Doctor Who Classic Series and DVDs

[paul.austin]

Oh, FFS, this is not a Doctor incarnation!

tardis.wikia.com/wiki/The_Doctor_(Shada)

[gallifreyan]

All this is nothing compared to the impossible Moff mess ( no one else can play The Master now, except John Simm, because Missy came next and the character was killed off.!).

Oh, I dunno:

Time-Flight: "So you escaped from Castrovalva. I should have guessed. "

The' Kings' Demons': "You escaped from Xeraphas"

Notwithstanding the miraculous escaping from being burned alive on Sarn, escaping a big T-Rex in the Rani's company, being exterminated by some Daleks in the TVM, not regenerating & being consumed on a funeral pyre at the end of Last of the Time Lords.

Missy was probably luckily wearing her Laser Screwdriver proof corsets, or something!

[Mark]

Oh, FFS, this is not a Doctor incarnation!

tardis.wikia.com/wiki/The_Doctor_(Shada)

Yes, that is a bit silly, it's just Tom Baker.

[Mark]

All this is nothing compared to the impossible Moff mess ( no one else can play The Master now, except John Simm, because Missy came next and the character was killed off.!).

Oh, I dunno:

Time-Flight: "So you escaped from Castrovalva. I should have guessed. "

The' Kings' Demons': "You escaped from Xeraphas"

Notwithstanding the miraculous escaping from being burned alive on Sarn, escaping a big T-Rex in the Rani's company, being exterminated by some Daleks in the TVM, not regenerating & being consumed on a funeral pyre at the end of Last of the Time Lords.

Missy was probably luckily wearing her Laser Screwdriver proof corsets, or something!

Blimey, you're probably right, I wouldn't put it past them!

However, Skaro was destroyed in "Remembrance" and Rassilon is still in limbo,

[brigham]

There is no reason why a writer's creativity ought to be compromised by imagined 'continuity', especially in something as discontinuous as Doctor Who.
If a respected scriptwriter had produced a brilliant story, only to be told "you can't do that, because Who's granddaughter said...", by some Stephen Lewis-like character with the creative ability of Don Quixote's ass, it would be a great disgrace.

[Richard Charles Skryngestone]

there are far greater continuity problems with the First and Third Doctors in The Three Doctors/The Five Doctors.

Go on...

Everyone is worried about the Second Doctor looking older in The Five Doctors, yet the fact that the First Doctor looks like a totally different man didn't worry those same people. (I wonder those same people feel about the recent Twice Upon A Time?)

The First Doctor acts totally out of character in The Three Doctors. And of course, The Five Doctors has all three Doctors from The Three Doctors remembering that story.

The First Doctor remembers Susan, and is happy to see her in The Five Doctors, placing that after The Dalek Invasion of Earth, which creates more problems.

Worst of all, both the First and Second Doctors wander around, speaking about Time Lords, Gallifrey, Rassilon etc.

This however is the issue. Every Anniversary/Multi-Doctor story is made from the point of reference of the current Doctor. Thus, The Three Doctors was a Pertwee story where earlier Doctors appear. Same with The Five Doctors, The Two Doctors...

And in fact, everything changes as the story does. Thus NOBODY has any idea who the Doctor is, or where he came from throughout the 60's. "Time Lords" are first mentioned in The War Games, yet by the JNT era, Shockeye(as just one example) instantly recognises the Doctor as a Time Lord. And there's an awkward scene in Silver Nemesis where Ace is told that she doesn't really know who the Doctor is, and she replies that she DOES knew, he's a Time Lord. Which just shows how familiar it all is.

The secrets were slowly revealed(there are other people like the Doctor, and other TARDISes!, the Doctor is called a Time Lord!, his home planet is called Gallifrey! etc.) Today of course everyone knows that "The Doctor, a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey..." yet that was definitely NOT the case for many years.

