Talk:John Frobisher

Poor, poor John... 86.154.81.7 01:42, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

I disagree. -- Noneofyourbusiness 02:53, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

poor johns wife and kids

John does not look like the Twelfth Doctor

Okay, over on Category:Look alikes of the Doctor, it has been given a deletion template due to it being "too vague and prone to misuse", and on the talk page, the consensus is that if an individual is not said to look like the Doctor in a valid source, then that character should not be entered into the category. Characters who just so happen to be portrayed by an actor who played the Doctor, therefore, do not necessarily look like the Doctor in-universe.

The thing is, with stories, they are limited by the confines of the medium; what we see, as the audience, is not necessarily true for the DWU, as it transcends our vision. We don't take production errors to be a hard fact of the DWU, do we? We don't acknowledge that some some aliens look like bloody bubble-wrap, do we?

As an example, in American Horror Story: Apocalypse, multiple characters are portrayed by the same actors. Taissa Farmiga portrays a character called Zoe Benson, who doesn't get along with another character portrayed by Madison Montgomery. Madison, later on in the series, meets the ghost of another character, Violet Harmon, also portrayed by Famiga. For all intents and purposes, Madison should immediately notice that this ghost looks exactly like someone she hates, but she doesn't. Despite Farmiga portraying both characters, in-universe, they do not look alike, despite what we as the audience see. Now while this series is obviously not a part of the DWU, it highlights how a narrative supersedes what we see as the audience.

Bringing this back to John Frobisher, the same can be said to be true. Just because we as the audience can see that both the Twelfth Doctor and Frobisher are portrayed by Peter Capaldi, absolutely does not mean that they look alike in-universe.

Epsilon📯 📂

18:44, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

Here's the question I think you should ask yourself: Thinking of the not we, which users would be helped by this change? I'm usually pretty good at coming up with hypotheticals, but I'm coming up empty-handed. To be frank, if the wiki's policies mean we can't say that John Frobisher looks like the Twelfth Doctor, that's a problem with the wiki's policies, not Category:Look alikes of the Doctor. We can revisit it if Murphy and Falchuk are commissioned for series 14, but until then, I don't think there's anything that could convince me this isn't a terrible idea. – n8 (☎) 20:02, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

I have to agree with Nate on this one. I can understand removing the category from audio characters that do not have a visual representation (i.e they are not featured on the cover art), but if policy says we can't trust our own eyes when we are given that visual, then something is wrong with that policy. LauraBatham ☎ 09:32, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

The category is poor and should be heavily amended. Someone like Lobus Caecilius is a lookalike of the Doctor, and we know this because the Doctor intentionally chose his face to remind him of Donna's teaching. But someone like John Frobisher has never been described as looking like the Doctor, he is simply played by the same actor which is out-of-universe information and shouldn't be present on an in-universe article. RadMatter ☎ 11:45, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

It isn't about trusting our eyes. We can clearly see that the First Doctor has been played by a different actor several times on-screen but we don't mention the recast on in-universe articles (apart from BTS). RadMatter ☎ 11:49, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

I guess I can see your point about the First Doctor actors (though Twice Upon a Time does acknowledge the difference), and I don't actually have a problem with the category being deleted altogether. I guess I'm just worried that we're going to get so caught up on following these sort of policies to the letter that we are going to reach "hat box" vs "hatbox" territory again. Its a slippery slope from "this character does not look like the Doctor, despite having the exact same facial features, because none of the characters say they do" to "Rose's dress in The Idiot's Lantern is not pink because none of the characters say that it is pink". LauraBatham ☎ 12:26, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

One solutions here would be to bifurcate the category into an in-universe "Characters who have been said to look like the Doctor" and an out-of-universe "Characters played by Doctor actors" (obviously not with those exact names, but I'm being verbacious for the sake of clarity). – n8 (☎) 12:43, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

I think that the difference between this and the argument regarding the colour pink is this; the colour pink is never portrayed as anything other than what we know it as so we have no reason to doubt that it is actually pink even though the characters do not state that it is, however Peter Capaldi is being portrayed as a completely different person in these two different characters and we're not meant to notice that they look alike (unless we are told that they do like we are Caecilius).

Nate's proposed categories are better in my opinion. RadMatter ☎ 20:45, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

I definitely agree. While some rewording will be necessary, the gist of the proposed categories is spot o, solving the issues at hand.

Epsilon📯 📂

22:04, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Unfortunately not, friendo! What you all seem to be (willfully?) ignoring is that anything like "characters played by Doctor actors" would be an out-of-universe category containing in-universe pages, in other words, against all our most sacred rules! Whoops! How about we just limit "look alikes of the Doctor" to individuals actually SAID to look like him and don't categories individuals who happened to be played by the same actor at all. Sound good? Yeah, thought so. Either that or we should create "monsters that looked like people in rubber suits", or add any character who was recast to the "shapeshifters" category. NightmareofEden ☎ 20:03, 14 September 2021 (UTC)