Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/The Doctor's Daughter

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This page is for discussing the ways in which The Doctor's Daughter 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. 

• Jenny does not seem to bleed at all and when she dies and she should as the pressure her hand is putting on the wound would be lifted because of her body going limp when she actually goes.

Very low blood pressure can account for no obvious bleeding out in this situation, also the Doctor didn't bleed when his hand was cut out, it may be something related to the residual regeneration energy.

• The Doctor says he visited the Medusa Cascade when he was a small child of 90 and assuming the machines make the clones around 20 years old then shouldn't Jenny be a much smaller child.

When he said that during "The Stolen Earth" it wasn't meant that he wasn't literally only a kid in relation to his current age Time Lords seem to go through childhood in a similar way to humans as seen in The Sound of Drums or any episode with Susan Foreman, the Doctor's Granddaughter. Besides which, the machines would logically go by biological age rather than counting the years.

• When the Doctor runs to the door in the beginning, it is clearly shown that he goes out only with his blue suit. Yet in the next shot when the trio are outside, he has his coat on.

The shot only shows the Doctor heading towards the door, and he has kept his coat near the door.

• It appears that Jenny regenerates as a substance similar to the vortex energy or the terraforming gas escapes from her mouth. However her body does not change.

She did not actually regenerate. The Doctor regrew his hand in The Christmas Invasion, as a Time Lord has great capacity for self-repair shortly after a full regeneration. It is more likely Jenny internally healed herself as she was probably within the first fifteen hours of her life. Alternatively, she may have been able to restart herself similar to what the Doctor did in The Shakespeare Code.

The implication is that the terraform gas healed her.

No, the scene was deliberately designed in such a way that it could have been either the gas or her regeneration energy. RTD talked about the fact that they shot her revival to look somewhat like a regeneration but not identical, for exactly this reason.

• During one scene in the tunnels of Messaline, the UNIT logo can be seen in the background.

Perhaps UNIT had something to do with the tunnels of Messaline.

• Jenny's clothes appear to have changed after Cobb shoots her.

As RTD suggested in the commentary, in the future they have self-healing fabrics.

• The TARDIS's telepathic circuits do not translate what the Hath are saying to the audience but Martha is able to speak to them and know that the Hath she travels around with is called Peck.

The reason it was not translated to the audience is a choice by the producers to add comic relief that Martha is the only one who can understand them and translate what they are saying. For example when Peck swears and she tells him to watch his language. Also, it tells the audience that the Hath 'bubble' rather than speak in words.

• All Jenny's knowledge and abilities were given to her by the machine she was born in. This may include her gymnastics skills. It is never explained why the other soldiers do not have the same ability.

This is more likely a Time Lord ability than a human one. The Ninth Doctor has a similar ability shown in The End of the World where he momentarily increases his perception so as to dodge fast moving fan blades. The Doctor hasn't developed this potential talent to its fullest, but Jenny has (the physical aspects of her programming would help there). Similarly, the Master is more skilled than the Doctor at hypnosis and Susan was said in DW: "The Sensorites" to have a particular knack for telepathy. Jenny also states that she is in peak physical condition, which might explain why the Doctor wouldn't be able to do it, but she would.

• It is not explained how Jenny would know how to fly a shuttle.

Militants today even have some basic knowledge of how to fly an aircraft even if they aren't in a division that requires it. Its mostly just for emergencies so why should the colonists be any different.

• Four apparent facts cannot all be true at once: (a) the war has only been going on for seven days; (b) General Cobb knows about The Source and its purpose only by hearsay passed on through the generations; (c) General Cobb is in his late forties or his fifties; and (d) offspring produced by the machine emerge with the bodies and personalities of human beings in their early twenties. If Cobb is as old as he looks, he ought to have been a member of the original landing party, in which case he would know what the Source really is.

Cobb was not in his forties or fifties. He was created by the machine to be a general and thus "born old". As to the apparent discrepancy in the first two, the Doctor explains at the end of the episode that both can be true because the war burns through several generations in a day.

In other words, it's (d). Privates emerge with 25-year-old bodies, generals emerge with 45-year-old bodies.

• If the war had only been fought for seven days that implied that no soldiers from the human side have survived past seven days otherwise they would know what happened. This is implausible.

There is constant fighting in close quarters, with huge numbers of combatants on both sides. It is quite possible.

• When Donna, Jenny and the Doctor are put in the cell no one searches them. This seems a major oversight. In addition to this the guard is standing right outside the door yet fails to hear the sonic screwdriver or the Doctor talking on his mobile phone.

A very bad guard. But he does believe that they are pacifists and thus are no threat and have no weapons.

