Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/The Big Bang

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This page is for discussing the ways in which The Big Bang 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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• This is a wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey thing, of course, but how does the Doctor get out of the Pandorica in order to be able to tell Rory how to get him out of the Pandorica? If it's simply a case of somehow getting your future self to rescue your present self - well, this terrifying prison would appear to be about as effective as a chocolate teapot...

Well, to be fair, they never suspected he'd be out to free himself, and no one had a sonic screwdriver (which I'll admit was a bit anti-climactic, ie the ultimate prison foiled by a bit of sonic).

Short answer: Rory let him out. Long answer: it's perfectly consistent temporal cycle but presumably incredibly unlikely to arise spontaneously. Maybe the Doctor got lucky or it was a trick he could only employ because the Universe was on its way out. Maybe the energy of the Tardis explosion was keeping this part of the Universe alive and the Doctor's connection to the Tardis allowed him to play temporal tricks with the small corner of the universe that remained. BenAgain 08:19, June 27, 2010 (UTC)

• When Rose made contact with her past self in Father's Day the Reapers appeared, why didn't they appear when Amy made contact with her past self?

The two versions of Amy were now different people - the present Amy wouldn't have remembered going to the museum and seeing the Pandorica.

Also, since the TARDIS is destroyed, this could also mean that time and space is destroyed. Since the Repears exist outside time and space, they may have perished along side everything else.

Everything occurs in a parallel universe, meaning the Reapers don't need to intervene.

The Reapers feed on damage to time. At this (subjective) point, the entire universe is being constantly destroyed at every single point in history simultaneously. The Reapers didn't emerge to feed on Amy's time-line crossing, because after 1,894 subjective years of this, the Reapers are possibly too metaphorically fat to move, let alone hunt.

Alternately, if at that point everything except the Earth had never existed, t may be that the Reapers never existed either.

Events took place in a collapsing universe in which the Doctor had already noted time travel worked differently (his vortex manipulator, for one.) The temporal physics involved in the Blinovitch Limitation Effect may be different or completely ineffective.

• The two Eleventh Doctors are able to touch.

Different incarnations of the Doctor have touched before without the Blinovitch Limitation Effect coming into play. Perhaps it works differently for Time Lords.

See the counter-arguments to the above point as well.

• The Doctor is exterminated by the Stone Dalek, but he doesn't regenerate.

It's firepower may not have been strong enough to kill him, just weaken him. Plus, it's possible that he halted the regeneration process long enough for him to get into the Pandorica, possibly meaning that you can't regenerate inside it.

To quote River Song: "The Doctor always lies." The Doctor didn't die, therefore he shouldn't regenerate

Indeed - when the future Doctor says something to the present doctor, he then collapses - then the present Doctor just pretends that the future one is dead (go back and look at his reaction)

• What caused the cracks?

It would probably be the TARDIS, possibly the cracks came from damaged time that gained from the TARDIS' repeating explosion, with itself repeating for many thousands of years, it may well have the cause of the cracks.

The Tardis exploding - have you not been watching?

I would think the cracks came from the eye of harmony being released and tearing apart the universe.

Ok, re-correct that, possibly the cracks came from damaged time that gained from the TARDIS nearly coming to exploding for two thousand years, it may well have been the cause of the cracks. The Eye of Harmony's an idea though (if it's still in the TARDIS somewhere).

• How is Rory alive again? Considering the timeline was restored and Rory was killed before he was erased.

