TV Series Contradictions

[Perry Vale]

I've just been listening to The Daleks' Master Plan, and felt educated to learn that Terranium is the 'rarest mineral in the Universe'. So, is it? Or is it Spectrox, from those muddy caves in Androzani? Or is there another episode telling us something completely different?

Share your Doctor Who contradictions with us in this thread!

[Logo Polish]

The Doctor knows what "framed" means in Deadly Assassin when he explains it to Spandrell, but by Two Doctors he needs to have Peri explain it to him.

[Pip Madeley]

Famous one, I'm surprised Logo didn't mention it - in 'The Mind Robber' Zoe knows what candles are and recognises them straightaway, yet by 'The Space Pirates' she has to ask if they're candles, and how they work.

Duh!

[Perry Vale]

Good ones! Maybe Zoe had her memory wiped in Season 6b2?

[Logo Polish]

I've known some use that to argue that The Mind Robber is all just a dream (at least from Ep 2 onwards).

[Pip Madeley]

Here's another goodie - in 'The Stones of Blood', the Doctor tells Romana that it wasn't the President who sent her on the mission. Yet she's unaware of this in 'The Armageddon Factor'.

[Si Hunt]

It's possible Spectrox was synthesized, and no-one had invented it at the time of "Masterplan" (or visa versa, if MP came later).

I always find the Doctors claim in the early Pertwee years that he "isn't fond of computers" to be bizarre. Because he isn't a fan of gadgets at all, is he? And isn't the TARDIS console equipped with a navigation computer?

Si.

[Ian Lethbridge-Stewart]

I always find the Doctors claim in the early Pertwee years that he "isn't fond of computers" to be bizarre. Because he isn't a fan of gadgets at all, is he? And isn't the TARDIS console equipped with a navigation computer?

Si.

True, but then he does also say that computers are tools and it would be silly not to use a tool at your disposal (or words to that effect). Maybe you have to have a navigational computer in order to pilot the TARDIS (it sounds like the kind of thing that one would need)!!!
Fair point about the gadgets though.

Mind you Pertwee was a gadgets fan so maybe his influence hadn't really come through at the time they made Inferno (which is where I think the "I don't like computers comment" comes from)?

[Larry]

Pyramids of Mars - The Doctor tells Sutech, that the controlls of the TARDIS only answer to him but by season 19 it seemed that any Tom, Dick and Harry could use them.

the Pertwee UNIT era is supposed to be set in the 1980's yet in Mudren Undead the Brigadier had left the army in 1977..

[Pip Madeley]

the Pertwee UNIT era is supposed to be set in the 1980's yet in Mudren Undead the Brigadier had left the army in 1977..

UNIT dating needs its own thread.

(why didn't Jo want Mike, for example?)

[Captain Tancredi]

I've just been listening to The Daleks' Master Plan, and felt educated to learn that Terranium is the 'rarest mineral in the Universe'. So, is it? Or is it Spectrox, from those muddy caves in Androzani? Or is there another episode telling us something completely different?

Different things could be the rarest mineral at different times, of course- if the taranium on Uranus was mined out, or the aftermath of 'Caves' saw spectrox banned entirely and the existing stocks destroyed (or alternatively, mass-produced so that it no longer had the rarity).

[Jason Thompson]

Spectrox is not a mineral, though. A mineral is a (usually inorganic) substance that is generated by geological or other non-plant or -animal processes. Taranium fits that description, whereas Spectrox is refined from bats' nests.

And as for the claim that the TARDIS controls are isomorphic, the Doctor seems to have quite good reasons for lying at this point. Other people have been operating TARDIS controls since season 1.

[Stuart Wallis]

Quite apart from Time Lords being immortal barring accidents and then being limited to 12 regenerations, the Master ends up just surviving a thirteenth attempt, even if it leaves him looking as he did in the Deadly Assassin.

[Si Hunt]

why didn't Jo want Mike, for example?

Because he was a big old gayer?

Si.