History Fridge / DoctorWhoClassicSeries

** Worse: given how his own people managed to stop him, Sutekh's powers aren't out of the ordinary for the Osirans, or at the very least they have a sizable fraction of his power. The Osirans, ''individually'', have the power to give incredibly powerful races like the Daleks and Time Lords a hard time... at least. It's a damn mercy that [[OmnicidalManiac Sutekh]] is the exception rather than the rule, since united the Osirians [[CurbStompBattle would curb-stomp]] [[PhysicalGod EVERYONE]].

** Sylvester McCoy's Doctor playing an active role in the Time War explains his actions in other stories as well. Why is this Doctor, more than any other, taking an active role in defeating ancients enemies like Fenric and the Gods of Ragnarok? Because he's frantically trying to deal with any powerful enemies that could conceivably ally with The Daleks against Gallifrey. He's also responsible for sending the Hand of Omega and the Nemesis statue back to Gallifrey--defeating potential enemies and stocking their own armories at the same time.

** Sylvester McCoy's Doctor playing an active role in the Time War explains his actions in other stories as well. Why is this Doctor, more than any other, taking an active role in defeating ancients enemies like Fenric and the Gods of Ragnarok? Because he's frantically trying to deal with any powerful enemies that could conceivably ally with The Daleks against Galifrey.

* The presence of the Watcher in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS18E7Logopolis Logopolis]]" makes a lot more sense if you consider how, in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS11E5PlanetOfTheSpiders Planet of the Spiders]]", Cho-Je turned out to be a mental projection from the Doctor's onetime guru, the Time Lord hermit who'd inspired him as a boy. When the Hermit regenerated in the Third Doctor's final episode, his projected self Cho Gee merged with him to assist the process; by the time the next Doctor died, Four had advanced in his own mental skills to the point where he could use the same technique to facilitate a difficult regeneration, albeit with a lot less artistry (hence, the Watcher ''not'' looking much like Creator/PeterDavison).

** Throughout the episode, the Doctor makes it ''absolutely clear'' that Sutekh is dangerous and must be destroyed at all costs. We only get to see glimpses of what he has done from the ravaged 1980s Earth, the things he makes people do and what the Doctor says, along with the things he makes Scarman do, and the only thing that could defeat him was the might of 740 Osirians, including Horus. Which begs the question: '''How dangerous is Sutekh at his full power?''' According to the Doctor, he can't defeat him and the Time Lords cannot defeat him either — which is coming from the race who later waged centuries of warfare against the Daleks! Furthermore, Sutekh would happily kill ''everything'' on the planet without a second thought — from reptiles to fish to humans — and he wouldn't stop there. He would wipe out ''every single existing thing'' in the universe — stars, planets, etc. He could annihilate the Daleks, crush the Ice Warriors, destroy the Sontarans, wipe out the Cybermen, burn the Autons, kill the Master, make the Silurians extinct and even take on the Great Intelligence (and very likely win.) And if he ever got his hands on a TARDIS, he could make companions or ''the Doctor himself'' no longer exist! Worst of all, he would not stop until the universe was ''completely empty.''

* In the famous 7-part epic "Inferno", the Doctor travels to an alternate world which he sees consumed by fire, returning to his own world just in time to prevent it from suffering the same terrible fate. This story works well enough on its own, but it got a little nod in the subsequent story "The Mind of Evil", where a computer can project your worst fear in front of you. For the Doctor, it's fire. At first it seems like a nice little reference, that the story "Inferno" was so traumatising for the Doctor he isn't able to forget about what happened... until you realise that being afraid of fire is a little too simple for someone like the Doctor, isn't it? By this point he had already encountered Autons, Daleks, Cybermen, Ice Warriors, Silurians, robot Yeti, and even THREE rogue Time Lords in the Monk, Master, and the War Chief and yet, out of all of those, the thing that scares him the most is FIRE. And why would that be? Because everything else is sentient to some degree. The Doctor is most famous for talking his way out of danger, no matter how difficult it may seem to do. In "Midnight", we saw what happened when this ability was removed from the Doctor entirely, and turned against him as a weapon. In "The Mind of Evil", we see that's what he's most afraid of, facing an enemy he can't talk to, can't reason with, can't argue with. Fire is an unrelenting force of total destruction and chaos, it doesn't pick enemies, it just destroys everything. That's why the Doctor is afraid of fire, because it's more dangerous and unpredictable than any of his other foes.
** It's also not improbable that Time Lords, being as time-sensitive as they are, may have some kind of foresight/future sight, even if not conscious (In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E2TheFiresOfPompeii "The Fires of Pompeii,"]] he tells Donna that he can see "everything that was, everything that could be, everything that must never be"). Maybe it's subconscious foreshadowing of Gallifrey burning?

* Grun, in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS9E2TheCurseOfPeladon The Curse of Peladon]]," does an awful lot of {{Flynning}} during his duel with the Doctor. The Doylist explanation is that the actor probably doesn't have a lot of staff training. However, the Watsonian reason may be that Peladon, being a technologically advanced society, probably doesn't have a lot of weapons training. Most likely, the post of King's Champion is an old-fashioned one, and there aren't a lot of duels to the death nowadays, with him being kept on out of tradition. Indeed, it's implied that the trial by combat is an ancient practice.

** The little girl who was hooked up to the Dalek battle computer. There is ''no way'' that was good for her sanity.

*** It's pretty clear that [[Recap/DoctorWhoS1E2TheDaleks "The Daleks"]] was the first time the Doctor encountered the Daleks. He certainly started off callous, but not to the point of standing by while a Dalek civil war took place on his adopted planet of residence. It ''is'' his fault that the Daleks came to Earth to get the Hand, however.
* In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS26E1Battlefield Battlefield]]", the Brigadier surviving what's set up as a HeroicSacrifice is actually quite a clever subversion of the trope. The whole serial has been about a conflict between Warriors, but the Brig's not a [[ProudWarriorRace Warrior]], he's an OldSoldier. At the end of the serial, [[SoldierVsWarrior it's the Soldier who sets things right]]. The Brig doesn't want to be a capital-H Hero who makes a HeroicSacrifice, he just wants to do the best he can, and go home to his flowerbeds. And he does.

