Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Doctor Who/Archive 7

; Archives
	Archive index; 5 April 2005 – 26 May 2005; 21 May 2005 – 23 September 2005; 17 September 2005 – 27 December 2005; 31 December 2005 – 20 January 2006; 19 January 2006 – 27 February 2006; 27 February 2006 - 16 April 2006; 16 April 2006 – 9 July 2006; 6 July 2006 – 5 August 2006; 9 July 2006 – 24 October 2006; 23 October 2006 – 30 December 2006; 30 December 2006 – 30 January 2007; 31 January 2007 – 30 April 2007; 1 May 2007 - 15 June 2007; 16 June 2007 - 15 August 2007; 16 August 2007 - 26 September 2007; 25 September 2007 - 10 December 2007; 11 December 2007 - 31 January 2008; 1 February 2008 - 30 April 2008; 31 April 2008 - 16 July 2008; 17 July 2008 - December 2008;

This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:WikiProject Doctor Who. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

←

This archive page covers approximately the dates between 16 April 2006 and 9 July 2006.

Post replies to the main talk page, copying or summarizing the section you are replying to if necessary.

Request regarding 2006 season spoilers

I know this is impossible to "police" given the nature of Wikipedia, but I hope that, as the new season airs in the UK, months before it is scheduled to air in Canada and perhaps as much as a year before the US will see it, that editors will avoid putting spoilers into edit summaries. The articles themselves have spoiler tags, so that's fair warning right there, but I already received a minor spoiler for the New Earth episode in the edit summary of the main Doctor Who article; I don't even have New Earth on my watchlist. I mean, can you imagine what it would be like to see an edit summary like "Adding details of death of Rose" or some such thing? I know it's probably useless to try and do anything about it, but perhaps WikiProject members could keep an eye out for such "back door spoilers". One very easy way to fix the situation is to do a minor edit which pushes the previous edit off the watchlist summaries. (Another, of course, is for spoiler-sensitives like me to remove potential spoiler articles from my watchlist -- and I have -- but to remove the main Doctor Who article kinda defeats the purposes of being a member of the Doctor Who Wikiproject. Thanks. 23skidoo 13:16, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Sadly, I think I'm going to have to at least remove articles such as Rose Tyler and Doctor (Doctor Who) from my watchlist after all. I just got "edit summary spoiled" regarding an episode we won't be seeing in Canada till the fall. 23skidoo 04:32, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Category:Doctor Who and Quatermass actors

Just wondering if this would be a good idea for an addition or not. There are more than you'd think: David Tennant, André Morell, Roger Delgado, Richard Shaw, Andrew Keir, Cyril Shaps, Moray Watson, Paul Whitsun-Jones, and Matthew Waterhouse. OK, I'm kidding about Waterhouse, but the rest are all I can think of at the moment. proteus71 21:37, 20 Apr 2006.

In the future there may be a category math feature which allows Category:Doctor Who actors and Cateogry:Quatermass actors (should it be created) to be considered together. —Wh o uk (talk) 21:21, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I would be interested to read such a list, however the potential is huge - Doctor Who and Avengers actors, Doctor Who and Blake's Seven actors, etc., etc. Because any such combination is arbitrary and likely to be down to the compiler's personal interests, it may be better to create a list rather than a category. DavidFarmbrough 06:21, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

History

Any Ideas on how to spilt up the History of the Doc? Aeon 04:36, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

How about by decade, or by actor playing the doctor?--Bjw e bb (talk) 09:24, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Probably by decade if anything - the periods each incumbant spend as the Time Lord vary from one film to seven years. Perhaps we should group the Nineties and Naugthies together, as so little happened during the former...? NP Chilla 20:46, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

That seems like a good idea. Now where to start.... Aeon 01:38, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

We've discussed this before, here, but it got stalled somewhere along the way. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 01:48, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Wartime

I've started an article on the first-ever "authorized" spin-off film at Wartime (Doctor Who) for anyone who's interested. Cheers! 23skidoo 19:28, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Looking good. I've never managed to see this one, so can't really contribute. However, I'm wondering whether, now that we've got articles for Wartime, Downtime and Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans, we should have a category for this sort of licensed video spin-offs. I'd create it myself, but I'm not sure what the best wording would be. Category:Doctor Who spin-off videos seems too broad, and would include things like the VHS release of K-9 and Company. Category:Videos featuring licensed characters from Doctor Who seems too wordy. Anybody got a good phrasing? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 05:30, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Doctor Who Spin-Off Video's seems like a good category name to me....however do you include Doctor What and the video of the stage play? How unofficial do you want to go? DavidFarmbrough 11:18, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

The three I mentioned above are all in Category:Reeltime Pictures, which is a subcat of Category:Doctor Who spin-offs. Maybe that's enough? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 22:07, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Opinions sought

Here's an ultra-geeky question for the lot of you: over at Lengths of science fiction movie and television series, there's a small dispute over whether the Children in Need special should be included in the total count for Doctor Who. The page tends to follow whatever the producers of a series say is canon, and failing that (as in the case of Doctor Who) whatever the broad consensus of fandom is. We've got the TARDISODES listed as "supplemental canon", since they're officially released filmed media but they're not film or television. Some folks want to put the CiN special in the same category, since it wasn't a "proper" episode; I think it should be included in the main count (as it was until recently). I said on the article's talk page that I'd ask here for opinions. So what do you think? (Besides that I'm a ridiculous nerd for caring, I know that much.) —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 05:35, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

It's a tough one. The CiN special is unlikely to be repeated or put onto a DVD for obvious reasons, but at the same time, I think the general feeling of fandom is that it is canonical. I would lean towards including it in the episode count, no matter how brief it was. Attack of the Graske, though, is probably right out. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 06:52, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

The "supplemental" category was added after a long dispute over videos filmed for rides and games. Things in the supplemental category are canon; no one wants to put the Children in Need Special in non-canon. The question isn't about canonicity; it's about whether or not the special counts as an "episode". Really, it's just a matter of semantics, which is why Josiah reached out to the fan community for input. My argument is that it is not an episode because it lacked a title, end credits, and the story arc of the show could be easily followed by people who missed it (like us fans across the pond watching on CBC). And since you brought up Attack of the Graske, would you classify it as non-canon, supplemental canon, or call it a game and not include it at all? Arctic Gnome 07:25, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I understand now. In that case, I would take the position that the CiN episode is as much an episode as was Mission to the Unknown (which also wasn't needed to understand the subsequent The Daleks' Master Plan, but was a prologue to it anyway), despite the lack of title and credits. It's a mini-episode, but an episode nonetheless, and was advertised as such.

Canonicity in Doctor Who, as you know, is a tricky thing, even in the best of circumstances. As for Graske, I personally would place it as non-canon or perhaps supplemental canon, but people may disagree. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 07:39, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm tempted to say that it (Pudsey Cutaway) shouldn't be counted as it's so short. But I also think it makes sense to use the same numbering as DWM (which avoids confusions and can then be treated as a source). I'll see if I can find out whether they count it... —Wh o uk (talk) 07:59, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Attack shouldn't be counted as it's a game - it's non-linear. Or are we counting Dalek Attack as canon these days (sorry!) DavidFarmbrough 11:12, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Does Russell Thelonius Davies count Regeneration Cutaway as canon? If yes, that would probably be the be-all-and-end-all to it. (Now I think about it, I think he does ay in DWM at one point that he would count it as canon. I'll investigate this!) As for Graske, well, you can take it or leave it, if you get my drift. NP Chilla 14:18, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Length has no bearing on canon. There is no indication to suggest the CiN Special (or whatever you want to call it) is anything but canonical. The Graske game is clearly not, however, has the Doctor interacts directly with the audience (but, on that account, where does that leave "The Feast of Steven" (Dalek Masterplan episode 6, IIRC) with its Merry Christmas greeting at the end?). The TARDISODES should probably be considered canon especially the latest one for School Reunion which appears to be a true prequel to the episode. But I don't see adding them to the episode count; there should perhaps be separate counts for TARDISODEs and CiN specials. 23skidoo 14:31, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

It's not so much the audience interaction that causes problems for Graske's canonicity (I can't believe I'm getting into this...) so much as being a game with different possible results depending on how you play it. But canonicity and numbering aren't the same thing, as you say. For example, The Trial of a Time Lord is canonical, alas, but you can still argue over whether it counts once, three times, or four. —Wh o uk (talk) 14:54, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

If you look at the numbering of stories on the R1 DVDs, given the numbers that the McCoy stories are assigned, they definitely count Shada in the numbering, and also count Trial as four stories. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 15:16, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Right, have checked with DWM. They don't count Pudsey Cutaway on the grounds that it's a scene rather than an episode. If we did count it, there's not really any justification for not counting Dimensions in Time (and counting it as two, at that).

