Theory:Torchwood television discontinuity and plot holes/Small Worlds

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This page is for discussing the ways in which Small Worlds 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. 

• Captain Jack claims he does not sleep (TV: Ghost Machine) but at the beginning of this episode he does.

He could have simple being closing his eyes, or attempting to get some sleep. It could also be possible that Jack was simply exaggerating or simply lying. He may have just meant he doesn't need sleep and not that it is biologically impossible for him to sleep at all.

Exaggerating makes sense. Anyone would say "I don't sleep" while only having trouble to sleep. And Jack being haunted by his past every night makes sense. In retrospect, Jack is actually eluding Gwen's question in Ghost Machine being about where he sleeps, since there is somewhere he at least tries to sleep. A plot hole could be seen here, but the authors could simply be tricky, letting the audience wonder in Ghost Machine about Jack's true nature after Rose revived him (Is he still human? Does he still need to sleep? Can he still biologically sleep?), and answering later on in the series that he still needs some sleep, but simply can't because while being immortal he has too many harsh experiences to live with.

I'm more inclined to see this as an explanation of why he 'prefers' not to, or avoids, sleep. He's probably a little lucky in the sense that he's usually able to avoid sleep due to his regenerative ability.

• Fairies kill people who cause harm to chosen ones, then why did they kill Estelle who wouldn't hurt a fly?

They don't just kill those who harm the Chosen Ones. They're not kind faeries, as Jack stated. They kill anyone who gets too close, it is also possible that they were worried if people knew about them, they would develop a way to stop them.

You also have to think about the mess at Gwen's place. She did nothing against the Chosen One as such. A possible explanation is that the faeries travel through time, as the ending of the episode suggests, from Jack's first explanation "backwards and forwards through time", and from Jasmin's answer in the ending scene "they'll find us, back in time". So the faeries knew that ultimately, it would be Jack's decision to let the Chosen One go. Killing Estelle gives their threat "lots of people will die" weight. As Gwen is the only one witnessing the scene, the mess in her place would have the same purpose.

It's possible they consider Torchwood generally, and Jack in particular to be a significant potential threat. This might have been an (unsuccessful) attempt to 'scare them off'.

• If several people were choking at once wouldn't there be choking noises?

Assuming this question refers to the flashback scene with Jack's squad. At this point in the episode, we only saw the child molester's choking, and it was noisy. But in the end scene, we see how Roy dies : the faerie plunges his arm inside the victim's mouth, there is no choking as such, and it actually isn't noisy. There still should be noises from the struggle. Yet, the episode suggests that the power of the faeries is much stronger than what we witnessed, as Jack (explaining to the Torchwood team) and Jasmin (in the ending scene) state it, they control the elements.

In addition, trains are noisy. You tend to 'zone out' a lot of noise in those situations.

If you're choking your airway is blocked and you cannot make a noise.

• Why didn't they kill Jack? Assuming this was before Rose made him immortal.

Jack hadn't done anything. Or, if this was after Rose made him immortal, and the faeries wanted him dead anyway for whatever reason, they may have known he was immortal and decided that killing him would be a lost cause.

The entire squad was killed and quoting Jack "some of them got drunk, drove a truck into the village, ran over a child, killed her". The faeries did not make any difference between the members of the squad while only some of them were responsible, so an explanation on the basis that Jack hadn't done anything wouldn't be consistent.

An explanation, while complicated, could be on the faeries' capacity to travel through time. When Jack's squad was killed, the faeries could have known his future decision to let go the Chosen One. The explanation seems paradoxical at first, since Torchwood is useless all throughout the episode, only being able to intervene on time in the barbecue scene, even there not being able to save Roy. Even then, without Jack, Jasmin would have "come away" anyway. But we don't know what Cardiff's Torchwood would be without Jack. In Doctor Who's Utopia episode, Jack claims that he changed Torchwood, departing from their old brutal ways, that was seen in some Doctor Who episodes (for example The Christmas Invasion). Even Jack himself states that the Doctor changed him in The Parting of the Ways, referring to him willing to sacrifice his life for humanity's sake. The Doctor might also have shown to Jack that he could negotiate with non-humans (in their first encounter, in The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances, the Doctor takes the risk of letting a mother touch her lethal child in order to rectify the nanogenes' misunderstanding of a human body) leading him to accept that Jasmin could go with the faeries instead of fighting for her to stay with her mother.

Why should we "assume this was before Rose made him immortal"? On the contrary, he was almost certainly immortal at the time. And this offers the simplest and most obvious explanation: the faeries realised Jack was immortal, and didn't bother with him.

• Why the needless cruelty by the fairies? Jasmine must know her Mummy (Jas is seven so it wouldn’t be “Mum”) loves her and would not want to leave her all alone. In universe, presumably Torchwood will have a lot of work in the aftermath to explain to outsiders like the press about Roy’s murder and Jasmine’s disappearance