Talk:2150s Dalek invasion of Earth

Rename

The Daleks invade not just Earth but blockade the solar system. Earth is named in the introduction, but I don't think it would make the article more accurate by adding it into the title. --Tangerineduel / talk 13:02, January 12, 2012 (UTC)

Proposal to rename and divide the two invasions

To avoid confusion with the Dalek Invasion from Lucie Miller, I propose this be renamed "22nd century Dalek invasion (The Dalek Invasion of Earth)" and another page being created, titled "22nd century Dalek invasion (Lucie Miller)". Toy Story Fan 17:29, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

Rather than adding dab terms, how about 2150s Dalek invasion of Earth and 2180s Dalek invasion of Earth? The structure better mirrors other pages like Dalek invasion of Mars (which should really be 2150s Dalek invasion of Mars, natch), and "2150s Dalek invasion" has a pleasing parallelism with Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.. – n8 (☎) 17:55, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, that works. Toy Story Fan 12:04, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

We might as well use this oppurtunity to standarise the format of all the Dalek invasion pages. I plan to create a page for the 2060s Dalek invasion in the near future which will necessitate a rename to 21st century Dalek invasion whatever is decided here. Do we want to use decades in the titles of 23rd century Dalek invasion and 25th century Dalek invasion as well? Borisashton ☎ 23:26, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

While we're doing this, could we make including "of [Place]" in the titles a general rule? Literally everybody knows the 2150s Dalek invasion as, well, "the Dalek Invasion of Earth".

And on a factual level, the Daleks' invasion of, say, Alvega, also took place in the 2060s, so we're probably going to have to do 2060s Dalek invasion of Earth, or maybe "of the Solar System", rather than just "[060s Dalek invasion". So if we're trying to be consistent, it would both be logical, and in accordance with reader expectations, to do the same to the 2150s one and more besides. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 23:42, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

I agree standardising Dalek invasion page names would be a good idea. I was wondering if we should better work out the term "First Dalek War" while we're at it. We could rename this page to that instead, though, as raised above, everyone knows this better as the "Dalek invasion". Personally, I think it makes more sense to give First Dalek War its own page to denote a wider conflict; the Earth and Mars invasions could be listed as "Part of: First Dalek War".

That then raises the further issue of "First Dalek War" also being used in the Planet novelisation to refer to the period of the Thal-Dalek War at the time of the Thal-Dalek battle. Is it worth creating two different FDW pages? TheCoud'veBeenKing ☎ 11:52, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Aye, in my view, the existence of another conflict called the First Dalek War is enough to make the name unsuitable for this page (although a dabbed redirect a First Dalek War (The Dalek Invasion of Earth) should probably be created).

An unrelated problem does occur to me, while we're talking T:NPOV, however: both Genesis of the Daleks and Doctor Who and the Crusaders date the invasion to the 21st century instead of the 22nd. The Genesis instance is just something the Fourth Doctor says, so we could plausibly argue he simply misspoke, but no such luck with the Crusaders instance, which is given by the omniscient third-person narrator.

Susan had gone, left behind in an England all but destroyed in the twenty-first century when the Daleks had attempted the conquest of Earth, an invasion only just foiled by the Doctor.'Doctor Who and the Crusaders

I'm unsure how to deal with this. First Dalek invasion of Earth would be conjectural, and potentially confusing because while it takes place later in the Daleks timeline, the Stolen Earth Dalek invasion does take place earlier from Earth's perspective. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 13:16, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

This but may be a discussion for elsewhere but T:NPOV seems a bit problematic to me in cases like this. Not in the sense that TV stories should be "more valid" than the expanded universe. Rather, doesn't it make sense, when relevant, for any story dealing directly with events (or characters, concepts, etc.) to be given more weight for detailing that element than stories which mention the same thing only, and erroneously, in passing? To give another example, Heart of Stone briefly and inaccurately dates The Vampires of Venice to the 15th century, similarly to Crusaders above; is that then just as valid as the concretely established 1580 setting given in Vampires itself? Do we have to edit every related article which states 1580 to point out HoS said it might have been the 1400s instead? A similar dating controversy to the Dalek invasion here has been raised briefly on the Tenth Planet Cyberman invasion page too because some novelisations give a different date, while most other stories, including The Tenth Planet itself, explicitly give 1986.

With all that said, I have to admit none of that fully fixes this type of issue. There's novelisations making changes to their own parent story, never mind others, for one thing (having mentioned Tenth Planet, it's guilty of that). Secondly, unlike Vampires, TDIoE doesn't explicitly date itself beyond the 2164 calendar; 2157 seems to have come from The Daleks' Master Plan, with later stories rolling with it. Thirdly, you still have the likes of Masters of Earth, which is about the invasion, still giving contradictory dates of the 2152 bombardment and the 2154-2164 occupation, rather than 2157-2167. Yet it demonstrates all the more, I'd say, that if T:NPOV is to be followed to its logical extreme, it'd make things harder to follow. We'll have to settle on something in the end, and so while the conflicting dates should be mentioned in the article, the most-used dates should probably take credence for coherence's sake - to my knowledge, that's '57-'67. That's my take anyway. Worth mentioning too that even real-world history is fraught with inconsistencies like this that we can't work out; trying the same thing with continuity in a long-running series about time travel is futile.

