Personally, if I had my way, I would get rid of the recaps, and just keep episode-specific tropes (and even then, only if the main page was bloated). The vast majority of these are awfully-written. But I think I'm one of the few who actually oppose this, and this isn't my main problem. It's the numbering of the individual episode pages post-2010.

Doctor Who officially went from its twenty-sixth season in 1989 to its first series in 2005. When a new showrunner took over after the end of the fourth series, he apparently called "series 5" a lie or somesuch, so for some bizarre reason a compromise was made to make the fifth series onwards the 31st, 32nd and 33rd seasons for the purposes of TV Tropes' recap pages. In the meantime, DVDs, Blu-Rays, iTunes, iPlayer, soundtrack albums and even the official site has since called the three series "5", "6" and "7".

Is the S31 and so forth crap anything other than obtuse due to what seems to be an flippant (and very long ago) remark about a showrunner starting anew?

On top of that are the nonsense episode numbering of mini-episodes which are in no way part of the main 13 episodes of series 6. One of which production-wise is almost certainly series 7. Namely "Death Is the Only Answer", "Night and the Doctor", "Good as Gold" and "Pond Life". Two Script to Screen submissions by primary school children, a set of DVD-exclusive mini-episodes, and a webcast look into the Pond family's life in the lead-in to series 7.

edited 13th Sep '12 3:12:39 PM by OldManHoOh

RE: the numbering, I agree with the current format of listing each overall series (as in the series itself and any miscellaneous Christmas Specials, DVD extras, animations etc connected to that series) "New Series X - Season Y" partly for completion sake, partly because it does acknowledge the ties between the old series and the new series and partly because it does work to preempt grief from any pedants who might get their knickers in a knot over it, but I do agree that where it lists the actual season itself (as in actual episodes officiall broadcast as part of that season) would be better served reflecting the new series numbering. If that makes sense. Which I'm not sure it does.

Regarding the recap pages, I actually like a lot of the recaps we've got there, but then I may have contributed or outright written a few of them so that might be me being not entirely objective; I wouldn't particularly object if they were trimmed down to the bare essential summaries though. Regarding the examples, I do wonder whether it might be worth doing what's done on the Community pages (another Trope Overdosed show if ever there was one) and use the main page for series-general tropes while moving episode-specific tropes to the Recap pages; problem here is that there's probably just as many series-general tropes as there are episode-specific ones, but it's a possibility I suppose. I think given the nature of the series, though, Doctor Who is one of those pages that would very easily become bloated without the recaps, though.

edited 13th Sep '12 8:30:58 PM by DoctorNemesis

Both numbering systems were in use from the relaunch. In fact the BBC only made their minds up when the DVD release came out.

i.e. two years ago. Also, might I ask where?

edited 14th Sep '12 11:33:14 AM by OldManHoOh

Bumping. Who used the "season 31" figure from the launch? Fans? News media? Radio Times?

Don't know myself, but doesn't it help to differentiate between the original seasons and the new series regardless of who thought it up?

edited 20th Sep '12 7:34:16 AM by ashlay

Another thing I forgot to add: why is it two different formats for the Russell T Davies (NSSX) and Steven Moffat (SX) eras? Wouldn't it have made more sense to have retroactively changed Russell's episodes to S27. It's not what they're widely called, but I suppose it's an alternative to "New Series Season" or "NSS".

edited 20th Sep '12 8:27:04 AM by OldManHoOh

Not season 31. TV Schedules used Season 27 from launch, among others at the BBC. There was no consensus and then the DVD company just did their own thing.

Exactly. We should change the numbering so that the new series goes by the Seasons 1-7 number and is labeled "New Series", because those who have not seen the old series (like me) will be confused.

That just means it's been the standard since 2005 DVD releases.

Most of the fans I've seen on places like Gallifrey Base use both Series 1-7 and Season 27-31 (Generally using the latter when comparing aspects with the old show, and the former when discussing things exclusive to the new show).

edited 22nd Sep '12 1:59:09 AM by Scardoll

If you consider the DVD company to be authoritative.

Edit: British TV guide using the 32-33 numbers

edited 22nd Sep '12 3:00:30 AM by Michael

Keep the numbers as S27, S28 etc. For disambiguation reasons. Season 1 and Series 1 would both be shortened to S1. That's not helpful.

Series 1-4 aren't S27 etc. (on the Recap index) at all. They're the semi-obtuse NSS 1, NSS 2 ("new series season", or "'new series' series").

edited 22nd Sep '12 1:36:16 PM by OldManHoOh

Doctor Who is huge and expansive, and the recaps should definitely stay. There just isn't space for all the tropes on the series main page, and the episode recaps are fantastically comprehensive. The tropes are very well-organised this way.

It seems there is an issue with the naming of some pages. Not sure how critical that is.

Bump.

The recaps definitely need to stay. For one thing, they're a fantastic reference for pinpointing which particular tropes appear in which episodes, or which specific episodes have certain tropes, depending on what you're looking for. But those tropes are nigh-well useless without a recap of the episode thanks to the nature of the series. They definitely need to stay, especially for newer fans.

That said, the numbering/naming system is a mess and it needs to be sorted out. I vote CS ("Classic Series") 1-26 for the old series, and NS 1-? for the post-'05 launch.

I think the key issue is the fact that the names of individual recap pages aren't following any particular scheme.

I second the CS/NS approach.

edited 2nd Oct '12 6:04:22 AM by ScoutsGirlfriend

I don't like the term "new series". At all. "The new series" to me just means the currently airing season (series in British English).

To support the term "Classic Series", I'll point that The BBC has used the term on one of the iterations of their Doctor Who homepage here. Their current homepage merges old and new and resets the season count with the relaunch. For organizational purposes, maybe making some distinctive gap between Doctors Eight and Nine on the list and simply addressing the new seasons as 1/2/3 is best if you want to change things.

On a sidenote, I'd just like to say the recaps on these pages have been very useful for me in watching the show and picking out episodes to watch, as well as understand what's going on between the Technobabble and Applied Phlebotinum. If they were removed, I'd be all... Moody.

Classic series is long-established, so I can't really do anything to seriously oppose it. New series is too informal and imprecise, however. And let's not even get into "nuWho".

edited 3rd Oct '12 9:53:27 AM by OldManHoOh

I like the recaps. I'm still working on the ones for Chris Carter's Millennium.

edited 4th Oct '12 12:30:51 AM by LadyStardust

I dislike them, but my proposal is not to remove them.