Template talk:Infobox Doctor Who episode

Box lines

Is it possible to keep the lines from the original look of the box? It looks a bit odd at the moment. --TimPope 21:34, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Khaosworks, to avoid having to make so many edits to a page you can use the "show preview" button, you have made an awful lot of minor edits here. ed g2s • talk 15:26, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

There is a Wikiproject going on about Doctor Who, and so far no one has complained about the box. When it was first put up, the reaction was fairly positive, and when it was changed by yourself, there was TimPope's comment as above, which I tend to agree with. Perhaps we should put it back to where it was before and then discuss whether to change it. --khaosworks 16:47, May 5, 2005 (UTC)

As an additional comment, note that Wikipedia:WikiProject Television episodes' infobox also has borders, being used for at least Wikipedia:WikiProject Buffy, Babylon 5 and Stargate Atlantis. --khaosworks 16:56, May 5, 2005 (UTC)

A further comment. I've now read some of the discussion over at Template talk:Infobox Pope and while I agree completely with the standardisation of CSS styles, a lot could have been avoided if you had just explained clearly why you were making the changes. It looked awfully unilateral. I still think that the borders make it easier to read, and hence followed your suggestion to use border-collapse. --khaosworks 17:16, May 5, 2005 (UTC)

An extreme example but if you look at The Trial of a Time Lord with four writers and three directors, the lines would make the infomation clearer to distinguish. --TimPope 17:23, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

I think if I explained to the Pope editors CSS standardisation one more time, I might go insane! Personally I think a of cellpadding is enough to distinguish on a simple list like this, as you would have if it were just a bulleted list. I think the lines are unnecessary clutter - and take away from the padded look of the box. Especially with "vertical-align:top" it's quite clear where each section starts. ed g2s • talk 12:09, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Another extreme example is Key to Time, but again, like Trial, it's a portmanteau entry for a story arc. I can see what you mean, but at the very least is there a way to isolate the title of the serial, like with a line dividing it from the rest of the entry or highlighting it? My coding skills in this regard are limited. --khaosworks 15:08, May 6, 2005 (UTC)

Added IMDB link

Following the Film infobox template, I've added a link to the IMDB profile. I think this has a lot of good information, now that individual episodes can be located on the IMDB. For multi-part serials, the IMDB has everything split up, so I recommend we only link to the first episode (as shown in the sample above) -- MisterHand 14:57, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Reformatting the template

I have made a slight adjustment to the template in order to bring it in line with WP:MOS-T, which outlines the Wikipedia conventions for television series and episode titles. The change involved adding quotes around the episode name variables. There are some pages (such as The Christmas Invasion) that use non-standard text in the variables, which unfortunately mucks things up. The alternative, though, is to go through every Doctor Who episode article and manually format the episode names. Thoughts? --Ckatz^chat_spy 00:37, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

There's been a lot of discussion about this in the past. If you'll check out Talk:Torchwood#Torchwood episode titles as the latest round on this. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 01:00, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

How about an entry for the companions? They change more than the Doctor. —Jonathan D. Parshall (Talk | contribs) 08:19, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Help with another template

I think the Doctor Who episodes template is very good, and being new to wikipedia, I don't know how to do them. (I've tried to grasp it but I just can't!) I was wondering if there was anyone kind enough to edit this DW template to make it into a "The Bill Episodes" template, as I am going to make a lot of pages for The Bill Episodes. I've created the page Template:Thebillepisodes but there is nothing on there. What I want is:

The top title bit to say the title of the episode, so that would have to be editable. The categories would then be:

• Original Airdate (which of course is editable for each episode)
• Written by (editable, and if not filled in will not appear)
• Directed by (editable, and if not filled in will not appear)
• Produced by (editable, and if not filled in will not appear)
• Starring (editable, and if not filled in will not appear)
• Previous Episode (editable)
• Next Episode (editable)
• List of The Bill Episodes (a wiki link to List of The Bill episodes)

Thanks very much if anyone can do this. Feel free to leave a message on my talk page. ( Just The Q ) 12:38, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

