So, the Doctors only solution was to wait 40 years to send a message?? What did he and Martha do in the intervening years apart from record the easter eggs? If this was the case then a 60+ Martha would still be around as well as the Doc. In which case why didn't he deliver his own message? No, a good initial story which falls apart when given some thought. Besides, if they were in 1969, all they would have to do is go to UNIT and meet Patrick Troughtons Doctor, or wait until 1970 and meet John Pertwee's and use his Tardis to come forwards, or pass the message... Now that would have been a cracking cgi-fest/ challenge in the style of Back to the Future 2. Tennant and Pertwee...

Who said the Doctor waited 40 years to send a message?

It was the policeman – can't remember his name – who waited 40 years.

Yeah it all starts to get very complicated. The essence is, the Doctor + Martha would have ended up having to live it out if for instance, Billy Shipton hadn't done what the Doctor had asked, from then what would have been Billy's future timeline.

I think the whole not meeting Pertwee thing can be explained by the fact that wasn't the TARDIS broken in his era and Doc 10 just storming in across that particular timeline would cause all the usual time related problems. (Ignoring the fact that Doctors have met each other in the past)

Was a fantastic episode, great fun. If you think hard enough you can pick holes in most sci-fi shows.

There were STUCK in time, so they could not wait

All time-travel stories have this kind of dilemma.

Think about Back to the Future III. Doc lived out his life in the Old West and was killed there. But then Marty went back to save him, and so that didn't happen.

If you accept that time travel is possible (which you have to if you're going to enjoy episodes like this) you have to accept that the past can be changed, which then changes the future.

So, the Doctor was stuck in 1969, and you can suggest that yes, perhaps in one reality he and Martha had to live there and Martha would have got old. But, that never happened, because he created the DVD Easter Eggs, which Sally used to send the Tardis back to 1969 and rescue the Doctor and Martha.

The way I saw it was that, the doctor couldn't save Billy, due to what the Angels had done to him. By asking Billy to deliver the message, it meant that The Doctor and Martha didn't grow old back then, and could stop the angels from doing what they'd done to anyone else.

Im not sure if that makes any sense. haha.

The reason Martha isn't 60 etc is because the Tardis was sent back to 1969 after Sally (and her man-friend, forgot his name), sent it back without them.
They then left 1969 to go onto another adventure. (To Cardiff )

Most people assume time is linear cause then effect, but its far more complicated than that. You see time is like a big ball and events are churning all around in this timey wimey stuff....(sic) Doctor No Ten's brill explanation in the Easter Egg

That sentence started well, but then it sort of got away from you.

....Don't blink

While we're on the subject of picking plot holes in what is probably the best Who story ever – going right back to 'An Unearthly Child'

Why did the Doctor say "Blink and you're dead"?

Wouldn't it have been more accurate to say "Blink and you'll be sent back in time where there is a good chance that you'll live a long and fulfilled life"?

Oh this one is easy. Don't forget that the Doctor only got the necessary information from Sally at the very end of the episode. At this point, the Doctor had not yet met Sally, but Sally already knew him because of the information that he communicated to her, that he originally got at this point in time.

Get it? Time isn't linear. The Doctor and Martha were never around to grow old in the 60s because the TARDIS got sent back by Sally. It's kinda like that old (and admittedly awful) show "Crime Traveeler," treated time. Sure, you can time travel, but you can't actually alter events, because in the big, non-linear perspective of time, you were always meant to time travel to that point and interact with the events. It's not a change in the past, it's the way it always was.

It's no wonder that sentence started well and went off. It's damned hard to explain, but if you can grasp the idea of non-linear time, you can see how it all, perfectly, fits together, without any major plotholes. It's just damned hard to put into words.

O/T - Have to embarrasingly say, it seems that my mate and I were the only ones who were gutted that it didn't get a second series

that is just your view of time like other people have said. Sally was always supposed to send the TARDIS back to them because time is non-linear.
if you are going to enjoy a show like Dr Who then you need to grasp that time is almost like a river it can twist and turn back on itself.
The Doctor could not meet up with his previous incarnations because that would disrupt the time "river".

The Doctor already knew what the solution to the problem was because he had got it from Sally.

Therefore that's what he used so as not to affect the existing timeline

BUT how did he know that he would need to carry the the dossier with him in 2008 BEFORE the Weeping Angels sent him back to 1969?

Or does he just have a good memory

The word is prodigous. Or very very big and he reads a lot you know

Nope, me too, even bought the DVD boxset.

I always thought that that might have been a sort-of homage to "Buffy". This from S4E1:



Phew! Not just me then

his pockets are bigger on the inside of course,just pop the dossier in and its there when he needs it

Just don't try to work out time travel stories. They create too many paradoxes and your mind will explode. Just enjoy them for what they are.

I think it is very brave of the producers to do a complicated time travel story. Even though the essence of Who is time travel, it has rarely done stories that involve the concept of time

ok, here's one to make your head hurt; what about the writing on the wall of the old house telling Sally to duck?* This was written by the doctor at some point in the (i.e. her) past (long enough for it to be wallpapered over), but would this have been in the transcripts Sally gave the Doctor?

If it was, then the doctor knew he had to leave the message and so at somepoint in his timeline went to do that. But what if it was when he was at the house leaving the message that he got touched by the Angel (even though he knew that that is what would happen as he had read it in the transcript**)?

So if Sally hadn't given him the transcript he wouldn't have gone to the house and may not have been touched by the Angel.


*Ignoring the fact that rather than lobbing something the Anger could have just crept up on Sally and touched her.

**but presumably he still did it to maintain the timeline, and he knew everything would be ok as he was given the transcript.

I think the explanation you're looking for is that time is a sphere made up of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff.

If you imagine that, it all makes sense.

Nothing to stop him from lancing the boil as it were. As soon as he knows what's going to happen, he travels through time setting things up as far as the video is concerned, then goes to the abandoned house. No need for a massive memory.

And it makes sense that it was the doctor that lobbed the something at her. Probably that stopped the Angel from getting her.