User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-4028641-20151023022659/@comment-188432-20151027172954

The variable is meant for the current or most recent Doctor — or, in the case of stories using past Doctors, the one with the most prominent role. If that's not easily discernible then the variable should not be used.

It seems to me that those who are arguing it should be for other, guest-starring Doctors are in fact misinterpreting the variable. Obviously, cases like the ones that have been pointed out were considered in the creation of the variable but rejected. Think of the variable as meaning "main Doctor" or "current Doctor", but using far few characters to achieve that meaning.

The cases where the current/main Doctor is indiscernible are very few and far between, and would almost certainly cause disagreement among users. In those cases, the quickest path towards conflict resolution is simply to omit the variable. If you don't know who the main Doctor is, don't use in the infobox.

Indeed, such cases never exist on TV because one actor's name always comes first. In Time Crash, it's Tennant before Davison. In Day, it's Smith before Tennant. In Three, it's Pertwee before Troughton. In Five, it's Davison before the rest of 'em.

And I'd take issue with what SOTO has said above. I certainly have no plans at all to move towards multiple variables, because, again, that confuses the meaning of the variable.

What we've done in the past, through discussion here in the forums, is to use as a place to stow multiple Doctors, and, indeed, you'll find many examples of that on the wiki. It's a bit unsatisfactory at the present, however, in that there aren't multiple instances of, and that'll be corrected shortly. The reason we went this way is so that we could have a more nuanced approached to the data. It's inarguably more useful to know that the Second Doctor in The Three Doctors is something other than the main Doctor. Newbies to Doctor Who — who comprise the bulk of our readership, after all — are served better if they understand which Doctor is the current one in a story, and which the guests. It's awfully easy for us to assume that "everyone must know The Three Doctors is a Third Doctor story", when there's ultimately no reason to make such an assumption. Why would someone watched Doctor Who for the first time last week know a damn thing about a story that happened more than 40 years ago?

Keeping a singular variable allows it to work as a vital clue to the average reader.  And if it doesn't work on stories we can count on a hand or two, that's more than okay.