Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-4028641-20151008023030/@comment-38288735-20191117121249

OttselSpy25 wrote: I am thoroughly against including all of the Ainley appearances as part of the Pratt/Beavers lineage, it feels reductive to say the least.

But that's not what Ringo's proposal does. The overall heading for the section makes no reference to Pratt/Beevers. It's simply grouping that entire time period together because,


 * 1) The Master keeps getting deep fried, then healing/getting a new body. I think we were up to five different times at our last count?  (Not counting each of the "Mastermind" bodies as a separate instance, or there would be a bunch more.)  Two of those times were in the middle of the "Ainley" period, and one of them was even called a regeneration; it just happened to end up with the same appearance as his previous stolen body.  So, all sources being equal, there's not just one Ainley incarnation. This lets us just group them all by recognizable appearance and be done with it.


 * 2) It is unclear what order some incarnations occur in. This shows that our ordering is, at best, an educated guess.


 * 3) The entire existence of some incarnations is contradicted by some accounts. The Eight Doctors implies that Ainley goes straight into the TV movie, ignoring the New Adventures and, in turn, being ignored by Big Finish.

So, yes, it may be reductive, but it's because the actual narrative we have is so convoluted as to require reduction.