Oh, and I really shouldn't have brought Trial up as that's story counts but this is an episode count so it's 14 either way :-) —Wh o uk (talk) 09:46, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

And RTD writing in the DWM Production Notes column referred to Aliens of London as episode 700, which suggests the production team consider Tooth and Claw #712 too. —Wh o uk (talk) 15:35, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

OK, so "Pudsey Cutaway" (or whatever we want to call it) isn't an episode as such — does that mean that it shouldn't be counted in a tally of the total time it would take to watch all of canonical Doctor Who? 'Cos that's what Lengths of science fiction movie and television series is. I get that you wouldn't count it in the "number of Doctor Who episodes". But would you count it in the total time? I would. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 21:49, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Canoncity post-School Reunion (SPOILER)

{{Spoiler about|School Reunion}} School Reunion starts the lean towards "the non-TV stuff isn't canon" (and, indeed, means Five Doctors needs a little finessing, but not too drastically).

Basically, the whole SJS part of the plot revolves around the last time SJ actually *met* the Doctor being when he dropped her off (in Aberdeen, it turns out) to go to Gallifrey, and she was worried that he'd died there ever since. There's also a reference that he's regenerated "around half-a-dozen times" since he last met her. 5Docs is finessable, since she spent most of her time with Doc3, and I don't remember if she got properly introduced to Doc5, and whether he predated "her" Doctors like Docs1 and 2. But her book appearances with the Seventh and Eighth Doctors are far more difficult to reconcile without invoking crap like off-camera mindwipes... - SoM 20:16, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Canonicity debates are, by and large, silly for more or less this exact reason. Plenty of equally large problems exist within the TV episodes themselves. Better to just stop involving ourselves in debates about what's canon and what's not - especially since doing so is almost necessarily original research. Phil Sandifer 20:35, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

True enough; but SoM has raised a valuable point - this story does seem to stick two fingers up at the spin-off novels. It is certainly possible that Sarah was referring to The Hand of Fear when she talked about when they last saw each other; and that the Fifth Doctor could be before or after the Pertwee/Baker incarnations (for all she knew). Let's not even mention Dimension in Time - it makes me nauseous just thinking about it. But, I think Phil is right - let's draw a line under this and move on! (Hoorah!) NP Chilla 20:42, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

theres a simple answer really.........what if in her time line she met doctor10 next............then wnet on to meet 7 and 8........its also possible that 5 docs was in a sort of bubble...doubly so now gallifrey is gone.Jaime9526 00:27, 8 June 2006 (UTC)jaime9526

Fanvids...?

Maybe, instead of having lots of pages for every different fanvid, just have a list of them. E.g.:

Dr. Who and the Horrible Slime (starring John Smith and Jenny Smith)
Wrath of the Rani (starring John Smith, Jenny Smith, and Jane Smith)

So in the stars section, there is the Doctor (in bold) and his companions (not in bold).

Thoughts on this matter? Davidpk212 15:30, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

The question is whether any of these pass the notability test, and I would venture the answere would be no. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 16:22, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Also, it depends on your definition of fanvid. Assuming you are referring to Downtime, Shakedown and Wartime as fanvids, in point of fact they are not. They are professionally made productions, available commercially, and featuring characters officially licensed from their creators. That's a big difference from productions made by fans for fun. There's a similar debate over at the Star Trek articles about where to draw the line. There's been an explosion of fanvid productions made for the internet, but at least one of these endeavors has actually involved members of Star Trek's original writing team and cast -- so what constitutes a fan video. The BBV/Reeltime productions, getting back to Doctor, would easily pass WP's notability requirements; something like "The Horrible Slime" (which I've never heard of before) likely wouldn't. 23skidoo 16:55, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Comics

I've noticed there aren't really any good resources on the web (or at least I've yet to find any) for the Doctor Who comic range. I just now picked up a copy of the collected Ninth Doctor comics, and honestly they're not too bad. I'm now curious about some of the earlier eras, especially the Eighth Doctor's (as, along with the novels and audios, this essentially was the Eighth Doctor's era).

I can see room for an article compiling the comic serials: breaking them down by Doctor; listing the titles, credits, and publication dates; and offering a brief one-or-two-line summary. Maybe the occasional panel, to see how each Doctor looked in comic form. Perhaps beneath each "era" heading, we could list companions (including original comic ones). Maybe listing the books compiling each range of strips (if any). Like the two Eighth Doctor compilations -- how much do they cover? How do the Marvel comics tie in?

If the lists get long enough, I can see breaking them up into multiple pages: one per Doctor. The comics seem like a significant enough (if greatly underrepresented) portion of "extended Who" to carve out their own small corner. Heck, a lot of the TV writers and staff have been involved with the strip, from Cartmell to Paul Cornell. And again, from 1989 to 2005, the strip was one of only a few official sources of "new Who" -- indeed, the only visually-based one. Maybe it's considered a little "lower" than the audios and novels; still, it seems somewhat important.

I can't do any of this, as I simply don't have the resources. That's why I'm so interested in seeing it somewhere. --71.139.19.107 20:51, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree that an article on Doctor Who comics would be worthwhile. It should probably begin life as a summary of the various places Doctor Who comics have appeared (TV Comic, Countdown, Doctor Who Magazine and now Doctor Who Adventures), before anyone undertakes an attempt to catalogue every appearance. The Doctor Who Reference Guide includes listings and brief summaries of most Doctor Who comics. Another (incomplete) resource which could be used is Strippingdown.co.uk, which covers many of the earlier comic appearances of the Doctor. I don't know if I'll have the time in the near future, but I'd support anyone who wanted to work on this. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 19:50, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Same here. I don't have time to launch such a thing myself, but I live and breathe the Doctor Who Reference Guide site, plus if I recall correctly the "Discontinuity Guide" also has info on some of the strips, so I could certainly contribute. And Marvel Comics also published an American Doctor Who comic book for a couple of years in the early 1980s (featuring colorized DWM strip reprints), so by rights there should also be a separate article about it, alone. Also, Colin Baker wrote a comic mini-series for Marvel (Age of Chaos, I believe). I don't know if it was ever actually published (if it did it was never distributed in Canada as I was in tight with a major comic book shop at the time it would have come out) though it's listed on the Reference Guide. 23skidoo 20:12, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Apparently "The Age of Chaos" was released as a graphic novel or novella — anyway, it was published as a one-off in 1994. You can see the cover here and read some reviews here; I've never managed to get old of it myself. I don't know whether the US Marvel comic deserves its own page or not, since it was just colorized reprints of DWM strips along with hastily written backup text pieces about the show ("History of the Cybermen!", "Meet the Sixth Doctor!" and the like). But we can see what develops. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 21:45, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Here's a tricky one for canonicity: Death's Head. DH was probably the most known original character in the Marvel UK line, and ran into The Doctor at least three times that I know of. As for how canon those encounters might be, I'd lean towards not very. But would it be fair to at least list the character (say under the "robots" heading), or include his article in the Who WikiProject?D1Puck1T 17:31, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

I'd say distinctions should really be made for the origin of characters like these: comics, novels, audios. That's whenever the information gets glutted enough to start building the walls. --71.139.19.107 11:46, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

The Lonely God

What do people think about this? I'm not sure myself. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 03:45, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Nor am I - the phrase in itself has only appeared the once, and the "my lonely angel" thing could be a coincidence. No mention was made in School Reunion, either. Anyway, as the Ninth Doctor once said, "Don't worship me - I'd make a very bad god. I wouldn't get a day off, for a start." NP Chilla 15:09, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

I think that it's clear that the 2006 series is establishing a theme of the Doctor's loneliness — nearly every episode has touched on it at least once, including School Reunion (it's part of Finch's temptation of the Doctor) — but I don't think that really justifies an article on the phrase. A bit OR-ish, I fear. Better just to incorporate discussion of the Doctor's loneliness in either Doctor (Doctor Who) or Tenth Doctor, depending on which people think is more appropriate. (I would have said Tenth Doctor, were it not for Reinette's comments about the Doctor's lonely childhood in The Girl in the Fireplace.)

