Doctor Who Series 11 / Headscratchers

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WARNING! THERE MAY BE UNMARKED SPOILERS!

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"The Woman Who Fell to Earth"

Why are all the main human characters so skeptical about the things they witness being of alien origin? Graham even claims "there's no such thing as aliens". At this point Earth has been invaded by aliens several times, not to mention dragged across the universe and back again. You'd think by now everyone would be comfortable with the idea that we're not alone in the universe?
- Doctor Who always loves to entertain the notion that humans merely forget and dismiss every single alien event that's ever happened until they fade from memory. Plus, we've seen that UNIT works hard to try to cover up every such occurance with something incredulous like a magic act or a hoax. The only major event in the revived series that would've erased any global doubts about the existence of aliens, the hijacking of Earth, ended up being completely erased from history by the cracks in the universe with no confirmation that it was ever restored.
- First of all, everything else the cracks had erased was returned back, so there's no reason the Daleks and the events of "The Stolen Earth" weren't de-erased as well. Davros himself returns in "The Magician's Apprentice" and alludes to the last time he and the Doctor met, so that seems to proof enough that people yet again remember the Dalek invasion and the Earth being moved. Secondly, that's hardly the only time a large-scale alien attack happened in the UK. The events of "The Christmas Invasion", "The Runaway Bride", and "Partners in Crime" were witnessed by whole of London, and televised globally. The invasions in "Army of Ghosts"/"Doomsday", "The Power of Three", and "Death in Heaven" were global events, which undoubtedly affected Sheffield too. (And the last two happened after the universe was restored in "The Big Bang", in case someone tries to claim the cracks have made people forgot about earlier invasions.) And the only on-screen proof we have of UNIT trying to cover up alien attacks was in "World War Three", where most people merely witnessed one spaceship. After that episode, no such cover-ups are mentioned. It would be ridiculous to think UNIT somehow had the means or even the will to erase all of the massive invasions and attacks that have happened since then. So the idea that people would still be sceptical of aliens, or even sceptical of them appearing in Sheffield, doesn't make any sense.
  - Both "Into the Dalek" and "The Magician's Apprentice"/"The Witch's Familiar" have explicit references to the events of "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End". (In the former, while the Doctor is accessing Rusty's memories, the Crucible is seen at one point. The latter story is full of references, including things like the re-appearance of the Shadow Architect and Davros playing a recording of something the Doctor says in "The Stolen Earth".)
  - But the Doctor clearly remembers too; just like he remembered Rory, even before he was restored. This is usually explained as the Doctor and his companions being "complicated spacetime events", allowing them to remember erased timelines. And surely the Dalek Mainframe is a complicated spacetime event too, not to mention Davros — enough so that the Daleks could very well remember Journey's End even if it's been unhappened.
  - Simply put, if the purpose of the Crack was for the writers to 'erase' inconvenient things like massive alien invasions that would change the very nature of human civilization, no other character than the Doctor (or the Daleks) seems to have any knowledge of them, and assuming they've been erased helps avoid a plot-hole, then the easiest explanation is simply that they've been erased by the Doctor still remembers them due to complex timey-wimey issues.
- Moreover, what's interesting is that most of the characters don't seem to be skeptical specifically about the existence of aliens, but that any aliens out there would attack a place like Sheffield. As for Graham, well... he's a curmudgeon.
- For the record, Steven Moffat did once mention that one of the reasons for introducing the Cracks was precisely a Reset Button for all the alien-invasions in the R. T. Davies era, to avoid the Whoniverse's present-day Earth becoming too unlike the real one. The same conversation implied it was one apiece in intention with Davies's own Time War, which is also a very convenient way to explain any Retcons needed.
  - That doesn't change the fact that at least two global invasions (in "The Power of Three" and "Death in Heaven") happened after the Cracks were closed and the universe was recreated, so at the very least people should remember those.
