Talk:The Doctor's early life

Page creation

Because of T:NPOV, it's always been the case on this wiki that the Doctor's multiple various origin stories - to wit, the First Doctor, the Other, The Doctor (The Brain of Morbius), Patience's husband, Dr. Who, and maybe the Timeless Child? - have been treated as equally true. But our coverage of the Doctor's childhood and early life at First Doctor#Life on Gallifrey has been an exception.

For instance, the novelisation, other stories, and behind-the-scenes commentary has confirmed that the infamous The Brain of Morbius faces are incarnations of the Doctor prior to the one we call First; if this is true (as we must treat it per T:NPOV), in The Time Monster when the Third Doctor remembered being a little boy and talking with K'anpo Rimpoche, that was a memory not from the lifetime of Hartnell's Doctor but from Christopher Barry's. But we obviously can't just move that information to The Doctor (The Brain of Morbius), since later stories have suggested that it was Hartnell's Doctor who was a child, and we can't treat those as not-true either!

So this page is the compromise. It gives us a way to discuss the 5+ contradicting origins upfront, and it houses all of the references to the Doctor's childhood, education, and career up until just before Hartnell's Doctor left Gallifrey, at which point it continues at First Doctor. (Any stories which do explicitly indicate that it was the First Doctor specifically as a child should be double-listed here and in the abridged original section.) Major sections are obviously very stubbified right now; please help me flesh it out! – N8 (☎/👁️) 21:22, February 21, 2020 (UTC)

I do not think we should jump into this without discussion. For one thing, it would take away from the main article to have a large portion of it missing, confusing new editors to what is worthy of inclusion on the main article, as well as requiring watching and/or editing two pages for the same information. Also, how far does this go from here? Are to now make new pages for other sections of characters history if they are too long and contradictory? Will the Master pages be separated as well?BananaClownMan ☎ 21:59, February 21, 2020 (UTC)

The issue is not that the First Doctor page was getting "complicated" as such, it's that it is a violation of T:NPOV, and simply wrong, to assert that all things dealing with "the Doctor's childhood" are definitely things which happened to the William Hartnell incarnation of the Doctor which most, but not all, sources dub the "First Doctor". --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 22:11, February 21, 2020 (UTC)

Personally, I fail to see how the assumption that the childhood happened to the Hartnell Doctor is a violation of any policy when the majority has it has such.BananaClownMan ☎ 22:19, February 21, 2020 (UTC)

T:NPOV, for Rassilon's sake, that's the policy. A majority of stories might say one thing, but just because those stories are more numerous and higher-profile, that does not mean we should make light of the equally-valid stories which disagree. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 22:25, February 21, 2020 (UTC)