"The Hungry Earth" plot holes

[EJA]

Here's a rather interesting page from the Dr Who Wiki, regarding various errors of the episode The Hungry Earth:

http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Forum:...discontinuity_and_plot_holes/The_Hungry_Earth


While I did like the episode, I couldn't help noticing these things. An explanation offered for the discontinuity with Inferno (which got over 20 miles beneath the Earth's surface and was intended to go all the way to the core) is that the Inferno Project was kept secret from the general public, but why would this be? All it was really doing was looking for a new energy source, nothing particularly sinister. I know I've brought things like this up before, but I can't help feeling a tiny bit irritated by it.

 

[Starkers]

An explanation offered for the discontinuity with Inferno (which got over 20 miles beneath the Earth's surface and was intended to go all the way to the core) is that the Inferno Project was kept secret from the general public, but why would this be? All it was really doing was looking for a new energy source, nothing particularly sinister.

Nothing sinister about looking for another energy source to replace oil/nuclear power during the Cold War? You don't think the Russkies would have been interested? Not to mention certain Sheiks.

As Bond said to Scaramanga in The Man with the golden Gun over the Solex Agitator. "I can think of some in the middle east who'd pay you to keep it off the market."

Maybe the plan was to make Inferno public if it was succesful, or maybe it was always planned to stay secret? I mean the technology alone was probably top secret.

 

[Cutter John]

I can buy the fact that the British government after the disaster would want to slam a lid on the Inferno project. What I didn't get was after that incident, the government would have allowed anyone else to drill that deeply. Unless of course they lied about the purpose of their project. But if it had been an illegal drilling operation I doubt they'd have been so accepting of the Doctor when he turned up out of nowhere. (makes me wish there had been an "Oh crap, what if hes with the government?" scene with the two project managers).

 

[The]

Who cares? It's Doctor Who. Continuity is a vague concept.

 

[Cutter John]

Who cares? It's Doctor Who. Continuity is a vague concept.

Awww, but wheres the fun in that?

 

[The]

Well, fair enough.

Then I offer my own theory:

Administrations change, politics change, and because people forget or fail to heed history, it's bound to repeat itself.

 

[OdoWanKenobi]

The crack wiped it out of existence. There, all plot holes solved.

 

[Captain Pike]

Here's my own rationalisation for the non-sensical name 'Homo Reptilis' -

The doctor wasn't referring to the species, as in the commonly accepted Genus Species format we are used to hearing - that would put them in the wrong taxanomic Order entirely. Instead he was using the Family name Homoreptiliae. This family name encompasses all Silurian/Sea Devil species seen thus far.

 

[EJA]

The crack wiped it out of existence. There, all plot holes solved.

Blimey, forgot all about this thread!!

Anyway, I don't think it can be as simple as that. As we know, once a person or object is absorbed by the Time Crack, it may have never existed as far as the rest of the world is concerned, but its effects would still remain there to see. For example, one person shoots and kills another person, and the shooter is then enveloped by the Crack, and thus never existed, but the person he killed would still be dead. So even if the people on the Stahlman Project were absorbed, their actions would still be in place. People just wouldn't remember them personally.

 

[The]

The crack wiped it out of existence. There, all plot holes solved.

Anyway, I don't think it can be as simple as that.

And yet, it is...

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Not from THE, but when were Silurians shown to have spaceships?

Not including Pandorica Opens, since that's the episode that has been bothering me.

 

[Whofan]

Well, perhaps these Silurians were woken up early by the rest of the alliance and told that this Doctor guy would give others of their species trouble in the future.

Either that or they're from the future when mankind and Silurians settle their differences and went back in time.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Don't forget the Silurian Cybermen from that Tom Baker ditty (third eye guns? C'mon!)). That means that there were probably Silurians on Telos (Tourists?), which means that there were probably Silurians on Mars before the fall of the Ice Warriors who had the tech to run off and found empire elsewere when enough of them woke in the future to join a federation witht he Earthers as seen in the Peledon episodes. There was an eighth Doctor Audio where they he was sayng that there was a colony worth of warriors in the Asteroid belts not due to wake up till the year 3000ish.

If the Silurians thought they would have been asleep for longer than a few decades then perhaps they might have jumped ship rather than merely taken a nap?

 

[EJA]

Could Stahlman's Inferno Project really have been a top government secret?

 

[Guy Gardener]

It had direct ministerial control, atomic power and a UN guard.

Doesn't sound very public sector which doesn't necessarily mean top secret.