Talk:Life-spore

Merge Tag

A: It's not clear to me that this and Xenomorph are meant to be the same, given what you've currently put on that page Epsilon, but I realize that there's a work in progress tag, so I can be convinced on that issue. I'm really not all that aware of the relevant appearances.
B: There's enough precedent to keep the pages separate as is. See Earth Reptile. Unless a licensed work uses both "Life Spore" and "Xenomorph" in the same sense, we have to refer to the similarities in BTS sections, and not even that if A doesn't succeed. Najawin ☎ 00:40, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Rebuttal:

Having watched every Alien film to date, as well as many of the tie in books and comics, I can shed some light. You see, these are absolutely Xenomorphs, due to the story paying homage to the plots of every Alien movie, as well as the "life-spores" being almost identical to the Xenomorphs.

1. The crew of a human spaceship arrives at some deserted planetoid, the crew go an explore, one of the members is violently killed, and by the end, there's only one survivor. That's Alien.
2. The planetoid inexplicably becomes a colony. That's Aliens.
3. The female human survivor fights the aliens, both adapting and changing between each fight. That's Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection.
4. The backstory of the aliens becomes more convoluted. That's Prometheus.

Then there's the name of the "xenomorph" - that isn't technically the name of the species. That's just a generic term, which has been addressed in the Alien franchise, so for The Annotated Autopsy of Agent 5 to use a similar, generic term isn't out of place, especially as this has actually happened in the series.

But you see, there have been cases where two pages have been merged without a valid source connecting the two. This Wiki has made it clear that they only care if a Doctor Who element is licenced - it's been said that if the Borg were actually unlicenced in Assimilation², we wouldn't change anything. The story provides an explantion as to how the Alien films exist in-universe - the Enemy inserted the life-spores into the "meta-stream", to bring the to the attention to the public. The "life-spores" are more like Xenomorphs than the actual Xenomorphs depicted in the DWU. The clear intent of the story is to bring the Xenomorphs into the DWU. Hence, why the pages should be merged.

Epsilon 📯 📂

00:58, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Ah. I see, I think. I was under the impression that there was a stronger basis for the existence of a unified "Xenomorph" concept outside of the Life-Spores, not just a few uses of the term "Xenomorph", and a few trapped specimens as cameos. You're trying to argue that this is about the Aliens movie concept moving into the DWU through this short story, and, as a result, allowing us to join these previous references that were just quirky pop culture throw aways into a unified concept where one before never existed. Yes? (I'd just like to make sure I have this pinned down before I respond.) Najawin ☎ 01:36, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Pretty much. Look here for an for an explanation of the name "xenomorph".

Epsilon 📯 📂

01:48, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Gotcha. I think it's fairly noncontroversial that this story is referencing the Xenomorphs from Aliens due to lines in the text like

While the spores were not yet developed enough to burst out as simple monsters

Or

Themselves mindless – they would ‘create’ Creators and Agents as part of their ‘false history’ of alternative-facts [...] In the beginning the Gods made Monsters (in the end the Monsters made the Gods).

And the emphasis on the 70s being the relevant decade. This might merit being enough to let this page have a BTS section talking about these similarities. I don't think it's enough to join this page with other references to the Alien franchise, and, indeed, there are noticeable contradictions between how Life Spores are treated in this story with the very few instances we see in other stories.
Examples include

The Enemy life-spores are present as I feared they would be. Swimming in the President’s dead cells.

And

Once or twice they filled a valley with Mist and killed or drove mad all within, but they could not quite make the major jump in perception they needed. For that they would – we theorized, need to tap a huge pool of psychic energy, of belief, of hope.

I think the distinction here is that while this story is alluding to, referencing and playing with, the Xenomorphs in Alien, and it might be worth putting that in a BTS section, or might not, the other things you're detailing in Xenomorph are more of cameos from other fictional universes that are played straight. Najawin ☎ 02:16, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

While not altogether sold on the merge, I'm not sure I understand your line of argument, @Najawin. I wouldn't say the other allusions to the Ridley Scott aliens (with or without the name "Xenomorphs") all count as being "played straight", and that is, anyway, a pretty weird basis on which to hang a merger. The life-spore creatures are clearly supposed to encompass the whole existence of the Ridley Scott aliens in the DWU; any more abstract disagreements on the specifics are no different from the variety of contradictory accounts on display at Santa Claus. And indeed, I think the recontextualisation of the Xenomorphs isn't really any different from how FP is wont to recontextualising any concept it plays with, including "primary" Doctor Who ones. The life-spores aren't quite the Xenomorphs of the movies, but in, I think, quite the same way that FP's Homeworlders don't quite feel like the same blokes in funny hats as those in Arc of Infinity.

