Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/Logopolis

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This page is for discussing the ways in which Logopolis 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. 

• When Nyssa objects to the Doctor collaborating with the Master, the Doctor states "I've never chosen my own company." but in the very first Doctor Who (An Unearthly Child ), he CHOSE to kidnap Barbara and Ian. Susan pleaded with him to let them go.

The Doctor is speaking generally, reflecting on how he oftend ends up in the company of certain people rather than selecting to have them with him. Recent to that time in his life, Romana, Adric, Tegan, and Nyssa could all be described in such a manner. If you really want to think of it as such, you could even argue that the Doctor felt forced to "kidnap" Ian and Barbara, because he feared the consequences of letting them go and potentially tell others of him and the TARDIS.

The Doctor did not invite them into his TARDIS. He did not chose their company.

The Doctor is just lashing out in frustration and bad temper here, but technically he is referring to his current incarnation; the Fourth Doctor did not choose any of his companions. Sarah was a hold-over from his third incarnation (and she technically stowed away originally to start with). Harry was tricked into the TARDIS after he got a bit patronising but ended up staying around longer than the Doctor might have intended due to events taking over. Leela basically barged her way into the TARDIS. K-9 was kind of foisted off on him by K-9's designer. Romana was forced on him by the White Guardian. Adric stowed away, and Tegan and Nyssa have both been kind of foisted on him / swept into his orbit by events. While he clearly grew to love all of them anyway, at no real point as the Fourth Doctor has he actually had a chance to say to anyone "Hey, I like you, want to travel the universe with me?" on his own initiative and choosing.

• This story features the Doctor's TARDIS materialising around the Master's TARDIS and creating a gravity bubble and the recursive phenomena of infinite TARDIS'es nesting within each other. Two TARDIS's materialised "inside" each other in TV: The Time Monster, but did not happen when the TARDIS materialised inside Professor Chronotis's rooms (actually his TARDIS in disguise) in the untelevised HOMEVID: Shada.

Chronotis's room was not a complete TARDIS; it was not dimensionally transcendant.

• Why does the policeman take the doll-like corpses so seriously?

Because he recognizes one of them as being the first constable seen in the story.

And also because they're, well, corpses. Unusually small corpses, perhaps, but still corpses. A police officer who does not take a corpse seriously is not a very good police officer.

• Surely the Doctor's plan of flooding the TARDIS to flush-out the Master is absurd nonsense.

The Doctor was feeling very fatalistic at this point. It is doubtful there is a normal procedure of what to do when your arch-nemesis creates a gravity bubble within your TARDIS.

A TARDIS inside another TARDIS may by necessity have its protection negated by the state of grace, presumably the main TARDIS having its own protection in place this would render the secondary TARDIS shields unnecessary, leaving the Master with little option but to flee.

• Tegan appears amazingly reconciled to the extraordinary events happening around her. In particular she does not appear to comment on the size of the TARDIS. She witnesses the regeneration of the Doctor without any evident wonderment and without questioning what is happening.

Different people react to extraordinary events in different ways.

• The only indication that the Watcher is the Doctor's future self is Nyssa saying, 'so it was the Doctor all along'. But how does she know?

As he is merging with the Doctor laying on the ground, she works out that it must be the Doctor.

• It is never really explained how/why the Watcher has come into existence for this regeneration and not previous or future ones.

It's a process that is not always necessary. It's been rather clearly shown that the Doctor does not have the smoothest time with regeneration. Sometimes he needs a little help, even if from a future part of himself.

• If the Watcher is the in-between point of the Doctor's regenerations and has foreknowledge of what will happen to Doctor #4, then why didn't he warn the Doctor against going to Logopolis in the first place? Knowing that the Master is stalking the Doctor and indulging in a totally random killing spree, and that the Master will follow the Doctor to Logopolis and set in motion a chain of events that will erase a portion of the universe and kill countless beings....why doesn't he try to prevent this from happening?

The third part of the Blinovitch limitation effect, prevents time travelers from messing around with their own history.

So what is the point of the Watcher following the Doctor around and going so far as to help his companions?

This is explained, albeit vaguely, within the story: "Logopolis is his target." Although the Doctor may have inadvertently seeded the notion of Logopolis in the Master's mind on Traken, and while stalking the Doctor was a happy bonus for him, he would have eventually gotten bored and travelled to Logopolis by himself. If the Doctor and Adric are unable to actually beat him there, arriving at the same time is the next safest option.

• The lock on the Master's TARDIS changes place in part 1.

A functioning chameleon circuit is more than capable of changing the location of the lock.

• In Part 4, the Master's TARDIS materialises just before the worker leaves the room, Surely the worker would have heard it?

A TARDIS is meant to blend in, and we now know that they can also have perception filters. Additionally, we don't know how loud the materialisation sound was at that moment, how good the worker's hearing was, or if he would have dismissed such a sound as something else (such as a piece of equipment).

The worker is wearing headphones. For the same reason, he doesn't react when the Doctor speaks to him a few moments later.

• When Adric and Nyssa are "outside time and space", how can they possibly see things that change with the passing of time - i.e. the growing entropy field?

