Forum:2023 Naming Scheme Reset

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Opening post

Okay, so now we’re at it again. As some of you may have noticed, Russell T Davies has taken over as showrunner once more. You even might have noticed that they’ve made a deal with Disney Branded Television for the 60th Anniversary specials and beyond to be available for streaming on Disney+.

So now we come to the, perhaps inevitable, rebranding of the naming scheme going forward, as the powers that be at the BBC has come to the conclusion that going forward with the naming scheme that has been held for the past 18 years should be no longer. The bosses at the House of Mouse went with the decision that the past 60 years of Doctor Who does not, at this time at least, merit a place on their streaming platform, and they’re beginning their era of Doctor Who partners, with the David Tennant 2023 specials going forward to the era of Fifteenth Doctor Ncuti Gatwa, branding the forthcoming batch of episodes post-specials as "Season One", then "Season Two" and so on… this naming scheme has been announced in the 1 November 2023 issue of SFX magazine by Russell T Davies himself as being the naming scheme that they at the BBC and the Doctor Who production at Bad Wolf are rolling with, therefore putting a halt to the "Series" scheme put forth since 2005 since Series 1, that itself replacing the naming scheme used by the now-"Classic Who" era of the franchise, itself being names "Seasons" since 1963 with Season 1 all the way up to 1989's Season 26.

Now here comes the juggernaut of the problem… with the naming scheme going back to being called "Seasons", how do we tackle the situation as we won’t be able to have two identical named pages on the wiki. How do you distinguish William Hartnell's Season 1 from Ncuti Gatwa's Season 1? As well as seasons/series going forward for that matter. How do we go ahead with this, practically, identical naming scheme. Do we use dab terms as with the "Series" naming scheme? Do we use words, such as I presented them above instead of numbers? Do we re-name the Classic Who naming scheme to use dabs? Or do we do nothing at all and ignore the bosses of our beloved show?

What would you propose is the best solution to do this going forward? Please discuss. Danniesen ☎ 20:44, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

Personally, I think that I'd like to have both year and series added to the dabs for all series. For example:

• Series 1 (Doctor Who) --> Series 1 (2005 Doctor Who)
• Series 2 (Doctor Who) --> Series 2 (2006 Doctor Who)
• Season 1 --> Season 1 (1963 Doctor Who)
• Season 26 --> Season 26 (1989 Doctor Who)
• Series 1 (Torchwood) --> Series 1 (2006 Torchwood)
• Series 1 (SJA) --> Series 1 (2007 SJA)

etc. This would make the new series Season 1 (2024 Doctor Who). While, yes, some of these dabs are unecessary, I like the consistency and clarity. Bongo50 ☎ 20:48, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

[Wrote this before Bongo's comment] Perhaps it's wishful thinking, but I think we should keep things the way they are for the time being. Let's see how iPlayer, Disney+ and TV guides call it publicly and go from there. If they're really going to push for "Season One" to be used everywhere, instead of RTD just calling it that, then that means digital libraries (e.g. iTunes or on-demand cable) will likely consider it a separate show, which I'm not sure if they'd do. Also maybe a DVD release will be announced, though that's farther off. That said, it's probably worth including in the beginning of the article pages. Chubby Potato ☎ 20:50, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

I like Bongo's suggestion, but there may be something to be gained in waiting and seeing what other outlets do. (Of course, we could just rename series 1 (2005) to series 27...) Aquanafrahudy 📢 🖊️ 20:58, 1 November 2023 (UTC)