­­ s0e10 "Christmas Moments" is not a Doctor Who special, it is an episode of Doctor Who Confidential. It's not currently listed under that series on TMDB s0e12 "Proms Special: Behind the Scenes" is not a Doctor Who special, it is an episode of Doctor Who Confidential. It's already listed as s0e11 of that series on TMDB.

What we need is proof. Why don't they have Doctor Who Confidential opening cards?

DVD Extras should generally be removed. Generally, a clearer definition of "Specials" is needed.

There's not much we can do about this until there's a ruling on which DVD extra are allowed. There are contributors and moderators arguing the exact opposite.

I think it might be better if non-narrative material (behind the scenes documentaries, interview documentaries) should be removed, or added to their own series/films. These aren't episodes of Doctor Who.

The guidelines are to follow the original release.

Hi, that at all is nice. Can we add a missing episode (Special) as episode13 ? To have bridge beetween these two Seasons.

e.g. S10E13 - 276 Neu 144 – Twice Upon A Time M Aus der Zeit gefallen 25. Dez. 2017 10. Jan. 2018 Rachel Talalay Steven Moffat Weihnachtsspecial (60 Minuten), zeigt am Ende die Regeneration vom zwölften in den dreizehnten Doktor ⚫ Ab dem Ende der Episode 144 (10.13) Aus der Zeit gefallen wird der Doktor von Jodie Whittaker dargestellt.

No, it was released as a special not 10x13. If you want an alternative order, use an episode group.

At least sorting them chronologically from release date would be a start, and there are plenty users up for collaboration checking through the specials to see what may need to be moved elsewhere.

Add nowwearealltom and myself as interested. ✌🏻

Just to add to this conversation, episodes like "Monster Files" should actually be a different show rather than specials.

@banana_girl said:

No, it was released as a special not 10x13. If you want an alternative order, use an episode group.

As you know, TMDB's data is used on many other programs and it's not always possible to sort by airdate. There can be a feature to show episodes like the Doctor Who specials as part of a season even if it's special as some might use S10ES13, or something; just an idea. Also, the link you added is a good place to start organizing the episodes.

@qstar.inc The sort of numbering scheme you mention, wherein specials are treated as additional episodes in a particular season, e.g. numbering "The Christmas Invasion" as 2x00, doesn't work for Doctor Who. For example, how would you number "The Snowmen", which comes between 7x05 and 7x06, under such a scheme?

@banana_girl said:

­­ s0e10 "Christmas Moments" is not a Doctor Who special, it is an episode of Doctor Who Confidential. It's not currently listed under that series on TMDB s0e12 "Proms Special: Behind the Scenes" is not a Doctor Who special, it is an episode of Doctor Who Confidential. It's already listed as s0e11 of that series on TMDB.

What we need is proof. Why don't they have Doctor Who Confidential opening cards?

What would constitute proof? It is clearly not an episode of Doctor Who itself at any rate.

@jivanpal said:

@qstar.inc The sort of numbering scheme you mention, wherein specials are treated as additional episodes in a particular season, e.g. numbering "The Christmas Invasion" as 2x00, doesn't work for Doctor Who. For example, how would you number "The Snowmen", which comes between 7x05 and 7x06, under such a scheme?

According to my suggestion, it's supposed to be S07*ES*05. But I know it's not good enough. It could also be S07E05ES01 so when there are two specials in between episodes, it can also be used.

@qstar.inc The trouble with this is that no widely used media library software supports this sort of format. Instead, a special should have metadata specifying what season/episode it immediately follows, or what season it immediately precedes.

@banana_girl said:

­­ s0e10 "Christmas Moments" is not a Doctor Who special, it is an episode of Doctor Who Confidential. It's not currently listed under that series on TMDB s0e12 "Proms Special: Behind the Scenes" is not a Doctor Who special, it is an episode of Doctor Who Confidential. It's already listed as s0e11 of that series on TMDB.

What we need is proof. Why don't they have Doctor Who Confidential opening cards?

I don't know. Is something ruled out of being a Doctor Who episodes if it has a Doctor Who Confidential title card? Is it ruled into being a Doctor Who episode if it has a Doctor Who title card (regardless of having been produced by a different production team)?

DVD Extras should generally be removed. Generally, a clearer definition of "Specials" is needed.

There's not much we can do about this until there's a ruling on which DVD extra are allowed. There are contributors and moderators arguing the exact opposite.

