Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/Rise of the Cybermen

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This page is for discussing the ways in which Rise of the Cybermen 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: 

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  • Rose informs the Doctor that Mickey's parents are gone and that his grandmother raised him, but had stated earlier in Rose that she would have to tell his mother about his death.
She said his mother could not cope and left. She never said whether Mickey was in contact with her or not, so she may have meant she might have to visit Mickey's mother to tell her.
Rose was gone a whole year with the Doctor. His mother could have died in that time.
Mickey may have been in contact as an adult since his grandmother's death.
  • When Rose decides to go look for her father, she defends by saying "You said 24 hours!" The Doctor hadn't told that to her as he and Mickey had just seen her.
The Doctor had told her. When he and Mickey find her, the Doctor says "24 hours".
  • Why do the homeless men start screaming as they are upgraded? In the next episode, we see that being under the earpods control prevents them from feeling emotions, and none of the people in that episode screamed as they were being upgraded until the end when the earpods were deactivated.
Mr Crane said that the signals still needed fine tuning. It is possible that the signal was fixed in the next episode and so that’s why no one else screamed as they were being converted.
  • The Doctor and Rose don't have earpods when they are posing as the catering staff, wouldn't they get noticed?
It might be expected that servants wouldn't wear them at work. Much like blue-tooth devices it would be considered rude.
Lucy, the other servant was wearing ear pods.
Similar to how people from the past do not comment on their attire, people from the present may not.
Since they are servants, they may not be thought to be rich enough so no-one would say anything, and no-one would take notice of them.
Rose has her hair down so her ears aren't clearly visible.
We do not know if the Inferno universe and the Pete's World universe work to the same rules. Also, the Doctor could have been mistaken as he was much younger then.
The presence of the TARDIS on Pete's World or the lack of the Time Lords might have also influenced things.
  • After the Cybermen delete the president, why do they start deleting everyone else, even though they don't know if the people they are deleting want a 'free' upgrade?
Everybody started running, so the Cybermen assumed they were refusing.
They only visibly kill one person after the president, and we didn't see what he was doing before the Cyberman killed him - he might have refused. Also, they might have been "inferior", like they judged the Doctor to be outside at the end of the episode.
You must have been watching a censored version. Five more people were killed on screen. And still more as heard by buzzing and screaming sounds. Also the mention of being "inferior" seemed more of a general statement about humans. The reason The Doctor was denied upgrade is because he was classified as a "rogue element".
It seems anyone who tried to run (i.e. everyone) was classified as rogue elements.
Jake states in the next episode that Lumic "wiped out the government" so it's possible that the people the Cybermen deleted were all members of the President's cabinet or the security services. The Cybermen don't delete many people despite nearly completely surrounding them, so they possibly only targeted those specific people. The "rogue element" classification probably refers to the fact the Preachers are known enemies of Cybus Industries and the Doctor and Rose are guilty by association, plus they don't have earpods and therefore haven't been downloading. Pete is the only one who does and the Cybermen later decide he should be "rewarded" so he clearly isn't a "rouge element".
  • At the party a Cyberman says the humans are incompatible, yet they had converted homeless people, and would go on to convert en masse.
See Above. When they started running, they thought they were refusing.
They only say this of the President for refusing, and the Doctor and co. outside the party.
  • This episode firmly establishes a discontinuity in Rose's age. Early in the story, The Doctor says Rose was 6 months old when her father died (November 1987) (TV:Father's Day), placing her birthday in May 1987. However, Rose states that she would be 26 in 2012 (Dalek), and her age is stated to be 19 as early as The Unquiet Dead (TV story), prior to skipping a year in Aliens of London. We can deduce that Rose first started traveling with The Doctor in 2005 from Aliens of London. In order to be 19 when Rose started traveling, she would have had to be born in late 1985 to early 1986.
Concerning ‘Dalek’, I think Rose was talking if she hadn’t been returned a year later than she was.
  • After the Cybermen crash the party, it can be seen that they have Cybus Industries logo on their chest and that Lumic is behind it. If so, why does Jackie, and other party-goers, continue to wear their EarPods that can put them into a trance and mind control them at anytime?
It could be as simple as in the panic, nobody made the connection and had the instinct to take their earpods out.
Jackie's earpod's are special and different from most people's. Removing them might be a different process than simply taking them out. They could be grafted to her ears for all we know, we don't see her not wearing them after all.
This is unlikely. We see her mention them as part of a special delivery for her birthday. She likely just forgot about them in the panic.
Most of the public clearly aren't aware of the earpod's mind control capabilities beyond the daily download. It's possible that some people may have taken them out once the Cybermen started deleting, but otherwise the earpods are used by people 24/7 to the point they simply forget about them, as Pete did until the Doctor reminded him.
  • Lumic didn't ask Geneva for permission because they will "refuse" him. The fact he asked the President of Great Britain suggests he believes he won't be refused. It's a bit naïve, isn't it? Asking someone for permission who doesn't have the final say on whether the creation of Cybermen will be approved.
We don't know how much power the UK wields in this world. It's possible that getting the support of the President would greatly increase his chances of success in Geneva.
Nations defy the UN all the time. Mr Lumic was clearly hoping - albeit expecting to be disappointed - that the President would decide that the benefits of the Cybus Industries project would outweigh the drawbacks of United Nations censure and give the go-ahead for the project to continue legally in Great Britain.
  • The badges on the policemen's helmets, during the public download scene, contain the Brunswick Star with a crown and Queen Elizabeth's royal cypher. Isn't Britain a republic with a president in this universe?
It could be that a similar symbol exists in Pete's World. Also, I think this may belong under production errors.
  • How does Rose’s phone use the internet in the other reality even thought it is a different type of energy?
A telephone - even upgraded with a possibly Gallifreyan universal roaming chip (assuming the Doctor didn't just buy a job lot of them from a market stall on Manussa or something one day, on the off-chance that he'd end up travelling with some twenty-first century 'phone addicts) is still a vastly more primitive piece of equipment than a space/time machine, and - unlike a TARDIS - isn't specifically designed to navigate through that altered space. Your phone would work equally well on a boat sailing on a sea of marmite, but the boat wouldn't. Similarly, you could probably power a crude electric kettle designed for 230V AC on 120V if you had the appropriate foreign plug adaptor, albeit sluggishly, but an advanced electronic device would experience far more problems.
  • First of February? Doesn't look like it. The predictable response is that, in this parallel universe, the months are altered. Yeah... so why does no one think anything about this? None of the trio care or notice, and if the months are different, that suggests a huge list of massive ramifications between this universe and ours which ultimately must be contradictory in ways impossible. Wozza123 ☎ 19:51, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
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