Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Doctor Who

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Images

Another project someone with energy could take on is ensuring that all our images have the proper license and fair use rationale. This is important because the rules on fair use are being constantly restricted and applied more thoroughly, and images that aren't properly tagged are subject to deletion. We need to make sure that all the images in our articles are properly licensed (use {{promotional}} for actual publicity shots, use {{tv-screenshot}} for screenshots). We also need to ensure that the images have an appropriate fair use rationale, fully explicated on the image page and indicated thus in the article:

<!-- FAIR USE of IMAGENAME.jpg: see image description page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:IMAGENAME.jpg for rationale -->

(The last part isn't enforced very strongly, but it's probably still a good idea to include.) The rationale on the image page should be specific to each article that includes it: see Image:10thplanet.jpg for an example of a rationale dealing with several pages. That image page can be used as a model for screenshots, and Image:Daleknew.jpg is a decent model for images taken from publicity shots.

There are many editors on Wikipedia who would be happy to remove every fair use image from Wikipedia. Let's not help them, shall we? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 08:10, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Lengthy plot summaries

I noticed that a lot of Doctor Who episode articles have some pretty needlessly in-depth plot summaries, and I plan to condense a lot of these, but I have only seen the Eccleston and Tennant series. Anyone else interested in working on this? --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 04:30, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Needlessly is a POV, they are far from too long imo - (oh and I invoke Sir Not'a'Lot's law - you can't quote/etc to WP:NOT) thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 04:35, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't really understand your Wikipedia jargon, but just looking at The Empty Child, the plost synopsis is a beat-by-beat rundown of every single scene in the episode. That's excessive. --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 05:16, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

You think that's bad? Check out City of Death -- and mind that I shortened the first episode description by two-thirds. (compare the history, before and after!) --Aderack 03:42, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I take your point, Chris; referencing every scene and its outcome is not necessary to convey the plot. In particular, anything unnecessary to the plot but still of note should go in a trivia section (continuity, references, production, etc) and not in the summary. I don't have the time to focus on that, but I think you have the right idea. Best of luck. Radagast 16:05, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

We've been through this before, and the general feeling was that the lengthier summaries, within reason, are preferred. Check the archives. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 16:14, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Khaos, just a note that length summaries are appreciated by some people (especially me) - I find a good decent plot summary improves an article ten fold, so from me to you, thanks! thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 16:38, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps it's best to throw up a rough definition of what a "lengthy" summary means? Approximately how many words per episode, for instance? It seems reasonable to have an upper wall. City of Death, before I chopped a (very) little out of it, was 6314 words long. That's well over 1500 words per episode. Yikes. If the entire summary were 1500 words, it would seem on the long end of acceptable.

I'm thinking a ratio of something like ten words per minute. Therefore a 25-minute episode would be 250 words; a 45-minute episode would be 450. A four-episode-long serial would be 1000 words; a six-parter would be 1500. Does this seem reasonable? --Aderack 03:45, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

It certainly seems reasonable to me. We do not want to infringe on the owner's copyright, which is a real concern with situations like this. Summaries should be just that: summaries, and not abridgements of episodes. They shouldn't in any way be a substitute for watching the epsisode. I am very impressed with the organization and level of detail with these articles (other than the summaries, of course), but we should keep in mind that this is a general-use encyclopedia and not a Doctor Who Guide. --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 07:03, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

If may offer my opinion? Both City of Death and The Empty Child are largely dialogue-driven stories; it would make sense that the plots are larger than a more action-orientated one (eg. An Unearthly Child) or a story which no-one wants to go near (The Twin Dilemma - with good reason!!). Perhaps we could just leave them as they are - to trim a story so full of twists and turns as, say, The Doctor Dances could prove detrimental, rather than beneficial. - NP Chilla 08:42, 31 January 2007 (UTCr

It is possible to paraphrase. The purpose of these summaries should be to illustrate story content; not to bullet point every exchange of dialogue. If a person wants to know every detail, that's what the actual episodes are for. For reference purposes, generalities win over specifics unless there's a specific purpose to the specifics. Too much clutter gets in the way of communication.--Aderack 09:51, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

If I may quote the page on fair dealing, "Some higher education institutions in the UK interpret 'reasonable proportion' as... An extract from a book amounting to 5% of the whole or a complete chapter." An average 45-minute television script will be 45 pages, with a lot of whitespace so about 200 words per page, totalling about 9,000 words in the script. 5% of that would be 450 words, roughly. That's not a legal opinion, just an extrapolation of a guideline used by some British institutions on what would normally constitute fair dealing. For the sake of discussion, I won't question the notability of individual episodes, but I would think that any text beyond that 450-word guideline would be contextual information, not just descriptive, i.e. talking about characters, perhaps locations (either in-story or filming), story arc references or significance, other production details, etc. (I'm also hazy on the 45-minute-per-episode thing, it might be 50 or 60 minutes for some of these.)Avt tor 17:04, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Right; that fits the "ten words per minute" rule of thumb I was thinking about. Honestly, that seems like the most reasonable ratio to me -- roughly measured, of course. Any more input?--Aderack 09:59, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Citations needed for our featured articles

LuciferMorgan (talk · contribs), the editor who put Dalek on featured article review (a process which it still hasn't passed, by the way) recently informed me that he's likely to put Doctor Who, TARDIS and Doctor Who missing episodes on FAR soon. I'm not sure whether they'll all be put up at once, or if they'll be staggered, but it would behoove us to start working on improving the citations for these articles now. The issue is that the standards for featured articles have been raised since these articles were promoted — in particular, they want specific citations for almost every statement.

