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

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This page is for discussing the ways in which The Moonbase 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: 

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... and so on.
  • Episode 2's cliffhanger involves the discovery of a Cyberman who has been hiding under a sheet in the medicentre for the last 25 minutes. When he gets off the sickbay bed, he nearly takes the whole thing with him.
The Cybermen aren't the most agile of creatures.
I could imagine them being rather heavy though. Even as little as 250kg, if instead of being spread over the volume of a morbidly obese human body, it's in a mostly-metal frame slightly larger than a man that can move reasonably quickly and carry full-grown men around "like a doll". would probably be enough to make the average hospital bed wobble alarmingly at the very least.
There's also the possibility that with so many crewmembers getting the disease, they'd run out of beds and had to start using ordinary lab benches and things, which is what the cyberman appears to be lying on - note the lack of any padding, mattress, handrails...
  • The addition of Jamie to the cast leads to a sharing of lines, so Ben becomes a scientist for a story (he knows that the Gravitron uses thermonuclear power, that interferon is a viral antibody, that acetone is present in nail varnish remover, and that the spray from the fire extinguishers would evaporate in a vacuum).
He is in the navy, so he may have an elementary understanding of certain scientific fields. Most people know that acetone is present in nail varnish remover.
The sharing of lines makes no difference to Ben, as Jamie wouldn't know anything scientific, and he is unconscious for most of the 4 parts!
They gave some of Ben's lines to Jamie and some of the doctor's to Ben. There still weren't enough lines to go round so that's why Jamie is unconscious for much of the story.
  • In Episode 2, when a Cyberman tries to zap Polly while she tends to Jamie, he misses, but she falls anyway.
She may have fainted from shock.
  • Throughout the episode, the Gravitron is pointed at the Atlantic ocean. Many hours pass, during which the Earth would revolve on its axis until the Atlantic would be pointed away from the moon.
  • The climax of the episode seems rather far-fetched. A Cyberman is revealed to have been concealed under covers on one of the sick beds. It seems unlikely Polly or anyone else would have failed to notice an extra body in the sick bay.
It's a disease that's already infected a large amount of people, so counting them every day might seem pointless. Besides, paranoia is spreading, and that'll absorb the attention span of anyone.
  • Hobson notes they need to keep a hurricane in the Pacific Ocean. However, the Gravitron is pointed at the Atlantic and the hurricane is threatening Miami.
  • Closeups of the transparent dome from the outside only show the Gravitron, not any of the desks, controls, people, etc.
a common thing for exterior shots is to show less detail of the interior.
maybe the shot was too zoomed out to see the smaller objects inside.
  • The examination tables in the sickbay are very light and wobble frequently. The most obvious cases are when the Cyberman takes one of the crew off one and later when he hops up off the table, almost knocking it over completely.
  • The Cybermen's spaceships look like paper plates held up by string.
How is this a continuity error? Even a well-shot good model wouldn't actually be a cybership, it would just be a well-shot good model in a TV show. Besides, as everyone knows, the real historical Cybermen ships were actually cyberplates powered by lengths of cyberstring, so it was a pretty good representation.
If the cybermen in TV: ‘’The Tenth Planet (TV story)’’ can have cybertape on their helmets, why shouldn’t their spaceships be powered by the mighty thermonuclear cyberstring?
Budget restraints.
  • Why bother to infiltrate the Moonbase by stealth, using the virus, when they have the means all along to capture it by force?
The virus is a necessary first stage in their conversion of the Humans, and they need Humans to operate the Gravitron.
Blasting a hole in the dome risks not only killing all the humans, making it impossible for them to control the Gravitron, but also risks breaking the Gravitron itself; it's an emergency strategy.
  • Why make only one hole in the dome?
Maybe there's only enough power for one shot.
They only had time to fire one shot that caused the damage. The second shot is deflected.
Explicitly, the Doctor notices that the Gravitron has been turned off, after the crisis of the first shot. They then notice that Evans is semi-conscious after the pressure drop and rush him. He couldn't have turned the Gravitron off whilst semi-conscious, so he clearly did so just before the shot, under Cyber-control, in order to enable them to fire. This is why the Doctor refuses to leave the dome when the Cybermen are setting up the second shot, after having confirmed with Hobson that the Gravitron is switched on; he's already realised that it needs to be off for the Cyber-bazooka to effectively penetrate the dome.
  • In Episode 4, why have the Moonbase crew left the Cybermen's control headgear right next to the patients in the infirmary?
Nobody knew that Cyber-control could remotely command their slaves to reattach the headgear.
  • Approximately five minutes into Episode 4, Evans is in the infirmary when the Cybermen reassert control. He gets up off of his bed and sneaks behind Sam, who's watching the door, not the beds. Sam is at the foot of an empty bed, and when the mind-controlled Evans reaches the left side of the foot of the bed (about one inch behind Sam) he then walks all the way around the bed (via the head of the bed) to get to the right side foot of the bed and hit Sam from behind. Not only is he no closer than he was on the left side of the foot of the bed, he could've just stepped one step forward to move to the right side.
  • When Evans sneaks into the Gravitron control room, he puts the cloth helmet on back to front (in the next scene it's the right way round).
He followed the order to put it on. Then a Cyberman noticed on the control unit that his brain was still being affected by the vibration, and sent the further Cyber-command "Right way around, you pinhead."
  • Stars are visible from the moon during lunar day when the lunar surface would be far too bright.
These are different variant of Cybermen, The Next Doctor and Army of Ghost / Doomsday feature the Cybus Cybermen again different. And it has been said that the Human race has a self deception as said by the Seventh Doctor in TV: Remembrance of the Daleks. Torchwood and/or UNIT most likely covered up these events. Plus, Hobson does actually say that everyone knows about the Cybermen but they believed them to have been wiped out so it's not as though they're completely ignorant as to their existence.
Also, at least in the case of The Next Doctor, it's strongly implied in Flesh and Stone that those events have been removed from history.
Also, time is 2-dimensional in the Whoniverse. Those events happened earlier in the 4th dimension, but later in the 5th dimension, so they're not knowable to these humans.
  • Would a tea tray really be strong enough to cover the hole, seeing how strong the depression is?
it was a super- tea tray.
The tea was provided by Polly, who's not familiar with the Moonbase stores. It was probably just a convenient piece of round plastic to serve drinks on, and likely built to rather stronger engineering tolerances than what would be necessary for a purpose-built tea tray. For all we know, it may have been a patent pending Cyber-bazooka hole space dome sealant patch.
  • The Doctor claims he was awarded a medical degree under Joseph Lister in Glasgow in 1888. (This is changed to Edinburgh in the novelisation.) However, at least in our world, Lister by that time held the Chair of Clinical Surgery at King’s College Hospital, London.
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