Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Doctor Who/Archive 2

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This archive page covers approximately the dates between 21 May 2005 and 26 September 2005.

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Archive
Archives

Contents

Stub

How many spaces should be placed between the end of an article and a stub? There does not seem to be any defined answer at all, even within Doctor Who articles. Maybe we should have this mentioned on the WikiProject Page. --bjwebb 19:38, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

My preference for any stub message is to have two empty lines seperating it from the text, just so that the article doesn't obviously flow into it. But I also cannot remember seeing anything about that in the style guides. Dewet 19:41, 21 May 2005 (UTC)
Not really something that we need to put in a style guide, I think. Just whatever looks right to you, I guess. --khaosworks 20:34, May 21, 2005 (UTC)

Minor characters

We've been getting a number of these lately - articles about characters that appeared only once and whose details are really covered in the articles about the episodes where they appeared and are otherwise non-notable. Rather than creating loads of stub articles and/or duplicating information that is already (or should be) in the episode articles, and then finding ourselves locked up in VfD discussions, maybe it's time to create a Minor characters in Doctor Who along the lines of Minor characters from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and start redirecting. My only fear is that given the 40-year history of the programme, there's going to be a crapload of these entries if we don't have some criteria for inclusion, even when it comes to this list.

Recently, we've had Pete Tyler, which I tried to get up to a decent level, but honestly, it shouldn't have been created in the first place. We've had Doctor Constantine, which is up for VfD, and now the latest one is Mavic Chen, which - to be frank - I don't see the point of. Thoughts? --khaosworks 09:01, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

If there is no more information that can be found about a character other than what is (or should be) contained in the episode article then surely we should just create a page with the characters name which redirects to the episode about the article. This would save on a really long minor character list. --bjwebb 14:08, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
That works for me. If there is a bit more to say, it can be added to an article as a subheader. Pete Tyler, for example, could and should be a subchapter of the Rose Tyler article. OTOH Adam, being an official (albeit short-term) companion, qualifies for his own article (just as Katarina and Sara Kingdom do). But single-appearance villains and supporting characters IMO shouldn't qualify for their own articles unless there is something spectacular about them. 23skidoo 05:47, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Doctor Who theme music

Someone who knows a bit more about the music side should take a look at this and see what can be expanded. Right now all it is is just a cut-and-paste of the "Music" section of the main Doctor Who article. Information on the theme from History of Doctor Who should be merged in here somehow, and maybe a bit more discussion on the various arrangements of the theme from Darbyshire to Peter Howell to Dominic Glynn, et al. --khaosworks 21:47, May 27, 2005 (UTC)

Doctor articles

Any progress on giving each doctor an article? I have infobox and nav templates in mind. GraemeLeggett 15:25, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I still plan to do them, it's a matter of sitting down and organising it and writing it properly. I'm in the middle of an apartment move, and the new series is really attracting all my attention at the moment, so I was going to put it off until after the series ends. Doesn't stop you from doing it yourself, of course. I would suggest though, that you create sandbox pages and let everyone have a go at them before putting anything up since this is going to be a major effort and change (not to mention changing all those Wikilinks). --khaosworks 16:16, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)
a) it doesn't have to be your work, only.
b) initially it'll be mostly cut and paste, and the meat will develop later as more specific doctor/actor stuff gets in there.
I'll have done an example layout by a few days time. GraemeLeggett 09:52, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Actually I've gotten something together already, on my user page: Navigation example and Box example. Early opinions welcome. The colours are left over from the original templates I used template:tank and afv nav templates
Looks promising. Couple of things that spring to mind: "The Regenerations of The Doctor on TV" is unweildy as a title. Why not simply, "The Doctors", as "Other Doctors" already covers the rest of the usual suspects. Also, the character infobox has the companions and series listing in the wrong cells, but that's just a format problem. --khaosworks 12:07, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
Yep, formatting alright, I don't know how to keep the text in the lefthand box top aligned and it looked bad hovering around the middle of the lists, so I split it over two. GraemeLeggett 13:09, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Have a look at Template:Doctorwhocharacter and see if you can use some of the code from that. --khaosworks 13:23, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
I've made a Box example based on Template:Doctorwhocharacter see my user site User:Bjwebb
Yes, that one looks better. Minor niggles - "Doctor Who Doctor" looks odd - how about "The Doctor" or "The Doctors"? Also, is there a better way to label it rather than "Article Navigation"? --khaosworks 15:42, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
We might as well adopt that then, fancy fiddling with the Doctor nav template too? GraemeLeggett 15:28, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
It looks good to me, save for one little niggling point: the "series" number in the top section seems redundant if we're listing both the years right above it, and the exact seasons themselves in the "Article navigation" section below it.... – Seancdaug 16:00, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
The upper one is the number of seasons for theat Doctor, the lower for navigating to the appropriate places listing the stories. It could be "related articles" rather than "article navigation" - that might clear up the confusion. GraemeLeggett 16:55, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Or, we could dispense with the "article navigation" header altogether, and have the first "Series" read "No. of seasons". --khaosworks 17:10, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

I've created a Nav. box based on Template:Doctorwhocharacter on my User Page. The only thing I'm not sure about on it is the bottom bar - Should it be in a different colour, if so what? Also for the Doctor infobox, I agree Doctor Who Doctor does sound strange, but the Doctor(s) could be mixed up with the character a a whole (The Doctor (Doctor Who)). Any suggestions? Fell free to make sensible edits to my user page. Finally, where are we going to create the sandbox Doctor articles. --bjwebb 19:28, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

