The Panopticon/What is an "appearance"? (comic edition)
I've been occasionally editing out appearances in comic stories. I tried to use the spirit of the old discussion of appearances in TV stories and audios. But much of that thread revolves around things like actor credits that are not applicable to comic stories. The other thing that is not immediately clear is what counts as "archival footage" when no film footage can directly appear in a comic book.
Given the Titanic efforts to mix and match different doctors, the appearances of various doctors and what counts as a multi-doctor story both get affected.
Perhaps, as in the above-mentioned thread, it's hard to come up with an exact rule. But it would be good to come to at least some common understanding. So let me use four examples to explain the rules I came up with for myself.
Essentially, I propose the following maxima: It is considered an appearance only if a TV production crew would be likely to shoot new footage for presenting the scenes with the character.
Example 1 from Weapons of Past Destruction. When Arnora roots out in the mind of the Ninth Doctor, she finds memories of the Eighth and War Doctors. These memories are only presented in one frame as images of their heads (see image). There is no interaction between them and the story's characters. There is nothing new that we learn about them. TV production would have found their stills and used them. No one in their right mind would think of inviting John Hurt for making one headshot. So while it's not clear whether these images are exact copies of some still frame from the TV, I would still call it a "bona fide" archival footage. In my mind, this is not a multi-doctor story as the Eighth and War Doctors do not appear in it.
Example 2 from The Transformed. When Mickey Smith recalls his relationship with the Tenth Doctor, there is a frame of them together. Maybe there is a similar still frame from some TV story, but it cannot be exactly identical. So there is little point in searching for it: a lot of time spent for an uncertain result. Instead I think of it as follows. From this frame, we learn nothing new. We learn that Mickey has eventually gained the respect and friendship of the Tenth Doctor, as opposed to his relationship with the Ninth Doctor, the Doctor in the story. Again, to illustrate something established in an earlier story, a TV production team would have probably used some existing footage. So this is again not an appearance of the Tenth Doctor, and not a multi-doctor story.
Example 3 from Hacked. There is one flashback frame showing the fight of Aesirians with various super-civilisations. In particular, one can see Sutekh sticking out his mask at the bottom. This is a narratively new scene (Aesirians were introduced in this story) that would likely require new footage, be it live actors or CGI. Thus, I think this should constitute an appearance of several species and of Sutekh personally.
Example 4 from The Fountains of Forever. The Tenth Doctor retro-regenerates into the Ninth Doctor, who proceeds to interact with other characters of the story. This is clearly an appearance of the Ninth Doctor, which makes it a multi-doctor story. And the proposed rule still works fine: one would need to get Eccleston to shoot those interactions, were it on TV.
This is how I currently edit comic stories. Are there objections? Or difficult cases not covered by the proposed criterion of narrative novelty requiring "new footage"?