The conversation on the phone was traced to The Hath as seen in one of the cut scenes

• Near the end of the episode, a softbox light can be seen inside the TARDIS, lighting the set.

Unless you believe this was intentionally meant to represent a softbox light being inside the TARDIS, this is clearly a production error, not a plot discontinuity.

• Immediately after Jenny was 'progenated', the soldiers ignore the Doctor, Martha and Donna - and don't bother cloning them. It's as if they know automatically that the Doctor is the only one who should be cloned. It would make more sense if the Doctor was cloned and as Jenny stepped out, the band of attacking Hath attacked immediately.

They were preparing for an attack just before the Hath attacked, suggesting that they knew an attack was coming and had no time to process Donna or Martha. Moreover Cline appeared to prompt Jenny to see if she knew what she was doing just before the attack. All these factors probably distracted them from the processing of Donna and Martha.

• Why are the clones 'born' with clothes?

There's no reason a machine capable of fabricating a complete adult body wouldn't also be capable of fabricating clothes around it.

• The Doctor has previously said that he can feel in his mind whether other Time Lords exist still, so why doesn't he feel Jenny still being alive? She is a Time Lord, and is very closely related to the Doctor.

She is not a Time Lord, as is stated explicitly. She is physically based on his DNA, but does not have Time Lord training nor all of the inherent mental connections.

Also, he's been wrong about this in other cases. In fact, at this point, the question is more why someone as intelligent and self-aware as the Doctor seems to believe he has this ability that he clearly doesn't.

• Even though it is just a small space shuttle Jenny seems surprisingly confident that she can travel the entire Universe with it.

She's just beginning the journey, she could certainly upgrade the shuttle or find another ship as the journey continues.

• The Doctor refers to the method of Jenny's creation as "not what (he calls) natural parentage". This is somewhat ironic, given that he was created in much the same way.

By showing a young Master with the appearance of a child in The Sound of Drums, the current production team may have shown that they do not consider the Looms to exist in official continuity, at least not exactly as described in novels such as NA: Lungbarrow. In other words, the implication is that Time Lords reproduce sexually and always have.

Even if Lungbarrow were canonical, "natural" would mean being loomed out of the genetic pattern of a House, not cloned from the DNA of a single person, and it would mean only producing a new cousin under specific circumstances, not creating them willy-nilly. So, his statement would still make sense.

Also, the EDAs and post-EDA BFAs pretty clearly indicate that, even in the wider continuity that includes the novels, the Doctor was _not_ loomed. For that matter, even in Lungbarrow, the Doctor was implied to be the reincarnation of the Other, who was born as Leela and Andred's child, not a normal product of the looms.

• The Doctor has killed several times before, why does he disapprove of Jenny's killing of enemies?

He only killed when absolutely necessary, even going as far to spare his enemies death in The Family of Blood. Furthermore, to see such a trait in his own child disturbs him.

• Even allowing for far-future science, how could a ball of gas the size terraform an entire planet? And, if we grant that it could, how could anyone possibly survive being in the same room when it went off, especially considering the rate at which it strips away topsoil? Clever nanites? But even then, where does the soil go?

Far more outlandish ideas have been proposed in science fiction. People in the same room with it survive because it is designed to allow for that when it's initialised. As for the soil, it would have to be converted into something usable or harmless.

• For that matter, why would it want to strip away the topsoil? Wouldn't that be counterproductive to the goal of turning the planet into one humans could comfortably live on?

The topsoil's contaminated by the planet's high-ish radiation levels, and otherwise the city would remain underground.

• It is highly unlikely that a military professional like the guard for the Doctor, Donna and Jenny's cell would be tricked by Jenny so easily.

Although a "military professional" who has been given innate physical and tactical abilities, the guard is also less than a day old in terms of experience. There's no reason to believe he would know how to react "professionally" to what are likely his first ever sexual advances.

• If the progenation machine generates clothing as well, why wouldn't it just generate the same uniform for Jenny as the other soldiers?

The machine that birthed Jenny was in a different area from the main human base. It's possible that different machines were configured to produce different uniforms to distinguish different units. Having different machines clearly mark their "products" in such a way could also be helpful if a production error needed to be traced to a specific origin.

• If, as stated, the war goes through many generations a day, how do all of the soldiers recognise night, treat it as a fact of life, and Cobb reckon that they will be able to shut down and continue in the morning?

All the soldiers are born with a complete military training as well as a militaristic mindset. It's hardly that much of a stretch they were born with an understanding of night, and an appropriate mindset.

• General Cobb seems rather calm in a life or death matter when The Doctor points a gun at him.

He's an experienced soldier, he's likely faced death many times.

Or at least he's been generated as a pre-experienced soldier who thinks he's faced death many times.