Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/An Unearthly Child

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This page is for discussing the ways in which An Unearthly Child 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. 

• When Susan says "I like walking through the dark," neither Ian nor Barbara seem bothered about the thought of a teenage girl walking alone at night.

However, this was 1963, a more innocent time.

Why should they be? It would be a perfectly normal occurence, as in November sunset in London goes from around 4.30pm at the start of the month to nearer 3.00pm at the end of the month. Nothing out of the ordinary would have been happening.

There is no proof that it is November.

There was nothing innocent about the sixties.

This is perhaps because, as they've already discussed, there are already a lot of weird things about Susan than bother them; the fact that she enjoys walking at night is merely the cream on top of the cake, and is in fact one of the more comparatively normal things about her.

• Why does Susan ask Barbara for a book about the French Revolution and then leave it in the classroom (as revealed when Ace finds the book in Remembrance of the Daleks)?

As far as she is concerned, she will be at school the next day.

When last seen, Susan is reading the book and stating "that's not right" in response to what she was reading. Perhaps she thought the book was unsuitable and abandoned it. Or she might have speed-read the book right then and there; later, the Doctor would be shown on several occasions to have this ability. It could also have been a different printing of the book as this is a chunky brown book while the version in Remembrance of the Daleks is sleek and black with gold lettering.

The book in the later episode is not necessarily the same book as Susan borrowed. It's a school; there are likely to be other students studying that subject. The book in the later episode is merely a little call-back to this episode, but that doesn't mean that it is supposed to literally be the exact same book.

This is also more a continuity issue with the later story than this one, to be precise about it.

• At the end of Episode One the cave man's shadow is seen to extend much further than it really should.

That depends on the angle of the light source.

• We see Horg leave to go and capture the travellers at the end of Episode Three, but at the beginning of Episode Four he is back with other members of the tribe, waiting for the rest to come back.

He turned around and came back at some point before the others.

• Whatever happens to the Doctor's bag?

The bag presumably was never recovered. Although the implements within it could potentially have changed history, the odds of them ever being found are remote.

It's recovered by his fellow travellers after he gets captured, yet they clearly lose access to it when they too are caught.

But why did they not ask for it back?

The Doctors matches were in it, thus it would make their fire-making much easier. Not to mention leaving it in the tribe's possession could prove disastrous to history.

As mentioned above, the other three travellers initially find it, then they too are taken by the tribe. At this point, they've lost track of it. Although some of the implements within it could potentially have changed history, the odds of them ever being used by the tribe or found after that are remote.

• Susan's claim to have made up the name TARDIS is not supported by later stories that indicate that it's a term in widespread use on Gallifrey.

Some names catch on quite quickly. Presumably she thought of it on their planet and others heard it and liked it. The true origins of the term TARDIS and how the Doctor came by this one are still very unclear.

Time Lords speak in Gallifreyan; Susan was therefore the first to invent an English name for the TARDIS and the TARDIS later translated its name whenever it was mentioned by Time Lords to that specfic name.

As pointed out above, the true origins of the term and how it spread are not yet explained. There's not necessarily any inconsistency, as the possible explanations (such as the ones given here) are numerous. If there were a discontinuity, it would be more properly attributed to later stories.

She is a girl and may have been bluffing.

What does age or gender have to with an individual's propensity to bluff, make false boasts, or any other similar explanation?

Considering the name TARDIS is simply an acronym, it is highly probable that many people could have 'made up' the name independently. Furthermore, such a name would be very likely to catch on an spread easily.

This is also more a continuity issue with those later stories than this one, to be wholly fair. For the purposes of this story, the suggestion was that the Doctor built the TARDIS and that Susan gave it the name, and the people writing this story would have no reasonable way of knowing that later writers would change this.

• Susan states that 5 dimensions have to be used to solve a simple math equation, with the fourth, Time, and the fifth, Space, in addition to the length, width, and height that she was given. However, space is not the fifth dimension according to physics, but is made up of the first three.

Susan is not referring to Space in that sense (length, width, height), but more as a hypothetical construct much like Time is. There are multiple dimensions of Space just as there are multiple dimensions of Time. She needed to go at least to the fifth dimension to solve the problem to her satisfaction.

Who's to say that "our physics is correct"? The point is that she considers space to be an independent dimension.