** Worse: given how his own people managed to stop him, Sutekh's powers aren't out of the ordinary for the Osirians, or at the very least they have a sizable fraction of his power. The Osirians, ''individually'', have the power to give incredibly powerful races like the Daleks and Time Lords a hard time... at least. It's a damn mercy that [[OmnicidalManiac Sutekh]] is the exception rather than the rule, since united the Osirians [[CurbStompBattle would curb-stomp]] [[PhysicalGod EVERYONE]].

* In the famous 7-part epic "Inferno", the Doctor travels to an alternate world which he sees consumed by fire, returning to his own world just in time to prevent it from suffering the same terrible fate. This story works well enough on its own, but it got a little nod in the subsequent story "The Mind of Evil", where a computer can project your worst fear in front of you. For the Doctor, it's fire. At first it seems like a nice little reference, that the story "Inferno" was so traumatising for the Doctor he isn't able to forget about what happened... until you realise that being afraid of fire is a little too simple for someone like the Doctor, isn't it? By this point he had already encountered Autons, Daleks, Cybermen, Ice Warriors, Silurians, robot Yeti, and even TWO rogue Time Lords in both the Master and the War Chief and yet, out of all of those, the thing that scares him the most is FIRE. And why would that be? Because everything else is sentient to some degree. The Doctor is most famous for talking his way out of danger, no matter how difficult it may seem to do. In "Midnight", we saw what happened when this ability was removed from the Doctor entirely, and turned against him as a weapon. In "The Mind of Evil", we see that's what he's most afraid of, facing an enemy he can't talk to, can't reason with, can't argue with. Fire is an unrelenting force of total destruction and chaos, it doesn't pick enemies, it just destroys everything. That's why the Doctor is afraid of fire, because it's more dangerous and unpredictable than any of his other foes.

* A relatively minor one, regarding the Third Doctor. When he's trapped on Earth he comes across as far more of an aristocrat than the grumpy and conniving old man, or the relatively genial hobo who preceded him. It rather fits that when the freedom of "Time" is forcibly taken away from him, he really plays up the "Lord" to compensate.

** Even worse still — if the Dalek factions had been in the area for some time, waging war on each other, then they were there when the First Doctor left with Susan, Ian, and Barbara in toe ay back in "An Unearthly Child". Perhaps the First Doctor was watching their civil war and about to intervene, but got sidetracked by the two teachers intruding into his TARDIS, and completely forgot to go back and take care of the situation... for 6 regenerations. Of course, when he first left the junkyard he hadn't learned to become a hero yet either, so maybe the First Doctor wasn't bothered by the Dalek civil war, just... curious.

** According to supplementary materials and WordOfGod, "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS25E1RemembranceOfTheDaleks Remembrance of the Daleks]]" is considered the first official shot in the Time War. Why, when the Time Lords and Daleks have been engaged in taking shots at each other as early as "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS12E4GenesisOfTheDaleks Genesis of the Daleks]]?" Well, in this story, the Doctor identifies himself as "President-Elect of the High Council of Time Lords"[[note]] conveniently forgetting to mention he's been deposed ''in absentia'' twice[[/note]] before manipulating Davros into unleashing the Hand, and as such, this isn't just shadowy warfare any more: It's an official action by the leader of the Time Lords!

* At the end of "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS19E4TheVisitation The Visitation]]", the Doctor and his companions stop to toss all the boxes on the Terileptil's wagon into the Pudding Lane fire, to get rid of their dangerous contents. Said contents are ''live rats'': animals which, while they had to be eliminated to avert the Terileptils' unstoppable plague, had never asked to be used as vectors and hardly deserved to be ''burned alive'' as a method of disposal.

* A classic series one for y'all; the end of "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS14E2TheHandOfFear The Hand of Fear]]", where the Fourth Doctor leaves Sarah back on Earth rather than taking her to Gallifrey, makes a lot more sense when you remember that the last time the Doctor introduced humans to his fellow Time Lords (albeit unwillingly), their response was to wipe their minds of all the adventures they'd had together after their first and dump them back home. Upon having to return to Gallifrey, the Doctor didn't want Sarah to suffer the same fate as Jamie and Zoë, and so decided to leave her behind. Which adds increased poignancy to their final conversation:

* In the famous 8-part epic "Inferno", the Doctor travels to an alternate world which he sees consumed by fire, returning to his own world just in time to prevent it from suffering the same terrible fate. This story works well enough on its own, but it got a little nod in the subsequent story "The Mind of Evil", where a computer can project your worst fear in front of you. For the Doctor, it's fire. At first it seems like a nice little reference, that the story "Inferno" was so traumatising for the Doctor he isn't able to forget about what happened... until you realise that being afraid of fire is a little too simple for someone like the Doctor, isn't it? By this point he had already encountered Autons, Daleks, Cybermen, Ice Warriors, Silurians, robot Yeti, and even TWO rogue Time Lords in both the Master and the War Chief and yet, out of all of those, the thing that scares him the most is FIRE. And why would that be? Because everything else is sentient to some degree. The Doctor is most famous for talking his way out of danger, no matter how difficult it may seem to do. In "Midnight", we saw what happened when this ability was removed from the Doctor entirely, and turned against him as a weapon. In "The Mind of Evil", we see that's what he's most afraid of, facing an enemy he can't talk to, can't reason with, can't argue with. Fire is an unrelenting force of total destruction and chaos, it doesn't pick enemies, it just destroys everything. That's why the Doctor is afraid of fire, because it's more dangerous and unpredictable than any of his other foes.

