Talk:Death

Section "Death and the Doctor"

This section has some interesting trivia, but seems a bit too "out of universe". How do we define "participation" in an adventure? What about characters who are just mentioned but never appear on-screen but are essential to the "backstory" of the plot? For example, since Professor Lazarus' experiments were funded by "Harold Saxon", does that mean the "Saxon" Master "participated" in The Lazarus Experiment? Certainly, he seems more essential to the actual events of that story by quite a margin than, say, Plenty O'Toole is to what happens in Jubilee. Of course, neither of those stories kill off all their characters anyway, so wouldn't fit in that section, but I'm just using examples of how whether a character "participated in an adventure" isn't a simple thing to determine if we're talking from an in-universe perspective. This looks more like just code for "everyone who featured in the story", phrased in a vaguely in-universe way without actually being in-universe. I mean, Ahmed is listed as a "participant" in the events of Pyramids of Mars, despite being in a separate continent from the main action. Although that particular one is inaccurate anyway since Sutekh survived (albeit was intended to die and his survival is an EU-based retcon, but, again, pages are supposed to be written from an in-universe PoV so that fact should be irrelevant to us), and Ahmed DOES die (the page already notes he dies "according to one account", but "according to one account" is for actually CONFLICTING accounts, and nothing in the TV serial actively CONFLICTS with his death in the novelisation).

As for the next paragraph, how many is "a few"? Do we go by the flat number of survivors, or as a proportion of the entire supporting cast? Either way, what's the "cap"?

I could maybe see putting this information in the behind the scenes section, or maybe even its own "real world point of view" page (as well as deciding that everyone does mean everyone, since there's no non-controversial definition of "a few" - albeit obviously still with allowances with characters who are expected to have some degree of "plot armour" anyway, such as the regular cast, significant recurring associates, and arch-enemies such as Davros and the Master, or, on the other side of importance, people like minor background extras with no lines who are seen walking by for a second), but, honestly, even there, given the sheer volume of Whoniverse stories out there, which T:NPOV would require us to list indiscriminately, I think there might be too many to reasonably keep track of.

As I say, I do find it very interesting, but I just don't believe it belongs on the wiki. Maybe it would fit on some fansite dedicated to this sort of stuff.

However, according to the page history, this was actually added by an admin, and I don't want to remove a genuinely quite interesting bit of trivia added by a wiki admin without any sort of discussion about it. So, I am inviting such.

I am still personally arguing for removing it though, but am genuinely fully open to any arguments to the contrary. All I ask is that you take a look at my reasons for my scepticism of whether this truly "belongs" on a wiki like TDC. NightmareofEden ☎ 18:00, 20 February 2022 (UTC)