Sunday, March 9, 2014

Doctor Who Derivativation # 4



"Robot"
  • What the hell is wrong that Harry can't tell a patient he is giving "full attention" to for three days doesn't have two hearts, non-human blood, etc.? Doesn't he even notice the bloke's face has changed (we know Harry was installed in UNIT prior to Planet of the Spiders, so he would surely have encountered the Third Doctor if only to know where the lab was). Has he been retconned? Did one of the Doctor's hearts stop beating?
  • The SRS has clear links to OGA, given Mr. Short is a member of both. How many other techno-doomsday cults was he a paid-up member of?
  • Is the Think Tank the one the Brigadier set up? With disintegrator guns, biowarfare and mad robots, are they reverse-engineering alien tech? Torchwood again? The Brig is surprised when the Doctor knows about what they're up to, so he's been keeping secrets...
  • What other stuff has the Think Tank created? Surely the blueprints remain intact. Will K1 robots using disintegrator guns be used for the Fawklands conflict?
  • How badly does Britain suffer for this story? Their position of neutrality is ruined because their own citizens stole the nuclear codes using taxpayer-funded weapons tech and nearly started world war III. Twice. No wonder after this, the Brig has to spend more time in Geneva - no one will trust the UK.
  • Why did the Queen want to see the Doctor at the end of this? Was it for Liz 2 to check out his new face and get to know him?
  • Did the Third Doctor really do all the paperwork and private meetings? How badly did they go?
  • Unbound: Mike Yates returns and they fight the robot in the flying Whomobile.


"The Ark In Space"
  • Is there a curse around Nerva as the Doctor suggests? From space dock to navigational beacon to last outpost of mankind, it's constantly targeted by flesh-assimilating threats and long-dead alien races returning from beyond the grave. Can that be a coincidence?
  • The sleepers on Nerva are a bunch of supremacist Nazis who created the solar flares in the first place as a method of ethnic cleansing humanity so only the pure could survive and recolonize the Earth. Note that no other 30th century individuals are remotely like Vira or Noah, and their first reaction to ordinary people (despite having Rogin as one of their top crews, recruited from the "thermic shelters" where normal people were supposed to survive the solar flares) is to try and kill them.
  • If the Earth is devastated by flares in the 29th century but thoroughly inhabited by the 41st, it clearly recovered from the apocalypse in less than the predicted minimum of five thousand years. Why did the Sleepers get their sums wrong? And why did no one wake them up when they're in orbit during Mavic Chen's rulership? Did no one want to wake the ungrateful bastards up? Or did they actually wake up after a few hundred instead of a few thousand years?
  • Noah destroys the Wirrrn - so is the Doctor proud of the "vestige of humanity" the guy kept?
  • How do the sleepers cope when they wake up to find GalSec unimpressed with them?

"The Sontaran Experiment"
  • What happens to Eirak and Krans? Do they just get left there?
  • Is this post-flare Earth actually Ravalox? Did Styre miss the Tribe of the Free over the hill (cause, you know, I actually kind of believe he'd screw up like that).
  • What left the Sontarans so ignorant they're terrified to enter the Milky Way galaxy when humanity has all but abandoned it for Andromeda? Have the Rutans given them amnesia or something? Or if Earth is post-Ravalox, have the CIA whitewashed everything?
  • Surely the Sontarans won't abandon conquering the galaxy because of the equivalent of a single prank phonecall? Can't they spare a second field marshall to find out blindingly obvious things like human beings need food and tend to drown underwater?
  • Unbound: Harry was right the first time, and Styre killed Sarah and the Doctor.


"Genesis of the Daleks"
  • What was up with the Clams?
  • Are the Thals connected with the Drahvin? Is that an Ice Warrior in the cave of mutations?
  • Why did the Time Lords choose this particular moment to intervene, around an hour before the first Dalek is fully-operational? Why not take out Davros' parents before he was born? Is it that the changes to history the Doctor performs are what is wanted? Or was Narvin just completely panicking when he came up with this last-ditch attempt to rewrite the present?
  • Which Doctors dealt with the Dalek invasion of 2000, 130000 and Mars?
  • How will the Thals and the Mutos survive now the Thal rocket has irradiated the surface even more?
  • Unbound: what if the Kaleds had succeeded in stopping Davros?

"Revenge of the Cybermen"
  • How did Kellman make contact with both Vogans and the Cybermen?
  • Are the Vogans connected with the Time Lords? They wear the Seal of Rassilon and the Time Lord don't return the Doctor to the TARDIS but dump in in a position to save Voga. And there is a Time Lord role known as Gold Usher...
  • The events on Nerva lead to the conference in Earthshock, when humanity learns the Cybermen are still around and organizes an alliance against them. Hence the CyberLeader having records of what happened with Voga, and the reason why humanity is banding against a race they seem to hardly know exists.
  • How did Voga become a drifting planet, ala Mondas? Did it arrive near Jupiter thanks to the wormhole that the Kraals and Crayford use?
  • What happened to Stevenson? Do the Vogans ever end their isolation?
  • Unbound: the Cybermen invade Nerva during Vira's time and use the sleepers to create new Cybermen, like the tombs of Telos in reverse.

"Terror of the Zygons"
  • Broton was going stir-crazy waiting for 2013 and the other Zygons to emerge from their paintings, and so struck out on his own, rather odd way using the ship's cow as a weapon of mass destruction. He's not alone in getting bored as Zygon, Zygon Who Fell To Earth, Homeland, Absolution, The Barnacled Baby and The Bodysnatchers show. Odd for such long-lived aliens they have no patience.
  • What happened to the Jimmerson boys? Why did the Zygons let one of them go?
  • Did the Skarasan eat the Borad? Or are they both happily in Loch Ness (which, we should remember, is a lake so large you could fit all the fish stocks on the planet in there and still leave plenty of room for a pleisiosaur to swim around in)?
  • Given the Skarasan was driven to a frenzy by a recording of a mating call, does it finally think it's been dumped? What will it do when sexual frustration gets too much, or without Zygons to look after it?
  • Do the oil rigs get rebuilt? Or is Mr. Huckle put off Scots mineral slime forever?