Now, there could be an argument from T:NO RW against the merger, is what gives me pause. Without prior knowledge of the Alien franchise, it is not clear that people would be able to connect the "life-spores" to mention of Xenomorphs in random VNAs. But on the other hand, there is also nothing in valid sources to link the name "Xenomorph" to the one in Mindwarp or the egg in Van Statten's Vault. I think the reason we're allowed to put all of these on one page is the policy worked out for naming of Star Trek things back when the Wiki scrambled to figure out how to cover Assimilation²; these are minor crossovers (albeit unlicensed on the other franchise's end), and therefore, ought to be treated based on our crossover policies. But as Epsilon highlights, by that same reasoning, we should be able to acknowledge the life-spore aliens for what they are. To someone familiar with the franchise being crossed over with, the situation with the life-spores is just as obvious as the larva in Mindwarp.

…But this is a very confusing edge-case and I admit it.

It could also be argued that there exists a difference between "life-spores" and "Xenomorphs" even if we acknowledge that The Annotated Autopsy of Agent A is about Xenomorphs — a difference similar to that between Autons and Nestenes, the ones being a manifestation or embodiment of the others. While this would necessitate some significant editing on both pages nonetheless, it would put a stop to the merger as such. Incidentally, such a minor distinction is also why we keep Earth Reptile — it's not quite about "the other name for the Silurians": there is a slight but significant difference between the two concepts, in that Earth Reptiles can also be Sea Devils. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 02:31, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Sure sure Scrooge, my point was more illustrative of the larger point B, which was that Earth Reptile vs Silurian is the relevant precedent and we need explicit identification of the two terms for us to be good. Epsilon's argument that this isn't needed because this only applies to Doctor Who-licenced terms isn't really relevant in my mind. His Borg analogy fails because while unlicensed work from outside the DWU isn't relevant per that ruling, that ruling doesn't establish that we can equivocate concepts unless they're identified as the same thing by narrative connections. So I think it's the same T:NO RW argument as yours, just in a subtly different form.

I note also, as this is relevant, that Xenomorph was a redirect to Alien until about a week ago when Epsilon started changing it. So it's not even immediately clear that we are allowed to put all of this on one page, Epsilon just did this a little while ago. (No offense Epsilon, I know this was good faith.) Forum:IDW Doctor Who/Star Trek crossover is not particularly helpful in this exact case. Najawin ☎ 02:55, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Now first off, please see my explanation regarding "Earth Reptiles" again. The continued existence of Earth Reptile has nothing to do with "sources licensed to use two terms" or lack thereof; Earth Reptile does not mean Silurian, any more than Ape is a synonym for Gorilla, is the thing. Your policy argument is not necessarily void because of it, but this is the wrong example completely, in my view.

I'd also like you to spell out why you don't think Forum:IDW Doctor Who/Star Trek crossover is relevant, exactly? My tentative policy argument, steelmanning Epsilon's original proposal, is as follows: we do not care about whether a crossover is licensed on the non-DWU end of things, just the DWU side. As such, Mindwarp and Assimilation² should not be treated differently, because they are the same thing on a policy level: stories which crossovers with preexisting non-DW-based sci-fi series.

Meanwhile, the Old Forums thread established that in the context of a crossover, we're allowed to call a spade a spade and a Vulcan a Vulcan, if this falls within the sphere of "things that anybody familiar with the non-DW-based franchise would know". Knowing the thing in the test-tube in Mindwarp is a Xenomorph is part of what any Alien fan would know going in; therefore, if Mindwarp is to be treated as a minor crossover, we should acknowledge it as a Xenomorph. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 03:05, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

The lack of any clear resolution delineating what exactly the policy measures we can take from it are would be one (:>), but, importantly, there are two issues here. First and foremost, that Mindwarp is a crossover as opposed to a cheeky pop culture reference would very much be under contention, as this post doesn't establish rules for demarcating cross-overs vs references/homages, and secondly, Epsilon explicitly rejects the Xenomorph label as being essential to the issue, based on his referencing wikipedia:Alien (creature in Alien franchise)#Name. So the very thing that the discussion is most helpful in doing, allowing names to be used across franchise borders, is entirely irrelevant here, as "Xenomorph" is not an official name. Najawin ☎ 03:17, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

If you look at the edit history for Xenomorph, you'll see that is was created in 2011 as a redirect to Alien, however at the time, there wasn't a source to tie the Xenomorphs to Alien - not that Xenomorph should've redirected to Alien, as the two things are separate concepts - one is a movie, one is a species (it'd be like the Doctor redirecting to Doctor Who). So it was correct for me to utilse the redirect for an actual page.

Oh, and Xenomorph is the official name of the species out-of-universe, just not actually within the fictional universe.

Epsilon 📯 📂

03:22, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

I think you'll find that Alien is not Alien (film), and Xenomorph was a redirect to the former, even though the latter existed at the time the redirect page was created. So there's an even greater confusion here, since it was created literally just to be a synonym page for the word "alien" until you took it upon yourself to change it. Najawin ☎ 03:29, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the lack of a clear closing post was all-too-frequent in the Old Forums, as we saw in the recent Rule 1 thread.