To get an idea of the amount of work needed, you can take a look at the edits which Dalek has undergone since it was put on FAR [1]. I encourage all project members to work together on this: the number of featured articles we've achieved is one of the things that makes us stand out from other television WikiProjects, and I'm sure we all want to retain that distinction. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 09:48, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I recommend we start with Doctor Who, given that it's our flagship article and should always represent the very best work we have to offer. I'm more than willing to help out where I can, and shall have a look at where I can start pitching in with some citations later on today. Angmering 16:43, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd personally recommend working on Dalek right now. It's over 2 months at Featured Article Review, twice the usual limit. If the article goes quiet for a few days, it may lose its star due to the prose objections by Tony1 (talk · contribs). Since the Project is kind enough to make valid attempts at improving its FAs, you're all free to ask me my critical opinion on the FAs and where I'd like to see citations - in saying this I mean without FAR, and in a more relaxed atmosphere. Once these problems are addressed, my advice would be to request Tony's critique, advice and help on the prose - if your articles ended up at FAR, he'll definitely spot prose issues. The worst example of a Wikiproject not addressing these problems is Beatles Wikiproject, which went from 11 FAs to 5 FAs in a short period of time - don't end up like them! Believe it or not, I'm not a bad guy, but just want FAs to be held to the current standards across the board.LuciferMorgan 02:49, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Right — after two months' hard work by both members of this Project and the folks at FAR, Dalek has been passed as a featured article. I've spoken with LuciferMorgan and a few of the other FAR editor/reviewers, and they said that they don't intend to nominate any of our featured articles for FAR at this point — but they can't stop anyone else from doing it. We can choose whether we want to focus on Doctor Who (as our "flagship article", as Angmering says above) or Doctor Who missing episodes, which it seems is our most undercited FA. Whichever we start on, I'd like this to be a concentrated group effort. Anyone want to help on this? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 22:16, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I'll help out. I've already set the ball rolling by adding a couple of citations this evening. To be frank though, I think the Doctor Who article needs a lot of re-writing throughout rather than just a simple matter of adding references... But I'm sure we're up to it! Angmering 23:37, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

This is true: the article could use some serious trimming. It's acquired a lot of cruft in one of the older meanings of the term: accumulated detritus that was useful at one point but no longer serves any real function.

One thing that might help is if we got around to creating an article for Companion (Doctor Who) (or Doctor Who companion, depending on what name we think is best). I started working on this a while back and began a draft here, but it sort of stalled out. Should we move that to article space and start working on it properly? If we did, we could then cut the section Doctor Who#Companions back and treat the article as a spin-out. (I know that's the least of the problems at Doctor Who, but every little bit helps, as the old woman said as she pissed in the sea.) —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 03:15, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I think separating Companions from the main article is a good idea (and the draft looks good). Other sections that could be pruned (and teated in a similar way) are Doctor Who#Awards and Doctor Who#Viewership, which offer more detail than necessary on an introductory page. I think Doctor Who should be structured to appeal to the casual reader, not the fan: there are a lot of people who just want a quick reference or a bit of background to the New Series. Gwinva 07:48, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Charming phrasology, Josiah... Anyway, yes, sub-sectioning a lot of the excess info out as we did back with History, Doctor and later Missing Episodes seems good. Is it worth building a completely new draft of the page from the ground-up on a sub-page of the project here and then transferring that across, or is that sort of thing frowned upon? Angmering 07:57, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

If doing an article on the companions of Doctor Who, it'd help to have critical reviews of the actress' performances in the role in newspapers and other publications, any awards they've recieved for the role etc. LuciferMorgan 10:48, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Remember that when citing from books, you need to cite specific page numbers. Footnote 4 in the flagship article doesn't do this, which can be raised as a concern. LuciferMorgan 23:09, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Better? (Yes, I realise the second Handbook citation goes across 73 pages, but it's a detailed chronology of various production memos and documentation of the time building up from the show's conception to launch, and there isn't really one page there that covers the info being conveyed in the sentence here). Angmering 18:49, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I've moved my draft to Companion (Doctor Who) — improvements, especially those incorporating LuciferMorgan's excellent suggestion above, are welcome and invited. (I've got a copy of David Howe's book Companions somewhere, which probably has some useful content — if anyone has a copy of John Nathan-Turner's book on the companions, that could be a good source as well.) The next thing is to move all those links from Category:Doctor Who companions to companion (Doctor Who) — I'll start on that tomorrow. (It's 2:30 am where I am, so I really should go to sleep.) —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 07:31, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Three days later, all the links are moved. Whew! —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 08:17, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Seasons articles

Someone has created Doctor Who: Season One through Doctor Who: Season Six, in the past there have been a few of these and they have been redirected to the list of serials, but I think it ought to be raised and discussed to see what people think. Tim! 10:32, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I really don't think these are necessary. Given that we already have individual articles for every serial/episode, we don't need a season by season breakdown with synopses, not to mention screenshots (which he's left a space for). Given that we've had this discussion before, I'm going to go ahead and turn these into redirects before he makes more. (I'll probably try and find the old discussion in the archive first, so I can point to it on his talk page. If somebody beats me to it, feel free!) --Brian Olsen 17:36, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, scratch that - I can't actually find anywhere where this has been discussed before. The closest I could find was at the talk page for the serials list, but it doesn't look like any consensus was ever reached. I hate to just redirect a bunch of pages somebody created without at least being able to point to somewhere that says that we think it's a bad idea... --Brian Olsen 17:54, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Ehh, really not necessary seeing since we've already have a list covering all the seasons (though, I'd rather it be details on the season {i.e. production} itself than the episodes therein). DrWho42 19:20, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree — there might be an argument for having articles on the production details of Doctor Who seasons, but there's no need for these lists. Between List of Doctor Who serials and the episode articles, they're redundant. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 19:55, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I've turned these into redirects to List of Doctor Who serials. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 17:48, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Templates

I believe I've standardized the various story templates (example) to the same look and format. They look a bit tidier now. There are a couple of issues, though. One, stories like The Five Doctors are becoming ridiculous; it seems to me there must be some other way of displaying the template information. Alternatively, perhaps articles that fall in the "minor references" category of a template shouldn't contain that template. Or maybe the "minor references" section is extraneous? I recall some debate about this a while back.

I'm also wondering about the brand new (Gallifrey) template — which felt like a good idea, as I often have trouble keeping track of which stories deal with Time Lord affairs. Also, these stories do trace a rough sort of a story arc, with the Eye of Harmony/Omega/Rassilon business, the Doctor's presidency, and the two trials. To make this template completely match the others, I can see a "minor references" section fitting in — though I'm not sure what a person might throw in there. What "minor Gallifrey references" might be worth listing? (Dialogue alone doesn't count, so no Runaway Bride or Time Warrior.)

