At the moment there are several navigation templates (navtemps) that are applied inconsistently. Some of them duplicate each other and keeping two copies will inevitably lead to bad maintenance. I propose to decide which of them to keep and to apply this decision uniformly to Big Finish's multiple ranges. Here is the current situation:
- There is one consolidated navtemp Template:NS that collects six of the New Series ranges and series together (plus one stand-alone story), but notably does not cover Torchwood audios (the reason is because Torchwood audios are not included into "The New Series" range by BF). This template is currently applied on all ranges it covers except for the new UNIT series.
- The new UNIT series employs instead the navtemp Template:BFU, which covers both old and new UNIT audio series.
- Torchwood audios are covered by Template:TorchwoodNovelsandAudio, which also covers novels, direct-to-CD releases and radio dramas.
- In addition, one of the ranges has its own navtemp, which is currently unused: Template:BFWD for the War Doctor range.
Now, although I sincerely appreciate the effort put into the creation of the consolidated template, my feeling is that it should be broken down for future proofing.
Currently, BF treats "The New Series" as a range, but this is not likely to last. For once, this "range" includes separate things that are officially ranges in their own right: "The Diary of River Song" and "UNIT - The New Series". On the other hand, BF has recently added "The Destiny of the Doctor" into the New Series range, which is not in the template, done pre-license extension and includes many of the classical doctors as well as new doctors.
In short, I believe this New Series "range" to be a mess that is not going to be sorted by BF anytime soon. On the other hand, the number of stories in this heap of stuff is going to grow (I hope), and the template will become less and less useful for navigation. At the moment, it includes seven closed-by-default subtemplates, some of which are further broken into subdivisions. On top of that, many of the stories have nothing to do with each other thematically: compare the new UNIT series and Tenth Doctor Adventures, which can never intersect for continuity reasons.
Here is what I propose.
- Remove standalone ranges (New UNIT and Diary of River Song) from the consolidated template and use individual templates for them (one is already used, the other needs to be created).
- Also remove from the consolidated template things collected in "Collected Tenth Doctor" and "Collected War Doctor" ranges and use individual templates for them (one already exists, the other needs to be created). This is especially clear for the War Doctor, which is one big arc of a story and would include an Eighth Doctor boxset in the end.
- Use the consolidated template for stories included in the New Series but not covered by other templates, namely, for Classic Doctors, New Monsters and The Churchill Years, as well as for Destiny of the Doctor. This requires adding Destiny of the Doctor to the consolidated template.
This allows to separate things that BF itself separates. And it keeps in the consolidated template only clearly anthological things, involving multiple doctors and with somewhat cursory common threads.
Thoughts and suggestions are appreciated. The main goal is to avoid the necessity to enter one multibox series into multiple templates, sometimes in different forms (compare names of boxes for New Series in the UNIT template and consolidated template).