Talk:Thirteenth Doctor (The Curse of Fatal Death)

Name

If this page is to have a Template:Conjecture tag, it may as well be renamed to "The Female Doctor", the moniker used to refer to this incarnation from the script extract released in DWM 328. Epsilon (Contact me) 18:17, October 3, 2020 (UTC)

Mmmmh. Thing is, that's not great for disambiguation purposes. "Female Doctor" could describe a number of different incarnations of the Doctor. You'd have to go to Female Doctor (The Curse of Fatal Death) at which point you just go right back to having to dab anyway, and frankly what's the point?

Historically we haven't actually needed confirmation of the "Numberth Doctor" form to use it without a conjecture tag. As pointed out by User:Borisashton in the Curse debate, the Eccleston Ninth Doctor wasn't confirmed as the "ninth Doctor" (let alone "the Ninth Doctor") until Series 3 — and I'm not actually sure we yet have a source officially calling Whittaker "the Thirteenth Doctor" in so many words. Certainly we didn't back in 2017, and yet that doesn't mean we put a conjecture tag on her article. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 18:39, October 3, 2020 (UTC)

I only added it because of the wording of the article "an individual who would logically have been called...", but you do make a point there. However, Epsilon also make a point about calling them what the credits identified them as.... hmmm.... 🤔 NightmareofEden ☎ 18:45, October 3, 2020 (UTC)

Moving the articles would allow us to eliminate the disambiguation from Tenth Doctor (The Curse of Fatal Death), Eleventh Doctor (The Curse of Fatal Death) and Twelfth Doctor (The Curse of Fatal Death), since they would become Quite Handsome Doctor, Shy Doctor and Handsome Doctor respectively. Lumley's Doctor will require disambiguation regardless, so why not just use the official name she's given in the VHS release? Gowlbag ☎ 03:59, October 4, 2020 (UTC)

Nuh-uh. Again, and with no offence to T:NPOV, it's not exactly hard to see how the descriptors Quite Handsome Doctor or Handsome Doctor could apply to other incarnations than the two Grants's. (Cough, cough, to name but the two "consensus" fangirl-worshipped heartthrobs.) And as for "Shy Doctor", just last season we had the Thirteenth Doctor sheepishly describing herself as "still quite socially awkward", so you don't even need to get into audience perception. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 09:11, October 4, 2020 (UTC)

Understandable, but are these descriptors ever actually going to be used for another official Doctor? Because these are the official names, as these were used in both the DWM script extract and the Curse documentary. (Which is actually on the wiki, I just can't remember its name...)Epsilon (Contact me) 09:29, October 4, 2020 (UTC)

All I'm saying is that we'd want to dab them if we used them, not that we shouldn't use them per se. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 09:31, October 4, 2020 (UTC)

I call your attention to [1] (dear lord I hate Discussions). The joke book used titles like "Sore Doctor". It's not outside the realm of plausibility that a second such joke book would use these descriptors. Najawin ☎ 09:35, October 4, 2020 (UTC)

And the chances of these exact, specific names being used would be very slim. Epsilon (Contact me) 09:38, October 4, 2020 (UTC)

I would personally advocate that we maintain Thirteenth Doctor with the dab. Script excerpt terms are good and all, but if one starts applying them for page name cases when there's a more recognisable term... well, it would be calling the First Doctor's page "Dr. Who" in my mind. Not strictly untrue, but not exactly what people are going to be searching for.

You could argue that Female Doctor might be more commonly searched when trying to locate this page, but does Thirteenth Doctor allow for that as is - since searching for CoFD Doctors is going to lead you to all of the other numbered ones (and I even more strongly would hope against changing them from numbering to descriptive terms) anyway. And as noted above, changing to Female Doctor would still need a dab.

Also, I can't speak for the accuracy of it but I also note that this page notes the script as calling her "The (Female) Thirteenth Doctor". That would imply emphasis on the number first, surely? JDPManjoume ☎ 09:16, October 5, 2020 (UTC)

I feel strongly against either moving this page or the main Thirteenth Doctor. Everyone understands the deal going on with Curse, and we call get why "Thirteenth Doctor (Twice Upon a Time)" is a no-go. At the same time, what is "Female Doctor?" Immediately you're making a situation where it's unclear what that means, thus we'd still need a dab term. Totally defeats the point! OS25🤙☎️ 18:05, October 5, 2020 (UTC)

Also, I don't get how this is conjecture? Is counting conjecture now? Are we not allowed to do math anymore?

If we know that Rowan Atkinson is the Ninth Doctor, then we know the numbers for the rest. Presuming otherwise is speculation itself. Saying that "Thirteen" is conjecture is itself conjecture. OS25🤙☎️ 18:08, October 5, 2020 (UTC)

A more pertinent piece of evidence than the script extract (scripts aren't final products, after all) is the Comic Relief Doctor Who Uncovered documentary produced for the VHS release. "The Quite Handsome Doctor" is not just a description; it is the actual and only official name of the character played by Richard E Grant. We see Richard Curtis refer to him as such here, and then we see the name superimposed on the screen as Grant is talking, capital letters and all. These have been the characters' official names in publicly available media for two decades. To continue calling him "Tenth Doctor (The Curse of Fatal Death)" when we know his real, much more unique name is rather like keeping War Doctor at "Ninth Doctor (The Name of the Doctor)" forever. As for name-recognition value, surely that's not a primary consideration when naming articles, or else Ninth Doctor (Curse of the Shalka would be located at Shalka Doctor, the name used approximately 100% of the time people discuss him; and besides, Hartnell's Dr. Who has been brought back and referred to as "the First Doctor" countless times, whereas the COFD incarnations have never had their original names challenged or overridden in this way. Even if there were evidence that a supermajority of readers found the article on the Hugh Grant Doctor by searching "twelfth doctor (the curse of fatal death)" (and I rather suspect they find it by googling "hugh grant doctor who"), that would not be a reason to keep the article there, any more than we should move The Doctor (The Brain of Morbius) to Morbius Doctors. Moreover, now that COFD has been validated, we're starting to see references to these incarnations proliferating throughout the wiki; if I were a casual reader and I saw a reference to "the Shy Doctor" (or "the Shy Doctor"), capitalised as such, I would immediately understand that this was the name of some distinct, probably comedic incarnation. If I came across a reference to "the Eleventh Doctor", I would immediately think of the character who is actually called the Eleventh Doctor, and be confused as to how this incarnation relates to him. Gowlbag ☎ 20:44, October 5, 2020 (UTC)

