Forums → Archive index → Panopticon archives → TVM Bruce and Miranda: Gerhardt or not?
From the TV Movie we have the characters Bruce and Miranda, who were never given surnames on-screen. Doctor Who - The Novel of the Film gives their surname as "Gerhardt." On this wiki we have Bruce's article at Bruce, and Miranda's at Miranda Gerhardt with a rename note that it should never have been moved from Miranda (Doctor Who). To get everything back into place, should we use the novel surname or not for both of them? — Rob T Firefly - Δ∇ - 16:39, September 19, 2011 (UTC)
- It feels like we should, but given that it is not unknown for the Target novelisations to differ on issues of fact from the show, I think it warrants a similar handling: An italicised statement on the order of Although their last names are never given in the movie, in the novelisation his/her surname is "Gerhardt". Boblipton 16:44, September 19, 2011 (UTC)
- No, it's a long-standing consensus that information which derives only from a novelisation or reference book cannot be used to give the main title for a subject. Otherwise we'd have Polly Lopez — instead of Polly Wright, and Susan English — instead of Susan Foreman/Campbell. It's fine to put information which comes from a novelisation into the real world section of an article. But it can't be the primary title of a subject. Miranda should be Miranda (Doctor Who) only.
czechout ☎ ✍ 07:32: Tue 20 Sep 2011
- No, it's a long-standing consensus that information which derives only from a novelisation or reference book cannot be used to give the main title for a subject. Otherwise we'd have Polly Lopez — instead of Polly Wright, and Susan English — instead of Susan Foreman/Campbell. It's fine to put information which comes from a novelisation into the real world section of an article. But it can't be the primary title of a subject. Miranda should be Miranda (Doctor Who) only.
- That's as I figured. I've moved her to Miranda (Doctor Who) and cleaned up all the links pointing toward it. — Rob T Firefly - Δ∇ - 03:11, September 21, 2011 (UTC)
- I apologize for not being able to find the policy on this, but shouldn't we leave a permanent redirect for Miranda Gerhardt (and maybe Bruce Gerhardt?) instead of a temporary deleted page, so if people search for her under that names (maybe because they remember that the article was at Miranda Gerhardt last time they looked) they'll find it? Or are we assuming that a search for Miranda Gerhardt will turn up only a handful of pages, including Miranda (Doctor Who) and the Miranda disambig page, and anyone will be able to find which one they're looking for easily enough? --70.36.140.19 07:27, September 21, 2011 (UTC)
- If it were a more highly-prominent, further-networked page I'd say consider leaving the incorrect title as a redirect, but as you can see at Special:WhatLinksHere/Miranda_(Doctor_Who) there are only half a dozen real links to Miranda. If someone who remembered the old page were looking for her again it'd be very simple to find her from any of those. — Rob T Firefly - Δ∇ - 11:54, September 21, 2011 (UTC)