Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/Hide

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This page is for discussing the ways in which Hide 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. 

• As the device that allowed Emma to break through into the pocket universe required the TARDIS's power to function, thus the long extension cord from the TARDIS, why does it keep working after it departs?

An "aspect" of the Eye of Harmony remained attached, which presumably supplied the power. The cables from the TARDIS were likely just needed at the beginning.

• Exactly why was that specific spot cold? And why did the temperature drop so suddenly?

It's highly unlikely that the writer simply 'forgot' about this, so it could be part of a story arc, with the answer revealed later on.

Or the explanation was cut, the end of the episode is rather rushed...

The typical explanation for a drastic change in temperature in the pseudoscience of ghost hunting is a spirit attempting to drain energy, e.g. heat, batteries etc, from an area so that it might manifest physically.

Wasn't the cold spot also the location of the "well"? (With the exception of that one instance in the room with the detection equipment.) It could be that the pocket universe was draining energy from the main universe in that particular spot, where the connection between the universes was closest.

• How did the doctor know at what point exactly Hila was going to appear?

He guessed

Or, he likely calculated it.

• Despite dropping to bellow zero, we don't see anyone's breath after the Doctor leaves the spot. And if it's so cold how come no one reacts to the sudden great change?

They do react.

No they mention it, and we do see the Doctor and Clara react for a short while, but when the shot changes to Emma and the Professor despite the temperature dropping bellow zero no one's shivering.

They can certainly feel cold without overtly reacting to it by shivering, etc.

• Where did the Doctor get a Metebelis III Crystal from, weren't they all destroyed at the end of Planet of the Spiders?

He may have got one from another encounter with the Eight Legs

But they were all destroyed when the Great One's chamber exploded.

Are we forgetting time travel? The Doctor simply has to go to an earlier period in time than when they were destroyed.

Then how did they all turn up in the Great One's lair?

Again, as a reminder, it's time travel. He can take the crystal, keep it from a thousand years, and return it back to the same moment he took it from. Hence, they can all be there by the time of Planet of the Spiders (which does take place in the far future as well).

• How did the Crooked Man's mate get trapped outside the pocket universe, the only doors were opened by Emma, and nothing got out of them.

The mate may have been dislodged when Hilda crashed

So its been in the same place for millions of years?

Or for a few minutes. Time is flowing at a different rate in that universe, so Hilda's arrival spanned a hundred thousand years.

• If the Crooked Man only wanted his mate, why all the sinister laughter? Is that really the only way it can communicate?

Maybe the Crooked Man was running from something else that made the laughter

It was likely to be how the species communicates and only sounded like laughter.

As mentioned in the story, the Doctor believed that it was trying to make him (and Hilda) scared, so they would run - and, it assumed, head back to wherever it's mate had disappeared to.

• Metebelisis III Crystals are used here very differently than they were in The Green Death and Planet of the Spiders, they still enhance mental powers and such, but before they did so with rewriting the brain, not being used to broadcast the abilities.

The Doctor is using it alongside other equipment.

• Why has the Doctor forgotten how to pronounce Metebelisis III?

It's been several Regenerations since he's pronounced Metebelis.

Lots of places and words have multiple pronunciations (data, tomato, etc). He's just using a different pronunciation now than he did all those centuries before.

• How exactly does Hila write the message on the wall? She has not crossed through just yet. And why does it suddenly disappear?

Maybe it was written by the Crooked Man?

It was written in frost so it simply melted. How it was written is a different matter.

Presumably the writing was also a manifestation or psychic interpretation of the message from Hila.

• If time for Hila was running as slowly as Doctor suggested, i.e. 100000 years for Emma was a second to Hila, that means that the time that Emma could possibly have been in contact with Hila would have been like only fractions of a millisecond from her perspective. Far too little for her to actually pay attention to her or even recognise that a person was there.

Perhaps it wasn't direct communication, but Emma hearing "echoes" of Hila due to her strong psychic connection.

No, I meant Hila explained she recognised that Emma was there. How can she consciously recognise the intermittence of something (Emma's entire life) that only takes a millisecond, total, from Hila's perspective?

• When The Doctor goes in to rescue Hila, why does time in the pocket universe suddenly calibrate itself with time back in the normal universe? By all accounts, it should have taken millions of years for the Doctor and Hila to return.

The device that Emma was using was linked to a subset of the Eye of Harmony, so it may have had temporal properties such as syncing up the timestreams of the two universes or tethering the wormhole to the timestream in the main universe so that when somebody crossed over from the pocket universe, they were brought into a time relative to Emma.

• The Doctor goes back to Earth 6 billion years in the past, but the Earth is only some 4.5 billion years old.

We could be wrong about the age of the earth as, like most scientific theories from the past, a lot of scientific theories we believe in now are probably wrong

In The Runaway Bride though, the Doctor says they went back 4.6 billion years to see Earth being formed.. no resolution here.

• Why does the ghost always appear to be in the same place considering that the earth is moving?

Perhaps the pocket universe is linked in a sort of "Geo-stationary orbit" to this patch of the Earth. As the Earth moves, so does the pocket universe with it. They are geographically in sync, but temporally out of alignment.

• Why does the TARDIS Interior have an orange-red hue when the Doctor and Clara are inside? The light as always Bright blue/white in every other episode with this console room.

• Why can the Doctor still rescue her if he travelled to the near end of the earth and captured her there?

• If the Doctor is in the pocket universe, why isn't there a Doctor-shaped ghost in the house on Earth too? Shouldn't there be an image of him running very very slowly too?