The Christmas Invasion:

10 The Tenth Doctor gets his era off to a flying start with some dodgy continuity in the pre-title sequence. When the Doctor opens the door of the TARDIS and says "London, Earth... did it!", his hair is styled neatly, and in the background you can plainly see the TARDIS interior looking its normal yellow colour. Then the camera cuts to a wider shot of him walking out of the TARDIS: The interior is now red and his hair is noticeably floppier.

20 There's a person who vanishes as the TARDIS appears — they start walking into the centre of the square, but are never seen again!

30 The positioning of the falling CGI TARDIS changes between shots. The shot looking at the TARDIS falling away from the camera (towards the bins) shows the doors on the front, but in the next shot as it hits the bins and spins, the door isn't visible.

40 Pieces of debris fly off as the TARDIS careers around the place and hits things, but the buildings seem remarkably untouched once the TARDIS moves on.

50 The TARDIS crash-lands in public and we see loads of people looking on after it has settled down — but not a single policeman or soldier turns up to investigate? In a similar vein, for the postman whose van gets hit — why doesn't (a) he get out and have a word, or (b) have an ambulance called for him by anyone?

60 The Guinevere probe bounces off the Sycorax ship... when surely it should have been smashed to pieces, being such a fragile and fast moving object?

70 "Guinevere" is spelt as "Guinivere" on one of the monitors at UNIT HQ.
[They moan about this on the DVD commentary]

80 When Rose and Mickey are Christmas shopping at the beginning, in clear view on the supposedly "London" street is a Welsh policeman — as evidenced by his ridged police helmet.
[I could make some sort of comment like "hasn't he got a funny helmet (tee hee)", but that would just be childish]

90 When Jackie and Mickey run out to greet each other, the high-angle shot shows the ground to be perfectly dry — but check again once the Doctor steps out of the TARDIS.

100 Noel Clarke appears to have an attack of festive spirit: When the Doctor steps from the TARDIS for the first time, Mickey can be seen smiling as his face turns away from the camera to follow the Doctor. Then, when the Doctor grabs him and screams, "Oh, I know...Merry Christmas," Noel can't control himself and has to look down to avoid David Tennant's eye (and presumably to stop himself bursting out laughing).

110 So the Doctor's dressing gown has an apple in the pocket because "Howard gets hungry in his sleep"? Who wears a dressing gown in their sleep??

120 Considering it's supposed to be, you know, Christmas... there are an awful lot of trees in full summer leafiness! Not to mention an entire block of flats with their windows open in the middle of winter (noticeable when the TARDIS arrives).

130 There's a scene where the mechanical Santas aren't wearing gloves and their human hands can be seen.
[The costume department were apparently "mortified" by this gaffe. I'm delighted to add to their mortification by publishing this online for all to see]

140 While the Christmas tree is going ape in the flat, Rose puts the sonic screwdriver into what looks like the Doctor's right hand. After she whispers in his ear and he wakes up, it's in his left hand.

150 While the tree is on its rampage, it smashes the window and door frame in the lounge, but later on the door frame is seen perfectly intact.

160 The Sycorax's methods are a bit strange: when you're trying to assassinate someone, do you plan to just stand singing out in the cold somewhere, just hoping that eventually whoever you want to kill will just happen to walk by? And why use weapons that are so ineffective that even when their victims do happen to walk past, they have no real trouble escaping? So much for "killer" Santas!

170 On a similar note, the Christmas tree is a highly complicated remote-controlled spinning thing that could, possibly, kill someone. Why put all that gadgetry in there, just for a long shot at killing someone, when you could just as easily slap a ruddy big bomb in there that would wipe out the whole building?

180 Is it just me or does it feel like the Sycorax focus all their attention on the Doctor in the first half, but then they just kinda forget about him and decide to take over the Earth instead?

190 In at least one of the shots of the people standing on the rooftops (possibly the Powell estate), there seem to be a lot of people wearing yellow shirts. All of whom are spaced at regular intervals...!

200 When the shockwave hits the Earth, it's strong enough to damage buildings — shouldn't it have been strong enough to knock at least a few of those people off the rooftops?