* In ''Recap/DoctorWhoS24E3DeltaAndTheBannermen'', Goronwy is implied to have knowledge a normal human shouldn't, such as giving a smile and a wink when the TARDIS disappears right in front of his eyes, and in general his DissonantSerenity throughout the story. But then ''Recap/DoctorWhoS30E12TheStolenEarth'' has the Doctor reveal that some bees are actually alien, and very intelligent at that. Presumably, the bees have told Goronwy everything he needs to know! Indeed, he indicates this himself:

* In the famous 8-part epic "Inferno", the Doctor travels to an alternate world which he sees consumed by fire, returning to his own world just in time to prevent it from suffering the same terrible fate. This story works well enough on its own, but it got a little nod in the subsequent story "The Mind of Evil", where a computer can project your worst fear in front of you. For the Doctor, it's fire. At first it seems like a nice little reference, that the story "Inferno" was so traumatising for the Doctor he isn't able to forget about what happened... until you realise that being afraid of fire is a little too simple for someone like the Doctor, isn't it? By this point he had already encountered Autons, Daleks, Cybermen, Ice Warriors, Silurians, robot Yeti, and even TWO rogue Time Lords in both the Master and the War Chief and yet, out of all of those, the thing that scares him the most is FIRE. And why would that be? Because everything else is sentient to some degree. The Doctor is most famous for talking his way out of danger, no matter how difficult it may seem to do. In "Midnight", we saw what happened when this ability was removed from the Doctor entirely, and turned against him as a weapon. In "The Mind of Evil", we see that's what he's most afraid of, facing an enemy he can't talk to, can't reason with, can't argue with. Fire is an unrelenting force of total destruction and chaos, it doesn't pick enemies, it just destroys everything. That's why the Doctor is afraid of fire, because it's more dangerous and unpredictable than any of his other foes.

* It most definitely was coincidence, but the final serial "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS26E4Survival Survival]]" does have a solid Bookend for the Doctor and his journey since the beginning of the show. In his very first story, he was willing to bash a caveman's head in to survive, but was shamed by Ian into showing mercy. Here, he's about to bash the Master's head in the same way, but this time he stops himself and comes to his senses. If we fight like animals, we die like animals. One way or another, humans helped the Doctor find... well, his humanity, or rather his compassion for living things.
** Ace's arc also ties into the Doctor's as well. She felt such a thrill from the animal planet all she wanted to do is run, just like the Doctor did from Gallifrey. At the end, he tells her the best of the animal planet will never leave her. Thanks to his fondness for humans, the best of the Earth is always carried with the Doctor even when the planet is no more (see "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E2TheEndOfTheWorld The End of the World]]"). And in the end, they carry on as only they could: going back to the TARDIS for more adventure, just like we hoped.

* At first it seems bizarre that the Doctor would say something as breathtakingly racist as his "Red Indian" rant in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS1E1AnUnearthlyChild An Unearthly Child]]". But given how Time Lord society is later portrayed - corrupt, conceited, dismissive of lesser races - it's perhaps understandable that he latched onto the equivalent attitudes of the planet he'd been marooned on, despite the fact that he'd abandoned Gallifrey for those very reasons. Part of his development as a character (in addition to getting rid of the impulse to commit self-serving murder) was recognizing that he was not as different from the other Time Lords as he'd have liked to believe, and striving to be better.

** Which also explains his sexist comments in "Twice Upon a Time!"

* It seems hard to imagine that the Doctor and the Master were ever friends, right? But look at the First Doctor - originally the kind of person who'd kill an injured person for slowing him down. That sounds more like a friend of the Master, now doesn't it? [[AudioPlay/BigFinishDoctorWho Big Finish]] runs with this idea in the story "Master," a kind of "Human Nature" for the Master. [[spoiler: It's the Doctor, not the Master, who commits the first murder. And then Death herself gets involved.]]
* "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS18E4StateOfDecay State of Decay]]" seems silly at first, with the vampires that look so much like something out of a Film/HammerHorror film. However, it makes perfect sense - they were originally astronauts from ''earth'', and had ''deliberately'' modeled themselves (and the whole set-up of the village and the tower) on their own perception of vampires.

* "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS25E1RemembranceOfTheDaleks Remembrance of the Daleks]]" :
** There are a crapload of blatant InternalHomage elements in the serial--the presence of the Coal Hill School and Foreman junkyard, Ace finding Susan's book on the French Revolution, and so forth--but there's a marvelously subtle one when Ace, talking to a new friend, expresses confusion over the monetary system because she's in 1963 so it's pre-decimalisation. Susan, in "An Unearthly Child", gives a wrong answer in class because she's forgotten decimalisation hasn't happened yet.
** At one point Mike Smith is right in the sights of a Dalek that has a direct shot aimed at him -- and it misses. Obviously, we can chalk this up to simply a moment of extreme good luck on Mike's part or the Dalek being a very poor shot -- except the story later reveals that Mike is a traitor informing on the military's actions to the neo-Nazi group affiliated with one of the Dalek factions. It's possible that the Dalek was under orders to 'make it look convincing' but that Mike, being a valuable source of intelligence, wasn't to be harmed -- at least, not until he had outlived his usefulness.

