User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-45314928-20200727170605/@comment-35218602-20200727193536

I was going to respond to this with simply something about how a more direct comparison to Braxiatel being created separate pages of "Time Lords" and "Brax's lot", and using some absurd implementation of "according to one account" in the header, but looking at this more we really don't have any consistent system anyway.

How is it that, for example, "Dr. Smith" and "that northern chap with big ears" are acknowledged as the Doctor, but, say, "Cosmic Hobo" or "the man with a bent nose" are not (in both former cases, they didn't have the rights to the Doctor at all, and in both latter cases, not to that specific incarnation). Or how we can't call Man with the Rosette or Professor Stream "the Master", but positively identifying Route22 as Iris Wildthyme or the Galactic Council referenced in the non-BBC spin-off K9 as one and the same as the one from Mission to the Unknown is A-OK. Or how the BBC Books line can't use Grace Holloway in an EDA but is allowed to partially novelise her departure scene as part of a flashback in Shroud of Sorrow without ringing any alarm bells. I see no consistency in this.

I mean, by the strictest interpretation of the rule we'd have to make a page for Man Who Was King of His Own Little Word (Dalek), which read

"According to the Ninth Doctor, the Man Who Was King of His Own Little World created the Daleks. The Doctor claimed that Henry van Statten would "like him". (TV: Dalek)"

And then a behind the scenes section explaining that Shearman intended him to be Davros but never stated this. In fact, as I mentioned its talk page, given T:NO RW combined with the strictest possible interpretation of the "in-universe evidence only" rule, we'd have to rename The Entertainer "Whistle Song (Image of the Fendahl" or similar. And checking that very page it looks like I successfully got a "conjecture" template added. And it's true it is conjecture. Because, if it wasn't, we'd get stuff like I just mentioned.

This may all seem a bit silly, but of course it is. It wouldn't please anyone I doubt this wiki would ever go that far though. On the other end of the scale we'd be making pages for Ace and Professor audios, which personally I would LOVE since those stories are GREAT, but I doubt equally this wiki would do that.

So I understand we need a middle ground SOMEWHERE, but it really should be consistent.

I've probably made my point more than enough already, but the real important thing is that we really need to look at how we consider all these "writing around trademarks" things, b/c I see it as extremely arbitrary at the moment. Honestly, "Cosmic Hobo" being the Doctor has considerable MORE narrative evidence than "Dr. Smith" being them. Should we now consider her the first female Doctor? If so, where does that leave Cosmic Hobo, a character who is quite honestly utterly meaningless if the connection is entirely ignored, something Dr. Smith isn't?

Actually, this might seem like something that deserves its own thread, but I'll just post what I've written here now and leave the community to comment. I've got something else I should be doing now, unrelated to this wiki, and so I'll now stop procrastinating on that.