Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/The Ark


 * It's rather remarkable that the TARDIS manages to land in the same spot twice (albeit a few years apart) when the Doctor can't control its journey.
 * The Doctor forgot to enter new spacial coordinates, or there was a breakdown in the mechanism, and only the time circuits were activated for this journey. This being the case, the TARDIS followed its default/emergency procedure (See TV: Terminus) of remaining locked-on to the Ark as a 'fixed point', even though it would have moved billions of miles through space in the intervening centuries it took to reach Refusis.
 * Actually the background changes so much that it is unlikely that the TARDIS landed in the exact same spot.


 * Alternatively, given the recent revelations in The Doctor's Wife, the TARDIS may have realised that the Doctor was partially responsible for causing the Monoids to overthrow the guardians, and taken him to the future because that is where he "needed to go" to put things right.
 * Even though I completely agree with this explaination (although for me, the TARDIS brought him there just because he needed to GO there, not precisely to help the guardians overthrow the Monoids but still to be involved in the events) I'd just like to point out than he DIDN'T landed on the exact same spot (well, not exactly.) Though he did landed around the same spot INSIDE the Ark, the ship was now "700 years of travel" away from its previous location from Part 1 & 2. In part 1 & 2, it was 700 years away fromi Refusis but in Part 3 & 4, it was like just one or two days away from the planet. (By the way, I know this isn't an argument AGAINST the previous point, but I didn't know where to put it. Also, English isn't my first language so I might have made some mistakes.)


 * First, The Doctor had no particular intention of returning to the ship, so that is somewhat irrelevant to the question. That said: (a) Is it remarkable? Yes. (b) Is it an amazing coincidence? Possibly (c) Unless it was part of some grander scheme/influence. (d) However, is it a discontinuity? Absolutely not.


 * When the Commander and Zentos question Steven about the TARDIS in the Ark's Control Room in "The Steel Sky", why does the Commander ask "You travel in that black box?" — bearing in mind that the TARDIS is blue?


 * The Monoids find the TARDIS in the jungle and send a report in, the print-out of which is actually readable on screen, and does indeed refer to the TARDIS as a "black box". Monoids have one large eye. Depth perception with one eye is only possible through indirect means- subconsciously judging the spatial relationships between objects. This would mean an evolutionary advantage toward Monoids whose eyes were better adapted to absorb and process a clearer, more precise image more quickly and make the most out of the light available; in human terms, although likely the eyes themselves would be biologically very different, more rods, less cones- i.e. poorer or non-existent colour vision.


 * Perhaps the scanner screen in the Control Room shows a black-and-white picture?


 * The First Doctor mentioned there wouldn't be a way to bring Dodo back, but doesn't the TARDIS have a fast return switch as introduced in "The Edge of Destruction"?


 * Presumably, following the events of The Edge of Destruction, when the fast return switch jammed and sent the TARDIS on a journey back to the very beginning of creation, the Doctor decided to disconnect the switch permanently — or he removed it altogether.


 * This story clearly depicts the destruction of the Earth by the Sun 10,000,000 years in the future of the 20th century while the last humans are clearly still recognizably human. However, The End of the World (TV story) depicts this occurring 5,000,000,000 years in the future of the 21st century (matching the opinion of current real-world science) while the last remaining human is some skin with a face.


 * Dialogue in The End of the World (TV story) (specifically, Cassandra's sneering comment about "mongrels" and what's later shown on screen in New Earth (TV story) and Gridlock (TV story) makes it fairly clear that Cassandra is the "last human" according to, and only according to, Cassandra's own decidedly elitist and self-serving standards, standards which her rich elite circle of acquaintances in The End of the World (TV story) apparently share, given their introduction of her, but which would probably be entirely irrelevant to the later human colonies on Refusis, New Earth, Frontios, and so forth, who would likely fairly cheerfully dismiss her labelling them as "human-ish" as the mad ravings of a deluded racist trampoline.


 * As far as the dates go, Frontios (TV story) makes it clear that Gallifreyan knowledge of this epoch of history is pretty (deliberately?) sporadic, and both The Ark (TV story) and The End of the World (TV story) show the human race as using an entirely different calendar system by this time. The Doctor arrives at his conclusion of a 10,000,000 year time lapse after a brief mental calculation based on the Commander's statement about the fifty-seventh segment of time, and may have miscalculated.