Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/The Evil of the Daleks

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

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• In episode two, The Doctor questions Perry about Bob Hall, asking about him by name. In episode one, Hall's name is never given verbally to the Doctor or Jamie.

It is possible that the information is given visually (on his clipboard, for example).

• In episode two, part of a camera appears as the Dalek questions Victoria.

Perhaps it could be a piece of Dalek equipment monitoring her.

Production error.

• Why not just kidnap the Doctor and Jamie?

This would be much harder to achieve without drawing unwanted attention by the authorities, than merely luring them to the shop with the TARDIS.

Just kidnapping the Doctor and Jamie was less likely to cause the Doctor to cooperate than holding the TARDIS hostage.

As Edward Waterfield notes in Episode Seven, regarding the Dalek Factor, whilst the Doctor thought the Daleks were making him do one thing, they were really making him do another; whilst we don't know exactly when in Dalek history this adventure takes place, these Daleks are at the least extremely savvy to the Doctor's skills and normal modus operandi, enough to recognise that attempting to kidnap the Doctor from twentieth-century Earth would likely a) cause a massive kerfuffle which might attract Time Lord attention, and b) probably not work. The Doctor has one great weakness common to all his incarnations - his greed for knowledge and experience. Whilst the Daleks would certainly agree with the Master or Davros that the Doctor's compassion is also a weakness, that compassion is explicitly something they can't understand, but his ruthless curiosity is something they can fully understand and know how to take advantage of.

• Since Jamie is so essential to Dalek plans, why are the traps set for him so lethal?

The Daleks have been known to kill anyone, even people they need.

In order for the Daleks to get the data they need Jamie must experience heightened emotions like fear and courage. For this reason the traps the Daleks set have to be genuinely dangerous. If Jamie encountered non-lethal traps he wouldn't have the same emotional reactions to them and the experiment would be ruined. Jamie dying from the traps was a calculated risk. Presumably if he had died the Daleks would have settled for a less optimal candidate and experimented on them.

Or the traps might not be as lethal as they seem.

Since the whole point of the test is to determine the Human Factor, using Jamie as the "template" average human, presumably the Daleks would factor in Jamie being unable to survive a particular test as simply being representative of any limitations of the Human Factor -- as in, an average human can only survive up to a certain point of the test.

• The Doctor agrees to work for The Daleks when they threaten to destroy the TARDIS - but on other occasions the TARDIS has been unable to be destroyed for example, the Daleks tried to attack it in The Chase and failed.

Journey's End clearly shows they are capable of destroying it when the defences are down. Further, the Doctor is shown later in the story to have his own ulterior reasons to pretend to be working for the Daleks.

Alternatively at this point the Doctor is separated from the TARDIS in both time and space so all the Daleks would have to do is close down their time corridor and it would be as good as destroyed.

• Just how long have the Daleks been planning this for? Waterfield must have been in 1966 for a while to get a reputation as a Victorian antique dealer before he could track down the Doctor and Jamie for the Daleks.

The Daleks could have dropped Waterfield off a few years before and then gone forward several months to check up on him. From their point of view very little time would have passed.

• How do the Daleks know that it will be the Second Doctor? - this is on the same day as the First Doctor story The War Machines, so it could have easily been him and not the Second Doctor.

They didn't necessarily know. The pictures of Jamie and the Doctor appear to have been taken recently - i.e., during this visit to Earth.

Possible for the Doctor but Jamie is wearing completely different clothes to the ones he wore in this story and The Faceless Ones (it's his outfit from The Highlanders and The Underwater Menace).

That can probably be chalked down to a production "error"; the production team may have only had photos of Frazer Hines in that costume available at the time of production, and the audience is supposed to just overlook the discrepancy.

