Talk:The Parting of the Ways (TV story)

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Uncredited cast

I've moved the uncredited cast to the talk page until they can be properly sourced (not IMDB). Shambala108 ☎ 23:23, October 16, 2012 (UTC)

I applaud — seriously, I really do — your efforts at verification. I wish more editors did this. Only trouble in this case is that it's obviously Jenna Russell. She's a fairly famous British actor, having been the female lead in Chris Chibnall's Born and Bred. Returning to article. This is a case like Bill Nighy being included at Vincent and the Doctor even though he wasn't credited. We know he's Bill Nighy because he looks, sounds, and acts like Bill Nighy.
On a side note, it was kind of a coup to get her in the episode at the time, because she was still filming Born and Bred.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  00:37: Tue 18 Dec 2012
That's cool, but I've got to say I'm not British and I've never heard of her. That's why I removed her pending citation. There's probably loads more pages where I've done this so I apologize in advance. Shambala108 ☎ 03:54, December 18, 2012 (UTC)

Fun Fact (not worth adding though)

This doesn't have to go to the main page, just wanting to point out a fun fact.

In the "Harry Potter"chapter "The Parting of the Ways", the character Barty Crouch Jr. dies. In this "Doctor Who" episode, the Tenth Doctor is seen first time. Both are played by David Tennant.

91.62.229.128talk to me 18:22, December 15, 2015 (UTC)

Continuity section

It's important that our articles be consistently written from the same point of view. Otherwise, we'd end up with one article written in past tense, another in future tense, and yet another in present tense. Or maybe, some of the articles would be written from a character's perspective rather than the audience's.Tardis:In-universe perspective [T:IU [src]]

When writing the behind-the-scenes section of an in-universe article, write from the point of view that your subject is fictional. There should be an obvious perspective shift from the rest of the article.Tardis:Out-of-universe perspective [T:OOU [src]]

What is not explicitly stated, indeed, is whether the "Continuity" section should be written from the in-universe or out-of-universe perspective. However, as is clear from the above quotes, it must be written from the same perspective throughout, for all the articles, let alone within the same article. In addition, the shift in perspective from in-universe to out-of-universe parts of the article must be "obvious" and the DWU must be treated as fictional in writing OOU. The second example of right vs. wrong in T:IU explains that even using terms such as DWU in the in-universe parts of the articles is prohibited, let alone names of stories.

Arguing that "Continuity" sections are actually out-of-universe is arguing against an almost universal practice of the wiki. It may not be recorded in policies, but it is very hard to find examples of "Continuity" parts written from the out-of-universe perspective. The "Plot", "References" and "Continuity" sections are all, in the absolute majority of cases, written from the in-universe perspective (albeit in present tense) while "Notes" are explicitly marked at T:FORM TV as containing behind-the-scenes information.

Now to CoT's edit summary "Sometimes a much more concise and accurate statement can be made by going OOU." Actually, a much more concise statement would have been, in this case,

Neither CoT nor N8 before him, opted for this simple and much more standard entry. My only guess is that this would not be accurate? Perhaps, not accurate like

Or in some other way? If the provided statement is not a hard fact, then, one would think, the readers of the wiki deserve a clarification rather than an obfuscation "It is established". Established by whom? By one of the characters? By the narrator? By N8? By CoT? Established how? By looking? By direct speech? By prior knowledge?

If CoT found it appropriate to undo an admin's edit to restore this information to the page instead of engaging in a discussion, as T:NO WARS would suggest, it must be pretty important. In the spirit of T:NO WARS, seeing that CoT has a strong desire to have this information on this page in this form, I am now engaging in a discussion of the information itself. I would appreciate it if CoT could answer two questions:

  1. How is this information related to this story, The Parting of the Ways? Why is it crucial to have it in the "Continuity" section of this particular story?
  2. Exactly how and by whom was it established in Lungbarrow that "Time Vortex appeared blue while traveling back in time and red while traveling forwards."?

Thank you in advance for your reply. Amorkuz ☎ 20:36, November 14, 2017 (UTC)

It looks like we have two issues going on:

  • How should we write Continuity sections? This is (obviously) a multi-page issue and should really be discussed at Board:The Panopticon. Tardis:Format for television stories is silent on the issue, but at one point (and no, I cannot remember where) I believe it was User:CzechOut who stated that it doesn't matter whether Continuity is written from in-universe or real-world. If this issue goes to the Panopticon, I will do my best to find this information.
  • Whether the information that was removed, then re-added, belongs on this page. Well, let's face it, most of the TV stories and audio stories and a good chunk of prose and comic stories have a lot of entries that aren't really continuity. It could and should be cleaned up, but it's a major undertaking that would require several people who have familiarity with the works in question. Maybe a posting in the Panopticon would help to define what we would like Continuity to contain.

