Talk:List of Doctor Who episodes (2005–present)/Archive 1

message: Is there a common format for episode synopses or can we settle on one? I propose the following
Title is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, originally aired in X parts from DATE to DATE. Anything especially significant about the episode (Anniversary, etc.) can be put here. If it is an early Hartnell serial, episode titles should be listed:
:* Title
:* Title, (etc.)
SYNOPSIS (as subsection)
{msg: Spoiler}
Full summary, including ending.
NOTES (as subsection)
Anything else significant about the episode that doesn't warrant an entry in the first section. For examples of this format, see Spearhead From Space and Remembrance of the Daleks.
--khaosworks 20:00, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I absolutely agree that we need a consistent standard, and that seems pretty good. Is it worth putting in a (main) cast list? I've been doing that with the episodes that I've put in (see, for example, Marco Polo). I've also put the series number in the intro, but I agree that transmission date is important too. I'd put anything more than that (anniversaries, etc) into the "notes" section.--ALargeElk 08:47, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think a cast list or series number is necessary, myself (perhaps if we included the official serial designation, like AA, or 7B). It doesn't look right on the page somehow. I would be more interested in the plot or the significance of the episode if any.--khaosworks 03:21, 14 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Other big thing - the correct term is story or serial, not episode. The series number is not something to put in as there is no official designation for any of them and some of the later ones generate a lot of controversy as it's not clear what should and shouldn't be counted. Timrollpickering 08:03, 14 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: You're right, of course. I use the term serial consistently in my entries (see my proposed format), but there's always the occasional slip. Can we then settle on whether or not to include  cast list and then start doing the individual serial entries to the proposed format? --khaosworks 08:48, 14 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I see no problem with cast lists. I would also use the production codes - these are mainly unambiguous and are generally used by reference works and the like. Timrollpickering 09:39, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

text: What about writer/director? Writers seem quite important, which is why I've included them in the ones I've done, but I do appreciate that Wikipedia isn't the Radio Times. Also, I think we need to say, "XXX is the Yth serial in the Zth season", rather than just using a production code which wouldn't necessarily mean anything to a non-Doctor Who fan (though why a non-fan would be looking up The Mark of the Rani, for example, I'm not too sure!) Oh, and can we make sure that alternative titles, where they are not ambiguous, are redirected to whatever title we use. --ALargeElk 10:07, 14 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Saying where a story is in a season isn't a problem - my problem is with attempts to number all the stories from the start which have appeared in some lists elsewhere. This breaks down because of arguments over "is the Trial 1 or 4 stories" (and the BBC took different views on different ocassions!), does Shada count etc... Timrollpickering 10:17, 14 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Need for a common format for serial synopses

message: Some of the links would be more appropriate for articles on concepts (e.g. The Daleks), whilst others lead to non-Who stuff like The Awakening. How about we retitle all the pages to something like The Daleks (Doctor Who serial) to provide a consistency and avoid confusion? Timrollpickering 03:28, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: We already have pages for Dalek, Auton, Silurian (Doctor Who) and so on. The Daleks is still the most common title (we don't want to use The Mutants because that would confuse it with the Pertwee serial of the same name) - the alternative is to call it The Dead Planet. I agree, though that The Awakening needs to be disamb'd. IMO, we should only tag it with (Doctor Who Serial) where it is necessary. To put the suffix on every serial seems a big clumsy. khaosworks 06:03, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I wouldn't advocate using The Mutants as the page title for the Dalek story (though there should be an acknowledgement on there that that is the original title and the reason why it isn't used) but Wikipedia does encourage consistency and standardised formates on large series of related article titles. Timrollpickering 10:21, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd say there's no need for suffixes except where necessary to disambiguate - there's going to be no more than half a dozen or so like that. --ALargeElk 08:47, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Need for an agreed format for the individual serial page names

