Doctor Who (2005): Episode Trivia
Season:
- When the Doctor speaks to the Nestene Consciousness, he mentions the Shadow Proclamation, which is then mentioned often throughout series one to four, and which the Doctor and Donna visit in The Stolen Earth.
- The Time War gets its first mention in this episode, albeit a little cryptically, when the Doctor explains to Rose the Nestene's food stock was destroyed in a war. We are also told later on that the Doctor himself fought in the war.
- The first appearance of the Doctor shows him grabbing Rose's hand. The old Doctor Who final producer, John Nathan Turner, didn't like the Doctor and his companions to touch as he thought there should be no implied sexual relationship between the two.
- Rose is shown to work at a department store called Henrik's, according to both a banner over the entrance and signage inside the store. However, when we see BBC News coverage, the store is identified onscreen as Henrick's.
- This story is remarkably like Spearhead from Space as they both open a series with a new doctor, both have the autons as the villain, and the Doctor gets a new companion in the form of Liz Shaw or Rose Tyler.
- The Doctor says that he can feel the ground beneath his feet spinning at "a thousand miles an hour". A figure of 1,041 miles an hour would be accurate at the equator. However, as a point on the earth travels through a smaller circle at higher lattitudes as it approaches the north pole (where it rotates, but does not move at all), the speed for London it would actually be about 650 miles an hour.
- Rose: That's it then, dishing out chips
Rose obviously has an affinity with the role of Dinner Lady. It's mentioned here as a possible career choice when talking to Nestene Mickey. Then she actually does it in School Reunion and talks about it in The Impossible Planet. - The assassination of JFK discussed by Clive in the episode is also significant to the history of Doctor Who, as the first episode of Doctor Who was transmitted the day following the assassination.
- Jackie Tyler's "Man Eating" reputation is subtly hinted at in her very first scene. The instant Rose walks out the door she picks up the phone to call someone. The timing, and body language, is very clear that she was waiting until the house is empty.
- In his first incarnation the Doctor met Genghis Khan's grandson, Kublai Khan, in the original series story Marco Polo. The Doctor has never had an on-screen meeting with Genghis such as says here, although the Master claims (falsely) that the Doctor was Genghis Khan in a previous life in the TV Movie.
- This is the second established time that the Doctor has visited Krakatoa during its eruption. The first is referenced in the original series Inferno, Episode 2, when the Doctor says the screeching noise he hears from a dying man is the same as that released at Krakatoa. Presumably the Doctor was present at Krakatoa in his first or second incarnation.
- When Rose runs into the TARDIS, she says to the Doctor "It's gonna follow us!", but if you look closely, her lips do not move when she says it.
- During the episode, Clive shows pictures of the Doctor by himself in various places (Krakatoa, JFK's assassination and at Southampton when the Titanic set sail). However, during this episode the Doctor implies several times that he has recently regenerated. You would expect the pictures can't be from the Doctor's future, because Rose is always with him until he regenerates and she's not in any of the pictures. But if he just regenerated before this episode then he couldn't have visited them in his past, either.
There are however acknowledged gaps between on screen episodes. In Boom Town Rose tells Mickey about places she has visited with The Doctor that are not shown on screen in previous episodes. So Rose could be travelling with The Doctor in all the instances found by Clive, since there is no guarantee she is standing right next to him at all these locations, so would not necessarily appear on the photos.
Plus, The Doctor could have travelled to these places in between the time when he leaves Rose and Mickey at the end of episode one, to when he returns saying "did I mention, it also travels in time?". - It is believed that the Nestene Consciousness mouths the words "Bad Wolf" during this episode, thus making it the first appearance of the reference. However according Russell T Davies it in fact says "Time Lord". He placed it in the dubbing script afterwards in order to get a mention of the Doctor being a Time Lord in the first episode. Russell also states it was dubbed in the wrong place, being later than it should have been.