"Planet of Evil"
  • Why didn't the Anti Matter monster just kill everyone to start with?
  • If the Morestrans can travel to the edge of the known universe... why are they staying in orbit around a dying sun instead of just colonizing new planets? Is having a dodgy sun the equivalent of erectile dysfunction these days and no one is willing to admit it?
  • Why is Sarah wearing old companions' clothes? Here it's Jo's tartan denim redneck outfit, and tomorrow it will be Victoria's white frock.
  • The Morestrans and the Daleks appear to have been enemies at some point. Shock horror.
  • What happened to destroy all life on Earth in the 300th Century?


"Pyramids of Mars"
  • Why is Nahmin working for Sutekh? Why does he believe a convicted omnicidal serial killer will spare his life in the first place? And if there's some evil Sutekh-worshiping cult, why have they taken a thousand years to help him? Is Nahmin the only member?
  • After the last story, the Doctor took Sarah home to the late 70s and left her there while he traveled on alone. He eventually bumped into her again in 1980, and she teamed up out of nostalgia's sake (which is why she doesn't leave the other times the TARDIS lands on modern Earth - it's still too soon for her leave). However, the Doctor's been so long alone he's changed his jacket and gone into a right mood... and, remember, this is a very simple compared to what the Eleventh Doctor deals with.
  • When was the Doctor blamed for the Great Fire of London?
  • Why does the Doctor disbelieve Sarah about the mummies? Especially when he's just seen one? Is he in denail? Is it just him being really, really pedantic? If so, time and a place, dude.
  • The Doctor lied about the isomorphic controls. Sutekh knew he was lying, but it gave him an excuse to humiliate the Time Lord by taking him over and making him fly the TARDIS anyway.
  • Who taught Sarah to be a crack shot with a rifle? Her Aunt Lavinia?
  • Why is there a priest hole in the priory? The Doctor notes it's a ridiculous anachronism, but given this priory is home to an Osirian Lodestone, future UNIT HQ and so on, could be some kind of nexus point that Sutekh needs to use to fire the missile at Mars?
  • The Doctor took a picklock from Mary Anttoinette - does that mean he prevented her escape from the guillotine, albeit unintentionally?


"The Android Invasion"
  • WHY?!?!?!?
  • Seriously. Why do any of this instead of just firing a plague missile at Earth? Why are the androids so unbelievably crap and prone to malfunction when the Kraals are experts? Why rehearse infiltrating a village when a) that isn't necessary to the plan and b) all the information is two years out of date? And why didn't they just poke out Crayford's eye?
  • What happened to the android Sarah? Or the Kraal fleet?
  • Is Benton dead?
  • Does the Doctor have a robot detector or was he just bluffing with a torch?
  • What in the name of god's arse is the TARDIS pause control? How does that work, a function that makes the TARDIS take off if you put the key in the lock and leave you stuck outside while it goes to the place you've told it to? Did the Doctor program this while high on smack or something?



"The Brain of Morbius"
  • The faces were the Doctor's, just distorted. It's a mind-bending contest, after all, so the face would be an on-screen avatar - and instead of getting more injured as the health level drops, it distorts to become unrecognizable.
  • Crozier and Solon - both convinced brain surgery and bodyswapping could achieve immortality. Did they ever meet at the same faculty parties?
  • If the Cult of Morbius is still in existance and dangerously powerful, why has Solon recieved no aide? You think the average Nazi would want to chip in and help the bloke who saved Hitler's brain, wouldn't you? And who was going to believe the bug-eyed goldfish-bowl-headed monster was their long-lost messiah? Mind you, Hitler himself manged it with the Ninja Turtles, so...
  • Were the Time Lords after Morbius or the Elixir? Were the Sisterhood right to be paranoid?
  • If Karn is near Gallifrey and the Sisters are scuttling every ship that passes by, why did it take so long for anyone to notice Kasterborous was new Bermuda Triangle and everyone who went into Time Lord territory tended to die mysteriously soon after? You think the Panopticon PR department would have spotted no one was keeping their appointments...
  • Unbound: everything in Vengeance of Morbius.
  • Unbound: everything in Warmonger.

"The Seeds of Doom"
  • How many other planets has the Doctor seen the Krynoids infest? He seems very scared by them.
  • The Krynoids appear able to communicate telepathically with plant-lovers - both Chase and Stevenson seem to be controlled by them, and botonist Keeler puts his arm to the weed despite knowing what will happen. And these are ancient, half-frozen to death Krynoids - how powerful would the normal ones be?
  • Whatever happened to Amelia Ducat? Did she ever try to join UNIT?
  • Just how many Krynoid pods have landed on Earth? (I know of the two in this story, two more in Root of All Evil, another two in The Green Man and the 21st Century UNIT vault has some kept - but if Earth gets hit by eight of them, how common are these bloody things?)
  • Unbound: Sarah is infected by the Krynoid, not Keeler. Does the Doctor try to find a cure or put her out of her misery?

"The Masque of Mandragora"
  • When did the Second and Third Doctors use the wooden control room?
  • Given how important all Guiliano's party guests were, it seems a bit suss the Mandragorans only zapped the ones with no material affect on history.
  • Why did Mandragora try to end human progress in 1492 when Sarah's from five centuries in the future when they didn't succeed? Were they going to change history like Sutekh? If humanity has the potential to be such a threat, why aren't they attacking every other sentient race - like, I dunno, the Silurians and Ice Warriors and Time Lords and Draconians...?
  • What happens to Rossini?
  • Has the Doctor encountered Helix-dominated worlds before? Are they common?


"The Hand of Fear"
  • Why were they blowing up the quarry in the first place?
  • Why do some people zapped with the ring become Eldrad groupies and others don't? Is it just something to do with human variety and dominant wills?
  • Why are silicon-based lifeforms succeptible to the cold?
  • If one particle of Eldrad surviving meant he could return... why didn't the Kastrians just inject him with the poison right away and let him turn to dust instead of his Bond-villain style long-distance execution?
  • How the hell is Dr. Watson going to cope with his repeated near-death experience, ordering the RAF bombing of his own nuclear reactor and the suspicion it was all a dream? Will Sarah succeed in coming back and convincing him it was all real?
  • What happens to the fragments Carter took that were absorbing radioactivity at the path lab? Are they going to grow into mini-Eldrads as well, eventually? Or is Sarah going to deal with them too?
  • Does Roz Hammond know she recreated Sarah's farewell scene, down to the stuffed owl and dungarees, in the second episode of Outland? I bet Shaun McCallif noticed but did he ever let on? 
  • Unbound: the Doctor comes back for Sarah.


