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3!!Beware of unmarked spoilers -- Headscratchers pages are always Administrivia/SpoilersOff
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5[[foldercontrol]]
6
7[[folder: The Daleks]]
8* Why does the Dalek cell contain a bed, something that they themselves would have no need for, if they had no idea that humanoid life still existed on Skaro?
9** [[Recap/DoctorWhoTheCurseOfFatalDeath WE WILL EXPLAIN LATER.]]
10** They would have done when they were Kaleds (or Dals), and they would have had no reason since for getting rid of it.
11** Possibly they choose to keep a few relics of Kaled life around, like a museum. Believing the Thals extinct, they'd need something to keep the hatred which is their sole motivation for existence stirred up, and reminding themselves of the lifestyle those despicable Thals' war took away from them could help with that.
12** They live in the remains of their former city, so it's probably just a remnant.
13** To a Dalek, it's not a bed, it's a ''table''. Sure, they could rip it out and replace it with an actual table, but why make excess work for themselves?
14* Why the inconsistency with Thal travelling? It is stated that the Thals have been travelling for four years, but by the next episode the figure is just over a year.
15** The Thals live a mostly primitive existence in a post-apocalyptic wasteland; their ability to keep track of time to any degree of accuracy is presumably a bit suspect. This, granted, is quite an extreme gap in between times, but it may have felt longer to some of them than others.
16** Possibly the Thal group in question didn't start out together. Some may have been wandering for longer than the rest.
17** They may have paused in their travels for a couple of weeks' rest a year ago, only to resume their journey again. Not all of them agree on whether that counts as a "stop" or not.
18* Why does Ian wait for Temmosus to finish his speech before warning the Thals that it's an ambush?
19** Curious what Temmosus would say, perhaps?
20** Hoping that Temmosus' words would persuade the Daleks to choose a peaceful alternative?
21* Given that the doors of the city are electrically powered, how can the Thals get out at the end after turning the power off?
22** It's also the power that keeps them shut. Without it, they can be pushed open.
23* The Thals describe the Daleks as being "great thinkers and philosophers". How could that be if, as stated at other times, they were created for the sole purpose of wiping out everything non-Dalek?
24** They were probably referring to the Kaleds there. For reasons that should be obvious, there would be significantly less cultural crossover and survival-of-encounters between Thals and Daleks than there would have been between Thals and Kaleds, so in absence of other sources of info, they probably (mistakenly) attributed characteristics of the Kaleds to their Dalek successors.
25** "Asylum of the Daleks" revealed that they do have a concept of beauty(aka ''pure hatred''), and their AbsoluteXenophobe behaviour is almost religious in how they've embraced it. These Daleks didn't know of other races and the Kaled race was relatively new in their memory, so they probably had some culture back then, but got rid of that they found out [[OmnicidalManiac there were far more things they needed to kill.]]
26** We also have to remember that "The Daleks" is technically set long AfterTheEnd. The Thals have an imperfect-at-best knowledge of the Kaleds and the beings they later became.
27** The Thals live in primitive conditions, while the Daleks still have a technologically-advanced city. The Thals may just be ''assuming'' the Daleks are great thinkers to account for the discrepancy in lifestyles, like Dark Ages commoners speculating that ancient Roman roads were built by giants or wizardry.
28* If the Daleks are such a notoriously aggressive race, battling their way across the universe, why does the Doctor seem to be unfamiliar with them?
29** Because he's been stuck on Gallifrey for most of his life, and so doesn't (yet) have an encyclopediac knowledge of most of the universe. Plus, at this point in time, the Daleks are confined to Skaro. They haven't yet become the universally hated and feared monsters they will be, they're just stuck on Skaro.
30[[/folder]]
31
32[[folder: The Aztecs]]
33* The Aztecs understand eclipses well enough to predict one precisely. However they still think they are the whim of the gods and a human sacrifice is needed to end one.
34** This is true to history. The Aztecs believed a solar eclipse was the Moon attacking the Sun. They could predict when the attack would happen from the Moon's movements, and also believed that blood sacrifices helped the Sun Warriors to fight off the Moon. Without enough sacrifice, the Moon might win this time.
35[[/folder]]
36
37[[folder: The Dalek Invasion of the Earth]]
38* Why is the Dalek in the river? To find humans.
39* Why did the Daleks locate their mine in Bedfordshire rather than somewhere where the Earth's crust is thin?
40** My guess is that they have mines all over the place; the Bedfordshire one is essentially their mine in Britain, and they're coordinating all of the mining efforts simultaneously.
41** They might be making use of the shaft that was drilled by the Inferno project.
42** FWIW, according to SCIENCE! the Earth's crust is theoretically thinnest at a point under the Atlantic Ocean where the North American and Eurafrican tectonic plates meet. Leaving aside that this was only discovered in 1981, however, expecting early-1960s ''Doctor Who'' to have the budget or resources to convincingly depict an underwater mining base would have probably been asking a bit too much of them.
43** The obvious answer is because they were working backwards; they came up with the idea to have Daleks in London / Britain first and tried to think of a reason to justify it second, rather than starting out by plotting the logistics of mining to the Earth's core and building the plot around the most plausible way of doing so.
44** Also, the Daleks ''love'' lording it over lesser species. Taking a little extra time to get to the Earth's core by drilling under Bedford (where there's already some mining equipment set up) is worth watching all those pathetic little humans grunt and sweat and live in terror for them.
45[[/folder]]
46
47[[folder: The Chase]]
48* FrankensteinsMonster rips off its bandages, but changes into a jacket before the next scene. There might be two Monsters.
49* The Daleks' robot "duplicate" of the Doctor, far from being "indistinguishable from the original", actually looks so different that you wonder if they've got the right person.
50** I think the duplicate was played by Creator/WilliamHartnell's {{stunt double}}.
51[[/folder]]
52
53[[folder: The Daleks' Master Plan]]
54* Why do the delegates look different to those in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E2MissionToTheUnknown Mission to the Unknown]]", and then look different later in the serial? (I already know they changed actors, I wonder if there can be an in-story explanation.) Particularly prominent is Trantis, who seems to have tendrils on his face but loses them later.
55** We know nothing of Trantis' people. Maybe their tendrils are like antlers, and they periodically shed them.
56** They could also have just been different delegates. It's a major galactic conference, presumably there were a few people present.
57* Are the titles of the delegates actually their names or where they come from? There is mention of the planet Gearon. There is Zephon, Master of the 5th Galaxy, however a Dalek refers to him as the Master of Zephon.
58** This seems to be a common diplomatic protocol (although it's surprising that the Daleks would adhere to it). We have a similar situation in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS9E2TheCurseOfPeladon The Curse of Peladon]]".
59* What happened to Warrien, the tall delegate in the white protective suit?
60** Perhaps he was plotting against the Daleks and was killed for this.
61** Or he was sent on behalf of Zephon who couldn't come at the time.
