Forum:Iris Wildthyme: should she stay or should she go?

Index → Panopticon → Iris Wildthyme: should she stay or should she go?

Spoilers are strongly policed here.
If this thread's title doesn't specify it's spoilery, don't bring any up.

There's very little debate that the character of Iris Wildthyme, as used in her Doctor Who-labelled crossovers, is a part of the DWU, and therefore something to be covered by this wiki.

Where it gets murkier are the books and audios where she's on her own. I think these should be put well outside our borders, because they are explicitly not in the DWU as stated by the publisher.

Here are some selections from the IW submission guidelines Obverse Books have on their webite, which can be found at http://obversebooks.co.uk/guide/.

• Iris’ origins are shrouded in mystery, which is the way Iris likes it. The most recent theory suggests that she comes from the Clockworks, the home of a race of powerful but indolent technologically advanced aliens, situated in a separate universe to our own known as the Obverse. Some have hinted that it is the manner in which the people of the Clockworks merely record and not intervene which caused Iris to leave in her bus, looking for adventure and excitement. There have also been suggestions that there is something rotten in the Obverse, something which scares Iris for some reason…

So, her people are the "Clockworks" and explicitly not the Time Lords. Yes, we all know what "Clockworks" is code for, but no, code language isn't good enough — as has been established at forum:How do we best include Faction Paradox on the wiki? We also have a named other universe from which she apparently comes. And it ain't the DWU.

• The Doctor, Time Lords, Cybermen and all that Jazz

Nowhere to be seen. Not even in jest. Nothing whose copyright belongs elsewhere, either BBC or Big Finish or Telos or whatever.

You can hint if it’s sufficiently subtle and deniable, but that’s about it. And it’d have to be pretty damn subtle and deniable, so calling them Cyberons or introducing a mysterious time travelling boyfriend called The Dentist isn’t going to work.

Heh, I like the dig at Bill Baggs here, but it's also fairly conclusive evidence that Obverse aren't playin' the same game as BBV or even Bernice Summerfield. They're not trying to remain in the DWU using only characters to which they have a license. This isn't P.R.O.B.E. where they've got permission for Liz Shaw — but not Benton — so they just fail to include Benton. Iris Wildthyme stories, at least by Obverse, just aren't in the DWU at all. They're taking a character out of the DWU and building a wholly new, and largely parodic, universe around that character. Which, again, is very different than what happens with Bernice Summerfield stuff.

It's more akin to what happened to Lucille Ball when she went from I Love Lucy to The Lucy Show. Yes, The Lucy Show basically still features Lucy Ricardo amd Ethel Mertz — only now they're both divorced and neither talks about her ex that much.

So I think all of it should go — save, again, for those things that happen in stories clearly branded with the Doctor Who logo. What do we do with it? Create another mini-wiki, I guess. It'd be pretty easy, given the pace of development at w:c:factionparadox over the last week.

Objections?
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  <span style="">19:19: Fri 25 May 2012 

I used to wonder why Mary Tyler Moore had divorced Dick van Dyke -- clearly the marriage had crumbled when the boy had died and she needed to get as far away as possible. Why did she change her name though?

Here, though, Ms. Wildthyme has not bothered to change her name, not even to the extent that Lucy Ricardo did. It's still Ms. Wildthyme, even in those Big Finish productions where Katy Manning is voicing her and Jo Grant. Given the slovenly BBC attitude towards continuity, I think we have little reason to turn our noses up at Ms. Wildthyme and the issues of picking and choosing which set of adventures is canonical and which isn't. So, yeah, I object. Boblipton ^{talk to me} 20:56, May 25, 2012 (UTC)

I'm with Bob. The argument with Faction Paradox was that these weren't stories about Time Lords with TARDISes from Gallifrey, they're stories about members of the Great Houses with timeships from the Homeworld. The change in names was a sign of the change in universes.

That's not what Obverse is doing with Iris. they're just telling stories about what Iris is doing when she's not around the Doctor (or anything else owned by the BBC or anybody else). And Iris is still visiting the DCU on a semi-regular basis. To me, this seems very much like the Bernice Summerfield situation.

And it's worth remembering that the Clockworks backstory first appeared in a BBC-licensed Doctor Who novel, The Blue Angel. I'm not seeing the problem here. —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 00:42, May 26, 2012 (UTC)

@Bob: Carol Brady didn't bother to changeher name for The Brady Bunch movies of the 1990s, but no one in their right mind would argue that Shelley Long is playing the same character as Florence Henderson. Christopher Reeve and Tom Welling both played a guy named Clark Kent whose real identity was Kal-El from the planet Krypton. That doesn't mean that Smallville is in the same continuity as Superman II. Guys named Greene and Olomos have both played a Colonial leader named "Adama", but that doesn't mean that the two BSGs are necessarily in the same continuity.

