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.

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• 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.

• 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 TV: 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.

• 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.

• 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, prevernts 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.

• 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?