- In the classic Jon Pertwee episode Spearhead from Space it was said that the Nestenes colonized many already inhabited planets, and didn't retain a home world as such. Now, either they settled down in the time between and that planet was destroyed, or someone hasn't done their homework.
- When Rose gives Mickey the Auton's arm, it is a right arm, but when Mickey throws it in the dumpster it is a left arm, then it's back to being a right arm when it attacks the doctor.
- When the wedding bride Autons prepare to shoot at Rose's mum, we see two close-up shots of Auton hand guns aim and then cut to a wide shot where all three have their guns ready, but afterwards another close-up shot of a third hand gun aiming is shown.
- When The Doctor and Rose are running towards the London Eye, Big Ben shows the time as being 10:30, yet there are night buses running (which run between around midnight and 5 a.m.).
- The Nestene only gave the dummies a "life", so who gave them the guns in their hands? Could there be a conspiracy between the Nestene and plastic shop dummy manufacturers?
- The Doctor explains the acronym TARDIS as "Time And Relative Dimension in Space" leaving the ‘S' off the word Dimensions. In An Unearthly Child from the Classic Doctor Who series, Susan who named the ship, didn't say Dimensions, she said Dimension. It was throughout most of the remainder of the classic series that the goof was made by saying Dimensions.
- When the shop dummies start their rampage, we don't actually see anyone being shot or killed. The official BBC on-line version of Clive's website confirms that he is killed, however in the aftermath there does not appear to be any other dead people on the floor, just inert dummies. Considering the amount of firing they were doing, there would have been dozens of bodies laying around everywhere.
- Why did the Doctor give Rose the plastic arm when he needed it to pinpoint the Nestene consciousness AND he knew that it was dangerous, as seen later when he goes through the trouble of tracking it down and finds it at Rose's home? (One possible explanation is that he's absentminded--plus the fact that he had a lot on his mind at the time, i.e. destroying the relay device on the roof.)
- This is the second time in as many episodes that the Doctor gets to rip the arm off something.
- The Doctor gets a B- for his act of "Jiggery Pokery" on Rose's cell phone. When she calls home, dialogue indicates that Jackie receives the call during a time period when Rose is still working at the department store.
- When the Moxx of Balhoon tells the Face of Boe, "It's the classic Bad Wolf scenario." the subtitles to the DVD read "Bad move scenario".
- This is the first episode in the new series in which the Doctor admits he is a Time Lord.
- The Raffalo scene was a late edition because the episode, like many in the first series, was underrunning.
- The episode features the first appearances of the Face of Boe and Cassandra, both of whom will feature in later stories.
- This is the first time that we see the Doctor cry, although he only sheds one tear.
- Shortly after the Doctor's TARDIS is taken away, a brief scene is shown of the spiders moving through the ducts is shown. Two of the CG creatures bump the camera -- a deliberate goof and perhaps a wink to the original series which featured many camera bumps.
- This is the first time in the series that the Doctor uses the psychic paper, as his and Rose's invitation onto Platform 1.
- We see The Doctor cry in this episode when Jabe confronts him about the Time Lords. This is definitely the first time we see him shed a tear in the new series, it may even be the first time we've ever seen it. Even the events at the end of Earthshock in the original series don't conjure a tear, even though he is visibly upset.
- The Doctor modifies Rose's mobile, enabling her to call her mother in the early 21st century from five billion years in the future.
This isn't the first time he's modified earth technology - Ace had a "boom box" with some rather unusual additions. - Jabe uses a type of handheld machine to try and find out what the Doctor is exactly. On the pre-production artist sketches of the 'machine' it has 9 strands of DNA. Each one represents one of the known Doctors' lives, Christopher Eccleston being the Ninth Doctor. However this representation never appeared on screen, the machine shows alternate graphics (timecode 11:55).
The artist's sketch can be seen on the Platform 1 gallery in the BBC episode guide. - When Cassandra was teleported back to Platform One, how come the two assistants, which moisturise her, didn't teleport back as well? This would have meant she survived if they did. The Doctor either obviously didn't think they were important enough, or he couldn't get them to teleport with her.