That was the point of my suggestion really. Having the top read "The Doctor" and linking that to The Doctor (Doctor Who) would indicate that as the parent article, and all the First Doctor, Second Doctor... etc. articles as daughters of that. Hierarchically, it makes sense. I personally think the bottom bar colour is fine, myself. As for the sandbox, I'll create Wikipedia:WikiProject Doctor Who/sandbox right now. --khaosworks 19:39, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
I see what you mean about the title, but wouldn't something like Regeneration of The Doctor be clearer? Also, are we going to have individual sandbox pages for each doctor Wikipedia:WikiProject Doctor Who/sandbox/Forth Doctor? --bjwebb 20:15, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Um, too elaborate. We may be overthinking it a bit too much here or uItalic textnderestimating our readership. I think "The Doctor" is clear enough, and if they click on it they will see the main article which explains all about regenerations. And the Fourth Doctor, etc. article itself should start by saying that the article is about the whichever incarnation. There should be no real confusion.
As for subpages, you can always create subpages on your own userpages temporarily (User:Bjwebb/Whatever page name, for example). if they are defunct and you want to delete them, just tag them for speedy delete, or just tell me and I'll delete them for you. --khaosworks 20:40, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
I have started a Fourth Doctor sandbox article at Wikipedia:WikiProject Doctor Who/sandbox and copied it to User:Bjwebb/Fourth Doctor. I think using my own user name would be a better place than the sandbox because we can edit more than one Doctor at once, but in separate places. Should I have all the Doctor sandboxes on my user name so they are all in one place? --bjwebb 21:05, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Ah, just had a fiddle with the sandbox version. GraemeLeggett 09:04, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I've started the Ninth Doctor sandbox article at User:Bjwebb/Ninth Doctor. Please add to it. Also, we could start with changing all [[Name of Actor|Nth Doctor]] links to [[Nth Doctor]], should this be added to the to-do list? --bjwebb 19:41, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I added a little bit to the last paragraph, in the sandbox, of the fourth doctor article about douglas adams as story editor. I would love some feedback Sean Black 21:13, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)
So are we ready to activate the Fourth Doctor then. I think so. GraemeLeggett 12:05, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Personality section's still blank, though. I'm always uncomfortable about putting up an article that doesn't at least read like it is "finished" - at least for the moment. --12:58, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)
I just started the personality section. I want to do a rewrite on the first paragraph of the story style section, too. Sean Black 22:47, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Go to it - that's what the sandbox is there for, and while what's there needs polish, the structure looks pretty good. I've been staying mostly out of it so far because it's been a very busy fortnight, but I give full notice that once I have time to settle down after the end of the series this weekend I shall be mercilessly editing these articles. But then again, the longer-time members of this wikiproject know how I am with these things. ;-). --khaosworks 23:18, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)


(Can't be beggared to type in the right number of colons) I've taken the 4th doctor article from the sandbox and put it at The Fourth Doctor. No point in waiting, get out there and start editing and adding.GraemeLeggett 15:07, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Well, first thing is that I've moved it to Fourth Doctor for a start. :) --khaosworks 15:11, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)
Which Doctor shall we work on next in the sandbox? How about the Ninth as he is the current? (I know he might be leaving in the next episode, but we won't be seeing the Tenth for that long in it and he only starts properly in the Christmas Special) --bjwebb 15:37, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Please could someone with admin capabilities delete User:Bjwebb/Fourth Doctor for me now that the Fourth Doctor article is up and running.
How does the Ninth Doctor sandbox look now. Do you think its ready? --bjwebb 14:34, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Be bold and move it into place, it's fine.--TimPope 17:05, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I've got a problem - all the live Doctor articles so far are in Category:Doctor Who Doctors under their number. What should the Tenth Doctor go under? --bjwebb 9 July 2005 18:08 (UTC)
Hmm. I'm stumped. --khaosworks July 9, 2005 18:26 (UTC)
I've got it. If you put " " before the number (e.g [[Category:Doctor Who Doctor| 10th Doctor) for all the Doctors it will just have a list of them without sections. However, at the moment only Sixth Doctor and Ninth Doctor are doing this; Tenth Doctor and Fourth Doctor remain in their sections. Could this be to do with the cache not updating? See Category:Doctor Who Doctors. I got the idea from Category:Positional numeral systems. --bjwebb 9 July 2005 18:46 (UTC)
To clear the cache on categories, you need to delete the category line entire from the article, save, then re-add the line, and save. That will clear it up. I've done that for the Tenth and Fourth Doctor articles, but the Tenth is still going before everyone else in the category. --khaosworks 19:55, July 9, 2005 (UTC)
Right. However, now that there are no headings we can asign a diferent first letter/number. I am using A, then we can have B when the eleventh comes along and so on. (If anyone is intrested, this is the way Base 16 is usually written.)

