Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/The Robots of Death


 * In the scene in which it is revealed that SV7 is receiving order from Capel, the robot's eyes are blacked out (in order to allow the reddening effect to be added) before the eyes are supposed to change colour. In the same scene, the identity of Dask as Capel is prematurely revealed as the actor's face is clearly recognizable despite the video effects used.
 * This is an error because in a later scene Capel is shown wearing a hooded robe intended to disguise his identity.
 * Why is that an error? He wears the hood for his own reasons later, but there is no reason for him to conceal his identity from SV7 at this point. The production team are further allowing the viewer to "guess" that Dask is Capel, without explicitly stating it yet.


 * The metal restraint on the Doctor and Leela visibly move with ease.
 * This is explained clearly in the story. The restraints are "like leather" until they are molecularly bonded, which can then be deactivated again making them easily movable.


 * Why does Dask/Capel bother to wear the hood when working on the robots in his secret lab?
 * It's a pseudo-religious fetish fuelled by his robo-messianic complex (i.e. the belief that he is the saviour of all robot-kind). Either that or perhaps it's a 'clean suit' that is a good idea to wear when mucking around in the brains of a Robot to avoid dust/moisture getting in there (Let us not forget that Capel sees Robots as his 'Brothers' and therefore is performing 'surgery' on them).
 * The 'clean suit' hypothesis is consistent with the fact that Capel requires a specialized lab to perform the alterations, but it is inconsistent with the fact that the room itself did not appear to be a 'clean room', and dust could easily enter via the door. The most obvious solution is that it is something that specifically comes from humans which needs to be kept out of robots' brains, and not just run of the mill dust.
 * Dude is a nutcase who thinks he's a robot working on a plan to establish himself as some kind of robo-messiah. I'm not so certain we should look too hard for any reasonable semblance of logic in his decisions. He could simply wear the hood because he thinks it's cool.


 * When Leela throws her knife at the attacking robot it makes a cartoonish 'shhhh doinkk!' noise. She also breaks character completely by following it with "Now you're just showing-off".
 * Leela has been shown to have a sense of humour. This is not breaking character.


 * V35 to V40 are said to have searched the ore hoppers, but V35 spends the entire story in the 'morgue'.
 * Obviously V35 was active long enough to be involved in that search, even if the majority of it may have been carried out by the others in that series.


 * The robot listening outside the crew's quarters was presumably meant to be D84, but it's actually a Voc.
 * There is no reason why this shouldn't be a robot other than D84. The Voc has been programmed (by Capel?) to gather information. When the straight forward approach failed, it simply waited at the door to listen.


 * How did the company know to put D84 and Poul on this particular sand-miner? Surely Capel's threats were not so specific as to openly state he was going to carry-out his threats on the sand-miner, which only has a crew of about eight people to begin with.
 * Capel only mentioned the revolution would begin in a company installation. There are other agents all over the company. D84 and Poul just happened to draw the short straw and ended up on the actual installation Capel was basing his revolution from.


 * Why on Earth would Capel choose to start his robot revolution on an isolated sand-miner on an uninhabited planet instead of one of the major cities (like Kaldor) on his home world?
 * Since he made his threats, the company had tightened up security all over the civilized planet(s). The sand-miner was a great, out-of-the-way place to work undetected.


 * It is not stated that the planet the Sand-Miner is on is uninhabited. The Miner could be on an uninhabited part of Capel's homeworld, and Kaldor city could be on the other side of the planet (planets are pretty big places after all)


 * Perhaps Capel saw the use of robots on sandminers as the quintessential symbol of their slavery, and so choose that as the place to begin their revolt. To Capel, the robots were the brute labour force used at the base of the economy.


 * Why does Dask sabotage the sandminer just so he can save it again? How does it advance or help his plan?
 * One possibility: the damage to the engines was caused incidentally during the clearly very violent struggle between Borg (who generally worked as a "mover" within the engine room) and his robot murderer, which resulted in both of them being "irreparably" maimed and could well have entailed collateral damage to the infrastructure. A second possibility: Dask engineered the "accident" in order to give himself time to remove some incriminating evidence from the crime scene.
 * It's also possible that Borg committed the sabotage deliberately when he was attacked, so as to destroy all the robots and limit the killings to the sandminer.


 * Given the real reason Poul has been put aboard the sandminer (i.e. to investigate the specific threats of a 'robot revolution' made to the company by Capel) why does the possibility that a robot has committed the murder a) not occur to him, and b) shock him so much when it is suggested to him by the Doctor?
 * Because, given the nature of his phobia, the very idea is unbearable for him to even contemplate. One can only assume the Kaldor City police have very bad psychological screening to have appointed him for this mission in the first place (with a robot colleague, to rub salt in the wound).
 * Also, no one really believes that the robots are capable of uprising. They're investigating it because some wackadoodle is making threats and they have to be seen to be doing something, but Poul probably didn't genuinely believe that there would ever be a robot uprising.


 * The Doctor, D84 and Leela see that Dask has converted 10 robots (not sure if that includes SV7 and V4 who'd been heavily damaged). So Dask has V6 and SV7 with him, why does he only send V5 to attack Toos, Pool and Uvanov? Why not send more? Where are the other 7 or so robots? What are they doing? Like V45 who strangled Chub what's it doing?


 * Why does Dask not get V6 a new hand if he's using it to assist him? Would he not want to heal his brother?
 * He might not have the time or resources at hand to fix it at that moment. Dude is planning a robot uprising and murdering people, that's surely likely to affect his priorities to some degree.