Talk:Totem (short story)

It is a violation of our archiving policy for the archive at right to have been created in the middle of a discussion. But I'm breaking that policy in this case because the multiple violations of T:DISCUSS and T:NPA could be stopped from getting worse by doing so. When this page re-opens for discussion, please talk only about the editing of this article — or you will be blocked. 03:17: Fri 15 Feb 2013
 * This talk page is now reopened to editing 04:10: Fri 15 Feb 2013

Identifying the Doctor

 * This section is open only to Master of Spiders

Master of Spiders, I'm giving you one more shot to make your case. Do not refer to me to other places where you have discussed this subject. What I want is this: a complete list of every single description of the Doctor in this story. That's it. I don't want your commentary. I don't want to hear from any other user. I want a simple list. If any other user responds in this section, they will be blocked. This is Master of Spiders' moment to provide primary evidence of the Doctor's description in this story. 04:09: Fri 15 Feb 2013

Ok, again...

"Quiet, strange, but undoubtedly good"

"a tall handsome man who would have seemed young and in the prime of life if not for the eyes - grey-blue empty eyes, sadder than her own"

"His hair was long, brown and wavy and his skin was pale - a foreigner"

"His accent was unfamiliar though each word was carefully pronounced"

"Then as now he'd been wearing a coat of green velvet, a simple white shirt, grey trousers that looked to be of good quality, and brown leather shoes"

"speaking very fast"

"straggling curl of hair"


 * I know it's name, I think, but I can't remember since..."(quote)

"I am The Doctor, no other"(quote)

Basically, certain aspects, such as the yes and the height do contradict what we know of Mcgann/Eight, and can not lightly be dismissed.

Also, where does it say the story features Eight? It is not in the table of contents, not in the story. The point again is that if someone goes into the story thinking "This story features Eight", they will accept those things that support his idea, while dismissing as "continuity errors", "typos" or "not notable", those which contradict it. And the only reason people have think Eight is because that is what certain people have told them. The same people who told them the story is set in both Spain and Mexico in the early 20th century, features a 'foreign cleaning lady', and has The Doctor talking to a previous incarnation "in his head".

If someone goes in thinking "A Doctor Who story I've never heard of or read!", it is far from clear which Doctor they will think is involved. Master of Spiders ☎  05:37, February 15, 2013 (UTC)

Thank you very much for taking the time to produce the list. I appreciate that you may have felt it redundant, but it helps the purposes of evaluation to have it one neat location.

I wanna say first of all that I think you're right. It's far from clear to the person who has never enjoyed DW prose between 1995-2005 that the person would be the Eighth Doctor. And I absolutely don't think we should just accept what others tell us. That's why I have paid so much attention to this discussion. Yes, this is only about a very minor short story. But the principle involved here — that of carefully assessing the source text — is something we must always strive — however imperfectly — to do.

The thing is, though, very few stories exist in a vacuum. Most DW stories are typical of the era in which they were made. That which is usual about the Fifth Doctor's televised era may not be quite so true of his audio performance since Time Crash.

And the Eighth Doctor is quite profoundly segmented — probably more than any other Doctor. It's important to put this story in the broader context of prose at the time. What time are we? Early 1999 — the story itself was almost certainly written no later than 1998. So we're talking a time when the Eighth Doctor comics had only barely started, the EDAs were only roughly a year old. There was no audio McGann, nor even Big Finish at all. Writer Tara Samms (well, Stephen Cole, really) had basically the movie, the Radio Times comic strips, The Eight Doctors and, if he was lucky, the first 15 of the EDAs, and the (black and white) DWM stories up through something like Wormwood. This is almost the first thing Cole writes for DW, and it's certainly his first Eighth Doctor story.

So I'm quite certain The Eight Doctors would have loomed much larger than it does to us today. Then it was "Uncle Terrance giving his seal of approval to McGann by starting off a new range." So I'm not throwing away lightly your objection to the height description. In pointing out that Dicks uses "tall", "young" and "Long-haired", I'm demonstrating how Cole is being true to the young series as it existed at the time. This was a valid description of Eight.

