Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/The Two Doctors

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This page is for discussing the ways in which The Two Doctors 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:

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... and so on. 

• Why is the Second Doctor using the console room from the Fourth Doctor era?

The TARDIS has more than one console room, and each console room has a variety of settings or desktops. The TARDIS console room was seldom exactly the same in successive stories anyway.

• If the scientists aren't Humans or Androgums then what are they?

They could be other species working on the station.

• The Sontaran scout ships are called battle cruisers by the space station's computer.

The computer may not have any other information on Sontaran ships.

The size of the ships is not apparent on the screen. All Sontaran ships may be built to the same unimaginative, functional pattern, regardless of size (with the possible exception of the anonymous vessel they use to sneak their advance forces onto Gallifrey in "The Invasion of Time").

• Despite being a recluse, Dona Arana is able to supply Shockeye with a current list of Seville restaurants.

Being a recluse means living alone away from others. It does not mean never going to town for supplies or to enjoy the occasional special meal.

• Dastari and the Androgums apparently speak English (according to the Dona Arana's comment on meeting them) despite being aliens who have never visited Earth before.

The invasion party may have been studying Earth communications in preparation for their landing, and selected English as the most prevalent lingua franca without realising it would not be widespread in the specific location they had chosen (though that does not say much for Chessene's supposed strategic brilliance).

• The Second Doctor was sent to Chimera by the Time Lords. However the Time Lords did not know where the Doctor was and Jamie had not heard of the Time Lords until The War Games.

This is the reason for Season 6B theory.

An alternative explanation might be derived from the implication in "The Deadly Assassin" that the Doctor, even during his period of exile, was working for the Celestial Intervention Agency, who seem to act somewhat outside the normal boundaries of Time Lord law.

While the Season 6B idea is now pretty widespread, this was not the reason at the time. First, it was explicitly stated in The War Games that this sort of technology did not exist then. Second, when the Third Doctor was sent on missions for the Time Lords, why did he never receive a Stattenheim Remote (and those were hardly top secret "Season 6B" covert opearations)? Mark of the Rani explicitly states that the Stattenheim Remote Control is a new invention. Then, when the Second Doctor sends out his distress signal, it is not picked up by Pertwee or Davison or Tennant, but by the Sixth Doctor at that precise moment in time. Time Crash will later tell us that when a Time Lord jumps a time track and meets his future self, his body visibly ages(but goes back to its proper appearance when he returns to his own timestream). Which is all saying that the Second Doctor is working for Time Lords from the Sixth Doctor's era, not his own. Presumably, when this is over, he will be returned to his own timestream, with memory wiped.

• So what is and is not true about what the Sixth Doctor said about the time capsule, when he knew he was being overhead by the General? He seems to imply to Jamie that he was making a lot of it up, but his actions seem to imply that what he said about needing to prime the cabinet was all true.

Most of it was true, with the exception of the fact that he had sabotaged the machine.

• The Sixth Doctor hearing the Spanish church bell ring, as he linked minds with the Second Doctor while on the spacestation, might give him the location and approximate distance of his past self from it, but not a compass direction - i.e. Is the Second Doctor being held north, east, south or west of the bell? So how does the Sixth Doctor know where on the search radius to land the TARDIS?

A combination of logical deduction to eliminate certain areas that the Doctor would consider unlikely; and a lucky guess based on what's left.

• Would Jamie really have reverted to such a feral state after having been abandoned on the station... and then recover his civility so quickly?

Well he is from the eighteenth Century, when a person needs to survive, there is no limit to what they will do, plus he just saw his greatest friend, the Doctor being killed (or so he thought) and that's bound to cause some psychological problems, and its implied the stuff the doctor gave him, helped bring him back to normal.

• The concept of the Sixth Doctor slowly becoming an Androgum makes no sense. If what happens to the Second Doctor affects the Sixth then, the Sixth Doctor would not have gotten to this stage of his life - i.e. meeting Peri, coming after his own self, and everything else in between. The whole course of his life would have changed.

It's a matter of proximity, and that these two points in the Doctor's life are in the same time zone. Additionally, the Sixth Doctor had just recently made a psychic connection with the Second Doctor.

• Many viewers were shocked by the Sixth Doctor killing Shockeye in so direct a manner. This was completely contradictory to the characters of the previous and future regenerations. Other Doctors had killed before, but in self-defence or by accident. But the Sixth Doctor directly kills a humanoid by pressing a cyanide-soaked handkerchief to his face.

This isn't the first time; see below for other examples.

Bearing in mind Shockeye has made a concerted effort at devouring both Jamie and Peri for no better reason than culinary curiosity, even the Doctor might be excused for warming to the concept of justifiable homicide.

The Doctor is acting in self-defence, as Shockeye is chasing him with the intent to kill him - not to mention having killed Oscar, tortured Jamie, and attempted to kill Peri. The Doctor has killed in similar circumstances before - see almost any story involving Daleks.

Not to mention "The Brain of Morbius," in which the Doctor killed an admittedly appalling human being (Solon) with cyanide gas, that very disturbing scene in "Genesis of the Daleks" in which he effectively water-boards Davros by tampering with his life-support system, and his deliberately hurling Magnus Greel into his own torture device. Season 22 is certainly violent, but one still gets the impression that if it had only been produced and edited by the equals of Hinchcliffe and Holmes, only Mary Whitehouse would have cared...

• Stike implied that the self-destruct mechanism on his ship would wipe out the surrounding area, including the hacienda. But when it did go off, it only resulted in a minor explosion, too small and far away from the hacienda to do any real damage.

  That's fine; Stike either lied or was at error.

• The Sontarans are supposed to be a clone race meaning they're all identical to each other, however Clinton Greyn and Tim Raynham who play Stike and Varl are different and whilst Clinton was 6 feet, Varl was 5 feet, while the Sontarans in The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky were the same height.

To be a clone, there has to be an original, clearly in this case Stike and Varl weren't cloned from the same original Sontaran, while (at least) most of the ones in the The Poison Sky were.

A "clone race" doesn't mean everyone is identical. It means everyone is cloned. There would hardly be much point in differentiating rank if everyone is identical. No doubt, there are different categories of clones, each produced for different purposes.

Possibly certain clones are conditioned in vitro to generate different ranks and specialisms (as in "Brave New World"). Taller commanding officers would make a certain sense (They would be more visible in confused battlefield situations).