Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/A Good Man Goes to War


 * When River tells the Doctor who she is, she gets him to look at the Doctor's cot. She also suggests this method for Amy and Rory, but the Gallifreyan doesn't translate. Why does the Doctor's cot have River's name on it?
 * River didn't get the Doctor to look * at* the cot, she got him to look * in* the cot, at the prayer leaf. Amy mistakenly assumed that he looked at the cot because she didn't know that the leaf was in it, and so she further assumed that the writing on the cot was the answer. But it wasn't, which is why River handed her the leaf.


 * If River is Amy and Rory's daughter, why wasn't she erased along with Rory when he died in Cold Blood?
 * Simple. When Amy's parents were erased from time, Amy continued to exist. Therefore, when Rory was erased from time, River continued to exist.
 * Also, being part-TARDIS/Time Lord, River may have been immune from the effects.
 * This episode takes place after the universe was restored. River was not encountered between Cold Blood and the return of Rory, in Auton form, in The Pandorica Opens, so if she was erased, she was clearly restored when Rory was. It has nothing to do with the events of this episode.


 * Why would the Cybermen have safety signs on their ship? There's clearly a "Fire Escape" sign and another denoting the contents of the tanks in the background while the Cyber Leader calls out intruders.
 * Cybermen aren't indestructible, they would likely need safety guidelines as well.
 * It also might not have been their ship; they might have assimilated it at some point.
 * That seems to be the general assumption of reviewers and fandom.


 * Why hasn't the Doctor ever assembled an army before now and why didn't he bring more of his assistants to help instead of old enemies like a Sontaran?
 * Clearly he never saw the need before, and they are all people who owe him favours, he probably doesn't want to interrupt his old friends’ new lives.
 * For all we know the Doctor may have done something similar to this before, but off-screen.
 * Although Sontarans are normally his enemy, Strax wasn't. Same can be said for the Silurians recruited to help.
 * The Doctor clearly chose his army for specific abilities. Martha Jones would have offered little to this mission, for example. Nor would, say, Sarah Jane. In addition, the Doctor has stated several times, most recently in TV: Death of the Doctor his reluctance to revisit former companions. So instead of past companions he chose individuals to whom a debt was clearly owed.
 * Behind the scenes, Moffat originally intended Jack Harkness to be part of the army, but John Barrowman was unavailable because of the filming schedule of Miracle Day. It's plausible that what happened in-universe was almost the same — the Doctor popped in to look for Jack, saw that he was back on Earth dealing with a problem of his own, and decided not to contact him.
 * The Doctor may have also decided to choose companions with specific talents and contacts. For example, Vastra may have been the key to the Doctor recruiting a troop of Silurians. He also may have chosen his army from people who he knew could handle the battle, which may be why Martha Jones, for example, wasn't included.
 * Where is it indicated that he didn't do this before? He might have done this 100 times off-screen, and he technically (if unintentionally) formed an "army" in Journey's End.


 * Vastra compliments the Doctor on taking over the station without a drop of blood spilt. However, she is wrong as at least two soldiers and one monk die during an altercation explicitly orchestrated by the Doctor.
 * Vastra did not witness the brief fight with the soldiers and the monks, she likely didn't know that had occured.
 * Perhaps she meant it literally, based on what her experiences have been like.
 * Also, none of the people recruited by the Doctor directly killed anyone, not the Judoon nor the Silurians, nor Vastra and Jenny. The soldiers did it to themselves by firing on the monks (when they should have known better).


 * When the Silurians, Judoon and Strax appear and take control of the base, why don't the monks attack then? And why are they left on the station when everyone else is taken away?
 * It's strongly implied that Kovarian arranged the whole thing as a trap, so the monks were likely acting under orders.
 * That's not implied at all - it was implied that the remaining monks had hidden in secret compartments and launched a counter-attack when the Doctor least expected it.
 * It is, she told the colonel to do so that the Doctor think he is winning at first.


 * If Melody is a flesh avatar, why doesn't she "melt" when Rory uses the sonic screwdriver while holding her to open the door to Amy?
 * Not all functions of the screwdriver are in use when the screwdriver is activated. The 'open locks' function is different from the 'Flesh discombobulation' function.
 * Yes but how does the Doctor change the setting/function as there is only one button on the screwdriver, I am talking about the previous screwdrivers too.
 * There have been several references in the past to the screwdriver having various settings. One button, for example, can be held down with different pressure, at different angles, for different duration, etc, to produce various settings. Part of the reason for the Doctor going in search of the Flesh in The Rebel Flesh was so that he could determine the right frequency to interrupt the connection between the real Amy and her ganger.
 * As answered in Let's Kill Hitler, the sonic screwdriver has a psychic interface.
 * "Just point and think."