- This is not the first Titanic reference in Doctor Who. In Rose, Clive had a picture of the Doctor, with a family that he persuaded not to board The Titanic.
The Doctor also talked about the Titanic being unsinkable in the episode Robot in the original series, and actually visited it during its sinking in the Virgin novel The Left-Handed Hummingbird.
The fourth Doctor also assures Cardinal Borusa in The Invasion in Time that he had nothing to do with that when the Cardinal finds an old newspaper with news of the Titanic's sinking on the front page. - The Moxx of Balhoon comments to the Face of Boe that their situation is "the classic bad wolf scenario", although he doesn't elaborate. This is the first reference to Bad Wolf during the season, but the references will get a lot more obvious later in the series.
- If the doors to the room Rose was in were jammed, how did she get out?
- They are not really spiders as they only have 4 legs.
...and when one of them clambers through a vent, it's a standard tumble dryer vent from any DIY store
- The events in this episode are alluded to in the 2008 episode The Unicorn and the Wasp
- When The Doctor saves Rose from one of the possessed dead, it is one of the rare cases when he opens a door without use of his sonic screwdriver, most likely because he didn't have the time.
- The Gelth light up the door-knocker as Dickens rushes out of the undertakers - a reference to Jacob Marley in Dickens' novel A Christmas Carol.
- The Gelth mention that their current state is a result of the Time War. After the emotional scene with Jabe in The End of the World the inference is that the Doctor helps them out of guilt for his actions.
- This is the episode that first mentions the Rift in time and space which runs through Cardiff. It is used again as part of the plot in a later episode of this series, Boom Town, and is also central to the Dr Who spin-off series Torchwood.
- When the Doctor sends Rose to the wardrobe, "First left, second right, third on the left, go straight ahead, under the stairs, past the bins, fifth door on your left." it is the first confirmation in the series that there is more than one room in the TARDIS.
- This is the first episode of 'new Who' to open with a scene which doesn't feature either of the stars.
- The TARDIS arrived at the wrong place and time.
- The Doctor advises Rose to change her clothes as to be less conspicuous in the 1860's, yet he himself did not change his clothing. Does the Doctor need to change his clothing, or does he make people perceive that his outfit is nothing out of the ordinary for the society that he visits?
- Dickens says he is going off to catch a mail coach. Mail coaches were no longer used some 30 years earlier in 1830. This may however be an in-joke since Dickens himself wrote in Pickwick Papers about how mail coaches' had gone out of service, replaced by the railway.
- When Rose is locked in the room and the bodies come toward her, you can see a modern-day electric light-switch to the side of the door she's trying to get through. As the Doctor runs down the hall toward her, you can see a central heating radiator. Both are wildly anachronistic for the time period.
- Dickens uses the phrase "On with the motley..." which is anachronistically incorrect. The phrase translates from vesti la giubba, a line of dialogue from the opera I Pagliacci. The opera wasn't written until 1892, and wasn't translated into English until 1902 (by Enrico Caruso).
- Historically, Dickens had abandoned his "farewell tour" and other charitable performances on doctor's orders in the spring of 1869, six months prior to the timeframe of this episode. (December 1869).
- In this episode, Christopher Eccleston is credited as 'Doctor Who', not 'The Doctor'.
- The psychic maid tells Rose that she sees an image in her mind: "the big bad wolf", which is one of the recurring Bad Wolf references throughout the season.
- Dickens did indeed die in 1870 leaving The Mystery of Edwin Drood unfinished, but he died on June 8th 1870, not in the winter as implied. He'd have had several months to write about "blue ghosts".
- This episode features the first appearance of Harriet Jones, here as MP for Flydale North. She eventually becomes Prime Minister, featuring and being mentioned in many later episodes.
- When the Doctor is watching TV, we see the children's programme Blue Peter in which the host has made a U.F.O cake, that he has decorated with jelly babies. Although jelly babies are very popular in the UK, it's a nice nod to the classic series, since the 4th doctor played by Tom Baker always had jelly babies in his pockets.