"The Deadly Assassin"
  • When did the Doctor and the Master last meet? Certainly, the Doctor's not surprised to know the Master was found dying on Teserus, or that he now looks like the grim reaper. Did Sarah meet him before the accident? (In The Five Doctors, the Third Doctor accuses the Ainley Master of being ANOTHER regeneration, so were there post-Delgado encounters after Frontier in Space?)
  • Was the President the one from The Three Doctors? If not Goth, then who was he choosing as his successor? And was one of his "shocking" nominations on the Resignations Day Honours List that of the Doctor? Cause that would be ironic...
  • How did the Doctor sneak past the Chancellery Guard? He's standing in the exit corridor and the whole squad have to walk past him into the console room - did he travel to another console room and sneak out that way? Or is Hilred even stupider than Spandrel accuses?
  • If Goth is one of the Time Lords from the Doctor's trial, is Hilred related to Andred?
  • Why didn't Runcible regenerate? He certainly wasn't killed too quickly, and not by anti-Time Lord weapons - I mean, a knife in the back wouldn't always kill a human, let alone a Time Lord?
  • If the summons was sent by the Master, did he also make the Doctor leave Sarah behind (having known the companion is as dangerous as the Time Lord in these sort of things)?
  • When the Time Lords say their presidents "chopping and changing every few centuries" do they mean they get through a lot of presidents or the presidents regenerate a lot while in office?
  • Obviously Spandrel and Engin don't know much about Rassilon and the Eye of Harmony - they're a reckless working-class cop and a senile librarian, they're not likely to know all the secret knowledge that only the Chancellor and above would be privy to, and likely to be taught dissinformation.
  • If a Time Lord can regenerate without changing his face, how many lives did Delgado get through?
  • Why doesn't Borusa remember the Master? Is he lying? Or was the Master the boring swot no one paid attention to in class because they were all too busy lusting after the Rani or laughing at Drax the class clown? It would be typical for an ignored, uninteresting kid to grow up to be postal...
  • Unbound: Sarah accompanies the Doctor to Gallifrey.

"The Face of Evil"
  • The Doctor's initial encounter with Xoanon and the Mordee.
  • How did the Doctor's face get carved on the mountainside?
  • What does it say about Leela that, having got her father killed, she effectively shacks up with Satan and leaves her society to its fate? Is she a coward or is she truly enlightened?
  • When did the Doctor meet William Tell?
  • Will the Tesh and Sevateem get along without a clear leader? Is Xoanon sane or just less obviously psychotic? And how has Kaldor City not somehow got this involved with Carnell and the Fendahl?

"Robots of Death"
  • What lead to Taren Capel losing his family and being raised by robots?
  • What convinced the Company Capel was at work on this particular Sandminer?
  • Are there storm mines for other substances? Ice Miners, perhaps?
  • According to Dark Eyes II, this story occurs within a decade of a massive Dalek occupation. If, as everyone seems to insist, Kaldor is in the same space/time universe as Blake's 7, this suggests the Federation falls to the Daleks rather than the rebels. But not the Fendahl, because Dark Eyes II and Robophobia are shown to be canon and Kaldor City can go *SUBTEXT* itself.
  • So, is it coincidence that identical copies of Deva, Travis, Kara, Chevner, Novara and Rontane are on this planet? Do the Clonemasters have a branch in the Blind Heart desert?


"The Talons of Weng-Chiang"
  • If Greel was just a copycat of Jack the Ripper, then who was Jack the Ripper? And where was he during this story as he must have survived well into the next decade to be eaten by Madam Vastra?
  • Were there really Time Agents after Greel?
  • How could Greel give mental powers to Chang? Why couldn't he use them himself? Were they some kind of funky alien contact lenses or something?
  • What happened to the giant rats? Did they starve to death? Or poisoned?


"Horror of Fang Rock"
  • What was the original beast of Fang Rock? A drunken brawl between lighthouse keepers like the Doctor assumes, or something else?
  • What was the info Palmerdale was after?
  • The Doctor and the Rutan make it clear the Rutans have only recently mastered shape-shifting; it's only in the last episode the Doctor realizes he's facing a Rutan at all. So, the current timeframe of the war (from the Doctor's POV) is in the 1900s. Odd, eh?
  • Any inquiry into the events would assume Skinsale went mad and killed them all - he was last seen losing at a casino when all his debts were paid by Palmerdale, blackmailing him for vital information. Skinsale gets aboard Palmerdale's yacht and the next day it's found shattered into Fang Rock, surrounded by corpses and Skinsale is discovered having died moments after searching Palmerdale's body (one of the few with a clear cause of death - being thrown from the top of the lighthouse and clearly murdered) for diamonds. So much for all that honor he was after...
  • Why is the Doctor fascinated by naughty Victorian postcards when he travels with Leela?


"The Invisible Enemy"
  • What went wrong with the secondary control room?
  • Where did the Swarm come from? Are there other viruses waiting to attack?
  • If the Swarm is effectively an idea given form... does that mean it's related to the Weeping Angels?
  • How was the virus supposed to multiply before it had access to TARDIS technology to make itself huge? It was already on the prowl before it infected the Doctor, after all.
  • The virus jumps into the TARDIS, then the Doctor is infected, and then Leela is zapped too. So... is the TARDIS still infected with the Swarm? It would explain how it can be steered so well...
  • Marius takes the infected corpses and puts them on cryo at the Bi-Al Foundation. Are they still contagious? Can the antibodies defeat them? And given each generation of infection was more powerful and contagious than the first, how long before they developed immunity?
  • Are Leela giving her own ancestors antibodies a time paradox? Are the reapers going to get involved?
  • How will 51st Century Earth cope now Titan is a crisp and can no longer refuel space ships across the solar system?
  • Marius says "Ka-Lay-Lee" to give Leela permission to control K9. So technically, K9 was her dog rather than the Doctor's, which also explains why he chose to stay on Gallifrey with her.
  • Given robot dogs are popular in this time period (the Doctor gets a job-lot of K9 units he then customizes, complete with manual as seen in Meglos) and Captain John Hart is from this time period and considers dogs sexy... well, is K9 actually some kind of sex bot Marius used for science instead? Don't judge me, bitches, these questions have to be asked!