I can't comment on the specific information because I haven't read the novel and haven't seen the tv episode in years, so I won't take a side on this question. Shambala108 ☎ 21:15, November 14, 2017 (UTC)

I'm not CoT, but I thought I'd give my two cents, since I was the one who actually added the contested paragraph. When I wrote it, it wasn't my intent to write it as out-of-universe, and I'm still not quite seeing what part of it breaks this convention. (And I don't think that convention is nearly as "universal" as you think it is, given that it seems to be broken more often than not on non-TV pages -- see PROSE: Alien Bodies, Lungbarrow, and Beautiful Chaos, for the first examples that jumped to my mind...) Based on your edit summary, I'd think it's my usage of PROSE: Lungbarrow, but I was explicitly trying to match the writing style of other Continuity elements on the page by including that. See:
If the problem was my quoting of the story title -- and now I reread your message, you do specify that story titles are absolutely prohibited in in-universe sections -- why did you remove my section but not all of these? You accuse CoT of having "a strong desire to have this information on this page in this form", and yet based on your own reversion, it seems that you have a strong desire to not have this information on this page in any form.
As to why this is relevant here: In PROSE: Lungbarrow, there's a scene where Ace (iirc) rides her bike through the Time Vortex:
The engine juddered and the steering jerked against her hands. The tunnel was going faster and wider. It was curving upward. The undefinable golden shapes that always rushed past her on these jumps darkened and were lost. She lifted her hands off the steering and watched the bike making its own adjustments. Thin streaks of light began coursing along the tunnel boundaries. Red to come, blue behind.
And that's relevant to this page because, as far as I'm aware, The Parting of the Ways is the first television story to show the TARDIS going forwards and backwards in time, both times with the aforementioned color patterns. If that's wrong, I'd love to know which episode page should have this section. – N8 ☎ 21:19, November 14, 2017 (UTC)

User:Shambala108 is, of course, right that no single format is adhered to completely. There are 18 "Continuity" items on this page in the standard format and 5 in this OOU format. With more than the 3-to-1 ratio, the latter are clear outliers. I would have added info in the majority format if only for the uniformity's sake. But I also did not see the relevance to the story: even now nothing on the page gives a clue what the connection is.

And now you persuaded me that I was right and it should not be on the page. Here are my problems with this edit:

  1. First of all, you compare TARDIS going forwards and backwards in time with a bike going in one direction (I don't know which, but bikes are not swings and don't go back and forth during one trip). So having one colour going to the future and the other going to the past is exactly the opposite of having both colours while going in one direction.
  2. While "to come" may perhaps be interpreted as "future", the "behind" description is very clearly not the "past" but simply the "behind of the bike". When she looked forward from the bike, she saw red. When she looked backward, she saw blue. (And either could be the past or the future, depending on which direction she was travelling. Plus she could be travelling in space only, in which case, the time differential is zero. I wonder if the novel states what it is.)
  3. All the novel states is that one person travelling on a bike saw these colours once. There is zero evidence that this is a universal phenomenon applicable to all timeships, all areas of the Vortex, and all observers. To give you an idea of what I mean, compare it with the description: "It was early morning. I travelled east. The sun was right in front of me." This does not mean that the same would happen in the evening.
  4. The statement "the first television story to show the TARDIS going forwards and backwards in time" is extremely OOU, if true at all. What you mean to say is that this is the first time the camera showed TARDIS in the vortex from the outside during both a trip to the future and a trip to the past in the colour era (Third Doctor onward). I'm not prepared to verify this claim. But it is certainly false from the in-universe perspective. Already The Chase has the TARDIS travelling from New York City in 1966 to Mary Celeste in 1872 and then to a mysterious house in 1996. And there are scenes shot from the outside. But you wouldn't see colours in a black-and-white program. You are really talking about camera angles and type of film used in recording, not about the experiences of the time travellers, who have TARDIS scanners available to them at all times. This, to me, is a typical note, not at all a continuity.
  5. The latest edit by CoT "It was first established" is equally fully OOU. Whose first it it? I bet he meant the chronology of the publication. Again this is a note, in the exact spirit of "ways in which the story was a major landmark in the history of the series" from Tardis:Format for television stories#Story notes. Continuity, on the other hand, "usually includes things of narrative significance" according to Tardis:Format for television stories#Continuity. How is it narratively significant that the viewer could not see the colours of the Vortex during the black-and-white era, when the inside of the vortex looked like a kaleidoscope, but now can discern them to be sometimes red and sometimes blue with no kaleidoscope in sight?

