Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/The Parting of the Ways

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This page is for discussing the ways in which The Parting of the Ways doesn't fit well with other DWU narratives. You can also talk about the plot holes that render its own, internal narrative confusing.

Remember, this is a forum, so civil discussion is encouraged. However, please do not sign your posts. Also, keep all posts about the same continuity error under the same bullet point. You can add a new point by typing:

* This is point one.
::This is a counter-argument to point one.
:::This is a counter-argument to the counter-argument above
* This is point two.
::Explanation of point two.
::Further discussion and query of point two.

... and so on. 

• Why did Jack say yes when the Ann Droid hit the daleks with the transmat? It would just bring them to the ship and they would come back on the Game Station.

It's slowing them down, which is the closet victory Jack's had in the battle.

• When Rose was Bad Wolf, why did she not see the Cult of Skaro and destroy them?

As the Bad Wolf, Rose could see all of time and space. She may have been able to see the Doctor having regenerated and those events happening, so left them be lest a paradox occur.

The Cult of Skaro were in the Void, where there is no time or space; meaning they were beyond Rose's powers

• How does the Doctor know to turn his head when his hologram appears to Rose in the TARDIS? He can't have been transmitting live because he said that "he bets" Rose was fussing and moaning, meaning he couldn't see her. It is unlikely that he would have gotten to know her so well he could turn his head at the right moment and stare at the right place.

There are interactive computer programs in real life that can somewhat react in this way, making it entirely plausible that Time Lord technology is able to do so to the level shown.

But the Doctor didn't turn until the very end, which wouldn't make sense if it were simply the technology turning him. If it were technology, it would have surely turned the moment she moved to his side, rather than before the last line.

The Doctor's Time Lord time-sense may somehow tells him that at that moment in Time, Rose will be standing in that exact spot. Events that have occurred in the future have resonated backward in Time elsewhere in the show, the heartbeat from the creation of the Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor for example, so it is possible the Doctor might have been able to sense far enough "ahead", especially given the psychic link he has with the TARDIS, to know he should turn at that point.

• Rose asks the Doctor why he cannot simply travel back in Time and warn the Humans about the Daleks. He replies that he has become part of events and so cannot do that. However, in the TV movie, the Eye of Harmony destroys the Earth, before the Doctor basically rewinds time and prevents it from happening.

Time-Flight and other stories have also established that the Doctor can't or won't change certain events. The Eye of Harmony's destruction of Earth was not meant to happen as the Doctor was familiar with post-1999 Earth, so it had to be undone.

At that point, crossing his own time line would have been taken care of by the Time Lords, as the Doctor pointed out in Father's Day.

• The Doctor saves Rose's life by taking the vortex energy out of her. He then returns the energy to the TARDIS. Why, then, do the effects of the energy kill him? It should either kill them both, as they both had the energy in them, or neither of them, as they both lost it.

Some novels have stated that, while regenerating, a body can absorb artron energy and feed it into the regenerative process. Assuming that the vortex energy is the same as artron energy, it is possible that the Doctor deliberately triggered a regeneration, possibly allowing him to absorb the energy from Rose. The regeneration then had to complete.

The vortex energy could have had a different effect on the Doctor's Time Lord physiology when he absorbed it, or for some reason he was not able to return all of it to the TARDIS.

Since the vortex energy makes one temporarily omnipotent, perhaps the Doctor repaired the damage to Rose's body, but couldn't to his own.

The Doctor may have absorbed all the energy from Rose before it caused her any damage, but by the time he returned it to the TARDIS, it had already done him too much damage.

After he said "I think you need a doctor" we can assume that when he took the energy from her, he healed her, he couldn't heal himself and this caused him to regenerate and Rose only fainted.

• The Daleks bomb "whole continents", and we see on a computer map that their bombing is so drastic as to radically change coastlines of entire continents. With all the things Rose/Bad Wolf changed, why does she leave that destruction in place, and why does no one seem concerned about it after the fact?

Bad Wolf/Rose happened after the bombing, so it is likely when she said I bring life, the continents were restored. If she also brought the people back to life, this could have created the Boekind.

• Why would it take it 2 to 3 minutes to get across the solar system? Haven't the Daleks moved around galaxies before?

As the Doctor mentioned in Journey's End the Daleks they were fighting were scavengers and were not a full Dalek Empire, thus explaining why it would take so long. Had they used the kind of speed that would be needed to move "around galaxies", they would have quickly overshot the Earth and been many star systems away from their target. Slower speeds are needed for moving over comparatively tiny distances.

• If the Earth is altered, how is it the same in the year 5,000,000,000?

The Doctor mentioned in The End of the World that it was restored to the classic appearance by the National Trust.

• Lynda says that she thinks that she and the Doctor are the first contestants to get out of the games. However, earlier on Lynda said to the Doctor he must have remembered when all the housemates walked out of the Big Brother house.

Lynda said that the games were locked after that, meaning she and the Doctor were the first to escape since the games were locked.

• Why does Rose restore Captain Jack's life, but not those of any of the hundreds of other people the Daleks killed? If she is able to disintegrate every Dalek in existence, it shouldn't exactly be hard.

Jack is important to her.