Per Vicki, whose spaceship in 2493 bore a UK flag and thus was very likely educated in a society that Susan helped to recreate:

"Time, like space, whilst a dimension in itself, also had dimensions of its own."

It may be "impossible unless you use d and e" as Susan puts it, because a Gallifreyan education would emphasise the importance of temporal dimensions in measurements, for obvious reasons, and, specifically, defining which one you're dealing with in a problem. "For (a) = n, (b) = n1; find (c)" may read like a trick question to a Gallifreyan schoolgirl; she'd be expecting Borusa (for example) to catch her out by pointing out that (a) and (b) had not been both defined as spatial dimensions. You'd need something like "Where (a:e AND NOT d) = n, (b:e AND NOT d) = n1; find (c:e AND NOT d) to confirm that it was a three dimensional puzzle.

Consequently, Susan panics at first, expecting a trick question, then lapsed into genuine incomprehension when she realised that Chesterton doesn't even consider the definition necessary.

• The door closes behind the travellers as they leave - how did it know to do this, and why doesn't it do it in other stories?

It sometimes does. The TARDIS, as later shown, is semi-sentient.

• The Cavemen at the end of Episode 4 are different to the ones in the rest of the story.

There are more people in the tribe.

No they are the same, it's just that the end sequence was filmed sometime before the studio recording, leading to differences in make-up and such. Derek Newark (Za) is plainly visible but looks slightly different than he does in the later studio shot sequences, for example.

• How did the cavemen beat the travellers to the TARDIS in Episode 3 - and how did they know where it was in the first place?

They live there, and know the quickest route to get somewhere. They knew where it was from description of where one of their tribe had originally grabbed the Doctor.

The travellers were slowed down by having to care for the injured Za and then carry him. The cavemen were led by Kal, who had seen the TARDIS materialise.

Also... it's a big blue box in the middle of a prehistoric desert. You don't exactly have to be Sherlock Holmes to spot it.

• How do the cavemen see inside the cave during the night (while orb is not shining) if they don't have fire?

Moonlight and natural phosphorescence in some rocks, plus vision that has adapted to having little light.

• It is scientifically impossible for an object to be bigger on the inside.

Dimensional transcendentalism is a scientifically plausible hypothetical construct, which contends that the "inside" of the TARDIS is actually in a different dimension than the "outside" - i.e., when you pass through the opening of the police box exterior, you cross a dimensional threshold to a completely different dimension, which could certainly be much larger.

The TARDIS is not a purely scientific device; as with Narnia's wardrobe, it is arguably at least a little bit magic.

Also, let us be bluntly honest, here; if you are unable to get past the premise of the TARDIS to such a degree that you genuinely consider it a 'discontinuity' or a 'plot hole', then frankly you have no business watching Doctor Who to begin with. This is purely a matter of 'willing suspension of disbelief'.

This is not a discontinuity. It is well established that within the Doctor Who universe this is something that can and does exist. This is like criticizing Star Wars by saying "the force and lightsabers aren't real!". In the universe of Star Wars these can and do exist and in the universe of Doctor Who a box that's bigger on the inside can and does exist.

• When Ian and Barbara enter the TARDIS for the first time Susan uses the door switch but later, when the Doctor electrocutes Ian, he uses the same switch.

This is likely a result of the Rassilon Imprimatur, which gives a Time Lord, and only a Time Lord, control over a TARDIS.

Different controls on the TARDIS can do different things at different times - much like hitting any given key on your keyboard can have different results depending upon what program you are running on the computer at that moment.

Actually, if you re-watch that part, the Doctor is at the console right beofre Ian goes to open the doors. If you look closely, he does something or flicks a switch on the console before Ian goes and tries to open the doors.

• Ian claims that the Doctor shut the TARDIS doors although it was Susan.

Ian was in a very bizarre situation at that moment, and could certainly be forgiven a simple mistake like that.

Also, Susan did so on the Doctor's explicit instructions. Susan flicked the switch, but it was the Doctor who essentially locked them inside.

• Susan claims she made up the acronym of TARDIS from "Time and Relative Dimension in Space" however that would only work if the Time Lords spoke English (The gallifreyan versions of the words all starting with the same letter seems to big a coincidence). If its simply a translation, why do all other Time lords refer to it as Tardis, rather than what ever the acronym is pre-translation.