And this is an important lesson that a lot of people tend to forget around this joint. It's very important to find and respect contemporaneous views of various subjects, because Doctor Who changes over time. We recoil, for instance, at the character of the Doctor being called "Doctor Who" — but of course he was Doctor Who. Heck, Hartnell even calls himself "Doctor who" — twice! — in the trailer for An Unearthly Child. There's probably not a contemporaneous viewer of The War Machines or The Highlanders who would have batted an eyelash at the character being called "Doctor Who" — but we today find it terribly jarring, or even a continuity error.

Similarly, we have to give credence to the height thing because it was true to the the literature of the 1990s. I agree with you that it makes no sense. But it was an established trait that he was "tall".

And that's how it would have been for other things you've mentioned as well. I see nothing above that wasn't established.

Amnesia is an obvious trait of this character, not only from the movie, but also from The Eight Doctors. Cole would later give Eight amnesia again in The Ancestor Cell, just a few months after this story was published. I think you've asserted somewhere that amnesia was some sort of trait of Three, but really: no. Not a full on trait. He had amnesia a time or one. But Eight had amnesia on a regular, ongoing basis in prose. That was the deal, the schtick, the trope. If you want more info, I'm sure Revanvolatrelundar can give you a quick rundown, but this is a narrative device that happened to him over and over and over again. Heck it even spills over a bit into audio, where he forgets who he is for hundreds of years in Orbis, for instance. That line you quoted is a 1,000,000 candle-power light projected into the sky like a bat-signal, saying, "Hey you guys! This is the Eighth Doctor. Get it/ Eight. Eighty eighty eight eight. The one before nine."

And then, if that weren't enough, there's the green jacket. Now, look: I get it. It seems black in the movie. But go through the DVD and grab some frames when McGann has a key light right above him. Then take some photoshop readings of the lapels and the tops of the shoulders. A good scene is when he's sittin' in the waiting room just after donning the outfit, or right after Grace and Lee get revived and they're walking down the steps from the place where the TARDIS reanimated them. Or some frames during the motorcycle chase. I was getting rgb values where the g outstrips the r and g by a few percentage points. It's really easy to get green-heavy readings off the lapels in almost every shot. Now, we're not talking major green here. But we are talking values like rgb(80,85,81), which can be found over and over again in the jacket whenever the Doctor is in full light. One thing to remember about the movie is that it takes place either at night or in the moody lighting of the TARDIS. McGann basically don't get a normal daylight scene at all. So of course the jacket looks black.

But let's say that we give you the Gary Russell novelisation color of "chocolate brown" (which he didn't really know by the way; he was just guessing). Even if he were wearing a brown or black, the Radio Times comic strips — the only colour images besides the TVM itself – had the Doc in green in each story. (Maybe not the whole story, but still, in at least part of each story.) That would have loomed large int he mind of Cole as he wrote Totem. So too would've the work of the authors before him in that slender year or so of the EDA's life that preceded Totem. And, as it turned out, "green velvet frock coat" was the phrase that stuck in the minds of Eighth Doctor prose writers. There is really a tremendous amount of evidence both before and after the publication of Totem that Eight frequently wears green.

Does someone who picks up this story to read it for the first time know this? No. And that's where I think you're having a problem. I don't know how many of the EDA books you've read, but if you'd read quite a number of them, your issue with this story would be limited to its setting. There wouldn't be any doubt at all that this is Eight. For those well-versed in the era, everything you've listed is proof that it's Eight. Unmistakably, taken in totality, adding in the fact that it's third person limited perspective, this is Eight. It couldn't be anyone else, when you factor in the date it was written, the book in which it was included, etc. Of course, there are some elements which can be undoubtedly ascribed to one or more Doctors. But this is characteristic of Doctor Who in general. People see Hartnell in Davison, McCoy in Smith, Davison in Tennant. And this makes sense because they are all one figure, and at times his other selves show through.