Last thing: did I get all the templates? I don't know, as there doesn't appear to be a central resource for them. Are there any others besides Daleks, Cybermen, the Master, UNIT, and Gallifrey?--Aderack 11:25, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I think that for stories with more than two or three templates we should just link to the templates, sort of like

See Also

Gallifrey Stories

Master Stories

Cybermen Stories

Dalek Stories

Unit Stories

DonQuixote 19:19, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

That seems functional.--Aderack 04:54, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

I see that Percy Snoodle has now made these templates collapsible, which I think is a good move. I don't have much (read: "any") knowledge of template syntax, but I've seen some templates where the default seems to be to have the template collapsed. This might be good to apply in these cases. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 00:33, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

That seems to solve the problem. DonQuixote 15:43, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. I knew there had to be something more elegant in the wings.--Aderack 09:29, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Return of Daleks in the Chronology

Couldn't (Shouldn't) "Return of the Daleks" be put in the 7th Doctor's Chronology? It can hand in hand with "The Veiled Leopard", since he is companionless and they are Doctorless? Should it be placed in release order with the rest of the Ace/Hex adventures? The Core-Man 16:09, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

But the Doctor says that Ace and Hex are "all gone now". I think it's set later in his personal timeline. Of course, what you or I think is really irrelevant, because unless we can find a reliable source any placement is original research. Best to keep it as "placement unknown", I think. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 17:43, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Help

does anyone know where i can get a clip off the internet of the 2006 intro (the part where it shows the TARDIS in the vortex, "David Tennant" and then "Doctor Who") to put on powerpoint. it's for a project. plz reply on my user talk page. thx --I.W 22:00, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I really wouldn't put it past YouTube on having it. I'd say: once you find the clip/intro uploaded there, just ask the whoever uploaded it to send your way. DrWho42 06:34, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Novelisation Infobox

Since we've got the "In Print" section going for every serial novelised, I personally thought a novelisation infobox would be helpful for each of them (i.e. author(s), cover artist, novelisation that comes after, &c). DrWho42 18:31, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Sure — I certainly see the advantage for an infobox with author, publication date and cover artist. I'm not so sure whether "novelisation that comes after" is of much use — is anyone likely to read Target novelisations in publication order, or in the order of the number in the series? But that's a small point — a novelisations infobox in general is a good idea. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 22:11, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't rule out the possibility, but I can see convenience in linking to the novelisation published after (i.e. for collectors and so forth). They are already ordered in such the way along the List of Doctor Who novelisations. DrWho42 16:02, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Speaking of the "In print" sections, I've noticed that on many serial pages "In print" is above "Production". This doesn't make any sense to me — it seems logical to me to discuss the novelisation after discussing the production of the serial it was based on. I've been moving these as I come across them, and at some point soon will probably go through the serial articles systematically to make sure that the sections are in a logical order. Unless anyone objects, that is. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 08:19, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't and I shall do my part in helping out. DrWho42 15:32, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't object, but if you're going to do that, you should change the "Episodes" section on the main project page - that has a recommended order for sections, and "In print" is listed above "Production." --Brian Olsen 19:29, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Good point. I've changed it. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 06:37, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Is anyone going to create a template for novelisations? I'll apply them to all In print articles as soon as one's available. DrWho42 02:00, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Mm, as far as what the template should (prolly) cover:

• Book-title (obviously)
• Book-cover
• Author
• Publication date
• Cover artist
• Number of pages
• Preceded by/Following

Sounds good? DrWho42 16:11, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Award, revisited

Last month, Smomo put up some possible Doctor Who barnstars for WikiProject use (see here). Unfortunately, the police box image he used is BBC copyright, so it can't be used on talk pages, per WP:FU. We've had limited success getting an attractive free image of a police box, but it occurred to me that if any project members are artists, someone could create one with CG and provide it with a free license. If we had a nice, freely licensed CG police box, we could use it where we now use Image:Police Box.JPG, in project templates and the like; it could also be adapted into a WikiProject award.

Do we have any CG artists in the house who'd be interested in this? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 22:40, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

It might be of interest that I have been told over on commons that fan-made images of the likes of the Daleks and the TARDIS, even fan taken photographs of fan-made replicas, are not allowed there as they are "derivitave works". As our TARDIS pic is hosted on commons, but nobody's deleted it yet, I am a bit confused as to what's going on, really. Angmering 23:10, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Maybe a mascot would be acceptable? Like Wikipe-tan? Something along the lines of K-9, but an original character? キー-10 (Kii-Ten) maybe? Or Wik-E? --GracieLizzie 00:52, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Hmm... I'd rather have something that could be associated with Doctor Who at a glance. I suppose we could ask at WT:FU whether a CG police box would be OK here — I'd think that it would be, since Wikipedia:WikiProject Stargate seems to be OK using this image and this one. Certainly, Commons is a lot more strict about that sort of thing than en is.

However, if it turns out that a police box is no good, maybe we could use a drawing of a scarf or a sonic screwdriver? We'll see. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 03:25, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Why can't it be a vortex? I don't think anybody owns the copyright to that in our continuum... DrWho42 06:08, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

That would work too... although, again, it can't be a screenshot or anything. It would have to be something independently drawn. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 06:11, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I think the sonic screwdriver would probably cause the same problems as the police box, but I like the scarf idea... surely that won't contravene any copyrights. --GracieLizzie 15:53, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

How about this:

Geni 21:43, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

It's a bit rough-and-ready, but it would certainly do. I'm completely image-inept, so my hat is off to Geni — thanks! (My inner pedantic fanboy wants to point out all the differences between the Earl's Court police box and the ones used in Doctor Who — but of course, my inner pedantic fanboy is a huge loser, and nobody should listen to him.)

If other people like this, I'll propose it to the relevant authorities. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 06:57, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Hello, I'm back again. While I like Geni's image, I have at last found a licensed TARDIS image that can be used on Wikipedia and so I have remade the two Barnstars I made before. Also, I like the idea of a sonic screwdriver barnstar, so I have made one of those as well. Feel free to use however you wish, and see the image page for the relevant copyright information.

