User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-121.45.54.78-20130925110520/@comment-188432-20140226144533

I think that basically sounds reasonable, Jlk7e. If we're talking in terms of setting up a rule about this, it would basically be something like the following.


 * For the purposes of "lists of appearances", a televisual appearance by a character is generally one in which their actor is credited. If the actor is credited, the character "appears", regardless of any other considerations.  Failing proper crediting, however, a character can be said to have appeared only in the following circumstances:
 * The character is obviously present in new footage filmed for an episode, but their lack of speech didn't qualify them for a credit under normal union rules
 * The actor declined credit that was ordinarily due, as with Bill Nighy in Vincent and the Doctor
 * Archival footage has been re-contextualised to be more than a simple memory of the past. Flashbacks to previous Doctors seen in Day of the Daleks doesn't count, whereas eleven previous Doctors do appear in The Name of the Doctor. Why? because Clara, a character from the current production, is shown to be interacting with the old footage, such that a new meaning for the old footage emerges.


 * The following things are never to be considered appearances:
 * Characters who appear solely in still images
 * Characters who appear only in a flashback using previously-recorded material. The people appearing in the Fourth Doctor's dying flashback in Logopolis don't count, because that's all old footage. By contrast, the people appearing in the Fifth Doctor's dying flashback in Caves do count, because that was all newly shot. (Of course, in this case, all the people in the Caves flashback were actually credited, so they are said to appear by virtue of that. No one from the Logopolis flashback is credited, which makes sense, given the nature of it.)

So what do you guys think? Reasonable?