Talk:First Morbius

Time Lord incarnation naming

If a Time Lord's name is a title beginning with "the", it's perfectly natural to disambiguate their incarnations with an ordinal number (when numbering is known). For instance, "An astronaut shot the Doctor" is very naturally transformed into

An astronaut shot the Eleventh Doctor.

It's with good sense that we have incarnation pages named First Doctor, First Rani, First Monk, Ninth Corsair, and so on.

But the situation is different when the Time Lord's name doesn't start with "the": for instance, personal names. Consider how we would transition the sentence "Morbius declared himself Imperator." With the current page name, we might say

First Morbius declared himself Imperator.

But this is ambiguous, since "first" could be an adjective or an adverb, and it might sound like we're starting a list of things Morbius did! To remove the ambiguity, we find ourselves writing

The First Morbius declared himself Imperator.

This is garbage, since now we're using his name like a title: "the Morbius".

This is the exact reason why we (and the fandom at large) use cardinal numerals to differentiate Romana I from Romana II instead of saying "First Romana" and "Second Romana". Transferring this precedent to Morbius's incarnations gives us an easy, readable, and grammatically sensical alternative to the current confusing title:

Morbius I declared himself Imperator.

I propose that this incarnation naming standard be applied to not just First Morbius and Second Morbius but also First Tecteun, First Drax, and so on. – n8 (☎) 20:20, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

I like this proposal, but what do you suggest we do when we know that a named multi-body character (as not all characters with multiple regenerations are Time Lords) has a name consisting of multiple nouns?

E.g. Iris Wildthyme I: seems clunky. Not that the character would not be actually named this as I'm sure we could do Lilith or "Edith Sitwell" Iris.

Epsilon📯 📂

20:46, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

I like this proposal. It feel very natural and makes a lot of logical sense. As for Iris Wildthyme, I think that, due to the ambiguity of incarnation numbering with her (much like the Master), names should be used wherever possible instead of numbers anyway. Bongo50 (aka Bongolium500) ☎ 20:52, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Mmh. I have mixed feelings about this, especially as it concerns a character like Morbius who was once a Lord President — because we have plentiful evidence of Time Lord presidents using precisely this numbering scheme not to refer to incarnations of a singular individual, but two distinct individuals holding the same office who shared the same first name — just like real-world human monarchs. If I see "Morbius I became Lord President", I don't know whether to think "the first incarnation of Morbius became President", or "this guy, in an unknown incarnation, was the first guy named Morbius to become President, but there were others". This ambiguity does not exist with First Morbius. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 21:52, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Romana has also been Lord President yet I've never seen any confusion over the use of cardinal numbers with her. That being said, I do feel that cardinal numbers would cause confusion with other characters which just highlights how weird the use of them with Romana is. Bongo50 (aka Bongolium500) ☎ 22:10, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Also, @Nate, I don't think it's fair to say that using "the First Morbius" is "garbage"/that it necessarily means that "we're using his name like a title: the Morbius". Let us do away with outer-space time-gods for a moment and consider human parlance: if I meet two people called Linda, and one is blond-haired while the other one is a redhead, then I might describe our conversation in such terms as "The blond Linda said X. She and the red-headed Linda shook hands." In fact, if I meet one then the other, I could in fact say "The second Linda was a lot more polite than the first Linda". None of this means that I am treating either Linda's name as being "the Linda". Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 22:27, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Nate on this one. Things like "Second Tecteun" sound odd to me. Regardless of which convention we go with, note that within pages, typically the incarnation can be specified with the link and doesn't need to be mentioned again. e.g. "Morbius' first incarnation declared himself Imperator. Morbius then..." This only really needs further clarification if another incarnation of the same Time Lord is involved, and sounds not so clunky. Chubby Potato ☎ 04:24, 21 December 2021 (UTC)