Talk:Timelash

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Didn't one of the books feature the Celestial Intervention Agency (or someone similar) vaporizing the Borad upon his arrival in Scotland so as to deal with any potential continuity problems with Terror of the Zygons? I'd mention it in the article, but I can't for the life of me remember which book it happened in. --DaveJB 15:37, 24 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

So I was looking over a few articles and noticed that Timelash is labeled a serial despite only being two parts, as are other two parters in classic who. eg. The Edge of Destruction, The Ultimate Foe, and most other season 22 stories. However, with New who two part stories are all labeled as two part stories and not serials, eg. Spyfall, The End of Time, World Enough and Time&The Doctor Falls. Now the answer you might be inclined to give is New Who gives each episode a different name which is not always true Spyfall/End of Time, or that Classic Who labels them all parts and not names once again not always true Edge of Destruction.
So is there any meaningfull difference between Timelash and Spyfall to make a distinction or is just an arbitrary or stylistic choice. Questions? four Olifanofmrtennant (she/her) 03:44, 14 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

I'm not sure that an RfC is necessary for this, nor that this is the best venue for it (as opposed to WT:WHO or WT:TV), but this is explained at WP:WHO/MOS#Terminology and has been discussed here and here. – Rhain ☔ (he/him) 05:10, 14 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

@OlifanofmrTennant Can you explain why you have not followed WP:RFCBEFORE before opening this "RFC"? -- Alex_21 _TALK 06:13, 14 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

@OlifanofmrTennant: I have pulled the {{rfc}} tag on this, for two reasons. First (as noted by Alex 21) there has been no attempt at RFCBEFORE, let alone that discussion has reached a stalemate. Second, that this matter is not confined to Timelash but also covers stories like The Edge of Destruction, The Rescue, The Sontaran Experiment, Black Orchid etc. - more than a dozen stories from the classic era, not merely two or three. This page (Talk:Timelash) is intended for discussing improvements to the specific article Timelash, not for more general matters. A much better venue would have been Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Doctor Who; and even then, a simple question there would have sufficed, as somebody there (perhaps myself) would have directed you to WP:WHO/MOS#Terminology - as Rhain has already done. There is no need for a full-blown thirty-day formal WP:RFC that sends out messages to many people with no interest in the matter. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:20, 14 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

Classic Who was/is billed as being in a serial format – one or more stories in a series, each spanning multiple episodes. This was explicit, and is referred to in both primary and secondary sources (including Timelash). The modern series intentionally and explicitly uses a 'story of the week' format, with occasional stories that span multiple episodes, arguably with Flux as an exception. You could argue that two-part episodes are technically a 'serial' but they are never referred to as such, officially or commonly, and that isn't the current format of the show. You could call that arbitrary, but Wikipedia uses the terms that are commonly used rather than words that technically fit the definition, so the terminology used does have a strong basis. Irltoad (talk) 12:44, 14 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

I'll defer to this. Slacker13 (talk) 13:59, 16 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

Removed rfc name. But also the mospage seemed to be contradictory as describing serials as miltipart stories and episodes as also occasionally being multi part. Questions? four Olifanofmrtennant (she/her) 22:10, 14 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

In the classic era, episodes were produced together as serials. In the modern era, episodes are produced separately, and some happen to be multi-part stories - that doesn't make them automatically serials. There's no difference between, say, Spyfall's two parts and World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls, all four are episodes, the two simply alternate between a shared or separate title. Even then, serials even had that until 1966, so the lack of different titles doesn't automatically make Spyfall a serial. In fact, in that particular case, the two episodes were actually produced separately in different production blocks.

(I'd also like to know there's zero reason for this discussion to be on this particular talk page.) -- Alex_21 _TALK 11:44, 15 April 2024 (UTC)Reply