Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/The Chase

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This page is for discussing the ways in which The Chase 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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• When they exit the TARDIS on Aridius, you can clearly see it has no backing to it, as the desert set is visible.

If anything, that's a production error and not a discontinuity.

In fact this is inaccurate as in fact you see a bright light inside the Tardis as the crew exit the ship and not the desert set.

• At the beginning of "The Executioners" Ian seems to know the words to The Beatles' song, "Ticket to Ride". This would seem to be inconsistent, as he left England in 1963 and "Ticket" wasn't released until April 1965.

He can only be seen mouthing the words "ticket to ride" at its final utterance, but not the next line "my baby don't care". He simply recognised the group, who was already popular when he left, and only sang along with the last line of the chorus. Since the chorus itself repeats "She's got a ticket to ride" three times, it's not an incredibly difficult lyric to pick up.

Ian is also an experienced time traveller by this point. It is entirely possible if not likely that, during his by-this-point lengthy travels with the Doctor, he has at some point heard or been exposed to the music of the Beatles beyond that which had been released by late 1963.

• Also in 'The Executioners' the Doctor's inference that the Daleks must be on their way to Aridius at that very moment or 'even worse' that they have already arrived does not follow, as suggested, from the fact that the time/space visualizer can only display events which took place in the past. Since the Daleks are travelling in a time machine they could be aiming to intercept the Doctor at any point in his personal history, i.e. including his own distant future.

The Doctor's conclusion is sound as he is witnessing the Daleks' departure relative to his own timeline. Since he does not have any recollection of encountering the death squad in his past he knows they can't be aiming for a point prior to this in his own personal history. But as, from his own standpoint, he is the 'current' Doctor, i.e. his own future not having come into existence yet, he can't be witnessing the Daleks leaving for anywhere else but his own 'present'. Also the Daleks claim to have located the TARDIS on Aridius. As he is unlikely to go there again, he believes they must mean him. He could not, for example, have used the visualiser on Aridius to see the Daleks departing the Marie Celeste or the top of the Empire State Building later in the story, despite them taking place in the past (presuming of course these periods in history were prior in cosmic chronology to the Doctor's arrival on Aridius) as these are both events which had not happened yet relative to his own timeline.

• If Frankenstein's monster is just a robot in a funfair then why does it attack the visitors?

Notice the place was cancelled. Maybe because the robots were faulty.

In PROSE: Interference - Book One, it's later established that faulty software (supplied by Microsoft) led to the robots killing people and the whole Festival having to be shut down.

Alternatively, the androids may be programmed to be harmless to humans but menacing towards inanimate props, which is how the Daleks would appear to them. That does not, however, explain why the Dracula android makes "seductive" overtures to one of the Daleks. Though it is probably sufficient to accept that they are pretty cheap and shoddy androids (by the standards of what a 1965 audience might have expected us to have by 1996).

• An Aridian can be seen getting up and sneaking off camera after being knocked over by Vicki.

Perhaps it was worried about being hurt again.

It could be going to get help.

• A man's shadow can be seen cast across the TARDIS when it lands in the haunted house.

Potentially an intentional "creepy" effect as part of the haunted house.

• At the top of "Flight Through Eternity" (Episode 3), the Doctor claims to have built the TARDIS. This is clearly at variance with other notions of the TARDIS' origins, such as its having been stolen (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles) and it having been grown (TV: The Impossible Planet).

Perhaps the Doctor constructed technology that was installed in the TARDIS (specifically, the scanner they were discussing at the time). He may have been referring to that.

This is not an unusual claim for the Doctor to make. The exact origins of the Doctor, the construction of the TARDIS, and how he came about it, are still shrouded in mystery. Perhaps though the TARDIS was grown, some parts still needed to be installed in it.

Additionally, having been the one who originally "built it" (literally or figuratively) does not necessarily mean that he couldn't have also stolen it later. It's also worth remembering that if there were a true continuity error here, it would be more appropriately attributed to the * later* stories for not being consistent with this one.

Just because he claimed to have constructed it, that doesn't necessarily make it true. He could've easily been lying, perhaps to try and impress his companions.

The Doctor's actual words are the time rotor detector has been in the ship since he constructed it. He may be referring to the time rotor.

There are quite a few ways for a person to both build something and steal it: If you build something for a company that employs you and then take it without permission - you have stolen it. If you build something and sell it to someone else - you can still steal it. If you build something according to someone else's copyrighted design - that is also considered stealing. If the government decides to appropriate or impound something you built - you might have to steal it to recover it.