But every story has the characters knowing as much as the viewers do. Unless someone like the Master appears,because he would know more about the Doctor than the viewers. Thus, any story made in the mid-80's would have that.For young viewers in the 80's, the idea that the Doctor once had NO control whatsoever over the TARDIS(and the fact that he also went years without a working TARDIS) would have been a shock. Tom Baker, Peter Davi(d)son and then-current Doctor Colin Baker could all control the TARDIS(often with exact accuracy), everyone knew that the Doctor was a Time Lord, and the Doctor sometimes did errands/missions for the Time Lords, some in secret. And so naturally, that was what was written.

How many times has there been a "First ever encounter with [x]" story, only for subsequent stories to claim that in fact that was NOT the "First ever encounter" after all?

[brigham]

The very notion that 'TARDIS' refers to anything other than Who's own individual machine, is itself a major continuity gaffe.

[Ronco]

The second Doctor is out of character in the Three and Five Doctors. He was never pompous or arrogant during the 1960s and his sarcasm level was very low too.

[paul.austin]

Even M*ffat noted that Troughton was a lot more serious in 1966-69 than he is in the returns.

[gallifreyan]

The First Doctor remembers Susan, and is happy to see her in The Five Doctors, placing that after The Dalek Invasion of Earth, which creates more problems.

Why shouldn't he remember her? & being after DIOE hardly creates probs - she was timescooped the same as the rest of 'em!

Worst of all, both the First and Second Doctors wander around, speaking about Time Lords, Gallifrey, Rassilon etc.

They've probably cracked on that it's safe to do so at that particular moment, what with the presence of their future selves 'n' all.

[gallifreyan]

The very notion that 'TARDIS' refers to anything other than Who's own individual machine, is itself a major continuity gaffe.

Becos?

[marsey]

When you can skip backwards and forwards in time , continuity goes out of the window. Doctor Who in one of the few series in which I accept that anything and everything is possible.

[Mark]

I wouldn't say The first Doctor was out of character in "Three Doctors", even at the time I thought that's The Doctor I remembered, Hartnell gave an excellent performance, he may have been reading from cards but he 'acted' the lines..."Right, so stop dilly-dallying and CROSS IT".

They tried to correct The Doctor controlling The TARDIS, with the Randomiser, but it was quickly forgotten.

The examples given in the multi-Doctor stories are not continuity mistakes, they are, as mentioned, a result of revealing new facts over time.

The most recent controversy, was Moff's re-writing of The First Doctor as a sexist character to fit modern thinking.

[paul.austin]

Almost everything people think they know about Hartnell is a lie.

He wasn't anti--Jewish.

He wasn't sexist.

He wasn't racist, despite the portrayal once he was safely dead as pretty much "member of the National Front/put petrol through black people's letterboxes". He had a deep love of black jazz music and the people who made it.

I can only imagine how utterly terrifying it was for him to progressively lose his memory and cognitive ability.

[brigham]

The very notion that 'TARDIS' refers to anything other than Who's own individual machine, is itself a major continuity gaffe.

Becos?

Sorry?

[drmih]

The very notion that 'TARDIS' refers to anything other than Who's own individual machine, is itself a major continuity gaffe.

Becos?

Sorry?

I presume it's 'txt' or the equivelent of 'Because?' I assume it's to do with the ideathat Susan came up with the name, so therefore it wasn't a generic term used by others.

[Spiny Norman]

Looks like we've got it sorted out. The first doctor wasn't sexist, he simply had no control over his tardis. :)

[gallifreyan]

The very notion that 'TARDIS' refers to anything other than Who's own individual machine, is itself a major continuity gaffe.

Becos?

Sorry?

So you should be. Don't let it happen again.

[brigham]

I'm fairly certain that the 'TARDIS' gaffe, and the change of 'Dals' to 'Kaleds', are the most obvious dis-continuities in the whole of Dr. Who.
It may be subjective, of course.

[Ronco]

How did we know Susan didn't tell others of her acronym before she and the Doctor left? And then, a few years later, it had become adopted by Gallifrey society?

[brigham]

How did we know Susan didn't tell others of her acronym before she and the Doctor left? And then, a few years later, it had become adopted by Gallifrey society?