"Image of the Fendahl"
  • Fendleman is working for Torchwood. He has a base built specifically over a time rift, with machinery designed to use the time rift, has worked on military hardware, and has a second in command a deranged bissexual polymath who is contact with Hartman in London and lots of security guards who are called in when mysteriously decomposing bodies appear. Plus, he nearly wipes out all life on Earth. What more proof is needed, huh?
  • Is the Fendahl skull really controlling the Doctor? How can it create Fendahleen out of thin air without humans to transform/feed on? Why wasn't there any salt on Planet Five? Surely one single alien can't be responsible for salt-worship, trisdekaphobia, the missing link, ghosts, psychics, the dark side of man's nature, the destruction of Mars, race memory, mythology, deja vu...
  • What happened to the rest of the Fendahl skeleton?
  • How will the vanishing priory be explained?
  • What will Adam Colby do now? Will he try and go public to regain his nobel prize?
  • What happened to Leaky the dog?


"The Sunmakers"
  • How are the humans going to get off Pluto with no spaceships and extremely limited sunlight? Yeah, they're free and all, and humans fight to the death but... how? Were the Plutovians allowed to communicate with other human colonies (this far into the future there must be OTHER outposts of human life, surely? The universe is a big place, surely?)
  • The eco-disaster that rendered Earth uninhabitable... did it produce Haemovores as well? Will the humans get a blood-soaked reception when/if they ever get back to Earth? Will the Sons of Earth approve, given their suicidal gaia-fetishes?
  • What the hell did the Doctor do to piss off the Droge of Gabrielldes to offer a star system as bounty?
  • Is the Company related to the Conglomerate? Surely an organization so powerful as to relocate the human race for a tax dodge and corporate files on the Time Lords has to make a bigger impact than just this story? Again, it looks like humanity has some problems as the Company Bailiffs will no doubt be summoned - unless the Doctor's tricked an entire galaxy-wide corporation into thinking it's gone bust? Did he cause the global financial crisis as well?
  • Goudry is Vila, scattered through time like Clara was.
  • Unbound: Leela was killed in part two, and Goudry becomes a new companion.


"Underworld"

  • Is the Doctor biased, or were the Time Lords really innocent of destroying a society? Herrik seems convinced that the Time Lords were total bastards who taunt them to this day. Or are they merely misinterpreting check-ups from Time Lords who are trying to keep an eye on their errant "children"? Given how involved Time Lords are with Voga, Solos, Karn, etc, is the Doctor's encounter here really just blind chance? Or are they finally trying to make amends with an unwilling agent?
  • Can Time Lords reverse the aging of their bodies without regenerating like Minyans can?
  • 372 years to Minyos II... that's a lot of time for things to go wrong on an overcrowded spaceship with next-to-no supplies, a very high-strung bunch of 10,000 year old argonauts who could quite easily turn psycho-cannibal. Can the pacifier rays keep anyone in check that long?
  • Has the Doctor improved the Time Lords' rep with the Minyans? Or is he the exception that proves the rule that all Gallifreyans are two-faced, double-hearted fuckwits who ruin everything?
  • Unbound: Tala becomes a companion.


"The Invasion of Time"





  • Why has Borusa had to regenerate so recently?
  • How the hell did the Sontarans use the Vardans without the Vardans reading their potato minds and learning they were going to be back-stabbed? Are Sontarans telepathy-proof? (I can't remember any stories where a Sontaran's mind is read, and their mind probes might deadlock their own thoughts).
  • How did the Vardans keep their alliance with the Sontarans secret from the Doctor? What would have happened if the Doctor hadn't time-looped the lot of them? Would Storr have let the Vardans do the thinking for him? Or were the Vardans, with their mind control powers, actually using the Sontarans as shock troops and the Sontaran arrogance adjusted the truth?
  • If a creep like Kelner can manipulate the force fields around Gallifrey, why would it pose any challenge to the Doctor? And if Kelner is just using the controls after the Doctor's unlocked them, doesn't that make him a huge liability to Gallifrey's safety? It doesn't help he's swapped allegiences with not one but three dictatorships in one day...
  • Why does the Doctor have a giant carnivorous plant in his greenhouse? Is it scintillating company?
  • Is the Doctor's memory really wiped? Surely, since the Matrix contains all knowledge, he can find out what's happening - or at least K9 can tell him in stultifying detail. And does tampering with his memory cause his more carefree behavior? Does Skagra's sphere break the mind block, which is why the Doctor becomes such a misery guts in Season 18?
  • What was the cyclic burst thingamajig Lord Gomer was sure was behind the Doctor's return to Gallifrey and becoming president? Was it how he first met the Vardans?


"The Ribos Invasion"
  • Are Garron and Unstoffe time travellers or just very, very far from home? Were they working for the Black Guardian or just semi-innocent bystanders caught up with things?
  • Is the fact that psychics exist on Ribos what has kept it so primitive?
  • Are the Northerners more advanced? Do they even exist?
  • What's to stop the shrivenzales from following our heroes out of the freshly-blown hole into the catacombs and terrorizing Shurr?
  • Unbound: Rodan is chosen instead of Romana.

"The Pirate Planet"

  • What made K9 go apeshit at the start of the story? It can't be the Polyphase Avatron, can it?
  • Is there something significant that both Ribos and Zanak are primitive worlds controlled by high-tech warmongers who know the secret of little lights in the sky that the people are ignorant of? Are Xanxia's wars the same ones the Graff Vynda K took part in?
  • Where did Xanxia get the time dams from, especially given she starts wars that blew Zanak back to the stone age? Did she cause the Vantiliaris to crash? And if she built the Captain's robot bits, how did she stop him getting older? He should look as wizened as Davros by now. Is there more time travel involved or nanogenes or really good plastic surgery?
  • I'm slightly confused. If, as the Doctor says, all the pirated planets are dropped into the core of Zanak and return to their former size... shouldn't Zanak explode? OK, they've been mined down and Zanak seems to be very big, but still, that's a lot of planets...
  • Romana shoots a guard in cold-blood. Doesn't that cause some kind of moral issue if the Doctor finds out? Mind you, given he uses nuclear explosives on a defenseless old woman in a tiara after doing the same with the Graff Vynda K, maybe he's setting a bad example. Is this what makes the Doctor dream about Leela? 
  • Calufrax is a cold, wet, icy planet. So it's probably not located in orbit that would allow Earth-like climate. And now Zanak is there. Surely it will start to freeze now? Even if there is some gizmo on the Bridge to protect the planet from its new environs the Doctor just blew it the hell up!
  • Where has the Doctor encountered Mentiads before?


