User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-121.45.54.78-20130925110520/@comment-33695797-20191201212808

Schreibenheimer: This only covers televised appearances. Of course some of it can apply for other media, but we probably should define guidelines for those too.

Focusing on TV stories, the line about "unless the story shows it is another character masquerading as that character" could be problematic, because sometimes it's another story that shows this. Maybe say "unless it is shown”? (There is probably a better example for the following but I can't think of one.) Suppose in The Impossible Astronaut the present Eleventh Doctor did not appear, but the future one, which only later was revealed to be the Teselecta, did. Would we still say the Doctor appeared in that episode? Probably not.

I think a good guideline in general is to depend on if only the character's appearance is taken on, or their personality too. While it isn’t a TV story, I’ll use The Forgotten as an example. Martha Jones and many other companions themselves never appear, but manifestations of them from the TARDIS' memory banks appear, seemingly having the original companion's memories and even their unique abilities. I would say these still count as the character.