* In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS11E1TheTimeWarrior The Time Warrior]]", the Third Doctor states that he has met Sontarans before. Given that this was the first time we viewers saw a Sontaran onscreen, we might naturally wonder when the Doctor met them. But watch 'The Two Doctors', and you may have your answer - if you believe in the 'Season 6B theory', then the Second Doctor may have been the one who first encountered Sontarans.
* A small but weird point... when one of his companions pointed out that Time Lords look human, he replied by saying that Time Lords came billions of years earlier, so really humans look Time Lord. But is there more to it than that? Before Rassilon, there were all kinds of uber-powerful non-anthropomorphic aliens running around. Then Rassilon shows up and there's all these wars against the Nimon, the Nestene Consciousness, the Great Vampires, etc. Over the course of the series, that's a lot of SealedEvilInACan that the Time Lords locked away. Now suddenly most aliens are human-looking, and the Time Lords are in charge but suddenly have a Prime Directive. But they're ''time travelers''. So during their rise to power they fight all these time wars with their rivals. Then once they win, they re-arrange time to suit themselves, making themselves undisputed masters of reality, and making sure that most aliens are basically inferior Time Lord look-alikes. Even the Daleks started out human-looking. Then, once they have history the way they like it, they make it illegal for anyone to meddle in history so that they can keep themselves Number One for eternity. NiceJobBreakingItHero. This is canon in the Creator/BigFinish ExpandedUniverse.
* In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS25E2TheHappinessPatrol The Happiness Patrol]]", the Doctor defeats a ColdSniper [[TalkingTheMonsterToDeath by talking to him]]. At first, this seems like he used some kind of psychic powers. However, it was not, it was reverse psychology. The gunman was used to killing from a distance; to picking off abstract forms through his scope without ever thinking of them as people. He'd never had to look someone in the eye while he was killing them, and the Doctor knew it and used that against him. When he was confronted with the fact that he was killing people, he could no longer bring himself to do it, and thus stood down.
* In the [[Recap/DoctorWhoTVMTheTVMovie Doctor Who movie]] the seventh Doctor is forced to land when the escaped Master sabotages his TARDIS. When he steps out of the TARDIS, he ends up in the middle of a gang war and is gunned down on the spot. Remember what was wrong with the TARDIS? The screen said "critical timing malfunction". In other words, ''bad timing''. The reason the Doctor isn't killed every time he first sets his foot on a new planet is because his ship is ''programmed to have good timing''.
* Also from the [=McGann=] movie, when Grace and the Doctor walk into the TARDIS, within moments she understands the concept of the interior and the exterior being in separate dimensions. The Doctor seems surprised by this. But, just before Grace says this, she's rubbing her wrist where she was burned by the Master's...discharge. Conclusion: this was the first sign that the Master was controlling her. And, about a minute later, she's got black eyes and is bashing the Doctor with the neutron ram.

* The character of Zoë Heriot seems like human {{Zeerust}} -- who would bother [[{{Franchise/Dune}} training a human to be a walking computer?]] But when you consider how often advanced computers [[AIIsACrapshoot go insane and attempt to destroy humanity]], it makes sense that [[{{Franchise/Dune}} people would want a human backup,]] just in case. Judging by what she does to the computer in "The Invasion", it's possible she was engineered as a weapon ''against'' advanced computers.
* The single most brilliant line ever uttered in DW as a throwaway joke has insane levels within it, and was unsurprisingly written by Creator/DouglasAdams. When the Doctor explains the TARDIS being "bigger on the inside than the outside" as "dimensionally transcendental." From a canonical viewpoint, this is true, as the inner portions of the TARDIS exist in a different dimension (as he attempts to explain to Leela). Therefore she transcends (overlaps) dimensions. On another note, however...the word "transcendental" also refers to something being beyond its properties. Her internal size transcends that of her outer plasmic shell: literally "Bigger on the inside than the outside"

* Steven and the Doctor are both eager to take Dodo with them in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E5TheMassacre The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve]]", the Doctor remarking that she reminds him of Susan and Steven remarking that she has the same last name as the girl he befriended in Renaissance France - Anne Chaplet - and could possibly be a descendent of her. Surnames at that time were exclusively passed down patrilinearly, meaning that if Anne had descendants, they would take her husband's name... unless Anne had mothered children out of wedlock. This is something that would be very, very rare, unless Steven [[GirlOfTheWeek had some reason]] [[BoldlyComing to believe it had happened]]...

* The First Doctor's character was originally intended to be a grumpy old man, stubborn and set-in his-ways, but very wise. However, in hindsight, it makes more sense to view him a young man who acts impulsively without thinking, but is very clever. In this light, many of his actions (stealing an antiquated TARDIS that he didn't know how to operate, running away from Gallifrey with his granddaughter, abducting two humans, nearly killing an innocent man with a rock to save himself, nearly getting himself, his granddaughter, and his companions killed from radiation poisoning because he wanted to go exploring, drugging his companions and accusing them of sabotage, threatening to abandon his companions during the French Revolution, and leaving his granddaughter on post-Dalek invasion Earth, to name a few) make more sense: He wasn't a foolish old man; he was acting without thinking. Similarly, he's not wise, but very clever: On both of his multi-Doctor stories, he constantly insults his future incarnations without thinking that he would someday be receiving those insults. Yet in both cases he comes up with the plan to save the day, showing his cleverness.

* THE ENTIRE SERIES, every adventure, every single incident, the universe, time itself, and the freaking MULTIVERSE being saved. All because Ian and Barbara were suspicious of Susan. If they didn't follow her to the TARDIS, in turn accidentally triggering The Doctor's series of adventures, the Doctor and Susan would probably "still" be in that junkyard having done nothing for the last 50 years. Since the Time War would have likely never happened since the Daleks first discovered the Time Lords through The Doctor.

* A one-off joke in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E10TheWarMachines The War Machines]]" becomes a bit of Fridge Brilliance thanks to modern ''Doctor Who.'' At the start of that serial, the TARDIS arrives in the sixties and the Doctor places an Out of Order sign on the TARDIS to, as he explains to Dodo, prevent anyone from trying to use it as an actual police box. Indeed, exactly that happens as a FunnyBackgroundEvent as the Doctor is saying this. What turns this into Fridge Brilliance is modern ''Who's'' introduction of the Perception Filter, which makes people not notice an object's presence. They've consistently been shown to stop working once someone is aware of it, and to rely on the fact that no one is actively looking for the filtered object in the first place. Obviously, it doesn't come up here because this is decades before the idea ever came about, but at the same time, would a perception filter have even ''worked'' in this instance? Police boxes were a fact of life in 1960's London. Were they needed, people such as that policeman ''would'' be actively looking for it, possibly allowing them to spot the TARDIS, filter or not. The Out of Order sign suddenly becomes more than just a simple gag.

