could work, yeah.
- OttselSpy25
While we're on the topic, can we discuss if we even need the prefix? If our invalid policies only count towards if we write about them in in-universe sections, then surely COMIC, PROSE, and AUDIO will suffice? I feel like the template is enough to get the idea that we don't consider the story valid across.
- SOTO
You might raise a good point there, that perhaps COMIC, PROSE, etc would tell us something more specific if it's already clear that it's an invalid source.
I happen to disagree with that stance, though. I think it's incredibly useful to emphasise that a story is not a valid source despite being in parentheses. The thing is, if you put the regular prefixes which we use for valid sources, readers might assume that the invalid stories are on the same level. In my opinion, TV, COMIC, PROSE and AUDIO should remain prefixes for valid stories only, and anything outside of that should use a prefix that tells us it's invalid.
NOTVALID, INVALID or INV instead of NOTDWU? This, I feel I can stand by, actually. The DWU, after all, is hard to define, and we do not seek to be an authority on what is or isn't part of it. Is a story set outside of the main universe a DWU story, anyway? It is much clearer to use one of the new proposed prefixes. I would got for NOTVALID, myself.
- Quest?on
If we got rid of the prefix, we'd need a PLAY one as well.
- OttselSpy25
Don't we already? I recall there being one at one point?
We'd also need one for films that premiere in cinemas, which we kinda already need for The Doctor's Meditation.
The reason I think that we should go without the prefix (but with the categories) is that I think that the concept of something being invalid is far less concrete than many here seem to believe it is. It isn't a completely solid idea that all fans must subscribe to -- it's a mostly technical ruleset which is used to tell if a story can be written about on the site. This can include things beyond "canon" (which is still evidently the mindset of most users and policies around the invalid workings), including if the book let's you choose your own path, to if you are the main character of the story, to if the story is even a complete narrative. We can hardly expect every person seeking info to abide by or care about what we deem valid. We can put that Curse of Fatal Death tag at the top, put in a paragraph explaining why it's not included in in-universe, narrative sections, and then leave well-enough alone.
- Shambala108
Should be either NOTVALID or INVALID but not INV.
INV doesn't tell anyone anything and requires new users to actually search out what it means, which in my experience they don't do.
Mind you, I'm not saying we need to change NOTDWU. Just saying which of the proposed changes would work.
- Quest?on
I support INVALID, personally.
- SOTO
Shambala108 wrote: Should be either NOTVALID or INVALID but not INV.
INV doesn't tell anyone anything and requires new users to actually search out what it means, which in my experience they don't do.
Mind you, I'm not saying we need to change NOTDWU. Just saying which of the proposed changes would work.
I agree. TD has some reservations about INVALID because that word has lots of connotations, as I understand it, though I will admit INVALID, as a typical single word, is a bit more visually pleasing. There's nothing wrong with that more jolting feel, though, if what we want to get across is that it's an invalid source. I feel NONVALID is pretty apt.
- Bwburke94
I support keeping it as NOTDWU myself, but I appear to be outnumbered.
- SOTO
What is your reasoning? This is a community discussion; don't be afraid to bring up your points. Even if a majority of those participating disagree right now, we should be exploring all possibilities, and their benefits.
- Bwburke94
This would be change for the sake of change. I see no reason it shouldn't stay the same.
- OttselSpy25
I wouldn't say it's "change for the sake of change." It's change because the title itself is counterproductive to the core beliefs of our policies and extremely confusing.
- OttselSpy25
Quest?on wrote: If we got rid of the prefix, we'd need a PLAY one as well.
SP, standing for "STAGE PLAY," does indeed exist -- which is odd tho, because under our current policy all stage plays are invalid and thus should only use NOTDWU.
- OttselSpy25
I'm bumping the article because it's starting to die down.
- Sabovia
I support INVALID being used in place of NOTDWU.
- SP is merely detritus from previous bot moves. Its WhatLinksHere report clearly shows it to be almost exclusively used outside the main namespace — in discussions and whatnot. Indeed, a few acronyms related to ranges are still around because they were the basis of bot moves, and they were not deleted at the end of those moves. The original acronym move was, at the time, a very complicated, multi-day affair. A few, minor things got lost in the shuffle. I think DAN still exists too, and is, I think, on SOTO's removal list. Existence is not the same thing as policy.
- While I personally disagree that NOTDWU is confusing in any way, I also don't particularly care if it changes. And while there are respondents to this thread whose passion runs about as hot as "if it ain't broke, why fix it", no one seems steadfastly opposed to the notion of a change, either. Furthermore, no no one has a particularly convincing or heartfelt defense of INVALID. So we'll be going with Tangerineduel's suggestion of NOTVALID. In fact, the switch has already happened.
- It's important, for technical reasons, to be able to distinguish between those stories which are valid and those that aren't. NOTVALID isn't just an acronym; it's a vital hook that a bot or DPL can use to generate useful lists. COMIC, TV and the several other acronyms have the meaning "this is a story that happened in the indicated meaning and is valid". We therefore will not be polluting that message, or making it harder for automated processes to distinguish between valid and invalid stories. An invalid audio is NOTVALID. It is not AUDIO.
- Categories are of a lesser priority, and will be changed as time permits.
- Despite OS25's declaration that it was "another good example" the story which appears in a charity work has nothing whatsoever to do with NOTVALID. NOTVALID, precisely like NOTDWU before it, is only for licensed works. We simply don't cover charity works — a point that was agreed a long time ago, but we have to keep cleaning up. So, yes, you will find that some people have added a few charity works here and there, but these should be deleted. They are not invalid; they're effectively banished, as Forum:Charity anthology short stories has made clear since 2011. Charity works are fan fiction, period, and we don't do that here. Other wikis are available. :)
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