Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/Terror of the Vervoids


 * Lasky has been into room 6, not finding her luggage there, because her key is actually for room 9. So how did she get in?
 * The same way the Doctor and Mel got in: the door was left unlocked.


 * How did Grenville know that the unidentified craft on the Hyperion's scanner was the TARDIS? The Doctor states the message was sent directly to him.
 * The Doctor has been known to leave his "calling card" to people he trusts (e.g., the Brigadier in TV: Terror of the Zygons). As he had met Grenville before and obviously had respect for him it is not inconceivable that the Doctor left him a means of recognising the TARDIS or contacting him directly. Alternately: having seen a space-traveling police box before, he could have simply made an educated guess. The TARDIS is not that hard to recognise.


 * Why don't the Mogarians notice a major change in character in one of their number?
 * Why would all of the Mogarians necessarily know each other? The Hyperion III is a passenger liner; any number of Mogarians could be aboard.


 * If the Vervoids are genetically engineered, why create them with lethal stings?
 * Doland seems unaware of the existence of the stinger; he shakes hands with a Vervoid. It may have been an unintended consequence.


 * Why does the Captain state that the ship is hijack-proof, even though it has been hijacked by Brookner? Between the ease with which the door lock is cut, and the fact that the Vervoids have no trouble gassing Brookner, "hijack-proof" seems to be an exaggeration.
 * The comment is obviously sarcastic: the Commodore states that the ship is "supposed" to be hijack proof when it has just been hijacked.


 * Since the Doctor is shown viewing an event in his future, presumably he should already know what's going to happen once his personal timeline catches up to the Vervoid incident. Yet he appears totally unaware as he proceeds through the adventure.
 * It can be speculated that the Doctor (or the Time Lords) likely erased his memory of the event so as not to corrupt the timeline later. Alternately, there is an unresolved issue as to how much of the evidence seen by the court (and us, the viewer) is genuine after the Valeyard's tampering. This may render the issue moot.


 * In the trial, why does the Doctor simply say that "The murderer" sabotaged the ship instead of giving the name?
 * The Doctor has a flair for the dramatic. He may just want to tell the story. Alternately, the Valeyard has a habit of interrupting; this may be an attempt at keeping him occupied to minimize the amount of interruptions.


 * Why does the Doctor edit the matrix in such a way as to hide the true form of the Vervoid for a while, or to hide the identity of the killer until the events of the story reveal it?
 * The Doctor has essentially the same motivation as the writers do: he wants to create a compelling story which shows him in a heroic light, solving a difficult problem. If they already knew the ending, they might refuse to watch the rest (and therefore miss all his good speeches), or get fidgety and start asking questions like, "If you'd gone down there earlier, wouldn't two more people be alive today?"


 * How can the Time Lords charge the Doctor for a crime he hasn't committed yet?
 * Why can't they? A person can be tried and sentenced for planning a robbery or a murder; this is roughly the same.


 * If the the Time Lords condemn the Doctor to death because he committed genocide then he will never actually commit the crime because it was in future, and so he would therefore be killed for a crime that wasn't committed. Ultimately it is ridiculous to use evidence from the future and takes away any suspense that the Doctor might be killed by the High Council.
 * Nope. First, see the above answer from another contributor regarding why/how a person might be punished for a crime they hadn't yet committed. That's just in our human, linear society. The Time Lords understand the complex (some might even say "timey-wimey") nature of time lines. They clearly view it as acceptable to punish someone for something they know will happen in some time line but hasn't yet (for example, sending the Doctor back to destroy the Daleks before they were created). As for the suspense of it, the fact that they are viewing one potential future of the Doctor's doesn't necessarily mean that they don't execute him. They understand that Time can be re-written, and have done it before. There's a reason they call them Time Lords...
 * In short, they're going to punish him so as to prevent the genocide, since punishing him would mean the event wouldn't happen.


 * If the Doctor didn't actually sabotage the communications system, and it was merely a distortion of the Matrix, then who did sabotage it?
 * Does it really matter who did it? Is not knowing a discontinuity? Certainly there were enough people with a motive: Rudge, Doland, the Mogarians; not to mention the Vervoids themselves.
 * The Doctor specifically says that "the murderer" did it. In other words, Doland.