** He's the only one who dies of old age. And if you're going to bring up one and war, one had a huge energy drain, and we don't know how long the time war lasted. And it's pretty obvious that he doesn't know how old he is in new who. The rest were killed.

** Even more FridgeHorror from that same serial-- [[spoiler:both factions of ]] Daleks have been in the area for quite some time -- how many people were made slaves to the Daleks, like the little girl and the teacher from the school? How many people were simply killed outright because they were unlucky enough to cross paths with a Dalek? Also? The area wasn't evacuated until AFTER the first skirmish in the serial, and there are people standing around looking at the commotion when the dead soldiers are discovered. How many civilians got killed when the Daleks started throwing around energy beams? One of the onlookers is a woman with a baby!
*** Although in the example of the first skirmish where the Dalek is revealed, most of these onlookers are moved well out of the way of danger by police and soldiers before the shooting starts, so chances are they're okay at least.
** Even worse still - if the Dalek factions had been in the area for some time, waging war on each other, then they were there when the First Doctor left with Susan, Ian, and Barbara in toe ay back in "An Unearthly Child". Perhaps the First Doctor was watching their civil war and about to intervene, but got sidetracked by the two teachers intruding into his TARDIS, and completely forgot to go back and take care of the situation...for 6 regenerations. Of course, when he first left the junkyard he hadn't learned to become a hero yet either, so maybe the First Doctor wasn't bothered by the Dalek civil war, just...curious.
* Here's one from the Doctor Who movie ("The Enemy Within"): remember how the Seventh Doctor was begging Grace not to operate? Remember how he "woke up" during surgery? Well, because they have two hearts, Time Lords also have a respiratory bypass system; in other words, any anaesthetic you give them isn't going to last very long--[[spoiler: and neither are any painkillers...]]
** Even under the best of circumstances, heart surgery after being shot is going to require massive amounts of transfused blood. Transfused ''human'' blood. Which would explain the ''very'' delayed and glitchy regeneration into Eight, but also why he was at peace with dying entirely at the end of that life, and why major intervention was required to regenerate him into War.
** The above leads to possible FridgeBrilliance. Why does the Doctor claim he's half-human? Why does the TARDIS seem to confirm this? Because he's still got human DNA swimming around in his system due to blood transfusions and his regeneration -- and link to the TARDIS -- is still glitching up in an attempt to cope with it.
*** Except that he didn't just claim to be half-human, but half-human ''on his mother's side''. That can't be explained away by a botched blood transfusion. His human heritage is only admitted surreptitiously to someone who wouldn't believe him, and while in the throes of a new body with a much more open personality than the previous one- he was ''revelling'' in telling people about his past, a past that he must have suddenly realized wasn't really secret for any good reason. He still knew not to tell anyone who'd actually believe him about his human mother though. In light of ''Hell Bent'', his secrecy makes a lot more sense- the Doctor ''is'' a HalfHumanHybrid, but it's his ultimate secret. Fewer people know he's half human than know his real name! Presumably, the reason why he's kept it so secret all this time has something to do with all those prophecies.

* The Meddling Monk's plan to alter English history would have created HUGE ripples. It is even doubtful that Vicki would have existed--and she's Cressida. Furthermore, genetic analysis has revealed that the Anglo-Saxons actually assimilated the Celts and Romans of Britain into their culture, so some of these villagers might be ''descended'' from Vicki. Ware [[ClockRoaches Reapers]].

* "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS13E3PyramidsOfMars Pyramids Of Mars]]":
** Throughout the episode, the Doctor makes it ''absolutely clear'' that Sutekh is dangerous and must be destroyed at all costs. We only get to see glimpses of what he has done from the ravaged 1980s Earth, the things he makes people do and what the Doctor says, along with the things he makes Scarman do, and the only thing that could defeat him was the might of 740 Osirians, including Horus. Which begs the question: '''How dangerous is Sutekh at his full power?''' According to the Doctor, he can't defeat him and the Time Lords cannot defeat him either-which is coming from the race who later waged centuries of warfare against the Daleks! Furthermore, Sutekh would happily kill ''everything'' on the planet without a second thought-from reptiles to fish to humans-and he wouldn't stop there. He would wipe out ''every single existing thing'' in the universe-stars, planets, etc. He could annihilate the Daleks, crush the Ice Warriors, destroy the Sontarans, wipe out the Cybermen, burn the Autons, kill the Master, make the Silurians extinct and even take on the Great Intelligence (and very likely win.) And if he ever got his hands on a TARDIS, he could make companions or ''the Doctor himself'' no longer exist! Worst of all, he would not stop until the universe was ''completely empty.''
** Worse: given how his own people managed to stop him, Sutekh's powers aren't out of the ordinary for the Osirians, or at the very least they have a sizable fraction of his power. The Osirians, ''individually'', have the power to give incredibly powerful races like the Daleks and Time Lords a hard time...at least. It's a damn mercy that [[OmnicidalManiac Sutekh]] is the exception rather than the rule, since united the Osirians [[CurbStompBattle would curb-stomp]] [[PhysicalGod EVERYONE.]]
** Which begs the question: If Horus and his fellow non-evil Osirans successfully locked Sutekh away and left him there, and Sutekh is the "Last Osiran" when the Fourth Doctor encounters him, then ''what was powerful enough to kill all the others''...?
* In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS21E6TheCavesOfAndrozani The Caves of Androzani]]", the Spectrox Toxemia knocks out Peri when she enters the 'slow paralysis of of the nerves' stage. It doesn't knock out the doctor at all. Ok, he's weak and on the floor when he 'dies' but he's awake. Now, we could logically extend this to a lot of other diseases/poisons. Spectrox toxemia weakens and kills you, but it's never actually stated that it causes you a great deal of pain (other than cramps.) What does the Doctor experience with all the poisons which causes you more pain than just cramps. Is he awake for the whole time?
* Here's one from the very first story, "An Unearthly Child". The junkyard the Doctor and Susan are staying is owned by I.M. Foreman, which is presumably why Susan goes by the name Foreman. Here's where the horror starts - Susan doesn't seem to have realised that she is posing as I.M. Foreman's grand-daughter and has dragged this poor junkyard merchant into her life. But this is the reason why it's so awful: one night Susan, along with two of her teachers, disappear from their lives, having last been seen at the junkyard. Which means I.M. Foreman has the disappearance of these three people, one of whom claims to be his grand-daughter, placed at his doorstep. It can't have ended well for I.M. Foreman - every time the Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara have fun on their travels, spare a thought for this man that they all threw under a bus when they left.

