Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/The Sound of Drums

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This page is for discussing the ways in which The Sound of Drums 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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  • During the Saxon Broadcast, why does the Master mentioning Martha being a medical student trigger the Doctor to look behind the TV? What motivated him to suspect something after they had been there for a good 10 minutes at least. Why would there be a bomb at all? The Master had so much opportunity to kill all 3 but never follows through so why plant a bomb?
It's been shown that the Master likes to toy with the Doctor, with the bomb just being the beginning. The Doctor may have suspected some form of trap, and when the Master said medical student he was sure of it. He looked behind the TV as that would have been the easiest place to put a bomb.
  • The Master used the Archangel Network to convince the world into believing "Harold Saxon" — him — was a real person. That means before the satellites were put in space he couldn't hypnotise people. How did he get permission to start the network in the first place?
The Doctor says that 'The Master was always sort of hypnotic'
  • On the in universe website www.haroldsaxon.co.uk, it states that Harold Saxon "dared to stand apart from the party system" and that "leaders of all three major parties - and even some Scottish Nationalists - defected to his banner of unity, bringing most of their parties with them". This implies he was leading a coalition government and wasn't part of a party himself. Since the Prime Minister is not directly elected, either being the leader of the party with the most votes or (rarely) being invited by the monarch to form a government, he would not have needed to have a general election to achieve this. The "Vote Saxon" campaign, meanwhile, presents the PM as being directly elected.
"Vote Saxon" could have just been intended as a catchy slogan for his movement, not literal.
Possibly, with the other parties joining his campaign, he ended up with the Saxon Party - the "Vote Saxon" slogan was used in the same way as "Vote Labour" could be used.
What exactly standing apart from the party system means is unclear.
It could well just be campaign rhetoric.
It's entirely possible for a bid for the premiership from outside the party system especially if unusual circumstances have disrupted it. In the real world both Lloyd George in 1918 and Ramsay MacDonald in 1931 were elected at the head of coalitions that drew together people from multiple parties, without really being the formal leaders of major parties themselves. It's most likely Saxon began a populist movement offering an alternative government and won power through the election with many from parties and independents standing as declared "supporters of Mr Saxon".
  • The Master had no way of knowing that Jack possessed a Vortex Manipulator, yet he seemed to expect that the Doctor's group would find their way back to the present, as evidenced by his televised speech, wherein he puts emphasis on the word "Doctor", and the traps he laid for Martha. How could he expect them to get back without the TARDIS?
The Master knows the Doctor well so he knows that the Doctor would find a way to return to Earth. Also, as Time Lords can feel each others' presence, he can likely feel the Doctor in London just as the Doctor could feel him.
He could also be joking about how the only person who could save the human race is the Doctor.
Because the Daleks weren't around for as long, people may not have noticed.
Also, the Daleks were never seen up close by anyone outside the Torchwood Tower, nor were they referred to by name. For all the public knew, they were some kind of secret weapon deployed by Torchwood against the Cybermen.
That makes no sense because if they were secrets weapons from Torchwood to destroy the Cybermen why would they being killing human beings?
Because they were dangerous experimental weapons that caused a lot of collateral damage, which is why they were never used until that extreme emergency?
And also in the deleted scenes Lance mentioned them TV: The Runaway Bride
It wasn't until a year later in "The Stolen Earth" that the Daleks made themselves generally known.
The Master was giving a political speech. The fact that Daleks are actually more dangerous than Cybermen isn't relevant; what matters is what people were most scared of.
  • When Vivian interviews Lucy, she tells Tish to take the coats out of the room, by calling her Tish, but Tish had never introduced herself to Vivian.
She may have before the scene started, or she's done her research.
  • It has been previously shown and indicated that Time Lords have extremely long, almost indefinite, life-spans and can remain healthy and strong in one incarnation for centuries. Indeed the First Doctor regenerated at the age of 450, yet the Master reduces the Doctor to infirmity by ageing him a mere 100 years.
His health failed because of artificial ageing not natural ageing. See The Leisure Hive.
