Let's start with the way in which the government of the United Kingdom works. There's been a big incident - a spaceship crashing in central London. In any national crisis, a meeting of COBRA is convened - the name deriving from Cabinet Office Briefing Room A. The make-up of this meeting would depend on the nature of the incident, but here we would expect to see the Prime Minister taking the lead, and the other relevant Government Ministers would be the Secretary of Defence and the Home Secretary. There would also be senior representatives of the Police, military and health services. In the absence of the PM, the Deputy PM would lead. The official residence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the third most senior government minister, is right next door to 10 Downing Street.
Even with the PM disposed of, there are an awful lot of people who would be convening before you would ever get to the bunch we see here.
The Opposition parties could have intervened if they didn't like the leadership of the country falling to so lowly a figure as Green.
Martial Law would have been instituted long before such a junior minister got to assume the Premiership.
No-one seems to link the disappearance of the PM with the arrival of the spaceship. Rather than be allowed to take part in the inner circle leading the government, Margaret Blaine is more likely to have been arrested on suspicion of being involved in his disappearance - being responsible for tracking his movements and seemingly the last person to see him. Likewise Oliver Charles.
How does someone like Dr Sato know about his disappearance, when people actually based in Downing Street are just confused about the situation? (Okay, so we'll later find out that she works for Torchwood and may have special access to information, but that's a long way off yet. This actually creates a bigger problem, as we'll find out that Torchwood have a whole tower full of people in Docklands, whilst she's based away in Cardiff - so what is she doing here anyway?).
Even with roads grid-locked, there are such things as helicopters. Horse Guards Parade would make an ideal landing site. There's also access to Westminster via the Thames.
Unless the Slitheen have gotten rid of all of the people mentioned above, a meeting could be held remotely if the key personnel couldn't physically attend - so government would continue to function. That's the whole point of COBRA - to manage the crisis and to ensure continuity of government.
We later see all the alien experts like UNIT arrive at Number 10, followed later by a whole bunch of other disguised Slitheen. If they could make it through the streets, then surely a lot of the genuine key figures could do so.
Also, COBRA meetings don't usually take place in Downing Street anyway - hence the name. There are far more secure places in Westminster for such meetings to take place.
The story begins with the Doctor bringing Rose home a year late - causing all sorts of emotional problems for her mother and boyfriend.
In a few weeks time, we'll see the Doctor happily take Rose back multiple times to see her father on the day he dies - so why does he not simply bundle her back into the TARDIS and cancel this out by getting her back on the right date? It can't be anything to do with crossing his own time stream or meddling with past events if he has no problem doing it in Father's Day.
The Missing Persons posters give Rose's age as 18, but a whole year has passed, so Jackie should surely have said that she is 19 now if they are freshly printed ones (and we see she has a pile in her flat). The one the Doctor removes to read can't be an old one, as it would never have survived 12 months outdoors in London due to weather, being plastered over, or vandalism.
There's no computer or internet at Rose's home - she had to go to Mickey's to use his - yet they get a US TV news station. (The Iraq War was televised primarily through US footage - but that was shown through BBC and ITN broadcasts. We didn't all magically get CNN in the UK).
The Doctor and Rose are captured after setting foot outside the TARDIS. A helicopter somehow manages to materialise immediately above them, but they don't hear it approach. The Doctor was in the TARDIS because he wanted to run some scans - yet these didn't pick up the helicopter.
Also, Mickey is with them at the time, and he manages to evade capture - despite them surely being surrounded by armed police / soldiers and observed from the helicopter above...
There are timeframe issues with the story - such as Mickey spotting the Doctor and rushing to Jackie's flat at 10pm, whilst the Doctor is then seen with Sato at 10.55pm. Did it take him nearly an hour to get to the hospital?
There's bright sunshine when the TARDIS arrives. It's March, so it can't be very early. The spaceship crashes into Big Ben at 9.50am - which means that the Doctor has only been questioned about a possible abduction for only an hour or so. Why did this take place in Jackie's flat anyway, and not down the police station?
I say the ship crashes at 9.50am, but as everyone knows they decided to flip the image and the numerals on the clock face are back to front.
The Doctor only gets flagged up on government security systems after Jackie reports him (which she takes all day to do) - yet he's been questioned by police for a while that very morning. Does the alert system only function if a crisis has already begun? As his arrival usually precipitates a national / global calamity, wouldn't it make more sense to have it search for mention of him all the time, rather than wait until after trouble has already arrived?
Talking of IT issues, the idea that UNIT have a one word password that lets you locate nuclear submarines and fire its missiles is an astonishingly stupid one.
Last, but by no means least, the Slitheen decide to discard their skin-suits to answer the phone call from the UN about access to the nuclear weapons. Not only does this mean that they no longer sound human - and they're taking a call, remember - but they have massive claws in their natural state. How do they propose to pick up the receiver...?
No comments:
Post a Comment