The TARDIS scanner could show them the areas of Space-Time in which they were interested, much as the Time-Space Visualiser could in TV: The Space Museum and The Chase

• How could Nyssa be certain when looking at the scanner image of the entire Universe that she couldn't see Traken or Mettula Orionis? Surely trying to find a single star or planet in an outside view of the entire universe is nonsense.

There are close-ups of dying planets and solar systems. Possibly the TARDIS has picked a tactless moment to allow Nyssa to telephatically control the scanner view.

• Why does the Doctor have a flashback of the Decaying Master when he's just met the new one?

He is having memories of various moments of his incarnation's life. Why shouldn't that include the version of the Master which he encountered on Gallifrey?

• Why is there a litter bin next to the 'Take Your Litter Home' sign in episode one?

Such signs are common in some places as a reminder that you shouldn't be depositing large amounts of trash into such bins if possible.

• Exactly WHY are Block Transfer Computations spoken aloud?

It's probably helps the Logopolitans focus their minds on the computations by speaking them. Sort of the same rationale for why some people think better by talking to themselves.

• When Tegan and her aunt are near the car and the Tardis materializes, they dont seem aware of this, but in The Christmas Invasion, Mickey heard the Tardis, although the radio was on.

The TARDIS sometime materialises with a little sound, sometimes with a lot of sound, and sometimes with no sound. From the TARDIS and the Doctor's perspective, there were likely hundreds of years between those two particular materialisations. Add to that the fact that in one, the Doctor had manically accelerated the TARDIS to be out of control, whereas in the other he was materialising it normally and presumably without wanting to draw attention.

Tegan and her aunt are preoccupied with trying to change a car tire on a busy motorway with traffic blasting past them. In addition to the other noises, they're not really paying attention nor are they particularly alert to the sound of the TARDIS, and so they just assume it's something to do with the traffic and don't really notice it (if you like, this could also be some kind of "perception filter" thing, wherein people subconsciously do not notice sounds of the TARDIS' arrival unless it happens right in front of them in a way that cannot be overlooked). In the later story, Mickey by that point is aware of the TARDIS, knows what it sounds like, and has been making a point of looking / listening out for it. He reacts because he knows what the sound signifies and has been waiting to hear it.

• Why is Nyssa caked in things like lipstick and eyeshadow in the photos I've seen of this story? Surely being on a desperate search for her father is not a time she'd spend minutes in front of a make-up mirror?

Photos often show the actors' make-up much more noticeably than one sees during the broadcast. But even assuming that they were somehow valid 'in-Universe', who is to say how much makeup Nyssa was or wasn't wearing when she learned of her father's disappearance..or for that matter, how much is common in Traken culture?

It might help to watch the story beyond merely looking at some photographs. It is clearly established that Nyssa has been brought to Traken by the Watcher. We have no knowledge of at what point Nyssa has been brought to Traken, and consequently how much time she has or hasn't either been searching for her father or has had to make herself look presentable.

• Why travel to Earth to measure a police box (which is bound to at least have minor dimensional variations from the TARDIS)? Why not just materialise somewhere safe and measure the actual TARDIS?

Because the Doctor needs the correct measurements. The TARDIS chameleon circuit is faulty, so its measurements may not be the same as a real Police Box.

• While the theory of heat death is explained correctly in the episode itself, the way it's depicted actually happening - namely as an energy field that disintegrates anything in its path - bears no resemblance whatsoever to how it would actually happen, and in fact more resembles the competing Big Rip theory.

• Near the end of part 4, when the Doctor is on the gantry whilst its turning upside down, you can easily tell the image of the Master in the doorway behind the Doctor is one taken from a different shot because the Master doesn't move in the slightest and you can hardly see anything inside the tower behind him.

Shot composition is a production matter, not discontinuity.

• At the end of part 4 when Adric, Nyssa and Tegan run to the Doctor after he fell, the security guards are chasing them and are shown to only be a few feet away from the Doctor's companions. Despite that, the companions still have time to talk the Doctor and for the Doctor going through the regeneration process, without the guards actually reaching them. In the next episode the security guards are still chasing the gang, again even though before they were shown to be right behind Adric, Nyssa and Tegan.

Several of the guards in fact are busily going up the tower to try to retrieve the lunatic in the scarf who's about to fall off it, and would need to climb down again. Additionally, they've just seen a man fall a fatal distance. Trespass isn't really considered that serious a crime, especially not at what appears to be a civilian installation. Those guards who were closest may well a) have prioritised calling an ambulance over arresting a gang of kids, since we see the ambulance arriving at the start of the next episode, and b) seeing the situation at the end, have let the three adolescents go to be with their dying friend to help and comfort him before the end. Of course, when this situation develops, as a ghost appears, walks into the dying man who then gets up with a new face and the teenagers start to run away with him, the guards would naturally give chase again, but would probably have lost some ground due to being rather dumbfounded by the whole bizarre situation.

• The Doctor is somehow able to have flashbacks to the events of The Invasion of Time despite his memories of that story having been erased at the end of it.

The erasure might not have been complete, allowing him to retain some fragments of what happened (such as an encounter with the Sontarans).