* The Zygons' plan to alter the Earth would have caused the Krynoid pods to germinate with Thete not knowing about it until far too late. And it's the same author--and director--for both stories.
* It most definitely was coincidence, but the final serial "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS26E4Survival Survival]]" does have a solid Bookend for The Doctor and his journey since the beginning of the show. In his very first story, he was willing to bash a caveman's head in to survive, but was shamed by Ian into showing mercy. Here, he's about to bash The Master's head in the same way, but this time he stops himself and comes to his senses. If we fight like animals, we die like animals. One way or another, humans helped The Doctor find...well, his humanity, or rather his compassion for living things.
** Ace's arc also ties into the Doctor's as well. She felt such a thrill from the animal planet all she wanted to do is run, just like the Doctor did from Gallifrey. At the end, he tells her the best of the animal planet will never leave her. Thanks to his fondness for humans, the best of the Earth is always carried with The Doctor even when the planet is no more (see "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E2TheEndOfTheWorld The End of the World]]"). And in the end, they carry on as only they could: going back to the TARDIS for more adventure, just like we hoped.
* In the famous 8-part epic 'Inferno', the Doctor travels to an alternate world which he sees consumed by fire, returning to his own world just in time to prevent it from suffering the same terrible fate. This story works well enough on it's own, but it got a little nod in the subsequent story 'The Mind Of Evil', where a computer can project your worst fear in front of you. For the Doctor, it's fire. At first it seems like a nice little reference, that the story 'Inferno' was so traumatising for the Doctor he isn't able to forget about what happened... until you realise that being afraid of fire is a little too simple for someone like the Doctor, isn't it? By this point he had already encountered Autons, Daleks, Cybermen, Ice Warriors, Silurians, robot Yeti, and even TWO rogue Time Lords in both the Master and the War Chief and yet, out of all of those, the thing that scares him the most is FIRE. And why would that be? Because everything else is sentient to some degree. The Doctor is most famous for talking his way out of danger, no matter how difficult it may seem to do. In 'Midnight', we saw what happened when this ability was removed from the Doctor entirely, and turned against him as a weapon. In 'The Mind Of Evil', we see that's what he's most afraid of, facing an enemy he can't talk to, can't reason with, can't argue with. Fire is an unrelenting force of total destruction and chaos, it doesn't pick enemies, it just destroys everything. That's why the Doctor is afraid of fire, because it's more dangerous and unpredictable than any of his other foes.

* A classic series one for y'all; the end of "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS14E2TheHandOfFear The Hand of Fear]]", where the Fourth Doctor leaves Sarah back on Earth rather than taking her to Gallifrey, makes a lot more sense when you remember that the last time the Doctor introduced humans to his fellow Time Lords (albeit unwillingly), their response was to wipe their minds of all the adventures they'd had together and dump them back home where they wouldn't remember him. Upon having to return to Gallifrey, the Doctor didn't want Sarah to suffer the same fate as Jamie and Zoë, and so decided to leave her behind. Which adds increased poignancy to their final conversation:

** Ace's arc also ties into the Doctor's as well. She felt such a thrill from the animal planet all she wanted to do is run, just like the Doctor did from Gallifrey. At the end, he tells her the best of the animal planet will never leave her. Thanks to his fondness for humans, the best of the Earth is always carried with The Doctor even when the planet is no more (see "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E2TheEndOfTheWorld The End of the World]]"). And in the end, they carry on as only they could: going back to the TARDIS for more adventure, just like we hoped.

* At first it seems bizarre that the Doctor would say something as breathtakingly racist as his "Red Indian" rant in "An Unearthly Child". But given how Time Lord society is later portrayed - corrupt, conceited, dismissive of lesser races - it's perhaps understandable that he latched onto the equivalent attitudes of the planet he'd been marooned on, despite the fact that he'd abandoned Gallifrey for those very reasons. Part of his development as a character (in addition to getting rid of the impulse to commit self-serving murder) was recognizing that he was not as different from the other Time Lords as he'd have liked to believe, and striving to be better.

* ''State of Decay'' seems silly at first, with the vampires that look so much like something out of a Film/HammerHorror film. However, it makes perfect sense - they were originally astronauts from ''earth'', and had ''deliberately'' modeled themselves (and the whole set-up of the village and the tower) on their own perception of vampires.
* Physiognomy is the belief that you can determine someone's personality by looking at their facial features. The Fourth Doctor in ''Robot'', when he looked in the mirror just after regenerating and said, "As for the physiognomy..." At first you think, "He used the wrong word! He should have said ''physiology!''" But he didn't make a mistake. He said exactly what he meant to say. ''He was looking at his new facial features to try to figure out who he was.''

* ''Ghost Light.'' Really, [[spoiler: the entire serial is a commentary upon evolution in general, as well as a massive tribute to the era that brought up the theory - the Victorian Era. And if this wasn't enough, the entire story is disguised as a freaking ''alien invasion'' told with the tropes of a ''Victorian-era horror story''... and finally, we have a story that also has the companion Ace dealing with her past and moving on with her life, as ''the entire theme of the story is also about change in general'']]! It's just such a shame that this serial almost doesn't make sense without multiple viewings or [[AllThereInTheManual seeing the documentary and commentary attached to the DVD release...]]
* "Remembrance of the Daleks":

* In 'The Time Warrior', the Third Doctor states that he has met Sontarans before. Given that this was the first time we viewers saw a Sontaran onscreen, we might naturally wonder when the Doctor met them. But watch 'The Two Doctors', and you may have your answer - if you believe in the 'Season 6B theory', then the Second Doctor may have been the one who first encountered Sontarans.

