Forum:Randomise on the front page

I'm all for the randomiser idea on the front page, but Shada should not be under the Doctor Who one. It is not a televised episode of Doctor Who and needs to be excluded.  Tardis1963   talk  10:59, May 21, 2012 (UTC)


 * Well, I think I was kinda lookin' at it as a production randomiser rather than a broadcast randomiser. Shada does have a spot in the list of produced stories, if not the broadcast ones. I don't see any immediate need to exclude good ol' 5M. After all, the randomiser does include other stories that weren't strictly braodcast.  21:43: Tue 22 May 2012

Would you really class it as "produced" though? I guess one might, but I for one don't. As far as I'm concerned - the production team gave up on it, and so it's no more than, say, the original The Nightmare Fair. Has there been a discussion about whether to include Shada as a proper DW episode or not?  Tardis1963   talk  12:31, May 26, 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, there has been a discussion about Shada, and it was ruled that the Tom Baker version isn't in-universe. But that discussion has nothing to do with this one.  You're talking about a feature on the front page of the wiki — well outside of our in-universe content.  It's perfectly fine to refer to an out-of-universe page on another out-of-universe page.


 * And there's no ambiguity about its status as a produced show. Shada is significantly different to The Nightmare Fair.  Nightmare was never in production, only pre-production.  Shada was actually mostly completed, and its production code remained honored.  5M is still Shada; the code was not transferred to The Leisure Hive. Nightmare — which ostensibly would have been 7A — simply lost its production code because it never entered production.  We go straight from 6Z (Revelation of the Daleks) to 7A (The Mysterious Planet).


 * Nightmare was a mere idea; Shada was a show whose production was interrupted by forces outside the production team's hands. Big difference.


 * And it's totally incorrect to say that the "production team gave up on it". It's well documented that JNT tried a number of different schemes to remount the thing.  It was his personal intervention that eventually forced its VHS release. So the production team was definitely willing; but the BBC execs, the unions and other factors (like Tom Baker and Lalla Ward's actual availability after they left the series) prevented it from being completed.


 * Also, I think you have to take into account that Shada was completely paid for. All the actors still got their fees, the crew still got paid, Douglas Adams certainly got a lot out of the deal because of the material's multiple reusages.  This is very different to anything that happened with Nightmare, which never was even cast.  The fact that real money flows through the various departments is the usual litmus test for something being considered "in production".  14:37: Sat 26 May 2012