Page for revival

Would it make sense to hae a page about the new Doctor Who serieses, seperate from a section in History of Doctor Who? This could contain history that is in there, along with casting and episode info and suchforth. Morwen - Talk 08:55, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Wouldn't all that be covered in the other articles anyway? GraemeLeggett 09:17, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Yes, it would bring together information that is currently split over many other articles. Also it could have overall view of the plot arc - which is currently a weak spot. Morwen - Talk 11:02, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
There really is no plot arc to cover (as we don't really have all the facts), unless you want to start listing all the possible deriviations of Bad Wolf, which is speculative, not encyclopedic. Actually, what the History of Doctor Who article could use is to split up into various eras - the 60s, the 70s and so on, not so much an article specifically about the current series. Still, we've only got 3 more episodes to go... --khaosworks 11:30, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
Problem is, that lots of places are linking to [[History of Doctor Who#The 2000s]] as if it was an article about the revived series. Possible individual articles about each Doctor (mentioned above, I think) would be useful here. We'll see. Morwen - Talk 11:39, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I know what you mean - if you do put a page together, what I suggest is that you do it as a daughter article of the History article, much like History itself is a daughter article of the main Doctor Who article. --khaosworks 11:44, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
Having daughter articles of the History article sounds a good idea and why not do it for all the eras? --bjwebb 19:34, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Hence my "to-do" entry above. :) --khaosworks 20:40, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

Adding a series field to Template:Doctorwhobox

Looking at the Fourth Doctor box that's on the sandbox, I think it's a good idea to add a "series" field to the infobox we have on the various serials/episodes so the reader can jump straight to the particular season (as opposed to the on-hindsight-cumbersome method of clicking on the "serial" wikilink that gives you the whole list of serials without jumping to the proper year). Over the course of the day (starting in about an hour) I'll be adding

|series=[[List of Doctor Who serials#Season 1 (1963-64)|Season 1]]

and so on as appropriate to the various infoboxes. The field won't show up in the box because it's not defined in the template yet, but this is so we can get all the episodes/serials done before activating the field and prevent unsightly {{{blanks}}}. So, if you're wondering what I'm doing (and I welcome help!), that's what's happening. I have the additional field added to the template in a preview box, and will activate it once the updates are done. --khaosworks 13:31, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

Just a bit of hair-splitting, but should you be using the term "season" or the term "series" since this is a British production? 23skidoo 14:41, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
As I explained to Dudegalea (I think), due to a historical quirk everything prior to Series 1 (2005) was referred to as "Season X" by the fans. The new series is properly called "Series 1". The BBC never really used "Series" or "Seasons" for the classic series, just production codes. That's why the List of Doctor Who serials is organised like that. The field is properly labeled as "series" to reflect British usage, but the designation of indidivual seasons/series will be to reflect the fan designations of the various years. --khaosworks 15:01, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)
No worries. I was just concerned someone might get enthusiastic and try and change all the references to "seasons" to "series". Personally I've always found the British use of the term "series" to be confusing since series usually refers to an entire run of programs, rather than just a particular "volume" for lack of an alternate term. Incidentally, I added a note to the Rose article to explain the fact the BBC decided to start the count over, even though many fans still refer to it as Series 27, Episode 1. That will hopefully prevent someone from making a "correction" to the infobox later. 23skidoo 17:07, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

All done. Hope I didn't miss any. --khaosworks 16:44, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

Telos

I've gone ahead and fleshed out the Telos article, however, I'm not too sure if it really needs to be, instead being redirected to the Cyberman article. Who's prepared to give their opinion about this? --JB Adder | Talk 05:41, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)

Telos at least as the distinction of appearing in more than one serial. --khaosworks 12:20, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)

Doctor field in serials

I think we should change the Doctor field for the Doctor Who serial pages from the actors name to the number and link to that Doctor, ready for the Doctor articles e.g First ([[First Doctor|First]]). Anyone think otherwise? --bjwebb 14:43, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Obviously me, as I reverted it. It seems incongruous, seeing as the infobox holds all real world information, to then suddenly link to an article about a fictional character. The way the plot summaries are written, the incarnation of the Doctor is always specified at the start. --khaosworks 14:46, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)
Fair enough, I see your point, I hadn't noticed it before. 100,000 BC however doesn't make any refrence to which incarnation. Do you think my change to it is O.K.? Do you think "the first incarnation of the Doctor (Doctor Who)" would be better. --bjwebb 14:55, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Either one is fine by me. --khaosworks 14:59, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)
I think both now belong there "nth Doctor (Actor name)". Not impossible. GraemeLeggett 14:58, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
khaosworks does have a point about all the other information being real life. Maybe "Actor name (nth Doctor)" would be better. Does everyone agree with this? --bjwebb 15:02, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
That might work better, since in the character articles we do it "Doctor (actor)" for the preceding and succeeding fields. So it makes sense that it's the other way around for real world stuff. --khaosworks 16:10, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

Doctor Who user page

Does anyone else think that a template similar to the stub objects should be created to proudly display on the user's userpage that they are a member of the Doctor Who project? I'd be happy to make it, unless amazing graphics are wanted, I'm not god at Photoshop!