So what you have to do, especially with Short Trips is see where the majority of clues lead you. And I think the key line of description is really the one you're dismissing:
 * "Then as now he'd been wearing a coat of green velvet, a simple white shirt, grey trousers that looked to be of good quality, and brown leather shoes"

All of that together is only the Eighth Doctor. There's no one else who had it all. It cannot be Pertwee, as you seem to allege. This is not only because the Doctor is described as "young and in the prime of his life" — which given the choice between Eight and Three obviously favours Eight — but also because Pertwee never wore a simple white shirt while he was wearing green velvet. He didn't wear green velvet all that often, mind — but it was exclusively in his latter seasons where he was also wearing incredibly frilly, Hendrixian shirts. There ain't a time from Three Doctors onwards where you can find a "normal" shirt on that man. I think I'm right in saying, too, that he never wore green velvet with grey trousers that looked to be of good quality. Grey trousers is totally a TVM Eighth Doctor giveaway. And Pertwee never wore a green velvet coat — only a green velvet jacket.

And every single one of the other qualities — speaking fast, straggling curl of hair, quiet, undoubtedly good, pale skin, careful pronunciation — all of that is easily attributable to 8. But you don't need any of that. Once you've got young, brown hair, long hair, wavy hair, curly hair, green velvet, simple white shirt, good grey trousers, and brown leather shoes — you're done. Given the literary tropes of the era, there's no one else it can be but Eight.

Is that confusing for the uninitiated? Absolutely. I find reading EDAs hard work, cause it doesn't quite match up with the picture of McGann I've got from the comics and the audios. A part of me has a hard time reconciling the McGann of the Charley adventures with the McGann of the Lucie adventures. But that doesn't negate the fact that Cole hits the Eighth Doctor highlights here.

What's going on for you in this instance is a common phenomenon for book series. It's like beginning your read of Ian Fleming's James Bond with "". You can't do something crazy like that without paying the price of confusion. Until you've read Casino Royale to fix the character of Bond in your mind, you shouldn't then go on to one fo the minor, experimental works. It just won't work for you. And I think the reason you've encountered so much resistance in this discussion is that others see clues, based upon their knowledge of early McGann prose, that you don't.  08:05: Fri 15 Feb 2013

Location

 * This section is open to every user

We've established so far that the locations mentioned in the story are clearly indicative of Madeira, but the text never gives that island location. It confusingly gives a Spanish title for the lead character — Señora — when it should have used Senhora, if the author had really intend us to read Madeira into the situation. There is something weird about that use of Señora if we're meant to think Portuguese.

I would love to just say Madeira and walk away, since, frankly, I love Madeira. As a one-time visitor to that island, I would love to just say that it's a part of the DWU, full stop/ But I can't figure out why in the world the author is using Spanish, since Madiera has no significant Spanish population and has always been in Portuguese hands. And I mean always. The first settlers were Portuguese. It was never in Spanish hands, so you can't dismiss the Spanish Señora like you could if this were Morocco. Also, the place names actually do work in Spanish, so it's just as plausible to believe that the author is creating a fictional Spanish-speaking place, where she's just thrown in a few words she picked up on holiday to Madeira.

So, bearing T:NO RW in mind, what do others feel most comfortable with doing?

Should we:


 * Dismiss the Señora thing as a production error and insist that this is most logically Madeira and she is therefore Portuguese.
 * Assert that the lady herself is Spanish but somehow resident on Madeira
 * Call it Madeira, but don't assert that it's part of Portugual. Assume that Spanish is spoken on it because of the lady's title.
 * Apply T:NO RW strictly and go with "an unknown Spanish-speaking country". Assume that the author is deliberately trying to fudge the geography by mixing Spanish with Madeira locations.  (Such fudging happens with regularity in DW fiction. Don't believe me?  I refer you the Great State of Malebolgia,  Or Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire. Or, heck, Leadworth, England.  Or the fact that Torchwood was supposedly underneath Cardiff.  Or that UNIT has a base under the Tower of London and in Mount Snowdon.)
 * Do something I haven't thought of 04:09: Fri 15 Feb 2013
 * Dismissing it as a production error seems the most logical to me. OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 04:22, February 15, 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm with OS on this one. Production error. The way I see it, "Señora" is the only thing tying her to a Spanish country. For all we know, she originally came from a Spanish country and moved to Portugal. But speculation. Anyways, at least in the real world, "Madeira" is Portugese for "wood." Why would a Spanish country use a Portuguese word to name a place? I just think the tiny production error of "señora" is the only thing contradicting this. [[file:SmallerOnTheOutside.png|13px]] SOTO ☎ 04:36, February 15, 2013 (UTC)
 * Check the story again. It doesn't mention Madeira, it mentions two places that in the real world are in Madeira. If the story mentioned Madeira we wouldn't need this discussion. Shambala108 ☎  06:14, February 15, 2013 (UTC)
 * Right. Sorry. She mentions Machico and Funchal. My point still stands with "funchal," which means "fennel" in Portuguese. [[file:SmallerOnTheOutside.png|13px]] SOTO ☎ 06:23, February 15, 2013 (UTC)
 * Also, it's mentioned that she takes a walk and gazes at Pico de Facho ("Peak of the Torch" in Portuguese), which, in the real world, is on Santo Porto Island. Unless the "wander through the fields" also involved swimming across an ocean to another island, it takes place on Santo Porto Island, if we are to apply the real world. Which we're not. [[file:SmallerOnTheOutside.png|13px]] SOTO ☎ 07:14, February 15, 2013 (UTC)