Is this argument still ongoing without a ruling? The Content Bible currently says that DVD extras are not allowed.

I think it might be better if non-narrative material (behind the scenes documentaries, interview documentaries) should be removed, or added to their own series/films. These aren't episodes of Doctor Who.

The guidelines are to follow the original release.

Can you point me to the guidelines? And what does that mean "follow the original release?" That alone doesn't really provide any guidance for determining which parts of the release are and are not episodes of Doctor Who. (for instance: are trailers? at least one trailer is currently listed, but many trailers are not.)

There are a lot of different issues here so I'd like to ask a couple questions to see if we can get the ball rolling on some agreed-upon changes.

Can anyone argue that s0e78 "An Adventure in Space and Time", s0e95 "The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot", s0e104 through s0e114 "The Doctors Revisited", are episodes of Doctor Who (2005) and should not be removed?

Can anyone argue that documentary featurettes with "Doctor Who Confidential" or "Doctor Who Extra" in their title card are episodes of Doctor Who (2005) and should not be removed?

Can anyone argue that the current (i.e., non-chronological) episode ordering of the Specials season is correct or, has any kind of basis? It may not be fruitful to work on determining the correct sequence until it has been decided which episodes (if any) will be removed, but can we at least agree that the current order is not correct and requires work?

@nowwearealltom said:

The real problem is that the system admins and designers here refuse to even think of alternate systems, and instead will always want to put everything on the same bucket instead of having special considerations even when the established "system" doesn't work.

Can you point me to the guidelines? And what does that mean "follow the original release?" That alone doesn't really provide any guidance for determining which parts of the release are and are not episodes of Doctor Who. (for instance: are trailers? at least one trailer is currently listed, but many trailers are not.)

Guideline that says "If the broadcaster hasn't put it into a 'season' on their end, TMDB won't put it into a 'season' either: https://www.themoviedb.org/bible/tv/59f73eb49251416e71000026#59f7445c9251416e71000039
Broadcaster indicating that 'special' episodes of Who are not 'in' a season: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006q2x0/episodes/guide

Not that I necessarily agree with the way 'specials' are currently handled mind you, I'm just providing the basis from which TMDB seems to be operating so we can extend the discussion from it.
My concern is that, currently, 'Special' has two distinct meanings (at least in the context of Dr Who), which is at odds from what seems to be the singular intended definition in the Bible.

In the context of Dr Who, the 'Specials' folder contains 'Special' content that is not a canonical episode, which is the expected definition of 'Special' as-per the Bible (is my understanding).
Things like:

Blooper episodes, recap episodes, preview episodes, best of episodes, live TV specials, (un)aired pilots, unaired or blacklisted episodes, etc. usually belong in the Specials.
Web specials, OVAs and spin-off webseries (e.g. Flight 462) can also be added to the Specials. If the network creates a separate page for the spin-off webseries, a new show should be created instead of adding the episodes as specials.
Some DVD bonus content is allowed.

However, my disagreement with how the Bible is being applied comes from this section:

Special episodes are any episodes that did not originally air as part of a regular, usually numbered season. Sometimes a network will call an episode a "special" episode—as an example, "in this special holiday themed episode"—but still assign it a season and episode number; in those cases, it should not be added to the special season here but, instead, to the season assigned to it by the network.
They sometimes air as an episode 0, an unnumbered episode or are released directly to DVD. For example, The IT Crowd's The Internet Is Coming and Black Mirror's White Christmas are special episodes.

Relying on the broadcaster either lumping episodes into a numbered season grouping or not, as the SOLE basis for deciding whether to lump them in with all that other non-canonical-episode content, is a flawed premise.
The BBC not bothering to group 'special' episodes into a season does not indicate that their level of canonical or watch-order importance is any less than an episode that does get lumped into a season.
In-fact, arguably for Who it's the opposite, as Christmas specials are often where the most significant plot and character development changes occur (see: Regenerations, Companions, etc). They just happen to have a release date that is far enough away from the rest of the aired content that it doesn't make sense to include it in either the preceding or proceeding season, and which does not have enough episodes in a similar air-date proximity to justify calling them a season on their own.
It is not indicative that the significance of the episode to the canon, timeline, story progression, etc, is closer to the level of podcasts and ads (ie: irrelevant), and yet the Bible clearly states that they should be lumped in amongst all that canonically irrelevant content unless they're given a season number, with no room for common sense to consider "well maybe there are exceptions to that rule".

