Theory:Doctor Who audio discontinuity and plot holes/An Earthly Child

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This page is for discussing the ways in which An Earthly Child 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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• This story completely contradicts the novel Legacy of the Daleks. First Susan has a son called Alex Campbell.

Not necessariy a contradiction in and of itself. Alex was presumeably created by a pseudo-scientific means given that he seems to be almost fully human, as well as the infertility between Gallifreyans and humans.

"Presumably created by a pseudo-scientific means"? There is nothing that even hints at that. And if Gallifreyans and humans were unable to have offspring, we wouldn't have had a show in the first place(see The TV Movie).

Admittedly I haven't listened to it in a while, so the created explanation is quite likely something I headcanoned and that blurred over. Be that as it may, the incompatibility between humans and Gallifreyans was established in Venusian Lullaby (novel) and somewhat in Legacy of the Daleks.

In Relative Dimensions, Eight does a scan that confirms that Alex is only 7% Time Lord. Admittedly I am not a geneticist, but I am fairly certain that's not how it should work if Alex was birthed naturally.

It is unlikely someone would be 7% anything. This doesn't necessarily mean that it was meant that Alex was loomed or grown in a test tube etc. More just proof that the writer doesn't understand genetics.

• Alex also knew his father David Campbell, who died when Susan and David didn't have any children.

I don't quite recall Alex having known his father, but I'll take your word for it. The framing sections of Gary Russel's Short Trips: Repercussions have an implied appearance by a taken-out-of-time Sam Jones. If blonde Sam Jones was indeed removed from time by the Doctor at some point following Interference, then the events that caused the Doctor to get caught up in Legacy of the Daleks, mainly his seperation from Sam, never truly happened in the new timeline(though the Doctor and perhaps Susan would retain memories of their parts in it), meaning David could well live to see Alex 'born'.

First, it's never said that it is Sam Jones. Secondly, Sam wasn't even in Legacy of the Daleks. Thirdly, as we've seen from the new show, even when the Time Cracks erased certain events, time travellers who'd lived through them remembered them, and retained the effects. (Eg. the Stolen Earth/Journey's End (TV story) regeneration still happened, even if Stolen Earth/Journey's End (TV story) itself was erased.) And why did you write born as 'born'? Again, there is nothing which states he wasn't born following coitus and pregnancy.

The first is admittedly a good point, as the implication is what my wildly contrived theory hinges on. The second is something I am aware of; if it wasn't clear, I am saying that because he never really traveled with Sam in the first place, he couldn't get seperated from her, and while looking for her, end up in the events of Legacy of the Daleks. The Doctor and Susan remembering what was changed doesn't really affect the theory, as David would be alive and that's all I'm attempting to fix.

• Susan says she hasn't seen the Doctor since The Dark Tower (ie. The Five Doctors (TV story), which contradicts Ground Zero.

Ground Zero has to have been undone anyway for the NAs to have happened; it is speculated by some that this rewriting occurs via Kroton harnesting the Glory. Alternatively, perhaps by being returned to thier own times, their memories of the events of Ground Zero were erased. As to Ace's fate in this scenario, well it wouldn't be the first time Seven replaced her(Loving the Alien); perhaps this Ace was just the latest model, removed from an alternate Earth by a lonely and depressed Seven near the end of his life.

Except that Ground Zero leads directly into The TV Movie. And there's also Legacy of the Daleks. In any case, your claim that "Ground Zero has to have been undone anyway for the NAs to have happened" is strange when one considers that pretty much every other medium has dismissed the NAs.

The Companion Chronicle The Prisoner's Dilemma, which tied into the Main Range Key2Time arc, featured NA Ace. The Gallifrey Chronicles referenced Ace's amnesia and subsequent botched restoration that occurred in Timewyrm: Genesys, while Endgame (novel) features an NA-era, white suit-wearing Seven, as does the first Klein trilogy that began with A Thousand Tiny Wings (audio story). The meeting between Eight and Susan occurred only briefly in Legacy of the Daleks, and at its rewriting into the timeline that would become An Earthly Child such a meeting could be easily forgotten, assuming that Susan would be able to remember. As for Ground Zero leading directly into The TV Movie, as I recall so do Lungbarrow, Bullet Time, and Notre Dame du Temps.

Wasn't Ground Zero a younger Susan? Ground Zero would be most recent for the Doctor, but The Five Doctors would be for Susan.

Yes, you are right. Ground Zero was a younger Susan. However, the Doctor and Susan did see each other in Legacy of the Daleks.

It was put forward in a recent edition of AHistory that the Monk's meddling of events in order to set up the events of Lucie Miller (audio story) and To the Death undid Legacy of the Daleks. Admittedly this doesn't explain how Delgado!Master turns into Pratt/Beevers!Master in the new timeline, but chalk that up to the CIA and Bob just could be your uncle.

The "new" EDAs with Lucie Miller screwed up continuity. The Monk says he hasn't met the Doctor since The Daleks' Master Plan (TV story), Susan hasn't seen the Doctor since The Five Doctors (TV story), and yet the Doctor mentions both The Bodysnatchers (novel) and Izzy Sinclair. Last fan fiction guess: After The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel), the Eighth Doctor restores Gallifrey, using the Matrix. He restores it to a much earlier version. As Susan was last seen in a TARDIS at the end of Legacy of the Daleks (novel), maybe she was on Gallifrey when it was destroyed in The Ancestor Cell (novel), maybe she died, and was restored. Same thing with the Monk. Maybe he was on gallifrey too in The Ancestor Cell. remembering what he did in 4-Dimensional Vistas (comic story) and No Future, the Doctor restored him to a point in his timeline shortly after The Daleks' Master Plan (TV story). With Susan, the Doctor restored her to a point not long after The Dalek Invasion of Earth (TV story), and gave the restored Susan the ability to have children with David.Legacy of the Daleks (novel) was overwritten, but just as the Doctor's regeneration in The Stolen Earth (TV story)/Journey's End (TV story) still counts, even though that timeline was erased, so the Master's transformation from Delgado to Pratt in Legacy of the Daleks (novel) still counts, even though that timeline was erased. The Doctor and the Master will remember Legacy of the Daleks (novel), Susan won't, as now it never happened for her. Of course, it would have been much easier to just not make new stories like An Earthly Child (audio story) in the first place...

You know it was all on purpose, right? The whole purpose of media is to entertain, and that goes both ways. The viewers are entertained by the fiction, and the makers purposely screw with 'canon' so they can be entertained by the fans trying to figure it out (The Infinity Doctors and The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion is evidence of that).

As for why some remember what didn't happen, others don't what did, or couldn't have done what they should have done in the never-happened timeline is dismissed in the narrative as, 'wibbly wobbly timey wimey'.