Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/The Brain of Morbius


 * Morbius' globe head falls apart when he tumbles over the cliff edge, and the camera bounces.
 * He's just been through a fight and is falling off a cliff. He's entitled to a structural defect after that. The camera bounce can simply be indicative of the dramatic nature of his falling.


 * Why doesn't Solon just put the brain into the Doctor's head?
 * Because Solon wanted to give Morbius various other biological advantages in his new body.
 * However, a simple transplant would have likely given Morbius the ability to regenerate again, so Solon's decision is still suspect.
 * Solon does not know how many bodies the Doctor has left and he probably does not want to risk the possibility that he is on his last.
 * Furthermore, Solon is a deranged egotist with a perverse artistic streak, who expresses great pleasure at the notion of "creating" Morbius anew. Building a new, albeit hideous, body, would be a far more effective way for him to demonstrate his full range of surgical expertise and (twisted) creativity.


 * The Sisterhood member Morbius kills does not seem to notice him until he attacks her, in spite of the grunting and growling he makes as he approaches her.
 * Clearly Morbius is intelligent and stealthy. This is not the first run-in he has had with the Sisterhood                    and,  fully aware of his surroundings, could sneak up on her as well as he did.


 * Surely it's worth mentioning one of the biggest discontinuities in the entire series, the Morbius Doctors. Going 'Back to the beginning!', Morbius runs through the 4th, 3rd, 2nd, and 1st Doctors' faces, and then 8 more (who happened to look just like the current production team, but that in itself isn't a discontinuity). They were clearly meant to be the 1st through 8th Doctor, meaning that what we think of as the 4th was actually the 12th. Which was fine, up until The Deadly Assassin told us that he only gets 13 bodies, The Five Doctors (and later stories) told us that the 5th actually was the 5th rather than the 13th.
 * General fan consensus is that these are Morbius's past incarnations. In any case, The Five Doctors showed us that whole new cycles of regeneration were available with the consent of high-ranking Time Lords or by such means as those used by in The Keeper of Traken.
 * Even if an earlier Doctor is in there, it doesn't necessarily mean an earlier regeneration. It could just be First Doctor as a younger man.


 * Having just rewatched this, there is no way you can interpret those as Morbius's faces. "How far Doctor? How long have you lived?" And the idea that all 8 faces were the first Doctor is even more implausible--they look nothing alike. The intent of the scene is obvious and unmistakable. (And even if it weren't, we know that the production team intended it that way because they've told us so.) But the original question assumes there's no way to retcon this, and there's at least one obvious way: They could be previous reincarnations of the Other. In fact, Morbius's discovering that the Doctor goes back much further than he expected--and that he really is dealing with a fellow "Time Lord of the First Rank", or even more than that--neatly explains his bizarre reactions better than anything the writers at the time could have intended. I don't know if Platt intended that retcon or not, but it works. And it's probably not the only one that works. And if you can charge this story with a discontinuity on the basis of continuity only invented in future stories, I don't see why you shouldn't be allowed to resolve it the same way.