All we need to do is actually look at that very same BBC listing of episodes to see the discrepancy. We can clearly see that the BBC DO consider those episodes to be canonically important enough to list them in the correct viewing order alongside the seasonal episodes, what we don't see is the 100+ other things in the TMDB 'Special' season that are not actually officially broadcast canon episodes.
I did see somewhere a reference to IMDB unofficially tacking the specials onto the end of the season from which they canonically follow, so that they are able to be listed in the correct order and context without requiring additional effort and understanding of the vagaries of broadcaster naming convention standards from the users (which may have been in a different thread as I now can't find it). Ignoring for the moment the response that IMDB is a 'fan' site and not to be trusted to do things 'properly' (which could also be said of Wikipedia, and is arguably not even a valid rejection of the notion, but ignoring it anyway to talk about WHY they do it). They do this because IMDB is not designed at the data-storage level (presumably) to store an episode in a way that retains it's relative position to seasonal episodes, without itself being part of a season, which is notably how the BBC are treating these episodes, so they need to apply a workaround to reflect the same significance and ordering as the broadcasters do, within the context of their system's capabilities, and in a way that is easily digestible to users.

Now, if TMDB does in-fact provide the capability via API calls and data points and whatnot to allow consumers (like Trakt, et.al) to differentiate between 'Special' canonical episodes that happen to not have a parent season, and special non-canonical non-episode content whose content does not have a direct impact on viewing the seasonal content, and to properly locate them in the appropriate relational context for viewing... By all means, let's share the details and I will raise a request with the consumers that I utilise to integrate with that functionality, and allow users to convert the data back to properly handling those episodes in their correct canonical listing context, like how the broadcaster are doing it on their side.

If on the other hand, TMDB does not store, or make available that distinction, then it's a data problem, and therefore a TMDB problem.
Saying "Oh, well the broadcaster doesn't put it into a season, so why should we?" does not hold water when the broadcaster also does not group them into a special non-season season along with a bunch of other non-canonical-episode content and obscure their proper relative position and significance to the seasonal content which depends on it.
The broadcaster lists them in their appropriate position, with their appropriate context, and without any of the muddying of waters that comes from also listing other Special things that aren't episodes, like podcasts and charity ads and interviews and such.
TMDB are including a great deal of content that the broadcaster are not, and are organising and arranging all the content in a season-centric hierarchy where the broadcaster are not. So TMDB must consider more than just the broadcaster's choice in season-grouping hierarchy if a proper and accurate degree of organisation is to be achieved.

TMDB can't just blindly apply the concepts of the Bible as currently written, to a broadcaster that doesn't operate under the same definition of Special.
It surely must either attempt to represent the data as faithfully as possible to the broadcaster's intent, or provide a mechanism for data-consumers to convert the content back to a state that reflects the broadcaster's intent.
Otherwise, it's actively doing a disservice to the content, and all parties involved in it's creation and consumption. It's also putting itself behind other alternatives which either handle the scenario via common-sense or consensus (eg: IMDB), or which provide both grouping contexts (eg: TVDB) just to die on the hill of a Bible that is (presumably) written by the same people following it, and not even in stone...

I do understand the need for a source of truth to make these sorts of decisions following clear rulings in ways that are unambiguously correct, because the alternative is endless bickering, but if those rulings are to be upheld over time instead of abandoned as cumbersome and unhelpful, then those rulings in that source of truth must adapt to and reflect reality as it changes, and as understanding of it evolves.
Now that a flaw has been pointed out in the blanket approach, the rule should adapt and overcome and make the site better for it, rather than continue to be blindly upheld without any consideration of change.

At least, that's my opinion. Though I understand I'm late to the party and all the mods are long gone, I felt this was the appropriate context to deal with specifically this, so hopefully it does get some visibility.

Here here. Came to comment how silly it is that Jodie's three long specials between S13 and S14, especially the last one have no meaningful distinction to random non-diegetic stuff like 1min "BBC1 Christmas Idents" in TMDB. As highlighted above, TVDB, IMDB, and I'll add, TVMaze all have the ability to mark these as kinds of Episode Specials of a particular season (as opposed to DVD/Blu-ray feature specials).

TMDB should allow for a meaningful distinction of episode specials and follow better practices around diegetic vs non-diegetic content established by the rest of the cataloging community.

