Howling:5 things to look for: Time or history is messed up

Please see the original thread Forum:5 Things to look for in Series 5 and the summary thread Forum:5 things to look for: Overall.

This was originally proposed by me (anonymously) in Michael Downey's original thread on "5 things to look for". This might not bee on of the 5 things; it could be secondary to the "There's something..." line, or to the Doctor being late, or to forgetting, or to perception filters in every episode.

--Falcotron 02:19, April 28, 2010 (UTC)
 * The Eleventh Hour: ??? (The obvious one that got everyone started on this, Rory's badge, was an unintentional production error.)
 * The Beast Below: When the computer reads out Amy's age and shows it on the screen, they're off by 2 years.
 * Victory of the Daleks: There's a blatant callout at the end to Amy not knowing who the Daleks are.
 * The Time of Angels: The museum is wrong about a bunch of things, there's something wrong with the book about the Angels, and of couse the River Song spoilers thing--but, unlike the first three episodes, this is all expected stuff, people being wrong about history, not something more meaningful.
 * Flesh and Stone: ???

FaS makes it obvious. The end of history is coming through the crack. "What if it could? What if time could run out?" Events and people are being erased from history, as if they'd never existed. We see this happen with Crispin and Philip, and the Doctor tells us that's why Amy didn't remember the Stolen Earth invasion yet (she wasn't a time traveler at the time it happened), and why nobody remembers the CyberKing in London.

But, assuming that Rory's badge, Amy's 2 years, etc. weren't all production errors, is there something more subtle going on? Maybe because Amy had been near the TARDIS and around the Doctor, or because she was going to be a time traveler later, things aren't pulled out of time completely for her, which sort of wrenches her and everything around her a little bit out of whack? --Falcotron 07:45, May 3, 2010 (UTC)

Also, have a look at the Flesh and Stone discussion page, specifically about the Clock (is it a production error or not?) and the Doctor's jacket / double doctor sections 86.26.137.154 08:00, May 3, 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. I'm not sure if any of that fits in here or not, but it's definitely interesting. --Falcotron 09:22, May 3, 2010 (UTC)

This could be just something Moffat does when writing time-travel episodes. In Blink, the birthyear on Kathy Nightingale's tombstone is wrong because she lied about her age when she was transported back in time. Exlonox 16:30, May 16, 2010 (UTC)

Multiple people have mentioned that all the clocks turn over to 12:00 PM at midnight instead of at noon. That could be a production error one, but every time? --Falcotron 04:20, May 23, 2010 (UTC)

In The Hungry Earth, I think the production crew might be making fun of everyone looking for date inconsistencies. The press release said 2015. But the on-screen caption says 2020, and the Doctor mentions that the Amy and Rory waving to them are 10 years in their future. So, everyone's looking for on-screen dates, to see if they're wrong. Are they?
 * The first is Aunt Gladys's tombstone. She died 6 years ago--2014, or 2009? Well, at first we only see it in the distance. When they zoom in on it at 08:50, the death date is conveniently blocked by Rory's watch and hand. We don't actually get to see it at 27:46. (She died in 2014.)
 * The church door has a Certificate of Maintenance pinned to it. It repeatedly appears prominently in the shot, but at 27:00, 27:12, and 27:25, the shot is for some odd reason out of focus (the characters' faces are also out of focus). Then, at 27:27, the focus clears up just in time for Tony to block the view of the certificate. Also, the top left corner is folded over.
 * The first time we see the van, we don't get to see it from behind to see the number plate. Then the shot is too high. And most other shots, the Doctor is blocking all but one letter. But we get a clear shot at 29:47--and after that teasing, what can we actually learn from it? The plate says "SL59 VXE", which means it was issued in Edinburgh in Sep 2009-Feb 2010. So... the van is probably used, and either 5-1/2 or 10-1/2 years old. Both seem equally plausible. --Falcotron 05:21, May 23, 2010 (UTC)