She may have restored their lives too. Nothing suggests she didn't. If Jack is the Face of Boe, he was noted to be part of the race of Boekind which other people seemed to know of and see. These people could be the other Boekind that are heard of.

• You've mentioned about how the humans may have been brought back to life like Jack was. Couldn't this cause them to live forever like Jack did?

Probably, which would suggest that she didn't bring them back, but only brought Jack back, since he is important to her.

• At the end when the doctor has prepared the delta wave and is deciding whether or not to use it, why doesn't he just use it? He was listening to Lynda when she told him that the fleet was bombing whole continents. How could he think anyone could survive that? So only the Daleks where left alive to kill with the delta wave so why was he hesitant?

He hesitated because he doesn't like killing anyone, not even his worst enemies; which is why he said he'd rather be a coward than a killer.

He believed he was responsible for killing all the Daleks and all the Time Lords to end the Great Time War, and felt very guilty because of that. The thought of committing genocide again was unacceptable.

• How was Rose able to follow the clues on how to become Bad Wolf if she originally had not become Bad Wolf to send them to herself? What originally created the clues? It couldn't be her, because she only got the ability to send them as a result of following them, and could not have originally followed them. Why is this not a worse time paradox than Father's Day (TV story)? I don't get it. Have similar situations happened in other episodes?

Time isn't a straight line, something can be done in the future by someone, sent to the past and that same person in the past can see its consequences. This is explained in The Unquiet Dead when Rose asks that and the Doctor says that you can be born in the 20th century and die in the 19th. This isn't the same thing as the paradox that happened in Father's Day. In that one the future was changed. Rose and the Doctor saw the words Bad Wolf during their travels, which means it wasn't a paradox.

In Father's Day the paradox was destructive in the sense it would cause things to "not happen" thus breaking the continuity of time. This paradox is constructive in the sense that the future event causes the past event in a continuous loop. Another excellent example of a constructive paradox is Blink. (Note that in Blink, the Doctor cannot use the information he gets at the end of the story to avoid the events of the story, because that would be destructive. He must let it happen to close the loop.)

This is actually a fairly common paradox in science fiction. The most straightforward example is a man who is given the plans to a time machine by a mysterious stranger. He builds and uses it, then when he is an old man he travels back and gives the plans to his younger self. Nobody ever drew the plans; they're a closed loop and have always existed. (And until somebody builds a real time machine nobody can prove this is impossible!)

• How come the Doctor - a Time Lord - has the Time Vortex in his body for no longer than 6 seconds or so, and is forced to regenerate, whereas Rose - a human - had the Vortex in her body long enough to kill the Daleks and revive Jack (thereby probably channeling extra energy) and long enough for the TARDIS to get back to the Game Station, and falls unconscious for what, five minutes, and then she's fine. Eh?

Yes but what if the energy was heating up inside Rose and then it had got so active when the Doctor absorbed it he would have to regenerate.

Refer to 4th bullet point for discussion on some of these issues.

After he said "I think you need a doctor" we can assume that when he took the energy from her, he healed her, he couldn't heal himself and this caused him to regenerate and Rose only fainted.

Maybe the energy is like Green Kryptonite, which will kill Superman relatively quickly but takes far longer to affect human beings. The dose might have been fatal to Rose after an hour or so but the Doctor could only resist it for a few moments before he had to regenerate.

• When the Doctor sent Rose back to her time, why didn't he go and cram everyone from floor 000 into the TARDIS and do the same? It would've been a hassle but the Doctor wants to save as many people as he can, doesn't he? It would've made a lot more sense.

They may not have believed him.

• Why did the Doctor send the TARDIS away immediately? It seems rather cruel to his constant companion, sending her away to save Rose. Why couldn't he have kept her around in case he wasn't able to finish the Delta Wave in time. At least that way they could both escape, rather then him dying and the TARDIS dying alone. Before someone says Rose would not have agreed, the Doctor could say crossing his timeline was a last resort. When the Daleks were just outside, he could send Rose inside and get to safety with her.

Rose wouldn't forgive him and he wouldn't forgive himself, cause it means everyone would die because of the Daleks, and the Doctor and Rose would run away. Ninth remembered doing something like this after the Time War - surviving when everything else dies, i guess he didn't really want this to happen again. As for the TARDIS, she'd understand his wish to save Rose and not to let the Daleks get her, the TARDIS, as they would work out how to enter and use it someday, or destroy it in a much more cruel way.

• The Emperor says he fell from the burning of Gallifrey (not in so many words) but Gallifrey didn't burn, so how did this occur?

That's not exactly what he said. You destroyed us, Doctor. The Dalek race died in your inferno, but my ship survived, falling through time, crippled but alive The Emperor thought the Doctor had burnt Gallifrey (so did the Doctor at that time). In fact, Gallifrey was gone, but there still was a burning - Daleks exterminating each other in a crossfire. In such mess, inferno indeed, it must've been easy not to tell what is burning and what is going on, especially if you're falling through time.

• How did the Daleks get past 499's makeshift wall?

• Why did Jack's Beretta 92FS lock back after so few bullets were fired? It has a magazine capacity of 15 rounds.

• Is it possible the reason Jack cannot die is because Rose used the energy from the Time Vortex to save him. It is only the second time we see Jack in the TV Series then when Torchwood starts which is after The Parting of Ways we see him not being able to die.