User blog:RABNerd VP/The Doctor Ships

As many of you know Doctor Who is a pretty big and long running fandom with quite a lot of ships. With each new Doctor more ships exist, not just because they get new companions, but because the new Doctor's get shipped with past companions, and past Doctor's get shipped with new companions. However, some of this can get very confusing, especially when it comes to ship names and categorizing. As some ship names are for a character and a specific Doctor, while others are for a character and just The Doctor. And some of our ship pages have ended up this way, with some being for The Doctor and a character (Thoschei and Docmana), while others are for a specific Doctor and a character (NineRose and TenRose or Whoufflé and Whouffaldi).

So we need to work out which way this needs to be done in order to clear up categorizations.

Having it be by incarnation would mean separating it down ship pages that are overall just The Doctor, and having ship names for each incarnation of each character that is shipped. This would mean articles like Thoschei getting split up into multiple pages based on the different incarnations. The Twissy page already exists for 12 x Michelle Gomez's Master (otherwise known as Missy), but it would also have to be split into a TenSimm page for 10 x John Simm's Master, as well as other variations on the ship.

Having it be just overall by The Doctor would mean combining ship pages into one page. Rather than splitting it by incarnation, all incarnations of The Doctor and a character would just be under the one page. This would mean combining certain articles into one. For example, combining Twiver and Yowzah into "DoctorRiver". This would still specify on pages how each version of the ship is shipped, as well as using a gallery in the infobox to differentiate between the versions visually. This would not mean coming up with new ship names for a character and The Doctor, if they're mostly only shipped with one version of The Doctor. For example, a page like Thasmin would not need a new name despite it being specifically being about the 13th Doctor and Yaz, due to the fact that Yaz is not shipped with enough of the other Doctor's for there to be an overall ship name for every version of The Doctor and Yaz.

A final option would be to keep the ship pages separate, but just have the all categorized under "The Doctor". This would mean that it would visually differentiate between Doctor's, but it would categorize just as ships for The Doctor. For example, the infobox on NineRose would list the 9th Doctor as the character, but would link back as just a The Doctor ship like it does for Thoschei.

One a decision is reached, the standard will be applied to The Doctor pages. This would also apply to pages for other characters in the fandoms who have different incarnations, such as The Master and Ramona. All ships for Time Lords/Gallifreyans will also move to non-binary ships, as they are a genderfluid/non-binary species. Below is a poll so that you can vote for the options, as well as discuss other possible ideas, as well as ideas for the list of ship names. You don't have to be a Doctor Who fan to vote if you feel this has informed you enough to have a strong enough opinion on. We'll keep the poll up for a week (December 18th 8pm Central Time) before coming to a decision, but if by the 16th, there's an option with a very high lead we will default to that option.

Thank you everyone for your time!

https://shipping.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000000101475