Confession #81: I Want Certain Retcons

April 15, 2015

Continuity is a tricky thing in Doctor Who. Due to the nature of the beast, with a plethora of writers contributing to the “canon” (a loaded, debatable term), contradictions abound. For large things, like humanity becoming aware of non-Terrestrial life, a showrunner will usually find a way to smooth over the issue with a clever (or not-so-clever) retcon. A few such instances were highlighted recently in an article at the Houston Press.

However, sometimes rather egregious inconsistencies remain unaddressed. Other times, writers throw in ideas that some fans simply find distasteful (while others, of course, couldn’t care less). There is at least one of the former category—and several of the latter—that still irritate me. Here are some of the blips in the Doctor’s adventures I’d like to see sorted.

I’ll start with the actual discontinuity, which involves the Blinovich Limitation Effect (BLE). First mentioned in Day of the Daleks, and later in Invasion of the Dinosaurs, the BLE began as a vague hand wave to explain (without explaining) why our heroes couldn’t simply go back and try again and again if they failed their mission the first time. Later, in Mawdryn Undead, we learned that an extension (or corollary, perhaps) of the Effect meant that if two versions of the same individual from different points on their personal timeline were to touch, there could be catastrophic effects.

Unfortunately, post-Hiatus Who has, more often than not, ignored the perils of the BLE—unless it happened to suit a particular storyline. There are, off the top of my head, three examples of characters crossing their own timelines and touching other versions of themselves. The first, where Rose holds her infant self in Father’s Day, does actually lead to severe consequences in the form of Reapers. It’s not the same result of that corollary that we saw in Mawdryn Undead, but at least we see how the paradoxical crossing of her own timestream affects Rose and her surroundings.

In contrast, two other characters come into contact with their previous selves without so much as a hint that anything negative might happen. The first is Kazran Sardick, who embraces his younger self in A Christmas Carol. The second is Amy Pond, who sets her hand atop Amelia’s head to measure against herself and get an idea of what year it is into which she had emerged from the Pandorica in The Big Bang.

I can’t help but wonder why the writers would stick with continuity in one case and not the others. One might think that the switch in showrunner had something to do with it, as Father’s Day aired nearly six years prior to the others. However, minutes before the Amy/Amelia interaction in The Big Bang, the Doctor and Rory cross sonics and sparks fly upon the release of temporal energy, demonstrating that they are, in fact, the same sonic at different points in its timestream. It appears that Moffat (who wrote that episode) simply decided to pick and choose where it suited him to use the BLE.

The next items on my personal shit list aren’t so much “continuity errors” as wince-inducing plot devices. Taking them in chronological order, let’s start with the travesty that is the Doctor’s supposed “half human” heritage, as mentioned in The Movie. I’ve ranted about this before, but as far as I’m concerned it’s a lie the Doctor told to advance his agenda of the moment. Although the Master repeats the lie later in the story, I can conceive of ways to explain that away, too. Besides, Big Finish has established a perfectly good mechanism for the Eye of Harmony to have been reset to need a human eye print.

More recently, I’ve cringed at two particular plot points Moffat has added—both introduced during this most recent series. The first of these came in right at the end of Listen (see my review for the full rant) when Clara meets the Doctor as a child. I simply don’t like Clara enough to want her to be influential for the Doctor throughout the entirety of his two millennia. It’s overkill, and smacks of hubris on Moffat’s part.

Then there are the Cyber-deceased. It may have been an effective threat for the purposes of a series finale, but when one considers the implications, the idea is pretty disturbing. People returned to their rotting, cyber-converted corpses with their memories—but theoretically not their emotions—intact? Even if one can avoid thinking too carefully about one’s own deceased loved ones in such a situation, the idea of some of the Doctor’s former Companions being subjected to such an indignity is almost too much to bear. (And no, I didn’t like that particular nod to the Brigadier.)

I’m certain it wouldn’t require a great deal more thought to identify other retcon-worthy moments. But I take comfort in the fact that as writers, showrunners, and other production staff are in constant flux, so is the state of canonicity (such as it is). There’s still hope that my least favorite plot points could fade into the mists of time.