Talk:Rassilon

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(Partial) split

In light of the recent splittings, I've taken interest in seeing how many pages could feasibly be split into their respective incarnations. Rassilon proved to be a particularly tricky case, in the sense that everything currently covered from their "early life" to their (first) death (covered now by the "Supposed death and survival" section) is extremely contradictory, and, honestly, makes it nearly impossible splitting.

However, from the moment Rassilon gets transferred to the Matrix onwards, his lives are far less contradictory (well, basically not at all) and are easily "splitable". Therefore, I'm proposing that we do exactly this. Leave all the contradictory/messier stuff here, where we currently make it into a coherent structure, and split only his post-death/resurrected incarnations, as follows:

• The overall page, which deals with everything up to "Supposed death and survival", and then link to his following incarnations
• Matrix Rassilon, which deals with all the stuff from his Matrix projections, until the moment of his resurrection during the Time War
• Resurrected Rassilon (fittingly), the incarnation that was resurrected on the early days of the Time War, but which soon regenerated into...
• War Rassilon (very obviously, not the only incarnation of Rassilon to be involved in the war, but then again so aren't the War Doctor and the War Master, and it's all-too-clear who we're talking about when we say these names, I think the same could be said about this one once we get used to the names)
• Ultimate Rassilon, who lived the final days of the Time War, and whose "biggest" act was trying to bring the Ultimate Sanction
• Banished Rassilon, as the two stories he appear in are partially motivated by his banishment from Gallifrey

Now, finally, as these are not "oficial" names, we'd use {{conjecture}} on the top of the pages. Even then, as our pages of the Monk, the Rani and all the others have by now proved, splitting by incarnations when possible improve our coverage of the stories these Time Lords are involved with, so I propose we do the same for Rassilon. OncomingStorm12th ☎ 23:45, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

My only real issue with this is that I'm not sure about the names of the "War" Rassilon and the "Ultimate" Rassilon. As someone who is not familiar with the Gallifrey audio series, when I first saw the "War" title, I thought of Timothy Dalton's incarnation. And if I hadn't already read the list to get some context, I wouldn't have even guessed which Rassilon the "Ultimate" one was, being more familiar with the term "Final Sanction".

Also, at what point in the Time War is the "War" Rassilon from? Is it possible that they are a younger version of the "Ultimate" incarnation? LauraBatham ☎ 03:02, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

An excellent point made by User:LauraBatham. Didn't the individual Rassilons get nicknames in Pandoric's Box? Maybe they could be used, since they are used in-universe and in a licensed stoiry? BananaClownMan 03:16, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

The point about nicknames is a fair one, but I don't think there's any doubt that the Richard Armitage Rassilon is a different incarnation from the Timothy Dalton Rassilon. They sound different and look completely different on the cover. When they're simply recasting a TV character, Big Finish Productions don't usually use the new actor's face on the cover (the one exception is the Bradley First Doctor Adventures line, and even then, only because those actors had previously appeared on TV in those roles, sorta). And if they did, you'd think they'd have made Armitage look moderately like Dalton, instead of giving him a beard. No, they're definitely different. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 11:40, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Ditto on what Scrooge said. Apart from both being war incarnations, there's nothing (even in Armitage's announcement that he was the same as the Dalton incarnation, so I'd advise a "separate-until-proven-same" vision in this.

As for the (valid) concerns raised by LauraBatham: I can understand how in hindsight one'd assume "War Rassilon" to be the one from the television because, despite T:NPOV, we know TV will have a wider reach than audio stories. And I see your angle of not associating Ultimate Rassilon to the Final Sanction, but ultimately, our page is set at Ultimate Sanction (and that was indeed what was used on the TV episode, so arguably that could be the most widespread name, via my last note.

That said, I'd say that I can't see much of a better name for either of these incarnations (but please feel free to suggest a different one if you can think of one). And, push comes to shove, even if a user comes to War Rassilon expecting Dalton, it'll only be a click away via the navbox.

Now for BCM's suggestion of the Pandoric's Box for monikers, all they give us (afaik) is "Crewcut" for Dalton and "Baldy" for Sumpter, which, while obviously both valid, I'd personally prefer not to use. OncomingStorm12th ☎ 15:18, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Actually, both 'Ultimate Sanction' and 'Final Sanction' are used at different points in The End of Time. When proposing the vote, Rassilon states that the choice is "Whether we die here, today, or return to the waking world and complete the Ultimate Sanction"; but later, when voicing his intentions to the Tenth Doctor, he declares that "we will initiate the Final Sanction. The End of Time will come, at my hand." Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 15:50, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

I support this proposal but I feel that Rassilon's early life should be covered on Rassilon's early life, much like The Doctor's early life. It seems much tidier this way. Bongo50 (aka Bongolium500) ☎ 15:54, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

