Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/The Vampires of Venice

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This page is for discussing the ways in which The Vampires of Venice 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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• So, the Doctor just left 10,000 ravenous alien fish creatures alive in the canals of Venice. Sure they would die off eventually without females. But, isn't that dangerous for now?!

Perhaps it is, that doesn't make it a discontinuity. But since there didn't seem to be much of a brouhaha about swimmers disappearing in the canals. Perhaps it's not quite as dangerous as one would think. The danger could be localised to the waters by the school, and people would learn to avoid the location.

There is nothing stopping the Doctor from (at a later point in his personal time-line) going back to this point in time to perform a 'covert' clean-up operation. In fact it is very strongly implied that he tends to do exactly this sort of thing in the season 6 story A Good Man Goes to War. (In fact it would be quite amusing if at some point in the future, a companion mentions taking a swim in the TARDIS pool, and the Doctor has to try and discourage them because "the pool is undergoing 'maintenance'".)

The third edition of REF: AHistory speculates that the Saturnyne males somehow became the progenitors of the amphibious gondoliers seen in AUDIO: The Stones of Venice.

• How can Amy use her phone to concentrate the beam of sunlight to kill Master Calvieri when the sky is dark? The light in the surrounding environment wasn't at all strong enough to do that.

Even when the skies are dark with clouds, there are a few beams of sunlight that get through. Obviously, there was enough light that Amy thought it was worth trying as a desperation move--but not that much, because she seemed surprised that it worked.

It looked more like a compact mirror than a phone.

• In her final scene, Lady Calvieri removes her clothing before throwing herself into the water, however it is clear from when her perception filter malfunctions that the clothes are completely illusory. Master Calvieri similarly removed his cloak and wields a sword, both of which are also illusions. However, the sword hits are felt by Rory and the broom he is using is cut by it.

I think the answer to this goes back to when the Doctor and Calvieri were discussing the perception filter. Perhaps the machine creating the filter is able to create an actual sword? It's certainly possible in the Whoniverse.

It seems likely to me that Francesco was carrying an actual sword. Additionally, his and the girls' clothing weren't illusory; they shielded themselves from the sun with it (the girls on their stroll, and Francesco after attacking the flower girl). I think we can infer that the Saturnyns are indeed wearing real clothes, and the discontinuity lies in their fish forms appearing unclothed.

The sword is real as he's still briefly holding it when his filter is off and drops it as he's leaping.

• None of the other Saturnyns appear to be wearing perception filter generators, which implies that Lady Calvieri's device is shielding all of them, however if Amy's kick damaged her device enough to cause her to blink into her normal form, why are none of the others affected?

If I remember correctly, the only two that were "born" Saturnyns were the Lady and Master Calvieri. The others were born human and were undergoing genetic transformation to become Saturnyn. Perhaps they had a machine which would complete the genetic transformation from human to Saturnyn (or the act of sinking into the water may have been a catalyst she was planning would work). Of course, they never got that far. And the reason I believe this is what may have happened is that when the Doctor shined his screwdriver at them when the girls were attacking, he said there was nothing left of them. Perhaps he meant they were just needing the final push to make the transformation? Possible.

Rosanna's perception filter generator was hidden in the folds of her dress, she only exposed it when examining the damage from Amy's kick. Later when her filter starts glitching on the staircase, Francesco asks "mummy, what's wrong with your perception filter?" implying that they've each got their own.

If you think about it, with the whole concept of a perception filter, it may be possible to hide one in plain sight.

• If the perception filter has a self preservation loophole, then why is Isabella unable to perceive herself being physically transformed into a Saturnyn?

I vaguely remember Lady Calvieri saying something about the transformation doesn't occur until waking up one morning and "your humanity is nothing but a dream". Perhaps it would take effect while she was sleeping and then when she woke up one day, she's be just like them. Until then, she'd still be "human", or at least perceive herself to be.

• The Saturnyns aren't vampires, they're fish. So why do they have such a problem with sun, why do they need blood, etc? They explained the reflection, they explained the blood, but they never explained the sun well. The sun may have been drying them out, as we were shown problems with hydration, but why would it burn them?

Fish usually live in dark oceans, especially looking at this type of fish. Therefore, they will shy away from sunlight and probably heat up to an extent at which they explode.