TimMorris 19:52, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The Doctors meet

How can different regenerations of the Doctor meet each other? - this breaks the laws of time. --bjwebb 15:20, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The law of time are more like... guidelines, really. Besides, we've seen that the laws of time can be broken, just with nasty consequences, so they're not physical laws (but let's not go into the Blinovitch Limitation Effect discussion...). Time Lords might not want to do this because it's a bad idea ("Two of us in the same place... created a vulnerable spot" - Father's Day), but both The Three Doctors and The Five Doctors show that the Council is willing to tolerate crossing one's own timestream in the "gravest of circumstances". In addition, even if it is a physical limit (and for that see Mawdryn Undead and the two Brigadiers), Time Lords — in particular the Third Doctor — seem to have the ability to be outside of, or be able to resist changes in time (The Time Monster, Invasion of the Dinosaurs), so that may account for things not going boom when Time Lords cross their own timestreams.
The Parting of the Ways suggests a more intriguing possibility that spin-off writers have only hinted that, that each incarnation of the Doctor is literally a different person (the Ninth certainly talks as if he will never see Rose again). With the same memories, perhaps, but in every other way different. (I like to think of them as analogous to siblings, which may explain why they get on each others' nerves) As Lawrence Miles suggests in About Time 5, regeneration may be the reason why Time Lords can meet their previous selves (and why Borusa in The Five Doctors didn't simply dump multiple versions of each incarnation of the Doctor into the Death Zone). --khaosworks 15:50, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)

A possibility: as the doctors (and possibly others from Gallifrey) can reincarnate, they use a euphanism/figure of speech. Alternatively, given the full definition of the Tardis' name, the next doctor comes from an alternative dimension.

Bad Wolf

Is it Rose herself who is Bad Wolf or Rose-and-the Tardis entity? Is the Tardis scattering the clues on its journeys?

Series 2 (28)

Should a new page for the next series be set up yet?

Will Jack return? As he refers to himself and the Doctor as Time Agents he probably has a different point of origin to the Doctor.

Jack will return sometime in the new series. As for a page, no. I think List of Doctor Who serials#Series 2 (2006) covers everything. --bjwebb 16:53, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Jack will return apparently in episode 5, I heard that somewhere on the BBC TimMorris 16:55, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
We know for sure he won't be in the first production block, and that will consist of the Christmas Special, Episode 1 and Episode 2 ("School Reunion"). --khaosworks 17:54, Jun 25, 2005 (UTC)

Tennant confirmed?

List of Doctor Who serials claims David Tennant has been confirmed for series 3. Is this accurate? According to The People on 3 July he's signed for three series, but does that mean he will actually do all three? According to Outpost Gallifrey, he said in an earlier TV Times interview that he would "wait and see what happens" before doing series 3. Martpol 6 July 2005 12:46 (UTC)

K9 to return?

Both "The Mirror" and "The Sun" have run reports today that K9 will be coming back for atleast one episode. He will be voiced again by John Leeson. "The Mirror" claims that the BBC Doctor Who Team will be making a new K9 for the story "School Reunion" and will be central to the plot with the Doctor and Co's battle with "The Krillitanes". RTD has already mentioned the "Krillitanes" in his DWM column this month. Would be inclined to treat the K9 story as speculation until we have heard it from more authoritive and reliable sources -- HeyWayne ( Talk • Contributions ) 07:55, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I read all this today and we've already noted the K-9 rumours, so this doesn't make it any more confirmed - it's suggestive and makes it more concrete, of course, but bar an official source it's still rumour. No need to elaborate more. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 07:58, August 24, 2005 (UTC)
Yep, very aware of the rumour mill concerning K9 - Just providing information (even if it is speculative) at the moment for the Wiki pages - Don't quite have the bandwidth yet to pull together anything significant. Shall continue to keep this side of Wiki appraised with any new developments :-) -- HeyWayne ( Talk • Contributions ) 08:15, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

The BBC Press Office has officially confirmed K9's appearance on Doctor Who. Source: [BBC Press Office] -- HeyWayne ( Talk • Contributions ) 09:21, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Project Breadth

I would prefer that we follow the example of Futurama, Lost and the like. Reduce all these episode articles to summaries split by series/season. Wikipedia is not a Doctor Who wiki, and in this case, less is more because episode summaries are far more easy to read, being grouped in time- and plotline order.

I'm of the belief that very few individual TV episodes are encyclopedic on their own, and creating them puts us more in the realm of being a bad TV Tome or IMDB. On the whole, I can think of less than a dozen individual episodes across all of TV history which deserve encyclopedic entries because they had lasting cultural influence -- think on the scale of Who shot J.R.? episode arc or perhaps the M*A*S*H finale.

At some point, it will become too much, as we get people putting out episode articles for every Seinfeld, Cheers, M*A*S*H, Star Trek, 24, Dr. Who, The Sopranos, South Park, Futurama, etc. -- it will be just too much.

Truthfully, I am a big fan of this and other shows, but we need to temper that with the goal of this project. Use the other outlets, like topic-specific Wikis. -- Netoholic @ 15:49, 2005 Jun 21 (UTC)

