Doctor Who

The Eleventh Hour - S5-E1

Factual error: When the Doctor spots Rory taking a photo of Prisoner Zero, we're shown a brief close-up of Rory's hospital identity badge. The date of issue is given as "30/11/1990". The main body of the episode is set in 2008, two years before Rory and Amy's wedding in 2010. It's further established in the episode that Rory and Amy played together as children after her first meeting with the Doctor in 1996, with Rory observing that Amy made him dress up as the Raggedy Doctor. Rory could not possibly have worked for the hospital for eighteen years at the time of the episode. (00:33:10)

Tailkinker

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Suggested correction: Continue watching the show as this is a clue and not a mistake. In later episodes Rory becomes the Last Centurion who watches over Amy for over 1,800 years while she is in the Pandorica. So while Rory was born in 1989, because of time travel and events that occurred to him, he's lived long enough to work at the hospital since 1990.

Bishop73

At that stage, Rory had not time-traveled at all. If he had been working at the hospital since 1990, he would have been a baby. And it was shown in "The Big Bang" that he works as a guard in the Museum where the Pandorica is kept in the alternate timeline, not at the hospital.

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The Unquiet Dead - S1-E3

Factual error: When Rose is locked in the room and the bodies come toward her, you can see a modern-day electric light-switch to the side of the door she's trying to get through. When the Doctor hears her screaming for help and runs for her, you can see a central heating radiator. In fact, the undertaker's house has at least two radiators in different hallways. Both are wildly anachronistic for the time period. (00:16:30 - 00:17:08)

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Suggested correction: While the light switch is ahead of its time, the heating radiator was invented by Franz San Galli in 1855 and was immediately popular. It's possible that by 1869, when the episode takes place, that Mr. Sneed would have one.

Smith and Jones - S3-E1

Factual error: A reflection of a full Moon is shown near the end. When Earth is viewed from the Moon earlier, over half of it is illuminated by the Sun. For it to be full Moon, the entire Earth would have to be dark. In addition, the place where the hospital was transported to was dark, and not sunlit. (00:37:45)

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Suggested correction: When the reflection of the full Moon is viewed it is night time several hours after we saw the Earth from the Moon.

Peter Wallace

Yeah, no, the phases of the Moon don't work like that. New Moon and Full Moon are two weeks apart. Since the Moon appears to be, judging by the appearance of the Earth, between New and either First or Last Quarter, it is impossible for a Full Moon to be visible later that night.

The Runaway Bride - S3-E14

Continuity mistake: In the scene when Donna asks the woman if she could borrow £10 because it's Christmas, you can see that Donna is wearing sports shoes instead of her usual white wedding shoes. (00:10:05)

LizzieWD

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Suggested correction: No, she's wearing the same shoes if you pay attention.

Never mind - she is wearing running shoes for no apparent reason.

The Sound of Drums (2) - S3-E12

Continuity mistake: When the Master stands up on the Valiant to announce that he is the Toclafane's "Master", President Winters is visible in the background, only the Toclafane aren't there. In the next shot, they return, buzzing around Winters' head.

LizzieWD

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Suggested correction: This seems to be caused by angles - the Toclafane are floating fairly high up, around the level of Winters' shoulders and above, but the Master is lower down. Hence, why they're not visible in the shot.

Human Nature (1) - S3-E8

Plot hole: The Doctor leaves Martha a recording with instructions for her for when he's human. However, the flashbacks to the incident that led to him using the Chameleon Arch don't leave enough - or any - time for him to have made the recording, presenting his decision to use the device as a spur-of-the-moment one that he immediately acts upon.

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Suggested correction: He would have been planning the change to human for a while now, not just made it up on the fly. So he could have made a recording before the opening scene.

The episode makes it pretty clear that he and Martha got taken by surprise by the Family's attack. The Doctor also explicitly says, when he gets out the Chameleon Arch headset, that he never thought he'd use it. The flashbacks consistently present his decision to become human as one made as an urgent, in the moment one.

Listen - S8-E4

Continuity mistake: After the Doctor is knocked unconscious, Clara uses the psychic circuitry to pilot the TARDIS to what turns out to be a moment in the Doctor's past, in the barn first seen in "The Day of the Doctor." The loft in the barn where the young First Doctor is sleeping in bed, however, was not present in the previous episode.

