Talk:2020: The Movie (TV story)

The Doctor and... another Doctor

I know Jodie's character uses a sonic screwdriver, and it's clear that the joke is she's the Doctor, but the trailer does say (and correct me if I'm wrong) 'Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor, and Mandip Gill as... another Doctor'. I know it's a spoof and this shouldn't be taken seriously, and I actually don't care how this article ends up regarding main characters, but aren't they both... doctors? They're not specifically the Thirteenth Doctor and Yaz... are they? And the Doctor part probably isn't capitalised. TheFartyDoctor ^Talk 17:32, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Hm, I disagree there. Mandip's character is probably not Yaz — but Whittaker is clearly stated to be playing "The Doctor" as opposed to Gill who is playing "a(nother) doctor". Obviously the story presents a universe with the Doctor is also a small-d doctor, but she is the Doctor. Somehow. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 17:49, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Tbh I kind of regret putting that message. I can now see through the blurry lense of spoof that 'and Mandip Gill as... another doctor' could simply be a reference to Yaz being a small-d doctor and helping out in the hospital. Ignore my point. TheFartyDoctor ^Talk 17:50, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure she's playing Yaz. Her dynamic with the Doctor in these twenty seconds is Yaz's dynamic with the Doctor. The narration is just a normie-level joke about "doctor" being the name of the protagonist and also an occupation. The 2020 Doctor Who cast reprising their roles in a film about 2020 makes basic conceptual sense; Whittaker reprising her role while Gill plays a different character with an identical dynamic with the Doctor does not. Yaz and the Doctor working as carers is no more mystifying than Martha being a maid or Clara a diner waitress or Rory a centurion. The sketch is styled as a trailer for a longer work; there's an unseen context in which what we glimpse here is more fully developed. Gowlbag ☎ 23:40, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

User:Epsilon the Eternal seems to believe otherwise, judging by the latest round of back-and-forth edits. Epsilon, do you have any argument for disagreeing with the conclusions of the above discussion? Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 16:54, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

To me, it boils down to context: this trailer is explicitly for an in-universe movie (which universe, not sure), but an in-universe movie none-the-less. This isn't a "framing narrative", it is inseparable from the fiction movie it depicted; for example, at the end, Michael Sheen broke "character" as COVID-19, and expressed confusion on how one would even portray COVID-19.

Now, this brings us to the Doctor and... "Yaz".

As we know that this is a fictional movie (as you agreed on Scrooge, as shown below), and especially as within the mini-episode, the characters were literally identified as "Jodie Whittaker" and "Mandip Gill" playing characters that are metafictional jokes on their Doctor Who roles.

Now, the in-universe actors are probably playing fictional depictions of the Who characters, but these characters are not the same as the actual characters. They are identified as actors within the context of the story, so we should create pages for them.

Epsilon📯 📂

17:06, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Additionally, to justify this character as Yaz, and not some doctor, means that you have to speculate that Yaz is undercover, or something: but speculation is strongly disallowed.

The narrative solely presents a female doctor, played by Mandip Gill playing herself, who is a bit ditzy and believes the the clapping for carers is for Bake Off.

This is nothing like Yaz, except for some nebulous "Doctor + companion" dynamic, which could apply to lots of characters who aren't the Doctor and one of their companions... for example, think of Iris Wildthyme and Panda - they have a "Doctor + companion" dynamic but they are not the Doctor and a companion.

Epsilon📯 📂

17:13, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Look, first off, under current policy, on no account whatsoever are pages for Jodie Whittaker (2020: The Movie) and such to be created. Yes, fictional counterparts of Whittaker, Gill and Lucas are posited by the framing narrative of 2020: The Movie, but they never appear, and even if they did, we commonly do not give real-world people playing parodies of themselves in invalid stories pages of their own. (See for example Christel Dee's many appearances in The Fan Show as varyingly parodical versions of herself.)

This is one of those times when we have to take a step back and appreciate that we are looking at a spoof produced in a cultural context, not as a mysterious cipher. It is transparently obvious to anyone watching 2020: The Movie as a Comic Relief Special (rather than "some kind of weird meta Doctor Who narrative") that its framing device is set in a variation of the real world, and that its centerpiece is an in-universe movie that could exist in our world; Doctor Who is a work of fiction in the framing-device parody of the real world, and characters from Doctor Who show up as one element of the posited in-universe movie extravaganza.

As I said on a talk page, this is similar to It's a Sin and its Regression of the Daleks (though obviously with much more focus on the in-universe piece of fiction).

To cover the Doctor of 2020: The Movie as being The Doctor (fictional character) would be a crucial error, acting as though the framing device — the world where 2020: The Movie is a real movie — is intended to be an invalid version of the DWU, rather than an invalid version of the real world. The world in which 2020: The Movie exists as a movie is a parody of the real world. Within that world, there is a parody version of our real-world Doctor Who, which crossovers with the in-universe movie, so the Doctor Who elements which pop up within the clips we see of that fictional movie "correspond" to the "top-level" fictional Thirteenth Doctor of our world, not to the "meta in-universe Doctor" of the likes of The Zygon Isolation.