62* How were the Daleks exactly planning to use the Time Destructor?
63** The Doctor just turned the Time Destructor on when he used it. It would be like having a powerful bomb and just letting it of. The Daleks could have made sure only some of the Time Destructor's power was let out at a time, and directed at certain areas.
64* Why exactly were the Daleks prepared to kill the delegates before the Invasion of the Solar System?
65** The delegates had already told their armies to help the Daleks.
66[[/folder]]
67
68[[folder: The Evil of the Daleks]]
69* Why not just kidnap the Doctor and Jamie?
70** Because then the Doctor would know there was trouble afoot and could potentially escape. As it is, he's too busy following the trail of clues to think anything too severely wrong is happening until it's too late.
71* Since Jamie is so essential to Dalek plans, why are the traps set for him so lethal?
72** The Dalek mindset is somewhat Spartan in this case; they want to be sure that their template is powerful enough to overcome a variety of lethal hazards, making for the perfect humanoid soldier.
73* How do they know he's the Doctor's companion anyway? Unseen adventure?
74** The Doctor's been busy at Gatwick for a while. Waterfield's agents probably spotted Jamie and reported back.
75* Why don't they have photographs of Ben and Polly? It was only at the very end of the previous adventure that they decided not to continue travelling with the Doctor and Jaime.
76** They might have taken some during the previous adventure. But since we don't know precisely when the surveillance started, the people surveilling them may have either learned that Ben and Polly have left the [=TARDIS=] or, perhaps more likely, never actually realised that Ben and Polly were ''part'' of the [=TARDIS=] crew to begin with. They may have simply assumed that they were two people that the Doctor and Jamie met while at Gatwick Airport, a not-wholly unreasonable assumption if you didn't see them all exit the [=TARDIS=] together; the Doctor and Jamie stand out as obviously a bit unusual, whereas Ben and Polly just look like two mid-twentieth century Londoners. As such, photos of Ben and Polly weren't included in those we see. (The real answer, of course, is because Ben and Polly's actors had left at the end of the previous adventure.)
77[[/folder]]
78
79[[folder: Inferno]]
80* The Doctor is very adamant that he can't bring anyone from the other parallel universe back to his own because it might shatter reality. Though at the same time we see that this parallel world travelling is not in his realm of expertise. Much later in the new series we see two versions of the same person from different realities (two Mickeys) in the same world who even interact and touch each other. Does that mean the Doctor was outright wrong about what could have happened in Inferno and if so, does he feel bad for letting (aside from the brigade leader) genuinely good versions of his friends die very horribly?
81** Keyword: '''might'''. This was most likely the Doctor's first experience dealing with the possibility of two parallel universes crossing with each other, and he didn't know what would happen. His worry that they could shatter reality by crossing worlds and interacting with their parallel counterparts was just that, a worry rather than a definite. Presumably since then, he dealt with parallel universes again and again enough to have figured out that crossing universes doesn't do much damage on its own.
82** As for his guilt, the novelisation of "The Mind of Fear", which happens later, heavily implies that a vision of fire that the Doctor is attacked with in the episode is a manifestation of his trauma over seeing what happened to the alternate world, and I believe a few other pieces of the Expanded Universe might have touched on it. And plus, well, he's not an unfeeling sociopath. So yes, he probably does feel some measure of guilt for not being able to help the inhabitants of the other universe more than he was otherwise able to. Although let's be entirely fair here; the Brigade Leader is the worst of them, but none of the other versions of the Doctor's friends and allies are exactly ''that'' good in the alternative world (they're all pretty willing fascists, for a start), and most of the ones who are better than others tend to die over the course of the serial.
83[[/folder]]
84
85[[folder: Colony in Space]]
86* The Master gets angry at an ancient alien for not allowing him to use powerful weapon to destroy the universe. He then points the gun at the alien which is then suddenly magicked out of the air. What. The. ''Fuck?!''
87** It's hardly the only weapon which completely destroys the target.
88[[/folder]]
89
90[[folder: The Daemons]]
91* The Doctor insists that that there is no magic and every thing can be explained by Daemons' "secret science." He describes it as invoking and channeling negative human emotions to create psychokinetic energy for various purposes. He also admits that the rituals are not mere window dressing. They have an actual purpose and can control the Daemon to some extent. The local witch confirms that what the Master is doing is exactly black magic. What the Master does also matches some definitions of magic out of the dictionary. So....why isn't what the Master doing considered magic? At best, isn't it both? Is the Doctor just being stubborn since his worldview is "everything can be explained by science" even if he cannot explain it?
92** Quite potentially. The Doctor wants to seem like the most intelligent person and say everything can be explained scientifically.
93** Clarke's Third Law: any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. In the case of the very advanced Daemons, this is even truer than usual.
94[[/folder]]
95
96[[folder: Day of the Daleks]]
97* Is the 22nd century Dalek invasion the same one shown in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS2E2TheDalekInvasionOfEarth Dalek Invasion of Earth]]"? If so, has history been rewritten or did they just spend four episodes running around for no real reason?
98** The "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS9E1DayOfTheDaleks Day of the Daleks]]" invasion happened in the wake of a nuclear war during the UNIT years, whenever they are. The other invasion occurred 10 years before the Doctor arrived, much later, so they're not the same invasion, conveniently for Susan. If they'd been the same invasion, then when the third Doctor stopped it from happening she'd find her home and probable husband erased from history, quite possibly leaving her in Limbo.
99** But would "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" have happened if the 3rd Doctor hadn't mucked around? And doesn't that pretty much make "Day of the Daleks" pointless?
100*** ''[=AHistory=]: A History of the Doctor Who Universe'' says the "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" happened, then, following their defeat, the Daleks travelled back in time to create the future seen in "Day of the Daleks", then the Third Doctor "unhappened" that future, putting history back on course.
101*** For the information of the less ''Who''-savy ''[=AHistory=]'' in no way counts as ExpandedUniverse canon, let alone official canon. I just wouldn't anyone to confuse this with WordOfGod. (Very well-researched book, however.) Anyway, the invasion in "Day of the Daleks" explicitly depends on a world in which World War III starts in the 20th century. and yet a throwaway line in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS25E1RemembranceOfTheDaleks Remembrance of the Daleks]]" says that the ''other'' 22nd century invasion (seen in "The Dalek Invasion of Earth") ''will'' happen, and the ExpandedUniverse confirms it.
102** Actually, "Day of the Daleks", which ''is'' a lot closer to "official canon" mentions that they travelled back to the 21st century in the aftermath of World War III (which as far as I can tell, only ''starts'' in the 1970s, which was later prevented) following a PREVIOUS thwarting of their Earth invasion. Both stories are set in the same century, but the time the Daleks have occupied Earth is vastly different. Also, the conclusion of the story negated the "Day" invasion from having ''ever'' happened.
