User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-1293767-20151029072618/@comment-5918438-20160108021315

Bold Clone wrote: Also, just out of curiosity, how exactly is a system which counts Planet of the Dead as story #200 flawed? I did not mean to imply that the simple fact that Planet of the Dead lines up with 200 makes it flaws. It is notable that it has been interpreted as such. Now I haven't personally made a numbered list to see where it would go with the now more precise requirements for a two-parter, so I can't tell you for sure where the inconsistency lies.

But what I meant to say is that if our system—which has consistency, and follows clear production intent through the hiring of guest actors, one director for the complete story and the filming of the story within one production block—does not line up with those lists given by other sources, there is nothing wrong with that. What we cannot do is adopt a system which does not make sense simply to allow for a clearly flawed numbering scheme to show up on our wiki as well. Again, we are not duty-bound to reflect the opinions of the DWM editing team or any other source in that area.

As for official statements, as has been said above, the BBC simply doesn't always make official statements on whether or not something is a two-parter. That's not something we can rely on, necessarily. But the intent is always clear. Putting any disputed cases aside, all clear two-parters follow the rules I describe above.

So it seems we've now found out that any claims made by fans to the effect of "This is part of a multi-part story", when that story does not share a director and production block etc with the episodes it's supposedly linked with, are quite simply that—the opinions of fans, and opinions perhaps reflected in (and/or perpetuated by) DWM. We need to be clearer than that. :)