I just added a citation to the article in answer to someone's question on the talk page, but don't take that as an endorsement of the article on my part. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 23:48, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Codemonkey has an interesting suggestion at Talk:The Lonely God: combine The Lonely God with Bad Wolf references in Doctor Who into a general article about recurring motifs or themes in the new series. I'm not sure whether it would work or not, but it's an idea worth considering. I don't think that The Lonely God can really stand on its own, but a general article on the structural elements threaded through the series might. On the other hand, it would be difficult to avoid OR in a topic that vague. Thoughts? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 21:38, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I can't say I'm keen. I don't see the notability of "The Lonely God" at all. His loneliness is relevant as a motif, but that can be suitably covered in the Tenth Doctor article. I'd just redirect The Lonely God to Doctor (Doctor Who). —Wh o uk (talk) 21:44, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Doctor Who chronology

Hi all,

I have just created a new page List of Doctor Who episodes by date, and I would really value some expert opinion on it, and the dates involved. I'd really like it to be accurate as possible, but I can't quite see how School Reunion is supposed to be in Spring 2007. Also, there may be extra clues as to dates hidden in some of the episodes, which I haven't spotted. Also it would be really nice if someone could add the earlier articles.Please read the article and tell me what you think. --Mark J 14:52, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

First of all, well done - it is certainly a good idea, and well-implemented.

Although I am not too sure about what to make of this, I could perhaps suggest if we are going to keep it as it is (ie. 2005-onwaqrds), we could perhaps change the name to "List of Doctor Who episodes by date (2005-)" or some such.NP Chilla 15:16, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Not to pour cold water on this effort, but I'm not sure where this is going; if this is going to be a chronology, it may border on original research if we're going to try and date every episode. A look at professionally done chronologies like AHistory will show you the nightmare of doing that, and the inability to do it without conjecture and speculation. What I'm asking, I suppose, is what's it for. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 15:34, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

What's it for? To look nice, mostly. Also, to see which time periods the Doctor has visited more than others. To see if any episodes took place at the same time (and therefore the Doctors could meet each other). Basically, to give a full and nicely-laid-out account of the complete time travels of our favourite Time Lord. Thank you for adding some episodes already. --Mark J 21:04, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

In that case, it really is going to be original research, in the end, since a lot of the dates are not specified. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 22:43, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm of two minds here. On the one hand, I do see the appeal of such a list, on an aesthetic and fanboy-ish level. On the other hand, I share Khaosworks' concern about avoiding original research. We might be able to get by with a list of only stories with explicit on-screen dates or dates given in contemporary production documents, but I'm not even sure about that. Even if we go with what's on screen, UNIT dating is going to give us trouble.

Perhaps this would be better suited for Wikia TARDIS than for Wikipedia? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 00:02, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Please also see Eras in Doctor Who, the two should probably be merged. Tim! 17:30, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Now there is an idea. If these two are merged, we'll have the best of both articles. Let's not forget, our pals at Wikipedia:WikiProject Buffy have had a "timeline"-type thing for yonks now - why can't we?

Oh, and as for original research, if we check out Justin Richards's The Legend (Continues?) and similar books for the dating, original research should be kept to a minimum, I'd have thought. NP Chilla 19:18, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

As a matter of fact none of my research is original. It all comes from the BBC website. Check it out here at [1] - in almost all the episode sections, under the 'Continuity' section, there is a short paragraph about the date of the episode. Check it out for yourselves and decide whether the source is trustworthy. By the way I agree with the merge. --Mark J 20:20, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

The concern isn't that any of the individual data points would be original research, but that the act of correlating them into a single list/chronology might be. For example, in Pyramids of Mars Sarah Jane says, "I'm from 1980." Does this mean that we should place Terror of the Zygons at 1980, before the Brigadier's retirement in 1977 (per Mawdryn Undead)? There are other, less obvious pitfalls too. It might be possible to avoid them, but Doctor Who has been going on so long that it's contradicted itself several times, which means that in order to assemble this sort of chronology, you have to make judgment calls on which bits of evidence to ignore. And that is where the original research (potentially) comes in.

The problem isn't insurmountable, I think, but it is a legitimate concern. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 22:00, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I should also note that the dates given on the BBC website are from The Discontinuity Guide, which, all due respect to Cornell, Day and Topping, are of dubious validity - not to mention speculative - when it comes to some things, which include some of the dates. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 22:39, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I think some of the things on the list should be removed, but a list containing timeframes of episodes of Doctor Who is a good idea. I don't know about putting it in chronological order - I was considering before this was created a possible List of settings of Doctor Who episodes, which would have had the episodes in broadcast order and then given the time/space settings that they each had, giving the Unit ones as "indeterminate" or suchforth. Morwen - Talk 23:39, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

If the episode states a time then it should be used. The fact that the chronology and continuity is all mucked up is neither here not there. The Discontinuity guide does explain its reasoning and could be cited as a source but I would stick with those where the evidence is directly stated within the programme itself, not inferred or deduced. GraemeLeggett 08:33, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

There is also the question of what to do when we come to stories that take place in various times, such as The Chase or The Daleks' Master Plan. NP Chilla 16:30, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Surely, the "known" dates can be put in, even if it is several times across the article. GraemeLeggett 16:47, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Do you mean, for example, having An Unearthly Child in the article twice, once under "1963" and once under "100,00 BC"? NP Chilla 20:07, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Not that there's anything on screen to place it in 100,000 BC... —Wh o uk (talk) 15:43, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

If people really want this article, then the dates have to be more-or-less incontrovertible, which means the UNIT era is right out. So many timelines out there, so many opinions differ, so you can't prefer The Discontinuity Guide over say, AHistory (which also explains its reasoning), since that would be POV. So, stick to explicitly given dates - which also means you've got a problem about Pyramids of Mars and Carnival of Monsters, say, where the dates given ("I'm from 1980" and "about forty years" from 1927) are part of the controversy or don't make sense. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 22:40, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

This also true. But going back to Tim's idea of merging the two articles - a truly superb idea; and with a section at the bottom noting the UNIT dating problems (and other irregularities that Khaosworks is rightly concerned for), I don't see why we can't have an article like this. After all, our pals at Wikiproject Buffy have had a similar article that has proven so popular, it has been split into three separate articles. NP Chilla 15:38, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

s/popular/long/ - Buffy, not being a time travel series, is a somewhat different case :-) —Wh o uk (talk) 15:43, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

I've made a stab at a merge at Wikipedia:WikiProject Doctor Who/sandbox. What do you think? Feel freee to modify it.--Bjw e bb (talk) 14:31, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

I have created Doctor Who chronology which the two original pages redirect to. Which format do you think is prefrable? The tabular or bulleted version?--Bjw e bb (talk) 15:25, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Conventions - yay or nay?

I was thinking, should articles on conventions like Gallifrey One, Invasions, and Dimensions be written. I was just thinking if there are articles on things like Auchinawa why not ones on Doctor Who Cons? GracieLizzie 21:35, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd be surprised if Auchinawa survived an AFD challenge. I don't think convention articles are considered notable enough, otherwise we'd have ot write dozens and dozens of them to cover the many conventions hosted over the years. Better to confine such discussion to sections about Doctor Who fandom, or region-specific articles like Doctor Who in America. 23skidoo 21:40, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

If you take a close look at the infobox on the Auchinawa article, you'll see it links to about 70 separate Anime convention articles. Perhaps it's more likely to survive an AFD than you suspect. Or perhaps they're all AFD candidates? I don't know myself. Personally I think conventions as large as Gallifrey and Panopticon are probably worth articles. Maybe Whovention at a pinch. --The Brain of Morbius 00:21, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd add content about conventions to Doctor Who fandom. If that article gets too long, conventions could be split off into a separate article. —Wh o uk (talk) 06:06, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

That's a good Idea, I'll add links to individual conventions websites later :). GracieLizzie 09:07, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Maybe the convention series can be made into their own articles (i.e. one article for all Panopticons) but IMO I would personally vote against keeping articles on individual cons if they were ever to come to AFD. I was actually going to nominate Auchinawa for AFD but didn't get around to it; I've seen articles sit around for a year or more before someone notices them, AFDs them, and they get deleted. And you're right -- all 70 could, in theory, be AFD'd if a keener decided to set his mind to it. Also, where do you draw the line? If we give Panopticon 7 it's own article, what's to stop someone who ran a con in, say, Tuktoyaktuk from creating their own article? There needs to be hard and fast criteria set for inclusion -- I don't know if such notability criteria has been established at the Wikipolicy level. 23skidoo 16:54, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Canonicity unclear... on every page?

I know the canonicity of the audio plays and anything not on TV is unclear, or more precisely, non-canon, unless specifically mentioned in the TV series. But is it necessary or desirable to repeat "The canonicity of these stories, as with all spin-offs, is unclear." and similar statements in every article that references them?

On canon, the project page mentions "To avoid the tricky issue of canonicity, we should identify the source of the information if it comes from anywhere else besides the television series. [...] We should should also limit the non-television series material, where possible, to officially licensed BBC material."