103[[/folder]]
104
105[[folder: The Time Monster]]
106* How do Krasis and the Master enter the latter's TARDIS in episode 4? The previous scene establishes that the Doctor's ship is inside the Master's and vice versa, which ought to make a closed loop. How is the Master's TARDIS simultaneously inside the Doctor's console room and in the TOMTIT lab. Note that when he de-materialises from the lab, he DOESN'T de-materialise from the Doctor's console room. We see the Master walk into his own TARDIS from the outside, but if he then walked back out again, would he be in the TOMTIT lab or in the Doctor's console room?
107[[/folder]]
108
109[[folder: The Three Doctors]]
110* Now, I'm not denying people are generally stunned by entering the TARDIS; they say things ranging from "it's nonsense" to "I'm in my nightie", but is the exact phrase "it's bigger on the inside" used that often, or is it that sort of thing that "always" happens like "monsters made out of bubblewrap" and "60s and 70s companions breaking their ankles", but as-described-exactly is only documented a handful of times and rhetoric for something else?
111** Probably -- but then, seeing as the most obvious thing for someone to think when they first enter the TARDIS doors is "it's bigger on the inside!" and it's pretty obvious when they are thinking or reacting to that, it's perhaps understandable for the Doctor / production team to assume it happens more frequently than it does; the basic reaction's always the same even if the exact words aren't always spoken.
112*** Could also be a bit of BeamMeUpScotty.
113* Why did the Third Doctor act surprised when he met his past selves. With them being his past selves and all he should have remembered that moment and knew he, meaning his past selves, were coming.
114** It's been pretty much established that, in multi-Doctor stories, only the most recent Doctor has a clear memory of events, and then only after the adventure is over and everyone is back in their proper places. Up until then, the Doctors have a vague memory of ''something'' happening, but it isn't really clear. Afterwards, some memories remain clear to earlier Doctors (like Two and Three not getting along), but not much else.
115** Also, TimeyWimeyBall is almost certainly at play in such a situation. It's possible that until the Time Lords made it happen, the Doctor had never crossed his timestream; in other words, he didn't remember it happening because until that point it actually ''hadn't'' happened.
116[[/folder]]
117
118[[folder: Planet of the Daleks]]
119* The Doctor stops a [[HumanPopsicle frozen Dalek army from reviving themselves]] by triggering an "ice volcano". Apparently, this floods the cavern they were in with "molten ice". I might be missing something, by isn't ''molten ice'' essentially ''water?'' An entire army of unstoppable death creatures were put out of commission by getting a bit wet?
120** What they say in the episode is that it's an allotrope with a much lower freezing point, so that it's liquid at sub-zero temperatures. The Daleks were being brought out of hibernation by increasing their temperature; immersing them in supercold allotropic water reverses that process.
121*** So something like liquid nitrogen, then?
122*** More like the cryomagma expelled by RealLife cryovolcanoes on outer-planet moons like Titan, Enceladus and Triton.
123[[/folder]]
124
125[[folder: Death to the Daleks]]
126* The Daleks practice their replacement machine guns on a model TARDIS. Where they got it from is never explained. Standard issue to encourage hatred for the Doctor?
127** Why not? They ''do'' consider him their one and only predator, after all.
128* What happened to the Exxilon in the TARDIS after Sarah knocks it out? Is it still in there?
129** Ran out after her.
130** Do we ever actually see it leave? Because this troper finds the idea of it still in there all these years later lost in the endless corridors of the Tardis rather amusing.
131[[/folder]]
132
133[[folder: Genesis of the Daleks]]
134* If the Kaleds can get into the Thal dome so easily why the attrition war?
135** Harry and Sarah getting attacked by Mutants before they can get to the Kaled City shows it is still a dangerous trek across the territory in between to get to the tunnels. Perhaps a few could do it, but not an army.
136* What happened to Kavell, the Kaled scientist who frees Harry, Sarah and Gharman? He disappears between Parts Five and Six. He's last seen midway through Part Five leaving with Gharman, but isn't with him and the other Kaleds when they're confronting Davros in Part Six. Unlike other MIA Kaleds (Ravon and Tane especially), it can't be argued he died in the Kaled dome when the Thals blew it up, since that happened a couple of episodes earlier.
137** Considering there were armed conflicts between the two factions before Davros agreed to the meeting, it can be assumed he died in a fire fight against Davros' people.
138* People often state that the fourth Doctor refused to wipe out the Daleks. But this is not what happened at all! After watching the serial there are two points where the Doctor could have blown up the Dalek embryo chamber. The first time he hesitates, unsure, before he can make up his mind he is told that Davros has given in and as such the explosives would be needless vandalism. The second time, after the Daleks start mass killing, he was going to until he was forced to take cover and the Dalek chasing him completes the circuit and kills them anyway. So not only did he not refuse to commit genocide (he never made up his mind) but all he needed to do was in fact done!
139** Well, in the second instance, he wired up the explosives, but then hesitated before touching the wires together to set them off. He talked to Sarah and Harry about the moral choice before him, and when the Dalek appeared, he could quite easily have touched the two wires together - it would only have taken a fraction of a second - but instead elected to drop the wires and run. It's deliberately left ambiguous, I think, but there's a case for saying that he refused to commit that genocide in dropping the wires rather than touching them.
140** And the reasons he gives for hesitating are more complicated than just "refusing to commit genocide"--he explains that many formerly warring races were forced into alliance by the Dalek threat, and so without the Daleks the whole subsequent history of the universe could be altered in [[HitlersTimeTravelExemptionAct radical and possibly very unpleasant ways]].
141** Furthermore, his mission's parameters included introducing some weakness into the Daleks to lessen their threat. Although he didn't intend to, fanon says that he did so by enabling Davros to survive when his creations turned on him. When he was later revived by the Daleks, he proved a profoundly divisive element that caused violent schisms that plagued the Daleks for centuries.
142** Something also usually forgotten: he also kept the Daleks entombed for an extra few ''thousand'' years. I don't know about you, but I think most civilizations would put up a bit more of a fight if they've had an extra few millennia of existence and progress.
143** Though "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS33E1AsylumOfTheDaleks Asylum of the Daleks]]" implies that pre-Genesis Dalek stories weren't wiped.
144** Good that someone else pointed this out. I will draw your attention to this analysis I found. http://www.historyvortex.org/Dalek3.html While I don't agree with all of it I still think it is a good analysis of Dalek history.
145* If the Kaleds want to keep racial purity and send all mutations to the wastelands, why haven't they exiled Davros? I mean, he obviously isn't a pure Kaled.
146** Davros is a pure Kaled; he's just a horribly disfigured one.
147*** I'm currently watching "Destiny of the Daleks", and he is identified as humanoid mutant.
148*** Keep in mind that you're talking about the same serial that persistently identified the cybernetic Daleks as robots.
149*** The Thousand-Year War used nuclear weapons. It's quite possible that whatever made Davros an insane potato happened to be radioactive and screwed around with his DNA
150** Knowing Davros, he probably ''instituted'' the policy of exiling mutants. Naturally he'd exempt himself from such a practice. Also, if it's keeping their bloodlines "pure" that the Kaleds are worried about, Davros's mutations surely aren't any threat to that, as his near-total paralysis ensures he'll never have any kids.
