Talk:Fifteenth Doctor

False appearances
Contents and The World Tree should absolutely not be considered as appearances by the Fifteenth Doctor. Contents was written long, long before the casting of Ncuti's incarnation and the vague description no better suits him than it does the Spy Master incarnation. As for The World Tree, Nick Slawicz (nor Big Finish for that matter!) has any right to use the Fifteenth Doctor. He was writing as a competition winner under strict rules as to what he could include, things outside Big Finish's license (which doesn't extend to the Fifteenth Doctor yet) cannot be used. So regardless of what the writer's "intention" was - in order to shoehorn his story as the first appearance of a new main series Doctor - is a bit of trivia that can be shoved on the BTS sections. DrWHOCorrieFan ☎  21:09, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Contents and The World Tree should absolutely be considered as appearances by the Fifteenth Doctor. Danniesen ☎  21:18, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Because RTD could predict five years into the future and Big Finish are able to use concepts that they have no license to? DrWHOCorrieFan ☎  21:19, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
 * RTD clearly based Ncuti’s outfit off of what he wrote back then. And for the Big Finish one, it’s not explicitly pointed out so there’s no license breach. And authorial intent matters. Danniesen ☎  21:27, 7 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Yeah, there does exist such a thing as retroactive continuity! Besides, in an era where the novelisation of Rose is being drawn upon in everything from Grounded to Redacted (even so far as to contradict the original television episode!), and where the Fourteenth Doctor's debut is Liberation of the Daleks and one of Thirteen's pre-TV adventures was another poem from this very same anthology, so, such a thing is entirely within precedent.
 * Furthermore, not only is accusing Big Finish of breaking copyright potentially libellous and implies it fails rule two of T:VS... Big Finish have done this before! Do you not remember, @DrWHOCorrieFan, audios like The Kingmaker featuring the Ninth Doctor? 21:47, 7 September 2023 (UTC)


 * I think Epsilon needs to be dealt with here, yet ANOTHER discussion being IMMEDIATELY taken off-track by false accusations of rule breaking. How many times do admins like Shamblar have to warn against such things before you and others take note? Absolutely outrageous to falsely accuse me of being libelous to stifle my argument.


 * No, Big Finish has not committed any copyright infringement because, despite Nick Slawicz's comments, the Fifteenth Doctor did not appear in that story. He is free to say that is who he intended to but he had absolutely no rights to include that character therefore it can be considered nothing more than an interesting factoid to add to the BTS pages (as I said in my original post!). And, as well aware as I am about retroactive continuity there is absolutely no evidence that links the Doctor from Contents to the Fifteenth Doctor. It describes the Spy Master's incarnation just as much, if not more, than Ncuti's. DrWHOCorrieFan ☎  22:23, 7 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Even if we put aside the concerns about libel, it is 1000% within precedent to identify the Fifteenth Doctor appearing in The World Tree considering the Wiki has had no issue saying Nine appeared in The Kingmaker for years. TK is a very fitting bit of precedent, as at the time that audio drama released, Big Finish didn't have the copyright to Nine, but he still appeared in it.
 * Also, the Spy Master Doctor being in Contents is silly. RTD was heavily involved with that poem, so it would make sense for him to draw upon it with Fifteen; I doubt Chris Chibnall even knew the poem exists. 22:30, 7 September 2023 (UTC)


 * RTD didn't even know Fifteen was a thing back then! You can say that it is "silly" for the story to be about the Spy Master, I say it is "silly" for it to be about Fifteen. Without concrete evidence both are speculative and neither should be viewed as correct! DrWHOCorrieFan ☎  22:32, 7 September 2023 (UTC)


 * He may not have known about Fifteen specifically, as he was yet to come up with the idea, but he still knew about a future Doctor that wore a hat and boots... so him having a future Doctor who has a hat and boots... that is what continuity is; Moffat obviously hadn't planned out his story arc about "Silence will fall" in series five and its later relavance to The Time of the Doctor, but the sources are still in continuity with each other! 22:37, 7 September 2023 (UTC)


 * I agree that no one would argue The World Tree should be covered as a fan work — the thing to do would clearly just be to confine it to BTS notes. I'd like the tone to quiet down a little — remember Tardis:Capital letters — but Epsilon's reducio ad absurdum was a bit question-begging, yes.