"The Stones of Blood"
  • Why didn't Cessair of Diplos try and escape Earth? Even given her long life-span, she didn't have anything better to do than murder husbands and have paintings made?
  • What was up with the crows?
  • Did the Ogri really effect mythology of stone ogres?
  • What were a Wirrrn and a Sea Devil doing on a Xarax Federation police ship?
  • Why does Romana think hyperspace is impossible? Is this some wierd definition of "true" hyperspace?
  • Isn't Amelia Rumford going to get in trouble when four people are found dead within walking distance of the cottage she's in (the owner of which has also mysteriously vanished)?
  • What will happen when the Megara catch up with the Doctor?
  • Did the Ogri that went over the cliff die, or is it still out there sucking the blood out of cornish cod?

"The Androids of Tara"
  • What caused the plague on Tara? Is it one of Terry Nation's great space plagues?
  • How did Grendel spike Rienhart's wine? Isn't it lucky he happened to drink it and pass out the second Grendel happened to be outside with no guards to stop him? Why didn't he notice the Doctor there, and his surprising resistance to drugs?
  • What the hell is the Taran wood beast? How could something that stupid survive a plague? What does it feed on? Is it actually some really shitty android Madame Lamia gave up on? How many animal
  • Are all Taran androids as intelligent as George? Did the Doctor program some free will?
  • The ease with which Romana gets the segment begs the question - is the quest to collect the Key, or to sort out the problems on Ribos, Zanak, et all? Or is she just getting some karma this week?
  • Grendel says the statue guards his fortunes. Ie, it's good luck. And then Romana takes it away and within the week he becomes a hunted fugitive. Coincidence?
  • Why isn't anyone on Tara dressed like Romana? Is the TARDIS wardrobe stuffed or something? Has she actually started the fashion trend in some bizarre wibbly-wobbly ontological paradox?


"The Power of Kroll"
  • How much of the holy book of Kroll was accurate?
  • Norl mentions the Stone of Blood. Since Ogri occur naturally in swamps, is this a coincidence?
  • How did Rhom Dutt contact the Swampies in the first place? It's not like he can email them like any member of the Nigerian royal family. Come to think of it, how do the Swampies even know about the Sons of Earth and their support? Is Mench telling them? Thawn must therefore know Mench is a spy or else how the hell did he think they were going to find out? Do the SOE drop parcels for the Swampies or something?
  • What are the other holy rituals? One's being stoned to death, another fed to a Kroll impersonator, and another is death by the wrack. It bugs me they don't explain the others.
  • Was Dugeen really a member of the SOE? (It's unclear if he said "they're not cranks" or "we're not cranks", though he clearly sympathized with them.)
  • Delta Magna runs on the flatulence of a giant squid. Now, assuming you can wrap your brain around that (and, seriously, I still don't get how calamari farts get turned into food) this means that the overcrowded Delta Magna now has no fuel/food any more. So while baby Krolls frolic happily in the mud, an entire civilization is condemned to either cannibalism or "returning to Earth to starve". Is this what happened when the Usurians offered their aide?
  • Are the surviving half-dozen Swampies really going to put up with Fenner or just kill him there and then? And unless the Swampies are some one-gender race, then all their women folk were eaten by Kroll and they're doomed to extinction anyway? Was Robert Holmes feeling really depressed this week or something?


"The Armageddon Factor"
  • Were the Doctor and Drax really close friends or was Drax exaggerating that to con the Doctor?
  • Was the Guardian always the Black Guardian? I mean, was it the Black one who set the Doctor the task in the first place? By which he threatened to destroy the Doctor if he didn't?
  • If the President of the Time Lords looks like Valentyne Dyall and the President is Borusa then that means there is another incarnation of Borusa to add to the first four. Seriously, what was wrong with the guy he kept regenerating that fast? Was he into extreme sport or violently kinky sex?
  • Where are all the Zeons?
  • Why were two neighboring planets so far apart?
  • Apparently the Shadow was the resurrected spirit of the Doctor's old enemies... but which one?
  • If the sixth segment turns into Astra, then logically all the other segments are back in their rightful place. Which is good for Garron. But that means Calufrax will reappear in the already-full-to-bursting Zanak, the Seal of Diplos will appear around a standing stone's neck, one Kroll will get a talisman down its throat and Grendel will get his goodluck charm back. Oh, and it will also be bloody easy to find them again! Bit of a problem there - and no, I don't count Key 2 Time as canon!
  • Whatever happened to Drax, anyway? Apart from using his hot pink Cadillac TARDIS to collect Sarah Jane's K9 from a 23rd century museum to fight Omega, of course...
  • Unbound: the Shadow was, as originally planned, the skull-faced Master.


"Destiny of the Daleks"
  • Why is Romana so scared of zombies? Is there a Gallifreyan George A Romero? Or is it some race memories of the great vampires?
  • Given K9 can catch laryngitis - and the Virus of the Swarm - why doesn't he have a firewall? And does the laryngitis in this story change his voice for the rest of the season?
  • What made the Daleks think Davros could help them, given they believed him dead? Were they going to download his brain and sift through the memories for something useful?
  • Um, are all Movellan women so flat-chested up close? Are the boobs part of the uniform?
  • Do the Daleks know about the Time Lords at this point in time? They don't seem to notice Romana has two hearts, for example. Do they think she's from Appapallachia or something?
  • Yet Davros clearly learns basic DW facts from the sensor globe in this story to bring him up to date with the eight thousand years he's been asleep. Does he also look up Napoleon quotes?
  • One of the prisoners is a black guy dressed as a Draconian. Are humans allowed on Draconia in the 49th century or is he just wearing a dead lizard's outfit?
  • How many people even know who Davros is? Why would Tyssan assume capturing Davros would be like arresting Bin Laden? And is bringing a dangerous individual that the ENTIRE DALEK EMPIRE is after into the heart of human space, then locking him up in a prison REALLY THAT GOOD AN IDEA?!? I bet bloody Torchwood came up with that brainwave...
  • What the hell ever happened to the Movellans after mastering biowarfare and rendering the Daleks all but extinct? Did some Y2k style bug stop them conquering the universe or what? Or did the fact humanity had one of their time-travelling spaceships captured by the Torchwood Archive fuck them up good and proper?