  - Neither of those incidents would have necessarily been attributed to space aliens, however. The cubes' origin may still be a mystery to anyone outside UNIT, and the Cybermen were created on Earth, so could just as easily be a result of out-of-control Mad Science as alien intervention.
  - Except that in "Death in Heaven", we see a television news report comparing Missy's Cybermen with a previous Cyberman invasion, presumably "Doomsday". Also, your average citizen wouldn't have known how the Cybermen were created, so presumably most people assumed them to be of alien origin. And they were created by an alien.
- Flat Earthers. Anti-vaxxers. Holocaust deniers. If aliens had invaded the real world a dozen times, you'd meet plenty of people in daily life who refused to believe it. This isn't a headscratcher, it's human nature.
- These sort of people are a small minority though, so it doesn't make sense that all the human characters in the episode are sceptical of aliens. Also, none of them are depicted as anti-science denialists, so such scepticism feels out of character.
- The Monks from Series 10 probably wiped a lot of humanity's collective memory of other aliens in the course of inserting themselves into humans' history. When they pulled out, they erased themselves from same as a parting cover-up, but didn't put any recollections about other alien encounters back again.
  - Except that one of the propaganda videos in "The Lie of the Land" explicitly mentions several of those alien invasions, in the context of rewritten history having the Monks stopping those invasions.
  - So maybe they erased all other non-hostile aliens from Earth's history so they could write themselves in as always defeating the hostile ones, then wiped the hostile ones from the record as well when they erased themselves. It'd certainly explain why UNIT got defunded by the end of Season 11, if nobody remembers UNIT's having fought any threats except human-created ones a la "Robot", "Invasion of the Dinosaurs", or "The Green Death".
Why is the construction yard Karl works at running in the middle of the night?
- Some of them do that, especially in rural areas. The fact that Karl was on a train at the beginning suggests to me that he and the others might be specific night shift workers.
- Downtown Sheffield is hardly rural though. Wouldn't people living nearby complain about the construction noises going throughout the night?
- If they're in an area not zoned for housing, there wouldn't be anybody living close enough to be bothered. As for why they're working so late, the construction project may be running behind schedule.
All the teeth in Tim Shaw's face look like human teeth. Do the Stenza only hunt for humanoids with that specific kind of teeth?
- Well, there are a lot of Human Aliens in this verse.
- And even when there's prosthetics involved, they often still have human-like teeth. Some of them were so wedged into his face that you can't even tell if they're human or not.
- There were at least a few that didn't look human. And the Whoniverse has so many Human Aliens that there's no telling how many planets those teeth might've been collected from.
- Fridge Brilliance: Tim Shaw is a cheater, which rather implies he's a coward who doesn't feel he can defeat a quarry without covert help. Possibly others of his species do sport sharp fangs, big chomping incisors, and the like among their facial trophies, but he's avoided facing off against any targets with natural weaponry because he's afraid to.
- "The Ghost Monument" reveals the Stenza have been despoiling and committing genocide on other worlds, including at least one occupied by Human Aliens.
How is a DNA bomb useful in eliminating witnesses if it allows those witnesses several hours to run around, communicating etc?
- Because the bombs are revealed to be remotely detonated, so Tim Shaw could've ended their lives at any given moment. But he was operating on that "I'll only detonate them if you decide to interfere again" logic that always works out great for villains.
- Tim Shaw probably wasn't worried about human witnesses; the young man whose sister was taken on a previous hunt wasn't eliminated by whichever Stenza took her, after all. Rather, the gathering coil probably detected that the Doctor wasn't human, and implanted the devices as a precaution: if Tim Shaw judged her likely to report his cheating to the other Stenza, then he'd be able to silence her. The coil didn't trigger the bombs itself because he hadn't programmed it to do so, but only to inform him of the situation in the event any other alien (of which Earth has an abundance, albeit living undercover) discovered its presence.