 * As regards the facts… re: World Tree, I wonder if there's a T:HOMEWORLD sort of argument to be made here. It's tricky. But importantly characters' identities aren't platonic ideals. World Tree wasn't allowed to describe the physical features of the Fifteenth Doctor, nor to say "Fifteenth Doctor", but it was allowed to depict "a near-future Doctor relative to the Eleventh" and then say it was meant to be that one. Isn't this like being able to refer to "the planet Grandfather Paradox came from" even if you aren't allowed to call it Gallifrey? Maybe. The argument against is that it's too vague in the text to pin it down to any future Doctor in particular (we'd have a very different situation if the clues more specifically pointed to "Thirteen's full-time successor, whoever he is") but… it seems silly to imagine sticking indefinitely with The Doctor (The World Tree) even though in four years 1) BF will be able to tell Fifteenth Doctor stories and 2) no one would ever dispute that it was Fifteen in The World Tree.


 * Regarding Contents, it could not possibly be the Spy Master, who was not, in fact, an incarnation of the Doctor; nor did he wear a hat. Ambiguous future Doctor or closest-feasible-successor-to-Thirteen is the essence of the debate (which a quote from the writer about intent would clinch, as per Talk:Totem (short story)). Tying it to the Power of the Doctor bodyswap is entirely absurd: we can reasonably assert that it's meant to be a version of the Doctor, some time after Thirteen. The question is whether we can reasonably infer that RTD thought back to the Contents Doctor when designing the Fifteenth Doctor's outfit. Maybe that's a stretch. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 22:39, 7 September 2023 (UTC)


 * I expected nothing less from someone who included Epsilon as a character in their story to challenge me on my reaction rather than swiftly punish them for their outrageous and unacceptable accusation. Cute. DrWHOCorrieFan ☎  22:44, 7 September 2023 (UTC)


 * I’d watch how I talk to admins if I were you. Danniesen ☎  22:49, 7 September 2023 (UTC)


 * @Scrooge MacDuck, what did I say that constituted reducio ad absurdum? I merely compared this story to others, so show there is precedent for its coverage as such. 22:50, 7 September 2023 (UTC)


 * @DrWHOCorrieFan: what "outrageous and unacceptable accusation"? Suggesting that some hitherto-covered story might fail T:VS is not outside policy, and certainly not a punishable offense, even when it's actually inaccurate (which I did acknowledge, chiding Epsilon for his tone). Nor is it off-topic for a discussion about whether or not the allegedly-unlicensed character appeared in the story under discussion! Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 22:52, 7 September 2023 (UTC)


 * @User:Danniesen Nice threat. I'd watch how you talk to average users if I were you, on Wikia admins are no different to the average user despite their ability to moderate. They are absolutely open to be called out when someone sees fit, as I have.


 * @Scrooge I was accused of accusing Big Finish of copyright. Don't play coy. DrWHOCorrieFan ☎  22:54, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Unfortunately only an admin who is far more willing to encourage thread derailing is present, so I will ignore the pettiness and continue with the discussion at hand.

@Scrooge The Spy Master identifies himself as the Doctor. That is a fact. We do not know who the narrator of Contents is, but from The Power of the Doctor we know that many people in the universe believe the Spy Master to be an incarnation of the Doctor (which he is). The narrator could be one of these people and therefore we cannot rule out the Spy Master as (in your opinion) he isn't technically the Doctor. DrWHOCorrieFan ☎  22:57, 7 September 2023 (UTC)


 * The accusation-of-accusing-BF was the "question-begging reducio ad absurdum" for which I chided Epsilon. But I wouldn't describe it as "outrageous and unacceptable", just a misunderstanding of your point — because as I said, it wouldn't be outside policy for you to actually suggest that a BF story failed T:VS if that was what you actually believed!


