Talk:The Doctor's TARDIS - list of appearances

Stay

The article should stay because obviously there are lots of appearances from the Doctor in which the TARDIS actually doesn't appear, and furthermore this article has just as much rights to exist as the other lists do. Why is this different? --DCLM ☎ 16:25, March 8, 2020 (UTC)

To be honest I think this article is extremely unhelpful. The appearances of the Doctor and the TARDIS are so overlapping with each other it is much more useful to note stories where the Doctor appears without the TARDIS or the TARDIS appears without the Doctor. The article for The Doctor's TARDIS was already doing a great job of the former for television stories. If anything we should expand that section to include all media. --Borisashton ☎ 16:28, March 8, 2020 (UTC)

When we're thinking about Doctor Who stories, it is kind of redundant and obviously going to have a lot of overlapping with The Doctor - list of appearances. But there are cases of the TARDIS appearing disassociated with the Doctor - Donna Noble: Kidnapped! comes to mind, plus we know that River occasionally steals the TARDIS when the Doctor is not looking (as per The Husbands of River Song (TV story)) so there's bound to be a few stories there as well. Personally, I'm not sure this list's existence does any harm. OncomingStorm12th (talk) 17:14, March 8, 2020 (UTC)

I just think including all the stories where the Doctor also appears dilutes and obscures stories where the TARDIS appears on her own to the point where the article becomes almost useless, as I said above because it is expected for the Doctor to appear with the TARDIS. If we were to go the route of Time Lords - list of appearances and exclude stories where the Doctor appears I think that would be a much greater asset to readers. --Borisashton ☎ 17:30, March 8, 2020 (UTC)

I agree up to a certain point. I mean, obviously removing stories where the Doctor appears the TARDIS seems wise, and seems like the most viable option, but what if the following happens (and I suspect there's at least one case where this happens, very much likely in The Chiswick Cuckoos): the TARDIS appears throughout a story, and for the vast majority of it, the Doctor is nowhere to be seen. Then, at the last few minutes/pages, they turn up for a brief cameo. Would the story be added to the list?

What if the Doctor and the TARDIS both appear during the whole story, but it's someone else using it? (say, River stole it and shes using it, all the while the Doctor is stranded looking for it)

These "nitpick" details means, imo, that it should be either all appearances, or deleting the page. OncomingStorm12th (talk) 17:38, March 8, 2020 (UTC)

Certainly these are all details to consider. What I would do is delete this page (which is far from complete anyway) and make a subsection on The Doctor's TARDIS page which lists and covers all these rare scenarios fully and in more detail than a simple list ever could. The page already has a bullet point on this issue so I think expanding it to a fully-fledged subsection of the bts is the best option here. --Borisashton ☎ 17:47, March 8, 2020 (UTC)

I agree with the above. This can make for interesting BTS content—Doctor Who stories that don't feature the TARDIS, (non-Doctor Who) stories that feature the TARDIS without the Doctor—but there's a reason the TARDIS has been excluded from the appearance list range since its inception. It's ubiquitous, and an exhaustive list would very nearly just be a list of all Doctor Who stories, or all appearances by any incarnation of the Doctor (and quite the task, if at all possible, to put together and maintain). Better to note the exceptions. (It would also be hard to make a case for this page without also bringing back The Doctor's sonic screwdriver - list of appearances, which isn't nearly as wide in scope as this topic.)
× SOTO (☎/✍/↯) 18:00, March 8, 2020 (UTC)

So what will be the conclusion to this? Should we keep the list or let it go? And if we do delete this article, would it be ideal to keep the talk-page going for future reference? --DCLM ☎ 07:31, March 10, 2020 (UTC)

Based on the above comments, this article/list will be deleted. To answer User:Danniesen's question about the talk page, we don't usually (there are probably exceptions but you certainly can't find them!) delete talk pages just because a page has been deleted. That way, we can in the future read the arguments for why the article was deleted. Shambala108 ☎ 12:57, March 10, 2020 (UTC)