The Daleks are presumably from a point in the future where they have encountered the Second Doctor (likely after The Power of the Daleks, and perhaps after an unseen adventure), and as Jamie in particular is important to their plans, they are likely making a point of seeking out the Second Doctor. In order to do so, they are probably making use of surveillance and Dalek agents. As a future story will heavily involve the Daleks making use of covert human operatives in London in the 1960s (see Remembrance of the Daleks), it is likely that they are using some of these contacts/agents in order to monitor the First Doctor's activities during the WOTAN situation (and may, it is possible to speculate, have had some secret role in those events) in order to ensure he doesn't cross paths with them instead of the Second Doctor. In short, there is probably nothing fundamentally preventing the First Doctor from stumbling into these events, but the Daleks are presumably doing as much as they can to try and prevent it.

It's also highly likely that, if we assume the above, the Daleks consciously didn't make a move against the Second Doctor (by stealing the TARDIS) until they were absolutely certain that the First Doctor had left Earth.

Remember also that Gatwick Airport, where the events of The Faceless Ones and the opening events of The Evil of the Daleks take place, is about an hour's drive from the (then) Post Office Tower and Central London, where most of the events of The War Machines take place. While that isn't that far, it still means that the First Doctor would have to drop everything to do with WOTAN and go out of his way to find himself in a position where he might become involved in the Daleks' plan.

• Was the photo of the Doctor and Jamie taken during a future adventure, or perhaps during the earlier adventure in Gatwick airport with the Chameleons? Otherwise, why weren't Ben and Polly in the photo, or otherwise part of the Daleks' plans? Jamie had been the Doctor's sole traveling companion only since the very end of the previous adventure.

As addressed above, the photo was probably taken during the Doctor's battle with the Faceless Ones.

That does not explain why Ben and Polly were not included.

Because Ben and Polly were not important to the Daleks' plan. Assuming the photo was taken at Gatwick airport, the photographer either focussed solely on the Doctor and Jamie or only the photos including the Doctor and Jamie were kept because they were the only two the Daleks were interested in. Ben and Polly were around, but they weren't all joined at the hip.

This serial's novelisation claimed photos of Ben and Polly were also taken, but information had reached that the two were no longer with the Doctor so they were no longer needed to be involved.

• The Second Doctor states that he had been wondering if he "would ever meet" the Emperor of the Daleks, suggesting this is their first encounter. However, in PROSE: Doctor Who and the Daleks, the First Doctor already met the Golden Emperor.
  • The television episodes are generally considered to take precedence over everything else when it comes to canon and continuity (especially merchandising tie-ins as with the example above). Furthermore, when the novelisations and similar tie-ins contradict the TV episodes they are based on, the TV episodes are generally regarded as overruling the novelisations. Ergo, this episode is the Doctor's first meeting with the Emperor of the Daleks. If we must square this into continuity, then the "Golden Emperor" is simply not the true Emperor of the Daleks.

• Why does Terrall get Toby to kidnap Jamie?

He could be resisting commands and getting Jamie to safety.

When his non-controlled personality reasserts itself in the stables, he's attempting to question Jamie as to Victoria Waterfield's whereabouts - presumably, since he appears to know that he's in the "grip of something" he doesn't understand, and that it's tied up with the disappearance of Victoria, he's wanting to question the suspicious and unexplained new arrivals to the house, out of the way of Maxtible and the Daleks.

• How does Toby know which one of them is Jamie?

He was told.

Toby's not a genius, but "I'll pay you to bring me one of the new guests- they're in the sitting room with the French windows, and it's either the scruffy little herbert with the checked trousers, or the young lad with the tartan skirt" is not too complicated a set of instructions.

• How exactly would Daleks be able to fake an Ω sign? As far as we know they are not able to hold pens.

Right back in The Daleks (TV story), when writing a message to the Thals, we see Susan using a pen, presumably supplied by the Daleks, with a large metal globe on the back end, which would allow it to be held by a Dalek manipulator arm. It's unlikely they do it often, or use them to write lengthy breathless prose, but potentially for something like, for example, marking a defective piece of equipment, being able to hold a manual writing tool could still be a useful skill.