Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/Four to Doomsday

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This page is for discussing the ways in which Four to Doomsday 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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• Tegan is able to draw very quickly and incredibly detailed sketches in less than a minute.

You must not have seen the episode in quite some time. Much goes on between when Tegan begins her sketch and when she ends. 5 or 6 minutes at minimum, possibly much longer.

• The Doctor describes the Maya civilisation as having reached its peak "8000 years ago"; the very earliest Maya settlements began 4000 years ago.

The Doctor has previously shown historical knowledge which has been lost to human history.

And he's also previously been wrong, off by a few millennia here or there.

• The Doctor claims the population of the Earth to be 3 Billion, where as it was around 4.5 Billion by 1980, being about 3 Billion in around 1960. [1]

It's just an estimation. Given the range of history the Doctor deals with, being off by 20 years is amazingly close,

Those numbers are also accurate to our own boring little planet. In the universe of Doctor Who the Earth has been attacked (covertly or otherwise) numerous times by that date. So a missing billion or so people seems morbidly realistic.

• Few non-indigenous Australians speak an Aboriginal language (of which around 200 exist) as fluently as Tegan demonstrated with her conversation with Kurkutji. It is almost certain that the language that Kurkutji spoke 40,000 years ago would have since evolved into a totally different language that his people would be using today.

• The Doctor was unable to understand the indigenous Australian language even though the TARDIS translates every known language telepathically.

The Doctor is the one who programed the translation circet so if he doesn't know the language then neather does the TARDIS.

Never heard that one before. Got a source for claiming the Doctor programmed the translation circuit?

Perhaps the "Time Lord Gift" of translation only works on living organic brains, and not on the artificial speech synthesisers of androids, however sophisticated. That does leave the question of why the Doctor could not understand Tegan's Aborigine speech, though (unless it wasn't really all that comprehensible). Alternatively, given the constant surveillance of Monarch, the Doctor could just be feigning ignorance in order to prevent Monarch realising the full power he and the TARDIS have (which might increase his desire to possess it, and spur him on to more ruthless tactics).

• Why did Monarch choose to stay in the 'Flesh Time', given his beliefs?

He was a hypocrite, and was afraid to abandon his real body.

• When the TARDIS is ejected from the ship, it drifts off into space. But in TV: Voyage of the Damned, the Doctor mentioned that, when set adrift, the TARDIS is programmed to lock on to the nearest centre of gravity. Shouldn't the ship have qualified as the nearest centre of gravity?

It wasn't drifting, it was still being powered; the time rotor is still operating. It was travelling along with the ship.

Given the Doctor's constant fiddling with the TARDIS, and more specifically the reactivation of the HADS in Cold War (TV story), it's likely that the Doctor simply changed the settings at some point.

• After the Doctor jumps out of the ship, he drifts towards the Tardis, slows down, and stops. Since there is no friction in space, the Doctor should have continued moving towards the Tardis at a constant speed.

We know the TARDIS has a force field around it (and the ship might as well). Both the Doctor and the TARDIS were inside the ship's force field.

It looks as if Adric fails to give him enough rope to make the full crossing ... although that certainly does not excuse the Doctor losing momentum on the way back, when Enlightenment unties his safety line.

• The Doctor is able to enter the TARDIS while in flight, hovering outside Monarch's ship. This contradicts what happens in TV: The Enemy of the World (TV story) and The Web of Fear (TV story) when Salamander attempts to steal the TARDIS, but begins flight while the doors are open, causing him to be sucked out.

Not exactly, while the time rotor was still working, and Tardis was still technically in flight, in Salamander's case the doors were open when they tried to take off. As show several times, its perfectly safe to open the Tardis doors when it partially in flight, cause then the force field will protect you. Leaving the doors open when your actively in flight or trying to take off however, is a completely different kettle of fish.

In Enemy of the World, the TARDIS is in the Time Vortex moving to a new place and time. In this serial, it's simply floating in space.