Identify the source, yes, but I don't see mentioning the unclarity of the spinoffs' canonicity alongside it. I removed one from sonic screwdriver a couple weeks ago, but I've been encountering it on seemingly dozens of Doctor Who pages since, so I'm wondering if this is consensus. TransUtopian 07:30, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

It is, and has been the practice for a long time. Generally because we have to assume that every page is the reader's first or only Doctor Who page. So while there are links to other stuff for clarification so we don't have to explain everything, the canon question is touchy enough and muddled enough that if we talk about non-television sources, people might assume it to be canon. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 07:50, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Khaosworks pretty much sums it up. It's only repetitive if you read a bunch of pages consecutively, but someone coming onto a Doctor Who page for the first time needs to have it made clear, especially since Doctor Who -- unlike Star Trek -- has no clear, studio-defined definition of what is canon, and the latest series has muddied the waters somewhat by making off-hand references to the novels. Plus no one really seems certain where the creator-licensed spin-offs like PROBE and the Reeltime films fit into all this, or if they even fit. 23skidoo 11:41, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I've only read a few DW pages on WIkipedia in quick succession, but I've noticed it over the past couple weeks. It's informative the first few times, but seems repetitive thereafter. Would a canonicity unclear infobox or somesuch in place of the text be a possibility? Or am I one of the few who sees it as repetitive?

Adding your reasoning to the project page might be good, since it's noticable but unexplained. TransUtopian 20:44, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps the "Canonicity unclear" statement should be in some standardized box on the side that was the same for every book and radio play. That would make it easier for the experienced eye to skip over it, while still being there for new readers. (Oops, Unsigned proposed the same thing above. I agree, obviously.) Algr 21:31, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

For the books etc. themselves like Anachrophobia, Canonicity unclear could be added to the infobox on the right. For the references to the spin-off media, like near the bottom of Doctor Who (1996), a footnote linked to the spin-off mention (like references are) could also be an option. If anything remotely like consensus agrees, that is. (Btw, Algr, my previous comment is broken up into 2 paragraphs. It's not unsigned.) TransUtopian 03:13, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I think it's original research to proclaim this - canonicity continually changes, and the fact of the matter is that even the "purest" available definition of canon (The original 26 series) leaves you with a host of contradictions. I don't think we get anything good by trying to rule on canonicity, so why open that can of worms? Phil Sandifer 03:51, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it's original research to claim that it is unclear, especially when it can be backed up by the examples given in the Doctor Who section of the Canon (fiction) article, nor is it original research to claim, as in that article, that by and large fans accept the television series as canonical... up to a point. The contradictions between the various lines is significant enough that it should be pointed out, lest everyone thing everything is intended to fit together seamlessly. The neatest option (which is not the say the ideal option, and neatness is a matter of degree) is simply to throw up our hands and say, "Well, you should know that how this fits in is a matter of debate."

As for the infobox suggestion, I'm not sure how it can be implemented in a way that isn't messy-looking - or just as repetitive. I'd have to see it first before offering an opinion. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 04:34, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Would it also be original research if one was to include a section in the pages for all the general ranges - BBC Past Doctor range, for example - saying how the canonicity of certain novels appears to depend on the events the Eighth Doctor range? The arc that finished with Sometime Never implied the the companion deaths (Ace in Loving the Alien, Mel in Heritage, Sarah Jane in Bullet Time, for example) were the result of the villains from that book meddling in The Doctor's timeline. So whether we can treat these events as canon is an issue brought up in the novels themselves. Speculations on this particular canon issue might be worth including. adamriggio 00:55, 4 June 2006

It isn't and shouldn't be the job of Wikipedia to try to fit together Doctor Who continuity. Discussions of how stories relate to each other should be from an out-of-universe perspective (see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (writing about fiction)), i.e. where the companion deaths in Loving the Alien, Heritage and Bullet Time written to a particular editorial strategy whereby they would be "explained" by Sometime Never? Bondegezou 21:05, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Vampires

Following on from Werewolf (Doctor Who), I have started Vampire (Doctor Who) and invite all contributions. Tim! 13:19, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Doctor Who companions

Just found this, which seems more like an essay than an encyclopaedic piece. Opinions? Tim! 21:14, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

This is an article, at least subject-wise, that we've been talking about for a while. However, it needs a reworking for, at the least, POV and verifiability issues. I agree that as it stands, it is more an essay than an encyclopedia article. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 22:22, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I would just like to point out that the whole companions part needs real clean up. Not only is the information repeated a lot (for example, there is a catagory of "Doctor Who Companions" and also spin-off companions here in addition to the article you have mentioned) but there is also irrelevant info within that article itself (for example, there is a brief section on Villians in that article). What might be wise would be to change the article's name completly, to something more like "List of Important Doctor Who characters" and maybe add a brief description of some sort. (Pkwebmaster 14:16, 29 May 2006 (UTC))

Flowery Language, perspective

"Heart of gold?" I think several of the Doctor articles have bad language but I'm not sure how to put things and I haven't the time myself. Also there are other issues, such as the "meant" phrasing that I changed to "caused to be". It just doesn't read right and seem quite literate.

Also, some of the episode articles are written in the wrong tense, or voice, or something. Take

"It is now only a matter of time before Gavrok and his troops arrive."

from Delta and the Bannermen.

This makes them seem like excerpts from stories rather than articles about them. --Howdybob 10:47, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Doesn't seem particularly flowery to me. "Heart of gold" is a perfectly normal and common English figure of speech. Are you American? Maybe it sounds more arcane to Americans? As for "meant that the Sixth Doctor's tenure was cut short" going to "caused the Sixth Doctor's tenure to be cut short", they seem pretty much equivalent to me. I don't have a preference.

For the plot summaries, they're all written in the present tense. That seems to be the conventional and most natural way of doing it to me. The only other alternative is the past tense, which would come out like:

On an alien planet the genocide of the Chimeron by the merciless Bannermen led by Gavrok was almost complete. The last survivor, Chimeron Queen Delta, escaped by the skin of her teeth clutching her egg, the future for her species. She made it to a space tollport where the Navarinos, a race of shape changing tourist aliens, were planning a visit to the planet Earth in 1959 in a spaceship disguised as an old holiday bus. She stowed aboard as did the Seventh Doctor and Mel Bush, who had won the trip as a prize for arriving in the Navarino spaceport at the right time to be declared the ten billionth customers. No sooner had the tourist vehicle blasted away than the Bannermen turned up, ruthlessly hunting down the fugitive, and they killed the Tollmaster when he refused to co-operate.

Certainly not an improvement. Makes it read even more like an excerpt from a story. Past tense works for a brief outline of events, but not a detailed plot summary. --KJBracey 14:12, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

As the author of the Delta and the Bannermen summary I've deleted the word "now" which may make the most offending sentence more readable. I've written many summaries/plots now and always use the current tense as I too find the past tense more jarring. --Litefoot 15:34, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

It's a general convention that fictional events should be spoken of in the present tense. We're not always consistent in that regard in the general articles, but for plots and synopses, it simply reads better in the present tense. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 14:43, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I stand by the meant/cause thing as mine is more proper.

"Heart of gold" is subjective, especially if it's "hidden". There are subjective statements, such as "all is well" on the D&tB page, that make it sound like WP is telling a story instead of describing one. Present tense is fine, I shouldn't have mentioned it, but some things don't read right. Things like "It is only a matter of time before Gavrok and his troops arrive" or "At Shangri-La Gavrok has booby-trapped the outside of the TARDIS in an attempt to kill the Doctor." read like plain statements.

