The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances: | ||
 | ep 1 – | At the very start, the TARDIS occupants are experiencing a bumpy ride. The camera tilts anti-clockwise as it often does, to indicate the TARDIS has violently tilted in one direction — but the actors don't react properly: Rose leans forward, the Doctor leans in the other (wrong) direction. And none of the cables (loosely run about the control panel) move even slightly. |
| ep 1 – | When the Doctor first discovers he's in London during the Blitz and exits out of the club, then up the alleyway towards the camera — before turning the corner, you can clearly hear someone (presumably the animal handler) issue the command 'Stay!' to the cat in the basket. |
| ep 1 – | When Rose grabs the rope and begins to drift up and away from the rooftop, look at the first wide shot of her. She's flailing her legs while hanging onto the rope in front of some plain-looking buildings. However, when we cut to a closeup, her head is in a different position and she's no longer flailing her legs. |
| ep 1 – | Barrage balloons were put up to protect from low flying aircraft... So why did we see the aircraft fly underneath the balloons? They should have had their wings ripped to pieces by the steel cables hanging from the balloons. Speaking of which, technically that's another blooper — the balloons should have had steel cables attached rather than ropes, though these wouldn't have been as easy for Rose to hang onto! |
| ep 1 – | When Nancy first goes into the kitchen, there's half a cake on the cooling rack, but when she picks it up, it has reformed into a whole cake.
[The nanogenes' handiwork again?] |
| ep 1 – | When Rose is about to fall off the rope, there's a shot of her hanging with her arms above her head — then in the next shot her arms are lower, at chest level. Then back to above her head again! |
| ep 1 – | When Captain Jack lowers the hatch inside his ship (before he and Rose ascend to the top of the craft), in the shot of him standing next to it as he descends from Rose's POV, the hatch is just about to brush his shoulder. But when the shot changes to behind him, he has somehow moved further away. |
| ep 1 – | Jack introduces himself as coming from the 133rd Squadron of the Royal Air Force, which in reality wasn't formed until the end of July 1941, a couple of months after the Blitz ended (mid-May 1941). |
| ep 1 – | When she goes outside to fetch the kids, how does Nancy manage to do a (very good) two-fingered whistle whilst wearing her woollen gloves? |
| ep 1 – | That cat looks suspiciously well-fed considering that the episode was taking place during a time of massive food shortages...
[Then again, maybe it was just a very resourceful cat.] |
| ep 1 – | The "Charley Chimp" toy (the classic cymbal-crashing monkey) is an anachronism. Charley Chimp wasn't first made until the 50's, and doesn't belong in 1941. |
| ep 1 – | If mauve is the Chula colour for danger, why do the attack alarms on their ambulances flash red? |
| ep 1 – | All the way throughout Rose and Jack's scene outside the ship, Big Ben remains frozen at 9:30. |
| ep 1 – | Nancy asks to use the "bathroom" — however, most London houses (at least, of the rather old type the Lloyds have) wouldn't have had bathrooms until after the war: they'd have had a privy or outhouse instead. |
| ep 1-2 – | Somebody needs to tell Captain Jack that there's no such rank as Captain in the Royal Air Force. Group Captain, yes. Captain, no. |
| ep 1-2 – | People's air raid preparations are shockingly lax compared to how real Londoners behaved during the Blitz — watch out for many examples of lights left on unnecessarily, windows wide open with no curtains, etc! |
| ep 1-2 – | Not to mention, doesn't it seem at all dangerous to light up Big Ben like a lighthouse in the middle of an air raid?? Why didn't the German bombers start swarming in like flies? |
| ep 2 – | Tape recorders were invented by the Germans during the war — and didn't fall into Allied hands until 1944 or thereabouts as the Allies pushed into Germany. Shame really, as it ruins that wonderfully creepy scene with the tape running out... |
| ep 1-2 – | Albion Hospital's big iron gates are unlikely to have lasted 2 years into the war, as there were big drives to reclaim iron for munitions and bomb manufacturing. |
| ep 1-2 – | Jack says that there's a seven-storey drop outside the window of Albion Hospital. Previous shots of the building establish it as having five storeys and a one-storey tower. |
| ep 1-2 – | In The Empty Child, when the Doctor is chasing the Chula ambulance, the computer monitor is on the far side of the TARDIS console (away from the doors).
When the Doctor and Rose come back into the TARDIS in The Doctor Dances, the computer monitor is missing entirely. The Doctor walks all the way around the console and it's nowhere to be seen on any panel. Finally, when Jack comes on board and the Doctor and Rose are dancing, the computer monitor is back — but on the panel facing the door this time! |
| ep 2 – | All the children are facing the typewriter, so why do none of them notice it typing on its own? |
| ep 2 – | In one or two shots, we see a gas-mask person in a wheelchair, which if you stop and think about it, doesn't make sense. Shouldn't they also have been repaired like the one-legged woman?
[OK, perhaps they were repaired, but it never crossed the victim's mind to get up and try walking?] |
| ep 2 – | There is NO way on Earth a picket of soldiers would be gathering around a bonfire during an air-raid!
[Why not just paint targets on their helmets and be done with it?] |
| ep 2 – | It looks as though Captain Jack's spaceship windows are covered with CSO material. Did someone forget to add the stars? |
| ep 2 – | If the nanogenes repair injuries, why do all those 'infected' still have a scar on their hands? Even if Jamie had had a cut on his hand when he was killed, surely it would have been healed by the nanogenes while they were turning his face into a gas mask? |
| ep 2 – | In a similar vein, if the nanogenes assumed the gas mask was part of Jamie, then why not assume all his clothes were part of the human body too and incorporate them onto all the humans they modify? Or, to take it a step further, why didn't they try to turn everyone into little boys... or at least males? |
| ep 2 – | This might be a new Doctor, but it seems he hasn't lost the ability of many of his previous incarnations to regenerate his clothes between scenes. He's wearing his red jumper on Jack's ship, but when he releases the nanogenes towards Jamie and Nancy, all of a sudden he's wearing his blue jumper. |
| ep 2 – | In the railyard, after Jamie becomes human again, the Doctor looks at his hands and moves away from the group — then he's out of shot while Jack is praising Rose's T-shirt. But after Jack's ship flies up, the Doctor is back behind Jamie and Nancy again. |
| ep 2 – | Captain Jack's ship is a marvel of 51st century technology, so why can't it defuse or otherwise dispose of a crude 1940's bomb? Why does Jack think it's a great plan to take the bomb physically on board his ship and fly out light years into space (an extremely long way as there's no large nebulae that close to Earth) and risk blowing himself up, rather than simply dropping it off with his tractor beam somewhere convenient (middle of the ocean should do) and letting it explode harmlessly? |
| ep 2 – | After Rose asks the Doc to dance with her, he comes over and starts inspecting her hands. As the camera cuts back and forth between views, Rose's hands are facing the wrong way up or down as he turns them over — for a second it makes you wonder just how flexible her arms are! |
| ep 2 – | The Doctor might be able to dance, but he can't click his fingers in time to the music. :) |