Talk:Trask (The Highlanders)

Merger
Can we talk this through first? I do want to keep the speedy rename list empty, but this is not a reason to rush things either. I understand the excitement: it is an amazing find, indeed. Let's do it properly though. There are several things here (for instance, it needs to be merged to preserve the history of edits at Trask (Alien Bodies)). I'll be happy to do it. But first, could you please walk me through the connection of Trask from the novel to Trask from The Highlanders? I do get the name is the same. What are the other similarities? On the scale of "River is Amy's daughter" to "the Doctor's name is Basil", how clear-cut is the connection? Amorkuz ☎  19:05, November 27, 2017 (UTC)


 * I'd be happy to talk this through! In PROSE: Alien Bodies, Trask is the reanimated corpse of a human whose death the Doctor caused "a long time ago". At one point, Trask remembers his death: falling into the water and drowning (and dramatically seeing the face of the Doctor, in an incarnation that looks older than Eight, staring down at him; but the Shift later explains this away as a fake addition to trigger Trask's memory and make it more dramatic). After his death, he was zombified by the Celestis, who have a habit of appearing to regular Joes, pretending to be gods, and getting them to sign away their soul in exchange for a few extra years of life. By the time of Alien Bodies, Trask has been dead for so long that he doesn't have any other memories from his life. And his name is Trask.


 * Meanwhile, in TV: The Highlanders, Trask is the captain of a ship. The Doctor tricks Trask into being distracted while the captives stage an attack, which ends with Jamie forcing him over the side of the ship. (Earlier, Trask had told everyone, "The only way off this ship is drowning," and he's not seen again in the episode, so the insinuation is clear.) And also, his name is Trask.


 * In a lot of ways, I feel like the name connection is the best reason, since I feel that if we had the same situation but both characters were specifically named "Nathanael Bumbernickel", the pages would've been merged from the get-go. But this isn't a John (Borrowed Time) / John (The Christmas Invasion) situation where it's a very common name used twice without connection; "Trask" is by no means anything approaching a common name, and I highly doubt it's just a coincidence of reappearing nonsense, since the author of Alien Bodies was clearly familiar with The Highlanders (cf his previous novel Christmas on a Rational Planet, which references every Classic story, and his later work in About Time 2). The "death by drowning, caused by the Doctor" connection is just the icing on the cake.


 * So yeah, that's my reasons. I'd already been working on a total rewrite of Trask (Alien Bodies) to amend the earlier confusion with the similar but completely different Kristopher Patrick Englund, so it was easy for me to merge it into Trask (The Highlanders); I apologize if I rushed it through when it shouldn't have been. – N8 ☎ 00:59, November 28, 2017 (UTC)


 * I've changed the "speedy rename" to a "rename" for a couple of reasons. The obvious one is that this matter is now under discussion, so it's not an obvious, non-controversial change. Also, speedy renames can't really apply when the proposed new name already exists as a redirect. It takes a little more work than just the speedy rename process to deal with an already-existing name. Shambala108 ☎  01:03, November 28, 2017 (UTC)


 * Gotcha; sorry about that.

Also, some more relevant evidence, since I've just realised that I accidentally read "four thousand" instead of "four hundred": in Alien Bodies, which is set in the late 21st century, Trask is said to have been dead for "nearly 400 years". Given that he dies in or around 1746, "nearly 400" might be a bit of a stretch, but the intent is clearly there. – N8 ☎ 16:34, November 28, 2017 (UTC)


 * Good thing about this thousand thingy. I was getting worried. My main problem, to be honest, was that Trask's memories in Alien Bodies were changed. In particular, they do not seem to exactly match the events of The Highlanders. Water - yes, Doctor - no, drowning - maybe. However,
 * "[the Doctor was] the one who killed [Trask] in the first place"
 * seems to be a fact, though the killing was not direct, not like in the memory. Because
 * "I changed his memory of the way he died, as well. Just to make it a little more dramatic."
 * Ordinarily, this would be a deal breaker for me. But
 * "I can’t plant memories, Doctor. I can only adapt them."
 * And here is how the memory describes Trask meeting the Doctor before
 * "The face was old, serious, a terrible frown stretched between a pair of sagging cheeks. The man who’d brought him here to die."
 * So presumably, if the Second Doctor can be seen as an old serious guy with a pair of sagging cheeks, we should be good to go because the memory was not arbitrary, just doctored. There is but one wrinkle there.
 * "So infectious that Trask managed to fight against the lake for a good thirty seconds more before the last of the air slipped out of his lungs."
 * Note the lake. In The Highlanders, Trask's fate is described as "in the firth". And "firth" is defined as an "estuary" or a "narrow inlet of the sea" . I have trouble calling a firth a lake, especially given that Annabelle was sailing between France and Scotland. She had no business being in a lake.


 * I'm almost sorry I found it as the connection would have been nice. Maybe there is more narrative meat in Alien Bodies to salvage the connection? But at the moment I have hard time reconciling Trask's death in a lake at the hands of an old Doctor and Trask's (potential) death in a firth after being pushed overboard by Jamie. Amorkuz ☎  23:23, November 29, 2017 (UTC)


 * I never saw this reply! A response: the "lake vs firth" distinction is nowhere near the smoking gun you seem to think it is. The whole point of the memory is that, despite being founded in truth, it's been muddled beyond the point of repair. If part of Mistress Na's backstory in Sil and the Devil Seeds of Arodor contradicted her backstory in Antidote to Oblivion — say, she remembers being born in the water of a lake, rather than the water of an estuary — would that be reason enough for us to conclude they're different characters entirely? Of course not; they'd be the same, one of the authors just got a detail wrong. (Or not even wrong, if her second memory was specified to have been scrambled.) The facts remain that this is someone who (1) is named Trask and (2) drowned (3) due to the Doctor's actions (4) about 400 years before Alien Bodies. How many fans do you think there are that (being familiar with The Highlanders) came across the name "Trask", saw the other things about the character, and didn't make the connection? Again, this isn't a normal name for a human character from the 18th century; the writer picked it for a reason. I think it's silly for us as a wiki not to recognize that. – N8  ( ☎ / 👁️ ) 16:05, March 3, 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree that "Trask" is way too weird a name for the nearly-identical circumstances to also be a coincidence. We generously buy that the new series Silurians from the time of the Dinosaurs and with human-like faces are the same thing as the classic Silurians who coexisted with australopithecines, and this is no different from that (indeed, with the plot device of Trask's scrambled memories, it's even clearer). --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  16:43, March 3, 2020 (UTC)