  • When the Doctor's flashback of Gallifrey is shown, the Time Lord headdresses are different and that they do not have the Seal of Rassilon on each side.
There are different headdresses for different parts of the Time Lord society but the Seal of Rassilon is seen below the Untempered Schism.
The production team may not be taking the Big Finish audios as canon.
Or there could be multiple factors on his going mad. In fact, The End of Time pretty much _proves_ there were multiple factors. For that matter, Master has multiple reasons piling up before he finally goes over the edge when Death asks him to be her champion. So, Master left out some of the factors making him unstable, so did this episode, and so did The End of Time. Maybe if the Master were speaking more precisely he would have said that the Schism was the first step toward his madness. Or maybe any one of them would have been sufficient, and his madness was actually over-determined, so it's reasonably correct to say that any of them were the cause.
  • Why does the Master need to become Prime Minister for his plan to work?
The Master's plans focus heavily on hurting and humiliating the Doctor, and modern Britain is one of the locations most dear to him.
The Master needs to be in some form of power to let Humanity know that he is in charge.
The Master always liked to be in control. Becoming Prime Minister would simply be the easiest way to do so until the Toclafane arrived.
  • If the TARDIS had been locked to the co-ordinates it had most recently visited, i.e. 21st century London and the planet Malcassairo in the year 100 trillion, how did the Master travel to Utopia to 'recruit' the Toclafane?
The Doctor indicates that the coordinates are locked approximately.
They may have been locked to a specific time but allowed travel to any space within that time.
  • The flashback of the Master as a novice looking into the void depicts him as a boy. But it is stated in Lungbarrow that Time Lords by his time were born/created in Looms as fully grown adults.
The production team may not count the various novels as canon.
Or, if they do, they may have read more than one novel, and may realise that the EDAs (and post-EDA audios) establish that it's not true that all Time Lords were loomed. Gary Russell (who I believe was either continuity advisor or script editor to the TV series at this point) has argued that, even without the EDAs, Time Lord history probably changed in the LGTW just as it did in the Time War in those books.
  • The sky of Gallifrey was exactly the same as ours in all its previous appearances, and not orange.
The sky is similar to how it was described previously at night. We have only previously seen the sky of Gallifrey during the day. Also, the sky here on Earth sometimes changes colour depending on atmospheric conditions, and it is reasonable that this is true for other worlds as well.
If you look at The Invasion of Time you will notice that all the scenes outside the Citadel are filmed with an orange tinge.
  • When Martha, Jack and the Doctor are in the car, Martha says 'its all your fault' to the Doctor. Surely it's not his fault as Martha was the person who aroused Yana's interest in the fob watch.
She means it as the Doctor set the TARDIS to go to Earth where the Master had her family arrested, and she was just angry, so she might not know what she was talking about.
  • If the Master travelled back to the downfall of Harriet Jones then how come the Doctor couldn't detect him through series 2 and 3.
A Time Lord can probably only detect another Time Lord from the same time period as him.
It was the signal from the Archangel network cancelling out the Doctor's perceptions. The Doctor himself points this out.
Also, the Master was changing history with a paradox machine, and the Doctor didn't have one, so he might have had a hard time fighting the Master's changes even if he had known about them.
  • The Valiant flying through space would suggest that some anti-matter device has been created to allow flying aircraft carriers. No such device is referred to however.
The Valiant never flew through space.
The Valiant shown in the Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords and The Stolen Earth is a different version to the one from BFA: The Nowhere Place.
Also, why would you need antimatter to fly through space, or to hover in the atmosphere? Antimatter devices are just power supplies.
Just because no such device is referred to doesn't mean no such device exists. Obviously, in addition to a power source, the Valiant also has some kind of engines, and is made of some kind of metal (or composites or whatever), and so on, but nobody told us what kind of engines or what kind of metal.
  • What exactly IS the Cruciform?
That was deliberately left unexplained, along with most of the other details of the things mentioned from the Last Great Time War, to keep the War mysterious and awesome.