This much, I believe to be more or less inarguable.

I have always been less certain about Gill's character. Obviously any audience members who get the joke of the sequence are supposed to recognise that Gill normally plays Yaz, but perhaps the implied alterations to the 2020: The Movie parody-real-world universe's Doctor Who involved casting Gill as this new doctor character, rather than rewriting Yaz to be a cop. I think that's kind of splitting hairs, but that argument can be made. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 17:21, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

EDIT: Oh, a perfect precedent would be the Tonight's the Night special. On one level it posits a slightly-parodical version of the real world, with David Tennant and John Barrowman playing slightly childish versions of themselves. But we don't make dabbed pages for those guys, and we certainly don't consider the parts where this fictionalised Barrowman is acting out parts of an otherwise-unseen Jack Harkness adventures to be about a Jack Harkness (fictional character). It's just invalid material about Jack Harkness. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 17:25, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Okay, I see what you mean with this being a variation on our world (and for the record, I never really said anything to the contrary on this), and therefore the Doctor within the story being a variation of the Thirteenth Doctor as oppposed to the fictional Doctor in-universe, like how Doctor Whoah! can be set in parodical versions of our world, whilst featuring the parody actors ostensibly playing the same characters as seen on BBC1's Doctor Who. Now, I think that we shouldn't treat Mandip Gill's character as Yaz however, as I think that that would be stretching it somewhat. It reminds me of the time in Holby City when John Barrowman's character saluted Jo Martin's character, a doctor, alluding to their roles in Doctor Who without actually being those roles; I feel the same is true here for Yaz.

One final thing however, @Scrooge, is that you are actually wrong about Tonight's the Night, as we've had pages for these fictional depcitions of the actors for a long time. David Tennant (Tonight's the Night) has existed since 2016, and John Barrowman (Tonight's the Night) since 2019. I do believe that the depictions of the actors playing themselves do merit pages, as do all parodical depictions of actors palying themselves. We do it for valid stories, and we are infamous for our schtick about giving evertyhing a page, so these characters logically should get pages. Christel Dee (The Fan Show) or along these lines should exist.

Otherwise, we should just remerge pages like Brian Blessed (Interference) into Brian Blessed, etc. They're pretty much exactly like their real world counterparts, so shouldn't they be treated equally to invalid parody depictions?

Epsilon📯 📂

14:16, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Questions on how to cover the skit

This whole skit is kind of a contextual nightmare. It's treated like a trailer for a (non-existant) movie. So what do we do here? Do we treat it as if 2020: The Movie is an actual "in-universe" movie?

How do we treat character pages? For one example, would it be;

A woman, feeling the strain of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, once screamed that she "[could not] take it anymore!" (NOTVALID: 2020: The Movie)

...or;

In a trailer for a movie called 2020: The Movie, Keira Knightly played a woman who [could not] take it anymore. (NOTVALID: 2020: The Movie)

WaltK ☎ 17:18, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

The latter. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 17:23, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Validity & fictionality

So if this is an in-universe trailer, then should the characters (or versions of characters) be in the category 'Fictional characters'? ('Woman (2020: The Movie)' currently refers to the skit as 'NOTVALID: 2020: The Movie' and calls her a 'Non-DWU individual') Cookieboy 2005 ☎ 09:38, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

Additionally, shouldn't the in-universe actors have separate pages to their real world equivalents? I was partway through writing an article about KSI when I thought, "shouldn't this be at 'KSI (2020: The Movie)'?". Regardless, the following is what I had created for the KSI page:

KSI portrayed Bill Gates, the business rival of the Inventor of Zoom, in 2020: The Movie. His character was distraught that Skype was losing money due to Zoom. (TV: 2020: The Movie)

Cookieboy 2005 ☎ 09:46, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

If 2020: The Movie were valid, yeah, they'd go in Category:Fictional characters. However, that category is part of the valid category tree, and so can't be added to {{invalid}} page. There is no suggestion that the universe in which 2020: The Movie is purportedly a real in-universe movie is the DWU, so it's not valid, so we can't put them in those categories. And it was decided a long time ago not to create too many subcategories to the Non-DWU material category tree, so we probably can't create a Category:Non-DWU fictional characters category (which is what we'd want). Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 10:54, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

What was the rationale for the decision not to add 'too many' subcategories? Cookieboy 2005 ☎ 15:25, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

A general feeling of wanting to discourage people spending too much time editing the non-DWU side of things when valid stories are to be the Wiki's priority, I believe. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 15:26, 24 April 2022 (UTC)