* In "The Happiness Patrol", the Doctor defeats a ColdSniper [[TalkingTheMonsterToDeath by talking to him]]. At first, this seems like he used some kind of psychic powers. However, it was not, it was reverse psychology. The gunman was used to killing from a distance; to picking off abstract forms through his scope without ever thinking of them as people. He'd never had to look someone in the eye while he was killing them, and the Doctor knew it and used that against him. When he was confronted with the fact that he was killing people, he could no longer bring himself to do it, and thus stood down.

* A classic series one for y'all; the end of "The Hand of Fear", where the Fourth Doctor leaves Sarah back on Earth rather than taking her to Gallifrey, makes a lot more sense when you remember that the last time the Doctor introduced humans to his fellow Time Lords (albeit unwillingly), their response was to wipe their minds of all the adventures they'd had together and dump them back home where they wouldn't remember him. Upon having to return to Gallifrey, the Doctor didn't want Sarah to suffer the same fate as Jamie and Zoë, and so decided to leave her behind. Which adds increased poignancy to their final conversation:

* The single most brilliant line ever uttered in DW as a throwaway joke has insane levels within it, and was unsurprisingly written by Douglas Adams. When the Doctor explains the TARDIS being "bigger on the inside than the outside" as "dimensionally transcendental." From a canonical viewpoint, this is true, as the inner portions of the TARDIS exist in a different dimension (as he attempts to explain to Leela). Therefore she transcends (overlaps) dimensions. On another note, however...the word "transcendental" also refers to something being beyond its properties. Her internal size transcends that of her outer plasmic shell: literally "Bigger on the inside than the outside"
* In 'The Deadly Assassin', we learn that the emaciated Master was found by Chancellor Goth on the planet Terserus, and then brought back to Gallifrey. In the parody episode 'The Curse of Fatal Death', the alternate Ninth Doctor (Rowan Atkinson) explains that the Terserans were a flatulent race who were wiped out when they discovered fire. Given his record for causing as much trouble as he can in the cosmos, it would be completely in character for the Master to have been the one who introduced the Terserans to fire, whereupon he was also engulfed in flames, leading him to the freakish burnt zombie state in which Goth found him.
* In "Pyramids of Mars", when Sarah sees the vision of Sutekh in the TARDIS it is assumed that this is of the imprisoned Sutekh. But consider that Sutekh is supposed to have lost his powers to influence the outside world while imprisoned. Then consider that in the vision, Sutekh is not wearing his mask, and the TARDIS is going back through time when it occurs: perhaps the vision is of Sutekh *after* he escaped.
* In "Genesis of the Daleks", the Doctor starts the Time War. He also travels to Skaro's past to do so via a "time ring" provided by the Time Lords rather than by using the TARDIS, which is brilliant because Sexy can see the consequences of the Doctor's actions and would ''not'' have willingly brought him there.
* The very first episode of which the Daleks appeared, "The Daleks", had some nice irony: despite the Daleks being Nazi parallels, the peaceful race they'd been going to war against since their creation were blond-haired, blue eyed Aryans. Not to mention that [[TorturedMonster the actual Dalek]] is physically the farthest thing from what the actual Nazis desired...
* [[UnreliableCanon If you assume Time Lords have two hearts in their first incarnation, rather than growing a second one upon regeneration]], a line in ''The Tenth Planet'' becomes fridge brilliance. When the Doctor is passed out, Ben checks on him and says his pulse is normal. If the Doctor's pulse is normal ''for a human'', one of his hearts must have stopped. No wonder he is so weak for the rest of the serial and dies at the end.

* So, why was the Doctor happy to take Jamie aboard the TARDIS when he'd quite recently near-destroyed his friendship with Steven by leaving Anne Chaplet to face the St Bartholemew's Massacre? He wouldn't take Anne because he'd so recently rescued Katarina from another massacre (the fall of Troy), only to see her perish soon after in a future world she couldn't understand. But he then took Dodo instead, only to see her cold nearly wipe out the human race in the far future. He must have reasoned from that that taking companions from any era had risks, so why not an 18th century Highlander he recused from the massacres that followed the Battle of Culloden?
* Steven and the Doctor are both eager to take Dodo with them in "The Massacre", the Doctor remarking that she reminds him of Susan and Steven remarking that she has the same last name as the girl he befriended in Renaissance France - Anne Chaplet - and could possibly be a descendent of her. Surnames at that time were exclusively passed down patrilinearly, meaning that if Anne had descendants, they would take her husband's name... unless Anne had mothered children out of wedlock. This is something that would be very, very rare, unless Steven [[GirlOfTheWeek had some reason]] [[BoldlyComing to believe it had happened]]...

* The change in delegates in "The Daleks Master Plan" seems odd, with Zephon turning up late despite apparently having convinced Beaus to join. Considering Mavic Chen claims there have recently been attempts to displace him it makes sense he couldn't leave the Fifth Galaxy for the first meeting.

* The presence of the Watcher in "Logopolis" makes a lot more sense if you consider how, in "Planet of the Spiders", Cho-Je turned out to be a mental projection from the Doctor's onetime guru, the Time Lord hermit who'd inspired him as a boy. When the Hermit regenerated in the Third Doctor's final episode, his projected self Cho Gee merged with him to assist the process; by the time the next Doctor died, Four had advanced in his own mental skills to the point where he could use the same technique to facilitate a difficult regeneration, albeit with a lot less artistry (hence, the Watcher ''not'' looking much like Peter Davison).

