Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/The Stolen Earth

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This page is for discussing the ways in which The Stolen Earth 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:

* This is point one.
::This is a counter-argument to point one.
:::This is a counter-argument to the counter-argument above
* This is point two.
::Explanation of point two.
::Further discussion and query of point two.

... and so on. 

• Why is it that the Daleks stole 24 planets simultaneously and 3 from out of time? The only thing they did with the synchronicity is alerted the universe to their little plan. Why did they not just take all 27 from different points in history?

It might have to do with the mass of the planets, depending on the advancements of the planet if the races on the planets are space travelers then they may take or leave things on the planet so they may have had the perfect mass at those points in time while the other 24 were just fine in the instant they were moved.

• It is not explained how the Daleks know of Harriet Jones.

If they know of Torchwood and UNIT, then they know about Harriet Jones. They are an advanced race and most likely would have done some research into the planet to find out about military bases etc. so would therefore know about Earthen politics.

• At the end of TV: Turn Left Bad Wolf was on the TARDIS. It's not there now at the beginning of this episode.

They've travelled to Earth, just as Rose needed, so there is no need for the message to be there anymore.

Exactly how Rose was able to accomplish that particular magic trick remains unexplained, however.

It was explained in the last discontinuity page. Most likely when the last Bad Wolf arc was finished.

• If Dalek Caan broke into the Time War, why did he not save millions of other Daleks to build a greater Dalek empire for Davros?

Dalek Caan is only one Dalek and it took all his ability to save Davros - ultimately, sacrificing his sanity to do even that.

There's an excellent amateur production, "Dalek Tales: The Dalek That Time Forgot," by Lee Adams (it's on YouTube) which links Dalek Caan with The Daleks (TV story), The Stolen Earth (TV story)/Journey's End (TV story), and Victory of the Daleks (TV story).

• When Harriet Jones transfers control of the sub-wave network to Torchwood, the map circles an area in Swansea, not Cardiff. '

There is no indication to suggest that the area circled has anything to do with the transfer of control. Furthermore, there were several identical scans of seemingly random areas on the screens in the background of most shots of the computer earlier in the sequence. Alternatively Harriet Jones may have been in Swansea.

• When Jones' sub-wave system seeks out those who have worked with the Doctor, only the companions of the Tenth Doctor are singled out, not other past companions and/or acquaintances who might have worked with previous incarnations.

The subwave network only seeks out those that have the capacity to contact the Doctor; other companions such as Tegan Jovanka or Ian Chesterton do not have this ability or the possession of a superphone.

Alternately, there's no indication that either Ian or Tegan are alive, or on Earth, as of the time of this story.

It's also possible that the subwave network is starting out with the most recent companions and working backwards. Harriet being former Prime Minister would most likely be aware of Jack and Martha via Torchwood and UNIT respectively and knows about Sarah through other sources. It's possible that had she been unable to contact them that the network could've sought out The Brigadier, Benton, Yates, Ben, Polly maybe even Grace Holloway (via I.T.A.R ?)

Also, Harriet Jones personally knew only two Doctors, the Ninth and Tenth, so she might have been more familiar with them and able to contact their companions rather than try and track down Jo Grant, for example.

• Donna indicates she has no idea what regeneration is, even though she was present when Martha mentioned it in TV: The Doctor's Daughter.

Neither Martha nor the Doctor went into detail about what regeneration was.

• Why did Harriet's computer screen turn off just because she died?

Harriet was standing in front of her computer when three Daleks fired on her, so the computer was likely destroyed by the overblast.

• If Rose asked her "Control" to lock on to the TARDIS and transport, why did she end up at the other end of the street?

Control is likely to be in Pete's World, so it did quite well to get her into the same street as the TARDIS. In Turn Left for example, she arrives in an alternate timeline, obviously unintentionally.

• The death of Harriet Jones belies the comment of the Ninth Doctor stating that she was destined to serve three terms as PM and lead Britain into a new golden age (TV: World War Three).

According to the Doctor, some events are fixed and others are in flux.

Time can be rewritten, the show has shown that many times. In this case, it was rewritten slightly.

Harriet Jones was already rendered irrelevant by her ouster following the events of The Christmas Invasion so technically this discussion is more appropriate under that article.

