Talk:Big Finish Doctor Who audio stories

Separate Pages for Spin off Big Finish
I'm thinking about creating a separate page for the Gallifrey, Dalek Empire, Sarah Jane Smith and UNIT audio dramas. Something along the lines of Big Finish - Doctor Who Expanded Universe Audio Dramas. Except that's a pretty long title.

So perhaps a separate page for the Dalek Empire audio dramas since they've got a pretty big universe that is quite cut off from the standard monthly releases in terms of characters; Big Finish - Dalek Empire Audio Dramas. Then also a separate page for Big Finish - Gallifrey (series) Audio Dramas.

Put Sarah Jane Smith and UNIT together as...Big Finish - Earth Based Audio Dramas or something like that. Also the Cybermen series will need some where to go as well. --Tangerineduel 04:29, 14 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Just as a comment, the first title doesn't need to be as long, as something like Big Finish - Expanded Universe would work just as well, unless Big Finish makes something other than audio dramas, which, as far as I'm aware, they don't. 13:09, 14 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Expanded Universe woudl technically refer to *all* Big Finish stories, since they didn't occur on television. just so readers can see as much as possible at one glance, I would just do Main Series and Others, and list the series in the order that Big Finish released them. you might also want a distinction between series that had more than one "season", like the Gallifrey stories, and self-contained ones like, I, Davros and Doctor Who Unbound. I would put a link to the Big Finish Bernice Summerfield stories on a separate page, for two reasons. one, because Bif Finish brand them very differently and put them another section of their website and two, to make the page less long (unless you with it that way.


 * The Expanded Universe wouldn't refer to all the Big Finish, as technically it all is part of the same universe, the Expanded part would refer to them being expanded from the Big Finish monthly series.
 * Big Finish does make other stuff other than audios: they publish the Short Trips anthologies, the Bernice Summerfield stories, the 2000ad, Saphire and Steel and Tomorrow People audios as well. --Tangerineduel 13:27, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Continuing with this idea
I am glad that the idea for separate pages for each of these series has gone forward, in lage measure. However, I think that this page should only be about the monthly range. Period. Everything else needs to be firmly moved to its own page, with explanatory text added. Doctor Who Unbound, for example, belongs solely on its own page. It's entirely and quite deliberately its own range. Just because the words "Doctor Who" are in the title is no reason to put a range on this page. Also, the list itself should be on its own list page. For instance, there should be Doctor Who monthly series audios and List of Doctor Who monthly series audios. There's a hell of a lot that could be said about just the standard, monthly range, as evidenced by the wikipedia article on the same subject. It's quite unsatisfactory having the series title link in the infoboxes taking you to what's merely a list page, for all intents and purposes. I want to know about the series, not just the titles in that range. Why the Eighth Doctor Adventures are "New" isn't really addressed by clicking on the link. A new user might be confused by what a "Companion Chronicle" is, or unsatisfied by the one or two lines about what makes something "unbound" or what Gallifrey is all about, or what makes the Sarah Jane series different than its two televised counterparts. We in general need to take a step back and consider that the most basic questions about these series still aren't answered by this wiki.

And we might want to consider whether there needs to be a standard naming convention applied. Here's a sample of how it all looks now:


 * Doctor Who Unbound — I suppose the thinking here is that there's no other Doctor Who Unbound out there. But aren't there short stories labelled Doctor Who Unbound stories?  I would tend to think there needs to be one page explaining the term "unbound" (how that's the equivalent to Star Wars "infinities", or DC's "elseworlds", for instance), and then one page on the series itself.
 * Dalek Empire (Big Finish) is strange, in that it names Big Finish in its title, whereas the majority of these pages just say "audio series"
 * Cyberman (audio series)
 * I, Davros is slightly odd in that it's unmodified. Presumably this is because there's no other I, Davros out there, but you face a basic arbitrary decision with this one.  One wiki "convention" says that if there's nothing else of that name, it doesn't need to be modified.  Another says  you should name things in an easy-to-find manner.  If virtually everything else that's an audio series follows a pattern, isn't it easier-to-find if you make this one follow the same pattern?
 * Gallifrey (audio series)
 * U.N.I.T. (audio series) is slightly awkward as it follows a different spelling of UNIT to the UNIT page.
 * Iris Wildthyme (audio series)

The basic predeliction seems to be to write Series name (audio series). But given how Big Finish have named the main line (namely, "Doctor Who monthly series"), I think a better standard might be the much simpler, ]]Series Name audios]]. So, Sarah Jane Smith audios, Companion Chronicles audios, Dalek Empire audios etc.  Czech Out  ☎ | ✍  09:31, 18 July 2008 (UTC)