first_air_date give the broadcast date of the first episode of the first regular season. The exact date when the first season will be broadcasted is not yet known.

The episode that was broadcasted on November 25, 2023 is a special episode.

Hm. I suppose I could understand if a special was like interviews or something not story related to the series, but the specials slated for the next weeks appear to be canon. Seems the rule should be more flexible in this case.

This is done automatically. We can't do anything.

As a developer I know that statement is false.

Perhaps you can't do anything about it, but I imagine it wouldn't be too difficult to repurpose the current code to include specials as a trigger for setting first_air_date.

Logically, if an episode of a series airs, special or not, it should count so long as the story is related to the series. To simplify content creation, a checkbox could be added to the Episode form; something along the lines of :
[X] canon
or
[X] story related.

Sometimes as a developer, we have to think about how to document a feature. Short and simple often is a better path, than a complex set of exceptions. It becomes easier to support, defines a reliable output, and reduces the introduction of new bugs.

It is easier to document:

The "first_air_date" will match the air date of the first regular episode of the season.

Versus:

The "first_air_date" will match the air date of the first regular episode of the season. Unless the first episode is a special, then the value will match the first special episode if it is considered canon.

There's a lot to unpack for that second conditional, and that assumes there isn't already a lot of other logic involved with the population of the "first_air_date" field.

This is a very specific edge case. It is rare for any series to air a special episode prior to start of the regular series. I can see why there would be resistance to make any change for what might be a once in a lifetime scenario.

@IJGFKRI Again, it's not a matter of special vs. season episode. It's "episode is canon", which is a very simple check.

To avoid having to update previous series in the DB, if first_air_date isn't set - iterate episodes in order of air date, stop the loop once an episode is_canon, set first_air_date for series. Seems simple to me.

I understand that adding is_canon would involve an addition to the UI, and perhaps an additional click from the User to have them verify whether or not the episode data they entered is canon (otherwise users that have been entering data for years may gloss over the new form item).

To your point about this being a once in a lifetime thing, I don't have proof one way or another about that. Maybe this is an oddity, or maybe it has occurred previously with other series. It does make me wonder what website data was referenced that says these new episodes are specials, anyone have a link to that? Perhaps this conversation is moot, and the site data was simply misinterpreted.

The "Specials" designation comes from the BBC's own website regarding releases of content:

https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/articles/2023/doctor-who-60th-anniversary-specials-everything-you-need-to-know

@IJGFKRI Thanks for the link. I may have missed it, but I don't see where it calls out that these specials are part of this new non-2005 Doctor Who. If anything it seems they could be categorized as a mini-series under something like Doctor Who: 60th Anniversary, or simply new specials for Doctor Who (2005).

I was searching trying to find an official cancellation of Doctor Who (2005), but the closest articles I came across were the cancellation of the release of season 14, not the series, just the season. So basically just announcements that the new season for Doctor Who (2005) has been postponed. Starting to question the validity of this series entry in the DB.

@TheOneWhoKnocks said:

I was searching trying to find an official cancellation of Doctor Who (2005), but the closest articles I came across were the cancellation of the release of season 14, not the series, just the season. So basically just announcements that the new season for Doctor Who (2005) has been postponed. Starting to question the validity of this series entry in the DB.

Here are the official BBC pages for the old show and for the new show.

Strange, alight.

I suppose one of my main concerns stems from https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/239770-doctor-who/discuss/6565952a3d7454012ccc9674, specifically

In TMDB, the title of the new Doctor Who is still without year, e.x. "Doctor Who (2023)"

the year will be present once the broadcast date of the first episode of the first regular season is known.

This is a problem for anyone scraping this data for the specials, since renaming the series (maybe next year), will force users to rescrape or manually update all local data.

Since the official website states Doctor Who (2023–), it seems the title could at least be updated now.

This is a problem for anyone scraping this data for the specials

Yes, already seen reports on the Kodi forum. This show requires the use of a Parsing NFO file as the scraper cannot find it.

@KarellenX said:

This is a problem for anyone scraping this data for the specials

Yes, already seen reports on the Kodi forum. This show requires the use of a Parsing NFO file as the scraper cannot find it.

We explain this here.

Thanks @superboy97 :)

I also explained here... https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=375203&pid=3173828#pid3173828

In case users need more help with their Kodi setup, they can post in that thread, or start another one.

That's a bandaid and not a solution. The issue still stands where users will be forced to do a lot of busy work because someone simply won't add a year to a series title.

Since TMDB constantly shoots people's issues down referring to broadcast companies websites as the only unfalable source of truth - they should do so again and refer to the year that is posted on the BBC site. Feels like another no-brainer that'll solve issues for folks now and in the future whenever the season airs.

@TheOneWhoKnocks said:

That's a bandaid and not a solution. The issue still stands where users will be forced to do a lot of busy work because someone simply won't add a year to a series title.

Since TMDB constantly shoots people's issues down referring to broadcast companies websites as the only unfalable source of truth - they should do so again and refer to the year that is posted on the BBC site. Feels like another no-brainer that'll solve issues for folks now and in the future whenever the season airs.

Adding the year to the title will not solve any problem. Many third-party applications don't expect the year to be part of the title and will not anymore work correctly..