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Suggested correction: These events take place thousands of years apart. Buildings (especially wooden ones) are likely to change in that time.

The barn appears three times, in "The Day of the Doctor", "Listen" and "Hell Bent." Its appearance in "The Day of the Doctor" is chronologically in-between its appearances in "Listen" and "Hell Bent." Both of the two latter episodes have the loft, but "The Day of the Doctor" doesn't. That's the mistake here.

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Suggested correction: The close-up shot of the Dalek just as Rory pushes it is positioned such that the ear lights, and the place where they're mounted, isn't visible anyway.

skater49th

Kill the Moon - S8-E7

Factual error: Near the end of the episode, the full moon is shown in the daytime sky, well above the horizon. This is impossible, as any celestial body lit by the Sun has its full phase only when it is directly opposite the Sun; thus, a full Moon rises at sunset and sits high in the sky only during the night. For the Moon to be in the sky during the day as shown, it would have to be visibly of a phase other than full.

DavidK93

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Suggested correction: The moon is not actually completely full. It's in a gibbous phase (opposite of a crescent), which can indeed be seen in the daytime.

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Midnight - S4-E10

Revealing mistake: In the opening scene the Doctor and Donna are speaking over the phone. The purple phone Donna is holding shows the slot where a cable should be plugged in, but there is none. (00:00:25)

ItsDesm

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Suggested correction: This shouldn't be considered a mistake. While it's true in real life this phone has a slot for a cable, they're on an alien planet and this is unknown technology. In-universe there's no way of knowing what that slot is for, and there's no reason to think the phone needs to be plugged into anything.

Bishop73

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Suggested correction: After the ladder breaks, and before we see Pete's feet again, we see him climbing a bit up the ladder. When his feet are next shown, he has them on the new bottom rung of the ladder. It would seem that the rope broke exactly where Pete was holding the screwdriver - right by his ankle.

Partners in Crime - S4-E1

Continuity mistake: When Donna starts fiddling with the Adipose necklace she stole, this causes an Adipose to be created out of Stacey's fat cells. When this begins, Stacey is in the upstairs bathroom applying lip gloss, and she's holding the applicator wand when her stomach begins to move. When she pulls up her shirt to look at her distending stomach in the mirror, the lip gloss wand is gone. (00:07:15)

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Suggested correction: Actually, it looks like she finished putting on lip gloss and put the lid with the applicator back on just before she starts feeling queasy from the impending Adipose birth.

skater49th

The Day of the Doctor - S7-E16

Deliberate mistake: Looking closely at the floor of Eleven's console room reveals that the part of the floor around the console facing the door has been discreetly raised up, which it isn't in any other appearance of this console room, so that Clara can ride her motorcyle inside it without going down two steps. This wasn't in any previous episode and is gone in the next one.

skater49th

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Suggested correction: The Tardis has constantly shown it can change its internal structure to fit its needs or desires.

Bishop73

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Suggested correction: In that era of Doctor Who the Earth was being invaded by aliens on a regular basis. Since the story is set in the 'future' year of 2012, anything may have happened to wipe that part of Michigan off the map.

I'm from Michigan and when I noticed the UP missing, I jokingly said to a friend "looks like Canada stole that finally"

Rise of the Cybermen (1) - S2-E8

Other mistake: Alternate Jackie is said to be turning 40. According to a newspaper Mickey finds early in the episode, the parallel universe is in the same year as the main universe. When Jackie's age (she claims to be only turning 39) is announced at the party, Rose does not in any way react as though that's different from the age of main-universe Jackie. The problem is that, given that Rose was 19 when she met the Doctor, and it has been, for main Jackie and Mickey, likely at least two years since the events of "Rose" (remember Rose's one-year accidental disappearance), this means Jackie would have had to have gotten married, and had Rose, before she turned twenty, and been a widow by the time she was twenty. Given that Jackie is from the UK, a first-world country, and that she seems to be in her twenties in "Father's Day", this is highly unlikely.