Also, technically speaking these are discontinuity issues with the later stories, not this one -- at this point in the series, the Doctor's claim to have built the TARDIS was the accepted explanation.

• At the end of "Flight", its technical flaws are obvious. In the first place, the angle of entry into the water is inconsistent with the casing housing an interior creature. It should have been vertically aligned when it hit the water. Second, contact with the water immediately makes it break apart. This is wholly inconsistent with the general durability Daleks are said to have. And lastly, once the creature breaks in half, its empty interior can clearly be seen.

Maybe the water got in to the Dalek's circuits and fried them killing and destroying the creature and made the shell somehow break.

But in the Dalek Invasion of Earth, a Dalek comes out of the Thames perfectly undamaged.

Perhaps that Dalek was specially made for underwater purposes.

(1) Not sure whats "its" is referring to in terms of technical flaws. But how are technical flaws a discontinuity? If referring to the Dalek transportation device, why should we expect a Dalek design to be technically flawless? (2) Angle of entry into the water would depend on a number of factors: the shape of the object, aerodynamics, its mass, its centre of gravity, the weight of its occupant. There is no reason for us to assume it "should have been vertically aligned". (3) When the Dalek transportation device hits the water, why shouldn't it break apart? Even if that particular unit was designed to operate under water (which is not necessarily the case), it hit the water from a height at an unexpected angle. Yes, in general durability is high. But in spite of this, numerous unexpected flaws and weaknesses have been exposed throughout the years. (4) That which broke in half was not "the creature" itself, but a transportation device for the actual Dalek. Are you certain the Dalek wasn't in the other half that you couldn't see inside? And that it didn't fall into the water unobserved?

• In 'Flight Through Eternity' the Doctor explains it takes twelve minutes for the TARDIS's flight computer to re-orientate itself and 'gather power', thus limiting the speed with which they can make each new jump. However, in the same breath, the Doctor states that 'these twelve minutes are vital to us. We must hold on to them.' Here he seems to be treating the twelve minutes they have to wait before they can depart after each landing as if it is a lead of twelve minutes. This attitude is confirmed at the end of the same episode when the Doctor states that their 'lead' is down to eight minutes. This is an inconsistency, unless the Doctor is saying that the amount of time it takes to gather power for the next jump has been reduced.

He could be referring to the Daleks' time machine having a similar reorientation time.

In later episodes the TARDIS can leave quicker. Perhaps it has been improved.

• If the Daleks are pursuing the TARDIS through the time vortex (i.e. are traveling outside of Space & Time) why when they finally do catch-up, don't the two time machines arrive simultaneously? If the Daleks time ship is capable of going anywhere/anywhen then wouldn't any degree of lag which existed within the vortex cease to exist once they re-entered the time/space continuum?

This is yet another instance of the Blinovitch Limitation Effect in action.

Furthermore, the Dalek time machine seems to have been specifically engineered to "hitch" rides along the "time tracks" / wormholes created by the TARDIS, and is not ideally suited for independent travel (hence the Doctor's extreme pessimism about allowing Ian and Barbara to make use of it, suggesting they will only have a 50% chance of surviving the trip). Maybe the Daleks have only just started using time travel.

• Despite ripping off its bandages Frankenstein's Monster takes the time to change into a jacket between scenes.

There are two different Frankenstein's Monster robots in the house; one for the lab and one for the ground floor in the background just before the scene ends.

• The Daleks' "duplicate" of the Doctor actually looks nothing at all like him. A different actor was used for the distance shots, much as a stunt double is used as common practice in films and television. Up close, William Hartnell plays the duplicate also.

The android duplicate could have similar properties to Kamelion, shapeshifting into the Doctor's form. However its shapeshifting abilities may not be perfect and sometimes undergoes a subtle change into a form resembling the Doctor but obviously not him. Perhaps it has a hypnotic effect on people so they do not realise it.

At any rate, the robot is passable at a distance, and like its later T-600 brothers only really has to be convincing for long enough to slaughter its targets. The Daleks' undue pride in its being "indistinguishable" from the Doctor is in character with their arrogance and racism (All humanoids probably look alike to them). It is just unfortunate that the production team mixes in those few close-ups of William Hartnell as the robot, thus turning an understandable production expediency (akin to a poor stunt double) into a blatant continuity error.