Also, it is stated in Season 2 that in Pete's World, Harriet Jones * does* complete her three terms and bring a Golden Age. So presumably the two Earths were running in parallel until the Christmas Invasion, at which point the Doctor altered the timeline in one but not the other. In a sense, the Pete's World timeline was thus the 'correct' version of history, so Rose got to live in the peaceful and prosperous version of history rather than the world messed up by the Doctor's actions (No Harriet Jones, so the Master is resurrected, runs as Saxon, enslaves the world, and ends up later killing the Doctor).

• Television, mobile phone and satellite communications continue to work, even though by rights when the planet moved anything in orbit should have been lost.

When the Daleks moved the planet, satellites were moved as well.

• Without the Moon, there would be huge earthquakes, tsunamis and landslides. The Earth would quite literally fall apart. There is no indication the Moon is taken with it, and it is proved that it isn't in the next episode.

The Moon does not hold the Earth together - gravity does that. While the pull of the Moon does influence tides and if it were to move closer to the Earth it would indeed trigger earthquakes and such, its absence would not.

Maybe, but the absence of the moon would have devastating consequences on other things that benefit the earth, like the magnetosphere. What's more likely, from the episode, is the way in which the planets in the Medusa Cascade automatically align in a new pattern, once they're all present. Earth simply enters a new gravitational pattern that has the same net effect as if the moon were still present.

There wouldn't be any tsunamis, since the absence of the Moon would cause the loss of tides. That's pretty much the only thing that would happen.

Also, just because neither Journey's End nor any of the later episodes that make reference to these events include mentions of environmental catastrophes in parts of the Earth doesn't mean there weren't any. They just happened off screen and life moved on, as it does in real-life disasters.

Journey's End does make mention of environmental catastrophes. When the Doctor is saying goodbye to Wilf, he mentions the rain as a side-effect of the events that happened.

• This episode is set in 2009, with hundreds of Daleks invading Earth. Not to mention the previous encounter in Doomsday, how does Henry van Statten not know of the Daleks in the 2005 episode Dalek, set in 2012?

That story was set before there ever even were Dalek invasions, as the Doctor hadn't unintentionally caused them to happen yet. In this case, history was rewritten so that Earth had been invaded by the Daleks, which it originally had never been.

The episode also clearly establishes that van Statten is not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. He might simply not realize what he has in storage (although given that you have people like Adelaide Brooke remembering the Daleks decades later, he'd have to be pretty dumb not to know about them).

• If the Earth has changed co-ordinates how is Rose able to find it?

Pete's World may have a spatial and temporal connection with the Doctor's Earth.

A teleport of a life form would take a while - while it easy to dematerialize the life form, the complications of the body would require some time to sort itself out, plus the extra complication of the cross-universe travel. It is possible that the magnetic shield established by the Daleks dragged Rose's "pattern" along with Earth after dematerialization, and then she materialized afterwards.

• Why did the Cardiff rift move with the Earth? Shouldn't it have stayed behind the way the TARDIS did?

The Cardiff rift is locked on a fixed point of the Earth and is dragged along with it as the Earth moves. Otherwise it wouldn't stay in place as the Earth rotates around its axis or revolves around the Sun.

• The TARDIS stayed in place even when the Earth moved. But in The Impossible Planet the TARDIS fell down after the floor was removed.

When the planets were stolen the Earth's atmosphere was also moved despite not being physically attached to the planet, suggesting that anything within a set area was taken with the Earth. In contrast, the TARDIS was just obeying gravity - if the floor is removed, you fall. His TARDIS might not have been fixed to the ground at that point.

It would have been dragged along with the Earth. It's more likely that either the TARDIS has a failsafe for large-scale teleports that it could get caught up into, or the Daleks recognized the active alien technology and averted taking it along with the Earth.

Alternatively the TARDIS didn't fall down because there's nothing to fall towards because there's nothing there to fall towards.

• Mr Smith was supposed to make every phone call the Doctor. However, the screen only shows a map of Britain.

The map is not a literal representation of every mobile phone under Mr Smith's control - otherwise there would be a lot more that the roughly 75 red dots we see on the map.