 * More to the point, however, this talk of "don't play coy" and "pettiness" is stepping over the line. You need to assume good faith here. Accusing other people in a conversation of "playing coy" is, like, literally the opposite of assuming good faith. Please apologise and do better in the future. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 22:58, 7 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Another derail. DrWHOCorrieFan ☎  22:59, 7 September 2023 (UTC)


 * No it's not.
 * Also, even if Big Finish did break copyright...? So what, exactly? I once again bring up the precedent set by sources from The Kingmaker (we stick the presumably copyright breaking instance on the relevant page anyway) to the Talk:Legacies (short story) (where we allow minor copyright breaking concepts to be covered regardless). I see nothing in this case, if it is true that Big Finish broke copyright, that sets it apart from other similar instances. 23:00, 7 September 2023 (UTC)


 * As the admin present has an established friendship with Epsilon I do not feel comfortable continuing with any discussion other than the topic at hand. Shamblar has advised against these dreailings. DrWHOCorrieFan ☎  23:02, 7 September 2023 (UTC)


 * @DrWHOCorrieFan, please, please listen when people tell you that you are being needlessly confrontational and assuming bad faith when none exists, and change your behaviour. I am actually begging you here. The truth is that your apparent, wholly-unfounded belief that I have some kind of bias against you (and in favour of Epsilon) has made it very difficult for me to handle disciplinary matters where you're concerned, because I just second-guess myself and worry that I'm feeding into your own narrative that I am some sort of bully with a personal grudge against you. I am really, really not. I think your contributions to the Wiki, including on this talk page, are very valuable, and I would love nothing more than to be able to engage in civil, positive discussion with you about honest disagreement. But we cannot do that if you keep accusing people of "playing coy" and "derailing". This is why the "assuming good faith" policy exists in the first place (and why we're working on reinforcing it). If you cannot wrap your head around that and change your behaviour accordingly, I will regretfully be forced to block you for repeatedly breaking policy even after being warned about it. I do not want to do that; I hope this desperate last-chance appeal makes it clear how much I do not want to do that; if you don't believe it now, I fear you never will. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 23:07, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

"Contents and The World Tree should absolutely be considered as appearances by the Fifteenth Doctor." - Danniesen. Just here to say I agree. — Fractal Doctor @  23:08, 7 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Anyway, as regards the Spy Master thing — unless I missed something, Contents just has a third-person-omniscient narrator, not an in-universe narrator. Thus a statement that the character was the Doctor should be taken at face value; we shouldn't entertain the idea that it was secretly someone claiming to be the Doctor.


 * Again, I'm not convinced that it's Fifteen, necessarily. I just don't think the possibility that it might be the Master has any likelihood on the Wiki even as a tangential possibility. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 23:11, 7 September 2023 (UTC)


 * I also agree that Contents has nothing to do with The Spy Master, or vice versa. — Fractal Doctor @  23:12, 7 September 2023 (UTC)


 * @Scrooge Even this comment here is extremely inappropriate from an admin. You should be messaging this to me personally on my talkpage rather than continuing to derail the thread despite my numerous attempts to restore order (which is supposed to be your job).


 * I start a discussion with valid points and correct facts regarding licensing and another user jumps in and immediately tries to silence me by accusing me of being libelous to a big corporation. Not only does that go against good faith but it is also against Shamblar's recent warning against accusing people of rulebreaks in threads. It deserved far more than a small childing, even I got a bigger warning for my reaction to it. You have an established friendship with Epsilon, to the extent that you even included them in your story, so for you to overlook such a major lapse in the rules (how many notes is Shamblar going to have to make?) and instead focus more on my reaction... what am I supposed to think? DrWHOCorrieFan ☎  23:13, 7 September 2023 (UTC)


 * You talk about us derailing the conversation yet you yourself do so just as much, if not more; I see my point about the precedents set by The Kingmaker (audio story) and Talk:Legacies (short story) have gone completely unaddressed! 23:17, 7 September 2023 (UTC)


 * @DrWHOCorrieFan: I considered going onto your talk page, but I feared you'd take that badly, on grounds of my leaving the public conversation to threaten you personally (as I feared you'd see it). Perhaps I was wrong to assume that, but it's getting to feel rather damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't…


 * For the record, Epsilon (Out of the Box) is not an in-universe counterpart of User:Epsilon the Eternal, but rather, a guest appearance the fictional character after whom the user named himself. The user is not actually my friend, any more than Stuart Hardy or Jonathan Morris, two other people whose creations I referenced in Out of the Box with their permission.