Unconvincing or not, one must admit that the effect of the vaguely-passable duplicate speaking badly-synched soundbites of William Hartnell makes for some striking "uncanny valley" moments. It's just a shame they couldn't have made it make sense in the script.

• The travellers walk past the Dalek Ship when going to the cave in episode 5 - the Daleks then proceed to pass the cave on their way to find it.

They took a different route.

• The Daleks' weapons proved useless against the horror house robots, yet they were quite effective against the Mechanoids.

The Daleks believed the horror house robots to be living creatures, so their weaponry against living tissue of course had no effect. With the Mechanoids, they knew they were dealing with machines.

• In "The Death of Time" as the Aridians show the airlock, one repeats the word this at the start of the sentence.

However the Aridian itself may be stuttering.

• In "Flight Through Eternity" there are at least 8 Daleks in the ship though only 6 were seen getting in in The Executioners.

However there could have already been Daleks inside.

• Is it really believable that Vicki would be surprised that a band she knows is over 500 years old would play classical music?

Evidently Vicki had never (knowingly) heard The Beatles music. They were famous enough that she knew of them. No doubt The Beatles had been touted as "way ahead of their time". So she could reasonably have believed them to be non-classical pioneers. Hence her surprise.

The joke is also that the then-cutting edge rock music the Beatles played has, by Vicki's time, come to be regarded as classical music in much the same way that medieval Gregorian chants, the Baroque concertos of Bach, Mozart's chamber music and the operas of Richard Wagner among others are all lumped together as 'classical' music by modern listeners despite all coming from different schools and styles of music. Presumably Vicki has always heard the Beatles discussed as a "rock" band, a genre presumably long antiqued by Vicki's time just as Gregorian chants aren't exactly the happening thing in music today, wondered what kind of music that is, and is surprised to discover that it is actually her period's version of classical music on finally actually listening to it.

• The Daleks' clearly have Time Lord technology, (big things inside small things, time travel in Tardis like style) something they will be fighting to get long after.

Hence the Time Lords repeatedly chucking the poor old Doctor in their way, even going so far as to attempt averting their very existence or at least rewriting Dalek history from scratch. Events in "The Chase" would have sent the Time Lords an early signal of the distinct danger the Daleks would come to pose to Gallifrey, and have motivated their temporarily successful (though ultimately futile) efforts to repress Dalek technological development.

We don't know for sure that the Daleks constructed the time-travel device they use in this story themselves. It is possible that it is a Gallifreyan TARDIS that they somehow obtained and fitted out for themselves, but were never able to replicate. (The one in the Daleks' Masterplan would be the same device at an earlier point in its existence). It would explain why they didn't just send another execution squad after the Doctor when this attempt failed.

It may be necessary to define 'long after' here- Dalek continuity is a mess at the best of times, and every theoretical timeline has to make at least some allowances for contradiction. For every argument that the JNT-era Dalek stories have to take place later because of the apparent fate of Skaro, there's a counter-argument to suggest that Remembrance of the Daleks (TV story) dates the Dalek Supreme's time of origin to the thirtieth century, whilst The Daleks' Master Plan (TV story) is set at the beginning of the forty-first, and for every argument that The Chase (TV story) is set soon after The Dalek Invasion of Earth (TV story) there's a counter-argument to set it after The Daleks' Master Plan (TV story) - "... delayed our conquest of Earth" would be appropriate for either. The technology they've developed by this time could well be the result of centuries' further improvement upon their time corridors and plasma globe executive toys from the JNT-era.

There is a theory that the Daleks we see here are actually Time-War era Daleks travelling back in time from some point during the Time War (so, in real-world terms, Daleks who exist between the classic series and the modern series).

• Why is Aridius called Aridius after its status as a desert, when it was underwater? Surely they wouldn't change a planet's name just because something catastrophic happened?

"Aridius" is the translation of the Aridians' name for their planet into the Gallifreyan name for it, and thus into an English equivalent of similar meaning for our ears. It's like a German film having a character say he comes from München, and the subtitles reading "I am from Munich". As to why the Time Lords would name the planet this, when it's rather like saying to a resident of ancient Pompeii "Oh yes, the Gallifreyan translation of your town's name is "Ghoulish mummified corpse-filled lava pit... no, dont ask why, spoilers!" - it's simply because Time Lords are gits.

"Aridius" may have originally meant something different in the local language (something equivalent to "Earth" referring to the soil humans stand on, for example); it's just an unfortunate twist of irony that in human English it sounds like it's derived from the word 'arid', which is also its eventual fate.