"City of Death"
  • The title refers to Paris, being known as City of Love. So it's a pun. You morons.
  • Who hired Duggan to investigate Scarlioni in the first place? Was it John Cleese or Eleanor Bron?
  • When did the Doctor meet Leonardo (it has to be his fourth self between this story and Masque of Mandragora)? Did he meet Leela? Is it true some of the defaced artworks actually hid blue police boxes? And surely the Doctor was involved in that whacky weekend Leo met some sea serpents?
  • Scaroth has never, not once, ever saught counselling for his PTSD? After all this time, it has never occured to him "actually, I told those stupid fucks this was a dumb idea, I'm not the one at fault"? And given that he and Romana agree the ship was stuffed anyway, all he could do was condemn the Jagaroth to a slow, lingering death by starvation since they were stuck on Earth. Was he just desperate not be blamed? What a bloody Emo!
  • Apparently 400,000,000 years ago is too recent for life on Earth. Was there some apocalypse and the Jagaroth restarted the cycle? It could explain why so many aliens came to visit prehistoric Earth to explore how the rebooted biosphere would work. But what caused the extinction? The Permian omnivores? The Fendahl? The Rachnoss? Global warming?
  • Where does Scaroth get his fleshmasks from? Does he grow them like the novelization says? And does he tear them off in private for his own relaxation or to remind himself who he really is?
  • And how did he fool the Countess? Tell her he was gay? Or was his flesh disguise fully-working?
  • Got to ask... was one of the Scaroths Jesus?
  • Is the Mona Lisa that survived the genuine one as the SJAs imply? Did that Mona just hear all the juicy gossip from Leonardo or because he rehired the genuine Mona to do the portraits? Yet, surely Tancredi could splurge out some cash for paint and not have da Vinci rely on some alien space dust as paint? Or, maybe more simply, the genuine AND a fake survived the fire and the genuine was uncovered after the Doctor and Romana left Paris.
  • How come Duggan can breathe on primeval Earth? Is it the TARDIS or is the atmosphere different than you'd think back then? Did the Jaggaroth terraform?
  • Does Duggan spend a really long time at the gift shop or do the Doctor and Romana literally fly down the Eiffel Tower? Was Romana joking? Can Time Ladies fly as well as pick and choose their regenerations? Or was it that stupid transmigration of an object bollocks?

"The Creature from the Pit"
  • The Doctor's meeting with Theseus and Ariadne and dealing with the Minotaur.
  • How often does the Doctor get junk mail from Gallifrey? Was this before, during or after his trial and exile? Is it like the Yellow Envelope, and you can't escape from it whatever happens?
  • What's so special about Erato's distress signal that only a special Time Lord gadget can pick it up? Shouldn't an SOS be, I dunno, easy to detect?
  • Given that 15 years is a blink of an eye to the Tythonians... what the hell do they think they're doing? Erato's effectively been five minutes late and they intend to DESTROY AN ENTIRE SOLAR SYSTEM - specifically that of the one planet they need chloryfyl from! Along with their own ambassador? Even Bush would call that an overreaction!
  • Indeed, Erato seems to be something of a total prick. In more ways that one. After fifteen years he still doesn't realize sitting on people kills them? And then he murders Adrasta who, it must be said, did not do more than lock him in a shitty hotel room for a few hours. And then he tries to sneak away before an innocent planet is totally destroyed by his bosses?
  • Why is metal so valuable on Chloris? I get it's rare... so what? Does Adrasta play her guards with iron filings? What do the bandits do with their stash given they still have to live like animals in the jungle?
  • No one on Chloris has ever tried to create a weed killer? Or use wooden tools? It almost seems like, as in State of Decay, something is trying to prevent the civilization from advancing?
  • Why can't the Doctor read Tibetan? Did he delete that info?
  • What happens to Karella and the bandits after this?


"The Nightmare of Eden"
  • Is the CET machine related to the miniscopes? Would the Doctor have tolerated it even without the whole drug business? Is an electronic zoo really a terrible idea, assuming it's not misused?
  • Why does East Galaxy have such low standards for employees? Is this some cold war thing?
  • Are Mandrels somehow poisonous? They seem to kill some people simply by breathing on them, and even casual scratches can prove fatal? Is this their vraxoin at work?
  • How did Tryst found out that vaporized Mandrels made vraxoin? How easily do Mandrels self-combust? And how did Stot know which expedition to team up with on the off-chance they'd find out a new source of vraxoin? Had someone been selling Mandrel crap on ebay or something?
  • What happens when the truth comes out that Mandrels make the worst drug in the universe? Will humanity seal Eden off or just nuke the planet and everything on it? Seriously, what do you think will happen? Especially as so-called trusted academics become pushers overnight...
  • Unbound: Romana drinks the vrax instead of Rigg. Does she become an addict?


"The Horns of Nimon"
  • Where do the Nimon come from? How did they get into this cycle? Were they persecuted like the one in The God Complex? Or do different breeds of Nimon feed on different things - life force, psychic energy, feng shuei? And isn't there some better way of travelling than building a black hole which will eat your new planet and any handy sacrifices en route?
  • How does the Doctor remove the time rotor without a) the TARDIS exploding b) Romana and/or K9 becoming the Bad Wolf? And how does Nimon disco-lighting help with the repairs? Is this what causes the rebooted police box exterior next season?
  • How rubbish is Aneth they'll believe a random street kid is some Harry Potter style hero? Are they truly a terrified post-apocalyptic society? What idiot thinks that Seth should paint a ship white instead of, I dunno, radioing Aneth and saying he's won? Are they really so primitive now?
  • Has the Doctor been there before? Or will he visit?
  • What happens to Sorak and the Skonnons? Do they finally man up and ask Aneth for humanitarian aide and blame all the crap they've done on Nimon as the book says?
  • Is Soldeed dead? Come to that, are the Nimon wiped out? They have a new energy supply for a few days, so they have enough time to create a new black hole and escape...
  • Is this story set before or after Seasons of Fear? Do the Nimon improve or decline?


"Shada"
  • So, uh, did this happen or not? And which Doctor did it happen to?
  • Did the Doctor change his clothes because he thought he looked too much like a student?
  • Which other incarnation met Chronotis?