You can take something in the form "the Doctor does this" or "this happens" out of context and it leaves open the question of when and where he does that, and the answer is "in the fictional series Doctor Who." Other sentences, say "the Doctor is doing this" sound like statements of fact. It comes up in a number of episodes. See changes I made to two paragraphs in Carnival of Monsters. I don't know if there's a particular grammatical principle I'm trying to think of. I think many episode pages need to be rephrased in places. --Howdybob 08:03, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Banishment of the daleks

Has this really been mentioned in DWM? Even if it has, is it worth keeping? Tim! 17:18, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I can't believe it merits an article. Do we have an article on unmade stories? That would be the best place for it (possibly in a "Fan myths" type section) if it deserves a mention at all. —Wh o uk (talk) 17:59, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I can support an article or a subsection on these stories, but there's no substantive source that this even exists, save for an apparent mention in DWM and a newsgroup. No way will this survive AFD. A story like Shada deserves an article because it was at least partially completed and was later adapted as a webcast, but otherwise I see no reason why this deserves its own article any moreso than Ian Briggs' never-produced Ice Time. 23skidoo 20:01, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

This is an article that deserves never to have existed - if the serial was never made, and probably never existed, why the Rassilon does merit an article (even one such as this, which consists of simply a short, embarrassing paragraph)?? Let's just bin the thing before it gets too silly. NP Chilla 15:51, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I have prodded. —Wh o uk (talk) 18:37, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I support that, but I think AFD might be a better idea, so that it can set a clear precedent. 23skidoo 19:10, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

If the PROD is removed, I'll take it AfD. That said, if it was mentioned in an unmade stories article, I would support a redirect. —Wh o uk (talk) 19:17, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

City of Death

The first two episdoe breaks are on the City of Death article, but the third is not there. In fact, the cliffhanger event (Kerensky's death) is not mentioned at all. Could someone do something about it - I'm not quite sure where it goes --Jawr256 17:45, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Episode lengths

I've added precise episode lengths to Rise of the Cybermen and School Reunion (which were based on the timestamps of fade-in and fade-out on my PVR recordings of the episodes). Rise of the Cybermen does indeed run about a minute long: so this has some relevance to the note about the lack of trailer. Since I dared do something different I'm sure I'm going to be summarily different, but please at least move this info to the note if you do that. Less certain about other articles. Perhaps we could do a timing project, also noting the nominal lengths. However: I presume the DVD releases all have the trailers stripped out anyway making the episode lengths variable? Gah. Morwen - Talk 00:48, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm kind of ambivalent about this. Where the episode lengths are really significantly shorter (re: The Mind Robber) is makes a bit of sense to note this, but it's probably better to be put in notes instead of in the infobox. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 00:51, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't think this level of detail is necessary. I know from all those In-Vision magazine of years gone by that no two episodes ever came in at the exact same length --some were a couple minutes short and some were a couple minutes long. As Khaosworks notes, if the episodes a really short or long, OK maybe mention it, but if we're talking about a minute or two then that's NN information as far as I'm concerned. 23skidoo 01:12, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

If it's a minute out, like Rise, and especially in that case as it affected the Next Time trail, I think it's worth being accurate. I wouldn't include seconds, but I don't mind the figures being rounded up/down. —Wh o uk (talk) 06:05, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Clean-up on Lost in Time

Can someone go through this? I'm skeptical as to the need for its existence in the first place since it's largely at present a list of contents (not to mention using some POV language). Perhaps it should be merged with Doctor Who missing episodes. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 02:03, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

I've given it a quick once-over and pulled out the POV bits I spotted. —Wh o uk (talk) 10:52, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Plotless serials

Do we have a list somewhere of serials without plot descriptions? I noticed Robots of Death lacks one, and may do this from the DVD before I have to return it. But it would be good to get a list. 213.107.21.212 17:29, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Erm... no, we don't have such a list. But chances are, if a serial has no plot decription, it'll be under the "Doctor Who stubs" section. Hope that helps! NP Chilla 19:26, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Ok, the list is

The Daleks has a cleanup tag on it for the synopsis
The Sensorites is far too short
The Romans has no plot
The Myth Makers has no plot
The Underwater Menace has no plot
The War Games is far too short
The Face of Evil is far too short
The Robots of Death has no plot
Image of the Fendahl has no plot
The Sun Makers has no plot
Nightmare of Eden has no plot
The Horns of Nimon has no plot
Shada has no plot
State of Decay ~~has no plot~~ is too short
Paradise Towers has no plot

Three stories also need completing: The Abominable Snowmen, The Web of Fear and The Seeds of Doom. I'd also suggest The Invasion of Time needs extension. NP Chilla also started City of Death and someone else completed it but without the same level of detail - Kerensky's death seems to be missing. This plot completion project has been one I have contributed to quite heavily over the past six months. The end is in sight! And can I reserve The Sun Makers. Litefoot 19:55, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm almost done with The Seeds of Doom (two episodes to go!), and will be, when time permits, progressing on each subequent Fourth Doctor serial in order, assuming no one gets there first. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 07:27, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to have another crack at City of Death; as Litefoot rightly says, I never finished it & am thus completely rewriting episodes 3 and 4 from the ground up (to include Kerensky's death, and so forth). NP Chilla 17:06, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Hello, I've started State of Decay. It's short by the standards of the others so far. I will attempt to track down my book and a video to lengthen, but if someone beats me to it, mazel tov. Samael7 11:00, 14 June 2006

Made some serious headway: The Sun Makers, The Abominable Snowmen, The Web of Fear, The Invasion of Time and The Underwater Menace now all have plots. It's The Romans next. Someone has had a go at Paradise Towers but it's too short and needs work. Litefoot 07:28, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Just extended State of Decay a bit, retaining the vast bulk of Samae's work. So this one can be ticked off too. Litefoot 09:16, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Also finished Nightmare of Eden and The Romans. Does anyone want to reserve any before I tackle the last dozen or so . Litefoot 21:08, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Made more progress, so the remaining list of plotless serials is:

The Myth Makers has no plot
The War Games is far too short
The Face of Evil is far too short
The Robots of Death has no plot
Image of the Fendahl has no plot
Shada has no plot
Paradise Towers is far too short

On top of this, as discussed above, khaosworks will finish The Seeds of Doom and NP Chilla will complete City of Death. I'll press on periodically with the others unless anyone else gets there first. Litefoot 06:41, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Peter Brachaki

Needs cleanup. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 16:00, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

I've done a little work and moved it to what appears from most sources to be the correct spelling. Angmering 21:51, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

I've taken away stub status in view of the length of the article. Litefoot 06:44, 06 July 2006 (UTC)

Listing options

User:Pkwebmaster Hi, Just enquiring as to what people would think of spliting the lists down (e.g. List of Doctor Who ____) so that we could have a classic series/new series split (For example, having List of Doctor Who Villians (Classic) and (New)). It seems to me that with the shows extensive history, that searching for a peice of Doctor Who knowledge on Wikipedia has become more like searching for a needle in a haystack. - 16:36 (GMT), 28 May 2006 Pkwebmaster

Actually, what needs to be done is to not keep adding every new monster to the list. I'd like to see the lists start looking like List of Doctor Who items, actually. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 15:54, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

But is treating the monster species like the items necessarily a good idea? Of course, most of the items can be dealt with by means of a single line (or possibly two), but can the same apply to a complicated species like (for instance) the Menoptra? After all - there are a lot more items in their retrospective list than the monsters and their equivalent list; natuarlly aliens and monsters require a lot more info than the average Pan-Galactic Gargleblaster-or-whatever-the-item-is (and YES, I'm aware that the Gargleblaster is from the wrong show...). NP Chilla 17:39, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

The biggest problem, to my mind, is that people are using the monster entries to regurgitate the plot of the story they appear in, which is redundant, since the episode/story articles already do that. Also, there are some entries which are not particularly notable or disproportionately long - Counseller Gray comes to mind, as do the Drahvins, or the "goodie" race in The Dominators. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 22:41, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree that excessive amount of plot elements in the lists should be avoided Tim! 17:10, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Doctor Who Movie?

I would also like to know what exactly we should do about the whole Doctor Who Television Movie Catagory thing. I am not sure whether we have done this or not, but if we have could we remove it as an objective. If we haven't, perhaps it is something we should dicuss. (Pkwebmaster 14:21, 29 May 2006 (UTC))

I've removed it. I don't think it's an issue anymore. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 14:36, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Template:Dalek Stories

There's a small dispute between Stephenb (talk · contribs) and... well, everyone else, really, about whether or not The Five Doctors is a "Dalek story" and therefore should be in the template. Welcoming opinions on this in an attempt to reach some kind of consensus on this at Template talk:Dalek Stories. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 01:14, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

"Everyone else" meaning about four other editors so far! But yes, opinions are still welcome - especially anyone who can say why "Dalek television stories" does not equate to "Television stories with Daleks in them". Stephenb (Talk) 17:32, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Tedious formatting issue

Boring query: in the infoboxes on the novels and audio dramas, story titles are quoted in italics, but in the infoboxes on the television serials they are not. I think this should be consistent, but which way around? Tim! 17:11, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Just noticed this: I think we should standardise it as non-italicised in the infoboxes, because it looks cleaner. The main purpose to italicise it in the article text is to distinguish titles from the normal text — that distinction is not needed in the infoboxes as they have their own fields. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 15:35, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Out-of-universe perspective

Might I recommend the proposed Wikipedia:Manual of Style (writing about fiction)? While there are many great Doctor Who pages on Wikipedia, some would be better with a greater use of an out-of-universe perspective, I suggest. Bondegezou 16:37, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Member Joining Question

I've fumbled around and aside of "signing in" I've seen nothing on how to actually join in other than the notice on attracting new members. So, how Do you get in?" I've also noticed that on the Missiing Adventures pages, you seem to be missing tons of information, not to mention the book covers. [ Adam ]

Just click on the link that says 'edit' and you're basically 'in'. If you want to be listed then just click on 'edit' in 'Participants' and type in your name. DonQuixote 19:44, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

It is not even necessary to join this project to edit Doctor Who articles - anyone can do that. Tim! 21:21, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Virgin and BBC novels

Just wanted to let y'all know that there are now stubs for all the stories in the following categories:

Virgin Missing Adventures
Virgin New Adventures

Eighth Doctor Adventures
Past Doctor Adventures

Please to feel free to 'have at', and fill in plot details and the like, doncha know. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ebyabe (talk • contribs)

Don't forget Who Killed Kennedy :) Tim! 16:52, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Just a side-note towards progress, since those lists are compleat in that they have the necessary articles for the corresponding books....