- When seen from inside Albion Hospital, the TARDIS does not have the words "Bad Wolf" painted on the side as in the previous scenes.
- The Doctor recognises several of the "Alien Experts" on the television as members of U.N.I.T. (United Nations Intelligence Taskforce), an organisation he was affiliated with in the past. This suggests that U.N.I.T. could still be in operation in this era.
- A child spray-paints "Bad Wolf" -- a phrase which will reappear throughout this season -- onto the side of the TARDIS.
- U.N.I.T (United Nations Intelligence Taskforce) gets a mention, although the Doctor seems keen to avoid them for the moment.
- According to Jackie's flyers, Rose went missing on 6th March 2005 and lives on the Powell Estate.
- This seems to be the second time the TARDIS didn't arrive where or when it is supposed to. In The Unquiet Dead, the TARDIS was out by about 9 years and in a completely different country. In this episode, it was out by 12 months instead of 12 hours.
- The Doctor states his age as 900 years. However, this contradicts the last on-screen reference of the Doctor's age in the original series in "Time and the Rani" where he says he's 953. It also suggests that the Doctor is living very fast; he's gone through 2 whole regenerations in less than 50 years whereas "Tomb of the Cybermen" establishes that he's made it to the age of 450 on only one regeneration.
- Mickey mentions that he's being doing research into 'The Doctor'. At www.whoisdoctorwho.co.uk, Clive's website, it's revealed that he's been updating it after Clive's death in the first episode.
- The Doctor keeps calling 'Mickey' 'Ricky'. The Doctor (William Hartnell) also used to call 'Chesterton' 'Chesterfield'.
- When Rose's mother informs the authorities about the Doctor, she mentions that the Doctor called his ship the TARDIS. But the Doctor never mentioned the name when Rose's mother first encountered it.
- When the spaceship crashes into Big Ben, the clock face is backwards, at the top where XII is, it says IIX and if you go anti- clockwise, it goes I, II, III, etc. Later, Big Ben is seen and is inexplicably working, since it was 10:55 when the spaceship crashed into it, but it later reads 6:10 during a news broadcast.
- When a Slitheen visits Mickey's flat, the word "Salford" can be seen graffitied on the wall near the elevator. Christopher Eccleston's hometown is Salford.
- The Slitheen's plan to turn the Earth into a radioactive fuel source for sale is reminiscent of the second Doctor episode The Dominators where the inhabited planet Dulkus was to be turned into radioactive fuel to power the war fleet of the Dominators.
- This was another of the episodes that underran, which is why the 'domestic' scenes at the end where Rose goes to her Mum and the doctor calls her from the TARDIS were included.
- Only three Slitheen suits were actually made. The group scene in this episode is courtesy of the Mill who increased the numbers by digitally duplicating them.
- In a brief shot of the London skyline 25 minutes into the episode, Big Ben can be seen undamaged.
- The password for the U.N.I.T website is Buffalo.
- The submarine HMS Taurean is completely fictional. Also, aside from the unlikelihood of being able to launch a missile over the Internet, the Harpoon missile is primarily an anti-ship missile and not launched against targets inland. The Trafalgar-class submarines do carry Tomahawk missiles, which would have been a more appropriate weapon.
- The Doctor: At the cost of five billion lives.
The human population of the Earth in reality, as of January 2005 is estimated at approximately 6.4 billion people. - The American newscast about the UN decision contains another "Bad Wolf" reference, but only the version that appears on Mickey's website: http://www.whoisdoctorwho.co.uk. The newsreader says the UN's decision is named "Mal Loup," which is French for "Bad Wolf."
- If the Slitheen had a large amount of calcium in their physiology, any acid would help in killing them. Not only acetic acid from pickling, but citrus juices and carbonated beverages would help to kill them in the same manner. Even rainwater would make them ill, since carbonic acid is created as a result of the pure water mixing with air pollution in the atmosphere.