"The Ghost Monument"

The waters of Desolation are teeming with flesh-eating microbes, but all other organic life on the planet is said to have died long ago... So what exactly have the microbes been eating in order to survive?
- Each other?
- The microbes were created as a WMD, so it's possible they were genetically engineered for biological immortality.
- Biological immortality still requires them to get energy from somewhere, unless they're somehow breaking the basic laws of physics. And if they were eating each other, they should've perished a long time ago, given that such cannibalism would result in exponential population decrease.
- Photosynthetic maybe? Aliens, who can keep track?
- Just because the microbes can extract energy from flesh doesn't mean it's the only thing they can get it from. They could be photosynthesizing (hence the reddish pigment), oxidizing metal residues (chemoautotrophy), living off organic particulates that haven't quite run out yet, or just waiting as dormant bacterial spores until one of the Remnants and/or some visiting idiot blunders into a puddle.
How is Ryan able to use a gun so effectively if he has dyspraxia?
- He does hold it quite close to his body, which may stabilize his aim somewhat. Beyond that, not all people with dyspraxia exhibit the full slate of symptoms; in Ryan's case, it may impair his full-body movements and rate of speech more than his hand-eye coordination.

"Rosa"

Krasko's whole plan of changing the history makes little sense. Rosa Parks was still a civil rights activist, so even if she didn't ride the bus that night, or the bus wasn't full enough, most likely she would've refused to give her seat the next time the same situation happened. So at most Krasko would've managed to postpone the Montgomery bus boycott a bit. And it's not like Parks was the only black person willing to go for such civil disobedience (in fact, a black teenage girl had already done the same a few months before Parks), so even if Krasko somehow made sure Parks would never ride a full bus again, it still wouldn't have changed history.
- It could have been that Krasko planned on interfering in more historical events after this one. Or if you want an explanation based solely on the episode, it seems he was just planning on the Butterfly of Doom to kick in and magnify the small delay into a huge setback in race relations by his own time.
- But it wouldn't have been "magnified into a huge setback in race relations" for the reasons stated above. Rosa Parks didn't start the civil rights movement nor was she the first or only one to have done sit-in protests. Even if Krasko had transferred her into the far future (which seems to have been his original plan), the movement would have rallied around some other protests. Now, if the point of the episode had been that Krasko's plan won't work, and the Doctor had told him he can't change the course of history, that would've been interesting. But the Doctor seems to be as convinced as Krasko that the plan will work, which doesn't make sense given what we know about the history of the civil rights movement.
  - Well, to begin with, Krasko doesn't really come across as some great genius when it comes to history or temporal mechanics. He's just a racist criminal who gained access to time travel. Its possible that all he knows is a simplified version of history - that Rosa Parks started the bus boycott which led to the civil rights movement — and so he came up with a simplistic plan to stop the advent of civil rights by stopping the boycott. As far as the Doctor is concerned, maybe she knows that there's a pretty good chance that even if Krasko succeeds, Rosa herself or someone else will start the bus boycott eventually and history will get back on track. But you can't expect her to just stand by, let Krasko do what he has to, and hope for the best right? Also, it's possible that in this instance, Butterfly of Doom applies and this one event can make or break the entire future of civil rights — the Doctor has the Time Lord ability to sense the risk of that being the case, which probably compelled her to make sure that Krasko doesn't succeed.
  - For-want-of-a-nail. While Rosa Parks could stage her protest on another day, there is no guarantee that even if she does, history will follow the exact same path. Say, for the purposes of argument, Rosa Parks makes her stand on the next day... and an outraged crowd lynches her instead of arresting her, leading to a more violent Civil Rights movement than the one in our history, leading to an even more divided and angry America which is unable to unify and remains violently divided on racial grounds, which in turn leads to a more racially divided future. Now that is a rather extreme and perhaps unlikely hypothetical, admittedly, but the point is simply that the Doctor and her friends know what happens in the future where Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on that day, but they don't know what could conceivably happen if she refuses to give up her seat the next week, or even the next day. Better safe than sorry.
Speaking of Krasko's plans on changing the history, clearly the inhibitor in his brain doesn't stop him from shooting people with his temporal displacement gun, as he tries to do that with the Doctor and her companions... So why doesn't he just shoot Rosa Parks with it and send her into the future?
- He doesn't want to just get rid of her, he wants to specifically do it at the exact time that she would've made history because his hatred of all that she stands for is that intense. Only after he loses his displacement weapon does he try everything possible to make her miss that fateful bus ride. Had his plans gone unopposed it's likely he would've shot her just before she entered the bus, or displaced the entire bus with her and everyone else on it.
Was River Song — or any other character — ever known to have a Stormcage tattoo? If so, did she remove or hide it? Knowing River it would be either Applied Phlebotinum or a good quality concealer. Which she nicked.
- There are a couple of possible in-universe explanations for why River didn't have a tattoo.
  - One, it's revealed in "The Angels Take Manhattan" that River was released from Stormcage for good after the Doctor began erasing himself from history, so it looked like she had been wrongfully imprisoned for a crime that was never committed against someone who didn't exist. So it's possible that, depending on when Stormcage applied tattoos, she either never received one or had hers removed upon release.
  - Two, River was imprisoned in Stormcage in the 52nd century, but Krasko is said to be from the 79th. Over the millennia, Stormcage's policies could very well have changed, and when River was there, they didn't give their inmates identifying tattoos.
  - Or three: The practice of tattooing Stormcage's prisoners was instituted because River kept escaping, and the prison's operators needed to do something to debunk its reputation as a Cardboard Prison once Dr. Song was set free and at liberty to boast about her frequent jailbreaks.

"Arachnids in the UK"