File:DoctorWho-Barnstar.pngFile:DoctorWho-Barnstar3.png

Smomo 20:09, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Who owns the copyright on the images you have added to the barnstars? I know I have seen those pictures before somewhere. --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 10:38, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

The copyright is owned by Rob Semenoff http://www.interocitor-media.com/tardis/. He allows use of his images for free as long as his name and a link to his website is stated as credit, and both of these have been put on the licensing information on the image pages, so we're OK to use them from that point of view. Smomo 16:58, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I'll have to check and see what the rules are for "Wikipedia-only" licenses for barnstars and the like. (The image licensing stuff is ridiculously complicated, and I know that there are some circumstances in which a license that says "you can use this on Wikipedia" isn't good enough. It seems ridiculous to me, but I suppose there are good reasons behind it...) —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 20:46, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

A Wikipedia-only license seems perfectly reasonable for a graphic for pages in the talk or user namespaces. I don't think there are any plans to market the User namespace on DVD-ROM... Avt tor 22:04, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

If it makes any difference, I asked some of the users on the IRC channel #wikipedia-en, and they seemed to think it would be OK. Hope it is... Smomo 21:36, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. Shall I propose all of these, or shall we make a choice here first? (I like this one, myself.) —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 22:32, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I think we should probably make a decision here first, to stop confusion later on. I prefer the second one most, or the sonic screwdriver one as a second. Smomo 22:37, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

It looks as if Wikipedia-only licenses may be completely eliminated, even for innocuous uses like this. See this thread on WP:AN. Perhaps we should wait until the Foundation's statement is released — unless you want to contact Rob Semenoff and ask if he'd be willing to license the image under the GFDL or another free license? On the other hand, even that might not be good enough for the way the wind is blowing: Kat Walsh's letter suggests that except for a very few, extremely limited cases of free use en: will soon be as restricted as Commons, and Commons doesn't allow any derivative images. So we probably couldn't have any police box images whatsoever.

I'm rather disheartened about the whole thing. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 18:08, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

While I get this isn't really a place to discuss this, surely the use of derivative images is really important for lots of uses on Wikipedia? I'm not really sure about the license either; he didn't explicitly say it could be used on Wikipedia, just anywhere where his name and link are present. Does this present a different situation, or is that what you mean by 'Wikipedia-only'?? Smomo 18:55, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

The "derivative images" thing is a huge mess, and if it's interpreted as strictly as they do at Commons we're going to lose practically all our images. :/ But that's still to be determined. For now, I've asked about the image license thing at Wikipedia talk:Copyrights/Can I use.... Frankly, I get confused by it all. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 21:29, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Have we got any further with this? Smomo 11:43, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

The answer I got at Wikipedia talk:Copyrights/Can I use...#Free use required that... wasn't encouraging. Smomo, perhaps you could discuss the situation there, and say exactly what permissions Rob Semenoff gave. Someone on that page may be able to explain the situation better than I can. You may need to ask Rob if he can license the image with a free license — one of the Creative Commons licenses (which include creator credit) might do. But as I said, I get confused by it all. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 21:13, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

OK, this is the situation as I understand it. The licesense isn't for only Wikipedia, its for anyone to use as long as they provide that basic information. So, as the way I see it, it would be acceptable for the use of this image in a WP Barnstar. In my opinion, it would be OK to submit the star for approval. Does anyone have a different view on the matter? Smomo 12:51, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry to keep spinning our wheels on this. The question — which I still don't know the answer to — is whether it's kosher by Wikipedia's arcane image use rules to use an image that's credited as "Please include credits and links if used for distribution" for a Wikipedia barnstar. I would think that it would be OK, but I don't know for certain. I guess the thing to do is lay our cards on the table at Wikipedia:Barnstar and award proposals and see what the folks there say. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 15:02, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

IMPORTANT UPDATE TO THIS PROPOSAL After an e-mail from myself, Rob has agreed to de-copyright this image and release it under a free license. He also provided me with two other TARDIS renders, also free of license. This solves our copyright problems here, and with using his TARDIS images in the future! I have updated the image page accordingly. This also means that the three TARDIS images Rob has released could be used elsewhere, in place of the TARDIS image we have for templates currently, for example. Smomo 22:21, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Excellent! Assuming that these really are free of license (see my concerns at User talk:Smomo), I move that we replace the image in the project banner {{doctorwhoproject}} and {{doctorwhostub}} forthwith. :D —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 02:15, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Just to clear things up, I sent Rob another email to confirm he was releasing this image to the public domain. He sent me this in reply:

“

I, Rob Semenoff, have irrevocably released all rights to this image, allowing it to be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, used, modified, built upon, or otherwise exploited in any way by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, with or without attribution to myself, as if in the public domain. However, as a courtesy, a link back to my site and my name would be appreciated.

”

I hope that clears things up :) Smomo 21:48, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Episode titles should be in quotation marks, not italics

Just a note, because this appears to be pretty widespread: Television show episode titles need to be in quotation marks, rather than italics. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (titles) for more information. --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 17:12, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Has this discussion not been had before? I'm sure it has. Ah yes, it has! Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Doctor_Who/Archive_10#Question_re:_style_guide - Also MOS states as well "Clear, informative, and unbiased writing is always more important than presentation and formatting. Wikipedia does not require writers to follow all or any of these rules, but their efforts will be more appreciated when they do so: the joy of wiki editing is that Wikipedia does not demand perfection." thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 17:23, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand your point. Are you saying that we should not attempt to follow the manual of style? I have said nothing of the quality of writing, just that the titles look sloppy because they aren't formatted properly. This is not just how Wikipedia does things; this is general proper usage for title. --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 18:20, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

They are formatted correctly. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 18:42, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Matthew, please go easy on Chris - it's a bit much to expect that someone should have to dig through an extensive series of archives just to find out why these articles deviate from the Style Guide. (I can relate, as I had the same question some months back.) --Ckatz^chat_spy 20:29, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

*scratches head* Go easy on him :\? thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 20:36, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

The consensus seems to have been in the past Chris that as for the majority of the first three years of the programme we have both episode and story titles, it's more convenient to have the old-style individual episode titles in quotations and story titles in italics. This has carried on into the new series for reasons of consistency within the Doctor Who articles themselves. Angmering 19:10, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Seems odd that basic punctuation rules should be subject to a project-specific consensus. If there's really a debate on this topic it would belong on WP:MOS. Or to put that another way, continuing past mistakes is not a way to get GA approval. Avt tor 21:11, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean by GA approval? Good article? Looking at the previous discussion on the subject, I think it is up for debate. --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 21:18, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't think anyone's suggesting it can't be brought up for debate. With the original series, episode titles are in quotation marks; it's serial titles that are italicized. The question of whether episodes of the new series, which doesn't have serials, should be in quotes or italics does come up from time to time. The project consensus thus far has been to remain consistent with the original series, but I don't think there's any harm in opening it up to wider discussion, if someone thinks it's warranted. --Brian Olsen 21:44, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I've thought for a while that we went the wrong way as a project on this one. Just to be clear, in case anyone's confused: the original Doctor Who series (1963–1989) was made up of multi-episode serials. For the first several years of the programme, each episode had an individual name: so, you would speak of "World's End", episode one of The Dalek Invasion of Earth. Beginning with The Savages, the individual episodes were no longer given names, but were identified as "The Savages, Episode 1" and so forth.