- "Bad Wolf" appears -- or rather disappears -- in this episode when The Doctor makes the child who vandalized the TARDIS clean it off.
- This episode features U.N.I.T.. Mickey claims that he researched about the Doctor when Rose disappeared. The Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) used to work for U.N.I.T. as Mickey explains he discovered.
- The UK doesn't really need "secret launch codes" from the UN. No sovereign nation currently submits itself to that kind of U.N. oversight. It's a plot device. Doctor Who is more Science Fantasy than SF (It has many of the trappings of Science, but does not attempt to maintain a hard connection to them, as SF typically does). It does not try to take itself too seriously, so, while it may reflect reality in some things, it takes liberties with both facts and science which SF would not.
- If the Slitheen are advanced enough to have space flight, and be able to compress their bodies and look like a human being, one would expect them to already have nuclear capabilities. A possible answer would be that The Slitheen are not an entire race -- they are a large family trying to find a way to make some quick money with the resources they do have. The technique of getting humans to blow themselves up is probably cheaper, and also is less likely to attract attention from any sort of intergalactic police (It would look like we did it to ourselves). In general, however, this should be presumed more of a plot device. Any spacefaring race would have means to trigger a nuclear war without such a complex plan. A few dozen radar-invisible masses striking strategic places at planetary velocities would be adequate.
- After the Slitheen realise that the Doctor's threat with the alcohol is a ruse, the metal shielding around the windows and doors close quite quickly. Later, while talking with the Slitheen again, the shielding closes much slower. It would appear that their motors run at speeds determined by the dramatic tone of particular scenes.
- The fictional Geocomtex website lists under its Products section Node Stabilized (in Lupus and Nocens variants). Lupus is Latin for wolf and nocens for harmful or bad. Interestingly, they also offer Argentum Ordnance, otherwise known as silver bullets.
- When the Dalek tells Rose, "I feel your fear," she replies, "What do you expect?" This is the same answer the Second Doctor's companion Victoria Waterfield gives a Dalek who makes the same statement in The Evil of the Daleks.
- Look carefully on the wall behind the Dalek when it is chained up. On the displays there are three schematics of a Dalek. These images are taken from the blueprint schematics that appeared in The Doctor Who Technical Manual entries on Daleks. They are prominently visible when the Dalek speaks to the Doctor for the first time.
- The Cyberman display has a sign that suggests that the head was recovered after the events in the Doctor Who story The Invasion. The head in the case is modelled on those seen in the Revenge of the Cybermen. Although based of the same design, the Cybermen heads seen in The Invasion are different in several ways from the head shown. One of the most noticeable differences is the handles on either side of the head. In The Invasion they are smooth, but in Revenge of the Cybermen they are ribbed.
- Anna-Louise Plowman (Goddard) is best known to American Sci-fi fans as Osiris on Stargate SG-1.
- This is not the first time in Dr Who history that a Dalek has been seen ascending a flight of stairs; one is seen doing that in the Sylvester McCoy story Remembrance Of The Daleks.
It is, however, implied that they (Daleks) have a method of getting up stairs in The Chase. - The Daleks were originally created by Terry Nation.
- This show perhaps has another salute to a previous era, with the Doctor getting to unleash some insults at a Dalek that can't fire. Jon Pertwee's Doctor also had the pleasure, when he found a group of Daleks unable to fire their guns in "Death to the Daleks." We also see a Dalek with unfamiliar emotions - something Patrick Troughton experienced in Evil of the Daleks.
- In a good contrast to Tom Baker's Doctor, it takes the companion (Rose) to stop him killing the Dalek. Tom Baker's doctor argued against his companions to let them live.
- The Dalek has been on Earth for over 50 years. So when it arrived, McCoy's Doctor was battling some other Daleks around London with Ace.
- Apparently, The Doctor didn't survive the Time War "by choice".
- Another mention of the Time War. So far it's been The Timelords vs The Daleks. From the information given, it looks as if the Nestenes people and the creatures in episode 3 suffered the consequences of the war, but not a main part of it.