All the giant spiders within the hotel are lured into the panic room, and left there to die, which is fine and dandy... but what about the spiders that are still roaming Sheffield, such as the one who killed Yaz's neighbour, or the one who shed its skin inside Graham and Ryan's attic? Does the Doctor just let them run free, slaughtering people?
- Presumably, the Doctor notified UNIT off-screen. "Chap with the eight legs, there..."
- That wouldn't work, because it's established in this season that UNIT has been dissolved.
Even though Thirteen appears to be more pacifist than some earlier incarnations, it doesn't make sense that she would let Robertson get away scot-free. His business venture caused an environmental hazard, which lead to the whole spider situation, thus making him indirectly responsible for all the deaths in the episode. And in the end it doesn't look like he's learned any kind of lesson, as he seems to be bound to make the same mistakes again. So why doesn't the Doctor do something to stop him from abusing his power, like she did with Harriet Jones in "The Christmas Invasion"?
- Maybe it was because punishing Harriet Jones didn't work out well for anyone. Besides, despite being a jerkass the entire episode, the only thing he was actually guilty of was negligence and trying to cover up something in the first scene. Given that he appeared surprised by the giant spiders, I'm not sure what he was trying to cover up. Maybe the Doctor tipped off UNIT off-screen. It would be hard to show them on-screen given the "no returning characters" thing.
- He was trying to cover up the fact that the hotel construction site was used as a dumping ground for hazardous waste. This is a serious environmental crime in itself, and according Robertson, his company does it all around the world, so he's definitely guilty of more than just negligence.
- For all we know, Yaz filed a proper report on Robertson's environmental offenses after everyone was home safe again. Between her mother's testimony and the physical evidence available at the hotel chain's various locations, it seems unlikely that he can avoid a scandal. Plus, Kevin's family could easily raise a stink about the man's death, as the bodyguard's contract is unlikely to have included a "must defend boss from giant spiders" clause.
Why did Yaz not identify herself as a police officer when Kevin pulled his gun and her and her mother in the hotel?
- Yaz was trying to assess the situation calmly, from what I recall, and from when she asked Kevin to put the gun down, and probably was going to identify herself, but then Robertson interrupted her and berated her mother for not immediately leaving and insulted Yaz herself by saying she should still be in school, and continuously hurled verbal abuse at the two before Yaz could do anything. At least, that's how I viewed the scene.
- Yaz hasn't been a constable for very long, and the hotel is probably well outside her manor as a patrol officer.

"The Tsuranga Conundrum"

If the Gifftan guy has a "birthing sac", why does he act exactly like a human when he goes into labour? Why is he screaming in agony, when the sac is said to have no nerves, and it can be cut open painlessly?
- Contractions?
- Yoss is rather nervous about giving birth, so it could be mental nerves.
- The extraction of the fetus may be painless, but the severing of the internal connection between Yoss's body and his son's might not be. Cutting the paired umbilical cords at exactly the same time seems to be medically important, which suggests they aren't attached to a placenta in the manner of an Earthly mammal. So perhaps the "cords" are actually a part of Yoss rather than an expendable, nerveless extension of the fetus, and he was feeling the closure of whatever vessels they'd been using to sustain his growing offspring.
If the Gifftans require surgical intervention to give birth, how did they ever evolve in the first place?
- Perhaps they're an engineered species, maybe from humans, even.
- Or perhaps they can give birth without surgical help, but Yoss's unusually-prolonged pregnancy — a whole day overdue, no less! — made it too risky to let nature take its course. Which, after all, is why he was on the ship in the first place.

"Demons of the Punjab"

The Doctor's speech at the wedding about love being the most powerful force in the universe doesn't jibe with their experiences over the years. Beyond love being unable to save the day in this story, the previous Doctor was perhaps one of the most loving of all Doctors in all senses — platonic, romantic, etc. Even so, Twelve couldn't save Clara from her fixed-point death despite all his suffering, and he didn't encourage Bill to use her strong emotions, such as love, to overcome Cyber-conversion. Heck, his experience with the confession dial is proof that love isn't worth much in the end; supposedly people all over the universe love the Doctor yet nobody cracked open that dial to save him. He even ended up Dying Alone in a sense. Expand that to all of their incarnations over the centuries, with experiences like the Last Great Time War within memory, and why would the Doctor still have such faith in love in a universe so cruel?
- Love was still a powerful force in all those stories, it just wasn't always the solution. Anything powerful can cause harm if exercised irresponsibly, and Twelve taking love too far nearly destroyed the universe in "Hell Bent". That doesn't mean it's not worth feeling, just not worth feeling at the expense of everything else.
- The Doctor's optimism and ability to retain her faith in love despite her hardships throughout the years is arguably part of what makes her a hero and a character to look up to; she doesn't give up and fall into cynicism despite how hard it gets.
- Plus, if we're honest, it's to avoid a Hard Truth Aesop. I can't imagine the parents of the younger viewers reacting all that well if the Doctor's message was essentially "Love ain't worth it, boys and girls; never love anyone ever."

"Kerblam!"

So, are the Teammates individually sentient, or just drones of the System? The fact that they have names, combined with Twirly obviously being sentient, suggests the former, but then at the climax the Doctor decides that blowing up the thousands Teammates carrying the bubblewrap-bombs is an acceptable solution? DOES NOT COMPUTE.
- As the Doctor states in The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos, she is okay with weapons being used on things that can be rebuilt, which the Teammates qualify for. Also, I wouldn’t say they are individually sentient, but certainly artificially intelligent, with the system being the main control “hub” in a sense, which can take over if need be. Plus, Twirley is an older model that may have developed a form of sentience over the years much like WALL-E, but still has the system in him, so needs to go through basic programming (such as promoting other products).