I concur. Also, I'd like mention that even if you were to find a person referring to these Doctors by their incarnation number, it'd most likely be because they had previously read the name of the erroneously named wiki page. Epsilon (Contact me) 21:03, October 5, 2020 (UTC)

I wouldn't say they're erroneous, Epsilon. As OS25 restated earlier, it is not inaccurate to call them by the numbered versions, any more than it is inaccurate to call the "main" Thirteenth Doctor "the Thirteenth Doctor". That's just how counting works. Whichever kind of name we go with, we will definitely keep redirects from the other kind. (Note that we have a redirect at Shalka Doctor!)

The comparison to "War Doctor" is an interesting one, but the issue here, really, is that there isn't any kind of evidence that the so-called "Handsome", "Shy" and "Quite Handsome" Doctors ever called themselves that in-universe, or were ever called that by somebody else in the DWU.

These nicknames may be official, but a documentary isn't a valid source at the best of times, and I don't think this one is attempting to say anything about what these Doctors are called in the DWU.

(To be clear, that's not a definitive admin-hat-on decision. Just a statement that for the time being I remain unconvinced.) --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 22:02, October 5, 2020 (UTC)

The War Doctor article isn't located at War Doctor because he's called that within the DWU, though. It's located there because the BBC and Moffat consistently referred to him as "the War Doctor" in non-narrative media such as press releases and interviews, comparable to the aforementioned documentary. It would have been silly to keep him at Ninth Doctor (The Name of the Doctor) for the following three years, or however long it took until Titan made a comic where Alice Obiefune called him "War Doctor" once. REG's character may not be called "the Quite Handsome Doctor" in-universe, but he's not called "the Tenth Doctor" anywhere, in his universe or ours; the former name has the advantages of being both unique and the official one released for public consumption, whereas the latter has neither. The argument that numerical names extrapolated by fans should override official non-numerical ones provided by the creators seems to rest on an assumption that the numerical names are somehow inherently objective, but I would say that cases like the War Doctor demonstrate that that's emphatically not true. Gowlbag ☎ 23:07, October 5, 2020 (UTC)

I would also call into question extrapolating the name of a character based on the lower third line of a documentary. And, if we delve that, could we not then also be querying that the credits for the story itself as released in VHS omnibus refers them all as "The Doctors"?

And then it's like War Doctor in that there's three credited and/or scripted names: The Doctor, The Other Doctor & The War Doctor. I'll admit that I'm lacking in knowledge re. the decision that came in that situation. I see the talk page, but there may have been a thread on the matter too (Sadly, the current forum/discussion shift makes it difficult to check, but if anyone knows of one - please let me know & I will consider whatever points were raised there).

But, for now, looking at the talk page - it seems moreso that the reasoning for War Doctor was not of self-reference but rather out of not conflicting with the self-references of 9, 10, 11 etc. Whether or not it should've been named War Doctor at that time, before he was named by someone as such in-universe... I'll leave aside.

Getting back to CoFD, The Master is the only one who refers to the Doctor in any meaningful way - and that's the Ninth Doctor as being the "ninth body". In the short lifespans of the following three incarnations, none of them notate themselves in any way or self-describe as such. Thus, I would argue that following the pattern set by the first of the featured Doctors being Ninth Doctor is the most sensible option (much as two of the Unbounds notate The Doctor, and New Doctor & Previous Doctor, and The Doctor), and numbering them as has been done.

It would be an altogether different matter if there was other material in which any of them did identify using a different term, but thus far no such media exists. So I would stand by the numbering. And I would also say it's not conjecture to number them. The only argument against the idea that the incarnations following are Tenth, Eleventh & Twelfth... would be to make conjecture yourself in speculating that there were other incarnations inbetween the blasts, and that the successive incarnations for some reason don't remark on that, and that as a result - the Thirteenth would then not be Thirteenth... and you'd be in a quagmire of speculative conjecture by then.JDPManjoume ☎ 00:03, October 6, 2020 (UTC)

Richard Curtis provides the particular names of the Quite Handsome Doctor, the Shy Doctor and the Handsome Doctor during the interview; the on-screen captions later repeat these in text, reiterating and confirming their capitalised proper-name status and the name of the Female Doctor. That's two discrete instances for most of these names already; they weren't winging it. (For anyone interested, the script extract provides more details on the evolution of the characters' names; their working titles had been "the New Doctor", "the Plump Doctor", "the Gorgeous Doctor" and "the Lady Doctor" respectively (with an additional "Geeky Doctor" between the latter two), but these were amended to reflect the actors who were ultimately cast, so it's quite clear that the production considered the ones in the documentary to be the finalised names.) It's not conjecture or extrapolation to notice the names being used in an official piece of media and then use those names. This isn't just "a documentary"; it's the official BBC-authorised documentary that was produced alongside COFD, on the set of COFD, and then bundled with what was to be its only available release for some fifteen years. Gowlbag ☎ 01:16, October 6, 2020 (UTC)