Theory:Doctor Who prose discontinuity and plot holes/Timewyrm: Exodus

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This page is for discussing the ways in which Timewyrm: Exodus 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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• In The War Games, the Time Lords put a forcefield around the War Lord's planet, preventing anyone getting on or off. Yet the War Chief somehow got both to the planet, and from there to Earth after this forcefield was in place.

Perhaps it is a one-way forcefield:people can reach the planet(presumeably with suitable enough difficulty as to deter most) but no-one can leave. As to how the War Chief was then able to get to Earth along with some of the War Lord aliens, he is a Time Lord, and thus may know ways around such technology.

• The War Lord and his men were clearly travelling to and from the planet by SIDRATs, yet the War Chief and some guards departed the war games by a spaceship.

Well the War Chief had to be recruited to allow the SIDRATs to be made workable, so presumeabley the spaceship was their form of transportation prior to the SIDRATs' creation.

But that would have been some time before. During The War Games (TV story) themselves, SIDRATs were used exclusively.

• In The War Games, the Time Lords erased The War Lord, The Security Chief, and all their accomplices from history. They explicitly state that it will be like they never existed at all. Yet somehow, The War Lord has a son, who not only exists, but remembers all the events of The War Games. To say nothing of the fact that he's now allying himself to the very man who was using his father, and openly betrayed him.

I would speculate that, as a lesson to the War Lord aliens, the Time Lords bent the rules a bit, permitting the aliens to remember the horrific erasure their leader had suffered and to discourage such behaviour. As to the War Lord's son allying himself with the man who betrayed his father, he most likely viewed the War Chief as a means to an end, one that the War Chief was needed to help achieve. Or he's just not the brightest spoon in the cutlery drawer.

Firstly that's a very big(and bizarre) speculation. The War Lord and all his associates were dematerialised, and made as though they never existed. But the really big point(and the one both you and Terrance Dicks can't seem to grasp) is this...If the War Lord never existed, how could he have a son? Because for the War Lord's son to exist, his father must have existed. But his father never existed. So the stupidity about him managing to get through the forcefield, remembering the War Games and allying himself with the War Chief are bad enough, but his very existence itself contradicts the War Games.

Oh, I can grasp the paradox of the situation perfectly well, it's dear old Terrance that got us into this mess in the first place. Ultimately any way to fix it is going to be bizarre speculation because there is no feasible way for it to work. If the properties of the forcefield allow for the paradox, then surely leaving the planet would result in the son's erasure from time. Short of a paradox machine implanted inside of him, there's really no answer that can be given.