The new series (2005–) abandoned the serial format altogether; although there are some two-part stories, each episode has its own name. The previous decision had been that it would be disconcerting to refer to Spearhead from Space and "Rose" in close proximity, and that it would be better to italicize throughout. This decision was later extended to Torchwood (see here).

However, I'm not sure that the decision was correct. If consistency is a concern, perhaps we would be better off to lose the episode/serial distinction, and put all Doctor Who television stories in quotation marks. Alternatively, we could keep the episode/serial distinction for the classic series, but put the new series and Torchwood in quotation marks, in keeping with the manual of style. Either way, I think that we should try to bring our articles in line with the general manual of style — it would be rather hypocritical of me to say otherwise, given the long-running dispute in which I maintained throughout that when WikiProject guidelines contradict Wikipedia-wide ones, the Wikipedia-wide guideline should take precedence unless the reasoning for the WikiProject exception can be explained to the satisfaction of outsiders. I don't know if the reasoning for this exception is strong enough, frankly — so we should probably bite the bullet and change at least the 21st-century episode titles to quotation marks. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 22:56, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree, as regards the new series (especially as it now also effects Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures). I'm torn on the classic, though - I'd hate to lose any differention between episodes and serials, but there doesn't seem to be a style guideline for how to indicate a collective name for a group of episodes. Should we toss this to the talk page for MoS (titles) and get some outside opinions? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Brian Olsen (talk • contribs) 00:20, 6 February 2007 (UTC).

I also concur, if for no other reason than that the modern single episodes are of a different format from the original serials — a point which is clearly stated on the list of serials. If anything, using different punctuation (and fonting) helps to draw the distinction and thereby justify the earlier usage of italics. The TV movie and other feature-length stories should remain italicized, for what I assume are obvious reasons. --Aderack 09:45, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, this is where things get confusing. The Five Doctors was originally broadcast as a feature-length episode, so would probably want to be in italics under a strict application of the MOS, whereas "The Two Doctors" would want to be in quotation marks. And then you get The Curse of Fenric, which was originally presented in a not very well edited 4-part version, and whose definitive edition is a re-edited and longer one-part story presented on DVD. How does that work?

What I'd suggest is, rather than discussing the procedural issue of what should take precedence, there should be an actual substantive discussion as to whether this sort of Doctor Who story naming weirdness is enough of a problem to justify making an exception: and if it is, actually codify that exception in the MOS, in a generalised way so that it would apply to other TV shows in the same situation. Morwen - Talk 14:23, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

This isn't a Wikipedia-specific issue. Please ensure that any proposed changes to the English language are approved by appropriate authorities so that they can be distributed to all educational institutions where English is taught.

Standard usage in English says that standalone works (like books or films) and short works (articles, episodes, short stories, etc.) which are part of a collection (note that "magazine", "anthology", and "series" are all words meaning "collection") are shown simply in quotes.

There are various ways of organizing works where there is an intermediate level, such as "Volume", "Book", or "Season". This intermediate level is not standardized so a local standard could be defined. Though in most of the examples I've seen it is shown just as plain text in capitals, without italics or quotes. Avt tor 16:45, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Avt tor, part of what we're talking about is one of those "intermediate levels" — a multi-episode serial that is itself part of a larger work. I agree that putting modern-day Doctor Who episodes in italics is a problematic usage which we should probably alter. But we also need to figure out what to do about the first 26 years' worth of Doctor Who stories. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 22:39, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

What? There is no standard English usage! The Oxford style certainly prefers that usage, although it allows for non-italicised, plain Roman (ie no quotation marks) for 'an ongoing series of books, journals and related sequences'. Thus: Doctor Who Rose or Doctor Who Series Title "Episode title". Associated Press style, however, uses plain Roman for names of periodicals, and quotation marks for book, film, TV show titles (ie "Doctor Who" not Doctor Who). There are plenty of 'standard usage' guides, all suggesting different ways of doing it, most for use in printed media, and all have changed over the years (it certainly changed in the move from handwritten to word-processing styles). Most publications and newspapers have an in-house style, adapted for their own situation. Wikipedia could well design its own (especially when we consider we are using a completely different media/encyclopediac form). Gwinva 18:23, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

How do you figure on The Two Doctors? It's still a serial -- one of three rather long episodes! And I don't understand the conflict with Fenric, either. That is, unless you're suggesting that serials should be quoted rather than italicized.--Aderack 17:16, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I've been thinking about this since my comments two above (out of time sequence as a direct response to Avt tor). The simple fact is (in my opinion) italics simply look better on the page. Now this is not as silly a reason as it sounds, if you will bear with me. Different organisations and media have established their own styles over time not to make a point but because it a practical solution for what they are doing. 3 examples: Newspapers tend to prefer straight Roman (or, at a pinch, quotation marks) as their wire transmission of information, or their typeface facilities, simply do not stretch to complicated punctuation. Manuscripts (ie handwritten) struggle with italics, so use underlining. Typescripts (for books and plays) also differ from 'standard' (they usually use Courier New font, also). Turning to another area, capitalisation has altered. 150 years ago, or so, almost every noun was capitalised. Now, with a lot of computer programmes not case-sensitive, and with the increase of email and texting, capitalisation is decreasing. A similar result -for different reasons- has arisen in academic history works. 'Correct' styling of personal titles requires capitalisation (the Queen of England; the Duke of Westminster), and this works because titled people are relatively few in number (ie not referred to every sentence). This is not the case in history writing, for most of the big players of the past were titled. It then became accepted practice, in academic circles, to say 'the queen of England' and 'the duke of Westminster' to save cluttering up the page with capitals (which makes it hard to read). This brings me back to my first point: "episode title" might be a good style for most situations, but when articles exist to discuss episodes, and which refer to them every few sentences, this becomes distracting, clumsy and hard to read. Episode title, on the other hand, works. Further complicating matters, quotation marks are used in 'standard usage' for more than episodes and magazine articles, but also to highlight text for a particular purpose, to show its not a real word, isn't what it appears to be, is a concept, or is a nickname or reference. Usually you can tell from the context of a work why it is used, but that is not so simple on these pages. Compare: "Bad Wolf" (running theme) Bad Wolf (episode); "Rose" (when its really Cassandra (New Earth)) and Rose (episode); "the Lonely God" (Face of Boe legend) The Lonely God (episode) or even the references in the text to the "Battle of Canary Wharf" (never an episode) and the wonderful "tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator" (which I guess no one can mistake for an episode). We simply don't need a proliferation of quotation marks all over the articles.Gwinva 20:38, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

