Doctor Who

Full Circle - S18-E3

Corrected entry: Romana gives the TARDIS's weight as five million kilograms in the planet's gravity. This is totally inconsistent with the TARDIS's weight in the rest of the series - for instance, in the third Doctor's time, a few soldiers were enough to lift it. And it can't be because of the planet having high gravity, as the Doctor and Romana would have been killed and K-9 crushed whenever they went outside the TARDIS.

DaveJB

Correction: There is no mistake. The outside has always weighed less than the inside, just like the outside is always smaller than the inside. Its outside weight is dependent on its chameleon camouflage, but in this episode they're talking about the interior weight. There have been episodes where people were unable to pull it if the chains were on inside, and in the episode Castrovalva, the weight of the TARDIS is much greater than 5 million kg. If that immense weight was always the case, it would crash through the floor of many locations where it materialised.

Bishop73

Referring to the new series, in the Twelfth Doctor episode "Flatline", the Doctor outright says that if he landed the TARDIS on Earth at its full weight it would crack the planet's crust.

Genesis of the Daleks - S12-E4

Corrected entry: Davros is supposed to be a brilliant scientist, solely responsible for the creation of The Daleks and their programming. Programming The Daleks to accept him as their leader would be the absolute first thing he would do, and it's clear that the Davros death scene was only done for dramatic effect. (00:21:35)

Daz

Correction: Davros didn't program the behaviour of The Daleks into them (remember that they're not robots) - rather, he altered the genetic structure of the Dalek creatures to make them emotionally underdeveloped. Besides, much of the story is based around Davros's arrogant and delusional nature (he probably assumed that The Daleks would blindly obey him anyway), so it's not really a plot hole that he failed to realise that The Daleks would become treacherous.

City of Death - S17-E2

Corrected entry: In episode 3, there are no crowds outside the Louvre when the Doctor runs up to it (just two gendarmes). It seems unusually quiet for the what the Doctor described earlier in this story as "the most famous art gallery in the universe"...

Correction: We only see a close-up of one entrance, not a wide-shot. And given that the prize of the Louvre collection has just been stolen, it's likely that the Louvre is closed to tourists.

The Creature from the Pit - S17-E3

Corrected entry: Neutron stars are one step away from being Black Holes. Anything such as Erato's ship approaching one would be dragged down to its surface and instantly crushed by enormous gravitational forces. It is therefore impossible to catch a Neutron Star in a net...

Correction: A typical neutron star is a long way from being a black hole (a couple of solar masses away), and neither neutron stars nor black holes suck orbiting objects into them unless they are within the event horizon.

Planet of the Spiders - S11-E5

Corrected entry: Neither the humans nor Spiders use the word "Spider", instead referring to them as "Eight-Legs". But when the colonists go off to attack the Spider lair, you can hear some of the extras shouting "Death to the Spiders" instead of "Death to the Eight-Legs".

DaveJB

Correction: That's the entire point of the scene. They are rebelling against the spiders and using the forbidden word as an act of defiance.

Correction: Basic lifecycle of extremely massive stars: they're born, they live for several million years, they die in a large supernova. There are two potential outcomes of a supernova: the creation of a pulsar or neutron star, or the creation of a black hole, depending on how massive the original star was. So yes, black holes are indeed created in supernovas.

Correction: It is possible to say the name "Adric" without moving your lips.

Remembrance of the Daleks - S25-E1

Corrected entry: We know the episode takes place on 23 November, 1963 because the first episode of Doctor Who is about to come on TV when Ace leaves the room. JFK was assassinated less than 24 hours ago, and nobody seems to be affected. Granted, the military characters have other things on their minds, but none of the civilians wear black armbands or even mention that the biggest news story of the year that just happened.

Captain Defenestrator

Correction: You said it yourself: the people have other things of importance to worry about. This is set in London, where the reaction would not have been as significant as in America. It is set in a school where the lessons would have gone on as normal. At most there would be some discussion in an assembly.

Correction: The Doctor is shocked by the Dalek as the Dalek is invisible, and the Doctor, to this point, is unaware that Daleks can be invisible.

Earthshock - S19-E6

Corrected entry: At the end of this story, Adric dies when he tries to prevent a Cyberman-controlled freighter from crashing into the Planet Earth. He became the first Doctor Who companion to be killed in the series.

Correction: It was Katarina, and Sarah Kingdom, (both from the original, first doctor series) who were the first to die. Katarina, being ejected into space, and Sarah Kingdom being aged to death by the Dalek's time destructor's field.

That's true. It is worth noting that Adric was the first long-term companion to die, as both Katarina and Sara Kingdom were around for less than a full serial. However, serials of that era were pretty long, so they were still around for a decent number of weeks.

