Talk:Patience's husband

Merger or rename?
"Patience's husband" is just a weird name for this page. It follows the format that's been tried and tested on pages like Bill Potts' mother where we don't know the character's actual name. But per The Infinity Doctors and both versions of Cold Fusion, we know Patience's husband's name, and it's "the Doctor". So this page either needs to be renamed The Doctor (Cold Fusion) ...

... or merged into The Doctor (The Brain of Morbius), which (per the citations of The Power of the Daleks, Something at the Door, and Cold Fusion itself) serves as the general landing page for all incarnations of the Doctor prior to the "first". I think I'd prefer the merger, since it reflects Lance Parkin's intention, the understanding of his audience, and the in-text evidence: for instance, the physical description of Patience's husband (across two incarnations) resembles specific Morbius Doctors more than the descriptions we've used to identify which incarnation of the Doctor is in several Short Trips. Thoughts? – N8 ☎ 15:34, April 24, 2019 (UTC)


 * Well, here’s some input: that merger idea is completely bonkers. All the lore about the Other and the Morbius Doctors is a contradictory mess, so the best we can do (short of making one page that discusses all the content from an out-of-universe perspective) is just keeping them separate, pointing out the links, and letting the readers draw their own conclusions. – N8 ☎ 04:56, August 13, 2019 (UTC)


 * As briefly discussed at Thread:267362, now that I have (1) completed a re-read of the relevant stories and (2) created The Doctor's early life, I now again think that part of the "pointing out the links" process must involve us merging this page into The Doctor (The Brain of Morbius). – N8  ( ☎ / 👁️ ) 02:21, March 31, 2020 (UTC)


 * I think we should keep it as it is. The Infinity Doctor is considered to be an alternate universe by the wiki so I do not believe it covers this character. I failed to find the line where his name was given has "the Doctor" in the novel. The closest i could find was:

"'Please wait for my husband. He is a Doctor!'"


 * and later it is implied more clearly that she relates him to the Fifth Doctor:

"She kept her eyes open, staring ahead, mouthing a plea to her husband."


 * On the other hand i found the statement that the husband's name was forgotten by our Doctor's time.

"'Can she remember anything about the father?’ Tegan prompted. The Doctor said his name, then paused. 'No, no. Quite impossible,' he declared. 'You've heard of him?' Tegan asked him. 'Oh yes, but it’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time. [...] While my people honour her husband, they no longer even know his real name.' 'But you recognized it,' Tegan noted. The Doctor faltered. 'I... I did, didn't I?'"


 * I am open to change my mind but I think we need to get quotes that his name IS the Doctor before renaming the page.RingoRoadagain ☎  16:02, March 14, 2020 (UTC)
 * Strictly speaking, we don't know that the incarnations we call The Doctor (The Brain of Morbius) also named themselves the Doctor. In fact, if we follow the implication in Lungbarrow that they were faces of the Other, they may well not have. But in both case, we know they are early faces of the individual who was known for most of their lives as "the Doctor", and have wisely decided that that's good enough.


 * I'm neutral on merging this page into The Doctor (The Brain of Morbius), but I am… mildly in favour of renaming it The Doctor (Cold Fusion). At the very least, I think a redirect should be made.--Scrooge MacDuck ☎  01:20, March 17, 2020 (UTC)


 * As I've said above, I now again think that the merge into The Doctor (The Brain of Morbius) is the best way for us to handle this page. My earlier concerns about the confusion with the Other are best addressed not by the upholding of the status quo but through a gentle reorganization of the Morbius page to cover the differing explanations of the faces, using "according to another account" tags and links to The Doctor's early life. – N8  ( ☎ / 👁️ ) 02:21, March 31, 2020 (UTC)