Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/Father's Day


 * If Rose can remember Jackie telling her about the blonde girl who was by her father's side when he died, that means it is impossible to change the past because the past changes would have already taken place which contradicts many Doctor Who episodes.
 * Rose's memory changed when the past changed. Previously she remembered Jackie telling her that no one was with Pete when he died.
 * Yet, Amy Pond still remembers the clerics and the Weeping Angel that got in her head after they were entirely removed from time in DW: Flesh and Stone, and the Doctor tells her that being a time traveler changes the way you experience time (implying that it makes their memories immune to changes in the timestream).
 * The Doctor later, in DW: Cold Blood, states to Amy as she is trying to remember Rory that memories are not 'immune' if one's own timestream is directly affected, which Rose's was by her father's death and her involvement in it.


 * When the Doctor is about to be eaten by the Reaper, Rose shouts "Doctor" then it cuts to a wide shot of The Doctor and the Reaper, notice that the shadowy TARDIS thing is gone.
 * The Doctor loses concentration when the Reaper was about to eat him, so the TARDIS must have been affected by this.


 * In the church scene the doctors sonic screwdriver goes off without making a noise.
 * Silent setting? it has been shown that the sonic screwdriver changes pitch depending on the setting. it is possible that this setting is at a range of sound that cannot be detected by human ears.


 * This is less of a continuity error in this specific episode, and more of a general one for the series, but surely there's an awful lot of times when the doctor has changed past events, where the reapers should thus show up. Is the survival of Rose's father somehow more important than any of the other seemingly fixed events that the Doctor has encountered? I find as a fan, I practically have to disregard this episode.
 * As the Doctor says in the episode, the Time Lords always cleared up problems like this in the past: with them gone, the timeline is much weaker. Also, the presense of two Doctors and two Roses at the scene of Pete's death didn't do much to help the situation.
 * There were always some things the Doctor would *not* change however (Adric's death being one example where he pointedly refused to go back and save him.) The presence of two Doctors & two Roses weakened the timeline, particularly with no Time Lords to keep things together. Then when the big event happened of Rose altering her own time line by saving Pete, the Reapers were able to break on through.