 * Colonel Manton suggests that the strategic advantage of the Headless Monks having no heads is that the Doctor would not be able to convince them not to kill him, as the Doctor has proven so able to do with his enemies in the past. However, once the appearance of the Doctor (in the guise of a Headless Monk) causes the clerics and Monks to attack each other, Manton removes the ammo from his weapon in order to convince the Monks that the clerics are not a threat to them. How could that be an effective way to diffuse the situation if the Monks have no heads with which to reason? And why would Colonal Manton beleive that such a strategy would work in the first place, given that he was the one to explain the inexorable nature of the Monks?
 * The Monks and Clerics are working together. The Monks clearly have some form of sentience and so would not kill their allies.
 * Manton's suggestion is rhetoric. He doesn't have to believe in it's veracity in order to see an advantage in convincing his troops that it is true.


 * At one point, you see Toby and Henry Avery, (the son and captain from The Curse of the Black Spot.) I thought that Toby couldn't be disconnected from the life support or he would die, because he was extremely sick...so how is he able to be up and fighting?
 * The life support system continues to heal the crew while they are walking about the ship, and possibly nearby the ship. The child is seen walking to the flight deck at the end of that episode so it is reasonable to say that he could walk around quite freely. As for fighting, they don't get involved that much in the episode, they capture the escape pod, with an apparent crew of 12, although only 1 is seen, (either a bluff, or that they are tied up inside the ship) and besides capturing a neighbouring ship is something one would assume pirates would do
 * Yes but in Black Spot, Rory 'redrowned' as soon as he was disconnected from the 'bed', so the 'near-the-ship' theory doesn't 'really' work, does it?
 * Typhoid Fever doesn't kill you quickly, whereas drowning does. It's possible that Toby could be disconnected from the life support system for a brief period of time, as long as he is reconnected to it before the symptoms of his fever get too bad.
 * The Doctor had said Toby had typhoid fever. The Automated Sickbay presumably cured him of it; however, typhoid is only a bacterial condition, and Toby was seen functioning relatively normally prior to being put in sickbay. Rory, on the other hand, was presumably in a state of suspended animation (for lack of a better term) keeping him from dying of drowning.
 * Even if the sickbay didn't cure him of it, the normal human immune system can kill off typhoid, as long as you stay hydrated and free of secondary infections for a few weeks. On a 17th century ship at sea, you'd have a pretty good chance of dying; in a nice clear spaceship sickbay, you'd almost certainly recover.
 * On top of all this we don't know how much later this was for Toby and Henry - it could have been a year or two, which was plenty of time for Toby to be cured, perhaps even by the Doctor himself in order to gain their allegiance to go on the Demons Run mission.


 * How are the Headless Monks able to chant their attack prayer if they don't have heads?
 * Probably because they produce a signal, or since they're aliens. They maybe able to use 'head functions' somewhere else.
 * The Wedding of River Song reveals that the heads remain alive and sentient, so perhaps they're the ones chanting and this is being broadcast, or the heads are nearby.


 * How are the Headless Monks alive? Doesn't decapitation generally kill most species?
 * Maybe they were 'born'/live headless. we might find out about more of these creatures later on.
 * Could be related to scarecrows in 'The Family Of Blood'?
 * Decapitation does usually kill most things, but we are also talking about thousands of years in the future. Presumably there is some component, whether technique or technology, which keeps them alive and able to function (and even chant).
 * Or an implant. Note that Dorium continues to walk around after being beheaded as well.
 * The Wedding of River Song confirms that some heads are kept fully alive (future tech again), while even those that have decomposed remain at least somewhat alive.