Various different editors have written synopsis of differing lengths, and far fewer have suggested that they should be reduced, your comments being the second that I have seen. None of the episodes have been challenged on Vfd, and is episode cruft any worse than the over abundance of geo-stubs, school entries, entries for individual railway stations etc. etc. etc.? --TimPope 17:18, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
No, but said cruft of all sorts should be culled; we're no exception. Especially when this information is already readily available elsewhere and in much more detail. I'm thinking primarily of the Doctor Who Reference Guide: they already have every classic serial, every New and Missing Adventure, every Telos novella, and the vast majority of Big Finish and BBC output. Why are we replicating (and in less detail) what they've done in a general encyclopedia? I tend to agree that full story outlines should only exist here for especially notable serials or episodes, with brief synopses for others of lesser note and external links. -- Guybrush 30 June 2005 18:36 (UTC)
That is an argument for deleting the whole of wikipedia, as all of the information exists elsewhere. One reason that I think justifies inclusion is that wikipedia has a neutral point of view, something which few other sources have. Many will say, for example, The Twin Dilemma is the worst episode ever, but here, we can just describe it as it happened. I think there is sufficient information available (excluding the plot summary) to make an interesting article out of each episode, some of them have extensive notes, especially the new series. If you think some "especially notable" serials deserve a synopsis... who would ever be able to agree which episodes are such... and from a neutral point of view, surely all serials should be viewed as equally notable. --TimPope 30 June 2005 18:47 (UTC)
I'm with Guybrush on this. It seems to me odd that, say, Creatures of Beauty should have its own entry. A music album with equivalent sales wouldn't get past the notability criterion as policed by WP:MUSIC! If it was put up for a VfD, I can't see it surviving. I'd hope to see more focus on informative articles about key people that bring together information from different sources rather than simply regurgitating what the likes of the Doctor Who Reference Guide offers. If the article contained something beyond basic credits, maybe, but not as it is. Bondegezou 16:48, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
I disagree with the above. Iff someone is going to take the trouble to write a good article about an episode, let the episode have its own article (see Category:Star_Trek:_TNG_episodes for instance). If not, merge by season. There's no reason why we should outsource material to other wikis; the criterion should be the length and quality of episode articles. Radiant_>|< 08:04, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)

Image:10docs.jpg

Shouldn't the Tennant picture be replaced with one of him actually as the Doctor? --bjwebb 15:27, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I've put something together. I hope Khaosworks doesn't mind me messing around with his image.... – Seancdaug 17:14, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)
It'll do until a better picture of him in his new Doctor duds comes along... --khaosworks 08:47, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)

Italicisation

Just popped in and am pleased to see the Doctor Who project alive and well. One thing, though: why no italicisation of story titles on first mention? This seems to conflict with general Wikipedia policy. Martpol 21:15, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Force of habit, mostly. Started out not italicising (being ignorant of the general MoS guideline) and then kept on doing it. It has been corrected on some articles but not others. --khaosworks 22:45, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)
Thanks. Just wanted to check before I italicised each one I came across. Martpol 07:34, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Tenses

Just a stylistic question: which tense is preferred when talking about episodes? I would suggest the present tense; after all, the episodes (mostly) still exist. For example, isn't it better to say "episode four features Colin Baker's face in the closing credits", as it still does when viewed today, than "episode four featured Colin Baker's face in the closing credits", which while technically correct seems a bit odd to me? Not sure if there's a general Wikipedia concensus on this sort of thing...thoughts? -- Guybrush 30 June 2005 15:28 (UTC)

I think we can agree on present tense when telling the plot of the episodes, but for the notes and analysis I must confess that my preference is the past tense, primarily because it's been drilled into me in academic historical writing to use it as it sounds more scholarly. The present tense is not technically wrong, but it really still is a past event, not a current one, irrespective of whether it's recorded or not. --khaosworks June 30, 2005 15:47 (UTC)

Plot summaries

I agree with there being a short synopsis for each serial, followed by a full plot summary. However, some of the summaries are unnecessarily long and detailed. See Spearhead from Space for what I think is a good maximum length summary for any story up to 7 episodes long. Then see Doctor Who and the Silurians for something considerably more detailed. Would anyone actually read a summary this long? Do people object to me editing a few summaries down to a more manageable size? Martpol 7 July 2005 09:02 (UTC)

Oddly enough, I wrote both summaries. The reason Spearhead from Space is that short is because it was one of the first summaries I wrote. I've always intended to go back to it and write more, but never got around to it. To be honest, I like the more detailed summaries. Which are the ones you want to whittle down? --khaosworks July 7, 2005 09:26 (UTC)
As further examples, I think the summaries for Terror of the Autons, Frontios, The Caves of Androzani are too long. But I'm willing to be guided by consensus on this. What do other people think? Martpol 7 July 2005 10:42 (UTC)
personally, I think Khaosworks' summaries are more like long precis, but I'm not in a position to take time to formulate punchier versions. They also make the overviews look very short - but I don't think we need a plot overview, a short precis and then a long precis - so it may as well stick like that. GraemeLeggett 7 July 2005 11:07 (UTC)
I also like the long summaries... I tried writing a punchy summary for the audio drama Project: Lazarus which worked out quite well, but I'm presently writing one for Zagreus and it defies all my attemps at conciseness unfortunately ;) --TimPope 7 July 2005 17:27 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a spoilerroom, or wikipedia is not cliff notes

I noticed this article when I was looking through the discussion of WP:WWIN. Should we be worried at the moment? --JB Adder | Talk 05:00, July 15, 2005 (UTC)

It just looks like a rule proposal from more than six months ago from someone who only wants Wikipedia to be about stuff like nuclear physics and Shakespeare (there is a faction of wiki-users with the elitist view that 'pop culture'-based articles - otherwise known as "something-cruft" -- have no place in Wikipedia). I see no indication that this rule actually was implemented and I'm sure it would be widely opposed as it would require the deletion of literally hundreds of articles, many of which have been Featured Articles in the past. I'd pay it no mind unless we start seeing a rash of Votes or Deletion nominations all of a sudden. 23skidoo 12:29, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

