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)

Complete split

We have a new category for Category:Rassilon's regenerations, and some of the pages look a bit incomplete without there being pages for Rassilon's pre-resurrection incarnations. Ages ago, I compiled a table of how we might split the earlier Rassilons, but never got around to posting it, and this seems like a good time.

The opening of the earlier split ignored pre-resurrection Rassilons with the justification that "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." This made sense for a climate in which the act of splitting was more contentious, but nowadays we have lots of incarnation pages. Contradiction is generally a reason for not against splitting; many of these accounts have different incarnations of Rassilon doing the same things in different orders for different reasons, and it would give more clarity if we gave them different pages.

The current incarnations section has the DWM Rassilon treated as two separate incarnations, the first incarnation seen in The Scrolls of Rassilon is equated with a modern BBC Books incarnation who is textually not Rassilon's first incarnation, and the Monstrous Beauty female Rassilon gets one sentence in the same paragraph which describes the appearances of other first incarnations of Rassilon. This isn't working.

By my count, if all the different versions of pre-Last Great Time War Rassilons were to be split into different pages, it would look like this:

Page name	Description
Rassilon's first incarnation	A general page similar to the Doctor's ninth incarnation, detailing the possible first Rassilons: Rassilon (Monstrous Beauty), Rassilon (Star Death), First Rassilon (The Legacy of Gallifrey), First Rassilon (The Scrolls of Rassilon), Ras (Omega), and Rassilon (The Five Doctors).
Rassilon (Monstrous Beauty)	Seen in Monstrous Beauty, a pre-regeneration “first Rassilon”, who may be a relative of Rassilon rather than the man himself according to The Shame.
Rassilon (Star Death)	Appears in Star Death, The Tides of Time, The Stockbridge Horror, Catalogue of Events, The Final Chapter, Wormwood, The Infinity Doctors, and as a statue in Supremacy of the Cybermen. In original sources doesn’t seem to ever regenerate and dies within 20 years of founding society, but in later ones is placed in the lineup of Rassilon’s many incarnations.
first Rassilon (The Legacy of Gallifrey)	A brown-haired compatriot of Omega. A character in an in-universe unreliable text.
second Rassilon (The Legacy of Gallifrey)	A younger, fair-haired man. A character in an in-universe unreliable text.
first Rassilon (The Scrolls of Rassilon)	The bearded man seen in an illustration in the story. A character in an in-universe unreliable text.
second Rassilon (The Scrolls of Rassilon)	A character in an in-universe unreliable text.
Ras (Omega)	Appears in flashbacks in Omega, played by Conrad Westmaas! Despite the story's ambiguity and tricky layers, the Doctor acknowledges at the end that these memories are genuine. Its worth noting that other voice actors in the flashbacks (namely, Vandekirian) don't correspond to the in-universe actors who play those characters in the present parts of the story, further suggesting the memories are genuine. In Zagreus, Charley takes this incarnation's place in a Matrix simulation of his lifetime. He is confirmed here to be the first incarnation, and his history involves a very distinct version of the Vampire War. He studies “alternative presents” of his own time which are identified elsewhere in the story as being the continuities of other Doctor Who mediums, placing this version of Gallifreyan history as being alternate to other depictions.
Rassilon (The Enemies of Time)	One of Rassilon’s younger incarnations who was more tyrannical then his later selves. An independent matrix imprint of this incarnation features in The Enemies of Time.
Rassilon (Pandoric’s Box)	A young, optimistic man, who is new to being Lord President, seen in Pandoric's Box.
Harpist (The Five Doctors)	Seen in the painting in The Five Doctors. Goth Opera describes the fellow as one of Rassilon’s “guises”.
Rassilon (Jorus and the Voganauts)	An incarnation similar to, but confirmed as a distinct incarnation from the Rassilon in The Multi-Faceted War. Appears in Jorus and the Voganauts.
Rassilon (The Multi-Faceted War)	A recently-regenerated, bearded Rassilon at the end of the Vampire War. Appears in The Multi-Faceted War
Rassilon (The Lost Dimension)	see section below
Rassilon (The Five Doctors)	The “Mutton-chops” Rassilon who appears at the end of The Five Doctors, as well as Pandoric's Box, Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible, Lungbarrow, Blood Harvest, The Eight Doctors, Christmas on a Rational Planet, Interference, Do You Have a Licence to Save this Planet?, and as on ornaments in the Eighth Doctor's TARDIS in Doctor Who. By most accounts the thirteenth incarnation, but by Marc Platt's 1990s stories the first and only incarnation. Platt's novels show a young Rassilon who eventually becomes this Rassilon. He is described to live on as a “spectre” in The Five Doctors and The Eight Doctors. Notably, Five Doctors does not once mention the Matrix or APC net, with the idea that the spectral Rassilon is definitively a 'Matrix Rassilon' comes from later canonwelding with Rassilon’s active unseen role in The Invasion of Time.
Rassilon (Seasons of Fear)	Don Warrington's Rassilon, who primarily appears as a Matrix projection but is indicated by several sources to be one of Rassilon's old faces. He appears in the early early 2000s Eighth Doctor Big Finish stories, plus is depicted in a statue in Supremacy of the Cybermen, plus the business in The Timeless Children. Zagreus indicates that it is this incarnation's body that lies in the Tomb of Rassilon; this could either be taken to indicate that Don Warrington was meant to be playing the Five Doctors Rassilon or that, given the various continuity demarcations of the story, the Big Finish version of Gallifreyan history has him as the final Rassilon. The fact that we have visual sources depicting him as a separate incarnation regardless means that he should get his own page.
Rassilon (The End of Time)	Timothy Dalton's Rassilon, who is depicted in several 2010s sources as being the Rassilon of ancient history.