151*** Right. Besides, look at how few of the Nazis were actually Aryan-this kind of selective racism goes on all the time.
152* How was the Doctor supposed to prevent the creation of the Daleks when the Time Lords sent him to a time after they were almost complete?
153** The Time Lords guessed wrong. By this time they'd regressed nearly to the relatively primitive technology from "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS14E3TheDeadlyAssassin The Deadly Assassin]]", and this was their best guess about when.
154** Maybe they expected him to commit genocide when he had the wires.
155* Why did Nyder leave to do during the meeting? Presumably to somehow ensure the Daleks were arriving on time but it looks like after his encounter with the Doctor he rushes right back to Davros' side and the Daleks still arrive right on time. Part of me can't help but think he left for entirely more innocent reasons and the Doctor just ensured he died with a full bladder!
156[[/folder]]
157
158[[folder: Terror of the Zygons]]
159* If "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS12E2TheArkInSpace The Ark in Space]]", "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS12E3TheSontaranExperiment The Sontaran Experiment]]", "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS12E4GenesisOfTheDaleks Genesis of the Daleks]]", "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS12E5RevengeOfTheCybermen Revenge of the Cybermen]]", and "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS13E1TerrorOfTheZygons Terror of the Zygons]]" are continuous, then Sarah and Harry have been active for far too long without rest.
160** Not when they all happen within 16 hours (their relative time). Maybe they are in (almost) real-time, making them around 7.5 hours long.
161** They also travel by TARDIS between "Revenge of the Cybermen" and "Terror of the Zygons" -- for all we know, it took them long enough to get to Scotland for Sarah and Harry to crash and have a nice sleep on the TARDIS on the way.
162** Also, Sarah changes out of her waterproof trousers into a skirt for the last scene of "The Sontaran Experiment". Presumably the gap there was enough for them to grab forty winks, especially given that the Doctor still needed time to finish working on the transmat.
163[[/folder]]
164
165[[folder: Pyramids Of Mars]]
166* If the Pyramid imprisoning Sutekh was on Earth, why did he bother going through the portal to England? Couldn't he have walked out of the entrance Scarman created and started his omnicidal rampage from there?
167** It wasn't on Earth-it ''was'' on Mars, so he had to go through the portal. There was no other choice. I'd advise you to watch the episode again.
168*** The pyramid with the Eye of Horus was on Mars, but the actual pyramid containing Sutekh was clearly on Earth - Marcus Scarman excavated it, broke in, and walked through the wall to Sutekh's chamber. As for the actual Headscratcher, maybe he wanted to collect his robots and anything else of his lying around that had been transported to England?
169*** If he did leave his tomb, he would emerge in a desert miles away from civilisation. Instead he chooses to go to where his powerbase is set up, and start from there.
170*** Sutekh probably also wanted to head directly to where the ''Doctor'' was most likely to return to Earth, since if anyone still had a chance of stopping the Last Osiran, it's him. Sutekh meant to ambush and kill the Time Lord, but forgot about the time-delay of the transport beam.
171* A [[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments hilarious]] moment comes when Sarah Jane has disguised the Doctor as one of the robots. Which begs the question-''how the hell did they fit his massive curly hair into the disguise?''
172** Presumably the same way they did it in real life. (For those not in the know, that really was Creator/TomBaker in the mummy costume!)
173** It's hair. It's an impressive amount of hair, granted, but it's not made of steel. They just pressed it down.
174[[/folder]]
175
176[[folder: Destiny of the Daleks]]
177* Why does literally ''everyone'' in this story identify the Daleks as robots, including Davros? It's a well-established fact that the Daleks are cyborgs, and the Doctor even finds a Kaled mutant in this story, yet the pepperpots are still called "robots."
178** The classic series was always very sloppy about scientific terminology - for a show that includes space as a setting, the writers didn't seem to know the difference between a planetary (stellar or "solar" system) and a galaxy, for one thing. It was often hard to tell if they meant stellar system(s), a/the galaxy/galaxies, or the universe, as all three terms would be thrown about more or less as it pleased them. Given that, it's not surprising if they didn't know the difference between robotics, cybernetics, and bionics.
179[[/folder]]
180
181[[folder: State of Decay]]
182* Okay Adric won't wake due to being hypnotized when Romana and Tarak came to rescue him that's understandable the thing is we know Tarak is a grown man and decently strong and that Timelords such as Romana are generally stronger than average humans so instead of wasting time trying to wake Adric why didn't Romana or Tarak just pick him up and carry him out?
183[[/folder]]
184
185[[folder: Logopolis]]
186* Why doesn't the Doctor go back in time to before the entropy field is created to prevent the destruction of a large chunk of the universe?
187** Perhaps a more important though smaller scale version of the same question: If Rose is stranded because he can't cross over after the rift closes, why can't he go back in time to a day when the rift was open, cross over then, and then return to the present on the other side? (He'd have to modify his Tardis to work there, but it sure beats burning up a star to send a message through when the rift's not open.)
188*** Also, quite possibly a Main/TimeyWimeyBall thing, where he ''can't'' actually go back through, no matter when he goes.
189*** Look, people, if the Doctor could do this, he would just do it every single episode. Which would be a rather boring series. In the "classic" series sometimes they would mention the "Blimovitch Limitation Effect" whenever a character would say something like "why can't you just use time travel to . . .(whatever)". In [[Recap/DoctorWhoTVMTheTVMovie The TV Movie]] , at the end [[spoiler: he goes back in time to save the lives of his companions, which is one of the many things that made us die-hard Doctor Who fans very angry at the Fox TV movie.]] In the "new" series we had the episode "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E8FathersDay Father's Day]]" which showed what happens if you muck around to much with time. --KEVP
190*** Come on. We have ''no idea what the hell was going on'' in the Movie. We see the words "Temporal Orbit" on the monitor, and then ''magic glowyness emerges from the eye of harmony and flows into Grace and Lee''. The Doctor doesn't ''do'' anything. Saying that he went back in time to save them is a big stretch. Exactly what the connection is to "temporal orbit" is never made clear, but the visuals don't indicate that the Doctor somehow rewound time. Some confluence of "Temporal Orbit", flying with the eye of harmony open, and the TARDIS being a "sentimental old thing" caused it to puke up magic resurrection-sauce. TimeyWimeyBall.
191*** Watch the revival scene in the TV Movie, then watch TheTimeOfTheDoctor, Matt Smith's last episode. [[spoiler: The visual effect for the revival energy and the regeneration energy look very similar. In both cases, energy from the Eye of Harmony was used to restore life to someone. In the first case, the TARDIS used it to revive Grace and Lee, and in the second case, the Time Lords used it to give the Doctor a whole new life cycle.]]