...and the Dals was the Thal's name for the Kaleds in Thalish, which sounds just like English (and Kaled), except for certain dialect words.

Except that they both speak different languages, but we hear them as English because of the Universal Translator built into Who's pocket watch.

Even when he isn't in shot...

You could make a religion out of it.

[Ronco]

Yes, Brigham, but I wasn't talking about the Dals/Thals/Daleks, I was talking about the TARDIS. But thanks for making a strawman.

[Duncan]

nobody sane cares

[brigham]

Yes, Brigham, but I wasn't talking about the Dals/Thals/Daleks, I was talking about the TARDIS. But thanks for making a strawman.

I was just having a laugh about how some people think that continuity in a discontinuous TV series is so very important, that they have to make-up explanations for the discontinuities.
Susan didn't do anything apart from what the scriptwriter said she did. She's a fictional character in a fictional story.

[Mark]

It never seemed discontinuous, in fact it was decidedly linear with companions coming and going ,and Doctors come to that!

It may have been for The Doctor, but not for us.

It's actually natural, to want to make sense of contradictions in TV series, as they obviously don't happen in real life.

[Richard Charles Skryngestone]

It never seemed discontinuous, in fact it was decidedly linear with companions coming and going ,and Doctors come to that!

It may have been for The Doctor, but not for us.

It's actually natural, to want to make sense of contradictions in TV series, as they obviously don't happen in real life.

There are lots of contradictions in real life. But a discussion of that would derail this thread.

[Mark]

It never seemed discontinuous, in fact it was decidedly linear with companions coming and going ,and Doctors come to that!

It may have been for The Doctor, but not for us.

It's actually natural, to want to make sense of contradictions in TV series, as they obviously don't happen in real life.

There are lots of contradictions in real life. But a discussion of that would derail this thread.

Not quite in the same league as on TV though, I mean where do you start with The Brig retiring in 76, when "The Time Warrior" was set in 1980, unless Sarah had forgotten when she came from!

[Richard Charles Skryngestone]

It never seemed discontinuous, in fact it was decidedly linear with companions coming and going ,and Doctors come to that!

It may have been for The Doctor, but not for us.

It's actually natural, to want to make sense of contradictions in TV series, as they obviously don't happen in real life.

There are lots of contradictions in real life. But a discussion of that would derail this thread.

Not quite in the same league as on TV though, I mean where do you start with The Brig retiring in 76, when "The Time Warrior" was set in 1980, unless Sarah had forgotten when she came from!

The thing is that if someone tries to explain 'UNIT Dating' or the Three Destructions of Atlantis, then they are labelled an anorak.

Someone trying to explain how Lee Harvey Oswald could fire from three completely different vantage points in a few seconds, or how World Trade Center-7 could possibly have collapsed, is labelled a 'conspiracy theorist', and may disappear...

[Brian F]

How did we know Susan didn't tell others of her acronym before she and the Doctor left? And then, a few years later, it had become adopted by Gallifrey society?

I'm not sure if it was only in original (not the restaged) first episode but Susan said she made it up so that her teachers would understand, therefore not before they left. If it was just the pilot episode then does it count?

[Richard Charles Skryngestone]

How did we know Susan didn't tell others of her acronym before she and the Doctor left? And then, a few years later, it had become adopted by Gallifrey society?

I'm not sure if it was only in original (not the restaged) first episode but Susan said she made it up so that her teachers would understand, therefore not before they left. If it was just the pilot episode then does it count?

One of the tedious 'explanations' was that Susan's acronym was something modern English-speakers could understand.

Once that word 'TARDIS' had been used, whenever anyone spoke of the time-space ship, the time-space ship itself would translate whatever it was called into the word "TARDIS", for those who heard it.

By the time other Time Lords were on the scene, the Doctor's companions(as well as the viewers) were all familiar with the word 'TARDIS', so that's what it sounded like everyone was calling it. In fact, the Time Lords on Gallifrey may have another, totally different, word for time-space ships, but since everything is being translated into English anyway, that word is translated into the familiar word.."TARDIS".