Factual error: The Doctor states that the radio waves take two minutes to get from Mars to Earth. The time interval can vary dramatically depending on where the two planets are in their orbit. But at absolute closest approach, Mars is just over three light minutes from Earth.
The Masque of Mandragora - S14-E1
Factual error: Giuliano explains to Sarah that he thinks the world is round as though this were radical. But this was the common belief throughout the late Middle Ages. The argument was about how big the Earth was and the ignorance about the existence of a continent between Europe and Asia.
The Masque of Mandragora - S14-E1
Factual error: Giuliano makes references to the invention of the telescope. Yet the invention of the telescope was at least a century after the events in the story and Galileo's experiments more than 50 years after that.
Factual error: The nuclear physics in the reactor scenes is laughably incorrect.
The Talons of Weng-Chiang - S14-E6
Factual error: When The Doctor questions the arrested Chinaman in the Police Station (in episode one), the Doctor claims to be able to speak several Chinese dialects. What the Doctor actually says to the Chinaman is "How Are You?" in Cantonese, but the rest of what the Doctor says is completely improvised gibberish that SOUNDS Chinese, but is, in fact, complete nonsense.
The Talons of Weng-Chiang - S14-E6
Factual error: The Doctor mentions at one point in the story that he had once been fishing in the River Fleet with the Venerable Bede. The Venerable Bede was a distinguished 7th century scholar, who lived his entire life at Jarrow, on Tyneside, and never at any time came to London.
Factual error: Titan is depicted as a Moon-like landscape with no atmosphere. In actual fact, Titan has a nitrogen/argon atmosphere denser than Earth's, and a reddish-orange sky. This was detected almost thirty years before "The Invisible Enemy" was made, so somebody slipped up in doing their research.
Underworld - S15-E5
Factual error: While it's true the centre of a planet would have no net gravity, the weightless condition would be everywhere, not concentrated in a convenient shaft.
Factual error: While gravitational forces can be "balanced" between planets at very specific points, the notion of balancing them completely to cancel each other out everywhere, as depicted in the Captain's trophy room, is nonsense.
Destiny of the Daleks - S17-E1
Factual error: Davros comments that, between them, The Daleks are carrying half a megaton of explosives - in other words, roughly twenty-five times more explosive force than the Hiroshima or Nagasaki bombs. An explosion of that size should cause enormous destruction (vaporizing everything within roughly two kilometers), yet when the Doctor detonates them they explode with about as much power as a small stick of dynamite each.
Factual error: There are currently well over 700 different native Australian languages, and undoubtedly many more have been extinct for centuries. The chances of a 20th Century European-Australian such as Tegan being able to understand a native Australian language from around 35,000 years ago are so astronomical it is beyond belief.
Factual error: In episode 2, the policemen from 1925 recognise the TARDIS as a police call box, even though TARDIS-style police boxes weren't introduced until four years later, in 1929.
Earthshock - S19-E6
Factual error: As the spaceship approaches the Earth of 65 million years ago, the Earth looks very much like the present day one. Hasn't anyone heard of "continental drift"? The Earth's land masses of 65 million years ago were not where they are now. (This has been fixed on the DVD)
Earthshock - S19-E6
Factual error: The Cybermen sets four explosive charges around the outside of the door, yet only the middle part of the door is damaged...
Time-Flight - S19-E7
Factual error: The Pleistocene Period began around 1.8 million years ago, not 140 million years ago as stated.
The Caves of Androzani - S21-E6
Factual error: Sharaz Jek's monitor that displays the tunnels and his androids is inaccurate. The white blobs are, as we learn later, supposed to represent his androids. He tells the Doctor that the green area is held by the army, yet on the screen the green area is populated by androids, so they could not have had control.
The Caves of Androzani - S21-E6
Factual error: When the Doctor is trying to land the ship, from the video screen it appears that they are moving towards the planet way too fast to make such a safe and quick landing. Also, the ship doesn't seem to have even penetrated the planet's atmosphere yet it lands seconds later.
Factual error: One of the characters in this story is called "Lord Ravensworth." Yet the story is set in 1813, and Sir Henry Liddell was not ennobled and raised to the Peerage to become Lord Ravensworth until 1821 (eight years later).
The Trial of a Time Lord 13-14 (aka The Ultimate Foe) - S23-E4
Factual error: The Master states that Earth and its entire constellation were moved, but constellations are merely patterns of stars (as viewed from a given point, like Earth) that may be nowhere near each other - the Earth could not really be described as being in a constellation as any sort of specific entity that could be moved.
Remembrance of the Daleks - S25-E1
Factual error: The events depicted are supposed to have taken place at the time of the broadcast of the first Doctor Who story... Saturday 23rd November 1963 at 5:15pm. However, the non-wintry weather and the bright evenings don't fit late November/early December.
Answer: It was never destroyed on-screen; it was intact at the end of the TV movie, and destroyed by the start of the 2005 series. It was destroyed in the novel "The Ancestor Cell," but in a completely different manner to what happened in the series.
DaveJB