Father's Day

Saturday, 29 October 2005 - Reviewed by Chris Morris

There are episodes of television shows where the writers make so many stupid mistakes and there are so many inconsistencies and things that don't make any sense, you pretend the episodes never happened. Father's Day is one such episode of Doctor Who that I consider never happened. I am a big Doctor Who fan, but this episode was REALLY badly written.

Why does the Doctor take Rose back to see her father get killed? The Doctor himself knows the dangers of messing with history, so why would he risk altering Earth's timeline to indulge Rose's wish? This doesn't make any sense at all. Let's say for the benefit of the doubt that he could keep Rose as an impartial observer to her father's demise who doesn't interfere. Then why doesn't the Doctor make Rose promise him not to save her father (and consequently change history) before he materializes the TARDIS? Why do the Doctor and Rose leave and come back, making dangerous doubles of themselves in that time period? Why do the earlier doubles of the Doctor and Rose disappear when the later Rose saves her father? How come there wasn't a double of the TARDIS that also disappeared when the doubles of the Doctor and Rose disappeared? Why doesn't the Doctor go back and prevent Rose from saving her father?

How does the interior of the TARDIS disappear? The interior of the TARDIS CANNOT disappear! The interior of the TARDIS has temporal grace or temporal invulnerability. The TARDIS is dimensionally transcendental (bigger on the inside than the outside) and the TARDIS interior exists in another dimension.

Why does the phone the Doctor listens to only play the first telephone call made by Alexander Graham Bell, over and over again? This is never explained.

Why does the TARDIS key glow, and why does the TARDIS slowly materialize around it? This is something else that is never explained and doesn't make any sense.

Why does the Doctor tell Rose "Don't touch the baby!" yet he keeps Rose in close proximity to her younger self, knowing that if Rose touches her younger self, the Reapers will be able to come into the church? Why doesn't he lock Rose away in another room, or lock the younger Jackie and the baby Rose in another room?

Why does Rose act like such an idiot in this episode, when Rose has been previously characterized as being smart and brave? Rose's stupidity is really out of character. Why does Rose save her father when she knows it will change history? Why does Rose touch her younger self after the Doctor tells her "Don't touch the baby!"?

After the Reapers destroy the Doctor, how and why do the Doctor and the other people killed by the Reapers magically reappear when Pete runs in front of the disappearing and reappearing car and kills himself?

Why does the car that is supposed to run over Pete continually disappear and reappear while going around the same block?

Why does the TARDIS reappear, in a different place from where it landed, when the Doctor and Rose are going to leave? Why does the TARDIS reappear at all, with its interior now intact? Why don't we hear the TARDIS materialization noise when the TARDIS rematerializes?

Why do the Reapers disappear at the end of the episode when history is still altered?

Why does the Doctor leave Rose's history and the histories of Rose's mother and father forever altered when the Doctor himself is against changing history (even though he did change Dalek history)?

How come the writer of this episode, Paul Cornell, never took into account the possibility that there may be no temporal paradoxes, and that changing history may just result in another parallel universe or timeline?

As you can see from all these inconsistencies, unanswered questions, and things that don't make any sense, Father's Day is a VERY badly written Doctor Who episode, and to me, this episode never happened.





FILTER: - Series 1/27 - Ninth Doctor - Television