* One of the goofier premises for a classic-series episode, that of "The Moonbase", makes a ''lot'' more sense in the wake of "Kill the Moon". Even allowing that a device like the Gravitron could influence Earth's weather by manipulating its tides as described, building it on the Moon of all places seems like blatant ScifiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale: it's so far away as to make servicing the thing or rotating staff ''extremely'' difficult, compared to what an orbital station or automatic satellite would require. So why put the thing on the Moon? Presumably, because after the gravitational disruptions, earthquakes and extreme tides brought about by the original Moon's hatching in 2047, humanity didn't dare let it happen again! So the Gravitron was built (maybe by Torchwood or UNIT) to stabilize any possible variations in the new Moon-egg's gravity; its later use to fiddle with Earth's weather was just a fringe benefit.
* The Daleks from "Death to the Daleks" seem bound and determined to live out ContrivedStupidityTropes, gliding obliviously into traps and falling prey to some really obvious trickery. In the wake of "Into the Dalek", where it's confirmed that Daleks' brains are interlinked with computers programmed to edit their memories and thoughts, it seems more plausible: while the City couldn't drain all of a Dalek's power, it may have drained enough to inhibit that linkage and cut the Daleks off from the computers they'd usually depend upon to make tactically-advantageous decisions. Not used to thinking without such enhancements, they started making mistakes they normally wouldn't have.
* Fans have been poking fun at the ungainly frill-and-shoulderpad collars used as formal dress by Time Lord officials ever since they were introduced. WordOfGod asserts that these costume parts were originally ''designed'' to make Tom Baker look ridiculous when he wore one. However, if this style of dress is especially ancient by even Gallifreyan standards, there could be a logical reason for it: those ornate collars would, if trimmed back a bit and hardened, provide a great deal of protection for someone's neck. So it's plausible that they're an elaboration of neck-armor that was worn by Ancient Gallifreyans during their war with the Great Vampires and their throat-chomping minions.
* In "The Mind Robber", the white robots are reused props from a production of ''[[Literature/IRobot Reason]]'' by Creator/IsaacAsimov. In-Universe, that suggests that they're repurposed fictional characters just like Gulliver and the Karkus. Moreover, in both stories their allegiance is only to TheMaster.

* In "The Time Monster", Stu retains his 25 year-old consciousness when he gets superaged into an Octogenerian. Which means that Sgt. Benton ''also'' retains his adult consciousness when he gets de-aged into a baby! No wonder he won't eat the marmalade sandwiches mashed up in cold tea.

* In "The End of Time", the Tenth Doctor sums up regeneration as the old incarnation "dying" and a new one being born. Meaning that when the Second Doctor was forced to regenerate by the Time Lords back in "The War Games", it was basically them executing that particular incarnation.

* "The Rescue": Just why '''did''' Bennett keep Vicki alive and go through his over-complicated masquerade as Koquillion? Fanon has some {{Squick}}y [[WifeHusbandry answers]].
* It has been stated many times that the Doctor's interference in Genesis of the Daleks started the Time War. But when you think about it, the Doctor is not only to blame for the Time War itself, but also for every other appearance of Daleks not set on Skaro. Remember, before meeting him, the Kaleds believed Skaro to be the only inhabited planet in the universe.
* In ''Terror of the Autons'', the Master plans to use living plastic to take over the Earth. Although plastic bottles weren't common ''yet'' in that era, plastic cups ''were'' common, esp. as sippy cups and baby bottles! Crosses with FridgeBrilliance when you realize that attacking Earth by killing children was his plan all along, as he did take over a ''toy factory"! (And NightmareFuel for any kids watching the episode!) Crosses over into AdultFear of the NightmareFuel sort when you remember the Master talking about "450,000 people" dying as a result of his plans.

* ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS13E3PyramidsOfMars Pyramids Of Mars]]'':

* In Caves of Androzani the Spectrox Toxemia knocks out Peri when she enters the 'slow paralysis of of the nerves' stage. It doesn't knock out the doctor at all. Ok, he's weak and on the floor when he 'dies' but he's awake. Now, we could logically extend this to a lot of other diseases/poisons. Spectrox toxemia weakens and kills you, but it's never actually stated that it causes you a great deal of pain (other than cramps.) What does the doctor experience with all the poisons which causes you more pain than just cramps. Is he awake for the whole time?
* Here's one from the very first story, An Unearthly Child. The junkyard the Doctor and Susan are staying is owned by I.M. Foreman, which is presumably why Susan goes by the name Foreman. Here's where the horror starts - Susan doesn't seem to have realised that she is posing as I.M. Foreman's grand-daughter and has dragged this poor junkyard merchant into her life. But this is the reason why it's so awful: one night Susan, along with two of her teachers, disappear from their lives, having last been seen at the junkyard. Which means I.M. Foreman has the disappearance of these three people, one of whom claims to be his grand-daughter, placed at his doorstep. It can't have ended well for I.M. Foreman - every time the Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara have fun on their travels, spare a thought for this man that they all threw under a bus when they left.

* At the end of "The Visitation", the Doctor and his companions stop to toss all the boxes on the Terileptil's wagon into the Pudding Lane fire, to get rid of their dangerous contents. Said contents are ''live rats'': animals which, while they had to be eliminated to avert the Terileptils' unstoppable plague, had never asked to be used as vectors and hardly deserved to be ''burned alive'' as a method of disposal.

* It most definitely was coincidence, but the final serial "Survival" does have a solid Bookend for The Doctor and his journey since the beginning of the show. In his very first story, he was willing to bash a caveman's head in to survive, but was shamed by Ian into showing mercy. Here, he's about to bash The Master's head in the same way, but this time he stops himself and comes to his senses. If we fight like animals, we die like animals. One way or another, humans helped The Doctor find...well, his humanity, or rather his compassion for living things.
** Ace's arc also ties into the Doctor's as well. She felt such a thrill from the animal planet all she wanted to do is run, just like the Doctor did from Gallifrey. At the end, he tells her the best of the animal planet will never leave her. Thanks to his fondness for humans, the best of the Earth is always carried with The Doctor even when the planet is no more (see "The End of the World"). And in the end, they carry on as only they could: going back to the TARDIS for more adventure, just like we hoped.