It's not really "early life" though. It's the entirety of his (first) cycle of life. Perhaps something like Rassilon's first regeneration cycle would be more accurate, if a bit unwieldy. The section on his "supposed death and survival" says he died in his 13th incarnation, so we do know he had but one cycle. Danochy ☎ 22:13, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Good thought but no cigar — a key issue is that Lungbarrow suggests that Rassilon and Omega never had regeneration. In that account (and possibly others), the Founders were able to splice regeneration into new generations of Gallifreyans, but not grant regenerations to anyone who'd been born as a regular Gallifreyan — including themselves. Thus the Five Doctors Rassilon is construed as the only Rassilon there ever was until the Time War. This is one of the main reasons (though not the only reason) we can't split the pre-Matrix stuff. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 22:18, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Right, in which case someone who has read that book really ought to add that vital piece of information to that section. In that case, I agree that accounts of pre-Time War Rassilon should largely remain on this page, although that's not to say that individual and distinct incarnations in that era can't be split off. Although I currently see little benefit in doing so. Danochy ☎ 22:27, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

I think we should create Rassilon's early life as a place to but the first bit of the biography. It looks very odd to me to have just that bit in the section while the rest of the main Rassilon page discusses all his incarnations in the appearance and personality sections. Although, according to some accounts, Rassilon was in his thirteenth incarnation when he died all of this stuff deals with very early Gallifreyan history prior to the creation of the Matrix so it is "early" in that sense. I believe this will also help the other sections if we split this off because the page can specifically focus on the idea of "Rassilon the Founder" rather than his depiction after any of his revivals. Additionally, there are two conflicting first incarnations so The Doctor's early life is ample precedent for this. Borisashton ☎ 11:38, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

First Rani / First Tecteun is one thing, but I am completely opposed to speculative titles like "Banished Rassilon" that are used nowhere in-universe or in fandom. Our job as a wiki is descriptive, not prescriptive, and inventing conjectural names for Time Lord incarnations in the hopes that they catch on is an abuse of our position! It will undermine fans' (and authors'!) already-low trust in the wiki, not to mention how it will make search impossible: there's no way the not we can be counted on to know that we call Timothy Dalton's incarnation "Ultimate Rassilon" as opposed to "War Rassilon". In contrast, not only is the existing common practice of dabbing by first appearance consistent with how Rassilon is currently linked throughout the wiki, it also better lends itself to searchability and accessibility for casual and new fans (ie 99.99% of wiki users). If we're determined to debate over names for individual incarnations, I suggest it be on the individual talk pages like Talk:Rassilon (The End of Time), after this page has been split into incarnation pages titled by appearance. And I think this would be a good precedent to set overall, given how getting everyone to agree on names for other Time Lords' incarnations has already indefinitely delayed the long-overdue splitting of some pages. – n8 (☎) 13:56, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree that if we are to split the page, using the first appearance as a dab would be the most appropriate way of naming the different incarnations, such as what was done with the Monk. LauraBatham ☎ 14:04, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

While I agree with Nate that the discussion of names for individual pages can and probably should be made after the pages are split, I strongly disagree on the notion that we can't "make up" descriptive names for individual incarnations of Time Lords. I understand his hesitation on the matter, but when I did it (or if anyone else were to do it), it wasn't out of vanity or to "hopes that they catch on". Part of our coverage is assuring our text flows propperly.

Multi-Time Lord stories are, more than ever, a popular thing. Trying to describe a story like Masterful using only "The Master met the Master in the Master's castle and then Missy arrived" is horrible, and certainly less informative then "The War Master met the Decayed Master in the Saxon Master's castle and then Missy arrived". This is a specific situation, yes, but my point is: inevitably having descriptors help our coverage of stories. Or are we to pretend that Battle for the Movellan ship, Andrea Yates' World and etc are intuitive, and the people most like don't arrive at most in-universe pages via story pages, or from other event/character pages? Most people could easily arrive on Ultimate Rassilon (or whatever title we come up with) via two paths: searching for Rassilon, and then seeing a handy link to it right below his infobox, or by visiting The End of Time (TV story) and seeing "Ultimate Rassilon" on the infobox.

Anyway, I'll reiterate that I agree this is a discussion that can be held at a later time, as Rassilon's are easy to dab by story. OncomingStorm12th ☎ 15:04, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Those use cases would work in any naming scenario – although I'm curious how the navbox would be formatted so users could find an incarnation without knowing where it fits in the timeline – but there's also the case where one can type "Rassilon" in the search bar, see Rassilon (The End of Time) pop up as a suggestion, and go, "Ahh, of course!" In any case, it seems we agree on practical steps in the short term, so I'll withhold the rest of my comments for later, more appropriate talk pages :) – n8 (☎) 15:23, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Alright, well, it looks like there is a consensus that the pages for Rassilon's Matrix iteration, and post-War regenerations, should be split off. I hereby rule that we move forward with this to clarify the situation, using dabbed names for the time being. Once this work is completed, we can implement a second phase of this discussion, discussing alternative naming schemes and precisley how to deal with pre-Matrix stuff — but there is no reason those issues should delay work which we've all already agreed can be done.

@User:OncomingStorm12th, feel free to move your sandboxes to the main namespace using the dabbed names. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 01:59, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Don Warrington in the infobox gallery

I feel that Don Warrington should appear in the infobox tabbed gallery. Problem is, I think there's only one visual image of him (the cover of The Next Life) and it's not exactly the most clear photo. Any suggestions? Fractal Doctor ☎ 11:06, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

I wouldn't say it's any less clear than Christine Summerfield's image. Jack "BtR" Saxon ☎ 13:38, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Good point, Jack "BtR" Saxon. I agree. I think Don Warrington should be added in. Fractal Doctor ☎ 14:19, 8 February 2023 (UTC)