• Rose and Donna's family are seen to have to phone him themselves without Mr Smith helping them.

The three of them are seen holding their phones and possibly dialing, but their actions wouldn't matter if Mr Smith has already overridden theirs and every other cell phone.

• Also, there is no way for them to know the Doctor's phone number, as it was not shown on the screen, but sent directly by Martha to Torchwood and Mr. Smith.

Mr. Smith does in fact display the number on his screen, which could easily have also been displayed to the subwave network at that point.

Or, they could simply have been phoning Donna, whose number they would have known. Moreover, Donna could have easily given Wilf the number to Martha's phone at some point, telling him to call it only if there were a real emergency.

• Why do the Daleks not attack any of the other planets they stole, and if some are populated with alien life, why do none of them take any action?

Presumably, the attacks did happen, but "off-camera". Jahoo isn't populated, Adipose 3 is a nursing planet with little benefit of decimating, moons are rarely populated, and in the Doctor's own words, "Who'd want Clom?". Earth may have been the last taken so the attacks could have already happened, with any populations imprisoned.

It may have been also left for last because of past experience indicating it would be the most difficult of the planets to conquer.

• If Dalek Caan changed history by saving Davros, wouldn't the Reapers come out?

Not if it didn't create a paradox. Further, if the change in the timeline occurred during the Time War, then the Time Lords were around to prevent them from appearing.

• In TV: The Sound of Drums, it was shown that travelling via Jack's vortex manipulator caused considerable discomfort to the user. Despite this when Jack teleports to find the Doctor, he shows no discomfort upon arrival.

The discomfort happens due to travelling through the vortex. Jack only teleported to another position, he didn't actually time travel.

• In the scene where the Doctor is explaining the Tandocca Scale, the TARDIS can be seen behind them, yet when the Doctor and Donna run off to the TARDIS they are running away from it.

No, they aren't.

• Technically, when Mr Smith is making every phone on Earth ring to the TARDIS, the signals travel at the speed of light. It would take several years for the signals to reach the TARDIS.

It has been long established that a "superphone" can work through time and space with no time delay, so the speed of light should be an irrelevant consideration.

• If the Earth is out of synchronisation with the rest of the universe, then how can the phone signal get to the TARDIS?

One of the main reasons Harriet Jones transferred control of the subwave to Torchwood: They could transmit it through the Rift, hence slipping back into regular time.

• Why didn't Gwen and Ianto use more advanced weapons while fighting the Dalek? They surely have weapons that could destroy a Dalek instead of machine guns.

They don't have much time to go searching for weapons, and they also don't have any previous experience with how resistant Daleks are to bullets. They had already mentioned that they had little chance but would go out fighting - so whatever equipment they used wouldn't have mattered.

• Martha is talking to Jack using an earpiece, but before she says "Bye Jack" she removes it, then in the next scene she's wearing it again just before transporting.

Having nowhere convenient to hold it, she put it back on again.

Rewatching the episode, I don't think she removed it - she just moved her hand.

• When Torchwood sends the signal to find the Doctor, the point of origin isn't coming from Cardiff. It's coming from the centre of Europe.

The limits of the Torchwood Rift are never defined for certain. In TV: Countrycide, the Rift expanded to the Brecon Beacons, but this could easily have been width. The Rift could easily have been long enough to reach Europe.

• In TV: Utopia, the TARDIS jumps to the end of the universe when Jack jumps on the TARDIS, because, as Jack said, it was 'prejudiced' against him. Why does the TARDIS not jump to the end of the universe when Jack enters the TARDIS in this episode?

That may be because this time he was inside the TARDIS, whereas in Utopia he was hanging on to the outside, which no normal person should be able to survive.

The TARDIS might have also lost its prejudice since Utopia, especially since he saved it in TV: Last of the Time Lords. This is highly likely, as Jack is allowed to fly the Tardis.

Or the Tardis may have realised escaping is more important.

• The Doctor says that the entire Medusa Cascade has been taken a second out of synchronisation with the rest of the universe, rendering the planets inaccessible. However, the nebula clouds can be seen before and after the TARDIS breaks into the Cascade.

The Daleks were using the Cascade as a hiding place for the planets, so leaving the nebula clouds visible as normal was a necessary part of this.

