Template talk:Regenerations of the Doctor

"Major"

How are we defining a "major regeneration"? Which regenerations are we choosing to exclude from this template? Jack "BtR" Saxon ☎ 18:40, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Oh snap, same topic different talk pages. Talk:Fifth Doctor's regeneration (The People Made of Smoke).

"Major" might not be the best word, but I think there's a clear sense in which some regenerations are much more well-trodden, mentioned continually, and only possible to cover with thick pages. Obviously the bias laws are around and such, but I think there's a clear different between the Tenth Doctor regenerating in The End of Time or Journey's End compared to The Lady of the Lake. Even "complete regenerations" is tricky, because I personally find little use in including every regeneration in The Curse of Fatal Death. I think there's some word I'm looking for, "notable" if we weren't wikipedia's evil twin, concerning the fact that some regenerations are just talked about in more stories.

Open to dialogue and improvement, but I think there's a clear intent and use of navboxes to not be about everything. CoT ? 18:50, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

As was hanging over Talk:Thirteenth Doctor's forced regeneration, this is a new avenue for the wiki. So, I at least can fall into meekness due to not having the precedent of what came before. Nowadays, anyone could feel confident making templates such as Template:Marvel Comics due to the wiki's history of policies, so it makes sense to take a less conservative approach if we have good reason. CoT ? 18:54, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

I agree that with how the template is organized, undone regenerations logically don't belong: the template should be clear that there are no more and no fewer than 12 instances in the first cycle. Nor should the Curse of Fatal Death regenerations be included. However, I can't think of a less ambiguous name for it. Throwing out a couple of alternate ideas for the worst-case situation that we can't make it work:

• Like on {{Doctors}}, maybe we could create a separate section at the bottom for undone regenerations and regenerations which weren't clearly placed within a cycle?
• If the above suggestion creates an overloaded template, we could continue indicating the regenerations with numbered digits (9th • 10th • 11th • 12th). It's true that the Ninth Doctor's regeneration wasn't initially intended as #10 of that regeneration cycle, but it's just as questionable whether the Third Doctor's was intended to be #3, or if #1 was a regeneration at all. So this would be at most an understandable imposition of later framing onto the events of earlier stories. Then in the "reversed and other regenerations" section we could clearly note Fifth Doctor's regeneration (The People Made of Smoke) as "5th (reversed)", for instance, or Ninth Doctor's regeneration (The Curse of Fatal Death) (good god) as "9th (Curse)".
• Alternately, we could split the template by separating it into {{The First Doctor's regeneration cycle}} and one or more others.

I don't think any of these ideas would be better than the template as it was initially created, so hopefully we can dispense with them and find a word that would let us suit the original intention without ambiguity. – n8 (☎) 01:57, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Pardon, but

Nowadays, anyone could feel confident making templates such as Template:Marvel Comics due to the wiki's history of policies, so it makes sense to take a less conservative approach if we have good reason.

Can we? There's a thread near the top of the docket on this question. We don't have any explicit policies about Navboxes, it's just sorta happened. To be fair, there didn't seem to be a ton of problems until the past few years, but I'm still doing my historical dive, and there were some. ("Enemies and aliens" of various seasons used to be nav templates iirc.)

I don't think the relevant comparison is just navboxes generally, or even navboxes as specific as the one cited. It's something like The Last Great Time War. The reason why we can coherently talk about "time wars" as something that we can put in a navbox is because there was extensive discussion over having pages for conflicts. It's natural that a rapid expansion in our event pages (even if we're taking it to be an implication of how our coverage already worked) would cause some headaches. But even that page has so much nuance that it's in a navbox, not a sidebar. Maybe this subject would be better served as one too? And expand it further? idk. (Though, not every event category should have a navbox, see Battle of Canary Wharf for instance. So that's another option if you want to do that.) Najawin ☎ 02:39, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

This all makes sense. I agree Najawin that the issue comes down, in some sense, to this being a sidebar. Probably the name of the template should be changed, with {Regenerations of the Doctor} being better served for a fuller navbox. I do find though that, especially since navboxes aren't visible on mobile, there's use in this current sidebar. I'm unconvinced about splitting it into regeneration cycles though, and perhaps the regeneration cycles would be better removed from this sidebar and kept for the navbox. I think the sidebar could just directly be "televised regenerations of the Doctor", which gives a clear aim and use. Anyone reading the articles on this would find that helpful, because there's a direct creative history and sequence there which affects all other depictions of regeneration. CoT ? 23:55, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Merging partial regenerations into the respective full regeneration page

The pages Fifth Doctor's regeneration (The People Made of Smoke) is a regeneration of the Fifth Doctor, if not the definitive one. Same with Tenth Doctor's siphoned regeneration. It is my opinion that these two pages should be merged into their respective Doctor's "main regen" page - Fifth Doctor's regeneration and Tenth Doctor's regeneration, respectively - as a new header, called something like "Earlier attempts", although "attempts" is probally a bad word here, and I'd appreciate it if someone else could think of a better one. There is a bit of precedent here, as Infected timeline (Interference) is covered at Third Doctor's regeneration and not, Third Doctor's regeneration (Inteference) or anything. Although I'll admit thats slightly different, as the regen itself - if not the events around it - is the same. I'm gonna go ahead and add merge templates on the two attempted regen pages, and link here. Cousin Ettolrahc ☎ 16:07, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

I strongly agree, especially with the pending validation of things like Doctor Who and the Rebel's Gamble. It's much better to have every "incarnation's" regenerations in one place. Far too incarnations, such as the Third Doctor, also have obscure, reverted, or alternate incarnations. There's no point in having Third Doctor's regeneration (Planet of the Spiders), Third Doctor's regeneration (Doctor Who and the Daleks in Seven Keys to Doomsdsay), Third Doctor's regeneration (The Touch of the Nurazh), Third Doctor's regeneration (Interference - Book Two), etc... OS25🤙☎️ 23:37, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

I disagree. See the existing discussion at Talk:Fifth Doctor's regeneration (The People Made of Smoke): partial or abortive regenerations like Fifth Doctor's regeneration (The People Made of Smoke) should certainly be discussed and linked to at (e.g.) Fifth Doctor's regeneration, but as independent events, it's my opinion that these pages should still exist independently. I would be okay with excluding the partial or abortive regenerations from the template, though; as OS25 notes, that would make things quite cluttered. – n8 (☎) 16:17, 8 November 2023 (UTC)