Theory:Torchwood television discontinuity and plot holes/Random Shoes

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

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• In the previous episode, They Keep Killing Suzie, Suzie says that after you die it's just dark. Unless it was the eyes keeping him from seeing it, why did Eugene remain on Earth, and not experience the blackness?

Jack states that the purpose of the sixth eye was to look back and see where you've been. Having swallowed the eye, Eugene himself states that the events after his death have allowed him to see his life for what it really was.

• Despite his arm passing straight through Tosh when trying to get her attention, Eugene has no trouble getting in and out cars.

Maybe he can't interact with sentient objects, unlike cars. He cannot affect anything physical (such as opening doors and the like), but he can sit in a car without physically affecting it.

• It is stated that Eugene's father works nights at a garage, but Gwen calls the garage in the daytime and is able to speak to him.

As Gwen phones him on the way back from Aberystwyth, it is likely the phone call was made in the early morning, when he could have been at the end of his night shift.

• It is established that Eugene's father left in 1992, and Eugene narrates at his funeral that his father is "14 years too late", seemingly placing the story in 2006. However, Gwen joined Torchwood some time after the Battle of Canary Wharf, which took place sometime in 2007.

The fact that no specific dates are mentioned, plus the possibility of Eugene merely rounding the figure to the nearest year could account for the differences.

• In the Happy Cook, Gary says that they failed to catch up with Eugene because Josh was wearing new shoes. However the shoes in the picture on the phone do not look new.

Josh may have bought the shoes second hand, and referred to them being new to him.

Josh was probably too ashamed to admit to Gary that he's just too slow/unfit, so gave a lame excuse.

• Okay, hope I’m doing this right, so here goes - just a question, but said ‘Random Shoes’ did not actually seem to do anything or be anything; why did Eugene take the photographs of them? What was the point? Sorry if there is some obvious answer and I just wasn’t paying attention.