This wouldn’t be easy to implement - definitely a far future goal - but I had an idea I thought might be fun.
Since we have “related stories” for the entries on the guide, I wonder if it would be possible to show users a “web” of connections - i.e., the longest chain of related stories they’ve completed (e.g. a user might see that they completed An Unearthly Child, which is related to The Eight Doctors, which is related to The Five Doctors, and so on, and so on).
For some users who have completed quite a high percentage, I imagine the map might well be quite large and elaborate!
One things bothers me is that some stories have all their adaptations/variations as a related story to another story, while others only have the original story
Hmm, yeah, that’s frustrating. Equally, I suppose you don’t want it to be uniform by default, because you never know when a target novel etc. is gonna tie into a whole other story (the 2023 Evil of the Daleks, for instance, ties into Wheel in Space in a way that the original story doesn’t).
I agree I think we would argue that the same monster could mean the related story ie Midnight → The Well. But then, every Dalek story would be related and that just doesnt seem practical.
I think for this happens there needs to be a concensus on what a related story is.
Hmm. That feels like more than a shared monster though - the Doctor literally has flashbacks in it.
I agree in principle, but admittedly I’m not sure how likely a consensus is in practice, it’s a very subjective, qualitative thing.
If you forced me for a definition, I’d probably say something like “For Story A and B to be related, Story B must crossover with, substantially build upon, or exist in reference to the events and ideas established in Story A”. That seems to cover most bases (everything from your hard crossovers in the wilderness novels, to pastiches in sketches/Alien Babies-type strips).
Sounds to me like building a multi-faceted taxonomy on the data side of things.
That would allow users to create a “web of connections” by selecting certain available facets (such as Monsters/Genre/Era/Story-Arc/…, and perhaps even on a more detail level including or excluding specific monsters like the Daleks).
This data could then be visualized using a standard graph-visualization gadget integrated into the frontend of Tardis.Guid.
Yeah if there are only 2 stories with the Midnight entity, then they are ”related” because of this rare connection. 1000 stories with Daleks in are not all “related” in the same way.
It was really just for a “if you like this, why not look at another story that is connected to this one” kind of thing. It will also be used for recommendations.
This web of connections sounds cool (and is actually similar to something I have planned for Prerequisites) but not a big priority at the moment