210 When the Doctor is moved to the TARDIS and Jackie comes back with the extra food, there are a lot of suspciously-unbroken windows visible in the blocks of flats, considering the force of the shockwave we saw.

220 At least twice in this episode, while characters are using computers you can see the controls for PowerDVD (or some similar DVD software) on screen pretty blatantly, thus giving away the fact that what we're seeing on-screen is being played from a DVD (or a video file) and not actually being controlled by the characters. It happens about 17 minutes in as we watch playback of the animated space simulation, then happens again later while Llewellyn is going through the blood records (look at the bottom of the monitor).

230 Watch out for some dodgy continuity as the Sycorax ship flies over London: There's no denying that it looks amazing and The Mill did a great job. But from looking at the effects shots, the ship seems to approach from both the north of London and the south of London while flying over the Houses of Parliament and over the Tyler's estate simultaneously. And it looks incredibly massive (or very high up) when seen from space but looks noticeably smaller (and/or lower) when the view switches to ground level.

240 So a third of the population were up on the rooftops (that's more than 20 million people in Blighty alone) so how could UNIT figure out so fast that so many of them were related and none of them were husbands and wives?

250 And speaking of which — really, NONE of those 20 million people were husbands and wives? Fat chance! If a third of the population have A-positive blood, then by definition 1 in 9 married couples are both A-positive!
[By my calculations, that's over 300,000 married couples in the UK alone!]

260 And don't any A-positive people in the world sleep in the nude (or at least topless)?

270 The PM's aide reads a slightly different message from the translation of the Sycorax's demands — the screen also demands "your women" but the aide doesn't mention that.
[Dirty old Sycorax!]

280 How does the translator "catch up" with the Sycorax dialogue? For the majority of the dialogue there is a delay between it being spoken and being translated (as you would expect). But at the end of the scene when we hear the words in English, the guy is translating at exactly the same time as the words are being spoken by the leader.

290 When the Doctor drinks the cup of tea, he claims that because it contains free radicals, it's "just the thing for healing the synapses". He's definitely in need of some synapse-healing — tea doesn't contain any free radicals! Quite the opposite in fact, since the anti-oxidants in tea destroy free radicals within the body — which is fine since free radicals are bad for you!

300 The Doctor has his whole hand cut off, yet there isn't as much as an 'ouch' from him. He was whining like a baby earlier in the episode in pain, yet apparently losing the hand doesn't even make him wince? Not to mention that when he holds up the "stump", there's no blood visible on his pyjamas — surely with two hearts a-pumpin' it should be a bloodbath?
[In fairness, I doubt any of us is an expert on post-regeneration Time Lord physiology]

310 Speaking of severed hands, when the hand is shown falling with the sword, we see that it's been cut off quite a distance below the wrist. Yet when we see the Doctor's arm just before he grows the hand back (during his little regeneration speech), it appears to have been cut off near the wrist, rather than inches below it.

320 One final problem in the same scene, how come the sword is sharp enough to chop off the hand below the wrist with one swipe, yet his sleeve remains completely intact? There doesn't seem to be even one missing thread on his sleeve where the hand is missing.
[Blimey, his pyjamas must be made out of some sort of super tough space-nylon — too bad it doesn't protect his hand though!]

330 Near the end of the swordfight sequence when the Doctor says, "It's a fightin' hand!" he had just stood up from the edge (with the blue sky behind him) after his hand regenerates. The camera cuts again, and now he's quite far from the edge facing the opposite direction with the wall of the ship behind him.

340 The Doctor grows a new hand because he's within 15 hours of his regeneration cycle. What does this mean exactly? He arrives in London during the hours of daylight on December 24th (three days after the winter solstice) so that makes it 4.30pm GMT at the latest. Fifteen hours later would be 7am on Christmas morning — in other words, when it would still be dark! Yet all those scenes with the Prime Minister's message and Rose, Jackie and Mickey carrying the Doctor out to the TARDIS take place in broad daylight.
[Admittedly he doesn't say 15 Earth hours...]

350 In the very last shot of the story, when the camera cranes upwards after the 'that way' ending dialogue. Billie Piper appears to accidentally look at the camera, and then look away again very quickly after realising her mistake..!

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