I better understand your point, but to it I might object that Forum:IDW Doctor Who/Star Trek crossover is promoting a broader attitude that in a crossover, we will give the over-crossing world the same "an iPhone is an iPhone" treatment that we would usually reserve to facts from everyday life. Of course, I know the "opaque blender" policy is in itself confused and contentious these days, but the fact remains. This approach allows us to recognise the larva in Mindwarp and the life-spores of Annotated Autopsy for "what they are", whatever name we decide to go with. (And in theory, absent my "Autons vs. Nestenes" concerns, I would not be opposed to naming the overall page "Life-spore" rather than "Xenomorph", as the primary DWU term for these beasties.)

As for "crossover" vs. "references," my understanding is that interaction of elements from two fictional "bubbles" (I shan't call them "universe" because the concept is irrelevant to the in-universe cosmology of what a universe is) is a crossover, whereas a "cultural reference"/"pop culture nod" could come in two broad forms:

• • Elements in a DWU story that intentionally resemble elements from another work of fiction but are not actually those elements from that work of fiction (e.g. floating-head Rassilon in The Five Doctors being a Wizard of Oz riff);
  • Acknowledgement of a real-world work of fiction as existing, as fiction, within the Doctor Who universe.

You may agree with this standard or you may not, but it appears to be the current practice both on the page Crossover and in application of the category. And I personally think it's as good a standard as any; really, it goes hand in hand with our generally not putting any stock whatsoever in the notion of "notability" as it is understood on i.e. Wikipedia: what matters is not the amount of "crossover", but the nature of it. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 03:33, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

@Najawin, I could've sworn it was a redirect to Alien (film). Ah well. But part of my point still stands - there was never a valid source, as far as I'm aware, to use "xenomorph" as a synomym for "alien".

Epsilon 📯 📂

03:37, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Let's point out Bart Simpson or William (Camera Obscura). Current precedent on this wiki is to write these sorts of things in the BTS sections or point out that these are mere resemblances. If we wish to overturn this, this would be a substantive rewrite to the wiki and, I think, massively expands the scope of crossovers past what most users think is the case. Suffice it to say that I'd like more than the three of us to be the ones who are commenting on an issue with such wide reaching ramifications, and, for good or for ill, I do believe it's a modification of existing policy. Najawin ☎ 03:46, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with the idea that this needs wider discussion than just three users on this talk page, but I'm not entirely sure what these two specific links are trying to prove. In the case of William (Camera Obscura), there is no other page with which to wonder whether to merge it; in the case of Bart Simpson, we do, as a matter of fact, cover the Party Animals and Space Invaders! appearances of the character on a single page called "Bart Simpson", which actually seems like a precedent to put the life-spores, mentions-of-things-called-"Xenomorphs", and very-recognisable-test-tube-larvae all on one page. Whether we call that page "Xenomorph", "Life-spore", or something else being, of course, another matter entirely.Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 03:52, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Both pages push back against the "extended notion" of a crossover. William (Camera Obscura) refers to an in universe character and then, in the BTS section, points out that his character is a reference to another show. Bart Simpson goes further in that it refers to a fictional character and then mentions other, in universe characters, that appear to be similar, while not identifying them as one and the same. At best then, it seems, this is what Xenomorph as a current page can do, collate things in the DWU that appear to be similar to Xenomorphs, but, as Life-Spores are notable on their own as actual in universe entities, they would still merit a page. Najawin ☎ 04:04, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

I mean, the thing in Mindwarp is also an in-universe entity — and "notable" is not a word anybody should be using on this Wiki when it comes to in-universe concepts. Ain't no such thing.

Accordingly, I would say the precedent set by Bart Simpson would be to cover all things that are intended to be recognised as identical to Xenomorphs on a single page, regardless of whether they are identified by the name "Xenomorph" — but, in the actual wording, to be more tentative about the relationship between the various accounts than Epsilon's drafts appeared to be.

Both due to the Auton/Nestene concerns and to the complexity of all this, I also think we should retain Life-spore for the moment, even if we do link to it from the in-universe sections of Xenomorph. The text that appears on "Xenomorph" should be along the lines of "Many people mentioned Xenomorphs. (PROSE: Etc., Etc.) The Sixth Doctor once walked past a creature resembling a juvenile Xenomorph. (TV: Mindwarp) So-called 'life-spores' whose history was [so and son] were a possible identity of the Enemy. (PROSE: (The Annotated Autopsy of Agent)" Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 11:53, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

I have performed some edits on both pages. Is this satisfactory? Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 15:42, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Again, I'm really not sure about handling the Xenomorph page like that at all, but this page looks fine, I've never objected to a BTS section for this page. Najawin ☎ 17:28, 21 December 2020 (UTC)