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)

Note: I realize the comment on digital libraries is for the time being an oversight, as the new episodes are exclusive depending on the region- I of course was thinking about the past. Though there's still things like Apple TV or Google which connect shows from different apps. Anyways, my point is that this one magazine interview isn't enough yet and we ought to see how it's actually handled. Chubby Potato ☎ 21:00, 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)

Series 2 (2006 Doctor Who) looks very weird to me. That seems to imply that it's Series 2 "of 2006 Doctor Who", i.e. the second season of a version of Doctor Who that started in 2006, and so onwards. I would prefer Season 1 (1963 Doctor Who) through to Season 26 (1963 Doctor Who) if we go down the years route.

Alternatively we might divide by production company. Season 1 (BBC), Series 1 (BBC Wales), Series 1 (Bad Wolf Studios)?

Yet another option would be to somehow use "Classic" and "NuWho" terminology, plus, I guess, Bad Wolf Who for 2023 onwards. It's fan terminology to be sure, but it's seen officially acknowledgement, notably in the Official Doctor Who Tumblr's watching guide. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 21:03, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

So I note that the lack of prior Who on Disney+ isn't because of The Mouse not deigning to include it, it's because there are prior contracts at play. Max still has the rights for another, uh, year or three, not sure exactly. And Britbox has Classic Who for a while as well. I suspect that in time this will be rectified. But this is all speculation.

I also note that this entire discussion may be pointless, as S5 was also called S1 during production, so we just need to wait and see, and I would hold off on actually making a change until we see the actual changes on the official BBC end. But discussing it to get ahead of the rush is a good idea.

My suggestion, fwiw, is Season 1 (British Broadcasting Company) / Series 1 (British Broadcasting Company), Season 1 (BBC Wales) / Series 1 (BBC Wales), Season 1 (Bad Wolf) / Series 1 (Bad Wolf). Distinguish by production company and make season and series interchangeable as redirects, perhaps defaulting to the official term that the BBC uses with an explanatory note for the nuance in the BTS. Najawin ☎ 21:31, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Remember that these are OOU pages so there's no BTS section. The idea of noting down nuance is still valid, though, just in a different section. Bongo50 ☎ 21:41, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

There's a notes section, which is functionally the same thing. It's used for whatever minutiae people want to put on the page that they think is relevant. Najawin ☎ 21:43, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

To your second point Najawin… yes, they referred to S5 as S1 during production, that is true… and up until today’s SFX Magazine statement I would have agreed with you that this was just them referring to Series 14 as season 1 for the sake of making it easier, but this issue of SFX states exactly this: '"Next year, season one. Yes, we’re calling it season one." We’ll let you catch your breath - we imagine there’s a collective gasp, a clutching of anoraks, a seizing of sonics. Not series 14, not season 40 - controversial! Davies chuckles at our geekery. "What fun that is, to be controversial."' Danniesen ☎ 21:46, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm aware of the comment. I stand behind my statement that this still might be moot and we shouldn't actually make changes until anything official happens. But it's enough to actually discuss this. Najawin ☎ 22:07, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Maybe it would make sense to take a leaf out of iPlayer/Whoniverse’s book, which has named the classic series "Doctor Who (1963-1996)". To do this, you could shift to using subpages of "era" pages. This would eliminate the need to put "Doctor Who" and the time range within the same brackets. So maybe like this:

• Doctor Who (1963-1989)
  • Doctor Who (1963-1989)/Season 1

Or brackets could be removed entirely:

• Doctor Who 1963-1989
  • Doctor Who 1963-1989/Season 1

( and links to seasons could be written as "Doctor Who 1963-1989 (Season 1)" )

Then, DISPLAYTITLE could be used to change how the article name displays within the page, if needed. Plus, at this stage, it would probably make sense to make dedicated pages for the three eras, to better communicate what these three eras actually are.

Adding the full time range makes the titles longer than ideal, but ultimately it would provide more clarity than confusion, imo. TheGreatGabester ☎ 22:36, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure about the subpages, but of everything, I prefer marking the different 'segments' of the show by the years they ran then any other way presented here so far. Doctor Who (1963 - 1989), Doctor Who (2005 - 2022) and such are more immediately understandable than Doctor Who (BBC) and Doctor (BBC Wales) for example, as the latter ask the reader to have at least some knowledge about the production of the show, whereas the years clearly distinguish which segment it is without the reader needing to actually know anything about those segments. Time God Eon ☎ 18:41, 2 November 2023 (UTC)