Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-88790-20140103140139/@comment-188432-20140105163241

I just wanna highlight one element: Tangerineduel wrote: If we're imposing an unofficial name on these stories why not treat them as they are in the stories, as elements of the trial. In what sense are they "unofficial"? The BBC's episode guide uses them. The reverse of the 30th anniversary VHS box set clearly gives the sub-serial titles. The Making of The Trial of a Time Lord documentary series on the DVDs uses the titles, as in The Making of The Trial of a Time Lord: Part Four - The Ultimate Foe. The stories are novelised separately; there's no sense in which Terror of the Vervoids (novelisation) is an incorrect title. And in the broader sense, the assignment of production codes to the individual parts means that the team thought they were distinct serials: Mindwarp is 7B, not 7A like its predecessor.

So the titles and the concept of the 14 parts being four serials are "official".

The worst you can say is that contemporary audiences didn't call the first four episodes The Mysterious Planet. But then, contemporary audiences would have no idea what would be meant by An Unearthly Child (TV story) or The Daleks (TV story) or The Edge of Destruction (TV story).

The only reason that resistance to giving 7B a name persists is because of the influence of Andrew Pixley and DWM in general, who refuse to use the name "Mindwarp" in places like DWM 249 and DWMSE 3. There, they've influenced fan opinion away from the BBC's apparent desires, and firmly chose to call Mindwarp "Serial 7B" and, worse, "The Trial of a Time Lord Parts Five-Eight".

Obviously fans listen to DWM, and they should. It's a great mag that tries to get to the truth of things. Here, though, they're being ever so slightly anal. The BBC themselves have been pretty comfortable using names — and not just episode numbers — for the four constituent serials of the season since at least 1993.