Talk:The Doctor: His Lives and Times

Non-fiction?

I haven't read the book, bear in mind, but the summary and table of contents as presented on this page really do make it sound like it's a fiction. It may be a non-valid fiction that breaks the 4th wall or something (again, I haven't read it), but whether it's plausible fiction to exist within the DWU is a different question than whether it is fiction at alL. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 22:31, July 11, 2018 (UTC)

Please refrain from commenting on material you haven't read. Note also that you should never edit story and non-fiction stories unless you saw/read/listened to them and have them fresh in your mind. Amorkuz ☎ 22:50, July 11, 2018 (UTC)

Considering the second point, I haven't done any such thing. As to the first — where would you suggest I ask this question, then, if it shouldn't be here? --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 22:53, July 11, 2018 (UTC)

I think you misunderstand my intention. When I warn you not to break any policies, I do not imply that you have. I warn you not to do that in the future. You are a new user, understandably unfamiliar with the large volume of our policies. I would prefer to prevent any of them from being broken than to clean up after they have been. Note also that it is impossible for an admin to know what is in an editor's head. Some write that they do not like the policy and wait for the answer, which seems to be your strategy. Others protest against a policy and start implementing their vision. Yet others start editing without even explaining why they change things. It is impossible to know in advance, which type a particular user is.

As for the question, there was no question asked. You were opining on the material you admitted not to know. Please don't do that on talk pages. I once again suggest that you will find a more receptive audience at Discussions. Talk pages are to discuss editing, which should be rooted in the knowledge of source material, knowledge you do not yet possess. Amorkuz ☎ 23:15, July 11, 2018 (UTC)

Short story titles

Regarding the existing story pages for this book, they need to be renamed to match the titles given in the book's table of contents and that appear at the top of each page of the stories:

• Still Need a Title! -> The Fourth Doctor
• When It Was Fun -> The Fifth Doctor
• The Dark Scrolls of the Valeyard -> The Sixth Doctor
• The Runes of Fenric -> The Seventh Doctor
• Judge, Jury and Executioner -> The Tenth Doctor
• Stop, Thief! -> The Eleventh Doctor
• The Tale of the Pandorica -> merge with above

The current titles are headings used within the stories, but not given as the story titles themselves. There's clean up that still needs done, and the speedy rename templates do need to be placed on these articles. I'm badly in need of sleep so I can't sit down and do all that at this moment, but am leaving this talk page message so that the as-of-yet half completed job doesn't confuse anyone. Toqgers ☎ 10:42, May 30, 2020 (UTC)

I'm not at all sure about this. For TV stories, we follow on-screen titles over "episode guides" or Radio Times, so shouldn't the title printed on the actual page overrule the Table of Contents? With the various ones you'd have renamed The Xth Doctor, in particular, it seems to me the ToC is just saying "on this page you'll find our story showcasing the Xth Doctor", not that this is the title of the story. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 10:44, May 30, 2020 (UTC)

The titles in the table of contents are also at the top first page for each story, in large text, and are repeated at the top of each page therein. These are the on page titles given for the stories. The current titles are just sub-headings describing certain portions within the story, and not every Doctor's story has such a sub-heading on the first page anyways. Toqgers ☎ 10:15, May 31, 2020 (UTC)

Man, I still don't know. Isn't that a lot like how in comics, you'll usually have a big capitalised logo with the name of the main character, and then the title in a smaller font, and sometimes no title? "WOODY WOODPECKER in "Good Neighbours"". --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 10:43, May 31, 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Toqgers. The existing pages need renaming. Each of the chapters contains far more fictional content than the titles of the existing articles currently allow. As an example, the chapter on the Tenth Doctor conatains not only Judge, Jury and Executioner, but also a series of short letters and newspaper articles, a number of which have no clear titles. For simplicity, they should be merged and renamed as Toqgers suggests above. 66 Seconds ☎ 23:00, June 22, 2020 (UTC)

But are those letters & newspapers the same story? If they have no other unifying factor than being about the Tenth Doctor, then I'm sorry but it'd just be inaccurate to merge them into one short story pages. Untitled 1 (The Doctor: His Lives and Times short story) and so on may be ungainly, but if that's what it takes, then so be it. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 23:07, June 22, 2020 (UTC)

