Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/School Reunion

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This page is for discussing the ways in which School Reunion 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 Mr. Wagner tells Luke that he has extra class, he is followed by Melissa, not Luke.

Luke may have been Melissa's last name. Whether he said Melissa or Luke, she would have followed.

Melissa may have been going somewhere else, and another person called Luke followed him soon after. Plus the boy's name is Kenny not Luke

• At the start Lassar assumes bat form to devour a child. He later tells the Doctor that while his brothers remain in bat form, with a morphic illusion giving them the appearance of Humans, his own Human form is real, a personal preference.

There may have been a second Krillitane in the room. After he closes the door, we lose sight of him. A moment later, the shadow bat-like image is seen through the small window. It cannot be clearly stated whether he transformed into the image, or if it was another Krillitane already in the room.

His own human form may have been real, but he may have retained the ability to transform back to bat form at will.

Well, I think he only said that he preferred the human form, but I believe he is just like the others, you might have misunderstood. It wouldn't make sense if so.

It's possible that he gained his Human form from the girl. The Krillitanes gain new forms from the species they kill, but they don't necessarily gain it from the individual.

• If Sarah Jane was investigating the school, like the Doctor, to discover what was going on after the lights and all the staff being replaced, why was she so openly asking question to the Doctor under his guise as "John Smith"? If the staff are all being replaced recently surely meeting a stranger, with an ambiguously genuine name, who had only just started also would ring some alarm bells, yet she very openly starts asking questions suspiciously having only just been totally sycophantic to Mr. Finch.

As indicated, this is because he is brand new and presumably therefore less likely to be part of any conspiracy surrounding the headmaster.

Sarah Jane always confronts aliens whenever she meets them as seen in The Sarah Jane Adventures.

• It is very unlikely that hundreds of papers would be flying out after the school blew up, especially ones that are not burnt.

It is quite likely that the heat of the explosion in one area of the school would cause papers in other parts of the building to blow out the windows.

• How can what appears to be a state school introduce a new curriculum when all state schools have to follow the national curriculum?

Exceptions to the rules always exist.

On the surface, the school may appear to be following the national curriculum, but may not actually.

• Why don't the dinner ladies just put a proper lid on the oil barrel before moving it?

The oil may have required ventilation.

But Brother Lassar seals the oil barrels later in the episode to prevent the Doctor getting to them.

• Why does Sarah Jane have K9 in her car, given that he's non-functional to the extent that the Doctor takes an hour to repair him enough to switch him on.

She was waiting for the Doctor to return.

She may have taken him along a bit like a security blanket type thing - making her feel more like the Doctor.

If he suddenly switched off one day, it is possible he may have switched on another. If she was in danger and he was not with her, but was working, he would have been no use.

• Why was K9 in the car rather than the boot the next day when he wasn't even switched on?

He may have been switched on, simply in an un-activated mode. He was damaged and not 100% working so he was probably flicking on and off, and plus his batteries weren't fully charged

• Why does unplugging it from the current cause the router to explode?

The router may be of alien technology, given that the program used to crack the code seems alien. Alien devices may work differently.

• How come Sarah Jane doesn't have her sonic lipstick or scanner watch which are gifts from the Doctor; we don't see the Doctor give them to her at the end of the episode, they aren't attached to K-9 in anyway and Sarah Jane would have mentioned the Doctor visiting again in Invasion of the Bane.

He gave them to her through a secret compartment in K-9 after the Doctor rebuilt him.

• The Doctor specifies that he had regenerated "half a dozen" times since he last met Sarah Jane. This would be true only if the Fourth Doctor was the last Doctor she met. However, he met her in his Fifth (TV: The Five Doctors), Seventh (COMIC: Train-Flight, PROSE: Bullet Time), and Eighth incarnations (PROSE: Interference - Book One, PROSE: Interference - Book Two). Although the Eighth Doctor adventure seems to have been overwritten, her meetings with the Seventh and Fifth have not, and the Doctor has only regenerated three times (a quarter dozen) since he last canonically met her.

Couple things; first, if we're only counting the TV stories and the War Doctor is involved, then the Fifth Doctor did somewhat meet Sarah Jane in The Five Doctors (though rather briefly). And second, it seems those events have been negated in some way.

• In the beginning of the episode, the TARDIS is in the school. The Doctor was going to go back in and get it to analyse the oil, but Sarah Jane mentions that she has K9 in the car, so they go to the car instead. At the end of the episode, the TARDIS is outside on a sunny day. Wouldn't the TARDIS have blown up in the explosion since we never see them go back to get it?

Maybe the TARDIS is set to materialise away from an explosion or similar, it won't have got damaged as in the episode 'The Parting Of The Ways' when the Dalek rockets hit the Tardis and when the Daleks shoot the TARDIS on board the Emperor's Ship it had extrapolator shielding from Margaret's (Slitheen) technology in Boom Town it would have got protected again when the school exploded.

The TARDIS can withstand great amounts of heat without scorching. Also, the TARDIS might have been moved by the Doctor before the final scene.

The TARDIS has, in the past, been shown to be undamaged by the direct, close-range fire of several Daleks. She's fairly robust.

• How exactly do the Krillitanes gain their powers after cracking the code - it's on a computer. Does the power magically burst out of the computer or something like that?

Presumably, the power is in the knowledge of what the Skasis Paradigm contains. Kind of like how learning of current scientific theories allow us to apply them to other things, it might be similar with the Skasis Paradigm.

• Why do the Krillitanes believe they're going to gain omnipotence after cracking the Skasis Paradigm? The children are the ones trying to crack it.

Either simply seeing the code gives you power, or they'd have the children tell them.

• It's very out of character for Sarah Jane to argue and be jealous of Rose, especially considering she met many companions in The Five Doctors! And, there is no evidence to suggest that her memories were erased after her adventure on Gallifrey.

The way we react changes over time. At the time of "The Five Doctors" it was a couple of years: she'd moved on, but had recently been sent a gift from the Doctor. Happy to see him, happy to see him doing well with others. Decades later, she hasn't heard from him in a long, long time, her one connection with him (K-9) has stopped working and he's hanging around with a young blonde girl. A bit of jealousy makes sense.

I think it was more a reaction to Rose’s jealousy. The first thing Rose said was he never mentioned her, in a tone that was obviously jealous. If you watch all of Rose’s interactions she is clearly jealous often as was her mother in Father's Day. Look at how she reacts to the other server in Rise of the Cybermen (Maybe Lucy is just a bit thick) so it is not uncommon that Rose would be really jealous of someone that the Doctor was close to. I think SJS just reacted to it after Rose was a bit rude to her.

• Why is Melissa the first to celebrate the school being blown up when not long previously she had said it was "fantastic" that break finished early?

Rose stated that the oil had now faded, maybe it had just done so with the kids.

• Why does Kenny admit about destroying the school? There would need to be a police investigation to determine what exactly happened. A student going around bragging that he destroyed the school isn't a good look.

It was just to give him a bit of praise considering how much of a loser he'd been considered by most (if not all) of the other kids. Besides, Sarah Jane published a news article on the event so it seems she was able to cover for any investigations to happen.