"The Leisure Hive"
  • Why does Romana tell K9 to fetch the beachball if she knows he'll short circuit in the water?
  • Surely the Foamasi must have some link to the Raxicoricofallapatorians? They're both green reptillian gangster families who hide inside flesh suits and hunt their prey nude, with an interest in buying radioactive mudballs no one else in the universe wants...
  • So the good Foamasi... drill their way into the Hive and creep around in a sinister fashion, spying through doors and stuff. But don't try and prevent Krimpton from being brutally murdered. Or announce themselves to anyone earlier. Or use any kind of translators to tell the Argolin what's happening. Could it be the "nice" Argolin are actually performing a Hustle-like con to infiltrate the Hive after all? And has it actually worked?
  • Won't the discovery of the working tachyon recreation gizmo mean everyone will want to rebuild it? If they don't, the Argolin will simply die out after all. I bet Vargos and the others will want a second shot at life if Mena does. Or is interbreeding the clue to their races' survival? (Given Argolin visit IceWorld, they at least survive that long, whenever IceWorld is set, anyway.)
  • Will Hardin marry Mena, adopt Pangol and stop his homicidal tendencies? I mean, that's still Pangol in babyform, his mind is the same as the loony that ran in there. As soon as he's a toddler he'll be trying to start wars again unless he gets some serious therapy...


"Meglos"
  • When did the Fourth Doctor meet Zastor? Was it with Leela or Sarah?
  • Are all Zolfa Thurans cactii or is Meglos special because he turned himself into light that can possess cactii? But then, why does he look like a cactus when his concentration slips? Has he just spent too long in cactus form (and he moves like he's got prickles in his armpits, too)? Or are Zolfa Thurans actually relatives of the Vinvocci and the cactus parasite thing was a total coincidence?
  • How did the dodecahedron travel to Tigella? Was it the good Zolfa Thurans? And how did the barbaric Tigellans harness the energy of a novelty lava lamp to power all their technology? How did they survive the lethal plants on the surface in the first place? What made all the vegetation evil in the first place? Was it radiation from the Dodecahedron?
  • Why did Meglos need George Morris? Are there no other humanoids in the galaxy he could get? Isn't sending the Gaztaks to Earth (a protected planet) to abduct the first tall white guy they find a bit like sending the Trotters into Area 15 to pick up some overalls on the needlessly-pointless-difficulty-scale?
  • What happens to Deedrix and Cara? Do the Tigellans prosper or die right away (the Time Lord files say that the only planet with any viable civilization was Zolfa Thura, not Tigella)? And what happens to the Cult of the Dodecahedron now the high priest is dead, the thing itself has exploded and science is triumphant - do they sacrifice themselves to the bell plants?
  • Can you really get lost on anti-clockwise-rotating planets or are the Doctor and Romana bullshitting us for their own olympian amusement?
  • When does K9 get his fuel efficiency fixed? Does it ever get fixed?
  • Romana says Meglos is indestructible. Ergo, he survived the destruction of Zolfa-Thura and his return in The Lodger is an entirely canonical possibility...

"Full Circle"
  • Why do the Time Lords want Romana back? Did they even know she was away, given the Guardian lied to her and impersonated the President? And why don't they summon the TARDIS with the recall circuit or a telepathic signal into the Doctor and Romana's minds?
  • If Alzarius is the E-Space equivalent of Gallifrey, is Terradon the E-Space equivalent of Earth? Note that Alzarius, like Gallifrey has two suns, a dark history, regenerating inhabitants, a technocratic society and rebels who live in caves on mountains discovering the truth about the universe.
  • What made the Starliner crash? Why were there never any rescue ships? Are the Terradonians still around after one million years, anyway? And given they're at least one million years behind the times, will these Alzarian throwbacks even be accepted by Terradonian society?
  • As the spiders/marshmen are Alzarian antibodies that destroy invaders... what happens on Alzarius when it's left alone? Is it like Virn or that other living planet in Blake's 7? Or perhaps Solos? Why does a planet go to sleep every fifty years anyway? Is Alzarius actually the norm of E-Space planets?
  • Why do the Marshmen have children? It's sort of like having an immune system that needs bedtime stories. And why do Marshmen victims have the whisker tatoo stuff on their faces? Is it some kind of posion to stop them healing from their injuries and regenerating?
  • Unbound: Varsh, Keira, the Marshchild or indeed anyone other than Adric joins this story.


"State of Decay"
  • What is the Wasting? Is it, as Zargo hints, the idea of gluttony and decadence? Or is it "being eaten by vampires" which the three protect the villagers from by virtue of only munching on the selected instead.
  • Is this story set in a different time period to Full Circle?
  • Over a thousand years, not once has anyone tried to kill the three who rule with some garlic or a cross? There was no initial mutiny when the crew of the Hydrax went into another planet and landed on an unnamed planet and then stripped out all the technology? At no point did anyone try anything, like say bundling the tree into an airlock and crushing them? Did Aukon mesmirize everyone?
  • Where did Aukon's bats come from? Are they native to the planet? What other animals are they?
  • E-Space has a thriving population of Tharil-slavers and interplanetary travel. Yet no one has visited the Hydrax planet or asked them if they've seen a lost Starliner? Or did the three who rule have to deal with E-Space natives over the last thousand years?
  • Why does anyone follow Ivo since he is as much as part of the regime as Habris and ensures everyone except his own family gets taken away and bled to death?
  • Do the three die from the death of the great vampire? The idea seems to have been they were killed by sunlight as dawn broke but... Aukon can survive in direct sunlight anyway. Can't he?
  • At what point did the Doctor decide not to return Adric to the Starliner?
  • Unbound: Adric becomes a vampire. A whiny vampire.


"Warriors' Gate"
  • Are the slavers from E-Space or N-Space? Apparently, Gallagher thought the former, but if the slavers are from N-Space, so must be the Tharils, ergo, Romana is in entirely the wrong universe to free slaves. So, if they're from E-Space... are they actually Terradonians?
  • Why does Biroc take Romana back to the Tharil Palace, which was only a fancy hologram recreation to show the Doctor their history? Is it just Biroc's too sentimental or distracted to change the desktop?
  • How does K9 get repaired to return to N-Space? Was Biroc lying or did Romana rebuild him?
  • How can K9 build a TARDIS? Did Romana nick some coral or something?
  • Are Aldo and Royce killed or do they escape death in a nifty escape capsule?
  • What happened to the first Gundan that ran through the mirrors? Is he still out there?
  • Just how much popular support do the Tharils have? Rorvik is scornful of the idea anyone objects to his slave trade, which has been contracted in society for decades at least. So, Romana might have the ex-slave empire actually against her instead of a few nasty bastards.
  • And how long have the Tharils been enslaved if Rorvik et all are unaware of Tharils fleeing to the Gateway or what the Gundans are for?
  • Unbound: The Doctor and Romana seem to be seriously contemplating retiring from the universe and returning to Gallifrey with Adric as their adopted son. What if this is actually what happened? How long before Romana snapped? How long before the Doctor snapped? And would the two K9s get on with each other as badly as Paul Margrs suggests?


