Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/Wild Blue Yonder

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This page is for discussing the ways in which Wild Blue Yonder 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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• Newton merely added a new definition to the existing word gravity, which already meant tending towards the centre of the Earth, so why does the episode treat it as if he made it up for the "Mavity" gag?

The word did exist before Newton but Newton greatly changed the definition of word, however, if he invented a new word for his theory instead of a pre-existing one than perhaps that word would be associated with gravity from then on and the actual pre-existing word of gravity falls into obscurity. It might not be super relevant but I feel like it's worth noting that the whole Newton bit can be seen as somewhat inaccurate, for example, there's no proof that an apple fell on Newton's head.

Or, more importantly as my friend studying mechanics pointed out, what letter would Mavity be in formulas? M is used for lots of things, g is (fairly) unique

That's actually a good question, I'd assume they'd just turn to some other letter in the word though such as a or v.

a is commonly used for acceleration, v for velocity so it wouldn't be those. The mavity change was done really for a fun joke and doesn't make that much sense if one ponders it for long, lest they invent all kinds of explanations that ultimately must contradict each other as Doctor Who is fictional.

• The Doctor can tell when time changes as we’ve seen before, but he seems surprised to hear Donna use the word "Mavity" for the first time.

Perhaps this change was so tiny or unimportant that the Doctor couldn't tell that time changed this time. It might also have something to do with the fact that the Doctor somewhat influenced this change.

• Tom Baker's Doctor dropped the apple onto Newton's head, and yet is nowhere to be seen

He was just casually lying underneath the TARDIS

Technically the Fourth Doctor just claimed he did that, there's no proof he did it though as we never actually see him doing it.

• Why did the TARDIS come back when it did? The danger had not yet been averted. And the line "a time machine would know", then why didn't it come back immediately after he sped up the countdown?

After a rewatch of the scene I think I better understand it. The Doctor specifically says "But, if he runs out of time, then the hostile action ends and a time machine would know!" What the Doctor means by this is a time machine would know if he runs out of time since it can see into the future. The TARDIS already knew the threat would be defeated and thus showed up before the actual threat was averted. Why it didn't come back as soon as the Doctor sped up the countdown could be due to a number of things. First thing that comes to mind though is the fact that when the Doctor sped it up, there had still been 2 possible futures, one where the Non-Things make it to the button and stop the self-destruct and one where they don't. The TARDIS just needed some extra time to see which future was playing out. As soon as it realized the one where they lose was playing out, it returned. It's also possible that the TARDIS saw that the Doctor and Donna had to stay after the self-destruct sped up in order to slow the Non-Things down and as soon as their roles were played, it returned. Might also possibly be due to the fact that the TARDIS isn't the greatest with timing perhaps it set off as soon as the Doctor pressed the button but landed a little later than it meant to.