There should be articles written up for the Ninth and Tenth Doctor Adventures books, as well as a few others (i.e. Short Trips, &c). DrWho42 05:34, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

The Doctors and their personalities

Can I just ask - what has happened to the individual "Personality" sections of each individual Doctor's article (in particular, Doctors 5-8)? They used to be rich, interesting passages, now they are footnote-sized prose you could fit on the back of a postage stamp. Plus, it looks terribly biased when you consider that the Tenth Doctor's personality is longer than the other nine put together. NP Chilla 17:42, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Doctor Who Tie-in sites

Just wondering here wether we should consider changing "Doctor Who tie-in sites" into "Doctor Who tie-in sites and games", and maybe cleaning it up a bit seeing as the BBC do not update the "Defending the Earth" web adress anymore; just leaving the new games on the main page; and also because they haven't used any external sites since the Cybermen 2-parter. (Pkwebmaster 11:34, 11 June 2006 (UTC))

Overlong episode "plot" descriptions.

First of all I want to say that I very much appreciate all the hard work that is going into the Who episode articles. That said, most of them, in particular those of the new series, have incredibly long 'plot' section, that both lose their encyclopedic value for summarized, concise knowledge because of their length, and might possibly skew the articles a bit too much into an in universe perspective.

Furthermore, previous Wikipedia consensus on TV episode articles states "Elements which are best avoided in any episode article: A scene-by-scene synopsis. An overall plot summary is much better; the article should not attempt to be a replacement for watching the show itself, it should be about the show". I think this is sound advice.

So, before just chopping up these article, potentially upsetting some editors, I thought I'd ask here first whether or not my opinion on this is shared, and if so, in what way these sections can be best improved.--Codemonkey 04:50, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I think there are arguments for both approaches. If the overlong plot length is a concern then this is partly addressed by the brief summary at the beginning of each article. One argument in favour of longer plot summaries is that the episodes are broadcast first in the UK, then overseas several months later (although some American Wikipedia editors have an uncanny knowledge of the show before its US broadcast!). I think the length of the summaries is justified in the context of other articles, for example look at the plot summary for Great Expectations. DavidFarmbrough 08:41, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

If you don't have complete plot descriptions it would be hard to justify not having articles on all the minor characters, planets, concepts etc. Better to just say what happened and point all the rest at the story it came from. For example, look in Category:Middle-earth rivers — I think the approach we are following here is better in that we don't have so many of the really small stubs that some other fictional series have. Tim! 20:28, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I feel there is merit in both approaches, but the majority of plot summaries I have written have not been overly detailed. That's not to say I consider The War Games an acceptable level of detail for a ten parter mind you... As a major contributor of these summaries, I've long thought a guidline would be more helpful, but maybe as a first action we need to get all the plot summaries done (perhaps as relatively shorter versions). After all, there's only a handful left to do. I've also started using line breaks to denote episode breaks which, even on the shorter summaries, I feel helps the look and readability of the page, but again this is something that needs proper discussion and standardisatio. Litefoot 06:23, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

SPOILER!! Rose....

Just thought I'd ask here to check, but as it has now been confirmed that Rose is leaving at the end of this series how much are we willing to put this infomration into the articles with regards to spoiling? The Rose Tyler article already has this information, but the Doomsday page does not. I was just wondering as this is pretty much rating a ten on the Spoiler scale... The_B 11:02, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia contains spoilers. If something is verifiable, neutral, etc. then it should be put into articles, regardless of the damage done to those who may be potentially "spoiled".--SB | T 11:04, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

List of Doctor Who UNIT Personnel

Needs looking at. I'm not even sure the title of the article's appropriate. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 17:01, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Nice idea, but doesn't feel quite right. Can'r put my finger on a solution without being a bit brutal. --Litefoot 06:26, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Just List of UNIT personnel? Tim! 08:34, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Maybe. It is also a little bare, to boot. NP Chilla 10:10, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I think that it should go to AFD for fancrufty reasons, or require severe cleanup. However, I'm not going to nominate or touch it myself — why should I be the bad guy all the time? If people want this article in as it is and think it's acceptable, be my guest. But it really needs severe cleaning at the very least. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 04:31, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I also think it's AFD fodder, however I too won't touch it, though if I were to cast a vote it would be to merge it with the main UNIT article. 23skidoo 06:17, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Love & Monsters

Is this the first time a cast list for a story has all its entries wikified and active? (Not including Inside the Spaceship). --Litefoot 06:31, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

It appears so! Tim! 08:33, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Doctor Who episode nav template

Doctor Who: Season 1 (1963–64)

List of Doctor Who serials | Season 1 (1963) | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | Series 1 (2005) | 2

Above is my idea for a template to put at the bottom of episode articles for people to jump from episode to episode. Though after looking at how short the seasons got in the eighties I'm think about changing it to a Doctor by Doctor list. Any thoughts? --Jonathan D. Parshall 08:36, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I love it!!! Seriously, it's a great idea. Well done, Jon!!--NP Chilla 20:00, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I personally thinks it adds another layer of complexity to the page that isn't needed; this is as the template is too wide to fit neatly, and kind of confusing with a lot of numbers. If I want to visit a specific Doctor's seasons, I like typing in 'Eighth Doctor' and going in from there. Just my thoughts though. Liyster 03:20, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Liyster here, but for different reasons. Including the season numbers instead of names may make episodes hard to find, because not everyone knows which season the show was in, whereas they may be able to remember the Doctor who starred in it, or the creatures that featured in it. I suggest you focus more on that respect than a season-by-season breakdown. --JB Adder | Talk 07:22, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

"Notes" section in episode articles

I just stumbled across a couple of articles on episodes in the recent Doctor Who series and noticed that the "notes" section appears to be consistently inappropriately misused. The items in the list are numbered but aren't actually referenced from anywhere in the main article, instead being just a great big list of random trivia. I changed the sections in Fear Her and TARDISODE to bulleted "trivia" lists more in keeping with the style of other Wikipedia articles, but now that I notice this appears to be part of a standardized format used by this Wikiproject I'm bringing this up here before I go on a large-scale conversion spree. Bryan 06:50, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Heh. And I see that I've already been reverted on Fear Her. Bryan 06:51, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm with you, Bryan. It is inconsistent with general Wikipedia usage of "Notes". Moreover, I think there's a tendency to stick things in these lists which would be better handled as text in the main section of the article concerned. Bondegezou 14:44, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I also agree. According to the manual of style, "Notes" is intended for the use of actual article footnotes. These sections should be titled "Trivia", because that's what they are. Another concern I have (and it's something I am trying to curb) is the overabundance of original research in these sections. While the Doctor Who articles are very consistant with one another (this is good), they are out of sync with Wikipedia guidelines in general (this is bad). -- MisterHand 14:51, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I'll get going on a big conversion project tonight when I get home (I've got an alternate method in mind that won't cause as much cleanup work as my quick-and-dirty search-and-replace did on Fear Her so it should go relatively quickly :). I'll see what I can do about integrating some of it into the main body of the articles and stick {{citation needed}} where it looks appropriate to do so, but I'll be somewhat conservative on that since I've got a lot of stuff to do so extra sets of eyes will be most welcome. Bryan 15:39, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Nice job. -- MisterHand 14:14, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

The thing about the "Notes" sections is that, just like "trivia" sections, they should typically be reformatted into something more encyclopedic... for instance, information about the releases can go in a "Releases" (duh) section, information about the production in a "Production" section, etc., in addition to sections unique to that article where there are outstanding issues (eg Attack of the Cybermen#Authorship). And yes, everything should be sourced -- I've had it in the back of my mind to start doing this, largely because most of it can be sourced fairly easily. I did this at The Brain of Morbius, hopefully I or others can do it to the rest, too.--SB | T 03:19, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh, certainly; I don't consider the "trivia" sections I'm leaving in my wake to be permanent things (though I personally feel that it's not unreasonable to have some trivia in a list like this, there may be some that can't be integrated elsewhere cleanly but is still worth keeping). It's just an incremental improvement. Bryan 04:13, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't call them Trivia sections as I tend towards never including a Trivia section in any article on the grounds that if something is trivial it shouldn't be in the article at all. Generally speaking, the information in the Notes sections aren't easily categorisable into lots of different sections that would be more than a short sentence or two each, which is smaller than a whole section should be.