 * Why is a Sontaran a Nurse? I swear I saw him in 'The Poison Sky'? Why does he want to help the Doctor? Have they met? When did they meet?
 * Strax was made a nurse as a penance. You saw him in The Poison Sky, because the Sontarans are a clone race - Linx and Styre (and the Sontaran who shoots at Martha and Mickey) were also played by the same actor. He wanted to help the Doctor because he owed him a debt. The Doctor met him offscreen in an unchronicled adventure.
 * It's a necessary conceit given the need to use different actors, but technically speaking, Strax should look identical to the Sontarans seen in TV: The Time Warrior or even Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans. It's basically the William Hartnell/Richard Hurndall effect requiring suspension of disbelief.
 * Some variation in the clones over hundreds (or thousands) of years is certainly understandable. But, the underlying point remains - Sontarans are clones, and thus they 'all look alike'.
 * In answer to "I swear I saw him..." it was established in the classic series that Sonatrans are a cloned race. Technically that means every Sontaran seen since The Time Warrior should have been played by the same actor. Not possible, of course, so references to "clone batches" are now made. Hence the nurse is said to be part of a clone batch, presumably the same one as those seen in Poison Sky, The End of Time, The Last Sontaran, etc.
 * As mentioned above, not every Sontaran needs to look absolutely identical across all time. There are different 'batches' of Sontarans, and there appears to be some variation among batches. But as also stated, we have seen some Sontarans who do look identical to Strax, presumably from his same batch.


 * Why does Vastra look a lot like Alaya and Restac in 'Cold Blood'? Vastra uses terms such as 'old friend' when they havent met?
 * Alaya and Vastra are identical because they were played by the same actress. Is it an error that King Peladon is identical to Private Moore and Professor Hobbes? Vastra and the Doctor did meet in the 19th century London underground in an untelevised story.
 * It's also been established that the Silurians are, themselves, effectively clones like the Sontarans. If all their masks were removed, they should all look like Vastra/Alaya, etc.
 * When was it established that Silurians are clones? Vastra and Alaya just happen to look alike, just like some people look very much alike. Maybe they were related.
 * When Malohkeh implied Restac was anxious to rescue Alaya as she was from the same gene batch series as Alaya.
 * Also, they probably look a lot less similar to other Silurians (or even to humans who've spent more time among Silurians) than they do to us. In one of the novels, a Silurian explicitly accuses the humans of racism for thinking they "all look alike", before admitting that humans mostly look alike to them.
 * Although teasing Jenny, Vastra does indicate that she has difficulty telling "mammals" apart.
 * Aside from the "clone" argument, it's never been stated on screen that she isn't a sister of the other two.


 * Why are Silurian teams attacking the Cleric 'Anti-Doctor' Forces?
 * Just as the Doctor got Spitfires from Winston Churchill, the Doctor probably got a squad of Silurians from Eldane to help against the Clerics.
 * Presumably Vastra helped with these arrangements too.


 * Why have the Church teamed up with Kovarian?
 * The Church teamed up with Kovarian because they wish to stop the Doctor.
 * The Wedding of River Song answers some, though not all, of these questions.
 * The specifics on that are explained further in ‘’The Time of the Doctor’’.


 * How did the TARDIS' translation matrix translate the prayer leaf for Amy and Rory, when they did not attempt to read it until after the TARDIS had already departed?
 * The TARDIS gets inside your head, and gives you the ability to translate alien languages, so it does not actually have to be present for the ability to work, as long as you have been inside the TARDIS before.
 * River also says concentration is needed, so if they just glanced at the leaf before, the name might not have popped out at them.
 * The TARDIS translation is not tied to the TARDIS being physically present, as there are many stories in which the TARDIS is nowhere nearby (sometimes even in another time zone or planet) yet the translation still works. Also, Let's Kill Hitler establishes that River is a "child of the TARDIS" which suggests she might have facilitated the translation in some way.


 * In Day of the Moon is implied by the pictures in the little girl’s room that she is Amy's daughter, but if she is River Song, but how come she can´t remember the astronaut suit or the calls to the president? And if that's not her how come she can regenerate?
 * I suspect it is because River knew that the Doctor had not yet learned her identity and said nothing about her personal knowledge of being in the suit. Plus, as an adult she would be viewing the suit from a much different perspective than when she wore it, not really being too concerned with the mechanics of the suits functioning at the time.
 * It is also possible that being around the Silence so much as a child, especially when fitted into the spacesuit, that her memory of the events were permanently erased from her memory.
 * River is very good at hiding her identity (nothing she says or does in any of her previous appearances even hints at her been Amy's daughter). Plus in the unlikely (but not impossible) event the two are not the same person one could be a backup for the other.
 * Steven Moffat and his writers have used misdirection before. Just because we've been shown images of the girl in the two-parter that doesn't mean that actually is the girl. Also, we have not yet been told who shot the Doctor - it's only assumed that it was the girl. And while Vastra asked the question about regeneration that doesn't mean River can actually do so; the girl regenerating could be someone else. These sorts of questions will either be answered in the second half of the season ... or they may be held over into Season 7 if Moffat continues with multi-season arcs.
 * Most of this particular discussion has been rendered moot by the revelations of Let's Kill Hitler and The Wedding of River Song.