  • I'm baffled why Winters had to be 'President elect' rather than President. If he were elected, but the outgoing president was still in the White House then the outgoing president should have been supervising the contact with the Toclafane.
Firstly, RTD has confessed that this was a misunderstanding on his part.
However, we could suppose that the Winters was in the same party as the serving President, perhaps serving as Vice President or Secretary of State, that the President was ill, so Winters was attending the conference as a member of the incumbent administration but referred to by his more senior title.
There's actually real world precedent for this. For example, George Bush met with Tony Blair while he was Vice President and President Elect. And when Cherie called him Mr President, he even corrected her, "Just President Elect".
George H.W. Bush was Vice President and President-elect from late 1988 to early 1989, before Blair's rise to power. George W. Bush was never Vice President. But the above scenario would still work.
Maybe Winters was almost at the end of his first term as President, and had been elected to serve a second term, but had not yet sworn his second inauguration. Then Winters would technically be both the President and the President-elect. Of course, in this scenario, it would be odd that Winters referred to himself as "President-elect" rather than simply "President", but it wouldn't technically be incorrect.
Or it's very early in his first term, he's still getting used to being President, and he fumbles his words under the pressure of meeting an alien race?
  • Why didn't Martha take Captain Jack with her at the end? She was obviously able to take care of herself but with him they could've accomplished more things.
Jack was a few feet away. If she were to be noticed moving towards him and be stopped, she would be unable to follow the Doctor's instructions.
Yeah, that doesn't make sense. She's pretty slow to leave, so she could've quickly latched on to him. And even if she hadn't, why couldn't he jump off the valiant and find Martha later?
  • If the Master has been suffering from "never-ending drumbeat" his whole life, why has he never mentioned it before? The Master is one of the most frequently recurring villains, but we've never heard about it.
It is possible that the drums have actually gotten worse over time or increased in volume as time got closer to the events that caused the drums in the first place.
Also, Rassilon changed the past by putting drums in his head. In the original timeline, there were no drums to tell the Doctor about.
  • Apparently, the Master gassed all the other members of the Cabinet, but this wasn't brought up again in the episode. Why?
The reporter interviewing Mrs. Saxon mentions that the Cabinet is supposedly "in seclusion." She doesn't understand what that means, but that's the cover story for why they've disappeared.
  • Why did the Tardis allow this customization of itself ? It was stated that the Tardis is a living thing, and it is bound to the Doctor.
That doesn't mean that she can always fight a clever Time Lord who wants to do some changes, she's probably not that independent, otherwise she wouldn't need the Doctor at all. Plus, just an idea, but she could willingly choose to obey, seeing all the time, including future, at once, she knew all of it would work out in the end and chose this course of events to play out. Maybe she even wanted to become a Paradox Machine for a change - it's the TARDIS, after all, the whole show is basically about her wanting to have some fun.
  • The Master is doing violence to the TARDIS, It is unable to resist. More troubling however is how the Master can take the TARDIS and make it do his will in the first place.
Same here.
  • It was the Doctor who caused the downfall of Harriet Jones, thereby meaning she didn't serve a full three terms and giving the Master the opportunity to become MP. So surely then the events of this episode are happening because of the Doctor?
I agree with you, but how is that a plot hole or a discontinuity error?
  • The master said that he was ressurected because he'd make the perfect warrior for a time war. However, the time lords granted him a new regeneration cylce in Dark Eyes, leading into the Alex MacQueen master, so he would already be alive and not need to be ressurected. Also, in series 9 of Gallifrey, the time war has just started, and Narvin had already ressurected the master.
  • I find it hard to believe the U.S. Secret Service wouldn't have shot the Master the very instant the Toclafane killed the president. While I'd be surprised that a scenario involving floating metal alien balls would be in their training, it would still be going against their training to stand and do nothing like they're intimidated.
  • I'm shocked Martha zero reacted much to seeing her family on the Valiant. She's found out her mother betrayed her and sought to hurt the Doctor. Hence her slapping the 10th Doctor. And helped in a trap. How come she zero shouted on her mother and call her a traitor?
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