Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/Rose

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This page is for discussing the ways in which Rose 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. 

• How can only the Ninth Doctor come from a place on Gallifrey that has the equivalent of a northern English accent?

The Doctor's accent can change from from one incarnation to another, as has been shown (6th to 7th, for example), just as his face, other mannerisms, etc. also change.

I know this, and I'm asking for an explanation for it!

That's like asking why only the 4th doctor liked jelly babies, had a scarf, why only the 5th doctor carried celery, or only the 1st and 12th doctors had mostly grey hair. Its just how they are.

A mistake by RTD. The 7th Doctor is played by a Scotsman, who uses a Scottish accent, but it is never mentioned on screen by anyone that he has a Scottish accent.

RTD wouldn't make a mistake like never having watched the Seventh, since we know he did. The 9th Doctor is probably just joking around with Rose; it's very like him to tease about his accent, and we know he slips in and out of characters with people he doesn't know (which means he would just say he's from the north to a stranger as a gaff).

The Doctor and the Master appear to be skilled natural mimics, picking up accents, voice patterns, and (given the vagaries of Gallifreyan biology) even appearances fairly easily from people they encounter in their travels. There are a few instances in canon of them being able to precisely imitate the voice of another on demand, so picking up an accent and subconsciously adopting it as the voice of your latest incarnation isn't that much of a stretch. After all, English is technically a foreign language with a learned pronunciation to all the Doctors, so just as 10's mockney is probably based on Rose, and 12's Scottish likely inspired by Amy, 7 and 9 had probably memories of a Scotsman and a Mancunian, respectively, in mind. After all, 'Received Pronunciation ', i.e. BBC English, is still an accent in itself too.

• When Rose is attacked by the plastic arm, the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to cancel the signal. While he is doing this, Jackie is drying her hair in the other room. In Forest of the Dead the Doctor says that hair dryers interfere with his sonic screwdriver, so shouldn't he be unable to use it against the arm?

The Doctor said some hair dryers. He also had to buzz it a few times for it to work.

Also that was a different sonic screwdriver than in Forest of the Dead, remember in Smith and Jones - he had to get a new one. In The Eleventh Hour - the Eleventh Doctor needs also a new one.

• Wouldn't Jackie hear Rose crashing through the table?

Jackie was drying her hair at the time, so would most probably not have heard her.

• How can there be photos of the Doctor, on the day before the Titanic set sail, at the assassination of John F. Kennedy and when Krakatoa erupted, without Rose? During this episode the Doctor implies several times that he has recently regenerated. You would expect the pictures can't be from the Doctor's future, because Rose is always with him until he regenerates into his David Tennant incarnation.

We don't know that the Doctor was newly-regenerated. His surprise at his looks could be explained by the fact he has a busy life and may not have had time, or bothered, to look in a mirror. And how else did the Doctor imply he had recently regenerated?

Those events could have happened after he saw Rose in her flat, but before he invited her to join him. Rose could have also chosen not to be in the photos, or may have not been near the Doctor when the photos were taken.

Possibly, but it's unlikely he would travel on other missions in the middle of this one.

The Doctor dematerialised in his TARDIS when Rose initially declined the invitation to join him. He then rematerialised to tell her it was a time machine. The events could have happened during this time.

Possibly, but it seems unlikely the Doctor would go off on other missions only to return a minute after Rose had declined to say "did I mention...".

It’s only a minute for Rose, but not the Doctor. He leaves once Rose says no and goes off on his own in The Beast of Babylon. Then he is made to realise that he really liked Rose and he should try and ask her again.

How about Rose being the one taking the pictures?

As seen in The Eleventh Hour, the Doctor doesn't really know what he looks like till he sees a photograph, or in that case a visual of himself. Not only that, in The Vampires of Venice, the Eleventh takes a moment to look at himself in a mirror, acting like it's been a long time since he has seen what he looks like. Plus, I don't recall there being mirrors in the TARDIS control room, where he spends most of his time.

There are acknowledged gaps between on screen episodes. In Boom Town, Rose tells Mickey about places she has visited with the Doctor that are not shown on screen in previous episodes. So Rose could be travelling with the Doctor in all the instances found by Clive, but there is no guarantee that she was standing right next to or near the Doctor when the pictures were taken.

The Doctor implies the Titanic photograph was most likely before he ever met Rose when he mentions "clinging to an iceberg" to Jabe in The End of the World. There had been no opportunity up to this stage for Rose to join him on missions not in the series.

Clive says that the picture is of the Doctor with a family who "cancelled the trip and survived". The Doctor was therefore not on the Titanic that time. It could have been a previous incarnation of the doctor who was on the Titanic the first time and ended up "clinging to an iceberg".

