Forum:IDW Doctor Who/Star Trek crossover

Ten Forward → IDW Doctor Who/Star Trek crossover (Reply | Watch)

The recent announcement of a Doctor Who/TNG crossover seems to complicate the lives of MemBeta and tardis:Doctor Who Wiki/Tardis editors. Since this may well be a "serious" as opposed to parodic crossover, have you guys given any thought into how you're going to approach writing articles here? Tardis and MemBeta have the same problems, it seems to me.

As things stand right now, Star Trek is a fictional television show in the DWU and Doctor Who is a fictional television show in the STU. After this thing is published, it looks like both franchises will be a part of the same universe, as long as you believe (as both MemBeta and Tardis do) that comics "count".

So do you have experience of anything like this? We have only a fleeting brush with the Fantastic Four in DWU fiction — and a bit of fairly easily resolved confusion over whether Sherlock Holmes is "real" or fictional — so there's nothing to prepare us for something that is at once a work of fiction within the universe and yet non-fictional to it.

I know that these are hard questions to answer before you've even read this story. Still, the mind boggles over the possibility of having articles about Deanna Troi at Tardis and articles about Rory Williams at MemBeta. And if there's nothing in this story that indicates it's imaginary, or that it doesn't involve the "real" versions of these characters, what implications will that have for the way we write about each other's franchise? The $25,000 question, of course, is where we draw the line. If we start an article on Worf, does that mean we necessrily need one on Klingons? And if you start one on the Doctor, do you need one on Time Lords, or even the ten previous incarnations of the Doctor who don't appear in the story, but are implied by the presence of #11? -- CzechOut 01:25, February 13, 2012 (UTC)

This is a reoccurance for us, we've just seen the release of a Star Trek/Legion of Super-Heroes crossover and there was also a previous Star Trek/X-Men.

Our approach was simple - we incorporate as primary material the events of the crossover characters and domain. The rest we treat as secondary, but valid. For example, we have an article about Darkseid, as he was mentioned in a Star Trek crossover. But you'll see no links to Heggra (his mother) or DeSaad (his chief assistant) because they weren't mentioned in the Star Trek oriented crossover.

We'll need to look at arrangement of interwiki links. For example again with Darkseid - we link back to his "primary" wiki, the DC wikia. Our external link uses their naming correction for the "(New Earth)" Darkseid, as he is the particular Darkseid mentioned in the story. -- Captain MKB 01:43, February 13, 2012 (UTC)

(Ah! Beaten to it.)

Speaking as a fan of both universes (though not the latest model of Who, blech) I'll probably do this comic myself, or at least I will here since this is where I'm familiar editing so far.

This had already happened a few times in Trek, for example Star Trek: Assignment: Earth (a spin-off functions the same way as a cross-over), X-Men with say Planet X, and recently with IDW's Star Trek—Legion of Super-Heroes, Issue 1 and so on. It seems the policy has been that these things come from alternative universes, and pages for relevant characters cover only what can be gleaned from the crossover material, with links to outside material. For example: Logan (Wolverine) (though his bio may extend beyond the crossover material). It depends how the story turns out, if alternate universes are the case.

In any case, it's already happened, with some unnamed cameos from two Doctors in Ishmael. :D

(Now, try explaining Death's Head without Doctor Who!) -- BadCatMan 02:03, February 13, 2012 (UTC)

We also have a paradox of Superman - mentioned in ENT as a fictional character but appearing in a flashback sequence as a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes... and the ship's theater showed a fourth doctor episode in a Diane Duane novel. Boggles the mind.

In any case, we'll probably need a The Doctor (Time Lord) article (since The Doctor is already taken as a "name" ;) -- Captain MKB 12:22, February 13, 2012 (UTC)

Heck, Doctor Who is fictional in its own universe, and so is Star Trek in its universe: Star Trek within Star Trek. We'll work it, somehow. :) -- BadCatMan 13:29, February 13, 2012 (UTC)

Hey, CzechOut, we now have TARDIS and The Doctor (Time Lord) articles. Take a look, see what you think.

