From the earliest days, people have asked why it is that everyone in the universe speaks English. From a production point of view, it's simply a dramatic convention, which means the writer doesn't have to include people asking why everyone in the universe speaks English. It's something that is just glossed over so we can get on with the drama.
In this story, however, Sarah actually asks the question about understanding a foreign language. It's not a throwaway line but a plot point - signalling to the Doctor that Sarah's mind has been tampered with.
Question is: why hasn't she, or someone else, asked about this before?
Why does the Doctor see threat in someone asking a perfectly valid question?
It's one of those things that they should either have explained from the start, or simply left alone.
Nowadays the Doctor has to go through it all with every new companion.
The opening episode introduces us to a new TARDIS console room. Except we're told that it's an old TARDIS console room. The suggestion is that it is the very first console room, used by the Doctor before we met him. However, the presence of a recorder and a frilly shirt suggest that the Second and Third Doctors have, at some unseen moments, quit the usual console room and gone back to the wooden one, only to quickly revert back to the regular futuristic one. We know that futuristic is the default, so just when did the earlier Doctor(s) use this console room?
Hieronymous claims that he was told that someone from the stars would be coming, but says it as if this will be an ally rather than a foe. Why then does he seek to destroy the Doctor from the off? And why, when the Brotherhood have the Doctor at their mercy, does the Helix choose that moment to descend on the temple and deflect the attentions of the brothers away from him and allow him to escape?
The brothers are twirling around the altar in a dance, quite close together, and Hieronymous and his high priest are overseeing the ceremony, yet no-one notices when the Doctor gets right up to the stone and pulls Sarah clear until he's almost out the door.
The authorities have never been able to stamp out the Brotherhood despite them surviving since Roman times - so around 1000 years - yet the Doctor just stumbles onto their temple looking for Sarah after 5 minutes.
Count Federico has been going to great lengths to keep his plans to usurp the dukedom secret - yet yells out "Death to Giuliano!" at the top of his voice in front of his men, and when any passer-by might hear.
Later, his lieutenant Rossini claims that the brothers are emerging from every street in the town, yet we never see more than about 10 of them at any time.
Quite a few of the guests are killed at the Masque before the Doctor stops them. Were none of these significant figures of the Renaissance? How did the brothers manage to miss all the really important ones like Dukes, Doges and Leonardo Da Vinci?
The Doctor claims that had they been 50 years later they could have used Galileo's telescope. He was only born 60 years after the events depicted here (in 1564) - so a century would be nearer the mark.
Marco scoffs at the very idea of the telescope - yet Giuliano has one sitting in his study.
Hieronymous, with added Mandragora intelligence, fails to twig that the Doctor is wearing a metal breastplate until he's almost drained his energy. Why not notice sooner, and shoot him in the head instead?
Russell T Davies did admit that the Ancient Lights in the SJA story Secrets of the Stars was going to be the Mandragora Helix, but chickened out at the last minute. If they weren't Mandragora, why didn't the Helix try again in the late 20th Century?
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