How do you like your temporal paradoxes? I like mine both rare and well done.
Don't do them too often, and if you must have one then make sure you do something very clever, or at least witty, with it.
Personally, I could do without them. Like parallel universes, I think they are a bit of a cheat.
Here, we have the issue that the resolution to the entire story revolves around the actions of a creature which, because of those very actions, will never come into being.
How could the Doctor have experienced the Ancient One's world, if it never existed?
Nothing new in this, of course. Back in the Pertwee era Letts and Dicks came up with the handy Blinovitch Limitation Theory, whilst in Pyramids of Mars the glimpse of an Earth made lifeless by Sutekh is simply never explained. Still, we have to mention this here because it is such a major plot point.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
Way back in the ancient past, the Doctor encountered Fenric and defeated him, apparently over a chess game. This caused Fenric to be imprisoned in a flask.
A couple of things to unpack here. First, how exactly can the "Evil from the Dawn of Time" be defeated so easily over a game of chess? Hardly omnipotence. (Could have been worse - could be a god-like being who gets beat because he can't catch a ball).
Second, the Doctor knows that Fenric is simply locked away in the flask - something which someone could easily find and open at some point. Why did the Doctor not take better (or any) care to ensure that he stayed lock away forever? Say, keep the flask stored in the TARDIS, or abandoned on some lifeless moon. Why only imprison Fenric, if he's the "Evil from the Dawn of Time". Why not destroy him by chucking the flask into a supernova like he did with the Fendahl skull?
It can't be the issue of the Doctor being unable to take a life, as the Seventh Doctor is a mass murderer in comparison to his predecessors.
He may not wield a gun, but he's happy to talk sentient beings into committing suicide (as happens in this story, or with the Dalek Supreme). He's also happy to goad Davros into blowing up Skaro, or tricking the Cyber-Leader into using Nemesis to blow up his entire fleet. He may say they did it to themselves, but if he knew mass death and destruction was going to ensue and went about deliberately triggering it anyway, then he has blood on his hands.
Nearly all the main characters, including Ace, are said to be the "Wolves of Fenric" - descendants of the Viking settlers who brought the flask from the Middle East to the north eastern coast of England. But, according to the runes in the church crypt, the Vikings were all killed by some black fog whilst still at sea ("the fingers of death reached out from the waters to reclaim the treasure we stole").
How then could they have started families?
The flask has obviously been in the sea for some time, as it is encrusted with coral. How then did it get to the bricked up tunnel where the soldiers find it. Who found and buried it? It can't have been all that long ago, as it's behind some fairly modern brickwork.
Unless adopted, most people have knowledge of their family history at least as far back as their grandparents as they are often still alive at the same time you are growing up. Even if not old enough to remember them personally, if they died relatively young, you'd see photographs and be told about them by your parents, aunts and uncles.
Yet Ace fails to latch on to the fact that she's sending a baby with the same name as her mother to her grandmother's home address. The script isn't clear on whether or not Kathleen Dudman then becomes her grandmother, or if she simply lodges with her biological grandmother and then either dies or abandons Audrey. If the latter, Ace ought to have been told the story of how her mother was brought into the family by a woman who turned up during the war and lodged in the house for a time, or, far worse, Kathleen is her biological grandmother and she hasn't spotted that they both had the same first name, had the maiden name Dudman, and was married to a sailor who died during the war (and once had a nasty encounter with vampires whilst stationed in Northumbria...).
Also, Ace has already met a couple of young evacuees from London, so sending a woman with a baby into the city probably isn't the smartest of moves.
Especially to Streatham. Had the writer done his homework and looked at bomb damage maps of South London he would have seen that there was a concentration of bombing right along the main road down towards the south coast - which runs through Brixton and Streatham. German bombers didn't just use the Thames to guide them, they also used main roads and railway lines. Even with the blackout, these could be seen on cloudless nights, especially under a "bomber's moon". Whilst not their specific targets, no bomber wanted to run the risk of flying home with bombs still onboard - the weight slowing the plane down and making it far, far more dangerous if shot at by enemy fighters or anti-aircraft guns - so they got rid of them along their route home.
Some quick ones now. How exactly are the Russians going to get the Ultima Machine home? Even if there's the submarine waiting just off the coast, it wouldn't exactly fit in their little rubber dinghy.
And wouldn't they have noticed the booby trap when setting the thing up? It probably wouldn't have been installed in the Kremlin anyway - the Enigma machine wasn't installed in 10 Downing Street after all. It would probably only have killed a few scientists and soldiers in some remote facility if the Russians had been stupid enough not to examine it properly.
And talking of the coast earlier, that was one place where road signs were definitely removed so as not to aid any invading German troops or enemy agents. That direction post pointing to Maidens Point should not be there, especially with a top secret military base on the doorstep. (This was noted at the time of broadcast).
Why do the Russians insist on speaking in English once they land (apart from sparing the viewers from having to read subtitles for the next three and a bit episodes). They aren't planning on infiltrating the base secretly, in disguise, or anything. It's a military raid, and they are still in uniform.
How can the Rev. Wainwright read a version of the Bible that didn't make it into churches until the 1970's onwards. (He says the third grace is 'Love', when his Bible would have said 'Charity').
Judson has either come up with the Prisoner's Dilemma seven years early (or has invented Connect 4 thirty one years early...).
Jean and Phyllis mention Hollywood actress Jane Russell - even though she didn't become famous enough for them to have heard of her until 1946.
Why does Judson fail to spot that some of the runes he's been studying so assiduously weren't there the day before?
Why does Millington order all the chess sets to be destroyed, if he's one of Fenric's agents and the "Evil from the Dawn of Time" wants another game with the Doctor?
Why booby-trap his own chess set with something that doesn't go off straight away? It kindly gives you plenty of time to notice it and get away before going Boom!
Who was it intended for anyway? If the Doctor, then again that makes no sense as far as Fenric's plan to restage the game goes.
How can his office resemble the Nazi one that closely - even down to the files and books?
Security at his top secret establishment is lax, to say the least. The Doctor forges signatures in front of people and no-one bats an eyelid. Ace has a rucksack containing a folding ladder and explosives, but no-one bothers to search her anyway.
(Ace does give a reason for carrying the ladder - she'd rather go rock climbing - but isn't using a ladder just a bit of a cheat?).
Just as with Josiah Smith, Millington fails to do anything with the Doctor and Ace - like lock them up or shoot them as spies - straight away, even though he knows they are not the people he was expecting. Why tolerate their presence at all? (Doesn't he realise there's a war on?).
Fenric is formless - seeming to simply inhabit people's bodies. So how exactly does he get killed when Sorin perishes? Why doesn't he just jump into someone else, or does he have to have some sort of physical contact with them? Would have been nice to know about this if that's the case.
If the Ancient One comes from a world polluted by this toxin, might it not be immune to its effects, or at least have some resistance to it?
Last, but by no means least, that seduction scene... OMG the dialogue's bad. Everyone bangs on about how Ace was this realistic working class London girl but who on earth talks like that? Trouble is, the soldier's lines are just as pretentious.
One or other of them would simply have asked if they fancied a snog surely...
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