• The Doctor states that Davros died in the first year of the Time War. However, the Doctor Who Annual 2006 established the War to have started in Genesis of the Daleks, and a period of at least 90 years passed between Genesis of the Daleks and Resurrection of the Daleks (the gap between Genesis of the Daleks and Destiny of the Daleks being of uncertain length), and Davros is still alive in the latter (and further appearances).

Although the annual suggests that the Time War started out with incidents such as the events in those stories, it also indicates that it later became a full-scale war. The Doctor is clearly referring to the first year of this full-scale conflict, when Davros' ship was destroyed.

Perhaps more to the point, the television production has never been obliged to consider an annual as inviolable when making their episodes.

Russell T Davies is on record as considering the events of Genesis of the Daleks to be the opening shot of the Time War, but that's not necessarily the same as the actual start of the Time War. The first shots of World War II were fired in early September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland, but for the United States the war didn't begin until Pearl Harbor was bombed two years later.

• Why is evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins appearing on television to assert that the Earth has moved? Surely an astronomer would be more appropriate?

Dawkins may already have been at the studio and so was able to make an appearance. It may be a small joke by the writers, as Dawkins is here clearly asserting a fact despite a considerable number of other people believing something different (people believe that the planets have appeared in the sky and the Earth has remained stationary), referencing his works and own atheism and the theist argument against him in reality.

It may also be an in-joke for Doctor Who fans, given that Dawkins is married to Romana II actress Lalla Ward.

Also, it's common for broadcasters to have "staff scientists" who are called upon for comment - even for topics not in their field of expertise. Plus, a scientist of the calibre of Dawkins would likely have some training in astronomy, and other sciences. Also, events such as pole shifts have been connected with evolutionary changes in the past, so the sudden relocation of the Earth would make for reasonable conversation with an evolutionary biologist in terms of the question of what might happen if the Earth is moved permanently.

• Why did Davros feel the need to remove so many cells from his body presumably with such speed that he did not give his tissue time to heal? He could have grown one Dalek at a time while the cell used grew back. Why was he content to leave his ribcage flayed open?

Davros is a megalomaniac obsessed with Dalek superiority, so he would want to create them again quickly. Davros is not a machine nor a Time Lord and has a limited life-span.

• The subwave network only seems to able to show four people on the screen at any one time (as evidenced by the fact that when Harriet Jones' signal is cut off it is replaced by static rather than the screen rearranging itself to show only three images), so where would the Doctor and Donna have appeared if Harriet Jones had not been killed?

There is no way to evenly divide a rectangular screen into three windows and still maintain an appropriate aspect ratio, so the network kept the fourth window after Harriet Jones dropped out. It should be assumed that if the Doctor and Donna had joined in when she was still transmitting, then the screens would have reconfigured into six windows.

A rectangle can indeed be divided into three and still maintain an undistorted aspect ratio. Just trisect the rectangle with two equidistant lines parallel to the longest sides. The only thing that happens is that you lose a bit of height on each frame. You'd go from one 16:9 frame to three 16:3 frames, which doesn't actually distort the aspect ratio; it just chops the top and bottom of the constituent frames. You'll still be able to see each frame at the proper width. If you set the distance from the camera to the subject far enough away, the person will still show up clearly, and the only thing that gets "chopped" is irrelevant information at the top and bottom of someone's face. No, the reason for the fourth box going to static is clearly narrative. It's done in fourths just so the viewer can easily see that someone's having trouble getting through, and, later, that Harriet had been killed. The question of "what would have happened if Harriet hadn't been killed" is moot, because that's not the way the story happened. Thus this isn't an error or a plot hole. Nevertheless as a matter of speculation, various things could have happened. I think it's less likely that a fifth and sixth square would have split off, and more likely that the square containing the current speaker would have been removed. For instance, when Harriet is looking at her screen, her own image is in the upper left. If the Doctor joined while she was alive, the most logical thing would have been for this "reflective image" to have been replaced. Of course, all this points out the genuine error in the scene, which is that of Rose. Since Martha's technical faults temporarily prevented her from getting in — yet she was briefly represented by static — there really should have been a fifth box all along representing Rose's "technical fault" of not having a camera attached. Still, it's easy enough to get around that by saying the subwave network's software required it to check for the presence of a camera in order to display a box