 * As for the present conversation, again, it would not be rule-breaking for you to say Big Finish had broken copyright. Therefore it is not "an accusation of rule-breaking" for Epsilon to incorrectly believe that you had done so! Epsilon's reading of your message was not inappropriate or a derailment, and it was certainly not an attempt to silence you. It was just sort of wrong.


 * @Epsilon_the_Eternal: Don't you start. No accusing people of derailing. None of you! Stop it! Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 23:19, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Accusing someone of libel is literally against the rules on most public forums, but different strokes for different folks I guess.


 * @Epsilon perhaps that is because you refer to things like everyone should know what you're talking about. You say the Ninth Doctor appeared in The Kingmaker, I look at that page and see nothing to suggest that. How am I supposed to respond? DrWHOCorrieFan ☎  23:21, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Libel would be a deliberate falsehood. Discussing earnest beliefs that some DWU works fail Rule 2 is something we have to be able to do on the Wiki, otherwise we couldn't properly conduct any inclusion debates. I don't believe Epsilon accused you of knowingly lying about BF breaking copyright; rather, he thought you earnestly believed it. Did you take him to accuse you of lying? Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 23:23, 7 September 2023 (UTC)


 * @Scrooge MacDuck: sure, I'll remain more on topic.
 * @DrWHOCorrieFan: from Ninth Doctor: 23:24, 7 September 2023 (UTC)


 * And from The Kingmaker: 23:26, 7 September 2023 (UTC)


 * @Scrooge He literally accused me of saying something "potentially libelous".


 * @Epislon None the wiser as to what your point is with that quote. DrWHOCorrieFan ☎  23:28, 7 September 2023 (UTC)


 * ...I.... that's the thing you asked for clarification about... you missed it on the page and I highlighted it... what part of that don't you understand...? 23:32, 7 September 2023 (UTC)


 * @DrWHOCorrieFan: …Ah. So he did. Do forgive me: I confess I'd missed that (this talk page has been moving very quickly, and perhaps might go a little better if people would psend more time to craft longer, more considered replies). Yeah, I'm going to request that Epsilon apologise for that, too. That is indeed just as surely a breach of T:FAITH.


 * But please apologise as well. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 23:33, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Once again I have been applied to by a user who feels that a discussion has gotten out of hand. For those that didn't see my message on Talk:Walking in Eternity, these accusations of Tardis:No personal attacks must be taken to an admin talk page. To continue on these talk pages is a violation of Tardis:Discussion policy.

As an outside observer, I have to mention something I have seen over the last few months. There are few users on this site who seem to be friends. There is nothing wrong with that. However, when one of this group appears to be the recipient of a personal attack, some of the others jump to their defense (and this does include at least one admin). This makes it look like the supposed offender is being bullied. Is that the impression we want to give users? I'll answer that one myself: NO. I've seen a few new users get driven away from the wiki by this apparent bullying.

These are the guidelines for dealing with what you might think is a personal attack: if it happens to you, take it to an admin. If it happens to someone else, let them take it to an admin; if they fail to do so, and the attacks continue, then you can take it to an admin.