This could be an environmental difference between Saturnyne and Earth - who's to say that Saturnyne wasn't further away from its sun than the Earth is?

• If Saturnyne was lost to the Crack then shouldn't the planet and by extension the Saturnyns (who presumably evolved on the planet) cease to exist?

It was just the planet that ceased to exist, not the actual aliens themselves.

Lady Calvieri said they escaped through one of the Cracks; they had lots of them appearing all around their planet.

Yeah, so what if the planet goes. If a house you were born in and lived in disappeared from time, would you be gone too? No. Same goes for them.

But, if Earth disappeared from time, then every human would be gone, as we are all born on Earth, so the Saturnyns should cease to exist as their planet is gone, so they should be wiped from time.

Since they escaped through another crack, it is likely that going through that crack cancelled out them disappearing from time.

There are a few possible explanations for this, but they all centre on the crack. It's a crack in time, and therefore it's connecting two different points in time. Travelling through a crack makes you a time-traveller of sorts, and therefore it's certainly possible that being a time-traveller allows you to "jump" the effects of a Crack (sort of like the old school time-travel games where a "time rip" would occur and start moving forward changing things, but if you "jumped" back before it reached you then you'd be all right, only in this case you're not fully affected by what the Crack does). We all know that a Crack is certainly able to be travelled through (Prisoner Zero did so) without being consumed. But once it's open to the extent we saw in Flesh and Stone, it most certainly will wipe you from time if you come into contact with it. Then again, they are a time-sensitive race, since they know of the Time War (Calvieri's response to the Doctor stating he's a Time Lord is enough to verify that). So there may be additional factors that play into this.

The Saturnyns planet might have been eaten by a wormhole crack like the one seen in The Eleventh Hour.

This was explained in TV: The Pandorica Opens. Sometimes things are left behind that people can't quite explain like Amy and the engagement ring.

Arguing that "if Earth disappeared from time, then every human would be gone so the same should happen with Saturnyne" as an explanation why "if Saturnyne disappeared from time, then every Saturnyn would be gone" is seriously unsound and flawed. You're simply using a variation on the original hypothesis to "prove" the hypothesis.

First, it has been quite consistently shown that when these Cracks erase someone, it does not rewrite history. It simply removes the person from memory. E.g. when the clerics were erased (Flesh and Stone), they weren't replaced with substitutes, and yet the Angels didn't suddenly manage to overwhelm the remaining people due to insufficient clerics to keep watch on them. In the same way IF Saturnyne was erased (the explanations we hear are quite vague), anyone who managed to leave the planet before this happened isn't also rewritten out of history.

Second, Lady Calvieri mentions at least 2 different kinds of Cracks.

• The Doctor usually asks all the alien races to withdraw peacefully so he can find them a new home. Why wouldn't he do it now seeing how Lady Calvieri didn't particularly care about the death of the human race and just the survival of her species?

The Eleventh Doctor probably has different ideas about who deserves what.

I think he couldn't do this in this situation, because of the circumstances. Moving to a new planet wouldn't have helped. Certainly she had a few females, but would that be enough in her eyes to populate a new planet? There's usually some convincing of the alien on the Doctor's part before the decision is made (which is also usually in the "uh, no, I'm taking over this chunk of humanity" response). I don't think there was any true way to convince Lady Calvieri to abandon her plan. And the reason I think she'd not take him up on the offer is that she's with the last of her kind. Her plan has worked thus far, and probably would have worked if continued through until the end. After all, why would you abandon a plan that's working to go for one that there's no idea of how well it'll work?

It seemed as though that's what he was doing - that, I believe, is why he was trying to prevent Lady Calvieri from killing herself. (Why else would he try to stop her from dying, if not to save her life?)

I think we're actually talking about the entire race there on Earth, not just the Lady Calvieri. There's her and all the male Saturnyns in the water as well. While the Doctor generally gives the second chance for the leader to take, the act of attempting to save her life is not what's in question here. The Doctor abhors standing by while someone dies, especially the remnants of a race. I think he recognized that she would not back down and didn't even bother, especially when people's lives were at stake.

Also, the Doctor didn't like the fact that she didn't know Isabella's name so didn't think that she deserved a second chance.

I agree; the Doctor has shown this side of him where, if he's angry, it doesn't matter if you wanted a second chance. His mind is made up (though I'm more than certain if he did offer a second chance and someone took it, he'd grant it to them).

