Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/The Curse of the Black Spot


 * Wouldn't the TARDIS translation circuit make Captain Avery understand what the Doctor meant by "sensors"?
 * If he doesn't know what they are, he still wouldn't understand what the Doctor meant. It's like how the people in Pompeii didn' t know what a volcano was.


 * If the crew on the alien spacecraft got a human disease then why didn't the 'Siren' put them in stasis as well instead of leaving them to die? Toby had a fever and he was put under stasis. Shouldn't the same apply?
 * The disease obviously incapacitated and killed the crew extremely rapidly, since they were still at their posts rather than having made their own way to the sick bay. Also the Siren was dealing with a new disease and may not have recognised that the crew were sick. In addition, the crash of the ship may have rendered the Siren's circuits temporarily inoperable.


 * Why would a spaceship have a virtual Doctor that can't actually cure people?
 * The siren was designed to treat the aliens aboard the ship, and may not have fully understood human physiology. So she kept humans in stasis rather than risk killing them by treating them incorrectly.
 * If she can't understand human physiology how does she physically mimic one?
 * Looking like a human externally doesn't mean you have all the same innards. Even a well-made doll can physically mimic a human.


 * When Doctor and Co got zapped into the alien ship, they arrived merely briefly stunned. All other victims were stored in suspended state upon arrival, even those who had no life-threatening injury. Why the different treatment?
 * We didn't see their arrival. Presumably they arrived merely stunned, but the Siren overpowered them and got them into stasis. The same would have happened to the Doctor and friends, but he did his usual fast talking followed by fast action.
 * Also, the Siren had just been freed from a barrel and had to chase after a whole group of people, so she may not have been as prepared as when she picked up the others one by one at her leisure.


 * Even for Dr Who, it's a bit of a stretch to have a crew of sailers with no knowledge of science more advanced than the astrolabe able, with no training, to successfully pilot an alien spacecraft that doesn't even have controls labeled in a langauge they could understand.
 * It's possible that they took weeks to learn to fly the ship, which we didn't see. That would also explain why the boy was healthy at the end, even though the Siren couldn't directly cure him (and it would take a few days to recover even if she could). And why they seemed to be heading toward a clear destination, rather than just "away from Earth".
 * I dont think he was cured, possibly still on life support as he still had the pipe going into his throat and that transparent choker. The other crew however didnt have injuries more than a few scratches which should heal on their own. The Aliens spacesuit had latin letters on it so possibly some of the ships systems could have been in an understandable alphabet.
 * Avery had also been aboard the Tardis and everyone who has been in the Tardis has language translated for them. Avery expressed a basic understanding of the Tardis systems by comparing them to his contemporary instruments. This combined with the linguistic understanding being in the Tardis has given him would, perhaps with some instruction from the Doctor, given him the ability to control the craft to some extent.
 * Rory asked Amy to unplug him and revive him because he can then teach the Siren about Human anatomy and tell her how to cure most diseases (he is a nurse). While he was teaching the Siren the Doctor presumably taught Avery how to pilot the ship.
 * Rory asked Amy to unplug him and revive him because he can then teach the Siren about Human anatomy and tell her how to cure most diseases (he is a nurse). While he was teaching the Siren the Doctor presumably taught Avery how to pilot the ship.


 * A repeat of the classic 'Period Terminal Illness' hole: The Doctor could cure anyone if he wanted by just taking them on a day-trip to a period when medicine has advanced sufficiently. Collect boy, go forward a few centuries, collect antibiotics, return boy. If this is against the Doctor's non-interference rules or risks the integrity of the timey-wimey ball, then so be it - but it would be nice to see the possibility at least mentioned and dismissed rather than leave it dangling.
 * The Doctor had an obvious ulterior motive here. He knew that, given the circumstances, Avery was going to choose to stay with his son and fly the spaceship off together and live happily ever after. If he healed the boy and returned him, or just told Avery of the possibility, who knows what Avery would do?
 * Also, the Doctor didn't need to cure the boy. With typhoid fever, if you make it through the month, you're pretty much guaranteed to survive. On a pirate ship, that might not be easy to do--but in a clean environment, with plenty of hydration and rest, the survival rate is around 80%, even without antibiotics. In a perfectly sterile environment with an emergency medical hologram zapping all the germs, it's probably even higher. And, if he happened to get unlucky, the Siren could put him in stasis for a couple weeks.


 * When the Doctor and Avery were running out of the TARDIS, Avery opened the door first. Since Avery was from the 17th century, how did he know how to open a door mechanism that hadn't been invented for another 300-400 years?
 * The handle on a door is designed to be intuitive.


