User:SOTO/Forum Archive/Tales from the Tardis/@comment-4028641-20131226044919/@comment-188432-20131226201522

Thread:145487 has settled this matter until the Capaldi era actually begins. We'll revisit if and when Capaldi gives us an idea of numbering.

Until then, we're going with the simplest numbering possible. In your absence, OS25, we've worked pretty hard to just discard numbering from articles.

For the time being it's simpler just to call them Nth Doctor and leave it at that. No pipe tricking like thirteenth body. No speaking of regeneration number. Just go with Nth Doctor. That'll make it much easier as we go forward, if things need to be changed en masse by bot.

Obviously the specific article called regeneration may well need to be altered to explain what we know so far. And you can't explain the Eleventh Doctor's regeneration without going into some detail about the regeneration numbering thing. But there's no point to overly complicating articles like Ninth Doctor, which are really far removed from the events of Time. And we absolutely, positively don't want to see leads made incomprehensible with qualifications like:


 * The Ninth Doctor was the ninth incarnation of a renegade Time Lord who called himself the Doctor. In truth, though, he was actually the result of that Time Lord's ninth regeneration and the tenth genuine incarnation.

That's just such a confusing and pointless way to start an article. Numbering just doesn't matter in most cases. John Hurt is the War Doctor. Christopher Eccleston is the Ninth Doctor. David Tennant is the Tenth. Matt Smith is the Eleventh. Peter Capaldi is the Twelfth.

Keep it simple. Don't get bogged down in truly unimportant detail. Don't try to be so hyper accurate that you actually create confusion.