New Photos for Actors

Now that we have individual articles for each Doctor, shouldn’t we try and get new photos up for the pages on the actual actors with what the look like today or recently? --AEdwards User Talk 17:50 EDT 19 July, 2005

Sounds like a good idea. I think its O.K. to change the pictures as long as a suitable replacement is found. (Preferably not fair use.) --bjwebb 16:22, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

New series episode articles

The Sunshine Camp has been created though I have never seen this title mentioned anywhere. What do people think about creating these as there is going to be very scant information to fill an article, and names are probably very likely to change before broadcast? --Tim Pope 21:57, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Bad practice since they can only be a stub/article full of empty sections - one could de-link them to prevent them being used, which is a little less drastic than VfD but quite tidy. GraemeLeggett 08:28, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
Very bad practice. This should have been speedy deleted the moment it was stumbled across. I've half a mind to speedy delete it, myself, but I don't think it fits the criteria anymore. I've dropped a note to Iain k to ask him not to add any more. --khaosworks 08:37, July 20, 2005 (UTC)
I'm redirecting it to List of Doctor Who serials for the time being. --khaosworks 08:39, July 20, 2005 (UTC)
I added The Satan Pit as a note to the Series 2 section. I also did a quite Google for "The Sunshine Camp" but I didn't come up with any references. Where's it from? --khaosworks 08:45, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

User:65.10.113.134

Someone please clean up 65.10.113.134 (talk · contribs)'s edits - they are generally informative, but he never italicises titles, and the new article about K'anpo is a mess (and I'm not even sure the name's correct). I need sleep so can't deal with it now. --khaosworks 17:57, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

I don't know about you, but I'm beginning to think that the K'anpo article should be stubbed, at least until we can find information outside of the television series about him. What do you say? --JB Adder | Talk 01:12, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

Bad Wolf mentions in Doctor Who

In case people haven't noticed this one yet. Tim has put up a merge notice on it. Anyone with views should weigh in on the talk page. --khaosworks 14:14, July 24, 2005 (UTC)

Serial summaries

I think these should be broken down nito a section-per-episode, with notes made of the cliffhangers. See what I've done with The Caves of Androzani (which I just did with it being fresh in my mind). Morwen - Talk 22:33, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

This is Morwen's edit. I reverted the change for the moment until we can reach a consensus on this as it's quite a radical change. As I have said in Talk:The Dalek Invasion of Earth, I can see how it may be useful, but... my difficulty with splitting up the synopses into episodes is, ultimately that not all the summaries, as they stand, split neatly into cliffhangers. To make them do so would entail in some cases artificially adding more detail which really isn't needed (see the "trapped in airlock" bit in Frontier in Space). The short summaries, like Terminus and Spearhead from Space, for example, are also problematic when it comes to this. On top of that, some of the cliffhangers are pretty lame, and as such don't really need to be pointed out, but that's just by the by. The addition of even more headers to the TOC also gives me pause. --khaosworks 22:43, July 27, 2005 (UTC)
I wonder if there is some way of indicating end of episode stylistically such as an ellipsis "..." or a line of asterisks
* * *
at the end of each episode, but of course everyone would have to stick to it, and as you say not all serials can be broken down so easily. I would also prefer not to have headers.--Tim Pope 22:48, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
I think that an ellipsis seems the best suggestion so far (but I'd like to see more options; I'll think about it on the way to work), since it's unobtrusive and unlike the asterisks can be put it or not as and when and it won't look like an actual style guideline. --khaosworks 23:24, July 27, 2005 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Be_bold. Anyway, it's not a radical change, it's just adding sub-headers to break up a long, hard to read section up into smaller changes. And this serial and the synopsis does divide neatly. I'm not going to get in an edit war about this, but unless you are actually disputing this, please restore my version. Trying to improve an article and getting immediately reverted because one person thinks we need a consensus first is not wiki and is going to scare me off from doctor who articles. Morwen - Talk 22:52, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
I'm sorry - I don't mean to try and scare you off editing, but is a radical change if you're proposing we implement it across the board, and we're trying to keep a consistent look to the articles, so yes, it would have to be an across the board change. That's why I said we can discuss this, and for the moment I am disputing the change because of the reasons I stated above. Let's put mentions of edit wars aside and see if we can come to some compromise on this - can you address the issues brought up? --khaosworks 23:15, July 27, 2005 (UTC)
I prefer the elipsis too. The asterisks were just something that popped into my head, as many novels use it, but it does look rather-unwiki like. There is also the possibility of a horizontal line <hr>
but that is probably just as bad or maybe even worse and I think Manual of Style discourages its overuse. Morwen's suggestion could be incorporated with simple bolding, and that would remove the problem of cluttering TOCs:
;Episode 1
The Doctor blah blah blah
;Episode 2
The Master la la la
Episode 1
The Doctor blah blah blah
Episode 2
The Master la la la
I am not particularly in favour of doing that, but am not strongly opposed to it either. --Tim Pope 07:51, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
I tried out hr as a style experiment on The Keeper of Traken, I was actually pleasanlty surprised as it looks better than I imagined it would. --Tim Pope 07:56, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
I think either ellipses or hr will do. I don't like the bolding because it's obtrusive: what I would like to see is something that summary writers have the option to use or not use as they prefer, so the less in-your-face, the better, if you see what I mean. --khaosworks 07:58, July 28, 2005 (UTC)
I like the use of <hr>, although i don't really see the point of objecting to the size of the box - it's not that big. The serial nature of Doctor Who is an important part of the old series, so having summaries that ignore it entirely would be strange. Happy now. Morwen - Talk 10:19, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
That's good. :) Please do contribute again, and I'm sorry again for any unintentionally hurt feelings. I hope this goes some way to showing that we're not unreasonable. I'm adding this option to the style guide. --11:11, July 28, 2005 (UTC)

