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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted 18:14, 29 April 2008.

Voyage of the Damned (Doctor Who)

[edit]

previous FAC (18:03, 4 April 2008)


Self nomination. This article failed FAC two weeks ago due to prose, which by the end of the FAC, was admittedly not as bad as it was at the start. Most of the objections had been dealt with and I think time was half as responsible for the article failing. Sceptre (talk) 20:21, 18 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is it staying or going? I need to know whether to look at the sources or not. Ealdgyth - Talk 02:21, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If Sceptre is able to keep up with both, I'll leave that up to the community. (Translation, I'm tired of the time it takes me to withdraw noms, and Sceptre is not a novice nominator.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:08, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I've got all three FACs on watchlist. Sceptre (talk) 11:29, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. The lede is a bit long and includes interesting factoids best left for the body of the article. (For example: "One scene required that a street in Cardiff's city centre be sealed for an entire evening due to security concerns.") A solid rewrite following WP:LEDE is needed there. The plot synopsis is bit long and detailed and should be rewritten into a less blow-by-blow, more concise version. Overall, the writing still needs a fair bit of tightening and polishing. The article is generally solid, but there are prose issues that need to be addressed to reach FA quality. If this is addressed, I will gladly support the article for promotion. Vassyana (talk) 21:24, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There is a reason why the plot's relatively longer than most; it's a 72 minute episode (so the previous 650-word version adhered to the film MOS's "10 words per minute" guidelines). I've cut it down to 380 words, which is less than most 45-minute episodes. Sceptre (talk) 21:42, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Had a go at the lead too. Anything else? I'll have a look at the prose later tonight. Sceptre (talk) 21:54, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, that's ... overgenerous (to be insanely kind). However, this isn't the place to make a point of my disagreement here. Regardless, I think the new synopsis is a great improvement! (I should note though, there is no MOS guideline for films, just a WikiProject guide. Could you point me to the 10 words per minute standard? WP:FilmPlot just recommends between 400 and 700.) The lede is also much improved. Outside of generally cleaning up some clumsy and/or poorly phrased language, I don't have any other objections. Vassyana (talk) 22:08, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, so it's changed? Well, WP:EPISODE stole the "ten words per minute" suggestion from the WPFILM MOS, and both allow for overruns if the plot gets very tangled (see Doomsday (Doctor Who), which was a tangling of four or five plot threads). And yes, Graham, I do. Sceptre (talk) 22:14, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the pointer! (Our fiction guidelines need some organization. :-P) If you're interested, I posted at EPISODE about this point. Vassyana (talk) 23:03, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Conditional Support — we need to work on the prose. It's a little lazy in parts. I've made a couple of edits and I will make some more suggestions later. GrahamColmTalk 22:13, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've added it to the LOCE's request list, but it might take a while there. Did some wording changes too. Sceptre (talk) 23:55, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - I've merged the lead paragraphs. Per WP:LEAD, a rule of thumb would be to have 3 to 4 paragraphs of lead if you had 30k or more. This article has less than 15k of readable prose, which means it should really only have 1 - 2 paragraphs. Two sentence paragraphs are generally not that strong. I've also corrected the title in the lead, as the quotation marks should not be bolded. I bolded and italicized the show's name as well, as that should have been done. I think two weeks may have been a little too soon to come back to the FAC given the numerous "minor" things I just found, it makes me wonder what larger problems the page could have.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 04:44, 27 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not really sure if disambiguators should be bolded. Sceptre (talk) 01:31, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose for now This was fun article to read. I've seen all of the new Doctor Who, so this was enjoyable. I think the article needs a bit of rewriting and reorganization, though, before FA promotion.

  • The episode continues from the end of the concurrent episodes "Last of the Time Lords" and "Time Crash", when the TARDIS collided with the Titanic to the Doctor's surprise - I think there should be season numbers here.
  • Almost all of the citations in the "Continuity" section is linked to other episodes. This makes me think it is WP:OR. It may seem obvious, but can we really compare episodes and say "this is the same"? The other objection I have is that the comparisons are trivial. I don't see the importance of them and since we can't elaborate on them in any way - risking even more OR - I would delete most of this section and rewrite it as a "References" or "Allusions" section.
  • Davies also emphasised society becoming aware of aliens and the tradition of London's consecutive Christmas attacks in the script, describing the latter in Doctor Who's "making-of" series Doctor Who Confidential as "becoming a bit of an in-joke" - Something like this could be used as a source for a "References" section, but it would have to be worded better.
  • The episode includes several references to outside the show's fictional universe. The episode is dedicated to Doctor Who's founding producer Verity Lambert, who died on 22 November 2007. The malfunctioning Host stuttering over the name "Max" is a reference to 1980s virtual presenter Max Headroom.[9] Davies cited The Poseidon Adventure as an influence for the episode's general plot, and the portrayal of Kansas in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz as an analogue for Sto.[11] - These kinds of references could be included in a single "References" section. Having them split up was awkward.
  • Can anything about the themes of the episode be pulled from the reviews? It would be nice to have a "Themes" section.
  • The first few sentences of the "Minogue" section need to describe who Minogue is - I didn't know. Since she is a prominent star in the episode, it is worth describing her in a phrase or two.
  • The "Filming" section reads like a list. Pick what is important to know and include only that. Not everything is important!
  • I'm not sure why we care very much about the "Internal reaction" of the cast and crew. Many times artists like what they produce. ;)
  • Bannakaffalatta's death was placed in the "top 20 tearjerkers" category - This sentence doesn't make sense to readers who haven't seen the episode. The character wasn't introduced in the plot synopsis. He is important as both he and Max are cyborgs (the cyborg issue was left out of the plot synopsis - the motivation, one might say, of some of the characters).
  • The "Criticism and review" section is too listy - it is just one quote after another. The prose is choppy. Something must be done to make it flow better. Removing some quotes, perhaps? Copy editing?

I hope these suggestions are helpful. Awadewit (talk) 03:06, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • I'm not really a fan of "themes" or "outside references" sections as they tend to propogate OR fast, especially on these kinds of articles. The continuity section really fits in the same vein, and were the show not 45 years old this year, I'd rather cut it. It's a struggle to get to the point where the only stuff in the article is stuff that's deliberately meant to be a continuity link rather than a throwaway line.
    However, you do have some points that were brought about, mostly about the plot - originally, the plot was around 600 words long (as it's 60% longer than most of the new series episodes). I'm thinking - this FAC will end soon and I don't feel confident I can get it up to a non-objectionable state in time... perhaps it'd be best to withdraw the article and resubmit it in a couple of months time once I've ironed the kinks out. Sceptre (talk) 22:24, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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