Real-life videoconferencing software never splits vertically or horizontally into 3 bands like that. For example, if you create a 3-way conference with WebEx, Acrobat Connect, or Citrix Online, what you get is a 2x2 grid of 4 panels with 1 panel empty. (With some software, this is infinitely configurable, but that's still the default.) Likewise, a 5-way conference is a 3x2 grid. You can argue about whether or not that's a good design, but it's clearly the most popular design. And I think it's reasonable to assume that whoever wrote the subwave network's software would do things the same way, either for the same reasons, or just because that's what they're familiar with. (In fact, it looks as if it may have been built on top of Connect, although that would be kind of silly, because you'd have to reencode everything as RTMP streams....)

• The Doctor was exterminated by a Dalek. If the Time Lords were exterminated by the Daleks during the Time War, then why didn't the Doctor die without regenerating like the Time Lords during the Time War?

The Doctor took a glancing blow from the Dalek weapon - enough to kill him, but not instantly. He therefore had time to regenerate.)

Furthermore, we know nothing of how the Time Lords actually died in the Time War.

Or who killed them, as it has been implied that the Doctor was directly responsible for the deaths of both races. Dalek extermination beams may have had nothing to do with it.

• Didn't the Dalek at the end of this episode contradict the prophecies of Dalek Caan, something that even the Supreme Dalek wouldn't do?

Not all Daleks may have known or cared of Caan's prophecy. It is the natural instinct of a Dalek to exterminate the Doctor on sight. Alternatively the Dalek might not have recognised the Doctor as he was standing to its side, and it thought he was just a normal human.

It wasn't trying to kill him, only stun and capture him. That's why it only nicked him, rather than hitting him with the full beam.

• When the Doctor arrives at the Shadow Proclamation the Judoon speak in their own language to him, and the TARDIS does not translate.

This part of the conversation is heard from the perspective of the Judoon, who obviously hear the Doctor speaking in their own language.

Another possible solution is that the Doctor has temporarily severed Donna's ability, and therefore ours, to access the translation circuit.

It's also possible that the Judoon were speaking English, which the TARDIS translated into Judoon. The Doctor then spoke Judoon right back to them, which they heard as English (esentially replying to them in the same language they spoke). Confusing, isn't it.

The TARDIS has occasionally left languages untranslated that the Doctor can speak, such as French, so there's no reason it couldn't do the same for Judoon. Apparently in these kinds of situations, either the Doctor or the TARDIS forgets about the fact that the companions are being left out of the conversation.

There are certain conspicuous gaps in the TARDIS' facility for translation- Foamasi and Judoon are the most noticeable. The Doctor refers to an inability to 'speak' Zarbi in The Web Planet (TV story), though in this case it appears to be down to a combination of them not using verbal communication- it may be beyond the TARDIS to mentally bridge the gap between rubbing together ridges on one's legs, and vocalising- and the Zarbi being "not an intelligent species" - presumably, significantly less intelligent than cats, horses, and babies. Mogarians also still needed to use their translators even when the Doctor was in the room. Whatever the actual reason, the magical translation field clearly has subtleties and limitations beyond 'all languages, all of the time'. Since Judoon is clearly a vocal language which can be fairly easily spoken by a Time Lord- the Doctor does so, unlike Foamasi, and the Judoon, whilst unlikely to excel on Mastermind are clearly intelligent enough to be sentient, unlike the Zarbi, perhaps the most likely reason is legal - the Doctor clearly has some official standing with and is to an extent within the legal framework of the Shadow Proclamation, and the Judoon are their enforcers. "It is an offence to provide unauthorised translation and potential misrepresentation of the words of police officers on duty by any means other than officially sanctioned and vetted translation devices authorised by the Shadow Proclamation" would be quite a sensible law for all sorts of reasons.

• When the Torchwood hub is attacked by Daleks, why did Gwen and Ianto not just escape by going up in the lift to the bay?

The Dalek would still find them if they went up the lift, they'd only be delaying the inevitable. Gwen expressed a desire to stand and fight.