"The Witchfinders"

How come no one questions the fact that the Doctor is supposedly the Witchfinder General until King James comes along and says she isn't? It would've been unthinkable for a woman to hold such a position in the 17th century, so they really didn't need to wait for the King to confirm this, her lie should've been obvious right from the start.
- The first person she says this to is Becka, who readily accepts it because she saw it on the psychic paper herself because she expected it (remember, it can show whatever the user wants them to see, or whatever the person wants to see without the user's dictation), but when she tries this on James, he sees the generally accepted view that women are second-class and not allowed to hold a decent job position such as the Witchfinder General because that is what he expected to see.
Why does no one question their clothing in this or any other era (like the Rosa Parks episode)? Wouldn't the 17th century folks who see them immediately scream "Witch!" given they are dressed for our time?
- King James does ask if they are "actors". He must think they're in costume.
- The Doylist answer is that at some point not long after the Hartnell era ended, the studio decided to stop bothering with dressing up the companions in era-appropriate clothing; it's not original to Series 11, you can see it all over the place in both New Who and in the Classic Series. There's no official word on it, but the Watsonian answer is that the TARDIS projects a lowkey perception filter that prevents people from noticing the time-travelers' weird clothing unless they'r really paying attention, kind of like Psychic Paper.
- Another possibility is that since Team TARDIS has two minorities on board, people might assume it's clothing or outfits from a different part of the world (such as the Americas, Asia or Africa).
- They're also in an isolated part of the country. People just might assume they're the latest fashions from London or something.

"It Takes You Away"

Since Erik thought Hanne's mom was really alive on the other side of the portal, why didn't take Hanne with him there instead of abandoning her for days?
- He was afraid he couldn't get back again. Also, the part of him that subconsciously knew it wasn't his real wife could have expected "her" to vanish if he wasn't there anymore to reinforce "her" presence, and the part of him that refused to consciously admit "she" was a facsimile was nevertheless reluctant to risk that.
Ribbons claims to have always lived in the antizone, but how is that possible if the universe only creates them temporarily? Also, if he's always lived there, how does he even know it's called an "antizone" (a term the Doctor recognises)? Wouldn't it just be a regular cave for him? But if he's lying about living there, what does he gain from that? If he doesn't want the others to know where he's from, he could've simply come up with some fake name for his supposed home planet, and no one would be any wiser.
- Possibly he and the moths are facsimiles like the fake Grace or Hanne's fake mother, only he embodies dread instead of The Lost Lenore. Erik might've unwittingly created Ribbons when he passed through the first time, as the manifestation of his personal childhood boogeyman. Hence, the childish name and over-the-top Obviously Evil muttering about eating people. The moths might've melded an individual distaste for moths on the part of Erik and/or one of Team TARDIS with the latter's wariness of giant arthropods in creepy tunnels, as per "Arachnids in the UK".
- Or, alternately, since this Anti-Zone was tied to the Solitract, it may have existed for a long, long time, and Ribbons may well have grown up there. Also, we have no idea how old he was, or what his lifespan would have been.
- Alternatively, just because the universe creates antizones temporarily that doesn't mean it starts a small big bang and lets the antizone form gradually like the actual universe. The antizone contains caves, a breathable atmosphere, and a small ecosystem, and is explicitly a response to an unnatural occurrence; weirdness is to be expected.

"The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos"