This logic is flawed. Being in a picture with a family who cancelled their trip doesn't mean the Doctor didn't board the Titanic himself. Especially when you consider that the Doctor would be quite capable of piloting the TARDIS onto the Titanic even after it had left port.

The Doctor has been aware that the Titanic is destined to sink since at least his 4th incarnation Robot (TV story), The Invasion of Time (TV story) . Therefore it is unlikely that he would purposefully board it with that knowledge. A previous Doctor, unaware of the Titanic's fate, could have boarded it and ended up clinging to the iceberg. This places the photo AFTER The End of the World (TV story). Alternatively, if the ninth doctor had boarded the Titanic AFTER convincing the Daniels family not to, he would have clearly known that it was going to crash AND that it was a fixed point (and therefore unavoidable) so his boarding of it would be fairly illogical. Not to mention the fact that this would mean the photo was definitely taken prior to The End of the World (TV story) which would mean that the doctor went back to 1912, stayed for at least a day, and never once saw his reflection OR looked at the picture of himself that he posed for. Which seems unlikely. It is more likely that after the Time War he would have been more inclined to clear up some of the mess it caused (The Nestene's invasion of Earth) than go to Southampton to board a sinking ship. So, although being in a picture with a family who cancelled their trip obviously doesn't mean that the Doctor definitely didn't board the Titanic either, it is a much more logical conclusion to make than the alternatives.

It makes perfect sense if the reason he got to know them in the first place was owing to him being involved in some caper around Southampton docks on the eve of sailing. Out of gratitude, he drops a hint to them to not get on the ship, but then ends up pursuing a fugitive Kroton / Vampire monkey / Tetrap /Bandril or similar on to the SS Titanic himself- or possibly finds out at the last minute that the TARDIS he left on the rocks has been accidentally loaded as cargo, or dozens of other reasons.

Perhaps Rose remembered the photos she had seen, and so when she and the Doctor travelled to those points in time she made sure not to get her picture taken so as not to cause a paradox. (Since she had already seen the photos of only the Doctor.

Most significantly: when Rose became "The Bad Wolf" at the end of the series, she made changes (leaving Bad Wolf clues) to ensure she would fulfil the mission of saving the Doctor. So, even if she had originally been in any of Clive's pictures, she would have altered them accordingly.

We find out in Good Night that the Doctor doesn't need as much sleep (although we don't know if that's age or species difference) and apparently he can get a LOT done while others are sleeping.

At the very beginning of the 4th Doctor's era, he had a trip in the TARDIS and an unseen misadventure during Robot, which brought about the events seen in The Face of Evil. This is according to the novelisation of the latter story. However, it's not mentioned in either of the television versions.

In Love and Monsters it's mentioned a "bad wolf virus" had wiped out mentions of Rose in the Torchwood archives. It's fair to assume Rose as the bad wolf would edit herself out of photographs as well.

• When the Auton's arm attacks Rose, we see Jackie in her bedroom using the hair dryer, when her hair is clearly already dry.

Many people use hair dryers to style their hair after it is dry.

• When Mickey opens the lid to the rubbish bin and his hands are stuck to it, when he starts to stretch out the plastic and turn around, the strands switch hands instead of crossing.

Clearly the plastic has the ability to do that.

Or clearly the production team stuffed up; simple as that.

• The Doctor says everything plastic shall come to life. However, during the Auton invasion, you can see heaps of plastic items that stay dormant. In fact, it's only the Shop Window Dummies that come to life. You can see shopping bags, chairs, bins that don't come to life at all.

He means the plastic that is controlled by the Nestene, why would the Nestene make plastic bags come to life when you can have a whole army of shop dummies?

Plastic bags could fly around and suffocate people.

Considering the way Auton-Mickey was blundering about unable to see after the Doctor pulled its head off, the plastic bags might have trouble finding their targets.

• Why do the Autons have guns in their hands anyway? Normal shop window dummies don't.

They must've been specially made and planted in shop windows, presumably by the Nestene Consciousness. Some of them may even be left over from the original invasion of Spearhead from Space.

Another possibility is that the joints in the wrists normally used to join the hands to the torso are shooting hard plastic bullets.

• Why couldn't Rose tell Mickey was an Auton? Anyone would have noticed the weird plastic sheen to his skin and hair.

Rose was preoccupied thinking about the Doctor. Having almost been killed and then meeting a mysterious man, it is likely that she would not be thinking properly.

The obviously plastic look was a production effect for our benefit. Spearhead from Space created the impression that Auton copies are extremely difficult to distinguish from normal humans.