- The Cyberman head has a sign on the glass case reading: Extraterrestrial Cyborg. Specimen incomplete. Recovered from Underground Sewer, Location London, United Kingdom, Date 1979.
- Christopher Eccleston is credited as 'Doctor Who', as opposed to 'The Doctor'.
- Henry van Statten's helicopter is called "Bad Wolf One."
- In World War Three, the world is shown extraterrestrial life and the aliens are even present in the museum, so why is Adam still theorizing about life on other planets? Shouldn't he and the world already know of that fact?
ANSWER: At the end of World War Three Mickey shows the Doctor a newspaper where the entire alien invasion scenario has been debunked as a hoax. Seems the government likes to keep a wrap on these things, which I believe is part of the premise of the upcoming Torchwood series. - The enter key on the keyboard is of a British keyboard layout (a vertical reverse-L shape) and not a US enter key (horizontal rectangle). It's probably hard to find a British keyboard around Salt Lake, Utah.
- If the lock to the "cage" has a billion combinations, and a Dalek can calculate a thousand billion combinations in one second, why does it need over 10 seconds to crack the lock? Probably because it can calculate a trillion (thousand billion) combinations in a second, but it takes slightly longer to enter them.
Also take into account that the lock most probably has a limit/threshold to how fast one can work it without overloading and frying the circuits and most probably locking themselves in. Might not be an issue for someone with human or Earth-computer speed, but could certainly be an issue for someone like the Daleks, hence the extra time needed to clear the locks. - Why hasn't Henry got any information on the Doctor? Even if all information about his visits is no longer available on the internet, there are surely other sources for a Time Lord that has specimens of at least three of the Doctor's enemies in his museum.
Reply by Thewbacca: if all of the stuff on the internet is wiped, stories of The Doctor and the Time Lords would be little more than fairy tales. One would assume that these would hold little interest to someone like Henry. - It doesn't really matter how fast the Dalek can calculate the combinations, it would still be limited by the speed at which the lock's CPU can process the combination data being sent to it by the Dalek as well as any delay inherent in the communication media, buffer and protocol used by the lock panel IO device itself. Unless the Dalek can somehow enhance the whole device to work faster, but if it had the ability and technology to do that, it wouldn't need to calculate any combination it would just be able to access the door unlocking part of the system directly.
- If Van Statten needed to close the bulkheads straightaway before the power loss occurred, then how does the Doctor reopen them without delay when the Dalek insists he does? It requires a great deal more power to lift a concrete & steel block from its frame than it does to drop it after all!
- With regard to the lock combination thing again. Any security system worth its salt (and that facility would presumably have the best) would stop accepting codes after too many incorrect ones have been entered, this is pretty much standard for security software even today. No security system of the future would be written so badly as to just allow millions of combinations to be sent one after the other so quickly. The Dalek should really never have been able to get out as the door panel should have blocked after 3 or 4 bad codes were entered. (Would have made the episode rather dull however)
- The Doctor: Time travel is like visiting Paris.
The last time The Doctor was seen visiting Paris was in the fourth Doctor episode City of Death where he also fought against an alien playing a long game, this one over 400 million years, the similarly named but unrelated Jagaroth. - It's cold on floor 500, yet you can't see anyone's breath, and Suki is wearing a thin blouse.
- The Doctor: Time travel is like visiting Paris.
- The Doctor is very careful to avoid Rose coming into contact with baby Rose.
This isn't the first time the Doctor has been concerned about this - although it doesn't apply (it seems) to Time Lords.
In Mawdryn Undead The Brigadier comes into contact with a past version of himself, causing a sort of "temporal short". - Baby Rose's eyes are blue, but older Rose's eyes are hazel. On the other hand, it's not unheard of for a baby's eyes to start blue and darken with age.
- On the DVD commentary for this episode, Billie Piper said this was her favourite episode from the first season.