I noticed something odd: neither the television series Doctor Who nor the The Doctor as a fictional character have been mentioned by name in any of the referenced Trek sources that I could find. So it's entirely possible that the fictional versions in the Trekverse are different enough from the "real" versions that there is no conflict. Sort of like Star Trek in the Benny Russell world, or Who's Professor X. :-D Of course, that's much harder to resolve on the Who side, which has been much freer with in-jokes and references (like the Eastenders/Dimensions in Time crossover).

That depends how the crossover goes. It might be a metafictive nightmare in the Land of Fiction! ;-). -- BadCatMan 13:10, February 17, 2012 (UTC)

External links

They snuck some DW into the latest ST-LoSH issue - the TARDIS is part of Vandar's collection of captured time machines. I wrote the article with the simplest description possible as there was no solid data from the source - it was a cameo with no other description. Since it is also on the cover of the upcoming, i figured it was safe material. The other cameos there are much more of a question. There's a time-travel modified DeLorean, Bill & Ted's phonebooth, Time Trax pod and a lot of other nifty things. -- Captain MKB 00:00, February 16, 2012 (UTC)

Drawing links

I'm wonder how we'd draw links between this crossover and other references that have appeared in Trek over the years. That is, the TOS novel: Ishmael describes (but not names) both the Second and Fourth Doctors, and refers to an unnamed time-traveling civilization in Kasterborous (a constellation in Who, a galaxy in Trek). The SCE eBooks: Wildfire, Book 1, Wildfire, Book 2 has Cervantes Quinn steal his sonic screwdriver from an unnamed time traveler. So would it be fair to have the (Eleventh) Doctor of this comic series share a page with those two descriptions, have him come from that civilization of Kasterborous (the Time Lords of the planet Gallifrey if the words are used), who once had his sonic screwdriver stolen by Quinn? It's all pretty obvious, but the links might only be via external knowledge rather than being within Trek sources. -- BadCatMan 05:50, February 16, 2012 (UTC)

Link schemes

I think the association created by the STTNG-DW crossover kind of regularizes the kind of ancillary references showing DW in other Trek literature -- for example, when a slew of time machines are shown in the ST/LoSH crossover, the TARDIS can be identified, and associated with DW because it is also associated to Star Trek through its STTNG/DW appearance -- but the Delorean is -not- linked to a DeLorean, it is linked to automobile, because there is no such "reinforcement" of the connection of any kind of Star Trek/ Back to the Future crossover (and you can't even see more than half of it).

However, i think the extraneous Doctor references from earlier literature should be strictly examined for supporting data. For example, showing the TARDIS (visually identifiable) in an "extraneous" appearance outside of the STTTNG/DW crossover is connected because of that identification -- but with a qualifying background note that maybe it's another TARDIS with the same disguise, so it isn't necessarily the Doctor who took it to that alternate reality. The sonic screwdriver reference is a little behind that for "reinforcement" - it doesn't show or describe the Doctor in any way, so it easily could be any other time traveler. It lacks the full identification such as seeing the person or even having them described -- but as a background note, these facts would be good on both the sonic screwdriver page and the Doctor (Time Lord)'s page.

I think the number of references regarding the Doctor (Time Lord) will be of sufficient quantity to be contained on one page - regardless of his numerous regenerations.

In terms of Kasterborous, a galaxy can be in a constellation, depending on where you look at it from. -- Captain MKB 03:31, February 17, 2012 (UTC)

I noticed that my note here has sort of gotten lost. A notation at the Doctor (Time Lord) and/or Doctor Who has mentioned that the Doctor is whom the sonic driver was stolen from in Vanguard -- didn't everyone see my note above that, since this didn't explicitly establish the Doctor's identity, it shouldn't be directly attributed to him? The article at TARDIS was meant to establish a model for such a reference being in a background section. -- Captain MKB 00:16, March 2, 2012 (UTC)

It was not directly attributed to the Doctor. It said "Cervantes Quinn once stole a sonic screwdriver from "a rather daft chap" on Barolia, prior to 2265." The article began with "An unidentified time traveler fitting the Doctor's description has appeared several times." -- BadCatMan 03:23, March 2, 2012 (UTC)