If you're running a Doctor Who fanzine you can do what you want. But if you want this to be part of Wikipedia, people are going to expect WP:MOS, which is where discussions about style should go. The reason for using a commonly-accepted style is so that people know what the heck you're talking about. If you use a non-standard style, it's going to be hard to move articles past B-class. Note that we're not just talking about text, but also the footnote citation templates, which you are not going to control. Avt tor 21:19, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

No one's trying to "control" anything — we're just pointing out that there was some reasoning behind the current style used in Doctor Who articles. I'm open to discussing this in a larger forum, and if that larger forum shows a consensus that we should change, I'll go along with the consensus there. See you at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (titles). —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 22:39, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I understand the problem, which is why I phrased it the way I did. I don't have an opinion about the intermediate group-of-episodes entity that some are calling "serials"; I have a feeling you could get away with a provisional project-specific style for these. (Provisional, as I suspect that a consensus style will emerge eventually.) I'm making a prediction about what will happen if you ignore consensus, but other than that I'm not expressing an opinion. Specifically I certainly don't intend to change styles of existing articles, and the point about consensus on reference styles will be more strongly made if other people argue it. Avt tor 00:04, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

We're calling them serials because that's the word for them. We didn't make the term up — it's what the reliable sources use. And incidentally, the current style wasn't a problem for Dalek when it was on Featured Article Review. (There were lots of other issues, but the fact that the article refers to Doomsday (Doctor Who) instead of "Doomsday (Doctor Who)" wasn't one of them.) —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 03:40, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Just voicing my opinion here Gwinva but I've always believed italics to be fugly and so try to avoid them if-I-can thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 21:21, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

The issue is that we shouldn't just go with our own aesthetic judgments, but follow the usage of reliable sources. The problem we're facing is that generalist sources are more likely to use quotation marks for episodes and even serials, while specialist sources (such as Doctor Who Magazine, and practically all the works we'll be using as sources for our articles) use italics for both. I think that as we're part of Wikipedia as a whole rather than a "walled garden", we should yield to the generalist usage for episodes — but serials are still a grey area. We'll talk it over. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 22:39, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

10th doctor spin of companions.

in Battles in time issues 8 (The Ood: Slaves of the Beast!) to issue 11 (Clockword Robots: Automatic Assassins!) the 10th Doctor had a companion (Jayne Kadett). Can i put that on the 10th doctor's page so it looks like this.

The Doctor

The Tenth Doctor
Doctor Who character
actual size
First regular appearance	The Parting of the Ways
Last regular appearance	Ongoing
Portrayed by	David Tennant
Preceded by	Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston)
Succeeded by	Unknown
Information
Tenure	2005 – ?
No of series	1
Appearances	12 stories (15 episodes)
Companions	on television Rose, Mickey, Donna. in spin-offs: Jayne Kadett
Chronology	Series 2 (2006)

Also can i make a page/section on Kadett. what does anyone else think. plz notify me on my userpage when u reply on here. thx. And in Doctor Who Adventures issues 20 and 21 the Doctor befreinds Kara McGravy, and in issue 22 and 23 (possibly 24 if the story goes over 3 issues ect , which is not ussally the case) he befreinds Daisy White. Are these concidered spin-off companions or are they people the Doctor just meets in a place he's visiting. McGravy hasn't travelled in the Tardis (not in the comic anyway) and neither had White, not yet anyway. wat do u think?--I.W 19:52, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Hm. I'd say it depends on whether the comics that Kadett appears in constitute one story, or several stories. (I haven't read Battles in Time.) If it's one story, I'd say that she doesn't quite qualify, but if it's more than one story you could add her to Tenth Doctor as you suggest, and also add her to List of companion characters in Doctor Who spin-offs. I'd hold off on Daisy until the DWA story ends, to see if she travels with the Doctor or not, but if she does she could be added too. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 03:33, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Kadett appears (as i said above) issue 8 to 11--I.W 08:58, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but is that four different stories, or one story in four parts? Or two two-part stories? That's what I'm asking. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 20:43, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

it's sort of 1 stroy in 4 parts, but it's not a case of cliffhanger, e.g at the end of issue 8, they are in the destroyed Cyber-base, but in issue 9 they are in a sort of airport took over by the cybermen. And she does travell in the TARDIS. --I.W 20:05, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a companion to me, then. If Olla the Heat Vampire can be listed on Seventh Doctor, I don't see any reason why Jayne Kadett can't be listed for the Tenth. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 20:50, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

If any project members have access to the relevant issues of Doctor Who Adventures, please do add Jayne Kadett to List of Doctor Who spin-off companions and the infobox in Tenth Doctor. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 15:41, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I believe it would be best formatted "Jayne Kadett (books)", primarily as it could possibly be removed by somebody who only watches the television series. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 15:44, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

The character is from the comics, not the books, and I presume that if it's listed as "in spin-offs" with a link to the entry at List of companions from Doctor Who spin-offs (or whatever it's called today) that would be sufficient explanation. See box to right.—Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 16:10, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

The Great Debate: a possible solution

Style guides exist to promote the delivery of clear English, not to lay down rules for the sake of the rules; punctuation, fonts and other textual conventions have developed so that a writer can make his meaning clear. The formats currently used by the Doctor Who Wikiproject are clear and internally consistent, aiding in an understanding of the whole Doctor Who genre. This is not a reason alone to retain the status quo, but it is when combined with the fact that reversion to the general Wikipedia usage would lead to unclear and imprecise writing. Quotation marks are also used for quotes, song titles, themes ("Bad Wolf"), temporarary names or designations (eg "Rose" who is really Cassandra (New Earth and "the Lonely God"), in-universe events ("Battle of Canary Wharf") and neologisms ("Tribophysics"), all of which occur frequently within the Doctor Who pages and are often linked (ie appear in blue text like the episode titles). For a quick example of a quotation-mark reversion see User:Gwinva/sandbox. Coupled with that is the unusual Doctor Who format that involves serials as well as episodes.