message: The Official Site's episode guide calls its entry for the last part of Season 23 The Ultimate Foe so why doesn't Wikipedia? PMA 04:08, May 13, 2004 (UTC)
:Hmm, they've changed it since I last looked. To be honest the whole season went out with one story title and was clearly intended to be one story, regardless of how the internal production was structured. The confusion arises because "The Ultimate Foe" was in fact a working title for the third bit, and only applied to the fourth by people outside the production office, presumably the publishers of the novelisation. Timrollpickering 07:55, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Can I suggest we decide first of all if the Trial should be presented as one story or four (I'm with the former as that is how it is billed on screen) and then decide on individual titles, if any are to be used. Timrollpickering 23:08, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

text: I'd go with four separate stories, plus an entry for the Trial as a whole (that's how we've got it now), but making the "official" position clear in each story.--ALargeElk 10:07, 14 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: The Trial of a Time Lord - One story or four? Individual titles?

message: I've been trying to push a standardized format for the episode synopses (see Tomb of the Cybermen, among others). One of the things I've added to all the synopses is an external link to the cast and crew lists on the bbc.co.uk website. They've changed the .html files to .shtml files, so the links are all broken. Please change the links accordingly if you come across them. -khaosworks 09:56, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Cast and crew lists

message: Do we really want to add this to the listing? So far, they've been included in the actual synopses. Also, the tables look really awkward. --khaosworks 00:04, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think they're important since some people might be searching for the episode name rather than the serial name.  As to the formatting, I admit there could be a better way of doing it.  I tried numbered lists, but that just took up way too much space.  I tried tables so that the episode number and the episode title wouldn't become separated.  "& nbsp;" might work better. DonQuixote 04:56, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I couldn't find a good way of formatting the text, so I just added links to individual episode title pages. DonQuixote 09:01, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Episode titles

message: I created Template:Doctorwhobox to replace the box at the bottom of the serial synopses. Have a look at the code for the box below to see how it works.
It's all very simple - basically, all you need to do is just fill in the fields, and put a  to separate the lines. We should still leave the External link to the Cast and Crew list as that carries a lot more detail. Guybrush suggested a Script Editor credit - where should it go in the hierarchy, though?
Comments are welcome. If this is acceptable to people, let's start redoing the serial pages with the new box over the next week or so. I'm kind of under deadline doom for my thesis, so I would appreciate help on this. -khaosworks 04:56, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Template:Doctorwhobox

message: Are these really needed? There is no actual consensus on the correct numbers for the series, not least because of Shada and The Trial of a Time Lord and the only time the BBC ever said anything on this provides a different answer to what we have here. Would it not be better to follow the usage of most programme guides and use the production codes which are pretty unambiguous? Timrollpickering 09:53, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The story numbers are on the BBC Region 1 releases, and with Remembrance of the Daleks being listed as No. 152, it seems that they're treating Trial as 4 serials instead of 1, and Shada is in there as well. The reason I put them up there is because of the lack of production codes on the new series - Series 1, Episode 1, etc. are going to be confusing. --khaosworks 15:05, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

text: I think that having a number to the left of each episode title is helpful even if the numbers themselves are more or less meaningless. People like to have things numbered. We may wish to add a note about how the numbering is arbitrary. --Ravenswood 21:00, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Added to List of Doctor Who serials. --khaosworks 21:27, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Story numbers

message: While it is not yet on the official BBC website, in their episode guide, the website Outpost Gallifrey has confirmed that the title of the previously untitled episode 12 is "Bad Wolf" (which was my first guess, anyway). Their source for this information is Doctor Who Magazine, so I assume it to be official. I'll go ahead and make that minor change... :) -- travlr23
:While the information seems reliable, I wonder if it might be worthwhile to specify that it's as-yet-uncomfirmed-by-the-BBC, just to cover our... well, y'know. OTOH, it's my personal inclination to trust OG over and above the BBC, so, whatever.... – Seancdaug 15:47, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)
::I think we can leave it as it's from DWM. The only confusion earlier (from an SFX article) was whether the earlier episode was World War III or World War Three, and that was minor. --khaosworks 15:54, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  untitled episode "Bad Wolf"