Talk:The Master

How to refer to each incarnation of the Master
Well, I think some of us were hoping it'd be simpler, but the fact that Talk:The Master (The TV Movie) discussion and Talk:The Master (The Keeper of Traken) are going on at the same time with seemingly different ideas made me think we should just discuss this. '''This is not necessarily meant to be a discussion to determine a name or page title for each Master; those should still happen on their talk page. This is just a discussion on having consistency between them.'''

This long comment started as something I was going to write for Talk:The Master (The TV Movie), with me saying I think it should either be both Tremas Master and Bruce Master, or both The Master (The TV Movie) and The Master (The Keeper of Traken), for consistency. …But then in the latter case, arguably some of the others should also use disambiguation terms. I personally think that for the "main" Masters (i.e. those not ambiguous or from another reality) should either all use descriptions for page titles, with the possible exception of The Master (Terror of the Autons) (the reason for which is currently discussed on his talk page and should remain there), or all use disambiguation terms, with the exceptions of Decayed Master, War Master, Missy and the Lumiat. Having any other sort of mixed arrangement would just be confusing. Please note I am not saying the wiki must subscribe to the above dichotomy, just that I think it needs to be discussed. But there's another problem:

Initially I too subscribed to the story dab pattern, for neutrality. But the problem is, the incarnations still need a name to be referred to with in articles to specify them. We can't say "The Doctor met the Master (Dominion)." in an article. It'd have to be something like "The Doctor met the Reborn Master." This means even if they're not page titles, descriptive names are necessary anyway. There are a few proposed names that work well enough with their story titles, like "Traken Master" (from The Keeper of Traken) or "Spy Master" (from Spyfall). But for most of them, a different name is needed to maintain an in-universe perspective, and because the text of the wiki will be using these names to identify the incarnations, it makes sense to me to have them be the page names anyhow, regardless of what they actually are. I am not 100% against using names on pages and disambiguation terms for (most) titles, which is essentially the status quo, but I think the page title should reflect how the character is almost always referred to on the wiki…

Last note, this is a bit pedantic, but I think it makes a difference: I think descriptive names which are derived from a name themselves should use quotes— basically, "Tremas" Master instead of Tremas Master, "Bruce" Master instead of Bruce Master, and "Saxon" Master instead of Saxon Master. This not only reads better to me, for example alleviating concerns that "Bruce Master" sounds like, and probably is, some guy's name, but also better conveys the reasons those names are being used. Currently quotes are variably used for all descriptive names (particularly with coverage of Masterful you might see something like "the 'Young' Master"), but I think that's too difficult to read and that is the best way to use them. Chubby Potato ☎  05:02, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
 * As previously mentioned at Talk:Fugitive Doctor, on no account should we use quotes for the actual page names (e.g. it is and will remain Decayed Master, not "Decayed" Master). This interferes with searchability and is ungainly besides. Big Finish's own box set titles don't say The "War" Master, either; nor do the Masterful credits from which we derive the proposed Saxon Master, Reborn Master or Tremas Master renames use such quotation marks.


 * This point aside, my intuition thus far is that we use quotation marks when pipe-linking dabbed The Master (Something) pages for clarity — precisely to emphasise that something is a nickname which isn't really that page's proper title. For example, the "UNIT era" Master. This is informal practice and that discussion would be in a position to reform it, though, myself, I think it's intuitive enough. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 11:19, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Scrooge, you're drawing an equivalence between quite unlike things. Of course we don't use "Fugitive" Doctor or "Decayed" Master, since those names are straightforwardly descriptive of each character in their entirety. But there is a straightforward difference between those names and names which are based on identities used only temporarily by the characters. "Missy" is not an alias in the same way that "Harold Saxon" is.