I think it's because he's a different Doctor. It was the 10th Doctor who was in the habit of offering different races to help them find an uninhabited planet of their own so they wouldn't have to invade an already inhabited planet. Every incarnation of the Doctor has a different personality. So while the 10th Doctor would definitely offer them a new planet, the 11th Doctor, apparently didn't think the same way.

The Doctor gave a very clear and specific reason why he was going to bring down house Calvieri: "She didn't know Isabella's name". Clearly he was very angry at the time. Furthermore he does try to help/save her at the end.

• In the scene when The Doctor is climbing through the bell tower: when he hear the sound of the bells he covers his ears and shows great pain as if the bells were too loud for his ears to stand. But in previous episodes he is able to withstand these sounds such as when he puts two sonics together or sonicing the TARDIS sound system.

Maybe it is different in his new body.

As we don't fully understand how the sonic screwdriver performs many of the tasks it can do (exactly how does it unlock a door for instance) nor do we know how many different settings there actually are, we can't compare the bells to the sonic screwdriver. Also, being near the base of the bell tower, it's quite possible the reverberation of the bells was amplified by the surrounding walls. Also, when he does stick two sonic tools together, he's standing at the epicentre of the sonic "wave" (or whatever you'd like to call it). The sonic wave is moving out from him, not at him. Notice, especially, that when he gets to the top and is in the process of stopping the bells from ringing, that while he's focused on stopping the bells, he's not wincing as much as at the bottom of the steps.

I've always thought that in such cases where he's made the sonic screwdriver amplify its sound his hands have otherwise been busy and he couldn't cover his ears. When he stuck 2 against each other he had to hold both of them; when he amplified the sound system, it would have been stupid of him to only cover one ear. But in both cases his face showed him wincing.

• How did the skinny Rory's stag night shirt fit over the rather large Guido's torso perfectly?

It was obviously quite tight.

• The Doctor says he doesn't like guns, which the 10th doctor stated but in the Time of Angels he happily used a gun, in fact requesting one.

In the Time of Angels he didn't use it to harm anyone.

And again. The TENTH Doctor doesn't like Guns. Rules like that don't cross incarnations. Several Classic Doctors have used firearms willingly.

Also, don't necessarily take everything the Doctor says at face value. The 7th Doctor was always saying he hated explosives (just like the 11th does), and then telling Ace: "I hope you're not carrying any of that horrible Nitro-9 and planning to use it to blow up that Cyber-ship over there * wink wink* ."

Yeah he used the gun in Time of Angels as more of a 'tool' than weapon in my opinion. And yeah there were classic Doctors who used guns though they usually again would say they didn't like to.

Plus, just because he doesn't _like_ guns (or explosives) doesn't mean he won't use them if he has to. I'm sure the Doctor didn't like using the Moment to wipe out all of his own people, either.

I'm guessing why he used guns in his earlier regenerations is because the time war changed him so he has been negative against weapons ever since.

Indeed the Doctor has never been presented as a pacifist. Every doctor has, on at least one occasion, used a weapon to achieve a goal if he had to. In fact they all have resorted to physical combat when the need arose.

No, when he used the gun in TToA, he didn't look "happy" about it. But he knew that's what he needed. And more significantly: he wasn't using the gun as a weapon.

• Why didn't the Doctor just use the TARDIS to get into Calvieri's school? It would be much safer than sending Amy in there.

Because they were already in events The Girl in the Fireplace.

That's not a hindrance to using the TARDIS to move in space Aliens of London. And sometimes he can even move through time Smith and Jones (albeit only for "cheap tricks").

• When the Doctor is on the church at the top, when congratulating himself he should have fallen off because the roof was slippery and wet and he was almost falling off before.

Not necessarily, no. Slipping in that instance was not a certainty.

But he is not holding on to the dome and almost leaning off the dome.

• During the dialogue between the Doctor and Rosanna, she addresses him as the Doctor "I need an answer, Doctor" though he has not told her who he is before, only that he's from Gallifrey.

She seems to be familiar with the Time War; though it's not clear how much detail she knows. Also she heard Amy calling for the Doctor earlier in the story, and could easily have figured it out.

• When Guido locks himself in the Tower to blow it up, the Doctor is not able to open the door using his screwdriver as he usually does. Why?