Did the ritual the Ux were performing somehow interfere with Tim Shaw's teleportation and transfer him to Ranskoor Av Kolos? Or are we supposed to think he just happened to randomly transport to the exact place and time on the exact planet where two godlike beings were trying to summon their god?
- Although he may be a complete liar, Tim Shaw does explain that the Doctor (unintentionally) corrupted his teleport when the Doctor asked how he got there instead of his home planet - in other words, yes, it was completely random and quite by chance.
Tim Shaw says he's been on Ranskoor Av Kolos for 3407 years, with the godlike powers of the Ux under his command, and during this time he's managed to... put five planets on stasis. Based on what we see the Ux do to Earth, the process of capturing a planet seems to be fairly quick, taking less than a day. If Tim Shaw is so driven by revenge, what exactly did he do for the rest of those 3407 years?
- Planning on how the technology can work when combined with the Ux’s power and then building the weapon when one of the Ux is all but refusing to do so has got to take some time, as has building his life-support, and he was waiting for the Doctor to arrive before taking Earth. Plus, he says he only targets planets that have “wronged” the Stenza - maybe there were only five planets (plus Earth) that has done so at that point in time that still existed - any others might have been destroyed already by Stenza warships.
- Of course, given that it's Tim Shaw the Dirty Cheat who claims this, it's quite plausible that it's only planets that have wronged Tim Shaw himself that he placed in stasis: he only says they'd wronged "the Stenza" as self-justifying bluster.
The Doctor and her team are against killing, so instead of shooting Tim Shaw they put him in a stasis chamber. But since he will be in stasis, this punishment can't have any reformative effect on him (unlike Missy's comparable punishment in the previous season), so if he's ever woken up, he'll be the same murderous bastard he was before. The only option, then, would be to never wake him up... But that would effectively the same as killing him, which the Doctor is against. So what's the point of putting him in stasis, then? Why can't the Doctor deliver him to a more traditional prison, like Stormcage? Without the power of the Ux he really isn't that dangerous, so a regular prison should hold him just fine.
- Because Tim Shaw is stuck in his own hell, unable to do anything. Plus, he is still alive - indefinite incarceration in a stasis chamber or not, he is alive. And the Ux stated they sealed the weapon/shrine thing so no one can free him. It’s like with the Family of Blood - the Doctor could have killed them for their atrocities, but chose to let them live forever, in eternal agony and suffering.
  - Well, yeah, as you say, it's best viewed as like what the Doctor did to the Family of Blood, because it's worse than killing him. But I think we can all agree that what the Tenth Doctor did to the Family was going too far, a symptom of his growing A God Am I problem. So why don't the companions (who should be acting as the Doctor's moral compass) point out to Thirteen that it is needlessly cruel?
  - Because it wasn’t Thirteen who locked him up - it was Ryan and Graham who put him in suspended animation, and the Ux who sealed the shrine, and they’re not likely to say it was cruel when they did it themselves. The Doctor just approved because no one outright killed anyone, and I doubt Team TARDIS will be annoyed that the man who killed Grace is now frozen and therefore point out the Doctor is being needlessly cruel. Hell, for all we know, two hours after they left, and the elation wore off, she chewed Ryan and Graham out for doing it, but knew they had no way of reversing it. And also, for all we know, this Doctor may be a very big believer in karma.
  - Why would they have no way of reversing it? They did a pretty easy (and fast) job of releasing the people held in stasis by Tim Shaw earlier.
  - The Tenth Doctor was also going a bit god-mad in the way he was trapping the Family of Blood. He wasn't just locking them into stasis, he was throwing them into some fairly nasty traps (sealing them at the heart of sun, wrapping them in unbreakable chains, trapping them in every mirror in the universe, etc.) on top of giving them eternal life. This meant that they weren't just living forever, they were living forever through some rather horrible torments that they would experience forever. Tim Shaw, conversely, basically got locked in a stasis chamber; not exactly nice, but probably nicer than living forever in a star while it melts you for all eternity in the scheme of things.
  - But then if he's frozen in stasis for eternity, what's the difference between that and death?
  - The fact that he's not actually dead. No one's arguing that Tim Shaw isn't in a rather unpleasant situation, but it's an unpleasant situation he might some day get out of; someone could release him, or find a better punishment for him, or even find some way of redeeming him in the future. You can't get out of being dead though.
  - This is Doctor Who. There are thousands of ways to get out of being dead. Just because someone could be resurrected doesn't make them any less dead.
  - Tim Shaw still isn't dead. There is difference between being brought back to life from being dead (which, to be entirely fair, doesn't happen as frequently in Doctor Who as you're suggesting if you're not, say, the Master) and not being dead to start with. Tim Shaw is still alive, he's just frozen in a moment of time. Someone who is dead is dead, decomposing, gone.

"Resolution"