When the Doctor leapt into the cracks, he and they were negated from time; therefore the timeline was reset so that Amy & Rory never met the Doctor, in other words the events of the entire series never happened until they remembered them happening. Because they never went to 2020, Rory never died there. QED. Then how much else of series 5 is gone, also if they remembered them happening and as you said they then happened he should die there

There are two phenomena at work here and they seem to have different effects on the story. The Doctor's reboot of the Universe rewrote time in the standard way, modifying history so things that once happened no longer did. Anything that came about as a result of the Tardis explosion did not occur in the rebooted universe. So series 5 never happened. On the other hand, the crack seemed to have a much more minor effect on time. Things that were taken by the crack did not disappear from history, but seemed to disappear from the memories of history. Amy couldn't remember her parents, but she must have had parents or she wouldn't have been born. Luckily all our companions are time travellers now and therefore remember everything. BenAgain 08:57, June 27, 2010 (UTC)

• Since when has a Dalek cared for its own safety, like the Dalek in this episode?

Firstly, in The Daleks , when a frightened Dalek clearly says "Stay Away From Me!" when attacked by ordinary humans. More recently, in Dalek - "Have Pity!" "Why? You never did!" - and countless other episodes since then when their eyestalks were impaired, and so on. A Dalek will naturally have a sense of self-preservation if it wants to remain alive. In this case, by the voice it was the Supreme - an ego-inflated model - and its forcefield was down, so that it could no longer rely on that for a defence. Then, when its last defence, relying on the compassion of its enemy, was broken down, like all bullies it was revealed to be a coward underneath its arrogance.

The Daleks in the Daleks were different in other ways to later Daleks. Other Daleks have only retreated because of logic not cowardice as they are meant to have no emotions other than hate not ego

However, baseless hatred is impossible. It has to be based on fear, or jealousy.

• How does believing in someone make them exist if they were meant to be erased.

Because if you can remember something then it clearly existed or else you wouldn't be able to remember it.

Also, because it erased them from peoples' memories, so if you remember them they are no longer erased... that doesn't make much science fiction sense, but that's the explanation.

As I described further up (and despite how it's described) the crack doesn't seem to remove people from history it just seems to act as a perception filter, removing any record of people. So maybe all it takes is for one person to be certain you existed and you come back. Maybe Amy's better than normal at this (having lived next to the crack). Or maybe the Doctor's in so many people's memories that there's traces of him everywhere. Amy might have been the tipping point. BenAgain 08:57, June 27, 2010 (UTC)

• How does a Tardis exploding cause this, the tardis broke up in The Mind Robber and the Daleks were going to blow it up in Journey's End. Alright something could have been done differntly here but still, no explanation is given.

In neither of those instances (I believe) was the tardis in flight. In this one it was. Please correct if i'm wrong but i would think that has something to do with it.

Like the Doctor, The TARDIS is a complicated anomaly in time: it exists at the beginning and the end of the universe, at the same time. The universe attempting to erase the TARDIS (that fought back using a time loop) may have been the cause behind this violent reaction. Then again, not even the Doctor knows what or why the TARDIS exploded, as stated in the final scene of The Big Bang.

Also the Tardis blew up from the inside, ie allowing the spacial-temporal 'crack creating' powers to escape.

Yeah, not all explosions are created equal. A simple explosion could just destroy the Tardis, but a chain reaction that fed off the Time Vortex could be an entirely different phenomenon. BenAgain 08:57, June 27, 2010 (UTC)

• How come the sonic screwdriver could open the Pandorica? I thought it had deadlocks.

I do not recall anyone mentioning the Pandorica actually had deadlocks, many other devices were mentioned but not deadlocks. Although I may be mistaken.

Doctor said in the last episode that its easy to get in, but impossible to get out.

If it's not made of wood, the Sonic will open it. Simple as that.

While it is easy to get in it surely can't be that easy that a tiny sonic screw driver can get into it.

The Pandorica did have deadlocks, but these were only from the inside to stop the Doctor getting out, not in.

Why would the Alliance turn to stone when erased from time?

How come the Earth seems the same despite there being no stars? Without alien races this would have affected all history. This episode is overelaborate and harder to understand then the Matrix films. Which person made it? They must be on drugs to keep trying to make everything bigger.

The Earth seemed pretty consistent with real-world Earth, and as far as I'm aware, we haven't had any contact with alien races. So how exactly should the Earth be different?