• Why does the Doctor go to London (let alone Earth as a whole) at the beginning of the episode? If it's the end of the universe surely anywhere in the universe could be checked to see if anything's wrong.

That's where Donna had encountered Rose in Turn Left, so it was logical of him to start there. Also the Doctor likes Earth.

• The visual effect used in this story for Mr. Smith is that used before TV: The Lost Boy. Following his "forced re-boot" in that story, the patterns on his screen are not the same (more "wobbly").

It is unknown how long it was between The Lost Boy and Journey's End, it could have only been a day and Mr Smith, despie being functional is still internally rebooting and has not had a chance to change his image.

Even though Mr Smith had a new desktop after his Reboot, its likely that as people can change the desktop on their computers, Mr Smith himself has control of it.

• It's strange that the Supreme Dalek wants to make sure the Doctor won't interfere while 27 planets have been stolen and Dalek Caan predicts that his companions will unite against them.

The Supreme Dalek believes Caan to be an abomination, and doesn't believe that everything Caan says will happen.

• From a logical standpoint, wouldn't only a single phone be able to reach the Doctor's phone, and all others get a "Line Busy" message?

Every mobile phone isn't trying to ring through to the Doctor and speak to him, they are only being used to help him find the Earth.

• In The Parting of the Ways Dalek saucers demonstrate enough firepower to completely destroy Australia to the point of being barely recognizable in a second or two, yet here their weaponry hardly seems more powerful than a standard Dalek gun set on 'Maximum Extermination'. The Doctor makes it clear that the Daleks are far more deadly here than ever before, and later states that the Crucible's fleet is already more than enough to slaughter the universe, so why are the Daleks using such weak conventional weaponry, especially if their intent is to destroy all human resistance?

They need the Earth intact as part of the engine for the Reality Bomb and they are not concerned with wiping out humanity before the Bomb is detonated, they invade mostly to procure test subjects. Using weapons powerful enough to exterminate landmasses would be counterproductive.

• When the Daleks find the subwave network has transferred to Torchwood the dalek that first turns round eye stalk is not working momentarily. The eye blacked out.

Dalek "eyes" can focus by opening and closing, much like the lens of a camera. In the past, they have been shown to narrow down to the point of appearing closed.

• If the Doctor and the gang return all of the planets to their correct locations in space and time, how did most of the events of the series happen? Most importantly, the Adipose breeding planet would not have been lost, so the Doctor and Donna would not be investigating Adipose industries (which would not exist) and therefore would not meet.

Since the Daleks took planets out of time as well as space maybe the Doctor and the others set a time period to send the 3 planets not in the present so they'd send Pyrovilia back in either 2009 or some time after 79 AD, The lost moon of Poosh sometime after the events of Midnight and Adipose 3 in the present along with all the other planets since Partners in Crime took place in Early 2009.

Also, you're thinking in linear time. In Donna's timeline, and in the Doctor's, the events of Adipose Industries have already happened; no matter how history changes, they've still met. So, the worst-case scenario, even if the Doctor accidentally undid that entire story by returning Adipose 3 too early, is that the Doctor and Donna's meeting appears to have no cause to any non-time-travelers. That's hardly a problem; it's no more paradoxical than the fact that Donna was walking around in 79 AD when she wasn't born until the 20th century.

• Why don't the Daleks use the "Dalek Factor" to turn the earth into a planet loyal to the Daleks? They have used it on earth during the Time War, why not now?

They didn't appear to need it.

• An episode of The Paul O'Grady Show is seen airing. The episode is set on Saturday, but Paul O'Grady is shown on Friday.

In DW: Rise of the Cybermen, Mickey Smith refers to the idea of an alternative to our world where everything is the same but "a little bit different" (i.e. blue traffic lights and Tony Blair never getting elected). It would appear that the Doctor Who world, Pete's World & Donna's World are the kind of world Mickey was referring to. So in those worlds, Paul O'Grady may well air on Saturday.

Or it's simply possible that that particular week O'Grady's show was rescheduled for some reason. Or he was thrown on the air to calm viewers. See point below.

• Why would there be any entertainment programming being broadcast at all? During a major event such as this, there should be 24/7 news coverage.

