FIXING CONTINUITY GLITCHES:

QUICK FIXES - 1

Every now and again, I'll deal with smaller continuity issues that don't quite merit a full essay. They can be tackled in a matter of paragraphs so I'll take 3 or 4 of these problems and just merge them all together into one longer piece. 

HEART PROBLEMS

A continuity issue that, amazingly enough, really doesn't get discussed that much. Steven Moffat, however, recently brought a lot of attention to it in Doctor Who Magazine.

The fact of the matter is, the idea of the Doctor having two hearts doesn't really get firmly established until Spearhead From Space. At the begining of his second regeneration, the Doctor is hospitalized and X-rays get taken of his chest. Surprise! Surprise! There's an extra heart, there.

From that point onward, the idea of Time Lord's having two hearts is an established piece of continuity. Bad puns get made on a fairly regular basis (my favorite being: "I'll keep it close to my hearts - both of them!") whenever discussions about Gallifreyan cardio-vascular systems arise. Both sides of the Doctor's chest get checked whenever someone is verifying his pulse. And so on....

Here's the problem: Before Spearhead, there are times when the Doctor's heartbeat is checked. No mention is ever made of the second pulse. The first time we see this is in the very third story of the first season. Ian Chesterton leans his head against the Doctor's chest and comments that everything seems fine. Shouldn't he be shocked that he's hearing mores lub-dubs than he ought to?

Lots of discussions have erupted over the nature of the Doctor's first two incarnations because of this. Many are fueled by such facts as the Second Doctor referring to the process of regeneration as rejuvenation, instead. And the 8th Doctor's claim of being half-human added more gas to the fire. Then there's the mention in Ribos Operation of the Doctor only passing his Time Lord exams on the second attempt. Wild theories claiming that the Doctor wasn't truly a Time Lord in his first two incarnations have been whispered in all sorts of shadowy corners.

I think there's a much simpler answer, though. Ian only heard one heartbeat because he only put his head on one side of the Doctor's chest! If you're not looking for an extra pulse on someone, you probably won't find it. Simple as that, really.

Things do become slightly more complicated when we consider that the Doctor received a full physical during Wheel In Space. No mention is made, then, of the double-pulse. One would expect an actual medical professional to be fairly thorough and would catch such a discrepancy. This can be easily explained. Chances are, a discussion did occur about the matter but it happened off-screen. I'm guessing Humanity, by this stage of development, has run into aliens. So the Doctor very simply explains to the person that is treating him that he's not actually a human. But that we, as an audience, don't witness this discussion. We're too busy following the plot-thread of those nasty bernalium-eating cybermats at the time!

WHERE DID THE NINTH DOCTOR'S "SECRET ADVENTURES" COME FROM?

I love the fact that right in the very first episode of the New Series we immediately run into a continuity error. I'm not actually being sarcastic, here. Doctor Who never cared much about continuity in the Classic Series and I was happy to see, in its new incarnation, it was quickly establishing itself as still being that sort of show.

I'm referring, of course, to the scene in Rose where internet conspiracy theorist Clive provides Rose Tyler with some background on this mysterious Doctor she's researching. It's a very cool and sinister moment but it also doesn't quite gel with what will happen in the rest of Series One.

Clive shows Rose all kinds of pics of the Ninth Doctor throughout the ages. He's at the Kennedy assassination, he's getting a family to avoid a journey on the Titanic and he's visiting Krakatoa just before it erupts (according to Inferno, it's his second trip). Again, it's a really great and mysterious moment. There's just one problem: Rose isn't in any of these pics. And she should be.

There's a little moment earlier in the episode that indicates that the Doctor is fresh from his regeneration at the end of Day of the Doctor. He passes a mirror in Rose's apartment and seems to be reacting to his new face for the first time. So this must be the Doctor at the very beginning of his Ninth Incarnation. The War Doctor, having just had his big adventure with Doctors Ten and Eleven, induces his latest regeneration, and then notices Nestene activity on Earth in 2005. I doubt there's been any time to do much of anything else (a quick change of clothes and an alteration to the console room's desktop theme - and that's about it!).

So Rose is joining the Ninth Doctor only moments after he's regenerated and continues to travel with him until he regenerates again. Basically, she's with him the whole season. So when he watched Kennedy get shot, saved the family from the Titanic and went to Krakatoa - shouldn't Rose be in those pics, too?

Some theorize that Doctor Nine did some travelling on his own before the events of Rose transpire and that's where the pictures come from. I find it hard to believe that he could make multiple journeys in the TARDIS after regenerating and never bother to check in a mirror to see what his new face looks like. On most other occasions, he's checking out a new face within a few minutes of getting it. So this idea doesn't work for me.