192*** The ''Faction Paradox'' novel "The Book of the War" (basically a big encyclopaedia regarding this time war between The Enemy and the [[strike: Time Lords]] Great Houses) has a neat little entry about the "Protocols of Linearity", about how going back into [[strike: Gallifrey's]] The Homeworld's own past may cause the universe to unravel. So, yeah, TimeyWimeyBall, is the answer.
193*** There's also always the possiblity that the rift exists in it's own moment, separate from the rest of time. Once it closes it is, and always has been, closed.
194*** The Doctor has actually said that once he's involved in the events of a certain place and time, he can't just go back and change things he's already done. Which makes sense, really. Think of it this way: Let's say the Doctor goes back in time and stops the Master from turning on the silence. Now he doesn't need to go back in time ''because'' he went back in time. The Doctor has now fundamentally changed his own past actions, making his current circumstances impossible, and now he's got a paradox on his hands. Typically if the Doctor has a problem to solve, he needs to use his brain, in this case, adapting the Logopolitans' program for use in the Earth's Pharos computer. And with respect to the people who died, unfortunately, there's really nothing the Doctor can do for them without screwing up the timeline. He can't always save everyone, no matter how much he wants to. If you boil it all down, trying to come up with a solution in real time and just going back in time to prevent the problem from happening is the choice between possible death and certain death. Which makes you wonder what the hell he was thinking when he went back the second time at the beginning of ''Father's Day''...
195*** The new series ''does'' demonstrate it's possible for Time Lords to drastically defy paradox and muck about with history, but only with the support of a Paradox Machine like the Master turned Sexy into during the Year That Never Was. The Doctor would never have the heart to do ''that'' to his beloved TARDIS, and Gallifrey would probably have called him home for a thorough dressing-down if he'd gotten into the habit of doing so in the classic series. Unless the Time Lords collectively back up his wish to impose a paradoxical change upon the past, as when they'd wanted him to negate the Daleks' creation, he's not going to get away with becoming another Meddling Monk.
196*** Saving a quarter of reality itself sounds like a decent enough reason if any to bastardize a Tardis. Though maybe the size of the paradox has an effect and it's simply too big a situations for one machine to handle. Or alternatively, if you're an optimist, the time lords did exactly that and everyone was saved !Hooray! Not like anyone ever mentions a massive amount of reality suddenly not existing in any subsequent episodes (except for Nyssa occasionally mentioning Trakken in which case she simply might not have been informed. She oddly doesn't make much of a big deal about being the last of her world).
197*** Becoming a Paradox Machine is clearly suggested to be hideously painful for the TARDIS in question; the Master only did it because it wasn't his TARDIS and he's a hugely petty, spiteful and sadistic person who wanted to cause the Doctor pain and didn't mean hurting his TARDIS to do it. It's also clearly unstable -- Jack Harkness shooting it a few times in "Last of the Time Lords" was enough to shut it down. And when it's shut down, everything snaps back to the way it was before the paradox was started, which in this case would mean snapping back to a point right before all of reality was in danger of being completely wiped out. This means that the Doctor hasn't actually solved the problem, he's really just kicked the can down the road, and he'd pretty much have to devote the rest of his life to making sure the Paradox Machine didn't switch off and wasn't in any way interfered with in order to keep the paradox from reverting. So presumably the Doctor would rather ''not'' inflict an eternity of suffering on his own TARDIS unless he has absolutely no option to do so, and since he actually stop the problem and can save most of reality (if, unfortunately, not all of it) without losing the ability to time travel, turning his own TARDIS's existence into a permanent living nightmare and devoting his entire life to maintaining an unstable "band-aid" over the wound instead of just stopping it once and for all, he chooses not to. I would also imagine that, given that there's a clear link between the Doctor and the TARDIS, he'd also probably feel his TARDIS's pain, which would give him added motivation not to do so if not absolutely necessary.
198*** We also don't know the full dangers of setting up a Paradox Machine -- leaving aside the name (paradoxes are usually not good to begin with), the fact that the ''Master'' was the one doing so should be a whopping great red flag if ever there was one that this is neither a good nor safe idea. It's obviously dangerous, it's obviously unstable, and it's being done by someone who doesn't care who has to suffer or die in order for him to get what he wants. It's entirely possible if not likely that a Paradox Machine would end up being a solution that was worse than the problem.
199* When Tom Baker had his last moment as the Doctor, we see the Watcher rising into the air as he changed into the Creator/PeterDavison incarnation. Nyssa says, "He was the Doctor all the time". What did they mean by that? How did all of that work? I came in mid-way through the Baker-era so maybe I missed an earlier episode that would've explained that.
200** No, he was never explained. All we know is that he is some sort of manifestation that started to exist during the Fourth Doctor's final days and aided him in his regeneration. We have seen OTHER such creatures though, for example; the Observer who was a Watcher for the Doctor's friend Rallon and the Doctor's mentor, K'anpo Rimpoche had Cho Je. My idea is that they are extra lines of defence against death. See, regeneration doesn't bring Time Lords BACK from the dead, it saves them from the BRINK of death. So I like to think of them as little pockets of Regeneration energy given form so that if the Time Lord that created them DOES die they can bring them back. Of course, that is ALL Wild Mass Guessing.
201** It's been a while since I've seen them, but I was sure that the Watcher was the Doctor from the future, come to warn his past self about the dangers he was about to face. He merged with the Fourth Doctor at the end because, by then, time had been changed so that the Watcher's timeline never existed.
202** Apparently the Watcher is meant to be a manifestation of the First, Second and Thirds doctors.
203*** Actually, a manifestation of the ''Fifth''. Four mentions something to the effect that he has "dipped into the future." Not the past. And apparently this was unclear when they edited the episode, so Sarah Sutton (Nyssa) recorded an extra line cold to voice over the "merger" at the end. Not understanding the context, she emphasized this as "So ''he'' was the Doctor all the time!" instead of "So he was ''the Doctor'' all the time!" ...and based on this JBM entry, it is ''still'' confusing.
204** The Watcher was not the Keeper but, as mentioned in the bullets above, a manifestation of the Doctor's future regeneration, created ahead of his regeneration to help the fourth Doctor regenerate when the time came. Why this regeneration should be particularly difficult for the fourth Doctor is never explained, since all he does is smash himself by falling to the ground from a great height, but the difficult regeneration is mentioned in the following story, "Castrovalva". Some fans have theorized that the fourth Doctor held onto his regeneration too long and that was why he needed outside assistance. Further, there is precedent. in the third Doctor's final story, "Planet of the Spiders", we meet one of the Doctor's teachers, who is posing as the Abbot of a British Buddhist monastery. The Abbot is very old and dies in this story, but one of the Abbot's top students, Cho Je, reveals himself to be a projection of the Abbot, who then becomes the Abbot's next incarnation after the Abbot regenerates. I've always assumed that the Watcher was on this model.