To summarise, I see no match between the two descriptions of the Vortex, in the novel and in this story. I also strongly disbelieve that in the first 20 years of coloured Doctor Who, the TARDIS was never shown in flight in the Vortex both travelling to the past and to the future, though I certainly am not going to waste my time finding where it happened, especially given that the equality of all media would demand also checking all comic stories, prose and audio stories up to 2005 if things are considered from the narrative perspective. Amorkuz ☎ 22:46, November 14, 2017 (UTC)

Look, I didn't add anything that wasn't already there before you, Amorkuz, removed the point on the grounds that it was written OOU. I didn't mean anything with the wording of the statement because I didn't write it. I just hopped on the wiki for a few minutes, saw an edit summary which didn't seem quite right in my eyes, and reverted it with after quickly finding what I thought were the relevant policies. (Obviously there was a bit too much Lungbarrow on the mind, because I linked to Tardis:Format for novels by mistake.)
I view it as a given that "every good-faith editor, from the newest editor to the most experienced bureaucrat, has the same status within Tardis Data Core." When I see someone removing something from a page because of a policy which doesn't exist and is proved to not exist by similar content which has been on the same popular page for at least half a decade, I will not hesitate to just revert.
It's funny that this exact paragraph was one of the few parts of the book to be illustrated.

I'm not really gonna comment on this particular situation too much, but the vortex has had a great variety of appearances and qualities through the years. A similarity between depictions of the vortex here and in a previous story is - in my opinion - more deserving of a continuity point on this page than the fact that Jackie has been in the TARDIS before.

Now, it is true that this particular situation works just as well written in-universe, but I stand by "Sometimes a much more concise and accurate statement can be made by going OOU." That was just a general comment which is true. For example, by having all of its continuity points written in-universe, The Weeping Angels of Mons (comic story) makes no difference between the explicit connections and the implicit ones. The actual comic does not mention that the First Doc, Steven, Dodo, the Fifth Doc, Peri, the Ninth Doc, or Rose visited the Christmas truce, yet our page for the story could be interpreted as saying that the story did.

It's the difference between:

and

(Although, I'd probably just put that whole thing into the notes section of the page.)

On this page,

  • An attempt at creating a different sort of Dalek/human hybrid would occur in TV: Daleks in Manhattan /Evolution of the Daleks.

is much clearer on the relationship between those stories and The Parting of the Ways than

  • The Daleks would later try to create a different sort of Dalek/human hybrid. (TV: Daleks in Manhattan /Evolution of the Daleks)

An example from this page of where the opposite is clearly true:

  • Rose mentions the Doctor taking her to meet her dad. (TV: Father's Day)
  • Rose mentions the Doctor taking her to meet her dad, which occurred in TV: Father's Day.

Say some comic featured the return of a character from a previous comic, but didn't make any actual reference to the plot of the previous comic. In that situation it might be more informative to have the continuity read "* Character B previously appeared in COMIC: Story C." instead of "* Character B appears. (COMIC: Story C)".

At the end of the day there's nothing inherently wrong with either format. "I would have added info in the majority format if only for the uniformity's sake." is the sorta advice which leads to 1) pages being slightly more bland and repetitive to read through and 2) potential misrepresentation of what is actually in the story. CoT ? 01:00, November 15, 2017 (UTC)

Amorkuz: you're right that, with the 3-to-1 ratio, the out-of-universe continuity elements are considered clear outliers, just as the in-universe continuity elements are outliers on PROSE: Alien Bodies, Beautiful Chaos, Lungbarrow, The Dying Days, The Gallifrey Chronicles, and so on and so on. I'm very used to writing articles for novels, and there were similar examples on the page, so that's the format I followed.
I must note how quickly the main topic of conversation has changed, though! When you redacted my edit, and when CoT reinserted it, it was because of this issue of in-universe vs out-of-universe writing in "Continuity" sections, not because you disagreed with the idea of it being a Continuity element. Could you officially retract those statements about Continuity sections being always written in an in-universe fashion? I just don't want any future users to stumble across this discussion and think it's an official rule declaration.
As for this new conversation, about whether it deserves being a Continuity element:
  1. Re:"What you meant to say": I know what I said, and I meant it. You've neglected the part of my sentence that specified "both times with the aforementioned color patterns". Time Vortex says "[The Time Vortex] had various colours, for a time appearing as either red or blue. Red generally indicated forward time travel and blue indicated travel to the past. (TV: The Parting of the Ways)" The quote has been there since 2010, and that citation was placed there in 2013. That led me to believe that this story was the first episode to display the NuWho convention of the Time Vortex appearing red when the TARDIS is traveling into the future, and blue when it's traveling into the past. If that's wrong, I'll gladly move the paragraph to the correct page.
  2. You're right that there is "zero evidence that this is a universal phenomenon applicable to all timeships" etc. But there is also zero evidence that the way the Vortex looks when the TARDIS is traveling through it is universal in any way. Was I trying to say or even suggest either of those things? No: as CoT succinctly summarised, I was just pointing out the similarity between the depiction of the vortex here and in a previous story.
  3. To try to bring this particular branch of the conversation to a speedy close, could I propose a different phrasing that you may find more amenable?
  • The Time Vortex also appeared as "red to come, blue behind" in PROSE: Lungbarrow.
Let me know what you think. – N8 ☎ 15:13, November 15, 2017 (UTC)
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