Two things about Rose Tyler. Firstly, at this point in her life, she isn't really adjusted to the idea of living in a world of fantastic monsters and a whole universe of strange, strange creatures. It's true that she's already seen living plastic, but, in the words of Channing, many years prior: "You have only seen the Autons... but the facsimiles are perfect reproductions". The second thing about Rose Tyler is that she elevates taking Mickey for granted to the level of an art form, and really wasn't paying him very much attention, being more interested in the mystery of her Doctor. She may well have noticed that Mickey looked- and was acting- weird- but was neither interested nor experienced enough to make the leap to "Wait a minute, he's a plastic duplicate being controlled by the Nestene consciousness!"

• The Doctor calls humans "stupid apes" but wouldn't the Gallifreyans, being humanoid and almost physically identical to humans, had evolved from an ape-like race?

Possibly, but it was the humans who were being stupid.

Plus, Time Lords are much more evolved than humans, so from the Doctor's perspective, humans could be considered the Time Lords' evolutionary equivalent of apes.

Time Lords didn't evolve from apes. They evolved from humanoid cats that evolved from humanoid fish.

• After Auton Mickey had lost his head, the body was blundering about as if it were blind, but the Auton arm could perfectly find The Doctor in Roses apartment, let alone get to the apartment.

Interesting. The only explanation I can think of is that the Doctor has physically interacted (touched) with the arm multiple times but not Auton Mickey, so it would not be able to locate him. Also, the restaurant was full of obstacles and people and Rose's house was not, as well as the fact that the arm is much smaller and was not restricted to the ground, although this is probably something the writers did not think about.

Auton Mickey has only recently been beheaded, whilst the arm was detached the previous night, so perhaps reasonably enough it takes the fragment of Nestene Consciousness within each time to adjust to sense the world around it effectively after dismemberment.

• When Rose ends her second encounter with The Doctor, she sees him walk up to the TARDIS. When it is out of her view, she hears it leave, runs back and sees that its gone. Yet, later on when they attempt to escape Auton Mickey, she sees it and runs for the gate. Why does she not think that it could be an escape route considering she saw it one moment and saw it disappear the next?

She might have been too fearful of the Auton Mickey to remember. And as she did not watch it disappearing, merely seeing it there and then not, it could have been moved or she could have denied her own eyes.

• The Doctor has a vial of anti-plastic, surely, it should be a vial of anti-Nestene Consciousness?

It could be both.

And, yet, the Doctor calls it anti-plastic.

Yes, it is anti-plastic. But the Nestene Consciousness is just that — a consciousness. It has to inhabit plastic, so the anti-plastic destroys the plastic it is in. When we see the "consciousness" it is actually a vat of plastic, not a physical Nestene form.

• Why are there only photo archives of the ninth Doctor?

There are also drawings of him, but if you are referring to not having any videos, it could easily be that he had not visited a time period that has that technology invented to shoot him on video, or that Clive did not show any to Rose.

I think the question is asking why there are no photos/drawings of his other incarnations.

In case you didn't know, this episode has recently been novelised. In it, Clive mentioned to having photos and drawings of the Doctor's other incarnations. These included his past ones and his tenth to thirteenth selves (as well as a couple he thought may have been the Doctor).

• When Rose's mum is out shopping during the activation stage, she is seen throwing away her red hand bag. Later after Rose saves the day and calls her mum to check if she is OK, Rose's mum pulls her phone out of a denim handbag?

The bag she throws away is a red shopping bag as its plastic and has a store looking logo on the front, it's not a handbag. She also has a blue handbag with her. Its really difficult to see as it is pretty much the same colour as her jacket so it blends in, it with her at all times. Later when she rings Rose, she pulls the phone out of that blue handbag.

• When Rose believes Mickey is dead, she says she will have to tell his mother. However, we later learn that Mickey's mother left the family when Mickey was very young, and presumably has no contact with her son.

She might have indirect contact with people Mickey knows, such as his teachers.

• When Rose gives Mickey the Auton's arm, it is a right arm. But when Mickey throws it in the dumpster it is a left arm, then it's back to being a right arm when it attacks the Doctor.

This is living plastic, which can change form.

• When the Auton takes the vial of anti-plastic out of the Doctor's pocket, it has a lid on. When Rose knocks the vial out of the Auton's hand it still has the lid on. On the shots of it flying through the air, it still has the lid on. However when the vial lands on the Nestene Consciousness the lid is now mysteriously missing. And I doubt the Doctor would carry around the vial in his pocket if the lid fell off so easily.

• Why is it all the Autons in the High Street at the end are able to use bullets to kill people but the Autons Rose encounters at the very beginning of the episode are conveniently not able to?

Those Autons may have been prototypes made by the Nestene Consciousness, so they had didn’t have guns in their hands. The ones that launched the invasion may have been a perfected form of Auton with guns

• Why did Rose neglect to clobber the Autonb about to chop her? Her survival instincts to fight. And it's got zero armour. She can rip ti apart.