Correction: The Cyberleader says that this is the form of The Doctor that foiled them in "Tomb of the Cybermen." The main point being to show which Doctor, not the actual event. As long as it's the second Doctor, any footage they have will do.

Captain Defenestrator

100,000 BC - S1-E1

Corrected entry: When Ian is trying to make fire with the sticks, he makes the rubbing motion while holding the sticks very far apart from each other. As the fire starts to light, he finally brings them together so that they are touching.

Correction: This isn't an error. He's not rubbing the two sticks together, he's using one as a bow to turn the other one very quickly. The friction (and heat) is on the base the vertical stick is pressed against. See http://www.wikihow.com/Start-a-Fire-with-Sticks for a detailed explanation.

Planet of Giants - S2-E1

Corrected entry: At the end of episode two, when the sink is emptied, the plug is placed on the bench. In the reprise for episode three, the plug is put back in the sink (thus enabling the miniaturized travellers to escape).

Correction: The Doctor notes that the plug was replaced when the flow of water is cut off.

Correction: This scene was actually shot backward to create a realistic-looking struggle. So in no way is the actor pulling the chair onto himself but he is legitimately pushing it away.

The War Games - S6-E7

Corrected entry: In episode seven the Doctor says that he is sending Zoe and Russell back to the 1917 (World War I) zone, but instead they arrive in the American Civil War zone.

Correction: It wouldn't be the first time he's got the coordinates wrong.

Josman

The Dominators - S6-E1

Corrected entry: The chart of the radiation on the island is wrong. The dialogue says it has steadily decreased over the past 172 years then suddenly disappeared. But the chart says it initially dropped rapidly for a few years, then started to fall at a slower rate for about a hundred years, then changed again and dropped to zero over fifty years. However, the way radiation disperses is anything but steady. It will continually slow down in its dispersal, forming a curve on a graph.

Correction: Actually, radiation will decay from an atomic bomb explosion at varying rates, depending upon which radioactive elements are dominant.

The Claws of Axos - S8-E3

Corrected entry: The Nuton power complex contains a cyclotron which, Winser explains, can accelerate atomic particles to the speed of light and beyond. There's even an instrument which measures the effect, with a scale marked in "x light". Unfortunately, relativity states that you can't accelerate particles to the speed of light (let alone beyond it), because at that point the particles would have infinite mass.

Matty W

Correction: There is a theory that a cylinder of sufficient density would cause light to loop around it and accelorate. The particles wouldn't be breaking the local speed of light but would be breaking the universal one. The cylindrical nature of the chamber may generate this effect. This is science fiction so you have to assume that scientists found a way around the problem.

Josman

Planet of the Spiders - S11-E5

Corrected entry: Near the end of episode five, Tommy rescues the Doctor and Sarah from the cellar. The spider-controlled men pursue and start banging on the cellar door. When they do, it wobbles quite a bit.

Correction: Doors often wobble if hammered on, particularly old ones. Not a mistake.

Josman

Correction: At the end of The Invasion, the departure of the TARDIS, now visible in its normal police box form, is seen by UNIT's Captain Turner. As the Brigadier's right hand man, I'm pretty sure that Turner would relay the information about the TARDIS's appearance back to the Brigadier.

100,000 BC - S1-E1

Corrected entry: During the long continuous hand held shot of Ian and Barbara exploring the junk yard in episode one, the cameraman trips, making the image jump up and down.

Correction: This happens in the unaired pilot, not the broadcast episode.

Planet of the Spiders - S11-E5

Plot hole: At the climax of episode 2, the Doctor is about to catch Lupton when the latter simply teleports to safety. So why didn't he do that in the first place, before engaging in a 15-minute chase?

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The Chase - S2-E8

Trivia: Such was the popularity of Doctor Who in Britain in the mid-1960s that even the Beatles wanted to make an appearance in the show. So a scene was written into "The Chase" to allow them to appear. The idea had been devised of including a scene on the Time and Space Visualiser depicting a Beatles fiftieth-anniversary concert in 2015, with the Fab Four dressed up as old men. John, Paul, George, and Ringo themselves were interested in the proposition, but it was vetoed by their manager, Brian Epstein. It was then thought that an appearance by the Beatles on Top of the Pops might be used instead, but no such footage was available. Fortunately, the Beatles were scheduled to perform "Ticket to Ride" at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith on April 10th, 1965, and that footage was used instead.

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Answer: TARDISes are generally available for properly authorised use on Gallifrey; they're not usually assigned to a particular Timelord on a long-term basis. The Doctor stole his when he left his homeworld.

Tailkinker

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