Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/Doctor Who and the Silurians


 * The vision impairment of the injured Silurian changes between episodes.


 * It was raining when Dr. Quinn arrived but it wasn't raining when the search for the "thing" began or before Dr. Quinn arrived.
 * It started raining in the interim.


 * Further, Quinn arrives in the barn with a wet coat. But in the next shot, in the same scene, his coat is bone dry.


 * The name 'Silurian' is a misnomer, as scientifically-minded viewers pointed out. The creatures could not have come from the Silurian Period, as reptiles had not yet evolved. In The Sea Devils the Third Doctor acknowledges the error by saying the Silurians should be called Paleocenes. But this is incorrect as well, for the Paleocene Epoch marked the beginning of the Age of Mammals.
 * The Doctor estimates at that time when they may have been from. The fact that mammals were becoming dominant during the Paleocene Epoch doesn't mean the "Silurians" couldn't have been there as well.
 * Also, contrary to popular belief, the Silurians were NOT named after the era.
 * In-story, they were, and this is explicitly stated by the Doctor. It is true however that the name was chosen by the writers because it sounded cool.The 'Silurians' were contemporaries of the dinosaurs (they have a dinosaur 'pet'). But the dinosaurs were dead by the Palaeocene. In The Hungry Earth the naming problem is neatly avoided.


 * The Doctor states that he's thousands of years old, which is inconsistent with the Second Doctor's statement of being only 450 years old soon after his regeneration (there's no indication the Second incarnation lasted for thousands of years).
 * The Doctor may have been exaggerating, or basing his age upon the relative age of the Silurians. The Doctor has been caught out lying about his age (DW: The Ribos Operation), and age can be interpreted many different ways when you are both a time traveler and an alien.