There are three issues which may require more discussion:

1. Matrix Rassilon currently covers three different Rassilons, all of whom would get separate pages if we split pre-resurrection Rassilon. With any other Time Lord (see Fugitive Doctor and Ollistra (The Side of the Angels)), we don’t usually treat Matrix appearances as separate characters. Complications are heightened by Terrance Dicks intending the Five Doctors Rassilon to be something other than a Matrix projection (a Time Lord ghost), with this interpretation appearing in Dicks' novels to the end of the 1990s.

Matrix Rassilon could function in a similar way to The Doctor's ninth incarnation, being a hub for the three characters, as well as instances which are more general or ambiguous, like The Invasion of Time. To my knowledge, The Legacy of Gallifrey is the only story to equate the Matrix's Star Death Rassilon with its Five Doctors Rassilon. Don Warrington's Rassilon is also inspired by earlier depictions of Matrix Rassilons, but narratively discontinuous with them. Overall, the three Matrix Rassilons are divided more than they overlap.

A panel of The Lost Dimension where Rass resembles Timothy Dalton.

2. The Lost Dimension features a sequence on Ancient Gallifrey with a Rassilon who is an older grey-haired man whose facial details shift across the story, at one point directly resembling Timothy Dalton. There are two relevant quotes from the story for this phenomenon, which connect it to author Nick Abadzis' Ocean of Time concept: “For some reason, even now, my brain struggles to focus properly on him. Am I remembering him right? His face… I’m left with impressions of strength, power. Like the Doctor, he contains multitudes.” and “I’m still not sure I’m processing all of this [these events] correctly. Like with Rassilon, my impressions have become slippery: like the details are changing, subtly, behind my back.” I would propose having a page called Rassilon (The Lost Dimension) which covers the events of the story and all of its subtle variations on Rassilon's appearance, while also acknowledging Rassilon (The End of Time) as one of these faces (with the story seeming to suggest that with Gallifreyan history constantly shifting, the Lost Dimension Rassilon is sometimes Dalton's Rassilon.)

3. Rassilon appears in a generic/unclear incarnation in The Fractures, Remembrance of the Daleks, and The Record of Rassilon. While close to the Platt mythos, the Remembrance novelisation shows a version of Time Lord history where the triumvirate can regenerate and so its Rassilon is uncertain. Given that the comic depicts a period of Ancient Rassilon's life which other sources depict him having Dalton's face in, The Fractures should be mentioned on the page for the Lost Dimension Rassilon as another example of the Dalton incarnation being murky in the past.

Thoughts? TheChampionOfTime ☎ 18:07, 27 September 2024 (UTC)