Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/Earthshock: Difference between revisions

* The Cybermen use emotional words like "Excellent". Positive emotion is supposedly absent in Cybermen. The Doctor elaborates on this when the Leader uses "fondness", but the Leader claims it is a word like any other, just like "destruction".

::As stated, they view these as being just words, without the underlying emotional connection that humans might associate with them.

::The Cyber Leader does seem unduly proud of his emotionlessness, however, considering he clearly has a sadistic little chuckle at the thought of human beings dying in terror, and he is decidedly less than stoical in his own death scene. This is probably intentional scripted irony, though (possibly inspired by the equally hypocritical though rather less menacing Cyber Leader of "Revenge of the Cybermen"). Either the Cybermen have taken the Dalek lead that a little of the nastier emotions makes more effective killers, or their diminished power has made them sloppier at brainwashing their converts.

::To add to the above point, Cybermen have been seen to take strong-minded individuals to become Cyberleaders. These individuals have then also been seen to retain some of their emotions and/or personality after conversion.

::We've seen their processing to be fallible on any number of occasions, and in a way, Cyberleaders are likely to be the most vulnerable to it- they're required by their job to spend time trying to figure out, or remember, how emotional adversaries would have thought. Also, while if a Cyber-lieutenant started to show emotional behaviour, they'd probably be ordered off to get their inhibitor looked at in short order. If a Cyberleader did so, then presumably only the Controller would be in a position to give that order, and that would only happen if the emotional responses were adversely affecting the Cyberman.

* During the cliffhanger, it's obvious that the three columns of Cybermen are mirror images: watch the middle one's right hand disappear

::It's a directorial trick, not intended to be believed in the first place. The director just did it to look cool, he wasn't implying that it actually looked like that.

* The steel bulkhead the Cybermen destroy flaps around as thought made of cardboard — the pieces of door also look like cardboard.

* Not only does the Cyberdevice miraculously allow the freighter to travel through time, it also transports it to the side of the Galaxy that Earth was on 65 million years ago.

::Time travel is usually shown to occur with fixed spatial coordinates relative to their start point in spacetime.

* If the Cybermen are fully anticipating the bomb to destroy the Earth, why are they concealed on the freighter in the first place?

::Lt Scott expresses surprise through his facial expression, but presumably he feels there are more pressing matters than asking questions about the TARDIS.

::As indicated earlier in the story, the signal from the androids disrupts the humans' communications. Even if the radios were working, Scott and his team were under fire from the androids and not really concerned as to what was appearing on the scanner at that time.

::To add to the above, the only difference he explicitly comments on is that one of the signals has two hearts.

::We've seen that the Cybermen obsessively monitor transmissions. And from ''Remembrance of the Daleks'', it seems like ''Doctor Who'' is an in-universe series. But they haven't watched ''Wheel'' or ''Tomb'' as many times as human fans, because they still have all the missing episodes.

::More seriously, in-universe they obviously weren't actually using clips of old episodes, that's just how it was represented on screen. Kind of like the fact that in-universe they were actually Cybermen rather than human actors in costumes.

::To expound upon the previous point, they were intended to be either recordings or other displays from various encounters the Cybermen had with the Doctor. For the Second Doctor clip, they're simply showing the incarnation who confined them to their ice tombs, not saying this was the moment that it happened.

::As he says, though, the console is damaged at the key moment.

* Several scientific evidences indicate that the asteroid(or the freighter, in Whoniverse) that caused KT extinction fell in Yucatan Peninsular, Mexico. But when the freighter smashed into the Earth, its screen showed Korea Peninsular.

* These Cybermen know about the events of [[Revenge of the Cybermen]], when that story took place much later on in terms of linear time, and this specific race of Cybermen only acquired time-travel shortly before [[Attack of the Cybermen]].

::It's possible that they did have some time-scanning (if not time travel) technology by this point. They device interfacing with the freighter does accidentally cause it to time travel, after all.

::He was sick that day of history class, and automatically tunes out anything remotely political. Or something a bit closer to Donna's accidental avoidance of extraterrestrial invasion.

* Bearing in mind that the Cybermen seem to have ironed out gender as an unnecessary appendage among their own kind, why construct visibly female and male android guards? One would assume not for the emotional well-being of said androids, and since their modus operandi is to melt intruders on sight, it could scarcely be considered useful for liaison purposes.

::They do it precisely because they are 'androids'. Cybermen are humans who have transcended humanity and headed toward the machine. Androids are the reverse; machines designed to ape the form and function of humans. Humans come in two distinct types, so far as the basic frame is concerned. It's not ''reasonable'' to waste time creating both types distinctly of a variation which is functionally irrelevant to the androids actual mission- but it is ''logical'' to do so.

::There is a potential logic to it, however; it can potentially create ambiguity and confusion regarding the activities of the androids if anyone witnesses them, thus obfuscating their actions as long as possible. For example, suppose someone witnesses the "male" android retreating after killing someone. The witness reports that the assailant was male. Consequently, someone who encounters the "female" android may not view it as  a threat (until too late) because they're on the alert for a male assailant, not a female. Then, if the "female" android is witnessed doing something, potential clashes between witness statements may arise as one party insists the assailant is male and another insists that the assailant is female, not realising that there are actually two. The ability of the enemy to counter the actions of the androids is thus undermined.

* I take it that the three crew members that were mentioned by Ringway and Briggs to have gone missing were secretly kidnapped by the Cybermen to be converted into Cybermen themselves?

::Almost certainly.

[[Category:DW TV discontinuity]]