 * What reason did the Doctor have for his "let the Siren take us" plan? It was easy to dismiss the apparent "hail mary" play at the end of Amy's Choice--he knew the whole thing was the dream, he trusted Amy, he couldn't bear to contradict Amy, at the very worst it was a 50/50 chance. But this one just seems like "out of ideas, maybe this will work, otherwise we all die".
 * Perhaps by that point, the Doctor had figured out - since the Siren only takes injured people she is actually trying to help them rather than harm them. He also seemed to have figured out that there was another ship there - after the siren takes them he quite calmly states that they are still in the same place as before. Also the Doctor was stranded on a ship in the ocean with insufficient crew and no TARDIS - there wasn't really much else left for him to try.
 * He calls the siren to save Rory. Now, if the siren wants everyone dead, why would it save Rory? At that point I worked out that the "victims" must be being teleported elsewhere and I would bet the Doctor did too.


 * Isn't interdimensional travel supposed to be impossible since the end of Gallifrey, as 10 said back in series 2?
 * Maybe the spacetime reboot changed the rules.
 * There are many different kinds of parallel universe, both in real-life physics and in the history of Doctor Who. Maybe one kind is closed off, but another kind isn't.
 * Martha in the Mirror already had interdimensional travel (and through reflections, even) in the middle of series 3, so maybe the Doctor was just wrong, or at least not very precise.
 * In short, "Nature finds a way". The very fact that the rift to the Cybermen could have happened at all shows that the laws set in place by the Time Lords were not hard and fast, especially since there were none to enforce it. These rifts are accidental, freak occurrences, like a CVE.
 * In short, "Nature finds a way". The very fact that the rift to the Cybermen could have happened at all shows that the laws set in place by the Time Lords were not hard and fast, especially since there were none to enforce it. These rifts are accidental, freak occurrences, like a CVE.


 * Nope. This has actually been referenced on-screen and explained more than once. Travel to some kinds of parallel worlds/alternate universes is (more or less) impossible now, but a different dimension is not a parallel world.


 * Is there any reason the ship has been totally becalmed for 8 days? It doesn't seem like it has any connection to the siren or the alien spaceship, and no other explanation is given.
 * Must have been connected to the ship being stuck in it, the same way the Tardis was becalmed as it couldnt sense the dimensional plane.
 * There doesn't need to be an otherworldly cause for it. Sometimes the weather is just calm. The fact that it was indeed calm is why the Siren was able to come across to the pirate ship in the first place, using the reflective surface of the water.


 * The pirate whose hand Toby cuts when they're in the magazine with Amy and Rory is discouraged from participating in his fellow pirate's mutiny when his blood is drawn. After the other pirate leaves with pistols in hand, he begins barricading the door again. This is the last we see of him. The scene cuts out, and when we're back in the magazine, it's just Amy, Rory and Toby. The pirate has completely disappeared and is never mentioned again. Made particularly jarring by the actor's subsequent appearances on Confidential
 * He appears at the end with the rest of them on the alien ship so presumably he was caught offscreen.


 * We only see him put one barrel down before the scene cuts. He might have been thinking of escaping, but in fear and confusion put down the barrel, thought 'What am I doing?', attempted to escape and was caught.


 * The CPR preformed on Rory shouldn't of been able to revive him even if Amy had preformed it properly.


 * I'll admit the CPR wasn't preformed properly because Amy didn't hold Rory's nose during the breaths. However, CPR on a electrocution victum or someone who is drowning can bring them back to life.


 * In The Pandorica Opens the Doctor says if there is no-one inside the TARDIS then the engines shut down. If the Doctor and Captain Avery left the TARDIS, why did it still dematerialise? Surely the engines should have shut down?
 * The dematerialization of the TARDIS in this scene is not an active function of the TARDIS, but a transfer between the pirate ship and the alien ship, as displayed by the eerie green glow which also surrounds the siren (and possibly other technologies of the alien ship). In short, the TARDIS did shut down, but it was towed, as The Doctor makes reference to in a later scene.


 * In Vampires of Venice the Doctor couldn't get Guido out of his house because the door was bolted. In The Curse of the Black Spot the Doctor unlocks a bolted door to see what has become of Mulligan.
 * The sonic screwdriver "doesn't do wood" [since Moffat] (DW: Silence in the Library), the door in Venice was totally wood, even the lock. IIRC the Doctor actually mentions it at the time.
 * Just to support that point - in SITL when the Doctor says it doesn't do wood, he tries to get the lock mechanism open using the screwdriver. The wood was warped, Donna suggests that he'd use the screwdriver to un-warp the wood or something, and he can't so he tries to get the lock.


 * Why doesn't the doctor help Rory when he's nearly dead? He does have some medical knowledge and surely the TARDIS has equipment that could help someone who was drowning.
 * To give the love between Amy & Rory a chance; to give Amy a chance to be heroic; because it's a more dramatic, and (semi-)believable it might not work and Rory could die. Take your pick.


 * The ship is in the middle of a storm, the water in the barrel would not be calm and reflective.
 * Take a glass of water and tilt the glass from side to side. The surface of the water stays flat despite the fact the glass is being moved around.