 * It's stated in this episode that Time Lords evolved naturally over a course of billions of years, and being exposed to energy from the Time Vortex, which is also how they gained the regeneration ability. But most other sources say that the Time Lords were founded by Rassilon, and gained the power of mastery over time from the detonation of a star, and that regeneration was created artificially by Rassilon.
 * Actually, although some of what was said above can indeed be confirmed through canon sources (i.e., various tv episodes), there doesn't necessarily have to be any conflict with what was said in this episode. Yes, Time Lords gained some of their "Time Lord-iness" through exposure to the untempered schism over billions of years, but we still don't know exactly how that happened, who may have arranged it, how "natural" it was or wasn't, where in their history that all started, or how Omega's detonation of a star factored into it.
 * In fact, it actually makes more sense as a combination of natural and artificial than as purely artificial. Maybe pre-Rassilon Gallifreyans had an unreliable ability to regenerate, vague sensations of the 4th dimension, etc., and Rassilon's biological improvements were able to turn that into the near-perfect 13 cycles of regeneration, ability to sense alternate timelines, etc. that we know today. And remember, we're explicitly talking about time travel here—maybe some of those natural abilities were even retroactively caused, in part, by Omega's star detonation, or even by deliberate tampering with Gallifreyan history by Rassilon.
 * Rassilon founded Time Lord society. There's nothing saying he invented regeneration. We also don't know how old he is. The Second Doctor stated on screen that Time Lords can "live forever, barring accidents". Rassilon could well be billions of years old. And if he did invent regeneration, one can imagine he didn't stick to the 13-life limit.


 * If the monks are headless, Then what is holding their hoods up?
 * Underwire in the hoods, or simply stiff material, or something more technologically fancy - all are viable possibilities.


 * Given that the Master and the Doctor don't write their names down, why doesn't River Song keep the name as it is written down? And then having done so, any particularly reason for reversing the surname and first name and why does she know this has happened? Why doesn't she just call herself Melody Pond? After all 'song' and and 'melody' would have the same symbol.
 * This can easily be ascribed to translation again (different cultures do it different ways). Choosing to call herself River Song instead of Melody Pond seems like a personal choice on her part - and probably a good choice if she knows that she has to hide her identity from the Doctor, Amy, and Rory, when she "first" meets them.
 * In fact, in the next episode, we learn the answers to all of this. It's an ontological paradox: Melody Pond learned that she was River Song from the Doctor and Amy, but the Doctor and Amy only learned that River Song was Melody Pond from River. That's one of the hazards of meeting people out of order…


 * This story is clearly set before The Pandorica Opens (in The Pandorica Opens River Song predicts the revalation of A Good Man Goes to War), but River has the wortex manipulator that she bought in The Pandorica Opens.
 * It is possible that the scene in The Pandorica Opens takes place before this episode.
 * From the Doctor's point of view The Pandorica Opens is set before A Good Man Goes to War (obviously) but from River's perspective, TPO is set after A Good Man Goes To War ... And between those 2 stories anything could have happened with her vortex manipulator (it could have been eaten by a giant octopus, it could have been destroyed or even confiscated in jail etc, you see my point?) . At the beggining of The Pandorica Opens she is acquiring a new one.


 * The Doctor claims he has no family still living. What about Jenny from The Doctor's Daughter? Shouldn't she count?
 * The Doctor had already left in the TARDIS before Jenny was revived. He doesn't know that she is still alive.
 * Susan is dead???


 * Very near the end of the episode, just after the Doctor realises she is Melody Pond and rushes to the Tardis, he says to Amy "I'm going to find her, and on my life she'll be fine!". But isn't it a fact that she actually died saving him, when HE met HER for the first time, in the ending of "S04E10: Forest of the dead"? If so, he actually omitted/lied that their daughter dies saving him from the moment he got to know River was Melody, did he not?
 * The fact that she lives for a long time and eventually dies 2 regenerations and who-knows-how-many years later isn't a very good criticism of the Doctor's promise. The better question is why he says this, and then it turns out to not be true at all. In the next episode, it's months later, and despite the fact that the infant Melody is still missing, the Doctor, Amy and Rory are just having a great ol' time adventuring, apparently not giving a toss about the missing baby.
 * It is stated at the very beginning of the next episode that the Doctor spent months searching her.