Transmission date confirmation required: Snakedance

Which set of dates is it? At the moment, the article lead is saying Jan 3-12, 1983; however the episode box is giving Jan 18-26, 1983. --JB Adder | Talk 02:12, July 29, 2005 (UTC)

Don't worry; I've fixed it. --JB Adder | Talk 02:15, July 29, 2005 (UTC)

wikiquote:Doctor Who

This page is in need of splitting. Please give your comments about this on its talk page --Jawr256 07:10, July 31, 2005 (UTC)

Mentor (Doctor Who)

This article seems to refer more to Sil than the Mentors. Should we move the article to Sil and rewrite it, and move the opening paragraph to the List of Doctor Who monsters, or should th Sil informaton be copied into its own article, with a link directing to it? --JB Adder | Talk 05:07, August 9, 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps moving it to Sil (Doctor Who) as a Doctor Who villain and add what generic information to the Mentor entry in List of Doctor Who monsters would be a good idea. Any thoughts, Tim on how to split it, since you wrote the initial article up? --khaosworks (talk• contribs) 05:43, August 9, 2005 (UTC)

It predated the lists, so I tried to merge Sil and Mentor material together. I am happy for it to be split up over the lists, if you want to do it go for it, or I'll do it later. --Tim Pope 06:55, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

I'll let you handle it. --khaosworks (talk• contribs) 07:07, August 9, 2005 (UTC)
Ok done, I wonder if Lord Kiv material should be moved to minor villains, but I'll leave that one for the moment. --Tim Pope 17:31, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Plot

Why do many pages (such as Invasion of the Dinosaurs and The Time Warrior have a synopsis *and* a plot section? Ken Arromdee 17:12, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

The synopsis section is meant for a one paragraph teaser, non-spoiler synopsis of the story. The plot section is meant for the detailed plot summary (which in those cases has yet to be written). --khaosworks (talk• contribs) 17:36, August 13, 2005 (UTC)

Stub graphic

There have been a lot of different logos, but there's always been the police box; what would anyone say to changing the Doctor Who stub graphic? --Jay (Histrion) 03:41, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Hmm. It might be too long, or not be legible enough, which is why we didn't use the new series logo. We'll see what everybody else thinks. Sean 04:10, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

I did consider the TARDIS at one point, but I thought it best that the project be clearly identified. That being said, do up a sample and let's have a look? --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 04:27, August 25, 2005 (UTC)
OK, I've got something just about done. I assume you want it in .PNG format. Any dimensional limitations? (TARDIS pun fully intentional. ;-) ) --Jay (Histrion) 20:22, 26 August 2005 (UTC) (off to find out how to upload files to this thing...)
Well, shoot. OK, someone tell me where to upload this thing, what filename to use, etc. Also, my graphic is a highly reduced and edited version of a BBC publicity shot; can I assume such a TARDIS photo would fall under the fair use laws, since we're currently using a logo that would trip the same wires? --Jay (Histrion) 20:42, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
It should be under fair use since it's from a promotional shot. Any filename is fine, really, but it should help us identify it easily. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 23:55, August 26, 2005 (UTC)
To upload a file click on Upload File in the toolbox to the left (below search box). --βjweþþ (talk) 11:59, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
OK, how's Image:Small TARDIS icon.jpg? --Jay (Histrion) 14:27, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
Looks good - what does everyone else think? I'd suggest, based on trying it out in preview on the templates, that we use it at 25px only for the stub template and leave the McGann logo on the project template. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 14:59, August 27, 2005 (UTC)

Comparison between Star Trek and Doctor Who

Found this... comments? --TimPope 17:34, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

I think it would have been a more interesting article if it had some real substance to it. The comparisons that are listed are very superficial and do nothing to enhance one's understanding of the comparisons between Doctor Who and Star Trek. This just strikes me as someone putting up a wiki article for the sake of it - it would be interesting to know where they intend to go with it. Otherwise, I think they really ought to continue this article as a sandbox article, otherwise I can see it being deleted for being too irrelevant. -- HeyWayne ( Talk • Contributions ) 19:47, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
agreed, if it's going to be deleted then it's not worth working on. --TimPope 21:48, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
You want to VfD it or shall I? --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 22:41, August 25, 2005 (UTC)


Novels

Someone created Heritage (Doctor Who). Up to now I've steered clear of the novels for fear of scope creep, but what do people think? Should we get into them? And what kind of format should we follow for these articles? --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 16:02, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