 * I very much like Chubby's suggestion. This is what it would take for me to get on board with some otherwise-repulsive suggestions: it makes "Bruce Master" sound less like the name of my next-door neighbor, and it suitably contextualizes the conjectural leap we're making in incarnation naming. In particular, I disagree with the idea that this would interfere with searchability in any way. Quote marks work fine in the search bar, and now that Fandom has made search work better with redirects, typing the same name without quotes will return the same result in a transparent fashion. Neither search nor precedent is an argument against this proposal. – n8 (☎) 14:47, 13 January 2023 (UTC)


 * I'm not a fan of the quotation marks. Whilst I can understand why people might want to use them for Tremas, Saxon and Bruce, I'm 100% against using them for the Reborn Master; "reborn" is an adjective, just like "decayed", so I don't see why it would be treated any differently. Jack &#34;BtR&#34; Saxon ☎  20:48, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
 * No one has suggested using them for the Reborn Master. I would also be opposed to such a thing. – n8 (☎) 21:16, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

I would choose Bruce Master over "Bruce" Master, Saxon Master over "Saxon" Master, Tremas Master over "Tremas" Master, Keller Master over "Keller" Master, etc. Aesthetics aside, the key problem here, which I'm surprised people are overlooking, is that placing quotation marks around part of a name does not actually communicate "this name is unofficial" in any clear or intuitive way. They could just as easily be read as some sort of quotation from some unspecified in-universe or out-of-universe source, or as in-universe nicknames (since quotation marks commonly signify a nickname when used for some but not all component words in a name; for example Punished "Venom" Snake from Metal Gear). With or without them, the wiki would still be making the same arbitrary call to employ the alias / host's name as an adjective when it was never used as such officially. That's OK by me - there's some objective, factual basis to describing Roberts's character "the Bruce Master", Simm's "the Saxon Master", etc - but if we're doing it, we should commit to doing it properly, in a way that gives the reader an uncluttered, consistent experience. Quotation marks are just confusing and distracting in this context. If a name is deemed so dodgy that it requires quotation marks, then we should just continue to disambiguate by debut appearance. PintlessMan ☎  21:40, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

My vote would go to: The "Bruce" Master, The "Tremas" Master and The "Saxon" Master - with quotation marks as shown. To me, this indicates they are The Master but that there are sub-names to differentiate and distinguish them. Conversely, I wouldn't use quotation marks for The War Master, as there are countless examples of that name being used widely across various releases. FractalDoctor ☎  00:34, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Defaulting to the most recent incarnation with the tabbed infobox images
Although tabs haven't yet been implemented here yet, following the discussion at Tardis:Temporary forums/Archive/Replacing docpic, I have a potential way to let us have the tabs listed chronologically but with the most recent incarnation selected by default which I have presented at Talk:The Doctor. It could easily be applied here as well. Bongo50  ☎  22:06, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Tabbed gallery
I note this page still needs a tabbed gallery. The Doctor page works well starting from the first known incarnation, so maybe the Master should follow suit (except with "A", "B", "C", etc.) Fractal Doctor ☎  11:08, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Indeed. Done, though as stated in my thread closure, the option of switching out this or that image is of course available. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 13:25, 8 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Scrooge MacDuck. Is the absence of a certain Destination Wars Master on purpose? Fractal Doctor ☎  14:00, 8 February 2023 (UTC)


 * As I just finished telling User:Jack "BtR" Saxon, it's "on purpose" in the sense that I was sticking with his absence from and with the basic precedent of not including the "according to one account" pre-Delgado incarnations established by the prior decision against including Brayshaw on the template. Also, aside from his controversial existence, it stands to reason that we don't want a somewhat "random" incarnation like Dreyfus to be the perennial default thumbnail instead of Delgado. All of this is in line with Jo Martin & friends not being represented on The Doctor. But Jack argues that we do include the also-controversial John Hurt at The Doctor, so perhaps we could consider the place of the pre-Delgado Masters on this one. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 14:02, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

This might be too outlandish an idea but just a thought I had, that could solve that (here and on other pages) - would it be possible to have a secondary tabbed gallery maybe further down the page, containing miscellaneous/somewhat ambiguous incarnations. I'm guessing it would have some pushback, and could be viewed as confusing, but it's just a suggestion.