Fiction is rife with examples of related characters with the same name. It's hardly fair to dismiss this thread's proposal simply on the basis that Paul Magrs didn't change his lead character's name. If he called her something other than "Iris Wildthyme", he would be losing a significant marketing asset.

@Josiah: Could you develop your last point a bit further, please? The word "Clockworks" does not appear in The Blue Angel. The word "clockwork" does, but only three times, always in its ordinary English meaning. The word "clock" appears only six times, always in ordinary ways.

Also, this isn't at all like the Bernice situation, as far as I can see, because Bernice has had solo encounters with other elements of the DWU — Daleks, Sontarans, Braxiatel, whatever. AFIAK, there's no attempt to suggest that Benny is in some alternate universe to the Doctor.

Not so, Iris. The publisher specifies that Iris' people, called the Clockworks, come from another universe called "the Obverse". Yet, she's definitely a Time Lord from Gallifrey in the DWU stories. I'm not seeing how that's compatible with being a Clockwork from the Obverse in the IWU stories.

Just as with other inclusion debates, I'm gonna need more info if I'm going to be able to integrate this into our "what this wiki covers" policy document. I need to know what the actual difference is between this and FP. As it stands, it really looks like Obverse are changing names to protect their asses, just like FP. I'm not sure I'd be able to convincingly distinguish between the two cases.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  <span style="">15:10: Sat 26 May 2012 

CzechOut could you give more information on exactly what you want to exclude from 'what this wiki covers policy' (we need a shorter name for it).

Are you proposing to exclude just the Obverse Books published stories? What of the Big Finish Productions books and audio? And Snowbooks' Enter Wildthyme? --Tangerineduel / talk 15:30, May 26, 2012 (UTC)

Why is it that we are asked for our feelings and then get into a long debate over logic and reason? I fail to see why we accept the fact that the Doctor was loomed and has a mother, father, brother and grandchildren, yet we strain at this particular gnat. Iris Wildthyme is part of the Doctor Who universe, so what she does and says away from the Doctor and the BBC-licensed parts of it are likewise part of it including her unlikely lies. You want my reasons, I demand that opposing material be composed in higgledy-piggledies or at least good solid clerihews. Boblipton ^{talk to me} 20:47, May 26, 2012 (UTC)

Now that I've gotten that glob of bile out of my throat, I'd like to discuss a bit of a trend that disturbs me. You may think this is thread hijacking. I think it is not, but a discussion of the impetus behind this and other threads.

Any organization can and must reflect the opinions of the people running it at the moment, tempered by the difficulty of changing things -- inertia, if you will -- and a bit of consideration for those who will come after. I think in this discussion and in others like the thread about The Infinity Doctors, Czechout has been trimming problematic works from consideration in this wiki. I have several issues with this. First, I am conservative in language and organization, feeling that there's no need to shoot the waltzing bears and replace them with dancing chickens simply because the former don't dance well; second there are real problems with continuity -- canon, if you will -- at the heart of the Whoniverse and worrying about what happens with people like Ms. Wildthyme when the Doctor is not around is small potatoes when we consider questions like the Doctor's age and what Time Lord family life really entails.

The third point is a philosophical one of how we organize this wiki. The original impetus was to make it inclusive: anything that might reasonably relate to the universe of Doctor Who was welcome. Czechout has been working to rationalize that attitude on a case-by-case basis. Each case can be justified on its own terms -- and by citing similar decision made in the past, the way the jettisoning of Faction paradox has come up in this thread. It's true that a lot of the Obverse stuff doesn't fit well, but then, neither does a lot of the stuff at the core of consideration -- just considering the tv shows, how many times did Sarah Jane Smith see the Doctor between her tenure in the TARDIS and School Reunion?

While Czechout's proposed changes are not wrong in the context of some views of how to organize this wiki, it is exclusive rather than inclusive and in the end it will be a very small and comparatively useless wiki. You can't remove the obviously wrong stuff and nothing else. In the end it winds up like a mustache in a Marx Brother movie --- one more little snoop and it's gone. Well, people can change it back later if they disagree -- except there's that inertia working against that.

What's the answer? The radical one of getting rid of the non-canon tag altogether? Maybe, but I doubt that will fly. I do, however, think we have reached, if not passed the point of diminishing returns and we should give this entire type of thread a rest. Even though I expect Czechout will complain that this is thread-hijacking. Boblipton ^{talk to me} 22:54, May 26, 2012 (UTC)

Again, I agree with Bob. This seems to me to be part of a "death by a thousand cuts" of all the interesting side-steps and discontinuities of the larger world of Doctor Who-related fiction. As such, it seems fundamentally misguided, and makes me want to suggest that CzechOut re-read Unnatural History, which I think says all that needs be said about such discontinuities.