In the real world, the BBC is known during the height of the Cold War to have created a light entertainment radio programming schedule that was to air in the event of a nuclear war, in order to keep the populace calm. Having a program like Paul O'Grady air during this crisis might have been a similar manifestation of this idea.

It certainly worked on Ianto.

• When The Doctor is hit by the Dalek's death beam, it only hits him slightly. Usually when someone gets hit by a Daleks death beam, they die immediately. Why did the doctor not die immediately?

The Dalek beam only skinned past The Doctor. If it hit The Doctor directly he would of died but since it just slightly touched him he had the power to regenerate instead of dying instantly.

Also, we have never see a Time Lord, with two hearts, hit by a Dalek beam. That second heart might have given the Doctor an advantage.

It grazed him on purpose to capture him. Davros, based on Caan's prophecies, has probably given orders that the Doctor is to be caught alive.

Every time the Doctor dies, he takes a long time to die. In the revival by this point, we'd already seen the Ninth Doctor absorb the Time Vortex and continue talking to Rose for a bit before regenerating. Similarly, after getting shot by Chan'tho, the Master continues moving around, even taking the time to lock a door before regenerating.

• How does Captain Jack know about regeneration?

The Doctor informs him about his previous regeneration following Jack's confusion in Utopia.

Perhaps more obviously, Jack has access to UNIT files, which would almost certainly have to detail the nature of regeneration. Harry Sullivan's medical report on the Fourth Doctor alone would give Jack enough information to understand the basics of regeneration. Plus, he witnesses the violence of regeneration, albeit through the glass windows of the TARDIS, when the Yana Master regenerates on Malcassairo.

• Why does the woman at the Shadow Proclamation tell Donna that there's something on her back? Didn't that creature from the episode Turn Left fall off her and die?

She said "There WAS something on your back".

• Why did Dalek Caan laugh? Daleks do not have emotions and probably never heard of laughing.

The Daleks are only supposed to feel hate, but 'The Doctor has mentioned before that they may have traces of other emotions (e.g. fear, in DW: The Parting of the Ways). It's possible that hate may only be the almost entirely PROMINENT emotion in Daleks.

Caan is also mental, he wouldn't act like a Dalek if he is working against them and is, completely and utterly, mad.

In fact, his laughter is meant as a clear sign that he's _not_ a normal Dalek anymore.

• If Martha gave the Doctor her special upgraded phone in TV: Last of the Time Lords, why does she state that the phone she has now can call any number through space and time?

Odds are the Doctor, having had all the associations with UNIT he had, had given them plenty of superphones to dish out.

Actually, that's not terribly likely. However, any phone anywhere (and anywhen) can reach the superphone that Martha gave the Doctor, as indicated by the previous times it called or was called by various people. So yes, Martha mis-spoke. However, the bottom line of what she was saying was correct - by calling her old phone, she should have been able to reach the Doctor from any point in space or time.

• How does Davros have his body back when in Remembrance of the Daleks, which took place earlier in his personal timeline, he had been reduced to little more than a head inside a Dalek shell?

He is in a Dalek shell, yes. However, we don't see whether or not his body is in there too.

Also, the resurrection of the Master as detailed in Utopia (and, later, the resurrection of Rassilon as revealed TV: The End of Time) set precedent; it's possible the Daleks were able to resurrect Davros in some way.

Davros has come back from impossible circumstances enough times that it's not really a continuity error anymore each time it happens.

• What happened to the Dalek's shields? The bullets seem to spark up on these Daleks. Speaking of which, since Jack knew how to recognize (and therefore possibly build) bastic bullets (TV: The Parting of the Ways) why didn't he provide Gwen and Ianto with them before teleporting out?

Only the Dalek in Dalek and Dalek Emperor's Daleks in Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways have shields, others such as the Cult of Skaro and the Daleks here do not. The Daleks with the shield could be a special type of Dalek.

Either these Daleks * did* have shields (why wouldn't the bullets spark when ricocheting off shields?), or they simply had superior casings such that bullets couldn't penetrate. As for bastic cullets, Jack didn't exactly have time to go "build" some before teleporting out. He further did not know that Daleks were coming to Torchwood.

• If the Earth was pulled away from the moon, wouldn't that mean that the moon lose its stable orbit around the Earth and plummet into the sun or collide into the Earth when moves back into the right position?

