Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-24175970-20140607012535/@comment-188432-20140607160954

Confusion about regeneration numbering, Stickmanville, is not the fault of The Day of the Doctor. It's always been confusing to speak of the "nth regeneration", and there's every indication that fans use it in a way contrary to narrative intent.

Terrance Dicks was really the first to tackle the issue narratively, and he clearly used "nth regeneration" in a way different to fans. Fans usually believe that Peter Davison was the "fifth regeneration" as much as he's the "Fifth Doctor". But that's not narratively true, because the First Doctor didn't result from regeneration. Thus, when asked, "What regeneration?" in The Five Doctors, Davison's character replies, "Fourth".

So


 * "doctor number"
 * is actually
 * "regeneration number + 1"
 * ''where the resulting incarnation believes himself a unique incarnation, and chooses to use the name of the Doctor

But the average fan, and especially the casual viewer, doesn't stop to think about this "math". So it's always good practice to be very specific when talking about regeneration events as opposed to Doctor numbers. And it always has been since this wiki opened in 2004.

Still, the "Moffat addendum" to the "Dicks rule" has seemingly muddied the waters. So as Shambala108 has usefully pointed out, we've had good guidelines in place since the airing of The Day of the Doctor, and editors here have simply gotten on board with them.

Those guidelines, however, were mostly talking about the number to apply to the individual Doctors, rather than the regeneration that spawned them. Whenever you're talking about the regeneration event, it is now, as ever, good practice to simply be as clear as possible. Often, this means saying something like "the regeneration from the Third to the Fourth Doctors", or "the regeneration forced by the Time Lords" or "the regeneration caused by spectrox toxaemia". And if the statement is properly cited — i.e. (TV: The Caves of Androzani) — then doubt is firmly eliminated. Well, until and unless two regenerations ever occur in the same episode.

As with almost every statement that could possibly be made in any of our articles, confusion is typically reduced by clarity of expression and a good citation. As you've more or less suggested, it's probably wise to avoid applying numbers to regeneration events altogether, unless quoting a character who's using numbers to refer to them. Might the article at regeneration need a cleanup with this in mind? Very possibly. But it's really nothing to do with The Day of the Doctor. It's just that fans have always had difficulty separating the regeneration event from the resulting incarnation's number.