How come the police officer who stops Lin doesn't know what a Dalek is, even though the entire Earth was conquered by them just 10 years ago?
- Well, Bill Potts didn't know either...
- Then that's merely a further headscratcher.
- All the officer asked was “And how are you spelling that?” Not “What the hell is a Dalek?!” And, in fairness, it was just Lin in the car - not the usual pepper pot we’re used to seeing - so there’s that.
- The "how are you spelling that" comment is clearly meant to infer the officer has no idea what Lin is talking about. If he remembers what the Daleks are and what they did to Earth, he should be shocked or at least surprised by hearing a weird-acting woman calling herself a Dalek, not sarcastically asking for the proper spelling of the word.
- He’s a police officer who probably has to deal with drunk drivers often enough to figure that someone acting weird behind the wheel is intoxicated in some way, especially if they spout nonsense; Lin’s driving is erratic and way too fast, which would normally point to drunk driving, and, again, it’s just her, without a visible Dalek. And the two previous Dalek invasions that happened in this guy’s lifetime were in 2007 (Doomsday) and 2009 (The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End) - one of them happened in London (2007) and the other was erased from history (2009).
- Some people keep thinking that everything the cracks erased during season 5 remain erased in later seasons, when there's really no evidence that's the case. The whole point of the Doctor's plan in "The Big Bang" was to bring back everything that had been erased - and it worked. At the end of the episode, the universe is back, Amy's parents are back, so there's no reason to think the Daleks and the history of their invasion isn't back too. In "The Magician's Apprentice"/"The Witch's Familiar", we indeed find out that Davros is alive, he remembers the events of "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End", and even has audio recordings of it. So clearly the Dalek invasion wasn't erased from history permanently, meaning that humans should remember it too.
- Then here’s an explanation: he’s thick
  - He's Mr. Thick Thick Thickety Thick-face from Thick-town, Thickania. And so's his dad! (PS: "Twice Upon a Time" is another episode that gives us a flashback to "The Stolen Earth/Journey's End". Davros calling the Doctor a "destroyer of worlds" is from that one.)
- The Crack erased whatever the writers of Doctor Who wanted it to erase. Yes, the universe was brought back, but the writers outright admitted that the whole point was to erase anything they thought might get in the way of the stories they wanted to tell and giving themselves the freedom to do what they wanted without having to worry unduly about continuity points their predecessors came up with. So while the Daleks were brought back and Davros was brought back, apparently some of the more stickier elements of Dalek history — such the Daleks literally stealing Earth — fell into, well, a crack. As evidenced by the fact that it hasn't been brought up again by anyone.
- As mentioned above, the events of "The Stolen Earth" and "Journey's End" have been referenced after season 5. "Into the Dalek" shows an image of the Crucible when Doctor goes through Rusty's memories, and "The Magician's Apprentice"/"The Witch's Familiar" has several references to the invasion story, including Davros playing a recording of a line the Doctor said in "The Stolen Earth". So clearly those events weren't erased by the Cracks.
- I stand corrected. But in that case, then, the above can be simply amended to the events in question being erased for the universe at large but, for various timey-wimey reasons, the Doctor and the Daleks still remember them. Both of them, after all, are "complex space-time events" more likely to be immune to this kind of time rewriting. In other words, they still happened for the Doctor, Davros and the Daleks, but they didn't happen for the rest of the universe. As also stated above, if the writers themselves admit that they use these kind of things to handwave away inconvenient plot details, it's simple and it avoids a plot-hole, then it's a workable explanation.
- Or maybe it's Earth that is the exception. Given how Earth was the one world that didn't get blown to subatomic particles during the catastrophe that made Big Bang II necessary in the first place, and given that its inhabitants' memories had already been scrambled along with history, it's possible that the reality-restoration left humanity's collective recollections distorted. Everybody else remembers previous events, including ones involving the Earth; it's just the locals who were left with mass amnesia.
Apparently the reconnaissance scout Daleks have powers beyond any regular Dalek, such as the ability to survive thousands of years with their body chopped to pieces, and the capability to remotely jam a TARDIS without using any external technology... So why haven't these super Daleks been sent against the Doctor, the arch enemy of the Daleks, in any of the previous conflicts we've seen?
- We're told the Recon Daleks were the first sent out from Skaro. Perhaps most of them met similar fates to the one that found Earth. And they probably weren't the majority of Daleks. Given the Doctor's knowledge of them, though, it's likely that there have been past encounters, and The Doctor, or other Time Lords, may have already dispatched them.
- Even if most of the original ones were indeed killed, why haven't the Daleks simply created more of them?
- Egotism? After all, if the Daleks had to make a more advanced form, they'd have to admit that they're not superior. Recon Daleks were probably always meant to be a "limited edition". And after a few encounters with The Doctor, maybe the means to make more became lost knowledge.
- We have seen the Daleks create more advanced forms numerous times: Special Weapons Daleks, the Cult of Skaro, the Dalek Emperor, the Supreme Dalek, etc. So clearly egotism hasn't stopped them from tinkering with their form. And all of their knowledge is stored in the Dalek Mainframe, so there's no way the blueprints for the Recon Daleks could have been lost.
