Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/The Curse of Fenric


 * Audrey has a Super Ted.
 * According to the DVD commentary, this was in fact a a knitted toy with a similar colour scheme''


 * Commander Millington's moustache - Royal Navy officers were required to have either a full beard and moustache or else to be clean shaven.
 * Millington might very well have adopted this non-regulation look as part of his dubious psychological warfare tactics, emulating Hitler's appearance as his office emulates the Nazi cipher room. Bearing in mind the dictatorial authority he wields over everyone at the base but Judson (who is so lax about regulations that he even overlooks the Doctor's blatant forgery of War Office documents), it is not hard to imagine him getting away with this small infringement.''


 * The English captain is surprisingly ready to join forces with the Russians he was trying to execute only a few hours ago.
 * He has just witnessed his commander in conference with a reanimated corpse and a giant mutant sea-vampire, plotting to bring about Ragnarok. This is bound to shake up anyone's priorities in unpredictable ways.''


 * The Russians speak nothing but English after the first sequence, even to the point of death.
 * This isn't really an error, but somewhat standard televisual "grammar". Many other films and television series — like The Hunt for Red October, have characters speaking in their native tongue at one point in the narrative, who then switch over to English for the majority of the story. Just because the audience hears English shouldn't be confused with what the soldiers were actually speaking.  Doctor Who often has non-English-speaking characters using English, even when that use of English can't easily be explained as a function of the translation circuit or other translation devices.  It's not necessarily an error for an English-language television programme to have its characters speaking in English.
 * Except that early in the story, the Russian leader tells his troops to use "English only from now on" so that the subtitles can stop.


 * How do the Russians expect to get away with the huge Ultima machine in their little dinghy?
 * As is made clear in the script, the Russians aren't planning to steal the entire Ultima machine, just its core, i.e. the small sliding-out section with the rotors and poison canister inside. The rest of the mechanism can be duplicated by technicians in the USSR.''


 * In what version of chess is the black and white pawns joining forces a legitimate move?
 * The game has been set in a way whereupon a draw is almost a guaranteed result, unless one player makes a suicidal move. By "joining forces", it means that white will make the suicidal move as long as black returns the compliment at some point, meaning the game can reach a conclusion.