User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-121.45.54.78-20130925110520/@comment-38288735-20191118174724

So this thread was referenced as superceding another thread, which brought me here. This is a pretty major thing to be leaving open as, if I understand the policy correctly, no work should be being done on appearance pages until it is closed (at least in regard to TV appearances, which, I agree with Amorkuz, this should be restricted to).

Personally, I think CzechOut's original proposal is pretty on the mark. I too feel that parentheticals would just clutter the lists, and since that particular aspect was decided in another thread, I'm not going to dwell on it.

One aspect that does not seem to have been nailed down is what to do when one character takes the form of another character, the most significant example being the Moment appearing as Rose in "Day of the Doctor." A loophole was provided that the casting for the special says "Rose", when the actual character is always credited as "Rose Tyler", but, in the interest of future-proofing, what if we didn't have that loophole. How would we handle it?

I suggest that an appearance not count if we are certain that the character is not appearing and that it is, in fact, another character taking their form, regardless of how they're credited. That way one character's "appearance" doesn't go on two separate lists.

I make that final distinction because that is where i draw the line: dreams, hallucinations, or visions of characters would count as long as it is not something else impersonating them.

Finally, the thread that brought me here is whether a corpse's appearance should count. My "vote" on that is that it should, as there are a decent number of characters who only appear post-mortem, and it's easier to include all corpses than to only include ones where it is the character's only appearance.