Talk:The Doctor (Doctor Who)

The War Doctor should be in the main image.

Stupid leaving him out. He's not a far off incarnation like Jo Martin's Doctor. He's an actual incarnation in-between 8 and 9 in the Doctor's first regeneration cycle, Hurt should be in there. He also became the Doctor again at the end of the special. It would also serve to easily inform new people where the incarnation lies if he's in the main image. 2001:BB6:6862:1800:1083:25A8:CE24:3431 (talk) 22:47, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

This page is written from a history of the programme perspective. If you want to write in an in-universe perspective, there's always tardis wikia. DonQuixote (talk) 21:20, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

The only way to be consistent is by removing the 2nd David Tennant iteration.

You can either include John Hurt & David Tennant III or leave out both. As a history of the programme non-fictional article, David Tennant should be in the picture once. He was the 10th Dr. &, as an actor, is best known for that role. Now he's playing the Dr. again. From a non-fictional perspective, he should only be in the picture once.

From a fictional perspective, John Hurt should be in between Sylvester McCoy & Christopher Eccleston & David Tennant should succeed Jodie Whitaker. 2600:1012:B168:43D1:0:4E:2A55:D501 (talk) 01:36, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

In the real world, David Tennant will be the series lead for the 2023 specials. It's not a new thing for series leads to switch back and forth. For example, off the top of my head, Tom Wopat and John Schneider were series leads for seasons 1 through 4 of The Dukes of Hazzard, then Byron Cherry and Christopher Mayer were series leads for season 5, and finally Wopat and Schneider were series leads for seasons 6 through 7. DonQuixote (talk) 04:00, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Should Brian be added as a relative of The Doctor?

Given that Brian (Rory's father) appeared a few times during the series, would it be reasonable to add him as The Doctor's grandfather-in-law, given he is Rory's father? Pokelego999 (talk) 22:53, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

He apears in more episodes than Adam but Adam is listed as a companion so yeah I think he should apear. OLI 14:27, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

To be honest, grandfather-in-law isn't a common metric even with real people unless you're compiling a family tree, and with this character there's too much OR involved (not to mention being too in-universe) with such a thing. DonQuixote (talk) 19:00, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

Bi-regeneration and the possible regeneration of 2 Doctors and List of Doctors Order

If Tenth/Fourteenth Doctor (David Tennant) is still able to re-generate and he manages to do so what happens to the List of Doctors order as there is no guarantee that he will eventually become Gatwa as there could be Unknown Doctors between the two versions of The Doctor.

Also, should Tennant's 14th Doctor regenerate, it's also possible he could gain an unfamiliar face or revert to another previous one. Even though the bi-regeneration in The Giggle gave us Fifteenth Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Fourteenth Doctor (David Tennant) at the same time it is still possible the 15th could have been pulled in from somewhere in the future. We don't know if both Doctors can re-generate yet or just Gatwa. - 2A02:C7C:53C1:E00:90CB:DA01:E677:CD31 (talk) 14:26, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

There's entirely too much speculation at play here. If/when such things transpire, then the article can reflect that. Until then, there's nothing reasonable to revise in the article. Beyond that, this discussion page shouldn't be a forum for what-if scenarios. —Shada Ng (talk | contribs) 16:54, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Origin

Since the timeless children, there is some debate among fans as to whether the Doctor is fully Gailfreyan. Hence some users have edited "Unknown, Gallifrey (adopted)" Has there been confirmation or not from the writers? ~~ 92.17.199.182 (talk) 22:00, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Voice changer dalek

a voice changer of a dalek 111.220.173.112 (talk) 05:27, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

David Tennant is there twice

Although there seems to be a consensus to distinguish between the tenth and fourteenth doctors in an in-universe sense, there is only one David Tennant (the actor). When listing the fourteen lead actors, he should only be listed once.

