Tardis:Assuming species
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Character names → Serials → Characters with one name → Honourifics → Magazine issues → Astronomical objects → Years → Eras → Dates → Human → Parts of a series without clear individual titles → Humanoid → Speedy renames → Lists of appearances → Universe → Integers → In-universe counterparts of minors → Colour spectrum policy → Assuming species |
Doctor Who has a long history of human-presenting alien species. That is, alien species that look indistinguishable from humans — like Time Lords, Alzarians, or the Aliens from The War Games [+]Loading...["The War Games (TV story)"] — or can make themselves look indistinguishable from humans, whether through natural shapeshifting like Chameleons or Zygons or through technology like the Slitheen family. And don't get us started on androids!
Consequently, we cannot assume that a human-looking individual in outer space is human, even if their actual species is never mentioned. Remember, Inston-Vee Vinder lives in the present day — just on another planet. He's not a human or posthuman. Such characters' species should be listed only as "humanoid", as per Tardis:Humanoid.
However, any of these alien species even operate either independently or within enclaves on 21st century Earth. It is a great temptation to extrapolate this to treat each human-looking character as if their species is unclear. But this ignores the reality that, for writers, human is the default; if a human-seeming individual on present-day Earth is actively intended to be otherwise, this will be clarified in the text. For the sake of all our sanities, we don't need Danny Pink to turn directly to camera and state "I am a human being" to put it in his infobox.
Instead, a humanoid on the planet Earth is presumed human, a humanoid on the planet Gallifrey is assumed Time Lord, and so on and so forth. This may not be known with absolute certainty to be accurate, but it does get rid of a cacophony of awkward sentences like "the male humanoid of an unnamed species".
