Talk:A.O. Osgood

Potential merge with Tom Osgood

This is a simple request, although maybe not a straightforward one; in UNIT Publications, a book is attributed to A.O. Osgood, who shares a name with Osgood (The Dæmons). Now it is, just from the evidence from this source, possible that these Osgoods are the same; two members of UNIT both being called Osgood? I mean, what are the chances?

Now I asked James Goss (the editor of the U.N.I.T. website) on Twitter if they are intended to be one and the same, to which he replied "probably!" I feel this is sufficient evidence, but I would like to hear the opinions of the other editors here.

The only issue is that later "expanded universe" stories named Osgood "Tom Osgood", but I feel there is ample precedent for characters with conflicting names. I mean, it may not even be impossible that this is not the case, as "A.O. Osgood" may be an alias or the initials of his middle names. I'm not suggesting we say as much on Osgood's page, but the name "A.O. Osgood" could be written in the lead along the lines of:

Tom Osgood was a UNIT technical officer who served under Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. According to a book advertised on the UNIT website, his name was A.O. Osgood.

And the behind the scenes section could elaborate more about the names.

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

16:16, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

I think I'd lightly support this. We may need to move the page back to Osgood (The Daemons) honestly. I'd be a little more convinced on the issue if any of us knew what AO was meant to mean.

My current theory is that the creator of the website decided Osgood would have the first name of his actor - Alec. Thus his name would be Alec Osgood and his nickname would be AO. OS25🤙☎️ 16:30, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm less convinced.

There's no indication as to what A.O. stands for.

Nor does the book's title Rubber-Soled Shoes and Silver-Tipped Bullets – A Life in Supplies that A.O. Osgood wrote tally with anything on Tom Osgood's page, there's nothing there that suggests he's on the supply side of UNIT where this information might become apparent. --Tangerineduel / talk 06:46, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree with Tangerine, I'm not convinced at all. There's no in-universe connection other than the (reasonably common) name; and out-of-universe we have an author who clearly doesn't remember choosing the name. Goss saying "probably" says nothing about authorial intent at the time of writing. Danochy ☎ 08:09, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

By our own standards we don't use authorial statements here. We use the text, and this isn't an example where there are only a few characters with the name of Osgood in UNIT. As stated at Frank Osgood, IU the Osgoods are an old UNIT family. Najawin ☎ 08:52, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, we do use authorial intent to guide us on how to interpret in-universe clues in the matter of merges. Had Goss definitively said "yes, the UNIT soldier called Osgood in my story is intended to be the previously-established UNIT soldier called Osgood, 100%, that was meant to be obvious", then the later addition of more UNIT Osgoods should not interfere with that, or else we may as well give Susan English and Susan Foreman different pages. And we wouldn't do that even if a modern story came along which asserted the Doctor had a number of different granddaughters called Susan, and showed us a clearly-distinct Susan Jones having her own adventre with the Daleks.

But then that argument is moot, because this is indeed not that. Goss's statement was not definitive; he himself is only guessing at the original idea. The situation is ambiguous enough that a separate page with a healthy BTS note is the most informative way to cover it. Certainly the whole "Alec" theory, while clever, is much too speculative to belong on the page, especially if we consider that it would be fairly strange to give his whole name as "A.O. Osgood" if "O." itself stood for "Osgood". Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 12:50, 28 January 2024 (UTC)