On that note, though, I can offer this from The Dalek Handbook, which is certainly worth including in the BTS section. It briefly speculates the path of Dalek history after the Doctor creates a new timeline in Genesis of the Daleks:

Perhaps the Doctor was correct - he'd set the Daleks back a thousand years, and Earth was not invaded until 3157, for example. Or, possibly, their history was played out more or less the same.'The Dalek Handbook

We know a new timeline was created in-universe via A Device of Death. It was also meant to crop up again in Return of the Cybermen, revealing the Genesis fallout caused all kinds of chaos to the timestream, used to explain all manner of continuity issues, though the ending scene was cut. Still, these ideas create scope in there to explain why the dates may keep changing. That, and the other passages in the Handbook which state the Daleks were becoming careless with time travel and their own history before the Genesis intervention. As the Tenth Doctor once said, "Dalek history was confusing enough before the Time War." (On a sidenote, the Handbook also attributes the Fourth Doctor's "year 2000" invasion reference in Genesis to "his erratic memory", hence why the sensors don't detect a lie.)

As regards the First Dalek War, I believe we should have separate articles bearing the same title - it's not unreasonable that two separate cultures like the Thals and humanity, without contact with each other, would both consider their wars the "First". First Dalek War (The Daleks), or (Thal-Dalek War), should deal with the early era of the Thal-Dalek War (should it be "Thal-Dalek Wars"?) before the Daleks first left Skaro. First Dalek War (The Dalek Invasion of Earth), or (Dalek Wars) should, rather than redirect to this article, be its own article on the about the Daleks' invasion of the solar system, which was comprised of the 2150s Dalek invasion of Earth (the primary theatre), 2150s Dalek invasion of Mars and other Earth colony attacks. Similar to World War II, where the Western Front, Eastern Front and Pacific War are all among the sub-wars in that conflict. TheCoud'veBeenKing ☎ 17:57, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

I truly think we shouldn't compromise on T:NPOV within pages. The possibility that the Dalek invasion happened in the 21st century should be reported earnestly on this page, not treated as a "mistake".

However, page names are another matter. The fact that Susan is at Susan Foreman (despite the existence of the Susan English version of what her Coal Hill School alias was) is a good precedent for us going with a technically "controversial" page name when a vast majority of sources go with that one, and only a tiny number use the competing one. I didn't mean to imply that T:NPOV made it impossible to have "2150s" in the title of this page; it's merely another axis to consider.

With First Dalek War — the thing is that we do have "the Thal-Dalek War" already as a name for the Thals' "First Dalek War". It's going to be a tough sell to rename that page to a dabbed form when we have a perfectly good non-dabbed one. Dabs should after all be circumvented where possible. Yet it's weird to have a dabbed name for the Solar System's First Dalek War but no other visible page actually bearing that name.

I'm not sure about the usefulness of separating out the other Solar System invasions in the 2150s. Those were all one War; certainly from the Daleks' perspective, and, given that a lot (though not all) of the other planets they invaded were Earth colonies rather than independent, probably from humans' as well. 2150s Dalek invasion of the solar system or something like that is very appealing to me for this reason. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 18:24, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

My concern over T:NPOV came mainly from the Cyberman invasion page I mentioned, where there was a point of debate raised about whether it can be called the "1986" invasion because of the other dates. Of course, that discussion hasn't been added to since December, but the naming issue is the same as this one, and going that far seemed extreme to me. But if that way of thinking isn't going to be a problem here then by all means proceed - I've no issue with the "one account suggests" approach in the body of an article. I still have a few questions about the Thal-Dalek War but they'd be better directed at that page. I'm thinking the way I am about "First Dalek War" in this case because a page already exists for the Mars invasion, which is part of the same conflict but not the same as the Earth invasion itself. Given than "First Dalek War" exists as a term for the period, it would make sense to use it somewhere. Though I suppose it would have to be different enough from this page to justify it, and I'd have to find the time to read GodEngine and look up other relevant stories for myself before I can determine if that's the case, so I'll hold off on that one for now.

I guess I'll end off on the original point of this discussion: I agree that "[GIVEN DATE] Dalek invasion of [PLACE]" is a sensible standardisation for article titles like this, and should be applied, when relevant, to non-Dalek conflicts too. TheCoud'veBeenKing ☎ 19:26, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

If we keep the Thal First Dalek War at Thal-Dalek War, then I see no reason why First Dalek War would need to be dabbed at all, as long as there's a "you may being looking for the Thal-Dalek War" up the top.

While I'm here, I also agree with the standardisation of Dalek invasions and also think we'd benefit from Dalek War and separate Dalek Invasions pages existing, plus the splitting off of the 2150s and 2180s invasions. Danochy ☎ 10:16, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

A separate page about the 2180s invasion has been created by User:MrThermomanPreacher, so this seems as good a time as any to round back to this discussion. It seems to have died down… golly, a little longer ago yet than I thought, but the consensus was clearly in favour of the renames and standardisation. The potential counterargument of the novelisation/Genesis dating was acknowledged but the precedent of "Susan Foreman" being preferred to "Susan English" for the page-name takes care of that. The alternative dating should be mentioned in the lead, but needn't prevent us from using the more commonly-used date in the title if it's clearly the consensus option otherwise.

Hence:

• 22nd century Dalek invasion will be moved to 2150s Dalek invasion of Earth, with the old title as well as First Dalek War (The Dalek Invasion of Earth) and 2150s Dalek invasion of the solar system being retained as redirects.
• Second 22nd century Dalek invasion will be moved to 2180s Dalek invasion of Earth, with the old title retained as a redirect.
• The current page First Dalek War will be deleted, in favour of the aforementioned Dalek Invasion-dabbed redirect for the 2150s one, and a new First Dalek War (The Daleks) redirect for Thal-Dalek War.

As much as possible, this format (using a specific year rather than a decade for wars that remained within the bounds of a single year) should also be followed on other pages about Dalek invasions and analogous, including in the form of redirects. Naturally, specific names explicitly given in valid sources (such as Planetary Relocation Incident) do trump this format except in special cases like the ambiguity on "First Dalek War". Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 21:36, 16 September 2022 (UTC)