Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/The Time Monster

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This page is for discussing the ways in which The Time Monster 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.
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:::This is a counter-argument to the counter-argument above
* This is point two.
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::Further discussion and query of point two.

... and so on. 

• In episode one, the interior of the police box prop is visible.

You cannot see inside, it is dark because when you walk into the darkness you appear into the console room. The TARDIS is made like this so you don't see into the spaceship.

Yeah, but you can see the inside of the police box in this episode. Normally it is dark, but not in this case.

If anything, this is a simple production error, and not a plot hole/discontinuity. If you'd like a narrative explanation, then simply call it an effect of the chameleon circuit - it's pretending to be a police box, so looking in from the outside should probably look to you as though you're seeing inside a police box. (Yes, I know we see the full interior in more recent episodes, but obviously the TARDIS has long since been established as "inconsistent" in its behaviour... or, feel free to call that a discontinuity on those later episodes if you like.)

• The V1 is black and white.

The fact that it is going through time might make it black and white.

• Since the V1 is moved forward through time while in mid-air, so that it explodes in the programme's present, how can it be that the local remembers it having fallen in the past?

The incident presumably occurs at both points in time.

• The Doctor's supposedly backwards dialogue when played backwards is still gibberish.

Perhaps it is gibberish so that people who can understand backwards dialogue won't understand it, and the doctor is not aware that he is talking rubbish.

The Doctor was talking to the Master, or trying to, so whilst the Doctor's TARDIS was presumably helpfully translating into English for Jo's benefit, whilst the Master's TARDIS was helpfully translating it into Atlantean for the benefit of Krasis, the Doctor himself was likely speaking Gallifreyan. Once the Master had reversed the sounds, the TARDIS presumably thought "... ok, sod this for a game of soldiers, I'm not wasting my time translating backwards Gallifreyan into backwards English just so his latest bit of skirt can fail to understand it in her own language instead of ours, wake me up in a minute."

• The effect of the crystal ages Stuart by over fifty years. Despite this, his nails and hair do not grow out to match his rapid aging.

The physics of death by accelerated ageing are problematic throughout Doctor Who (cf. "The Claws of Axos", "City of Death", "The Leisure Hive", "Timelash", "The Sound of Drums"). Strictly speaking, if all that is happening is that Stuart's personal time is being sped up within a small area, he should die of dehydration long before he has a chance to become an old man. One could hypothesise that the ageing effect is being accomplished at a microscopic level, wearing out each individual body cell while bypassing the bodily functions. Not that this excuses the chicken in "City of Death" (which very explicitly was within a bubble of accelerated time, without any food supply, and should just have died).

Given that we don't quite exactly know what was being affected (cells or whole body, for example) or how the technology truly works, all we have to go on is speculation. Whatever the time effect is, it obviously causes aging or a simulation thereof, but the person does not actually 'pass through' the intervening time - meaning, Stuart didn't live through 50 years without food or water. The process also obviously didn't accelerate growth of nails or hair, nor have his heart beat fifty years worth of times, nor anything else requiring all that energy one would have gotten from fifty years worth of eating food. It's a bit of an ipso facto, but without truly knowing the technology and temporal laws involved, there we are.

• Why do the Roundheads and the horseback rider attack UNIT without being provoked?

The Roundheads were clearly poised for attack anyway, and presumably just followed through despite the bewildering change in situation. The knight was in the middle of charging, and wasn't neccessarily attacking - just not stopping.

Alternatively, if one buys into the notion that the Master and the War Chief are the same person, then he has past form in conditioning unfortunate soldiers into mistakenly attacking the wrong army ...

• In episode four, when the Doctor's and Master's TARDISs are inside one another, how is Krasis and the Master able to enter it from the TOMTIT lab when it would only be accessible by those who were already inside the Doctor's TARDIS' console room?

• It seems highly improbable that Sergeant Benton would not have the Brigadier's phone number.

The gap in rank between them is a big one. It's not especially unlikely that an NCO wouldn't have a senior officer's number.