- (Unless Rose has 2 phones) Adam could have given back the phone to Rose in the TARDIS on the journey between 200,000 and Adam's own time.
- This episode shows that changing history has violent ramifications. However this also implies that every time the Doctor or his companions saves someone's life (or kills them--cf. The End of the World) there is a risk of something like this happening--especially if they don't know the local history.
THEORY: If Rose's Dad hadn't died, Rose would never have travelled with the Doctor and never would have been there to save her father's life. She created a paradox relative to herself and the Doctor, and it's only in these rare circumstances that the Reapers appear.
It was also pointed out in the episode itself that because the Doctor and Rose were there twice at the same time it created a weakness - and technically Rose was there twice in two different ways. Once at the beginning of the episode with two current Doctors and Roses, and then later when she meets the young Rose. The weakness created by the multiple versions of the same people allowed the reapers to break through.
However, in the case of a time paradox, say, the dead being inhabited by hostile aliens, as in The Unquiet Dead, wouldn't that change the future quite a bit more, and still lead to the time paradox, with Rose probably never being born, The Doctor not going back to that particular time, and hence not opening the rift, wouldn't that be a similar time for the Reapers to show up? - Rose's mum does not look 20 years younger as compared to Aliens of London/WWIII which is supposedly 2006. Even with the big hair.
- "This episode shows..." The wounds in time were created by the paradox of Rose having grown up without a father and Rose growing up with a father. The fact that the latter would come into effect as a consequence of the former became the dilemma which caused the wound in time. To simply put it, they can alter other people's lives, but not their own.
- Although the TARDIS has changed into just a call box, the Doctor leaves it without locking it.
- The Doctor is very careful to avoid Rose coming into contact with baby Rose.
- When Rose and Jack are on the top of his ship the time on Big Ben is 9:30. The time never changes, despite the scene lasting several minutes.
- In the broadcast version of this episode, a sound cut was made in the scene at Albion Hospital where Dr. Constantine's face transforms into the gas mask. There was supposed to be the sound of his skull cracking as the change happened, but it was felt to be too horrific and was therefore cut.
- This is the first adventure with Captain Jack Harkness. He appears in the four remaining episodes of the series and will appear in his own spin-off Torchwood. He also appears in Series Three and Series Four
- The bomb says "Schlecken Wolfe" meaning "bad Wolf" in German.
- Several of Jamie's abilities were left unexplained in the finale of the episode, including his ability to make a door close by pointing at it.
- At time of airing, and still at present this is the only storyline in the new series where no character (good or bad) is dead by the end. In fact, this ends up bringing characters back from the dead. As the Doctor said, "Everybody lives!"
- The nanogenes allow a life form to communicate through anything with a speaker. Why were they able to cause the typewriter to work?
- If the nanogenes would still take a few hours to become totally airborne, how was The Doctor able to "throw" them at the afflicted people? And why did they require time to become airborne?
- Magnetic tape players weren't present outside of Germany during World War II. Recording gramophone would have been the most likely means of recording an interview, but wire records might also have been used.
- The Doctor has obviously forgotten his vow to Peri at the end of the Sixth Doctor episode The Two Doctor where he stated a it would be a healthy vegetarian diet for the both of them from then on, since in his dinner with Margaret he orders steak and chips.
- There are several mentions to previous episodes; Rose mentions Platform One, the setting for The End Of The World and the events of The Unquiet Dead (with the Rift, the Gelth and Gwyneth) are mentioned as well.
- When Mickey is seen getting off the train at Cardiff Central station; the tannoy announcement heard as he gets off the train- which is in Welsh- is telling passengers that the next train to depart from platform three is going to Swansea.
- The real full name of Margaret Blaine is 'Blon Fel Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen'.
- The name of the nuclear installation is "Blaidd Drwg". The Doctor stares at the name, translates it as "Bad Wolf", remarks that he and Rose have been seeing Bad Wolf all over the place, then casually dismisses it as coincidence. The Slitheen says she had no particular intentions for the name; it just sounded good. This is the first open acknowledgement of all the Bad Wolf references throughout the season, suggesting that there's something going on behind the scenes.