Other fans suggest that Rose just didn't happen to be around when the pictures were taken. She was buying some hot dogs down the street when Kennedy got shot. Or was the one holding the camera when the picture of the family that avoided the Titanic was taken. Or the sketch artist didn't like Rose and decided not to include her in the Krakatoa picture. It seems highly unlikely that the only pictures Clive got of the Doctor just happened to be the ones that Rose was coincidentally absent from.

I suggest, instead, that a bunch of travelling occurs for the Doctor between the dematerialisation and rematerialisation of the TARDIS at the end of the episode. When he offers Rose the chance to be his companion and she says "No." and then he comes back a moment later and gets her to change her mind it looks like only seconds have passed. But this is a time machine. It can return to a location in time and space only seconds after it left but can take a huge journey between those two points.

I suggest Doctor Nine spent a considerable amount of time travelling throughout the Universe after being turned down by Rose. Among those journeys, he watched Kennedy get shot, saved a family from boarding the Titanic and made his second visit to Krakatoa. He probably did a bunch of other stuff, too. For all we know, he may have even picked up a few companions for a bit here and there. These journeys could've gone on for several years. But he always remembered Rose and wished she had said yes to his offer. So when the TARDIS finally returns, either by accident or design, to that moment of refusal only a few seconds later -  the Doctor pops back out and makes a second offer to
Rose. She climbs aboard and off they go to experience the rest of Series One.

This idea, to me, makes better sense.   It also enables us to believe that the Ninth Doctor had a longer lifespan than just the year he seems to spend travelling with Rose (was it even a year? It's hard to tell...).

THE MANY FACES OF MORBIUS

The production team tried to have a bit of fun with continuity during Season 14 of the Classic Series. Apparently, they wanted to insinuate that there were incarnations of the Doctor that existed before the William Hartnell version.

One of the nods they make happens right in the first story of the new season. The Doctor re-discovers an alternate console room. Apparently, there's some visual clues that are supposed to get us to believe that incarnations before the Hartnell Doctor had been there. The best we see to support this is a ruffled shirt that looks like Jon Pertwee might not have worn it since it looks a bit pinkish. And a shaving mirror. Was this meant to indicate there was a bearded Doctor at some point? Wouldn't a person who hasn't grown a beard be more likely to having a shaving mirror? After all, they're going to be shaving a whole lot more than a bearded man does (at best, we bearded fellows groom our beard - something we can actually do half-decently without a mirror).

The other big nod to these "hidden incarnations" occurs a few stories later in Brain of Morbius. As the Doctor and Morbius are mind-bending, we see images of previous incarnations appearing within the machinery they're using to battle each other. Pertwee, Throughton and Hartnell all show up. And then, a whole series of other faces start appearing. Oh my God! It's earlier incarnations of the Doctor!

Or it's Morbius' past lives. Which seems more likely. The Doctor quickly regresses back to his first life and does his damnedest to hold on in battle. He fights back with all he's got and starts forcing Morbius back through his earlier bodies. Those are the pictures we see after the Hartnell Doctor appears. They are not earlier incarnations of the Doctor that we never knew about. They're Morbius.

Yes, Morbius cries: "How far back, Doctor? How long have you lived?" (or words to that effect) which tends to indicate that these are the Doctor's lives we're seeing. But it could have just as easilly been a cry of desperation. The Doctor is starting to burn through Morbius' past and the evil renegade Time Lord is really hoping that these three previous incarnations are all the Doctor has. He's yelling out in just a bit of panic rather than questionning just how many lives the Doctor appears to have.
Interestingly enough, I had watched Brain of Morbius before I'd learnt of this amendment the production team was trying to make to continuity so this has always been the way I've interpretted that scene. I was still a relatively new fan at that point but I knew there were only 3 Doctors before Tom Baker. So I just assumed those other faces were meant to be Morbius. So this theory was a sound one for me even before I learnt what the sequence was meant to convey.

I'm perfectly fine with one incarnation of the Doctor remaining "hidden" from us until the 50th anniversary. But the other 8 to 10 that we see in Brain of Morbius are just too big of a stretch.  I know some fans like to refer to the theory of "the Other" that starts to get talked about during the Seventh Doctor era and try to say that these are his incarnations. But that whole concept starts falling to pieces when the New Series comes into play. In New Who, we seem to be back to the idea that Gallifreyans reproduce the way humans do rather than having to rely on Looms. So those mysterious faces have to belong to Morbius. Of course, they also happen to belong to the production team that was working on Doctor Who at the time!



There you go, a few quick continuity glitches fixed. Did you notice how I put the Number One beside the title, though? That means, of course, that this is another ongoing series. We'll see more of these down the road....