However, rather than proposing at Wikipedia style forums that Doctor Who should be an exception to the rules, it would perhaps be more sensible to propose that Doctor Who is re-categorised. Let me explain. As the 'brand' originated in Britain, the Doctor Who pages on Wikipedia follow the British usage for style. The most accepted British style guide is The Oxford Guide to Style. It, of course, promotes italics for series and quotation marks for individual episodes, but also states (in section 6.3):

"Use roman without quotation marks for an ongoing series of books, journals, and related sequences of publications, if each volume within the series has an individual title."

You therefore get: Encyclopedia Britannica Dal-Lek, Virgin New Adventures Lungbarrow. The format is not without precedent in television as you get things like (my mind's gone blank so imaginary example) The Warring World documentary When the Earth Blew Up.

Doctor Who is more than a television series, it is a genre, an institution, a brand, a 'regular slot on television'. Argue in the approriate Wikipedia forums that Doctor Who should be re-classified as 'a related sequence of publications, films and television stories', then each episode, serial, film, novel, comic (and possibly even short story) requires italicised titles. Individual episodes within serials (like chapter points) use "episode" or, more correctly in Oxford style 'episode'. This format leaves Doctor Who used for the TVM only, as Doctor Who would be used everywhere else. It's easy enough to say 'the televison series first showed...' when explicitly referring only to that.

But all this is only relevant if Doctor Who WikiProject members like the current format. Gwinva 10:31, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Hey — I like the current format, I'm just not sure it's defensible in the larger context of Wikipedia. Your proposal is very interesting, Gwinva, and it would certainly work within the context of Doctor Who, but I don't know whether it can be sustained in a larger context. I can see the argument you're making, and indeed there are a lot of contexts in which when we say "Doctor Who" we're referring to more than the television series. But there are also contexts in which we are talking specifically about the television series. Would we try to distinguish between the two usages? Would we say, for example, "The base under siege is a standard Doctor Who story" (speaking of Doctor Who as a brand, or style of storytelling), but "Doctor Who performed better in the Saturday evening BBC1 slot than Robin Hood did" (speaking of Doctor Who as a television programme)? Would we say "Doctor Who is the longest-running science fiction television series in the world" but "Doctor Who has spawned spin-offs in multiple media"? It's an intriguing idea, but I don't know whether we'd be able to sell it to Wikipedia-at-large. Hm. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 21:41, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

We certainly wouldn't want to solve one problem by creating another, so we'd have to consider carefully how we use the title Doctor Who. The whole proposal is based on the fact Doctor Who is a blanket term for a whole host of individual stories. As soon as you need to say Doctor Who (the series) the argument falls apart: further sub-sets of italics should be in quotation marks. Therefore you would have to use qualifiers; ie. just as you say: The Doctor Who novel Lungbarrow you'll need to say the Doctor Who episode Rose, and refer to the televison series thus: "The Doctor Who televison series is the longest running science-fiction televison series..." Whoops, clumsy example, have to think about that. "The televison series performed better than Robin Hood...". "Series One was a great success" (not Series One as that pushes episodes into sub-sets). Basically with Doctor Who (plain roman) as an umbrella term, then each complete, titled, story should be in italics. This includes even the modern two-parters, for they are titled individually (like separate novels in a trilogy or omnibus). The beauty of this formatting is that it does not go against the accepted Wikipedia style conventions as long as Doctor Who can be considered (as I said above) 'a related series of publications, films and television stories'. I would think most would go along with that, other than the purists who will only consider the television series worthy of the title. What do others think?Gwinva 12:42, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

It's an interesting and subtle argument. I worry that it might be too subtle for general use — and, of course, there are plenty of pages where there's no way to avoid talking about "just the television programme" (e.g. List of television programmes broadcast by the BBC). I had a similar discussion about Star Trek vs. Star Trek at Talk:Canon (fiction) way back in October 2005, and I think it ended up with a similar but perhaps slightly different conclusion: to say "Star Trek" when speaking of the franchise, but Star Trek when speaking of the television series: so, "the Star Trek universe" or "the pluralistic ideals of Star Trek", but "the Star Trek episode "Day of the Dove". However, I'm not sure how widely applied that conclusion was. It's worth discussing at WP:MOS-T. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 21:40, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I have to say, I think it gives me a headache... Angmering 23:34, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I realise that not everyone would argue all day over the niceties of punctuation and formatting but, strangely enough, I could. Do tell me to stop if you are thoroughly bored. As far as I see it, the Doctor Who WikiProject have three options. 1. Change formatting in line with Wikipedia style and give episodes quotations. To be consistent, the serials should be also, with episode titles used as subtitles (eg. "Serial:Episode"). 2. Use the current format and plead at WP:MOS that Doctor Who is an exception to established style. 3. adapt my proposal above. It would be easy to implement (when approved) and easily explained. A template could be placed on each talk page saying something along the lines of:

In the context of Wikipedia, Doctor Who is a related series of publications, films and television stories. It should be rendered in plain roman. The titles of novels, films and televison stories (episodes) should by displayed in italics.

Josiah rightly points out that Doctor Who is mentioned on many other pages. These would need to conform. Can use 'Doctor Who televison series' if it is not obvious from context. This is all just my suggestion. I wouldn't presume to discuss it at WP:MOS-T until there was some consensus amongst Doctor Who project members. Gwinva 12:55, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Doctor Who Box

The doctorwhobox on the right hand side of story pages contains various facts, but I wonder if the IMDB external link. Would this be better placed under External Links instead or, given that the link provides little or no additional information, should it be removed altogether? --The Missing Hour 00:10, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I think that the IMDb link is pretty common for television and film articles: it's in {{Infobox Television}} and a lot of other templates in Category:Television infobox templates. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 06:41, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

The Master

File:MasterIncarnations.png

The major incarnations of the Master. Left to right: Roger Delgado, Peter Pratt, Anthony Ainley, Eric Roberts.

With the apparent first-hand confirmation of Simm's casting (see the Master (Doctor Who) or List of Doctor Who serials pages), the Master page might demand a bit of a revamp. This might be jumping the gun slightly, as the BBC has yet to give the go, though I figure we might as well start thinking about it.

