How to handle change in main cast for same character?

Was this prologue aired on TV?

If it didn't air on TV (i.e. just released in theatres / DVD) we wouldn't add it.

If it did then we'd consider if it should be a new character or not, using the Characters section from the Show Extras data policy.

Well, somebody added airing time, so it must've been on TV. This never got to theater, but was ported straight to DVD release in late 1998, I believe, which is after TV series started airing so the airing date on file is probably correct whoever added it. This is just the same as any other TV movie that is made as part of the TV series (i.e. Murdoch Mysteries, The Good Witch, etc.), so I think it is fine. It should be under Specials, although I dunno why it has to be connected to any season, it is currently connected to Season 1 because it seems obligatory, but Specials are usually in between seasons. Sort of how 24: Redemption is 2-hour special that serves as a prologue to Season 7 but isn't really part of that season nor of season 6.

Okay, so according to the policy which says...

"An actor is starring as a common character in the show. Halfway through the show, the actor portraying the Character is replaced by a different actor. The actor switch is not incorporated in the Show's plot line and interactions with this Character are as if nothing happened. In this case, a single Character entry should be created with multiple actors pointing towards it."

...I should've linked Ian Bohen to point to a single character, which is Hercules. However, there is no such feature under single character. The only way is how it is created now, which links Hercules character to both Ryan Gosling and Ian Bohen. All is great, but there is no way to show Ian's photo as Hercules when he played it and both show Ryan's hercules photo.

I think this was perhaps intended for anime characters where change in actor doesn't change character's photo, but in live-action shows character himself/herself looks different because different actor is playing it. So, not really sure how to handle this because it looks like an error when you see Ryan's photo twice under different actor's name that played the same role. There are more such things where leading actor was replaced in live-action TV show, so how do you handle character photo to appear correctly in such case without creating two characters (i.e. Hercules #1, and Hercules #2)?

According to policy, there is some serious mixup with characters for He-Man...

https://www.tvmaze.com/shows/4230/he-man-and-the-masters-of-the-universe/characters

...where you can see something like "Man-At-Arms/Battle Cat/Cringer/Mer-Man/Buzz Off/Roboto" as a single character while each are obviously different characters in the story, Man-At-Arms is He-Man's friend who knows his secret, Battle Cat/Cringer are He-Man's best friend, a tiger (alternate personas), Mer-Man is a villan and a Skeletor's henchman, etc.. Guess these need to be split into separate characters... luckily they share the voice-actor so this won't create a problem.

@MAT13 wrote:

Do I need to create "Hercules #2" character and assign it to Ian and upload his photo as Young Hercules, or can I upload his photo under same Hercules but assign it to his representation of the character?

Just leave it as it is, how it was with Zack Goodweather in The Strain

@horizon wrote:
Just leave it as it is, how it was with Zack Goodweather in The Strain

Hm, okay. Thanks.

I've at least uploaded a photo of Ian as well so both of them playing Hercules at least appear under the character's gallery...

https://www.tvmaze.com/characters/128876/young-hercules-hercules/gallery

Wow, this looks horrible...

https://www.tvmaze.com/shows/40047/love-comes-softly/cast

...so many duplicate, triplicate, quadruplicate actors for the same character. This would be better if characters had numbers and would show correct actor's photo instead of showing same one under four different names.

Actually, a slightly better, but still bad, solution would be to have a photo that has all the actors portraying that character.

Of course, best solution would be to find a solution to this and programatically fix it :)

@MAT13 wrote:
Wow, this looks horrible...

https://www.tvmaze.com/shows/40047/love-comes-softly/cast

...so many duplicate, triplicate, quadruplicate actors for the same character. This would be better if characters had numbers and would show correct actor's photo instead of showing same one under four different names.

Actually, a slightly better, but still bad, solution would be to have a photo that has all the actors portraying that character.

Of course, best solution would be to find a solution to this and programatically fix it :)

I couldn't agree more, it is incorrect and highly confusing. In situations like this IMO it is better to not have a character image at all, then have the same image for all actors. It was brought to admins attention many times before, so hopefully it is somewhere in their backlog :)

@tnt wrote:
I couldn't agree more, it is incorrect and highly confusing. In situations like this IMO it is better to not have a character image at all, then have the same image for all actors. It was brought to admins attention many times before, so hopefully it is somewhere in their backlog :)

As the person who did the Love Comes Softly stuff, I also agree it looks pretty naff, but with so many parts played by multiple actors... honestly, it was the best I could think to do within the current system. I did do my best to upload a picture of every actor (where possible) who played each part though  so at least they exist in the character gallery. Although, saying that, I'm not adverse to having those character pictures removed either, I definitely see what you guys see in terms of the mess it makes.