Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/Time and the Rani

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This page is for discussing the ways in which Time and the Rani 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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• How can the Doctor's accent completely change? Why is it Scottish?

Lot's of planets have a north.

It's spelled "lots". And that isn't really an answer. How can only the Seventh Doctor come from a place on Gallifrey that has the equivalent of a "Scottish" accent?

All the Doctors upto 7 have a different accent!

• The Doctor is wounded enough to regenerate during The Rani's TARDIS shoot-down, but Mel is barely stunned.

They are on different sides of the console, and he hit his head on the console; sometimes a car accident that barely scratches one person is fatal to someone sitting next to them.

Mel is fit, while the Doctor is not.

We have no idea exactly what the Doctor and Mel were doing at any point prior to the attack on the TARDIS or when we first see them. Anything could have happened to explain why the Doctor appears to have suffered from what has happened more critically than Mel has. Indeed, several expanded universe stories involving the Sixth Doctor (Time's Champion (novel), Spiral Scratch (novel), The Brink of Death (audio story)) have speculated that the Sixth Doctor was already on the verge of regenerating prior to the beginning of this story, and that the Rani's attack was the final straw or ultimately negligible.

• How can the Doctor not realise that Mel's face is different from the real Mel's face?

He is suffering from post regenerative trauma.

More importantly, the Rani had given him an amnesia drug. He didn't even know who Mel was; so how exactly would he be able to "recognise" her? The Rani probably didn't even need a disguise ... at least not until the drug started to wear off; as she undoubtedly knew it would. And when the Doctor did start regaining his memory, the disguise served its purpose of extending the charade.

• The Rani can check that the Doctor's hearts are beating simply by placing a hand on his chest.

Time Ladies may know of such a method.

If her sense of feeling within her hands is good enough, why not? Try putting your ear to someone chest and listen for their heart-beat. That's the "sense of feeling" in your ear.

• The Doctor is able to check Mel's pulse with his thumbs.

The Doctor having an ability such as this is not surprising.

It is possible to detect a pulse with your thumbs.

• Without appearing to make any adjustments to the TARDIS the Rani is able to patch Urak's vision straight into the TARDIS scanner.

She had apparently made enhancements to Urak to transmit his thoughts/vision on a general frequency.

• She is able to shoot down the TARDIS as one would any old passing spacecraft.

The Rani is a Timelady, and likely has Timelord technology capable of attacking Timelord vessels.

• In order to release the Lakertyans from the Rani's deadly bracelets, the Doctor and Mel use a fibre optic cable to complete an electrical circuit.

They look like fibre optic cables to us; they obviously carry electrical current regardless of their appearance.

• Tetraps have eyes in the front, sides and back of their heads. Why, then, do they need to turn their heads when looking for something?

Maybe some eyes are better for looking than others.

• The Doctor says that both he and the Rani are 953 years old. However, he has no way of knowing her age at this point, considering they are both time-travellers.

Before Russell T. Davies' infamous "900" quote, Time Lords did know. No matter where they went, they were still in synch with their TARDISes. Even if the Time Lord lost track, the TARDIS would be able to measure how much time had passed. Not in "calendar time". So, as a purely hypothetical example, if a Time Lord spends 6 months on Earth, 3 months on Telos, a month on Skaro, 6 weeks on Peladon, and two weeks Mars, then the TARDIS keeps track that a year has passed. The other thing was that prior to the Virgin Books, a Time Lord could only return to Gallifrey after an equivalent amount of time had lapsed. So, using another purely hypothetical example, if a Time Lord leaves Gallifrey on the first day of the month, and spends ten days on Karn, when they return, they could only return to Gallifrey on the eleventh day of the same month. So however much real time passes for the Time Lord is synched up with Gallifrey linear time. And again, prior to the Wilderness Years, that synched up relative time also related to Time Lords meeting each other. Of course, these rules were all thrown out the window by the Virgin Books line.

While that is always a fun headcanon, nothing even remotely confirming anything like that was ever said on screen. The events on screen seem to match up with that theory, with each successive Gallifrey story seemingly taking place after the last and each successive meeting with the Master being after the last, but there is a MUCH simpler explanation for those things: It makes easier television to not have to figure out where in someone's personal timeline an event is, especially when each televised story tends to reference the prior one. With BOOKS, you tend to have more hardcore sci-fi fans who are ready for complex stories ABOUT time travel, whereas in the series time travel is pretty exclusively used to just get you to the story.

The Rani didn't look a day over 700.

He has no way of knowing her age that the viewer is privy to. For all we really know, Time Lords have a special sense that enables them to determine such things as how old the other Time Lord is (in order to determine whether or not they are in 'sync'), or this is a little trick the Doctor has picked up in centuries of time travel, or what have you.

• Why is the Rani's TARDIS located so far, or indeed, any distance from her headquarters?

Considering what happened last time she met the Doctor, wouldn't she want to keep her Tardis as far away from the Doctor as possible?