The Doctor (Doctor Who) page might be a good place to start: put a picture of Simm at the top; give a procedural rundown of the previous major incarnations of the Master. Since we've never actually had the nature of the Master's various incarnations clarified for us, it probably would be difficult to create individual pages for each. It would make some sense, therefore, to differentiate them within his overall page. Ainley's portrayal was different from Delgado's, for instance. (In the Traken commentary, he mentions that JNT promised to give him some of Delgado's performances to study; he never followed up, leaving Ainley to recreate the character from scratch. It was only years later that he had the opportunity to watch the videos and study how Delgado had played the part. Roberts' Master was... a departure. Simm's will probably be completely different again.

I guess there are a couple of reasons for my posting this. One, I'm looking for input on when would be a good time to go ahead and edit the page; two, I'm looking for further ideas on how best to revise it.--Aderack 03:44, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

A collage like this would be great, too! --Aderack 05:12, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

This is a fantastic idea! But can we be sure that Peter Pratt and Geof Beevers played the same incarnation? If we can (and I'm quite sure we can), there is no fault with fashioning a picture such as this whatsoever. - NP Chilla 17:25, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I like the idea of a collage like this, but I think we should hold off on including Simm until it's officially confirmed by the BBC. I assume it's true (based on the Independent article), but I think putting an image of Simm on Master (Doctor Who) is jumping the gun a bit — especially since it will be an image of the actor, rather than the character (we probably won't have any images of him as the Master for some time).

Of course, all this is assuming that fair use images like these will even be permitted on Wikipedia in future, something which I'm not at all sure of. I'm pretty disheartened by the way the wind is blowing in that department... —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 19:59, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

You're right - that seems to be the wisest course of action. - NP Chilla 20:18, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it looks like the BBC is going to try to keep the lid on this as long as possible. Judging by how weirdly evasive Simm was on the radio, it seems pretty much certain — and yet it also seems like the BBC isn't going to be coaxed into spilling the beans until it's good and ready. And, well, good for them. Good point on the actor, though I recall that images of David Tennant were used as placeholders before the broadcast of Parting of the Ways; I figured this was a similar circumstance.--Aderack 21:25, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

That's slightly different, because the BBC confirmed that Tennant would be playing the Doctor pretty soon after the news leaked. This time they're staying schtum. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 21:37, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

As for the Pratt/Beevers Master: there's nothing specific in the episodes to confirm that they're the same incarnation, though it seems self-evident that this was the intent. If we take a step out-of-universe, there's discussion on the Traken DVD about the costuming. Originally Beevers was to have worn the same face mask as Pratt; he complained, saying he could give a better performance if the audience could see his own eyes. So the intent is clear from at least a production standpoint. The question is, then, whether we take an in-universe or an out-of-universe perspective on the matter. To put it another way, although we can't be positive that they are the same incarnation, within the fiction, we can be sure they were meant to be.--Aderack 21:38, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Indeed.--Aderack 21:38, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Given that, whatever the production team's intentions, different actors played the character in The Deadly Assassin and The Keeper of Traken, I think it's slightly misleading to use both names in the image caption. We should probably either include images of both actors in the role, or caption only the ones we choose to feature. (To put it another way: the makers of the TV Movie may have intended Gordon Tipple to be playing the same version of the Master that Anthony Ainley played, but we shouldn't caption a picture of Ainley as "Anthony Ainley/Gordon Tipple".) —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 22:03, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Noted--Aderack 22:28, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I'd agree that Pratt and Beevers are meant to be playing the same incarnation. Smomo 12:53, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I actually find this an interesting problem -- and maybe one worth discussing in a more general sense. How do we interpret a fictional work like Doctor Who? In a vacuum based on its fictional content, or in the context of its production? Once created, does the work stand on its own for analysis or in the case of conflict does authorial intent supersede the face value of the fiction? Furthermore, assuming there is no correct answer to this discussion, what is the most appropriate standpoint to take for the purpose of Wikipedia? Generally, I'm inclined to say the more detached the perspective, the more useful as a research tool -- which is in theory what we're creating here

What about this Master thing, though? Is the production intent enough to conclude that the two actors are playing the same role? If that's all we're looking at, I'd say yes. Clearly so, even. The problem rises when we start looking to the fiction as an authoritative source; though the implication is clear, at no point does it absolutely confirm the issue. What I'm wondering is if fiction may be cited as a reputable source of information about its own fictional content. From a lay perspective, this is an obvious stance to take. The problem in doing so within an encyclopedic context is that art is by nature interpretive. Any conclusions derived from that interpretation (including apparent inconclusiveness) therefore veers close to POV -- which in theory we're trying to get away from. This, I suppose, is the origin of the "out of universe" argument that keeps popping up.

Preliminarily, I'd say production intent -- where available -- is the most encyclopedic source on a fictional work. Popular, published interpretations would come next. The work itself should come as a final consideration, and then only in a descriptive rather than a conclusive capacity.

So what does this mean about the Master? Though on the surface to do so seems close to making original conclusions on an inconclusive issue, it looks like it would be most encyclopedic to go with the production intent and define the Pratt/Beevers Master as one entity. If there is any popular, published controversy on the issue, then it can be cited. I don't know that it's appropriate to even point out the lack of explicit confirmation within the fiction, unless one of the higher sources brings up the issue. It's not really our place to put the problem on the table; merely to present it if it's already been raised.

My question is, then, are there any significant works that investigate the issue?--Aderack 14:10, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

CFD notice

Please see Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_February_16#Category:Television_producers_by_series for a category deletion nomination of Category:Doctor Who producers, Category:The Sarah Jane Adventures producers and Category:Torchwood producers. Tim! 07:27, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 February 16#TV directors by series (which includes Category:Doctor Who directors and Category:Torchwood directors) and Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 February 16#TV writers by series (which includes Category:Doctor Who writers, Category:Torchwood writers and Category:The Sarah Jane Adventures writers). —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 02:26, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Articles with awarded status

I'm building a list of the articles that we have edited to a good standard that have received awards (GA or FA) over at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Doctor_Who/Awarded_articles. Please can you contribute any articles you know of with awards, especially GAs, at that page. Thanks. Smomo 13:56, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Time Lord article nomination for Good Article

Please go to the Time Lord article and see its talk page as this article has been nominated for a GA status. However, the nomination is currently on hold and some changes have been suggested; please see the articles talk page! Smomo 14:11, 18 February 2007 (UTC)