"The Keeper of Traken"
  • What happened to Nyssa's mother? Does divorce exist on Traken?
  • Why doesn't Nyssa seem to have any friends of her own age? Is she allowed into the palace on work experience or something? Because her dad is a Consul?
  • Surely not all Melkurs resemble those art deco statues? Or does everyone evil in Mettula Orionsis dress that like and head for the only botanical gardens on the planet? Is it some kind of inadequate psychic armor?
  • Did the Master plan to get stuck there for twenty years? Given his scheme relies on it, maybe. But since he has another TARDIS in the statue head, he could have legged it years ago if he tried.
  • Why does the Master keep referring to the Doctor as "Time Lord"? Does he no longer consider himself a true Gallifreyan after all these years?
  • The Master is actually about to take over the Doctor's body a split second before Adric saves his bacon. Presumably he can only pull this stunt off once, which is why he never tries it after he gets Tremas' body.
  • The Keeper is clearly on the verge of complete senility. Not only does he decide to ruin Kassia's life twice over by taking Tremas and Melkur away from her, he then forgets to tell anyone he's sent the Doctor and Adric and accidentally implicates them as evil. He then works out Kassia is evil and lets her kill Soron anyway. Are all Keepers this bad at the end of their reign?
  • How does the Master's collar allow Kassia to fire laser beams from her eyes? Seriously!


"Logopolis"
  • Anyone ever noticed the wierd foreshadowing in this season? Morix, the Pangol/Mena blend, Meglos abandoning George Morris, the vampires dissolving, then the Master and Tremas... all involve two individuals blending and transforming into new forms. Is that coincidence? Really?
  • Why is Tegan in England? Why didn't she try and get an air hostess job with QANTAS in Brisbane? Was she globetrotting with Colin and stayed with Aunt Vanessa?
  • Do the policemen connect the corpses with the Master? Do they think the Doctor is some kind of copycat for that bearded guy in the seventies who got locked up on island after blowing up a church
  • What the hell was the Doctor's original plan to drown the TARDIS? To set up shop on 1980s Earth with Adric and lure the Master out into the open?
  • The Watcher, huh. Did the Fourth Doctor create it with powers K'Anpo left in him? If so, it seems unconscious because the Doctor tells Adric he has absolutely no idea who the white guy is until they meet. And why does anyone who talks with the Watcher become so secretive about their conversations?
  • How did the Watcher bring Nyssa to Logopolis? Was it during the time he had control of the TARDIS in part three? If so, did he take it back to the Barnet Bypass to do his earlier stalking?
  • What did the Watcher tell the Doctor? If it was, as it appeared "Go to Logopolis anyway, ditch Adric there and then run off and on no account ask the Time Lords for help even though they could be damn useful", the Watcher either fails mighteously or deliberately triggers the apocalypse. Which might make sense if the shrinking TARDIS nearly killing the Doctor is what generates the Watcher in the first place, so he's going back to engineer his own birth.
  • The Monitor's plan B - does it need to be continually used? I mean, if the Pharos Project folks reboot the systems, will the CVE close? Or does the fix-it trick only need to be used once?
  • Was the Master really expecting to rule the universe from the Pharos Project or was he just getting off on the chaos he'd cause? Giving him a button to blow up the universe would cheer him up, based on past form. Or were the drums really loud that day? 
  • Only one CVE stays open. Is this the one that leads to E-Space or another? If not, how can Romana ever return? What other universes are now sealed off?
  • Why doesn't the Master's chameleon circuit work properly? Are police boxes jinxed?
  • How many planets are destroyed by the entropy? Vast parts of the universe aren't inhabited, so many nowhere really important was wiped out. Because surely the Doctor would be all "ah, yes, 1981, that was the year half the galaxy mysteriously vanished, I really should have asked about it". Is this an unfixed point, like all the Silurian stories?
  • Is Traken really wiped out? It gets swallowed up in the entropy field, yes, but Nyssa seems to cope pretty well. She's joking in the next scene for Christ's sake. Is it possible that Traken wasn't wiped from existence, but just devastated? Nyssa never says Traken was destroyed on screen, only that it "used to be" like the Zero Room. Given she has no family there, and possibly most friends would be either dead or busy rebuilding the planet, she might stay on the TARDIS by choice.
  • It's unclear if the Doctor lets go of the pylon or not, but he isn't really trying to hold on. Why? Is it just fate? Is he allowing himself to die to try and sate the Master's psychosis (he has, after all, given up control of the universe for a chance to kill the Doctor)? Is he going to trigger his regeneration because his body's knackered and his dendrites are damaged by all the entropy, so he's trusting his next self will be better off than waiting around to die?
  • So, the Doctor's last thoughts are of his companions. Is this some kind of final shutdown to trigger his regenration? (The Third, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh Doctors all have to say goodbyes before they regenerate, while the Eighth clearly is thinking of his.) If so, what do all his enemies represent? A stubborn refusal to give in?
  • The last thing the Doctor thinks of is Romana, and he turns into a young thin blond. Coincidence?
  • Unbound: instead of Nyssa, Sarah Jane Smith is brought back. Or maybe Leela.


"K9 & Company"
  • How will Morton Harwood cope now all the villagers are arrested?
  • What was causing the strange pH levels? Buried corpses? Alien radiation?
  • Did Vivien Faye have anything to do with the witches' covern? Keeping barbarous primitives on hand with the BIDs would play into her hands very well, after all...
  • What was the book SJ was writing?
  • Whatever happened to Brendan? Did it hurt?
  • Unbound: as per the original plan, K9 mk III was actually an assassin working for the Master.
  • Unbound: what if SJ was too late and Brendan was sacrificed?

No comments: