User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-86.174.105.135-20161211174119/@comment-1432718-20161212033228
OK, first of all, the template really has nothing to do with this discussion, at least until we come to a conclusion.
Also, we are not going to argue for/against each article. Instead, I think we need to address the four (by my count, correct me if I missed any) different types of The Doctor (story title) articles.
- Not valid Doctors
- Doctors from alternate timelines
- Doctors who are confirmed to be specific separate incarnations - The Doctor (Good Companions), for example
- Doctors whose incarnation we can't figure out from the story
We are really only concerned with #4. I agree with the OP that we don't need to create a new article every time we don't know the specific incarnation; instead this info can go on the article The Doctor. This is mostly an issue with short stories, as almost every other media is either visual or audio so that we can tell which incarnation it is; and in the case of novels we usually know which incarnation. Having read many of the short stories where we don't know the incarnation, I can say that in most cases you could speculate a current incarnation; since we don't allow speculation, it's best to put the info on "The Doctor" page instead of creating new pages.
I think that creating new pages for these incarnations gives new users (who may not be familiar with the extended universe of DW) the impression that there are many more incarnations of the Doctor than there really are.