There is a logic to the structure that's used in that the notes tend to be kept in chronological order in relation to the story in question. I agree that anything that's genuinely OR shouldn't be there and notes like this can be excised or raised on the relevant article's talk page.

I'd suggest allowing slightly longer for the discussion before making changes to the hundreds of articles involved as I see that hardly any of the regular project editors have contributed to the discussion yet (and I've only just spotted it myself). I don't object to renaming from Notes if it gives the impression that they are footnotes (although in a large number of cases the notes could be footnotes if a number was just added at the relevant part of the plot section), but I'd not be in favour of Trivia as an alternative section heading. —Wh o uk (talk) 06:14, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree that although some of the information is trivial, most of it isn't. Maybe something like "story notes" would be preferable. Tim! 06:35, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree that caution is preferable here, and personally find much of the "trivia" to be very informative. Yes, there needs to be more structure perhaps, but at what expense? Litefoot 06:51, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Ideally, trivia should be incorporated into the article. However, there are always going to be a few misc things that need to be bullet-pointed and put into a trivia section. That's okay. Trivia isn't a dirty word, and not all trivia is necessary "trivial." See this excellent essay on trivia in Wikipedia: WP:TRIVIA -- MisterHand 14:14, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

And I note that that essay's first practical suggestion is never to call a section "Trivia" - it even suggests "Notes" as a suitable alternative :-) —Wh o uk (talk) 14:21, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Oops. Looks like that was added recently (this month, in fact). Interesting: by suggesting "Notes" this essay is now in conflict with the MOS. -- MisterHand 14:38, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

I've taken it back out, it seems reasonable to me for a guideline to take "precedence" over an essay in this manner. I also softened the wording of the prohibition on trivia sections since I see nothing inherently wrong with them myself - if nothing else they serve as a good repository for "work in progress" material that can be more solidly integrated into the article later. Bryan 04:22, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

While calling the section "Trivia" might be slighly inaccurate on account of a few non-trivial tidbits of information being present in some of them, the much more accurate section title "Big pile of miscellaneous facts" is inelegant. :) I've gone ahead and trivialized the sections for all episodes from Doctors seven through ten already, I'll pause on the rest for now but hopefully nobody's been following along and reverting because I've been doing more than just changing the section title. No matter what format ends up being settled on there's going to be an awful lot of cleanup work that still needs to be done, these note/trivia sections appear to be heavily laden with unsourced assertions and potential original research. I'm also a little dubious about the significance of some of the things mentioned. For example, in the Delta and the Bannermen article one of the items is "The motorbike ridden by Billy in this story is a Vincent, made by British manufacturer Vincent Motorcycles." Assuming it's true, I can't figure out why it's remotely worth mentioning. It's possible more context is needed.

My suggestion for what it's worth would be to incorporate story notes directly into the plot summary and where warranted create sections such as "Production" and "References in other Doctor Who fiction" to hold stuff that can be categorized by topics. That'd leave very little left over in the "miscellaneous" pile in most of the articles I've seen. Maybe even delete a few bits. Bryan 04:13, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

As per the above advice, I have been through all the New Adventures (and some Eighth Doctor Adventures) making changes along those lines. Bondegezou 15:56, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Can I just ask - are we using the 1.), 2.) etc. numbering or bulletpoints? We seem to have a bit of both in the various Notes/Trivia sections. --NP Chilla 19:57, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I've been switching over to bullet points since the order of the items isn't important and they aren't individually referred to. My philosophy is to default to bullet points for lists and only make them numbered if there's some specific significance to the numbering. Bryan 05:14, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Ah - I've been wondering about this change, and was looking to see if this had been discussed anywhere before changing "trivia" back into "notes". I'd agree with the person above who noted that there is sometimes useful information in these notes, along with also wanting to express a general disquiet for this section to became a repository for fannish speculation (one of my activities has been to excise notes that have become irrelevant/outdated or confirmed in the main article once the programme has actually been broadcast). Although, if editor TheDoctor10 were still active, he'd see this title change as constituting official permission to load all Doctor Who articles with his personal speculations.

Also, I think this note-bloat phenomenon might merely be a problem with the new series, where it is natural for fans to be speculating/adding information before broadcast. IIRC, the article format was put together before the new series started - personally, I'd prefer to keep the section as "notes" for the classic series, even though they usually aren't actual footnotes there either - there's no problem with people adding lots of barely relevant information on those articles. PaulHammond 20:25, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Following on SB's idea, and his excellent work on referencing The Brain of Morbius, I moved the trivia entries on the "Morbius Doctors" to their own section - it certainly seems noteworthy enough, and the information is presented from an "out-of-universe" perspective. I'm definitely in agreement that this should be done wherever possible - the articles just look better and read as more encyclopedic with more than just a plot description and a long trivia list. --Brian Olsen 23:58, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, the "notes" title for the section still rubs me wrong because Wikipedia's manual of style (and my own personal understanding of the language) gives that section title a specific meaning that's at odds with the contents. But although I think I'll resume changing it to "trivia" in the remaining articles soon, I'll proceed more slowly and see if I can do some reorganization along the lines of Brian Olsen's efforts as I go. Hopefully that'll keep the contents of the trivia sections actually trivial, and perhaps in some cases make the section vanish entirely. Bryan 04:14, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Doctor Who Themes And Title Sequences

I suppose one could write an article about the title sequence, I think it has been raised before... this one needs work or something Tim! 20:25, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Interesting find. I think that article, as such, should be redirected to Doctor Who theme music and a new article could be started focusing on the title sequence (using the theme music article as a guide). -- MisterHand 20:36, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. —Wh o uk (talk) 08:38, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

I've changed it to a redirect for now. -- MisterHand 14:16, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't think there's a need for a separate article on the title sequences. I'd rather see a section added to the Doctor Who theme music article. 23skidoo 15:22, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Key articles for Wikipedia 1.0

Hello! We at the Work via WikiProjects team previously contacted you to identify the quality articles in your WikiProject, and now we need a few more favors. We would like you to identify the "key articles" from your project that should be included in offline releases of Wikipedia based on their importance, regardless of quality. We will use that information to assess which articles should be nominated for Version 1.0 (not yet open) and later versions. Hopefully it will help you identify which articles are the most important for the project to work on. As well, please keep updating your Arts WikiProject article table for articles of high quality. If you are interested in developing a worklist such as this one for your WikiProject, or having a bot generate a worklist automatically for you, please contact us. Please feel free to post your suggestions right here. Thanks! Walkerma 01:13, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

I think Doctor Who, TARDIS and Dalek are probably the three culturally most important. Doctor Who includes several main article links to other articles which are relatively important such as List of Doctor Who serials and Doctor (Doctor Who). —Wh o uk (talk) 08:42, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Seconded. Perhaps too crufty, but Doctor Who theme music also has quite a lot of cultural impact and interest outside the Doctor Who fan community. My two cents, anyway.--SB | T 08:46, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Thirded, though I'd also add Doctor (Doctor Who) as one of the up-front articles. 23skidoo 15:21, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Here's what I think: at the moment, there is a grading system concerning the quality of articles on Wikipedia (the current system can be found here. So, I'm thinking, maybe we should submit all articles that are considered Good articles or better to WP1.0. --JB Adder | Talk 07:15, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Refrences to The Lion King in Doctor Who

I just discovered this article while going through the latest PROD list. It gave me a chuckle, though whoever created it needed a spell check for the title. Unless someone contests it being listed on PROD it'll be deleted in a few days. 23skidoo 15:30, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure why it was listed for PROD, when clearly this is featured article worthy! -- MisterHand 15:35, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

It did inspire me.--SB | T 22:20, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, a spell checker is needed for the article. However, the proposed deletion is, as necessary as it may be seen, can be avoided by combining all references "foreign" (unrelated) to the Doctor Who franchise into a single page. Who agrees with my proposal (and it's a serious one too)? --JB Adder | Talk 07:03, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Norman Kay

