User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-43908-20150311013943/@comment-6032121-20181105192347

NateBumber wrote:

• There is nothing in-narrative indicating that these are separate incarnations of Romana. They both regenerated from Romana II, they serve identical roles as Lady President of Gallifrey, and there's nothing distinguishing in their physical descriptions. The only "evidence" we have that they're separate is the quote from Scott Handcock, but that's purely out-of-universe and cannot be considered as a valid source for this wiki, just like how Handcock's comments about Trey being the third Romana weren't enough and we had to wait for Enemy Lines to make that identification.

It's sort of a fine point in editing philosophy, but some have argued (and I'm tempted to agree) that if we have conclusive evidence that two characters, who may or may not be identical in practice, were created separately by people who didn't know of each other's work, then they shouldn't be considered the same character. If there were a 1964 novelisation which namedropped a member of the same species as the Doctor as having a beard and being called "the Master", but the later creator of the actual Master went on record to say he'd never read the novelisation in question… then I would say that the two "Masters" should have separate pages.

NateBumber wrote:

• "Trey" is a Matrix projection of Romana III in the exact same way that Zagreus and The Tides of Time involve a Matrix projection of Rassilon. Technically that projection isn't the real Rassilon we see in The Scrolls of Rassilon – that guy is dead, this is just a copy – but they're covered on the same page regardless, and I think it would be silly to separate them. The same logic applies to this scenario.

Rassilon's complicated, since no one can agree on whether his resurrected Time War self was retrieved from the Matrix, or if he'd never been really dead (just "sleeping") and the fact that he had a Matrix duplicate was irrelevant. Similarly, Auton-Rory merges with Rory in Big Ban II and blah blah and it's all very confusing, so we just have Rory Williams. But in cases where it's clear that the duplicate and the main person are separate, where there's no suggestion that they rejoined, the precedent is to keep both — I'm thinking of Twelfth Doctor vs. Twelfth Doctor (Shadow World).

The problem with "alternate third Romana" vs. "Trey" is this: can we say for sure that it's not a name the Matrix-version chose for herself after she was copied from the prime Romana? If the Eleventh Doctor (Ganger) had chosen a name for himself, we wouldn't consider that an alias of the Doctor, would we?