I was all for Madeira/Portugal until I heard Czechout's explanation about Senora. Now my vote is for leaving the infobox blank and calling it a story with unknown location. We have two pieces of conflicting real world info: places names and character title. If we are to apply T:NO RW it should apply to both pieces of information. Shambala108 ☎  06:40, February 15, 2013 (UTC)
 * In my eyes, at least, the place names is more important. In the real world, "senora" can be explained away at least a dozen different ways: it was during or soon after Spain's occupation of Portugal; she moved from Spain to Portugal, not very far I might say; her ancestors moved from Spain or simply kept their Spanish traditions and passed them down generations down to her; her husband was Spanish and employed "Senor" so she employed "Senora" in his honour... I could go on forever. Obviously, this is all speculation. But it certainly does mean that her employment of "senora" does not necessarily mean that it doesn't take place in Portugal.
 * Let's look at the place names now, assuming it takes place in Spain or any Spanish country. The only explanation is that, in the DWU, these places are in Spain, and Spain named places after Portuguese words, because they got bored.
 * I think it makes more sense that a woman in Portugal would call herself "senora" than Spanish places having Portuguese names. It would be speculation to think that, because one person uses the name "senora," which can be explained away in a million different ways, this story doesn't take place in Portugal, despite every definite evidence to the contrary. [[file:SmallerOnTheOutside.png|13px]] SOTO ☎ 07:14, February 15, 2013 (UTC)

Date
One other thing that seems to have been forgotten in the date. The article states it is "early 20th Century", when there is nothing that even hints at a date. While my knowledge of geography is rather shaky, I do know without having to Google, that from 1580-1640, Portugal was part of Spain. I realize that is a lot of OR, but it does explain how a Portuguese person in Portugal may be addressed by a Spanish title. Long shot I know, but who decided "early 20th Century"? Master of Spiders ☎  05:40, February 15, 2013 (UTC)
 * You make an amazing point here, MOS. The date. While it's speculation to say that it happened between 1580 and 1640, or that she came from a Spanish country, or that it takes place after 1640, but not too far afterwards that the woman wouldn't use the word "senora." If such words were used while Portugal was under Spanish occupation, then it would take a long time, generations (or at least one), until it died down. "Early 20th century," unless you can find a source, is also based upon conjecture, and won't be included.
 * I made this a new section so we can talk about the dating of the story. Any clues for that? [[file:SmallerOnTheOutside.png|13px]] SOTO ☎ 05:59, February 15, 2013 (UTC)
 * I've got a couple clues:
 * The Doctor says "and then I'll tell the police." Assuming it's in Portugal, the real-world Portugese police didn't have a real presence until 1867. You wouldn't have gone to the police long before then. Only out-of-universe, though.
 * They used coins, which means it took place at least after 1179. As if we didn't know that.
 * A market in Funchal is mentioned. This could even take place today, so that doesn't help.
 * Anyone have anything to add? [[file:SmallerOnTheOutside.png|13px]] SOTO ☎ 06:35, February 15, 2013 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately your first two clues violate T:NO RW. I suggest we don't include a date because we don't know it. Shambala108 ☎  06:44, February 15, 2013 (UTC)