To be honest I can't see the difference between having the novels and having articles for the individual Big Finish releases. (Personally I wouldn't even have the Big Finish articles, but that's just a personal view). Angmering 16:04, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
I don't see the harm in there being individual articles on the books as long as they aren't just a bunch of stubs. 23skidoo 16:14, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
If someone wants to write a plot synopsis , why not? I did like Khaosworks' EDA overview, I thought that was a nice idea. The one problem with the novels over the audio dramas, is that beyond the plot there's not much else to say. At least with the audio dramas, you have plot, cast and production crew. If the plot synopses for the books are going to be short, it might be possible to merge them, say 1st Doctor MAs, 2nd Doctor MAs ... 1st Doctor PDAs etc. --TimPope 18:42, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
I'm a lot more familiar with the novels and was sort of disapionted with the audios getting so much attention, so this is cool. Having said that, I think merging into a list would be good (along with notes similiar to what we have with the tv articles). --Sean 19:13, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
I think the novels should be addressed individually as many consider them to be part of the Doctor Who conon. I dont think that small sized articles should be feared as it means the list can grow more quickly and individual articles can convey a great deal more than one overview can. Justin Foote 01:24, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Minor companions

Jason (Doctor Who), Crystal (Doctor Who), Zog (Doctor Who), John (Doctor Who) and Gillian (Doctor Who) have been created. They need to be cleaned up and formatted to conform with the other companion articles. Also, time for that List of minor Doctor Who companions, methinks. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 22:52, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

The John and Gillian articles are desperately in need of merging. Almost 100% of one is a direct copy-paste of the other. And it's unlikely that an article is ever going to refer to one of them and not the other at all. In my opinion, merge them to John and Gillian (Doctor Who) and redirect the originals. Any support?--The Brain of Morbius 01:25, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
I agree. Maybe we should create The Ultimate Adventure as well. Would we consider merging the Katarina (Doctor Who), Sara Kingdom, and Grant Markham articles into the minor companion list? Sean 03:57, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
I'd leave the television companions generally alone. Grant has appeared in more than one story, so he's probably significant enough. This is for people like Catherine Broome, Sir Justin and Gus. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 04:01, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
What about Alison Cheney? Sean 04:31, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
I'm of two minds about her, really. Technically, she's appeared in two stories, but you could bung her in there without much trouble, I suppose. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 04:44, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
John and Gillian (Doctor Who) has been created with the merged information and the redirects done. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 05:55, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

UNIT uniforms and equipment

I have some thoughts for an article describing the equipment and uniforms used by UNIT over the course of time. I think the range of vehicles, installations, weapons and uniforms used by UNIT would make interesting reading but there is really no place for it in the article United Nations Intelligence Taskforce. Dose anyone agree or dose this sound to extravagant?

Being an American I am in the dark about most developments in the new series, so any help there would be appreciated. I would also like suggestions on how such an article should be titled. My thoughts are either UNIT uniforms and equipment or UNIT materiel. Justin Foote 00:31, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

From where would you get the sources for the article? Aside from the triviality, I'm a bit concerned that this may be original research. I'm not saying yes or not, just wanting a bit more details about the proposed article. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 00:42, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
I think a sub-section in the main UNIT article would do, no? My collection of UNIT stories is rather sparse, so I don't think I I can help much (Although I'm dressing as the Brig to hand out candy on Hallowe'en, I think that's original research :) Sean 00:55, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
My general idea is to based it on only observations from the episodes themselves. I have a complete collection of all the UNIT episodes on tape as well as the spin-offs Downtime and the BBV "Auton Trilogy". Justin Foote 01:06, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
I suggest that you put it in the main article instead, perhaps under Organisation (there's a bit in there about weaponry already). The rest of us will edit it mercilessly after that, as usual. :) --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 01:31, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Mickey: companion?

The latest DWM has this description of School Reunion:

Sarah and K9 will join the Tenth Doctor and his current companions Rose and Mickey to battle the evil Krillitanes.

Is this official enough to update his status? Radagast 19:58, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

I'd wait until we have something a little more solid. If the Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart isn't a companion (on the principle that he didn't travel in the TARDIS, saving only that jaunt to Omega's universe of antimatter), we shouldn't jump to put Mickey on the list either — at least until we know for certain what happens to him in Season 2. —Josiah Rowe 21:35, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
I agree let's wait till it's official; in the meantime I consider him a semi-companion along the lines of the Brigadier and Mike Yates. However maybe the DWM article indicates something different. As I understand it, Captain Jack was supposed to return in 2006 until the actor became unavailable -- maybe the scripts have been retooled to include Mickey instead? 23skidoo 22:11, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Collaboration?

Does anybody else think that it would give the whole Wikiproject some great motivation to have our own personal collaboration to try and get an article up to Featured Article standard? I think that History of Doctor Who or Doctor (Doctor Who) would be good candidates, mainly because the're very complete anyways :) Thoughts? Sean 02:30, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

TARDIS might be a good choice, it has been peer reviewed. --TimPope 09:16, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Historical characters in Doctor Who

Just found this last night. Needs some cleanup, but it's okay. Any thoughts? --Sean Jelly Baby? 16:37, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

The Last

Anybody have any idea what this is supposed to be about? There is a Big Finish audio called The Last, but that is clearly not what this article is about! --TimPope 21:37, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Hoax article - he also created The Next Life in the same way, gibbering about a new companion named Faust. I've speedy deleted both. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 22:48, 26 September 2005 (UTC)