Forum:Main/Regular Cast Listing in Episode Summaries

So, as I've been going through the various episode aricles lately I've noticed that a number of these episode summaries have lists of either Regular Cast or Main Cast before the guests and co-stars. Now, it seems to me that we have a listing of the regular/main/whatever you want to call them cast members on the main page for the series. Do we really need a cast listing on the episode summaries? If so, we should be putting it on every single summary, if not (which is likely better to my mind) then we should be removing it from all of the episodes that it is currently on. Anyone else have any thoughts on this? -- Sulfur 02:40, 18 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I think its a good feature -- its designed mostly for TOS, where the "main/regular" cast included characters -- Scotty, Sulu, Uhura, Chekov, Rand -- that were not in even half the episodes of the series. The other way around this is a note of a main cast members "non-appearance" in an episode. -- Captain M.K.B. 03:05, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

We have the Main character non-appearances page already. To me, it seems that having a cast listing on each episode guide could be easily replaced by a link to the non-appearance listing and that would mean maintaining one list as opposed to many. The other option I can see is that we should put the cast listing on each episode guide as opposed to about 2/3rds of them. -- Sulfur 13:35, 18 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I've noticed the exact same problem... I just never got around to bringing it up. Now that you have... :) I think what we should do on all the episodes is 1. eliminate the "regular cast" or "main cast" listing (if it exists) 2. add a bookmark link to the section of the main series page listing the regular cast, and 3. add a link to the main character non-appearances page. That way we've avoided duplicating information all over the place. -- Renegade54 14:38, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm happy to work through doing all of this, interspersed with my "unformatted" project (going through everything with a template and adding links, etc to them). I figure that I'd start with TAS, then TOS (because TOS is a fairly short series all things considered), before moving onto the "modern" spinoffs. I do think that your suggestion of how to deal with it is a good one. The links could likely be done with a template that fills in the blanks. I'd have to figure out how templates work (behind the scenes) before offering to do that part though. -- Sulfur 14:44, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Ok, so I was keen and wanted to figure out how templates worked, so created the "Template:Main-Cast" item. This template is in use on the TAS episode. One thing that will be "fun" to do as I add these will be to attempt to fill out the non-appearance lists, especially for the TAS, which appears to be sorely lacking. What do people think of it thus far? -- Sulfur 15:47, 18 May 2006 (UTC)


 * This template bugs me for some reason. I think you lose something when you remove the cast listing. I think you should let some other people give feedback before you go ahead and implement it, because not enough people have weighed in yet (although I suppose they'll see it when they view the RC list). --Vedek Dukat Talk 19:35, 18 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Sooooo... whatever happened to "be bold"? :) Mind you, I'm not disagreeing... the more I'm looking at the episodes changed so far, the more I'm wondering if we shouldn't go the opposite direction, and add regular cast info to all the other episodes that don't already have it. Hmmm.... -- Renegade54 21:21, 18 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure about this myself... It's correct, if the same content is used on at least several dozen pages we might as well either create a template that contains this content, or link to a central page that has this information once instead of placing it on each individual page. On the other hand, if all we do is link from each episode to the series (which should be linked already), why link at all?
 * The real question probably is - what is the purpose of listing some actors on an episode page? And the only sensible answer to that question is the one Mike already gave above. We want to quickly see which actor participated (or didn't participate) in an episode - and if that's the case, the info should be on the episode page, and not hidden in some big table elsewhere. -- Cid Highwind 21:44, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

A Template maybe? ↕↕↕↕↕↕↕↕↕ 23:44, 18 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Having a template for each series with the cast wouldn't be too bad really either. The big issue comes when we have to go through and put in the specific characters that were/were not in an episode.  One good way to do this might be with a template for each actor with their role, but that might be a bit of overkill.  If we do go with the method of listing the cast featured in the episode each time, then it's going to be one serious project to put it all together, because it seems to be relatively rare that all of the actors/characters feature in a particular episode.  The way around that might be to simply list the full cast for the episode followed by a series of "X did not feature in this episode" (with a link to the non-appearance page.
 * Either way, it would be nice to see all of the episode summaries have the same format, same kinds of information, and so forth on them. Or maybe that's just me. :) -- Sulfur 01:32, 19 May 2006 (UTC)


 * When I started episode articles on MA-fr, I've asked myself if I should let or remove the regular cast. For TOS, as it change quite every episodes, I quickly decided to let it. For the TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT episodes, I've also decided to put them because it enable quickly to see which characters appeared and because I didn't want to direct to a page that "is not yet complete" : If a character isn't listed as absent for an episode, is it because he was in the episode or because his absence wasn't noticed. - Philoust123 09:42, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

I feel obligated to note that the only "main cast" for TOS season 1 is William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, and for seasons 2 and 3 add DeForest Kelley. The rest are "co-stars" or "also starring". --Myko 12:32, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Cast Template

 * ''Moved from User talk:Renegade54

A question. With the changing cast on TOS (season 2), TNG (season 2 especially), DS9 (season 7), and VOY (season 4-7), what is the plan to deal with those? Have a cast template for each season? -- Sulfur 02:18, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
 * No, I'm testing out a template whereby you can turn off various cast members. Try out the test one I created so far... it's not quite done, but you can get the idea. Use "Template:TAS main cast" by default, all main cast members are there. You can turn each one off individually; for example:
 * will produce
 * will produce


 * but
 * will turn off line 3, i.e. DeForest Kelley, to give you
 * will turn off line 3, i.e. DeForest Kelley, to give you


 * and so on.
 * -- Renegade54 02:27, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

The template idea is a good one. When I get a spot of time, I'll go through some of TAS season 2 and put some in, so that we can get a better idea of what it looks like in context. -- Sulfur 20:14, 22 May 2006 (UTC)