205*** The only real difference between Cho-Je and the Watcher is that K'Anpo was consciously projecting an image of his next incarnation, with the effect that Cho-Je looked exactly like K'Anpo became, whereas the Watcher was a subconscious projection of the Fifth Doctor, and thus a poorly-formed one.
206[[/folder]]
207
208[[folder: Castrovalva]]
209* The Doctor spent the night in Castrovalva. He was tired, very ill and possibly slightly drugged. Why the hell didn't [[spoiler:the Master]] just kill him then and there, when it would have been really easy, instead of waiting until after breakfast the next day? Does he just like to make things difficult for himself or something?
210** No, he needs the Doctor alive in order to have fun humiliating him. E.g. Turning the Doctor into Dobby in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E13LastOfTheTimeLords Last of the Time Lords]]".
211** The Master's just like any other evil arch-nemesis; he's an insecure egotist who can't handle the fact that the Doctor has so consistently proved himself superior by foiling his plans and beating him so many times. It's not enough to just ''kill'' him; the Master has to make the Doctor ''suffer'', take absolutely everything away from him in order to prove once and for all that the Master is the better man. And furthermore, the Doctor has to be very much aware that he's lost for the Master to be satisfied. Where's the satisfaction in killing him when he's asleep and none the wiser?
212** This is the Master we're talking about. As the Rani said, he'd get dizzy if he tried to walk in a straight line.
213[[/folder]]
214
215[[folder: Arc of Infinity]]
216* [[spoiler: Omega]] in his antimatter form needs to bond with the Doctor in order to re-enter the normal universe from his alternate dimension. So why does his monster minion not need to do this, as presumably it would be composed of antimatter, and how can Tegan, her cousin Colin Frazer and his friend cross over to the other dimension? Presumably anyone or anything wanting to cross over from one dimension to the other would have the disastrous effect predicted in the case of Omega, judging by what happens when matter and antimatter collide in RealLife?
217** In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS10E1TheThreeDoctors The Three Doctors]]" Omega can send other things to the normal universe by shielding them using his own will. The reason he can't leave the same way is that he wouldn't be able to use his will to shield himself once he left. There is also the problem that he no longer exists as anything except his will which probably contributes to why he has to bond with the Doctor to get a corporeal existence.
218[[/folder]]
219
220[[folder: The King's Demons]]
221* Here's a meta one. OK, so Kamelion gets forgotten about because the prop was ridiculously difficult to operate. Fine. But he's a ''shape-shifting robot.'' How the [[GoshDangItToHeck bleeping heck]] did nobody consider "Gee, let's just have him shape-shift into a different form and have a human actor/actress portray them?
222** Because then you'd have to pay a human actor/actress a regular salary to appear in the show, on top of the three regular actors and actress you're already paying. You don't have to pay a robot prop anything. They just completely overestimated exactly how good the prop would be.
223*** The prop would probably have been fine, but the man who knew how to program it was killed in an accident, which meant nobody could work out how to operate it properly. What little we see of it was far short of what they were hoping for.
224[[/folder]]
225
226[[folder: Resurrection of the Daleks]]
227* Despite having spent his time in suspended animation he has been able to make his mind control device and has learnt enough about Time Lords to deduce that they're 'all soft'.
228** The mind control device just seems to be part of his travel device; chances are, he's had it all along, but this is the first time he's had the need or opportunity to use it on-screen -- ever wondered why Nyder was so insanely devoted and sycophantic to Davros?
229** As for calling Time lords soft, Davros is a sociopathic megalomaniac, who considers anything that isn't an up to eleven version of fascism and xenophobia soft. The mere fact the time lords haven't conquered the entire universe, and drove all other races to slavery or extinction. Is all the proof Davros needs.
230* Why are the cylinders of Movellan virus left on 1984 Earth, a planet that the Daleks want to invade? It's a bit like the Allies hiding an atom bomb in Berlin.
231** Where else are they going to store it? On their own ship? Where if it breaks it'll kill them all.
232* And worst of all- Davros is still alive ''how?'' Didn't the Daleks exterminate him in "Genesis of the Daleks"? Same with his survival after [[spoiler: getting infected with the virus developed to kill the Daleks]]?
233** He survived in "Genesis of the Daleks" because his secondary life support system kicked in. He survived the Dalek virus because he is not a Dalek.
234*** To elaborate on this, in ''Genesis'', Davros was kept alive by his life-support system, due to it doing ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin. This was even shown in a deleted scene where, moments after Davros is exterminated, a light on his machine starts flashing. In "Resurrection", it can be assumed that although his DNA was similar enough to that of the Daleks to be infected by the Movellan virus, the genetic/epigenetic differences were still too great to kill him.
235[[/folder]]
236
237[[folder: The Mark of the Rani]]
238* How about when the key to The Doctor's TARDIS fits and works in the lock to The Rani's TARDIS? With no explanation how that possibly works.
239** TARDIS keys are most likely less "*TARDIS keys* and more *TARDIS* keys. That is, they are keys unlock TARDIS(s).
240** The Doctor's key unlocked the Rani's TARDIS but not the Master's. When the Time Lords were trying to break into the Doctor's TARDIS they mentioned different keys for different types of TARDIS. That may mean that the Rani's TARDIS is a model that has the same key type as the Doctor's and the Master's isn't.
241[[/folder]]
242
243[[folder: Timelash]]
244* Okay, no seriously, how ''did'' the Doctor and Herbert escape the explosion?
245** Probably the same way the Doctor and Romanna did back in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS16E6TheArmageddonFactor The Armageddon Factor]]".
246** This is explained in the novelisation; since the warhead's radiation was only dangerous to organic matter, the Doctor used a Kontron Crystal to move himself and Herbert into the future, allowing them to essentially skip over the moment of impact and thus evade the radiation that would have actually killed them.
247[[/folder]]
248
249[[folder: Revelation of the Daleks]]
250* Why does Davros drop the polystyrene statue full of fake blood onto the Doctor?
251** Presumably because he wants to [[{{Troll}} mess with and humiliate]] the Doctor. Which is a bit petty of him, granted, but hey. It's Davros.
252* Why isn't the flower being used already?
253** It seems clear that nobody at Tranquil Repose is aware of its usefulness. (Maybe Davros, but why would he tell anyone?)
254* Davros does make some mention of turning the Doctor into a Dalek, but why not just capture him the instant he arrives?
255** To gloat about his victories, of course.
256* When captured, how does the Doctor know that Davros is still alive? (Natasha and Grigory can't possibly have told him, because they don't know either.)
257** The Doctor mentions in passing that the spaceship in ''Resurrection'' had crashed, "I thought with you on board". His dull surprise seems to indicate that he's used to Davros escaping death at this point.
258** The audio drama "[[Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho048Davros Davros]]" serves as a prequel to this and seems to show 6 is aware Davros is active in this time period.