The infobox says “Portrayed by” and seems to proceed to claim the character was portrayed by two David Tennants (2005-2010) and (2023). That is incorrect, he was portrayed by the same man (2005-2010, 2023). There is a clear precedent in Sean Connery’s non-consecutive portrayals of James Bond which are listed in that character’s infobox as (1962-1967, 1971, 1983). Even in this specific Doctor Who list, David Bradley’s non-consecutive appearances as distinct incarnations of the character are listed as (2017, 2022).

The subsection titled Actors begins by saying “The actors who have played the lead role of the Doctor to date in the programme, and the dates of their first and last regular television appearances in the role, are:” and follows that up with a table listing the fifteen in-universe incarnations of the character instead of listing the actors who have played the lead role in the programme to date as promised. Either the table needs to be revamped or the sentence leading into it needs to be rewritten.

I would propose something like:

Actor	No. of series	No. of episodes	Incarnation	Original start		Original end
				Date	Age	Date	Age
William Hartnell	4	134 (29 stories)	First Doctor	23 November 1963	55	29 October 1966	58
Patrick Troughton	3	119 (21 stories)	Second Doctor	5 November 1966	46	21 June 1969	49
Jon Pertwee	5	128 (24 stories)	Third Doctor	3 January 1970	50	8 June 1974	54
Tom Baker	7	172 (41 stories)	Fourth Doctor	28 December 1974	40	21 March 1981	47
Peter Davison	3	69 (20 stories)	Fifth Doctor	4 January 1982	30	16 March 1984	32
Colin Baker	2	31 (8 stories)	Sixth Doctor	22 March 1984	40	6 December 1986	43
Sylvester McCoy	3	42 (12 stories)	Seventh Doctor	7 September 1987	44	6 December 1989	46
Paul McGann	—	1 (1 story)	Eighth Doctor	27 May 1996	36	27 May 1996	36
Christopher Eccleston	1	13 (10 stories)	Ninth Doctor	26 March 2005	41	18 June 2005	41
David Tennant	3	50 (39 stories)	Tenth Doctor	25 December 2005	34	1 January 2010	38
			Fourteenth Doctor	25 November 2023	52	9 December 2023	52
Matt Smith	3	44 (39 stories)	Eleventh Doctor	3 April 2010	27	25 December 2013	31
Peter Capaldi	3	40 (35 stories)	Twelfth Doctor	23 August 2014	56	25 December 2017	59
Jodie Whittaker	3	31 (24 stories)	Thirteenth Doctor	7 October 2018	36	23 October 2022	40
Ncuti Gatwa	1	9 (8 stories)	Fifteenth Doctor	25 December 2023	31	TBA	TBA

or:

Actor	Incarnation	No. of series	No. of episodes	Original start		Original end
				Date	Age	Date	Age
William Hartnell	First Doctor	4	134 (29 stories)	23 November 1963	55	29 October 1966	58
Patrick Troughton	Second Doctor	3	119 (21 stories)	5 November 1966	46	21 June 1969	49
Jon Pertwee	Third Doctor	5	128 (24 stories)	3 January 1970	50	8 June 1974	54
Tom Baker	Fourth Doctor	7	172 (41 stories)	28 December 1974	40	21 March 1981	47
Peter Davison	Fifth Doctor	3	69 (20 stories)	4 January 1982	30	16 March 1984	32
Colin Baker	Sixth Doctor	2	31 (8 stories)	22 March 1984	40	6 December 1986	43
Sylvester McCoy	Seventh Doctor	3	42 (12 stories)	7 September 1987	44	6 December 1989	46
Paul McGann	Eighth Doctor	—	1 (1 story)	27 May 1996	36	27 May 1996	36
Christopher Eccleston	Ninth Doctor	1	13 (10 stories)	26 March 2005	41	18 June 2005	41
David Tennant	Tenth Doctor	3	47 (36 stories)	25 December 2005	34	1 January 2010	38
	Fourteenth Doctor	—	3 (3 stories)	25 November 2023	52	9 December 2023	52
Matt Smith	Eleventh Doctor	3	44 (39 stories)	3 April 2010	27	25 December 2013	31
Peter Capaldi	Twelfth Doctor	3	40 (35 stories)	23 August 2014	56	25 December 2017	59
Jodie Whittaker	Thirteenth Doctor	3	31 (24 stories)	7 October 2018	36	23 October 2022	40
Ncuti Gatwa	Fifteenth Doctor	1	9 (8 stories)	25 December 2023	31	TBA	TBA

