| 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 (Timelord) 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)
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)