This has now been done. Thanks. ( Just The Q ) ( talk ) 23:57, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Companions

I'd like to add a Companions field. Any thoughts where it should go? Vagary 08:06, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Adding a "Missing Episodes" field

Given the significance of the missing episodes of Doctor Who, I think the template should have an optional field that would allow the template to list what episodes are missing from the serial. For flair, the field title should link to the Doctor Who missing episodes article. I'm going to try to put this into the template, but I welcome other user efforts to do so. (Particularly since I may fail) -- Y|yukichigai (_ramble argue ^check) 11:08, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Removing story number

There's a discussion underway here which is leaning towards removing the story number field from this template. Any interested party should go there and express their view. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 17:37, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Music

Could we add a parameter for the composer of the episode's music? For example, Francis Chagrin on The Dalek Invasion of Earth. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 23:59, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Should this infobox include a section for citations?

Various inboxen around the project included either a general section for citations or specific section for citing specific data in the infobox. {{Infobox locomotive}} uses a general section while {{Infobox settlement}} has specific sections. Below, I'm including some good points made by Redrose64 (talk · contribs) to help understand some of the possible options.

There seem to be at least four approaches to referencing the data in the infobox:

1. Don't do it - since the infobox is a summary of the article, everything in the infobox should be repeated in the main text, so the refs also belong in the main text;
2. Put refs after the individual data values (as seen with the closure date in the infobox of Chalcombe Road Halt railway station);
3. Use dedicated parameters (as seen at Amsterdam for the area, elevation and population);
4. Use a global parameter (as seen at the bottom of the infobox of NBR 224 and 420 Classes).

The parameters mentioned in items 3 & 4 are variously named "footnotes", "notes", "ref", etc.
— User:Redrose64 14:11, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Would it be helpful to include some area for citations in this infobox? 64.40.54.49 (talk) 10:47, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

This a copy of the infobox from the Christmas Special article on 13 December. The cast list is ref'd with five different citations. (These references are listed below.) I don't see that have a footnote box is going to be helpful, or that dedicated parameters would work with a cast list? Edgepedia (talk) 12:41, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

231 – "The Snowmen"
Doctor Who episode
Cast
Doctor Matt Smith (Eleventh Doctor)
Companion Jenna-Louise Coleman (Clara)
Others Richard E. Grant – Doctor Simeon Tom Ward – Captain Latimer Liz White – TBA Dan Starkey – Commander Strax Neve McIntosh – Madame Vastra Catrin Stewart – Jenny Flint Cameron Strefford – TBA Ian McKellen - Voice of the Snowmen
Production
Directed by	Saul Metzstein
Written by	Steven Moffat
Produced by	Marcus Wilson
Executive producer(s)	Steven Moffat Caroline Skinner
Series	Series 7
Running time	60 minutes
First broadcast	25 December 2012
Chronology
← Preceded by "The Angels Take Manhattan" Followed by → TBA

This is method no. 2 in my list. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:46, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

I'd say 2 myself. 1 would work if the stuff in the infobox was also in the main article, but a lot of it isn't - so really 2 is probably the best option. 188.221.79.22 (talk) 11:59, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Doctor2

@Edokter: and @MarnetteD:. The reason why I added the extra parameters is because, with these extra parameters, it will say Doctors, rather than Doctor, singular, which I personally reckon is more correct. Could I ask you, why don't you think the extra parameters should be added?Theoosmond(talk)(warn) 18:01, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Hello Theoosmond. Your ping did not work though I am not sure why. IMO the "s" is not necessary. As to the "doctor2=" field I can guarantee that it will cause confusion among editors. They will want to change it to match the incarnation number of the Doctor listed. I just feel that this infobox works fine as is. Now this is one editors opinion. If you would like more input you could post a link to this conversation at the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Doctor Who. MarnetteD|Talk 19:13, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

@MarnetteD: It did not work because it was malformed... the edit has to be correct first time in order for a notification to work, you can't go back and fix it later. Similarly, your edit won't have notified Theoosmond because you had one pipe too many. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:26, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