The Time Lords in general likely speak Gallifreyan all the time (at least on Gallifrey), but with the show being broadcast on Earth we wouldn't understand it, so their speech is translated to English for our benefit; maybe they DO refer to TARDISes as whatever the acronym is pre-translation and we're just hearing the translated term.

Alternatively, a future Doctor will respond to a friend of his claiming that Time Lords "look human" by irritably retorting "No, you look Time Lord; we were first." It is not impossible that, for reasons unknown, in the Doctor Who universe human languages are similarly based on or drawn from Gallifreyian somehow.

Or, perhaps Susan made up the acronym "TARDIS" from the initials of the translation of the phrase that they actually use to refer to a TARDIS in Gallifreyan?

It might be worth noting that the official/standardised name for a TARDIS on Gallifrey is simply TT Capsule.

• It seems highly unlikely that a group of cave dwelling proto-humans would not share the secret of fire within their own tribe. The old woman even says she never saw Za's father make it. It is highly suspect that a group like the one depicted here would not be awed and intensely curious about making fire, and want to learn how, or that the one person who knew would be able to keep the others from learning how as they watched him do it.

Explored to some extent - Za's mother not only recalls that her late husband jealously guarded his skills, but that in good time this annoyed the tribe so much that "they killed him for it". Possibly Za's father was an ambitious outsider from a more advanced tribe, or just as likely a cunning but selfish individual who lacked the strength or charisma to be a natural leader, and thus used fire in a fatal attempt to blackmail his way up the greasy pole of paleolithic politics.

Whoever has the power to create fire would have immense power. I'm not surprised it was kept a secret!

• Why do the tribe speak english?

The TARDIS translation matrix.

• The Doctor states, "I won't allow myself to be frightened out of my wits by mere shadows." Wasn't he aware of the Vashta Nerada?

The Vashta Nerada aren't exactly mere shadows, now are they? The Doctor may know they are not on the planet in this time period. Alternatively, no, he may not be aware. He is after all rather young at this stage.

• Why does The Doctor keep calling himself, and acting like an old man? He should be quite young in Time Lord terms.

Much, much later, we learn that he was 'never' expected to make Time Lord, that he ran away from the rite of the Untempered Schism, and just had some anonymous clerical job in the Capitol of no importance before he and Susan went om the run with the TARDIS. He may not actually have legally been a Time Lord at this point, and it has never been confirmed that unqualified Gallifreyans can regenerate.

Purely speculative, but perhaps, having fled the Schism, exposure to which we're later told is one of the essential elements in brewing a Time Lord, he may not have had the ability to regenerate at this point, and thus his view of himself as an old man, having apparently gone on the run in his twilight years with nothing left to lose could be entirely genuine. Perhaps its only when he later does inadvertently receive a massive dose of temporal energy - from the Time Destructor, in The Daleks' Master Plan (TV story), that everything changes for him.

That he is "young in Time Lord terms" is irrelevant. By any objective measure, by the time we first meet him the Doctor is clearly an old man. It's just that he's actually even older than he looks, and that there are also people of his species even older than him. To put it in human terms, a 60-year-old is young compared to a 90-year-old, but that doesn't mean the 60-year-old somehow stops being old. And even if he is young in Time Lord terms, he is still incredibly old by the terms of the humans he is talking to.

The real world reason is they hadn't decided he was a "Time Lord" yet. The in-universe reason is confirmed by Time Crash, in which the Tenth Doctor states that at this point in his life he truly WAS young, but acting "old and grumpy and important".

• How did Susan manage to enroll in Coal Hill in the first place?

Presumably much the same as any student would enrol in a school in the United Kingdom in the 1960s, albeit with a certain amount of time-travel and future-tech facilitated forging of documents and fudging of background details going on. She was likely presented to the school as a recent arrival to the area (which is true after a fashion), and as Coal Hill appears to be a local state-run school they would be required to accept her so long as there was a place free for her (all children between the ages of 5 and 16 are legally entitled to a free education at a state school in the UK).

It would also likely be easier for the Doctor and Susan to fudge several of their background details at that time, as records were mainly in paper form and would be a lot harder to access than they are in modern days when information is electronically available. This is also coupled with the fact that many records would have been destroyed or lost during the Second World War and its aftermath, which is around when Susan would have been born had she actually been a young teenager in the early 1960s; any gaps in her paperwork would be put down to the war or the confusion surrounding it.