Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/Revenge of the Cybermen

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This page is for discussing the ways in which Revenge of the Cybermen doesn't fit well with other DWU narratives. You can also talk about the plot holes that render its own, internal narrative confusing.

Remember, this is a forum, so civil discussion is encouraged. However, please do not sign your posts. Also, keep all posts about the same continuity error under the same bullet point. You can add a new point by typing:

* This is point one.
::This is a counter-argument to point one.
:::This is a counter-argument to the counter-argument above
* This is point two.
::Explanation of point two.
::Further discussion and query of point two.

... and so on. 

• Why do the Time Lords send the TARDIS drifting back through time? Why not have the time ring simply return the Doctor, Sarah & Harry to the Ark (See The Ark in Space), say, an hour after they departed?

The Time Lords are aware of the Cybermen's plot to destroy Voga and so divert the Doctor to prevent it. That is why he is only 'rewarded' with the TARDIS at the end of the story when the Cybermen have been defeated and the situation resolved.

• The Cybermen's desire for revenge in this story, as reflected in the title, is out of keeping with their unemotional characters.

Arguably, they are not seeking revenge in their attack on Voga but trying to destroy a potential threat; it is the Vogans who incorrectly assume that their motive is revenge.

Revenge can be rationally motivated. If everyone knows that the Cybermen get revenge when slighted, people will be less likely to slight them. (This is part of the reason for punishing criminals, even though a state, being an abstract collective that has no emotions, isn't actually angry at them.)

• The symbol seen hanging in the Vogan audience chamber (and smaller versions on the Vogan costumes), would later be re-used in The Deadly Assassin, and become better known thereafter as the Seal of Rassilon.

Only with the benefit of hindsight does its appearance in this story seem unusual, and there might have been a relationship between the Vogans and Time Lords, or they could have just found the seal unaware of what it meant and used it on their clothes.

Or it could just be a coincidence

, many countries have similiar flags, to outsiders they look the same

• The Vogans have an endless supply of gold but have no defense against the Cybermen.

The gold has to be ground to dust and funneled into the chest unit. This was the point of the glitter gun. Vogans don't have this and so the only way for this to happen was to do it manually. But this is impossible as a Cyberman would a) tear your arms off or b) shoot you.

• The launching of the Skystriker is represented by rather obvious NASA stock footage of a Saturn V rocket taking off.

The rocket is labeled "United States" - not necessarily of America, possibly of Voga.

If 50% of the countries next door to America are also called "The United States", it's not too implausible that the same name might be used elsewhere in the universe.

More importantly, this is obviously a production error, not a plot hole.

• In episode one, the Doctor refers to the Cybermen as 'total machine creatures', when they are in fact part organic.

He is speaking poetically and in the sense that they have had all of their emotions expunged.

• Lester wears his interplanetary Space command insignia upside down.

There are often traditions within military units regarding how various insignia are worn.

• There is air and gravity inside an asteroid 4km across, and a noisy explosion in space.

The Vogans have engineered the habitat for themselves.

• Cybermats are hugged to make them look as if they're attacking.

It's instinctive, not just for humans, but other animals capable of doing so, to close the arms over anything attacking the chest, in an attempt to crush them. Also, the Cybermats are probably programmed to go for the chest, seeing as that's where the heart is.

• The Cyberleader shakes the Doctor's shoulders in what appears to be Swedish massage rather than strangulation.

The Cybermen aren't very flexible, especially manually.

• If the transmat only works on human tissue, why doesn't it wreck Cybermen and leave humans naked?

At no point is it stated that the transmat only works on human tissue. The Doctor merely says that one of its effects is to disperse human molecules. Thus there is no reason to suppose it will have a detrimental effect on non-organic matter.

• When the Doctor enters the TARDIS in episode four the paper printout of the space/time telegraph can be seen hanging on a hook just inside the door.

It is possible that the space/time telegraph apparatus is integrated into the fake police call-box phone behind the little hatch in the door (As seen in ''The Empty Child''). So this is where the ticker tape would be printed off.

• It's been established in past episodes that the Cybermen can survive in the vacuum of space without breathing. If that's the case and they have no need to breathe, then they have no breathing apparatus to clog with gold or anything else. The Doctor identifies them here a "machine creatures," further confirming the fact they don't breathe.

A faulty assumption. An astronaut can survive in the vacuum of space, but still has a breathing apparatus. The Cybermen have an apparatus which fills a similar life-sustaining role as breathing does, but do not actually require an atmosphere around them. The physical properties of gold prevent that apparatus from functioning properly.

• It's not clear why gold would affect a cybermat, which in all on-screen appearances are simply metal drones. It's stated here that gold works on Cybermen by clogging their breathing apparatus, but cybermats don't breathe.

The mechanical specifics of a Cybermat are never really discussed in that much detail, leaving us to conclude by observation that they must have some apparatus which is based on the Cyberman apparatus which is vulnerable to gold.

• Despite the fact that Cybermen are emotionless beings, the Doctor easily provokes the Cyberleader into strangling him. Worse, the Cyberleader then tosses him away.

Given this is the future, the Cybermen have probably been programmed with certain emotions, ie. anger, vindictiveness, cruelty, to make them more ruthless.

• In the previous episode the Doctor explains the Cybermen's weakness to gold is because it clogs their breathing apparatus. But here gold affects the Cybermen radar. Radar doesn't need to breathe.

It obviously utilizes technology similar to the Cybermen apparatus which is vulnerable to gold.

Or, it could be that it is simply gold's great density which blocks radar - any other dense material, like lead, would have the same effect.

• If gold impairs Cyberfunction, then it should disable the Cybermat when the Doctor fills it with gold dust.

Not necessarily. Water impairs human breathing when in the lungs, but that doesn't make it fatal when humans drink it.

• If gold's relative softness is the reason it kills Cybermen, wouldn't a similarly soft, yet more plentiful metal like lead work just as well?

It's not the softness of gold that matters, but its ability to coat the Cybermen's breathing apparatus. Only gold can be spread easily and thinly over a surface (like gold leaf), and this is just what would happen if a cloud of powdered gold was blown or sucked over a piece of apparatus.

• Why, during the final struggle over the Skystriker control panel, between Harry, the commander and Vorus, do the two able-bodied Vogan guards that are flanking Tyrum not help, instead choosing merely to stand looking-on?

Soldiers need orders

• Why doesn't the Cyber Leader just kill the Doctor and Sarah near the end when he has the chance instead of going to the trouble of tying them up and leaving them to be killed later?

The Cybermen have very limited resources, so he's not going to waste any killing people who are going to die soon anyway.