I do think this page should begin with Delgado because of the reasons you stated. Worth noting that we do include Hurt in the tabbed Doctor gallery, and we include the Lumiat in this one (as well as others). The only difference with Dreyfus is that he's pre-Delgado and so instead of being mid-gallery, he'd be eternally at the beginning/the default starting image, and I completely understand why a lot of people wouldn't want this. (I wouldn't want this either, but is there an alternative, other than just leaving him out?) Fractal Doctor ☎  14:09, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Well, as I said, the alternative would be to start with William Hughes, thus sandwiching him away. But I would find it hard to justify including these two and not other alleged pre-Delgado Masters e.g. the War Chief, and that might get very controversial very quickly (I would be willing to bite the bullet of including Peter Butterworth, but I don't think many people would! This is just what we have the "no controversial information in infoboxes" rule of thumb for.)


 * As regards a more thorough gallery of incarnations, this sounds like a very good use of the proposed usage of galleries on in-universe page, which is currently against policy but is one of the proposals currently rising through the Temp Forums propositions table. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 14:12, 8 February 2023 (UTC)


 * I don't think the likes of the Monk and the War Chief are comparable to the likes of Parker and Dreyfus. With the Monk and the War Chief, there are conflicting accounts on whether or not they are the Master. There's no such confusion with Parker and Dreyfus. Jack &#34;BtR&#34; Saxon ☎  14:15, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Fair enough, Scrooge.

I'm probably opening a huge can of worms (and maybe not in the best suited place) by asking about the War Chief and what the evidence is for and against him being an incarnation of the Master, but I think it's worth noting that Dreyfus' incarnation was invented as, and specifically designed to be an earlier incarnation of the Master, and I think there's a debate about that warranting inclusion. I've just had a look at your back-and-forth with Jack &#34;BtR&#34; Saxon, and both of you raise good points. I think it's a debate to be had though at some stage, and good note about the upcoming galleries discussion. That could solve some issues down the line.

(I wrote this before seeing Jack's response just now. I'm sitting on the fence and viewing both sides, but ultimately I'm siding with Jack's reasoning here, if I'm honest.) Fractal Doctor ☎  14:17, 8 February 2023 (UTC)


 * @Jack, they're not exactly the same situation, sure, but there are certainly accounts by which lights no such persons as Parker or Dreyfus's Masters could have existed (The Dark Path positing that Koschei didn't call himself "the Master" yet by the time he left Gallifrey is the obvious one). Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 14:19, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Tangential question: is Parker meant to be the same incarnation as the 'child' we saw in The Sound of Drums flashback, or not? Fractal Doctor ☎  14:21, 8 February 2023 (UTC)


 * On the whole I'm less concerned about specific cases than about what a giant can of worms pre-Delgado Masters are, such that starting the infobox at Delgado just seems like the cutoff point that will cause the fewest headaches. It's a line in the sand, not a natural boundary, but it's a common-sense sort of line in the sand that readers will easily grok as saying "we're starting with Delgado for IRL reasons/sanity" rather than a judgment-call statement of "such-and-such pre-Delgado Masters count more than such-and-such pre-Delgado Masters". A full gallery elsewhere on the page, if the Temp Forums pass that reform, would then sound like quite an attractive proposal to supplement it.


 * (Re: Parker/Hughes… that's another controversial one. Per recent BTS quotes, it seems that yes, but that's ambiguous in the stories themselves, particularly as they have some conspicuous physical differences e.g. eye colour. So that's another area of possible contention.) Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 14:19, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

I'm not gunna die on this hill, and I'd be happy to wait until the Temp Forum discussion happens regarding a potential alternative before continuing this debate.

I also note here that there may even be a hint of Big Finish muddying the waters themselves anyway, or subtly trying to retcon a few things in light of IRL events surrounding Dreyfus and his positioning anyway? Fractal Doctor ☎  14:26, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

If the preacher (who appears in half as many stories as Dreyfus) and the Asian child (who is apparently not even intended to be a mainline Master) are included, there's no justification for excluding Dreyfus. Including pre-Delgado incarnations is no more "opening a can of worms" than including post-Delgado ones. I think we should either stick with major TV incarnations (as on The Doctor) or include the lot, not this weird middle ground. PintlessMan ☎  16:32, 8 February 2023 (UTC)