As suggested, I've so far been working through these individually. However, I still have reason to believe that all documents in the book are part of the same story. The very first page - Know Your Enemy (short story) - which we currently have listed as a short story isn't a short story at all, but an introduction to the book. In it, Kovarian states "This is the whole story. Well, almost. Dr Song did most of the actual digging, of course, poor dear". She goes on to say "If we are ever to win this war, it is vital that you are all fully acquainted with the real facts of His lives". I believe that this should be treated exactly the same as The Secret Lives of Monsters (reference book), where we have a separate page for The Secret Lives of Monsters (short story). With The Secret Lives of Monsters, all fictional content was supposedly compiled by an in-universe alter-ego of Justin Richards, while fictional content in this book has supposedly been compiled by Kovarian and River Song to be used as a guide for troops prior to the Battle of Demons Run. I think we should merge all current pages into a single page entitled The Doctor: His Lives and Times (short story). 66 Seconds ☎ 17:23, July 7, 2020 (UTC)

Interesting perspective — but let's not necessarily get carried away. Collections of stories sometimes do have a supposed unifying background as in-universe documents. For instance, Afterword suggests all the previous stories in Decalog 3: Consequences are part of an in-universe anthology which Arthur Candy helped compile when he became stranded in the 20th century. But clearly Consequences isn't the way to go. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 17:28, July 7, 2020 (UTC)

Edit conflict

I don't see how that works if they're separate stories (we don't even treat The Trial of a Time Lord as one serial). The "X Doctor" headings are just chapter/section titles. What did we do about The Time Lord Letters?
× SOTO (☎/✍/↯) 17:33, July 7, 2020 (UTC)

Yeah. I now agree that "X Doctor" headings aren't the way to go - they don't make any narrative sense. I've currently been doing it in a similar style to The Time Lord Letters, following the style of reference you (User:SOTO) did on the page for Atif Basra. So far I've been updating pages on the London Underground, Agatha Christie and Kizlet. I don't have that book, but I understand the letters in that have actual titles. What's so hard about this one is none of the documents are named, so I'm struggling to come up with meaningful titles. There's also at least three extracts from the Doctor's diary across various chapters, two extracts from A Journal of Impossible Things, two UNIT Internal Memorandums and a whole series of letters from Victoria Waterfield to her father. Just wondering what the consensus is on these; should we be treating them as one item, and - if not - how best can we name them so as to reference without causing confusion? 66 Seconds ☎ 18:03, July 7, 2020 (UTC)

Further to my point above, I've started noting various items in the book but have reached the issue of whether or not these items can be classed as valid under Tardis:Valid sources. If taken as part of an overall story as suggested in my comment above, these could be viewed as supplementary material. However, if viewed alone, many fail at rule 1: they are not stories in their own right, but rather letters, advertisements, posters and maps. Are we to say it is all invalid, say that some is valid and some isn't? Or should we merge the supplementary information with the main feature on the page, such as inluding the Doctor's letter to Kublai Khan and the map of the Travels of Marco Polo on the page for Susan's Diary (short story); though that then creates the issue of what to do with miscellaneous documents on pages where there isn't a main feature, such as pages 228 & 229. 66 Seconds ☎ 15:34, July 8, 2020 (UTC)

In-universe texts like diaries and letters are a common form of short story, and there is a precedent for directly-related features like maps, printed alongside, to be considered illustrations of the story, and valid in their own right as part of that story. The Doctor's letter to Kublai Khan can easly be a short story in its own right, and valid; the map can only be valid if we take it to be an illustration to either that story or Susan's Diary.--Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 15:38, July 8, 2020 (UTC)

Everything in this book is so interconnected and overlaid, it would make no sense to artificially generate short stories or features for all of them. It would be completely intractable. There are so many items which would be impossible to designate as a story or feature in a way which makes sense to the reader. The alternative, of treating these like we do The Time Lord Letters (novel) seems a more sensible option, with a The Doctor: His Lives and Times (short story) page collating all the in-universe information. It's a lot of separate pieces of information for one page, though, a problem which TTLL also faces. Splitting off each section into a subpage would be nice, similar to how we treat Lost in Time with Lost in Time (video game)/Events, Lost in Time (video game)/Fragmented Cosmos (episode), etc. So maybe something like The Doctor: His Lives and Times (short story)/The First Doctor. Danochy ☎ 13:23, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't love that option. I think a detailed summary with sections and subsections is fine. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 13:30, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

That's fair, I'm honestly not too bothered with exactly how we cover this. Just that we get it into a state where everything can be sensibly covered. it's spent too long in limbo. Danochy ☎ 13:37, 29 June 2024 (UTC)