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Suggested correction: "Highly unlikely" is not impossible, there are many cases of this sort of thing happening even in the age of contraceptives. The episode is also set during the 80's, so it's possible that Pete and Jackie were misinformed. There are other TV shows such as Raising Hope or Bump that use this as a major plot point - hell, the very next episode after Fathers Day features an approximately 12-year-old mother in the form of Nancy, the 17-year old mother of antagonist Jamie.

Nightmare in Silver - S7-E14

Plot hole: At the beginning, when the Doctor, Clara, Angie and Artie get off the TARDIS, the two kids are absolutely convinced that they're on the Moon, despite the Doctor explaining that they're actually at the Spacey Zoomer ride on Hedgewick's World, the greatest amusement park in the universe. The kids only realise they really aren't on the Moon when Webley emerges from inside of a fake rock formation, followed by the soldiers. The part of the room that the soldiers come from, which should have been fully visible to the time travellers from the beginning - in fact, they should have been looking directly at it when they leaned out of the TARDIS in the very first shot - looks nothing like the Moon and contains a sign for the Spacey Zoomer ride and a large map of the amusement park. (00:00:01 - 00:00:45)

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Suggested correction: Perhaps they didn't see everything and only focused on small things, or they remembered the Futurama episode with an amusement park set on the moon.

The Impossible Astronaut - S6-E2

Other mistake: After River shoots at the astronaut going into the lake, she drops her arm. The next second, she turns around and the gun is holstered without her having made any movement to do so, and there was no sound made.

Movie Nut

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Suggested correction: The holster is low enough for the subtle movement her right arm makes to be using it. As for the sound, the removal of her gun doesn't make a sound either. The only sound heard is directly before it when she put her medical scanner away.

42 - S3-E7

Character mistake: The question to unlock one of the doors asks for the next number in the sequence 313, 331, 367. The Doctor gives the answer as 379 with a convoluted (albeit correct) explanation of happy primes, but there are much simpler solutions. The difference between the first and second numbers is 18 and the difference between the second and third is 36 (which is 2 x 18), suggesting that the difference between the third number and the next could be either 54 (= 3 x 18), giving 421 as the next number, or 72 (= 2 x 36), giving 439. It's likely that the Doctor would see that the answer is ambiguous, and yet he confidently states that the most complicated answer is correct. (00:08:45 - 00:09:15)

paolog

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Suggested correction: If you know what a happy prime is, like the Doctor does, it might be simpler than your idea because you gave 2 options - 421 and 439. The idea of a pattern is there should be only one answer that fits, which would be the case if they're all happy primes.

Good point, except as I have mentioned, there are other answers that fit.

paolog

But the sequence of happy primes is recognized. Using your logic, what would be the preceding numbers?

Bishop73

The Day of the Doctor - S7-E16

Continuity mistake: In this episode, I. M. Foreman's scrapyard is at the end of the alley next to Coal Hill School. In "An Unearthly Child", the scrapyard was far enough away from the school that Barbara and Ian take Ian's car to get there. Barbara also describes it to Ian as "there's a big wall on one side, houses on the other." If it was right next to the school, she would have mentioned "that scrapyard next to the school." (00:00:15)

Captain Defenestrator

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Suggested correction: The evidence to this is merely a sign directing people to the scrapyard. This does not indicate whether or not the scrapyard in question is actually at the end of that road.

skater49th

That still seems to be a point to bring up. Or better yet, "Her address is the same as the scrapyard on that sign outside the school."

Captain Defenestrator

More mistakes in Doctor Who

The Satan Pit (2) - S2-E12

Doctor: So, that's the trap. Or the test or the final judgment, I don't know. But if I kill you, I kill her. Except that implies, in this big grand scheme of Gods and Devils, that she's just a victim. But I've seen a lot of this universe. I've seen fake gods and bad gods and demi-gods and would-be gods - out of all that - out of that whole pantheon - if I believe in one thing... Just one thing... I believe in her.

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More trivia for Doctor Who

Midnight - S4-E10

Question: Is there any information on the entity shown in "Midnight?" It seems interesting enough to have some depth to it. It seemed to be bad in nature. It also seems to have been exactly what the woman that was possessed was afraid of.

Knever

Chosen answer: No, no information is avalible for the identity of the entity.

Repo_Man

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