Doctor Who (2023) and tvdb

[gmc99]

There are three Doctor Who series:
Doctor Who 1963-1986 listed in thetvdb as Doctor Who
Doctor Who 2005-2022 listed in thetvdb as Doctor Who (2005)
Doctor Who 2023

The new series already has some specials and season 1 starts in May. This is listed by the BBC as Doctor Who (2023). It is also listed on the BBC programme pages, within the BBC iPlayer and BBC Doctor Who Twitter page as Doctor Who (2023). Both imdb and tmdb are referring to it as Doctor Who (2023).

The tvdb however has this as Season 14 of the 2005 series.

I did raise a ticket with them about this and was told that the new episodes coming in May will not be 2023 season 1 but 2005 season 14. They said that the BBC was calling it a new season and a return. I have replied to them with more evidence but don’t hold out much hope.

Doing an internet search I found comments by other people saying that had had no luck with thetvdb. One person had created a record for Doctor Who (2023) but it was deleted.

I’m sure this will all cause lots of chaos come May and trying to cope with this situation in Plex will be a nightmare.

[ilike2burnthing]

TMDB as Metadata Source

Plex → Data from TMDB Jellyfin → Data from TMDB Trakt → Data from TMDB Want to know why my media is messed up? I have had no problems with sonarr using tvdb because the episodes more or less matched with tmdb and I could manually correct the ones which weren’t. But the new Doctor Who series pushed me over the edge. It’s a different series officially, and TMDB has it as a different series too. TVDB doesn’t, they have the episodes in the 2005 series. The media players will never recognize the …

[olliebean]

I have no idea what the TVDB’s rules are now, since they closed their user forums where the rules were listed, but it used to be that the original broadcaster was considered the ultimate authority when it came to season/episode numbers. In this case this could arguably be the BBC or Disney+, but both are listing it as a new series, i.e., starting from season 1. So the TVDB have either changed their rules, or they aren’t following them (which wouldn’t be anything new).

Based on past experience, I fully expect that they will wait until the most disruptive moment to change their data and then suddenly do so without giving a reason. Then they will probably change it back a few days later, then switch back and forth a few times, then end up locking the series so no new episodes get added at all until they can be bothered to get around to it, some time after broadcast.

[gmc99]

The forums were closed to stop any discussion of anything.

I also believe that their policy is to do what they want and never do anything that would be sensible or useful for those people using their stuff.

When I originally raised Doctor Who (2023) with them and they replied the BBC was calling it a new season and a return; the linked web page they sent me to did say that but nowhere did it say “season 14” just basically back for a new season.

I guess for now; we wait.