Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/The Ice Warriors

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This page is for discussing the ways in which The Ice Warriors 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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• Varga's head design changes after he wakes up.

• The TARDIS lands on its side in episode 1, but it's the correct way up in episode 6.

Jamie or Victoria may have unknowingly stumbled upon the mechanism used in Time-Flight and by extension another mechanism which stands the exterior of the TARDIS straight up as well.

• When they leave the TARDIS, they push the doors out the way - usually people are seen to pull the doors to exit the TARDIS.

They probably swing both ways, especially considering its appearance is based on something barely big enough for one person, therefore doors that swing outward would make more sense anyway.

• Just how do they get the the doors anyway - the console is seen in other stories to move with the exterior, so they'd have to jump quite far. Even if they used the mechanism in DW: Time-Flight, they'd still be gripping onto the ceiling or the wall.

• Plants use up Carbon Dioxide, so no plants would actually mean more Carbon Dioxide, not less.

• How do the Ice Warriors survive the freezing Ice?

They're not called ICE Warriors for nothing. Many complex organism are capable of surviving being frozen, such as fish and some scorpions. It is by no means hard to conceive of a sentient race of creatures who have evolved (or been engineered) with the capacity to do likewise.

• If the warriors have been in the Ice since the first Ice age, then why weren't they frozen out at the end of that? Many glacial remnants remain from the last ice age. They could have been trapped in some of the ice that didn't melt at one of the poles, which only began shifting toward the British Isles at the start of the new ice age.

• How does Varga know where the warriors are when he goes to free them from the ice?

Each member of the crew are issued with a locator device and homing beacon to aid rescue and recovery from hostile environments and in situations just like these.

• There was no way the Doctor could know the Ice Warrior had been in the ice since "prehistoric times," once he had been removed, since he didn't know where he had been found.

It's possible that Penley told him.

• At the end of Episode Four, the Doctor says he never answers questions until he's "addressed properly." In the reprise at the beginning of Episode Five, he says, "properly introduced."

There have always been slight variations whenever a cliffhanger is reenacted rather than replayed (say, from film) from the previous week. This example is simply more obvious.

• There seems to be some question over where the Ice Warriors are from, its stated that they have been there since the first Ice Age but later it's said to be the last Ice (there have been at least six major Ice Ages several minor ones.

• If the Ice Warriors have been there for so long, the nuclear material should have decayed by now.