My first reaction is... Why did you not say so in the first place, or post this after the first revert. No one can read minds, you know? It is actually a good point. However, the number of episodes using this would still be too little to warrant all the extra parameters. "Doctor" being singular is not necessarily wrong. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 20:00, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

@Edokter: I did say what my editing purpose was, I said in one of my reverts on the template page With this way of writing the infobox, it will say Doctors, not Doctor, if there is more than one Doctor. Just saying.Theoosmond(talk)(warn) 20:22, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

@Theoosmond: "...in one of my reverts" is what the problem is. Either say so in your iniital edit, or on the talk page after being reverted. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 21:08, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

@Edokter:Ok, recieved and understood.Theoosmond(talk)(warn) 21:17, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

@Edokter: Theoosmond seems to have an aversion to constructive discussion, preferring to re-revert and if that fails, hurl abuse. See User talk:Theoosmond#Redlinked cast members, User talk:Theoosmond#December 2015, User talk:Redrose64#December 2015. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:26, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Question over Template usage

Should this template be really used for episode articles of Doctor Who, in place of the standard infobox per MOS:Television - Infobox - Episode Articles? GUtt01 (talk) 17:49, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

GUtt01, I'd say yes, due to the different formatting. Does the parent template list the Doctors and Companions separately, and also differentiate between episode and serial? -- Alex^TW 00:50, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Deriving an episode/serial number

I would like to revisit this series of edits from October 2018, made by TedEdwards (talk · contribs) and MSGJ (talk · contribs). Basically, it's taking the article Doctor Who (film), extracting the infobox from that from which it then extracts the value of the |number= parameter, all to obtain the value 156. This number is not going to change, although the total number of episodes/serials will increase. If this situation continues, the number of articles transcluding Doctor Who (film) will increase - it's presently at 341, with the result that yesterday, MusikAnimal (talk · contribs) semi-protected that article.

I don't think that is necessary, and would like to eliminate the need for such protection by getting rid of all those transclusions. Accordingly, I would like to carry out this edit to the infobox. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:57, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly agreed with this edit, if it improves the efficiency of the template. If, for some mircular reason, the numbering did change, then we just need to change that value as well. -- /Alex/₂₁ 15:26, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Fine by me, I have no memory of this issue now! — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:30, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

I also agree. I don't think we should be translcuding mainspace pages on other mainspace pages – ever. I'm going to start a discussion on this over at WP:VPT. For now I maintain the article should remain semi'd given its high trasnclusion count. — MusikAnimal ^talk 15:56, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Support. According to the last lead paragraph in List of Doctor Who episodes (1963–1989), the number is unofficial and other numbering schemes have been used. But then we can just change the number here. If somebody is worried that the number is changed in Doctor Who (film) but forgotten here then we can insert a source comment about it at the number in Doctor Who (film). We could also transclude it in both the article and template from a subtemplate but I don't think it's worth the effort. Just set it in the template. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:49, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

 Done * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 04:33, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Thank you I wasn't sure whether to act upon it myself. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:12, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

"Incidental music composer"

Would anyone be opposed to changing the parameter "Incidental music composer" to simply "Music by"? This is how {{Infobox film}} handles it, and I personally think it looks much cleaner when it's only on one line (and more consistent with "Directed by", "Written by", "Produced by" above it). Thanks in advance. – Rhain ☔ (he/him) 11:25, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

As the one who added that parameter, I have no objections - I don't remember now why I worded it as I did Etron81 (talk) 02:16, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

I appreciate the response. There's certainly nothing wrong with the phrasing—it would have been changed years ago otherwise—it's just a small change that crossed my mind. Since it seems uncontroversial, I'll make the change; if anyone disagrees, feel free to revert and/or discuss here. – Rhain ☔ (he/him) 00:01, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Inconsistencies with {{Infobox television episode}}

I recently noticed that this template was missing parameters for cinematographer and editor, like at {{Infobox television episode}}. I've added them to the sandbox and testcases. Would anybody be opposed to their inclusion in the main infobox? – Rhain ☔ (he/him) 00:13, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

I see no issue with this. -- Alex_21 _TALK 03:20, 26 April 2023 (UTC)