Also, see my post on Talk:The Hungry Earth about references to all of the Third Doctor season finales, which may mean _something_, although I'm not sure what. Maybe calling out the UNIT era with its dating mess is just another playful tease at fans looking for dating inconsistencies, or maybe it's a hint that we should be looking for them. Or maybe neither. --Falcotron 05:43, May 23, 2010 (UTC)

The weird thing was why did it say it was nearly the earrly afternoon when it was clealr night time outside in Flesh and Stone, and surely the production would have noticed as they clock is shown close-up for an important reason, in which is doesn't change time normally, either. In order for the clock to change in such a fashion, it would have to be done on purpose. If they wanted it normal, they would have filmed the clock changing naturally, but they made it so that it skips hours upon hours in one second. Delton Menace 07:52, May 23, 2010 (UTC)


 * Yeah--and, as with most of these cases, that was dramatically highlighted with a tight closeup that's held for a long time. Why? Can it be a coincidence that these "production errors" only crop up in the scenes where they're most visible? --Falcotron 07:56, May 23, 2010 (UTC)

Does Anyone notice, in 'The ELeveth Hour', at the end, when Doctor and Amy started the TARDIS, there was a close-up shot to the clock, the AM.&PM. issue was mentioned for many times, however, it seems that no one talk about the last number staying at 56 without changing. -- grabpot 02:27, June 03, 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, that is the second counter. Maybe the second counter doesn't move when the hour counter is moving that fast. Just looking at how fast the minutes are moving, imagine how fast the seconds would have to move to keep up with the minutes and hours. And considering it's a flip type clock, it would make the clock not able to move as fast if it had to wait for the seconds to move.
 * Best I can come up with. V00D00M0NKY 06:14, June 3, 2010 (UTC)
 * Since I went through a bunch of these things as a kid, I can tell you that nearly every flip clock was set the same way: You turn a knob on back to flip the minutes over super-fast, and the hour flips over every time you get back to 0 minutes. The seconds don't change. (Actually, I had one where the seconds did change, and it was a huge pain. You could only zoom through about 1/10th as fast, which was a particular annoyance on end-of-DST day when you had to go ahead 23 hours. And the seconds would jam all the time, so we had to keep opening it up to fix them. And eventually they got so bend that we had to throw it out--which really pissed me off, because I'd put Star Wars stickers all over it.)
 * Anyway, the point of all that is that the seconds things is probably just a production error: They did the fast-forward thing just by twisting the set knob, and that doesn't affect the seconds.
 * But this brings up another question: Why did Amelia have a flip clock in the mid 90s? Once decent LED clocks became super-cheap in the early/mid 80s, these things pretty much vanished. They make them nowadays as 60s/70s/80s retro, but they didn't back then. --Falcotron 13:48, June 3, 2010 (UTC)
 * Amelia had one? We're talking about the one in the TARDIS. V00D00M0NKY 15:46, June 3, 2010 (UTC)


 * Oops, you're right. I was mixing up the scene in FaS (which is in Amy's room) with the one in TEH (which is in the TARDIS--as grabpot explicitly said, but I somehow missed it anyway). Amy of course has a nice modern LCD clock in FaS. The TARDIS has a flip clock because it's all full of retro from different eras. And I'm an idiot. --Falcotron 16:16, June 3, 2010 (UTC)
 * Just on the thought of Amy forgetting the daleks, does anyone think this could possibly tie in with Donna not seeming to know anything 'global' that happened, such as the Dalek and Cybermen fighting in the sky, etcetc? It's a bit of a long shot, but maybe things have been planted for a while now..
 * Just on the thought of Amy forgetting the daleks, does anyone think this could possibly tie in with Donna not seeming to know anything 'global' that happened, such as the Dalek and Cybermen fighting in the sky, etcetc? It's a bit of a long shot, but maybe things have been planted for a while now..