Hi people; we have a slight problem over persons named Norman Kay. "Our" (WikiProject Contract bridge) Norman Kay was a famous American bridge player, so we'll need a disambiguation of some sort. See Talk:Norman Kay for possible solutions. Duja 14:49, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Sontaran appearances

Sontaran television stories
Third Doctor: The Time Warrior
Fourth Doctor: The Sontaran Experiment \| The Invasion of Time
Sixth Doctor: The Two Doctors
Rutan television stories
Fourth Doctor: Horror of Fang Rock

Above is a Sontaran appearances box that I have created to follow those of the Daleks, Cybermen and Master. I've included the Rutans as they are the main enemies of the Sontarans. What do you think? --Jawr256 17:10, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Erm... well, my worry is that the Sontaran beasties do not merit a box of their own, considering how they only ever appeared in four stories. And as for the Rutans, well...!!--NP Chilla 18:10, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I also think such an infobox would be over-egging the pudding a tad. Angmering 20:01, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree - and you've missed A Fix with Sontarans :-) —Wh o uk (talk) 08:02, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Embargo

So. A Rather Significant Piece of Casting Information has been released by the BBC but is technically on embargo til midnight. Are we considering ourselves bound by that? Morwen - Talk 13:29, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

When Tennant was announced as the next Doctor both Angmering and I abided by the embargo, but that was we had less people who paid attention to the pages. I don't think anybody else will these days. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 13:43, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

I've been abiding by it too. Trouble is, we can't claim it's not verifiable if someone does put it up when it's clearly there. —Wh o uk (talk) 13:45, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

And someone has. Morwen - Talk 13:47, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Had a similar case over on Daedalus class battlecruiser#First battle of P3Y-229, where publically available casting information for the next season of Stargate SG-1 gave a strong indication of how part of the season-ender cliffhanger would resolve. Wikipedia contains spoilers so I see no problem with this sort of information being present. In this case it's only a day in advance of when it's "supposed" to be revealed anyway. Bryan 15:19, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeah - if we'd been given this information in confidence it would be another matter, but it's clearly leaked. I note outpostgallifrey's forum moderators have now basically given up firefighting all mentions of the actress's name, and have fallen back on asking just for no links to the press release. I half wonder whether we'll see a story on news.bbc.co.uk by the end of the day. ;) Morwen - Talk 15:31, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

The BBC have put a press release on their website that anyone can access, ergo the information is verifiable, ergo I feel it can go in Wikipedia. (You have to know the URL, but once you do, anyone can see it.) Had the BBC sent a press release around without making it publicly available (e.g. an e-mail only message or a website requiring a password), then I'm sure the information would have leaked out to fan circles but, in a sense, the information would not have been verifiable, ergo it would not be appropriate to put it on Wikipedia. In other words, if the BBC are too lazy to recognise how the world works these days, that's their problem! When they see lots of hits coming from Wikipedia, they'll learn to control the flow of information better. Bondegezou 15:37, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

I note that a couple of people have decided to blank Martha Jones (see Doomsday (rather ineffectually, to be honest). The way embargoes work is this

you tell people stuff upfront
they agree not to release it until specified time, because in future they know they might get their access cut off to future releases done this way

I can't concieve of anything that might be illegal here, on our part or the leakers (embargoes generally aren't as formal as NDAs, you see, they're informal). As to immoral: i'm not even sure that whoever leaked it is actually behaving immorally. We certainly aren't behaving immorally by taking advantage of a leak: we have no agreement with the BBC at all not to use this information, formal, informal, legal or otherwise. We might, as I indicated before, choose not to use information that is embargoed in an effort to present ourselves as having high standards: but to be honest what's the point? Morwen - Talk 19:34, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Morwen is right, we are not under any legal agreement not to disclose. And the information itself isn't illegal in the way, say, official military secrets are. I also think that the only moral side is to warn our readers to look away if they don't want to know. It's out there, verifiable and published, nothing to stop us using in IMO. -- sannse (talk) 20:03, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

It's up on Outpost Gallifrey without any fuss -- Litefoot 21:03, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Yep. Is it worth it waiting until GMT midnight (which, at the time of writing, is less than two hours off) to pop the thing in, or should we just shove it in and hope no-one notices? Heck, that last part came out a lot more malicious than it sounded in my head... <wanders off, mumbling and rambling incoherently...> --NP Chilla 21:19, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Question, because I missed part of this. Do you mean to say that the BBC announced on its website the new companion, yet requested an embargo until sometime after the information was put online? If so that's even more stupid than the BBC PR flacks making up that mostly fictional press release about Eccleston's departure. If you want something embargoed ... duh ... don't put it online. Once it's on the public Internet (as opposed to an intranet, or some password-protected private site) it's fair game and to be honest no one is under any obligation to honor such an embargo. 23skidoo 22:24, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

It was supposedly a link in an email only sent to the press, and then someone leaked it. However, the page itself was not password protected, although originally the only way to access it would have been if you knew the exact link. The_B 22:46, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, fair enough. I saw the URL at the Trek BBS this morning and there was no indication that it was a "private" link. Still, they should know better. A better way to avoid something like this would have been to just do a straight e-mailing of the press release rather than relying on a webpage that anyone could access... granted it's not perfect, but then I remember the days when my newsroom used to get embargoed press releases sent by fax. 23skidoo 22:51, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

One other obvious way to do it would be to give everyone a different (unique and hard to create random working ones) link, then you can tell who leaked it. Morwen - Talk 23:58, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

AFD listings

Doctor Who New Series 3 (AfD discussion)

The aforementioned articles have been listed at Articles for deletion. Please contribute to the discussion. Uncle G 11:08, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I've voted in favor of deleting the above as we don't have individual articles for Series 1 or 2 (at least I don't think we do) and any details about series 3 would either be covered in the main article or the individual episode articles that will no doubt be created once details emerge. 23skidoo 13:13, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Companion templates

I've had a try at making some companion navigation templates at User:Percy Snoodle/CompanionTest. To give you an idea what to expect, here's the First Doctor one:

Companions of the First Doctor

... Susan		Vicki			Sara	Dodo
Ian				Katarina				... Ben
Barbara								... Polly
			Steven
^	^	^	^	^	^	^	^	^	^

What do people think? Percy Snoodle 15:53, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I see what you're trying to do, but I had to think about a bit. Unfortunately, if one has to actually think about it to figure it out, it's probably not that useful as a template. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 17:40, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. Do you have any suggestions for how I might make it clearer? Percy Snoodle 18:42, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Looks neat. I did something like that for a newsletter ages ago. (In MacPaint!) But it was vertical and included the episode names down the left side. I don't know how wiki tables work so I can only guess if you could do it that way. Algr 17:57, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Vertical text doesn't work well in HTML; It's a limitation addressed in CSS3. Percy Snoodle 18:15, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree it's an interesting idea, but I also agree it's too complicated and busy for the actual companion pages (I looked at your page, and the 7th Doctor in particular is...well, complex, to say the least - fanboy in me likes it, wikipedian in me doesn't). I think any template would just have to have the companions listed in order they joined up - trying to convey more information than that isn't needed, since it'll all be in the pages linked to anyway. --Brian Olsen 23:33, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it works especially well, but it's an interesting idea, we could certainly do with a kind of companion-timeline thing. Having the main flow be vertical doesn't imply the actual writing has to be rotated 90degrees... Morwen - Talk 09:44, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

See {{British Leyland}} for a dgood exmaple of the execution of a timeline, but I suggest you do it by series/season (tricky) or by Doctor (simpler) than story or year. GraemeLeggett 10:07, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, that's the template that inspired me to try. I initially thought about doing just two templates - one for Docs 1-7 and one for docs 9+ - if you think that's a better plan, I'll give it a go. Percy Snoodle 12:42, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia/Wikimedia has a custom markup designed to make timelines easier - you can read about it at meta:EasyTimeline -- Chuq 04:38, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Just to note on the 7th Doctor companions template that Kadiatu is not a companion. Tim! 08:48, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Colonel Crichton

Comments, please. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 01:22, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Delete, surely? I can't believe this even comes close to being notable enough for Wikipedia. Angmering 06:26, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Delete - if this stays up I'm writing one on Doctor Sweetman. Litefoot 06:32, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Delete. Non-notable. --S iva1979^{Talk to me} 06:46, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, will someone do up the AFD or shall I? The only thing I might be able to raise in Crichton's defence is that he appears in Big Finish's Project: Valhalla as the Deputy Director of the Forge. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 06:51, 6 July 2006 (UTC)