- As for surviving for centuries despite having its body divided into pieces, we've known since "The Witch's Familiar" that Daleks who've lived for millions of years won't even give up the ghost after they've decomposed into slime. That Recon Dalek's 1200-plus year sojourn as multiple chunks was just a Time-Out by comparison.
- Who says they haven't sent them after the Doctor or created more of them? They very well could have; we just haven't seen any others yet. It's a big universe out there.
- The Doctor is not familiar with the recon Dalek's capabilities, and clearly the Dalek supposed to be something new to her, no something she has come across before.
- I'm not saying the Doctor has encountered them before; I'm saying that we don't know that the Daleks haven't sent any out after her just because we haven't seen them yet. Again, it's a big universe out there, and there's always a first time. Just because the Doctor hasn't encountered a recon Dalek before doesn't mean that there haven't been other recon Daleks sent out after her, it's just that they haven't actually crossed paths before now.
Why does the UK communications center have a computer interface that's perfectly fitted for a Dalek "plunger"?
- To be fair, it wasn't a standard "plunger", and the Dalek had researched Earth's tech level and weaponry while using Lin's body. It may have already decided on a course of action and customized it's "plunger" to be as useful as possible with the existing tech.
- Still, what kind of a 2018 computer has an interface that's a large round hole?
  - Maybe it was designed by engineers who were also Star Wars fans.
Why does the Doctor invite Ryan's dad to travel with them, but not Lin and Mitch? Surely she has much more sympathetic view of them than him, and as archaeologists they'd probably be extremely interested in seeing the past with their own eyes.
- The Doctor, noticing that Ryan's dad was earnestly trying to make amends, may have been trying to afford him a further opportunity to do so. Lin and Mitch, having just had their relationship threatened by Lin's all too close contact with a Dalek, may not react so well the next time they're in a life threatening situation, and the Doctor is Genre Savvy enough to know it's a very real possibility.
- She could also have made an offer to them off-screen, but it was politely rejected. After all the craziness with the Dalek, Lin and Mitch might have just wanted to take things easy. Adventures in space and time aren't for everyone.
Why does the Doctor call the Recon Dalek a refugee when she knows perfectly well it's a scout for an invasion? Unlike the Zygons, the Recon Dalek didn't escape a destroyed homeworld, and there's no hint it's fleeing an anti-Dalek army or even its own people; indeed its whole plan is to meet up with other Daleks. What's she talking about?
- The Doylist answer is that this is probably a holdover from a draft that more openly ripped off Dalek, with an outright stranded Dalek who never meant to wind up on Earth. If you want a Watsonian answer, though, the Reconnaissance Dalek is stated to be one of the earliest ones to leave Skaro; meaning it's presumably from the immediately post-The Daleks era, when the Daleks were a bare few survivors from that time the Doctor helped the Thals destroy their city and turn off their life support. While some stories (not least of which Genesis of the Daleks) do suggest that it is in Daleks' nature to try to conquer the rest of the galaxy, attempts at this point in Dalek history to conquer other planets could easily be painted as extremely aggressive asylum-seeking along the lines of the Zygons' in Day of the Doctor. Think War of the Worlds. ^note
- The simple fact that its fellow Daleks seem never to have looked into why it hadn't reported back to them might, in itself, have been cause for the Doctor to conclude it had been written off for dead and forgotten. To a Dalek, being bluntly abandoned by its own kind might make it a metaphorical "refugee" from the ranks of the "superior", even if it was in no physical danger or distress.
How did 9th century humans defeat the Dalek with medieval weapons, yet modern soldiers with modern weapons were unable to?
- Modern isn't always a synonym for better. I assume that back in the ninth century they simply ended up massing a huge army and Zerg Rushing the Dalek to a degree that overcame the Dalek's defenses. To (over)-simplify, medieval military tactics were a lot more melee in nature and, at least prior to the development of archery-based tactics, primarily revolved around charging at the enemy and hitting/stabbing them with things until enough of the enemy either stopped moving or ran away for you to declare yourself the victor. Furthermore, leaders and generals of the era tended to regard their common troops as a lot more expendable, and were willing to accept fairly heavy casualties if it would mean achieving victory. Even a Dalek could be overwhelmed by a lot of enemies rushing it at once and hitting it with heavy clubs or slashing at it with heavy swords if you didn't mind potentially losing a lot of people at the same time. Modern military tactics, however, tend to rely a lot more on distance and cover, and prioritise keeping alive as many of your soldiers as possible; you get behind cover, fire at a distance, and pick off the enemy without getting close. This might actually favour the Dalek, since it's largely immune to modern firearms and can use its superior firepower to pick off its opponents at will.
- It's also possible that the Dalek had already suffered damage during its journey to, or landing on, Earth. Lots harder to find and commandeer replacement parts for a broken Dalek shell in the 9th century than the 21st.
How did the Reconnaissance scout end up in the 9th century? The Doctor Who wiki states that "The Daleks" takes place in 2064, and if memory serves it wasn't until "The Chase" that they first developed Time Travel, if the scout is meant to be a Dalek that left Skaro between "The Daleks" and "Daleks Invasion of Earth" then how did it end up over 10 centuries in the past?

Headscratchers / Doctor Who Series 11

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