The moon would have started on an orbit around the sun if it had been moving the correct way at the time. When the earth returned, the TARDIS moved the earth into a position that would cause a resumption of the correct orbit. Let's remember there were six people flying the TARDIS making sure it went the right way, and three experts for control.

It's also possible the TARDIS, off-screen, moved the moon back into position by itself.

We never see much of the direct gravitational aspect of a planet getting removed. It's possible that whatever technology the Daleks used to remove the planet replace it with something of equal mass so that gravitational effects stay the same and so the missing planet goes undetected for longer.

• Jack appears to be very cheerful when he leaves the Hub even though he is entirely clueless to the fact that Tosh installed the Time-Lock and likely (and correctly) thinks that Ianto and Gwen stand no chance against a Dalek.

As clearly indicated, he has no idea that a Dalek saucer has locked onto their position. Only Ianto and Gwen know.

• When the Doctor's companions alert him to the Daleks, Martha tells him it's not just Dalek Caan. Although she never heard his name in Evolution of the Daleks.

Even if she didn't hear it directly then, it's an easy conclusion that the Doctor could have mentioned it to her just afterwards. He was the one Dalek that got away, so it's even quite likely that his name came up.

• When the Dalek invaded Torchwood, Why didn't it go into lockdown like in (TV: End of Days)

It was protected by the Time Lock.

• Why does nobody even take a split second to explain to Donna even a single aspect of what's going on? She's never seen a Dalek, and never met Davros, Harriet, Jack, Sarah, or Martha, she's never heard of Torchwood... I suppose it isn't technically a continuity problem; she trusts the Doc enough to follow him along and not ask questions... but still, nobody takes even a moment to explain anything to her besides the regeneration.

Most of the characters don't explain what's going on to the others around them; they spend the first half of the story despondent and defeated, and the second half panicked and manic.

• How does Davros know Sarah Jane Smith's name, bearing in mind that he never once heard it mentioned in Genesis of the Daleks?

Well, we didn't see him hear it on-screen, but so what? When Davros was later rescued, he most likely would have obsessively studied everything he could about those events. The Daleks have time-space visualisers. They could have dug up security camera recordings from the bunker or the city. And so on. So, given that the Doctor used her name multiple times in that story, there's a good chance he could have learned it.

• If it was 8 AM in London when the earth was taken (as said by Sarah Jane), then it would be 3 AM in New York. What's Martha doing at work in the middle of the night?

She is working for UNIT now, so it was probably something very important.

• Established in TV: The Parting of the Ways and TV: Fragments, after the Ninth Doctor abandoned him, Jack Harkness uses his vortex manipulator to travel from 200,100 to the 19th century, then lives for over a century in Cardiff waiting for a version of the Doctor to return. How does he still have the defabricator gun he used to fight Daleks on the Game Station?

Since it was Jack himself who modified the first defabricator into a weapon, he clearly has knowledge of how the device functions, so it is possible that he simply built a new one. He certainly has the time as well as the resources thanks to Torchwood.

• When the TARDIS arrives at the Shadow Proclamation the Judoon speak in their own languague not English even though the TARDIS should have translated it.

This question was already asked above.

• Why would Davros create a Supreme Dalek knowing that it would most likely usurp control from him?

Davros probably knew that he wasn't very strong anymore, so thought that creating a Supreme Dalek to be their leader would give their plan a greater chance of success. He was probably OK with this. It wasn't like they were torturing him, and his plan would have succeeded, which would have satisfied him.

• The Daleks clearly know about Unit and attacked them which makes sense but how did they not detect K-9 through the portal in Sarah Jane's safe and Mr Smith a Zylok? Shouldn't they have scanned and detected them expecially after being scanned by Mr Smith?

A couple of points: 1) They don't deem him and K-9 as big a threat that needs to be dealt with, so leave him be. 2) They only specified the need to defeat all of the Earth's leaders, which Mr. Smith and K-9 are not part of. 3) They will be destroyed by the reality bomb anyway so it is senseless to watch a Dalek platoon destroying him when the bomb will do that anyway - they only attack Earth's defenders to captures humans to test the reality bomb works.