To answer the question about The Blue Angel, I'd have to re-read it to be sure, but my recollection was that the sections of the novel which dealt with the Obverse suggested an alternative origin for Iris (hence the name of the publisher). I'm not at all sure that Iris has called herself a Time Lord or claimed that she was from Gallifrey in any work published since then; and even if she did, we know that she lies and misremembers things. Anyway, the version of Iris currently appearing on the covers of Obverse Books looks like Katy Manning, who's still playing her on audio for Big Finish.

When I was making the comparison with Bernice Summerfield, I was specifically thinking of her earliest adventures in the non-Doctor Who NAs. As I recall (and I could be wrong,as I haven't read any of those books since shortly after they were published) they didn't use any Doctor Who monsters, but did use characters like Jason and Braxiatel who had been created for the Doctor Who NAs. Specifically, Braxiatel was never referred to as a Time Lord in those NAs, was he?

Iris has always been an elusive, willful old bat, who refuses to be tied down by anything as mundane as continuity. Why should we presume to determine which of her adventures were real and which we're fictional in the Doctor's universe? I may have quoted this in another one of these inclusion debates, but it seems to me to come down to the line from Alan Moore's "last" Superman story: "This is an imaginary story. Aren't they all?" —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 01:53, May 27, 2012 (UTC)

I like to think of a wiki as a well trimmed tree, about a specific topic, not like Wikipedia that is a never-ending grape vine, encompassing everything. If we include non-BBC/BF produced Iris, where does it end? If a character is introduced in a Obverse IW book, and then gets their own spin-off with another company, that does not mention DW or IW at all - do we include that series? What if we do, then a character in that series gets their own series with another publisher, that does not mention the series that they originated it?

As far as I can see, just because she looks the same as Katy Manning in both Obverse and BBC/BF productions, does not mean that Iris is the same person in both. If the only connection between Obverse IW and BBC/BF IW is the character name and image, I don't think that quite qualifies for inclusion.

I'm all for "interesting side-steps and discontinuities", but a separate wiki is more appropriate for such ventures. Keep the TARDIS Index File for Doctor Who, not stuff based on, but separate from, Doctor Who. Tardis1963 talk 10:23, May 27, 2012 (UTC)

If we do wind up covering companions of companions of companions, what's the problem, Tardis1963? Are you concerned that we don't have enough floorspace or will run out of brooms? I'm old enough that I have issues with some of the normal practicalities of the Internet and do silly things like that. If we wind up having articles on stuff that stray pretty far from William Hartnell's Doctor, it's the nature of the beast. People will still head over to the core current articles to learn and edit. Articles further afield will consist largely of a few lines and a link to sites with on-point discussion, like the Star Trek references.

A more overtly realistic concern would be that the quality of the core articles would suffer as effort is shifted to peripheral issues. If it is, it is the natural evolution of the way some one's interests shift and people are just as likely to move from Iris to the Doctor as the other way -- more likely, I should think, because the Doctor offers more diversity. In either case, it's an infinite buffet -- take what you want and don't worry -- the food does not spoil.Boblipton ^{talk to me} 11:04, May 27, 2012 (UTC)

@Tangerineduel: As stated in the original post, the question before us is whether Iris Wildthyme stories not branded with a Doctor Who logo should be included.

@Boblipton: The reason you're being asked for you opinions and then being challenged with logic is because this thread, like other inclusion debates is ultimately designed to provided new users an easy-to-follow guideline about why we cover some things that are vaguely DW-related, and yet leave others alone. I'm not looking for just an opinion. I'm looking for a logical opinion. The question that must be answered here is, how are the Iris Wildthyme stories different than the Faction Paradox stories, which we have already disallowed?

You yourself Bob have called for a (long overdue) overhaul of the Manual of Style and its supporting policy documents. What is the most fundamental document to that entire process? Obviously it is the document we now call Tardis:Canon policy. Until and unless we know what we cover, the question of how we cover it will be built on shaky ground.

If you don't enjoy the process of discussing the particulars of various stories and/or ranges, that's cool. No one is forcing you to participate, and this can get wearying. If you want to opt out of the process, as you did with the MOS rewrite, that's certainly your option. But it does need to be done.

As far as I can tell from burrowing deep into our archives, there are a few, relatively minor parts of the database, which no one has ever questioned. No one gave any reasons for suddenly covering Faction Paradox or The Stranger or whatever was BBV's "analogy of the month". People just started doing it, without really examining it in any detail. We've never talked about the "Iris Wildthyme franchise", save for one very brief discussion about early Iris Wildthyme books.

