Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/Gridlock

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This page is for discussing the ways in which Gridlock 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 didn't the Macra fly up and kill any people in cars not just in "The Fast Lane" but any where?

THERE GIANT CRABS NOT INSECTS, they don't have wings and they can't fly!

• If the Face of Boe truly is Jack Harkness, it does not make sense for him to die, since he is immortal.

Harkness still ages, just at a much slower rate; assuming no further time travel, he's now over 5 billion years old. He also gave the last of his energy to open the motorway; this last energy could have been the energy that was keeping him alive. Also, on several occasions in both Doctor Who and Torchwood, Jack "died" and did not immediately revive until some time later. We don't know for certain if Boe really died. It is also possible that being over 5 billion years old has taken its toll on Jack, perhaps even destroying his Immortality eventually, the effects of the vortex and his luck could have 'run out' as said by Ianto in Children of Earth.

Furthermore, there's no guarantee that Jack was even telling the truth about his nickname. He could have learned by other means that the Doctor and friends were acquainted with the Face of Boe, and be playing an elaborate joke on them.

Jack isn't immortal, he is described as a 'fixed point in time': he survives until he can pass his message (You Are Not Alone) to the Doctor.

• It seems rather silly that the automatic quarantine would let people into the motorway (surely letting the virus in), but not let them back out. What's more, wouldn't any of the later entries to the motorway have noticed that nobody ever came out, or even tried to get out through the entrance shafts.

The quarantine was to separate the lower city from the upper city, not the lower city from the motorway. The motorway was probably sealed to prevent the citizens of the lower city from realizing that they were trapped, as they knew they could leave at any time.

• What happened to the Macra? Where did they go after the events of Gridlock?

When the motorway opened up, the gas keeping the macra alive would have spread away.

• In New Earth, the Doctor said that New Earth is in the galaxy M87, which is a real galaxy in the Virgo cluster. It is half a million light years across and 60 million light years away. Yet here the Doctor says that New Earth is 50,000 light years from Earth. In 5 billion years the Milky Way and M87 ought to be millions of light years further apart, not closer together.

[Perhaps the people of the year 5 billion have the ability to move solar systems and galaxies around.]

• If the there is self-replicating fuel, then how can the three passengers to go in the fast lane rule be meant to save fuel? And how does the self-replicating fuel work anyway? Surely the second law of Thermodynamics would mean that you need some external input to keep your fuel supply going for that long. Especially if all the cars are generating exhaust fumes (and hence losing some of their fuel as part of the process of using it). The same goes for recycling all the waste products into new food. Some of the food will get used up as energy, even if you lie comatose when not eating it.

• If it takes 6 years to go 10 miles, why don't people just walk?

[Everything is sealed off, so the motorway is the only way to get anywhere.]

• What did the carjackers mean when they talked about being "too poor" to have a third passenger?

• When the car turns off all its systems, including the engines, how does it stay floating?

[Perhaps they've invented a material that naturally repels gravity. Although that begs the question of how they get one of these cars to land.]

• If the undercity was sealed off, then why is there both sunlight and rain in the section that the Doctor and Martha arrive in?

[It's artificial].

• And how can a virus possibly infect an entire planet in just seven minutes?

[Either they have a special virus-spreading teleportation system, or the planet is very sparsely populated, and the virus was teleported right into the heart of its population centres.]