184.144.62.38 (talk) 01:01, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

I have been WP:BOLD and changed the infobox per your suggestion, as this would appear to be straightforward. As you say, there is one David Tennant, not two. I don't think the table should be changed, though. I understand your reasoning for the suggested forms above, but if you tie both roles to a single Tennant entry like that, it breaks the sorting of the table, keeping Tenth and Fourteenth together no matter if you want to sort it by one through fifteen. For that reason, I think the table still needs to have the characters separated. JustAnotherCompanion (talk) 08:12, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

This was reverted by an IP editor and, without seeing this discussion or that you had made your edit WP:BOLDly, I restored your edit. Ordinarily I would have left it in its original state and discussed here but missed that. I strongly agree with the above comments that listing him twice implies they are different actors. The infobox says "portrayed by" so he should be listed once with the dates. A comparable (but obviously different!) situation is Living with Yourself which stars Paul Rudd as the protagonist and his clone – but the infobox only lists Rudd as "starring" once.

Nonetheless, if other editors disagree, feel free to re-revert to the original state and we can discuss per WP:BRD. Irltoad (talk) 13:40, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

I've done some more research and have some additional comments to make that supports Tennant being in the infobox once. 1) I checked the instructions for Template:Infobox character and for the 'portrayed' field, it says "Name of the individuals who portrayed the character." This seems straightforward; there's only one individual named David Tennant who prortrayed the character, so he gets named once. 2) The edit summary of the IP editor who reverted me ends with "If he appears in the list once then it may seem to some people that he only played one incarnation". I'd like to turn that around and ask, "Who reading this list will see David Tennant named twice and jump to the conclusion that he played two different incarnations?" If you haven't watched the show, are you really going to think Tennant played a different incarnation in his second appearance? I don't think so. And if you have watched the show, you don't need to list Tennant twice to know that his 2023 appearance was as a different incarnation. 3) In any case, regardless of the incarnations, the character is still "The Doctor". One David Tennant has portrayed the Doctor.

As for the subsection headed Actors, I think this could be solved by changing to order of the columns slightly and renaming the section. At the risk of having WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS invoked on me, I had a look at how List of US Presidents handles their non-consecutive president, Grover Cleveland. Their table has the President number in the first column, so Grover Cleveland is listed separately at 22 and 24 rather than having his presidencies rowspanned together. It strikes me we could do the same here; have the incarnation numbers for the first column, then there's no issue with Tennant appearing twice in the table. The subsection may need to be renamed Incarnations. Which, given this is a character article, I don't see a huge issue with. But on this one I'm not inclined to be bold because it's nowhere near as straightforward as the infobox issue. JustAnotherCompanion (talk) 14:42, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

List of presidents of the United States is a great article that spends most of its lead explaining how and why it is not a list of men who have held the office, it is instead a list of presidencies. If the table here is going to be based around the in-universe incarnations, I think it would make sense to rename the subsection and rewrite its introductory sentence.

I also think that the List of actors who have played the Doctor falls foul of this and is sitting on the fence about what it is trying to be. Template:Doctor Who places it alongside character pages and calls it a page about the “Doctors”. The article’s title, lead and infobox are explicitly about the 14 actors who have played the part. But the core table is a list of incarnations with two David Tennants. I may be overstepping however, that’s probably a different argument for a different talk page, and as an IP editor renaming a 20 year old article or reformatting its titular list is probably above my pay grade. 184.144.62.38 (talk) 20:21, 14 July 2024 (UTC)