I am not, as Josiah Rowe has suggested, on a campaign of "death by a thousand cuts". It's a total mischaracterisation of my efforts to suggest that I'm out to find some "narrative through-line" for the DWU, and get rid of everything that doesn't comply. I'm simply following an apparent "procedure", which I did not invent, of looking at individual stories or story groupings. This then makes it possible for the administrative staff to point to a determinative discussion, when asked by other editors to explain why we do things the way we do. These "individual discussions" are solely an administrative tool.

The issue here is a very narrow one. Again we have stories being published without BBC licensing, like FP. Again we have a publisher saying it's a different universe, like FP. We also have a character, like Death's Head, who did not originate in the DWU, but was instead brought into the DWU, then resurfaced on the other side of that for additional solo stories, then occasionally popped back and forth between her own universe and the DWU. We've already ruled the pre-DWU stories out, so why keep any of the stories without a DW logo?

Like Tardis1963, I think it important to define with very slightly better precision what this wiki is about. For instance, it could be easily argued that the entire Marvel Universe is, in Josiah's words, one of the "interesting side-steps and discontinuities of the larger world of Doctor Who-related fiction", because we see the Seventh Doctor land on top of the Baxter Building in the pages of Death's Head (1988). Do we then add articles for the Fantastic Four here? Do we cover all of Death's Head's adventures here? I guess we could, but we haven't. We've limited ourselves, more or less, to those DH stories that have the Doctor or characters that originated in DWM.

And, Bob, sure, we could, from a technical standpoint, grow this wiki in any direction, and to any capacity, we wanted to. But that technical fact could lead to utter chaos. Here's just a sample of the fun that could ensue if we followed your "take what you want and don't worry" philosophy:

• Because Sherlock Holmes is in All-Consuming Fire', pages about the whole Sherlock Holmes canon could be grafted on the wiki
• Thanks to the IDW ST/DW comic, we could import the whole of Memories Alpha and Beta here
• Because The Beatles appear in The Chase, their careers, as we know them in the real world, could be said to be implied to exist, and therefore the entire contents of The Beatles' wiki could be imported here.

No, no: there must clearly be boundaries. Exactly what those boundaries are is less clear, which is why we need to have these debates.

Finally, Josiah Rowe, I do appreciate the signficance of Unnatural History, but again, that's using a narrative to sort of force a practical, out-of-universe operating philosophy on the wiki. Again, inclusion debates are firmly not about narrative issues. It's about the stance that the publisher/author/copyrigh holder has taken. We can't give into narrative problems when determining whether to include something, or else John and Gillian will really be in trouble.

And I loved the reference to "For the Man Who Has Everything", just because it's a great story. Yes, they are all imaginary stories. But so are Sherlock Holmes stories and Star Trek stories. And EastEnders stories. And Faction Paradox stories. The question isn't which are imaginary, but rather which are set in the DWU. If they are set in the DWU, we cover 'em. If not, we don't.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  <span style="">20:29: Mon 28 May 2012 

Unfortunately, your ideas of chaos and mine differ, Czechout. Let's suppose that we leave these articles untrimmed and as a result we have thousands of pages and millions of words discussing, say, Sherlock Holmes. You look at this potential state and see chaos, madness, a loss of purity of essence. I look at it and say "So what?" Is someone going to come along and shoot your dog because we've strayed outside the boundaries? -- they're not going to shoot mine, because I don't have one at the moment.

Pardon me if I seem to be mocking, but your attitude confuses me. What's the terrible thing that will happen if we have half a dozen or ten thousand subjects covered that are iffy? I agree that's it's likely such articles would be more central to some other wiki, but so what? People won't look at them that often, but so what? This is wiki about Doctor Who therefore it should cover anything that bears some relationship to Doctor Who. Iris has appeared in a goodly number of stories that directly reference the Doctor. That's some relationship to the Doctor. Some of it is clearly outside the DWU, but it all informs Iris, who is under consideration and therefore should be considered in this wiki.

Tell me what I'm missing, please. Boblipton ^{talk to me} 21:22, May 28, 2012 (UTC)

If we add another 10 or 20 thousand pages for stuff like Sherlock Holmes, Marvel and Star Trek - this wiki will cease to be a "Doctor Who" wiki. Clicking on Special:Random page would only bring up DW-related pages 50% of the time if that was the case - half of the time users would be directed to pages with absolutely nothing to do with Doctor Who! Not to mention it would make normal browsing ridiculous. Would we have a category for people who haven't appeared in Doctor Who? 'Cause if we added all the content that is a side-step of the DWU eg. Star Trek, there would be a heck of a lot of character pages for characters who've never appeared in a work that has the word Doctor Who anywhere on it. Tardis1963 talk 00:48, May 29, 2012 (UTC)