259[[/folder]]
260
261[[folder: Trial of a Time Lord]]
262* In "Recap/DoctorWhoS23E3TerrorOfTheVervoids", how can the Time Lords charge the Doctor for a crime he hasn't actually committed yet?
263** Wibbly wobbly, Timey Wimey.
264** I know what you mean, because doing something like that would cause some sort of paradox. Like, if you went back in time and killed Hitler before he did all the terrible things, then he'd never be able to do it. It's confusing.
265*** The trial is a sham. The Doctor hadn't encountered/killed the Vervoids yet, and the Valeyard/Time Lords cherry-picked it out of desperation, ''anything'' to find the Doctor guilty and sentence him to death, which will give the Valeyard all of the Doc's remaining regenerations. Also, the proceedings are more of a smokescreen to cover-up the Time Lords' genocide when they moved the Earth out of its normal location. The Time Lords, after all, are the ultimate hypocrites: it's all right for THEM (collectively) to commit genocide, but when the Doctor does it...ho boy, the axe is gonna fall!
266*** It's the Doctor who chooses the Vervoid encounter as his defence, which is basically "I will get better". Aside from the fact that that's a bit like a murderer promising a judge "I won't do it again, M'lord", wasn't choosing an adventure where he wipes out a species a bit stupid? Thinking "The Deadly Assassin" would have been a better choice. Then again, executing someone for a genocide they have not yet committed is a bit suspect.
267*** Considering that when the Valeyard brings up the genocide charges, the Doctor immediately leaps up and defensively yells "That cannot apply!", he presumably believed that the Vervoid's ''own'' genocidal plans towards humanity would act as extenuating circumstances of the "self-defence" kind.
268*** It's also probably worth remembering as well that these are Time Lords; they don't have the same view of linear time as us silly little three-dimensional humans do.
269*** Given that (a) the Doctor is suffering from memory problems in the story, (b) a constant theme throughout the episode (including ''Vervoids'') is that the excerpts from the Matrix are being altered to cast the Doctor in the worst possible light or manipulate evidence, and (c) the story is from the future, and there are probably some kind of TimeyWimeyBall issues with accessing it to begin with, it's entirely possible that the Vervoids encounter is not as it seems, and the Doctor is being stitched up. There's actually a story in the 2019 short story anthology ''The Target Storybook'' (written by Creator/ColinBaker, incidentally) which hinges around this possibility: essentially, the Doctor didn't/doesn't commit genocide on the Vervoids at all (he spares their seeds/pods so that a new generation has a chance to be grown and raised better), but the Valeyard has the footage and the Doctor's memories altered to make it ''seem'' as if he does.
270*** "[[Recap/EighthDoctorAdventuresTheEightDoctors The Eight Doctors]]" EU novel states that the whole thing was a cover-up by the CIA (the Time Lord agency, not the American one, obviously), and they'd worked with the Valeyard to create a kangaroo court in fear of the Doctor figuring out what happened with Ravalox. Naturally, he does, and the corrupt Time Lords are deposed and punished.
271* Doesn't the Doctor leaving with Mel at the end of ''Trial of a Time Lord'' constitute a weird paradox? If she was plucked out of time to testify about events in the Doctor's future, shouldn't the Doctor have not actually met her yet from his perspective?
272** Long answer 'yes' with an 'if', longer answer 'no' with a 'but'. But it's possible that the Time Lords simply erased his mind of the whole affair. The ExpandedUniverse novels just suggest that 'present' Sixth Doctor returned Mel to the point in time where she'd been taken from the company of 'future' Sixth Doctor, but still remembered what was going to happen.
273** The Doctor dropped Mel off. In his personal timeline he then met her when she met him for the first time in her personal timeline. Later she was dropped off so she could be taken to the Doctor's Trial. He then found her again after his earlier self dropped her off. They continued travelling and Time and the Rani picks up on this. Happy?
274(Then again, the whole "Trial" arc is very confusingly handled...)
275* The Doctor refers to the Valeyard with names such as 'Scrapyard' and 'Boneyard'. While they make sense to us, they wouldn't to the Time Lords: they are speaking Gallifreyan, and therefore wouldn't see the puns in the names.
276** Even if we can't suggest that Gallifreyian due to numerous temporal complexities sounds a lot like English (hey, they look human, stranger things have happened in the Whoniverse), why would the Doctor care about that? He's using the puns to express his overall disrespect and contempt for both the Valeyard and the legal proceedings he's been forced into, which would come across through his attitude even if the Time Lords didn't quite understand the reference. They're humourless and pompous killjoys, so they're not going to laugh either way.
277[[/folder]]
278
279[[folder: Dragonfire]]
280* The dark side of Svartos is meant to be an ice planet but no one is dressed for the cold; Ace is in shorts, Mel is in short sleeves and no coat and the little girl runs around in a dress.
281** It's also a shopping centre; presumably there's some kind of a heating system at work.
282** Added to which, snow is superb insulator, which is how igloos keep warm on the inside.
283** Maybe it's just not ''water'' ice. Svartos could have hydrodynamics based on a different liquid that freezes at shorts-and-short-sleeve temperature.
284* How did Ace communicate with the natives of Ice World? She was hurled untold years through time and space and there was no Tardis Communication Circuits around to help her. Must have been an interesting first few months.
285** Perhaps she landed at a point where universal translators existed? No one ever said that the TARDIS Communication Circuits are the ''only'' method of translation in the universe.
286** She's also been there a while. Perhaps she just learned the language the old-fashioned way.
287* The infamous episode 1 cliffhanger...why does it exist when there's a perfectly good cliff hanger they could have ended on. While the Doctor is pointlessly dangling for his life, the girls have just encountered the bloody dragon everyone had been talking about all episode!
288** Most classic Who stories generally try to set up a few cliffhangers to show each of the main characters being in some kind of peril or tense situation if they've been split up. Encountering the dragon was the peril for the girls, but the episode would still have needed to set up some kind of peril for the Doctor, particularly as he's the main character
289* Why did Mel leave? Seems there was some basic reason for it but it's as nebulous as the circumstances of her arrival.
290** I believe it has RealLifeWritesThePlot-Bonnie Langdford was planning on heading out anyway.
291* The little girl has bare legs and very visible knickers. Her mother didn't think things through, I gather?
292** Fashion Marches On?
293[[/folder]]
294
295[[folder: Doctor Who TV Movie]]
296* If Chang Lee had the only key, how the hell did the Master get into the TARDIS in the TV Movie? Did he find the spare key, or what? It's certainly plausible, but he probably wouldn't put it back when he was done.
297** Well, let's see. The first time we see him in the TARDIS it's as that blue snake thing and that's because the Doctor's giving his ashes a lift off of Skaro. The second time, he was with Lee, who had the key on him from when he gave the Doctor a lift to the hospital. In fact, ''the Doctor'' ended up having to use a spare key, which he kept in the POLICE BOX sign right behind the P.
298** In episode three of "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS26E4Survival Survival]]" the Master was in the middle of picking the lock when the Doctor caught up with him. Presumably this time he wasn't interrupted.