Consider me even-later to the party, but after reading through what's been said, instead of adding to the conversation with things that have mostly already been said, I decided to go though all 199 of the specials and tried to categorise them to see what exactly is contained there at the moment. This is what I found:

Actual Specials 22/199 (11.06%)

There include things like Christmas, New Years, etc. Specials (e.g., The Christmas Invasion, The End of Time, The Snowmen, Twice Upon a Time, The Power of the Doctor).

Prequel Episodes 29/199 (14.57%)

These include both Tardisodes and various prequel episodes released for different episodes or series.

Mini-Series 14/199 (7.04%)

These include Space, Night and the Doctor, Pond Life and Meanwhile in the TARDIS.

Greatest Monsters and Villains 10/199 (5.03%)

A 10-part series produced by the BBC in the lead-up to the 50th Anniversary with a short intro plus . The BBC even has a show page for it, so technically it should either be it's own series or considered a re-broadcast of the original episodes which accompanied each part. Currently, the BBC says each are ~5 minutes so it's own show seems appropriate.

Monster Files 4/199 (2.01%)

Four episodes from the series already on TMDb.

Standalone Documentaries, etc.: 13/199 (5.63%)

There are assorted documentary-style entries. I think they should probably each have their own movie page, but am not 100% sure.

Doctor Who Live 2/199 (1.00%)

There isn't much information about what exactly this is, but it seems to be a two-part live show in relation to the 50th Anniversary. Cannot tell though since I can't find it anywhere.

Children in Need 4/199 (2.01%)

These seem to be specially-produced short episodes for the BBC's annual Children in Need event.

Proms 5/199 (2.51%)

Appearances of Doctor Who at the Proms over the years.

The now-titled *Doctor Who: Best of Specials* 8/199 (4.02%)

I'm not sure about the original release, but they now form the Best of Specials.

Behind-the-Scenes 6/199 (3.02%)

Generic BTS content I couldn't fit anywhere else.

Doctor Who Extra 15/199 (7.54%)

15 of the episode from the series already on TMDb.

DVD Extras 44/199 (22.11%)

Release that were a part of a DVD box set as extras.

Miscellaneous 22/199 (11.06%)

Anything else I couldn't fit anywhere, including:

• Attack of the Graske
• Dreamland
• Good as Gold
• Doctor Who P.S.
• The Night of the Doctor
• The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot
• etc.

Some of these have entries in TMDb already, some do not.

That leaves the question, what should happen, because I think it's fairly clear that something should. Here are some things we can do now:

• for starters, I think all of the content that is already somewhere else on TMDb, such as Monster Files, Doctor Who Extra, etc. should be removed from the Specials. I don't see any argument for them to stay for as long as they already exist as their own entries.
• there is a gap of numbers missing between E103 and E115, presumably due to entries being deleted. This probably should be fixed.
• since TMDb seems to care so much about original air dates, everything left in specials should probably be ordered by that. At the moment, most-ish are, but a non-insignificant number aren't.
• there is a duplicate of The Science of Doctor Who - E57 and E90

That's really it for the easy-ish actions that can be taken with the current state of TMDb, but I think there needs to be a discussion about adding features to the TV section so we can properly add all of this content in. Polluting the Specials series because there isn't a better place for it is a symptom of a gap between the vision for the database and it's current capabilities. DVD extras aren't really specials, neither are BTS content. They're extras. There needs to be a special place for these. Maybe instead of only having series, there could be a space for special series for these things, or allow episodes to not appear a series and only in episode groups. That would allow episode groups to be able to document the DVD extras without polluting the main show.

I don't have all the answers, and neither does anyone else really. What we need is to have a meaningful discussion about how both the content on the site (what's there, what isn't, what should and what should not), where the bible falls short, and most importantly, what can be done to address it over time. Without that, the problems will continue to pile up and more shows will become the mess we see here.

Hi all,

Love the discussion here. I raised another thread discussing this exact problem.

I spent some time categorising and sorting every single extra from the Doctor Who Blu-Ray collections, I'm talking:

• Specials
• Outtakes
• Minisodes
• Prequels
• Continuity compilations (per season)
• Video diaries

I put all of these in order and categorised every single one with metadata and insertion data to fit into each season:

• Image #1
• Image #2
• Image #3

This process took a long while, but as a completionist it allows for the discerning viewer to experience the entire Doctor Who catalogue including every DVD extra in chronological order. My view is that if it exists, why shouldn't it be in the list?

Anyway, I'd be happy to share my NFOs or contribute in some way to help fix this issue with the specials folder.

Many thanks Ben