Hopefully you all can act more civilly towards each other so I won't have to take further steps. Shambala108 ☎  23:34, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

In light of the above, and the (entirely reasonable) temporary locking of this talk page to allow this discussion to cool down, the editors who were invited to present their apologies for breaches of Help:Assume good faith/T:FAITH should do so on the talk pages of the affected users. This means that User:DrWHOCorrieFan should apologise at User talk:Epsilon the Eternal and User talk:Scrooge MacDuck, and User:Epsilon the Eternal should apologise at User talk:DrWHOCorrieFan. Thank you for your cooperation. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 23:42, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Continued discussion
Now, I don't want to start anything up again, but I just wanted to chime in and say that I think we should cover on this page, as we have explicit authorial intent that that was the Doctor, but not the Doctor from Contents for now, as I'd rather wait and see if RTD drops any further hints that the two doctors are the same. Aquanafrahudy  📢   06:56, 8 September 2023 (UTC)


 * This was in the rules for the competition in 2022: "Submissions can be set in the universe of Doctor Who in the  Classic Series and the New Series i.e., at any time in the lives of the Doctor from his first incarnation in An Unearthly Child up to and including his twelfth in Twice Upon a Time. The only exception to this is the War Doctor. Due to licensing agreements, we cannot include the War Doctor in stories submitted for this opportunity, so please don’t use this character."


 * The story explicitly wasn't allowed to use the Fifteenth. The fact the writer intended it to be the Fifteenth is nothing more than a bit of trivia. DrWHOCorrieFan ☎  08:44, 8 September 2023 (UTC)


 * I disagree. — Fractal Doctor @  08:45, 8 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Me too, and also, the precedents I highlighted earlier cover us here. 10:06, 8 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Are you disagreeing with DrWHOCorrieFan or me?


 * Also, it doesn't explicitly disallow the Fifteenth, it explicitly disallows the War Doctor. And even if it did, then it wouldn't be copyright infringement because it's not explicitly the Fifteenth. But that was the intention. Aquanafrahudy   📢   14:13, 8 September 2023 (UTC)


 * I was disagreeing with @DrWHOCorrieFan. But again, even if it is true that Fifteen's appearance was breaking copyright, that does not matter! This is the exact same situation as the Ninth Doctor appearing as a "bloke with big ears in a leather jacket" in The Kingmaker, and so T:BOUND applies. We've allowed these technically-outside-of-copyright appearances of Doctors in audio dramas and other parts of the EU for years. There are no new developments here. 14:29, 8 September 2023 (UTC)


 * It isn’t breaking any copyright. It isn’t explicitly stated in the story itself, and authorial intent itself does not break copyright, so this Doctor being the Fifteenth does not in fact break copyright, no matter who wants to keep up the fantasy that it does. Danniesen ☎  14:38, 8 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Yeah. So not only does it not break copyright, even if it did it still wouldn't be an issue here. There is a valid argument in Contents featuring the Fifteenth Doctor being too vague, but there exists no issue with The World Tree. 14:40, 8 September 2023 (UTC)


 * I wouldn't say there's no issue, as T:HOMEWORLD exists. Aquanafrahudy   📢   15:09, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

User:Danniesen please make sure you keep Tardis:No personal attacks in mind.

And I haven't added to this discussion prior to now, but it has always been the policy of this wiki that we don't rely on assumptions, especially when it comes to material that hasn't been released yet. When we have done so in the past, we have had to go back and clean up existing pages after learning that either a story title was changed before broadcast or a character name was changed before broadcast. It hurts nothing to wait for confirmation, while jumping the gun can lead to later, confusing clean-up work. Forum:Why we sometimes protect article creation: the curious case of Dorium Maldavar is interesting reading for the origins and explanation of this policy. Shambala108 ☎  15:33, 8 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Be that as it may, few assumptions are being made. No assumptions are being made with The World Tree, and while Contents is more ambiguous, there is a decent amount of evidence to support the conclusion. 15:43, 8 September 2023 (UTC)


 * I agree with Shambala that I don't think fighting over this now makes a lot of sense. How on earth can we argue about how well 15 matches the characters in question, when we haven't even seen him on-screen yet! Personally, I expect Contents to be a slam dunk – both characters were even created by RTD, and it wouldn't be the first or only time that he lampshaded a real future incarnation in that collection. I'm less sure about The World Tree. What makes us say the future Doctor is 15 rather than, say, 16? or 12? – n8 (☎) 16:39, 8 September 2023 (UTC)