- When the Doctor first tries to escape from the Big Brother house, Lynda reveals that a "deadlock seal" prevents contestants from escaping. Deadlock seals are first mentioned as a barrier that the sonic screwdriver can't breach in the 1969 episode The War Games; they are referenced again later in the 2006 episode School Reunion.
- When Rose is remembering the various times and places she has heard or seen the phrase ‘bad wolf’, clips from ‘The Unquiet Dead (‘the big bad wolf’), Dalek (the helicopter), Boom Town (‘Blaidd Drwg’), Aliens Of London (the TARDIS graffiti) and The Long Game (BadWolfTV) are shown.
- This is not the first Doctor Who story that uses the idea of reality TV that kills. A similar concept is used in the Colin Baker story Vengeance On Varos (1985).
- Rose 'remembers' the helicopter call-sign in Dalek as "Bad Wolf One," but neither she or the Doctor were present to hear it identified as such.
- On one of the walls in the "Big Brother" house there are pictures of circles. If you look closely, they resemble the armour of the Daleks.
- This episode features the first mention of Torchwood on Doctor Who. It comes up on The Weakest Link as the answer to the question: "The Great Cobalt Pyramid is built on the remains of which famous Old Earth institute?" The contestant guesses "Touchstone", but the Anne-droid provides "Torchwood" as the proper answer.
- The alien sounding words Grexnix and Ghaffelbette used during the show originate from the long running British Science Fiction comic 2000AD.
- The Doctor claims the Daleks are hiding themselves from sonar. But sonar relies on sound waves, which can't travel through the vacuum of space.
- All shows The Doctor and companions find themselves in are futuristic versions of real shows. Furthermore all voices from the robots are provided by the real life hosts of these shows:
Anne Droid - Anne Robinson (The Weakest Link)
Davinadroid - Davina McCall (Big Brother UK)
Trine-e - Trinny Woodall and Zu-Zana - Susannah Constantine (What Not To Wear)
- The Doctor claims that he is known in Dalek legend as "The Oncoming Storm", a title that first appeared in the Virgin New Adventures novel Love and War by Paul Cornell, who also wrote the episode Father's Day. In the novel, the title was applied to the Doctor by the Draconians, although it is possible either they or the Daleks appropriated the title from one another. In the spin-off media, the better known title of the Doctor in Dalek lore is the Ka Faraq Gatri, the "Bringer of Darkness" or "Destroyer of Worlds", first used in Ben Aaronovitch's novelisation of his episode Remembrance of the Daleks.
- Rose's actions create a predestination paradox. The words "Bad Wolf" tell her to try to get back to the Doctor, and her doing so gives her the ability to leave the words through time as messages to herself, which she then does. Although it can be argued that the phrase "Bad Wolf" originates with the Bad Wolf Corporation, it can also be argued that she somehow prompted the creation of the phrase and therefore the Corporation through her powers in the first place.
- A clip from Boom Town is shown when Rose explains to Mickey about the heart of the TARDIS.
- Rose refers to the events of Father’s Day about meeting Pete and her being the blonde girl with him when he died.
- Delta waves originally appeared in the Fifth Doctor serial, Kinda. In this episode, however, they are used to kill, whilst in Kinda they were used to induce sleep.
- Jack uses "bastic bullets" against the Daleks with some initial success. Bastic bullets were first referenced in the original series in Revelation of the Daleks.
- It would seem logical that if possessing the vortex energy damages the Doctor to the point where he has to regenerate, it should have left physical effects on Rose, who possessed it for a far longer period of time.
However, this can be explained by the fact that while the Doctor absorbed the Time Vortex, and contained it, Rose did not contain the vortex - rather, it absorbed her, and flowed through her. - Bad Wolf appears in this episode almost everywhere, and it is later revealed that Rose is in fact the Bad Wolf. The reason she realises it is the graffiti sprawled across the playground and on the wall.
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