Thread:92.13.62.175/@comment-92.13.62.175-20140913161941

Already assuming John Hammond is very definitely dead in both canons, eh? He did die in the novel canon, but to already edit his article to say he's truly dead in the movie canon too is still speculation that succeeds in jumping the gun. Yes, Richard Attenborough has died, but that doesn't necesarily mean that Hammond truly died with him. A tweet featuring a bronze statue of Hammond by Colin Trevorrow himself is not enough to justify calling the movie Hammond very definitely dead; the article also needs a reference to solid evidence from the JW script, or even the movie itself once it has been released, in order for Hammond's status in the movie canon to be finally settled.

Let's take a different example of ambiguous status: Elisabeth Sladen, the actress who played Sarah Jane Smith in the long-running TV series "Doctor Who", also died, but that didn't mean Sarah Jane died too, despite the last episode of her spin-off series ending with the words "And the story goes on...forever". As of 2014, this remains the case as "Doctor Who" itself has yet to indicate on screen that the character is deceased. Also, in the expanded universe Sarah Jane is said to live on well into the 21st century, something also reflected in "The Sarah Jane Adventures" itself.

My second example is Nick Yemana from "Barney Miller", who actually went AWOL during the series, even though the actor Jack Soo, who played him, really died in real life. So the actor got a non-canon memorial-tribute episode, while Nick disappeared from the series and was definitely gone for good; there was an episode where a lot of drama was attached to the removal of his desk from the office, and characters would sometimes mention "back when Nick was here". However, it was never made clear whether he died or just went away somewhere. The final episode has Barney looking around the squadroom one last time; he remembers (via flashback clips) the cops who'd left the squad in years past. When he remembers Chano, Wentworth and Fish, Barney is smiling in fond remembrance. When he remembers Nick, though, his expression is very sad.

My thid and final example: When Raymond Burr died in 1993, the writers of the Perry Mason TV movies offered a character played by Paul Sorvino as his replacement, claiming that Perry Mason had "gone on vacation".

More examples of characters that have not died but their respective actors have can be found here.

And here's another example, though without the actor dying: Lawrence Gordon] from the Saw series was not seen since the first movie, and indeed Saw Wiki originally had his status marked as "Unknown", but it wasn't until his appearance in the final movie that the question of his status was finally resolved as being "Alive".

Quite frankly, if you had edited Hammond's character listing on Wikipedia itself, Wikipedia would simply have disallowed the death allegations in accordance with their "Not A Crystal Ball" policy.

Now does everything make sense?

In accordance with my views and examples above (especially the Nick Yemana example), I have temporarily rectified Hammond's article to reflect the fact that the movie Hammond's status has been left open since JP3. If, and only if, a spoken line in JW confirms that the movie Hammond has actually died can this mean that we can finally determine that Hammond is "effectively" deceased in both canons.

-- 92.13.62.175 16:19, September 13, 2014 (UTC) 