299* In the movie, Lee steals the Doctor's stuff. So where did he get the jelly babies? You can't get those in America, as far as I know.
300** The Doctor already had them before he arrived in San Francisco, presumably.
301** Actual jelly babies are scarce here, but there are a great many similar candies that the Doctor might take as second-best and mentally refer to the same way.
302** Watch the scene in Grace's office just before Lee walks in. There are two bags. Grace is holding a smaller one, the one with the jelly babies. The larger one, with the rest of the stuff, is on her desk. Presumably, when going through the larger bag, Grace took out the smaller one to look inside it. Lee took the larger bag before Grace could put it back. So, Grace hung onto it, then gave it back to the Doctor later.
303* So whatever happened with Ace?
304** In the EU, Ace either:
305** a) Dies heroically as a teenager saving the universe in some way or another (in a ''Magazine/DoctorWhoMagazine'' comic "Ground Zero").
306** b) Circa her mid-twenties, after a career as a combination of DarkActionGirl and NinetiesAntiHero when by most fan accounts she turned into TheScrappy, parts from the Doctor, who gives her her own time motorcycle and polices the timeline of Paris (according to the novel ''Set Piece'' by Kate Orman).
307** c) Changes her name to Mc Shane and still travels with the Doctor and another companion named Hector or "Hex" (in the ongoing audio plays from Creator/BigFinish).
308** d) Or eventually becomes the last-but-one of the Time Lords after the death (and we mean literal ''death'') of the Doctor in the {{Elseworlds}}-ish webcast ''Death Comes to Time''. (Another Time Lord, the Minister of Chance, carries on for the Doctor.) (This last came out prior to the new series revival.) Obviously, the ExpandedUniverse contradicts itself a lot. Most notoriously in the case of Ace.
309** e) Had the series not gotten cancelled, script editor Andrew Cartmel favored turning her into a Time Lady.
310*** So humans can be turned into Time Lords? The more you know...
311*** Although this has never been dealt with in the series, it is a common fan theory that "Time Lord" and "Gallifreyan" are not the same thing. Time Lord is a title received by going through the Academy, so a person who is not from Gallifrey could theoretically achieve it. On the other hand, the new series has referred to Time Lord as the Doctor's race, and he himself has mentioned having "Time Lord DNA", so this could all be utter nonsense.
312*** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS15E6TheInvasionOfTime The Invasion of Time]] features a group of "savage" Gallifreyans, ones who reside and survive outside the Citadel and clearly lack the cognitive abilites of their fellow Time Lords. Besides, it's been a recurring concept in the classic series that Gallifreyans were just another race of near-humans until Rassilon used his miraculous infinite source of energy, the Eye of Harmony[[note]]actually a black hole, which he somehow discovered how to "harvest"[[/note]] for the invention of all their time-related technology, including the [=TARDISes=], and to introduce and provide power to the regeneration process.
313*** The answer has been revealed! Recap/DoctorWhoS32E7AGoodManGoesToWar confirms it - Amy Pond's daughter Melody [[spoiler: aka River Song]], is human, but has got traces of Time Lord DNA - exposure to the time vortex can make you a Time Lord even when you're still in the womb!
314*** It can give you Time Lord features but even further messing around to try to create a Time Lord on the part of the villains only gave her ''some'' Time Lord DNA.
315*** Maybe "Gazing into the heart of time" and whatever other fun little ceremony the Time Lords put the adepts through messed up their DNA, and thus "Time Lord DNA" differs from Human AND Gallifreyan DNA and they are thus a species of their own?
316*** You know, a civilization that has mastered space and time, built magic boxes powered by black holes and can tow planets around probably wont have any issue bestowing regenerative properties onto a human. . . .
317*** Again, from the novels, this is kind of true but with nanomachines messing with DNA rather than the gazing. I don't imagine this will ever make it to the series though.
318*** "Listen" canonizes the notion that not all Gallifreyans are Time Lords, as [[spoiler: one of the Doctor's childhood caregivers poo-poos the idea that "that boy" could ever go to the Academy and achieve Time Lord status]].
319** According to ''Series/TheSarahJaneAdventures'' there's at least one Dorothy running about raising money for charity on earth. That could be Ace.
320*** Almost Definitely Ace, the charity is called [[FunWithAcronyms A Charitable Earth]] (ACE)
321*** Confirmed (that is, depending on your views of the canonity of advertising material) in the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgHRLi02JAc trailer]] for the Season 26 blu-ray boxset, which revolves around an older Ace standing in her office reflecting on her adventures with the Doctor.
322*** Also, during the Eleventh Doctor's era, he may have used "Time Lord DNA" since he was the last-Time Lord vs Gallifreyan is kind of a moot point at that time.
323** [[Recap/DoctorWho2022CENThePowerOfTheDoctor Apparently]] she had a falling out with the Doctor and ended up back on earth.
324* In the scene immediately following the Doctor's regeneration, when he falls to his knees and does the big "WHO AM I??"-- what the hell part of the hospital is he in? Why is there water on the floor? Why is everything broken?
325** It is presumably some sort of storage area. Most large building have a room somewhere that is full of very random, and often broken, things that no one knows what to do with. The water must be from a leak somewhere either in a pipe or where rain has come in.
326** If you'd permit me a WMG, I'd guess it was a wing of the hospital damaged by a recent earthquake.
327*** If I remember correctly, that's the explanation given in the novelization.
328*** My recollection is that it was an area of the hospital that was being redeveloped.
329* Why, for heaven's sake, does the Eye of Harmony from TARDIS open to the human eye? When people arguing about The Doctor being half-human, then they point on that scene, but no one ask why Eye of Harmony open to the human eye/human DNA in the first place? This is gallifreyan/time-lord technology...
330** Watsonian answer: The Doctor did it, back in [[Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho011TheApocalypseElement "The Apocalypse Element"]], using the only human eye on Gallifrey, Evelyn's, to lock the Daleks out of the Gallifreyan systems. Doylist answer: Obviously, at the time they meant the half-human revelation seriously, so it works for the Doctor's quote-unquote half-human eye and thus for fully-human eyes. No, with the quick abandoning of the half-human thing, it doesn't make sense on its own, which is why Big Finish patched it in passing.
331** Even taking the plot twist at face value it doesn't make all that sense given if the Doctor is half time lord and its primed to him then it should work for both Time Lords and Humans. The most likely explanation is that the Doctor just configured it to humans because he both trusts them and thinks them too stupid to obliterate reality with the eye (and if he ever needs to use it himself humans are the one race he probably has on hand). Where's time lord are a notoriously corrupt and dangerous species who definitely would try to use the eye hence protecting it from them is wise. Hell that's probably the entire reason its in his TARDIS and not under the citadel to begin with.
332* The Doctor is pronounced dead at 10:03PM, so why are the investors touring the hospital at that time of night?
333[[/folder]]

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