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.

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• 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.

• 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 has 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...".

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, The Eleventh, in Vampires Of Venice, 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 traveling 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 Titantic 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.

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.

• When the Auton's arm attacks Rose, we see Jackie in her bedroom using the hairdryer, 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 stays 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.

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

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