Talk:List of Life on Mars (British TV series) episodes

BBC4 scheduling of series 2
The plan was for this to continue through the remainder of the series, as is common with some BBC programming.

Is this known, or speculation? I think there should be a reference, or this should be removed. Ros0709 12:10, 21 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I have now removed the comment. I would certainly like it to go back if it can be justified with a reference. One thing that troubled me about the claim is that there is high anticipation about exactly what is going on re Sam Tyler's predicament and ep. 8 should reveal that. Did the BBC really intend to show that episode on BBC4 first, thus "spoiling" the surprise for the majority of viewers who would watch it a week later?
 * Ros0709 08:57, 25 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Probably not. Usually in these situations &mdash; Life on Mars's Kudos stablemate Spooks, for example &mdash; they don't show the last episode of the series on the digital channel, so digital viewers have to wait two weeks for it. They've done this with the last few series of Spooks, and with State of Play back in 2003 and probably with other dramas too. Angmering 23:00, 27 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm the one who was responsible for adding that in the first place (a little rashly, perhaps - it was obviously what was planned, although as my old Culture sections of the Sunday Times are now in a bin I can't confirm that somebody explicitly said it...). And... I'm not sure what you're getting at. The idea would have been that by the time they got to the end, you could watch episode 7 at 9pm on One, episode 8 immediately afterwards at 10pm on Four, and then if you didn't have Four (there are still some people out there) you could instead watch episode 8 the following Tuesday at 9pm; I'm not quite sure where the spoiler bit comes from, seeing that as of 9:59 on a Tuesday both channels would be dead level. I'd got my wires crossed about the commonness, though - I was thinking Torchwood at the time, but with hindsight they actually did it differently (Sunday BBC3 or the immediately following Wednesday on BBC2) - this sort of behaviour is still what's done with QI, though. Kinitawowi 23:10, 27 March 2007 (UTC)


 * The spoiler issue comes from the fact that people who saw the final episode on BBC Four would see it a whole week (well, minus one hour!) before those who only have analogue television. Thus there's a whole week for those who only have analogue to accidentally hear how the show ends &mdash; an especially big spoiler with Life on Mars &mdash; from their mates, from the media, etc. That's why the shows I mentioned above didn't let their last episodes go out on digital first as the rest of their series had done. Angmering 10:20, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Episode names
Neither the shows themselves, the BBC site, nor IMDB has titles for the individual episodes beyond "Episode 1", etc. They are cited to DigiGuide as the source, but what's the nature of that site? Where did it get the titles from? Without clear evidence to the contrary, I'd take the BBC site as the definitive source, and conclude that the proper titles are simply, "Episode 1," etc.--Trystan (talk) 18:10, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm also skeptical of these titles. And I don't know how reputable that site is. What about the DVDs? I don't own them, because they haven't been released in America. What titles are listed on the Region 2 DVDs? Dirk Amoeba (talk) 15:26, 11 March 2008 (UTC)


 * According to DigiGuide, they accept user-submitted content. Based on that, and given that we have no official sources that use these titles, I think we should probably rename them to Series 1 Episode 1 (Life on Mars) and so on.  Though as Dirk says, confirmation from the DVDs would be great to have before beginning such a large move.--Trystan (talk) 19:31, 14 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree, Some fan just made up these names for DigiGuide. The Wikipedia pages should use the BBC names (I.E. the Episode Numbers).  This goes for Ashes to Ashes as well. —MJBurrage(T•C) 04:40, 22 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I tend to agree. I am going to rename the episodes on the episode listing page.  Someone should help rename the individual episode pages and fix the links. --Phoenix Hacker (talk) 07:24, 22 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I moved all the episodes and updated the related templates, but the character and actor pages still need their links updated. —MJBurrage(T•C) 15:10, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Proposed merge of episodes
At present the individual episodes consist almost entirely of in-universe plot summaries and trivia. With the exception of the pilot, all episode articles fail WP:EPISODE. It is likely that each individual episode of a television series will not be notable on its own, simply because there are not enough secondary sources available. Manual of Style (writing about fiction) explains further:

When an article is created, the subject's real-world notability should be established according to the general notability guideline by including independent reliable secondary sources — this will also ensure that there is enough source material for the article to be comprehensive and factually accurate.

Articles on a work of fiction should primarily describe it from a real-world perspective.

Every single one of the episode articles fail these policies.

Therefore all episode articles should be merged and redirected to List of Life on Mars episodes. Even then episode lists pages must still be notable, and contain out-of-universe context, and not merely be a list of episode titles or cast and crew: Wikipedia is not a directory. McWomble (talk) 13:06, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Oppose Police,Mad,Jack (talk · contribs) ☺ 15:00, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Why? They clearly fail core Wikipedia policies. If they are not trimmed and merged, they are open to being deleted outright. McWomble (talk) 09:25, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Comment Moving content elsewhere is generally preferable to simply deleting it. How about this Life on Mars wiki? It's fairly sparse at the moment, but an infusion of this material could certainly jump start it.--Trystan (talk) 18:09, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Sounds good to me! Transwiki as much content as you like then WP:EPISODE can be met with a merge. McWomble (talk) 06:46, 5 December 2008 (UTC)