User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-1451563-20180913002703/@comment-5918438-20181004041155

From Tardis Wiki, the free Doctor Who reference

Examples of an overview perspective within a narrative would be more:

Osgood reads out a file about the Doctor. It says something like, "Many of their incarnations seem reluctant to comply, but they will ultimately cooperate with UNIT forces, toward a common goal."

And maybe in prose, or exposition-heavy dialogue, one story finally will discuss the Doctor more generally, in the third person, from an overview perspective. But so far, even Titan hasn't given us that (within a narrative).

We already take cues from credits which name characters, by the way. Broken gives Ianto's mum the name Glenda in the credits, but that's not established within the story itself. And our naming scheme for Romana's different incarnations is not followed in any narrative, nor even in credits.

To quote:

The designation "Romana II" is not precisely derived from DWU narratives. Rather, it comes from various reference literature like Companions of Doctor Who and Doctor Who Magazine itself.

Even if we never see in a story what the Titan blurb gave us, there is clear precedent for following their real world usage anyway.

(And again, it's what the English language would have us do, and I still maintain that grammar takes precedence over exact word choice in stories, unless we're giving a quote.)