h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The Ret-con - the act of retroactively making something work in continuity. So in Doctor WHo terms, a retcon would be an element in one episode that suddenly fixes a continuity point from an earlier episode.

The new series is full of really subtle retcons that won't mean a thing to the casual viewer but can have the loyal odler fan applauding.

In 'The Christmas Invasion' we have two such retcons. The Doctor reveals that it's possible for him to grow back a hand because he's still within a given timeframe since he regenerated. This deftly explains how Romana could flit through five different bodies when she regenerated. Earlier, Rose mentions that only one of the Doctor's hearts is beating, which goes some way to explain how the companions of the first and second Doctors never mentioned his two hearts.

The Doctor tells Rose in 'End of the World' that the Tardis has fiddled with her brain so she can undrstand alien languages. In The Christmas Invasion we even see how this works in reverse, with Rose not being able to understand the Sycorax and then suddenly being able to. This explains in more detail a throw-away line from 'The Masque of Mandragora' about it being 'a Time Lord gift'.

In 'Dalek' we see a Dalek flying up stairs (I know we'd seen that in two previous episodes, but this was really making the point) as well as using its sucker arm in a variety of offensive and versatile ways.

In 'The Five Doctors', we see the Cyberleader killed by the Raston Robot. Yet the Leader is also present at the massacre of the cybermen on the chess board inside Rassilon's tower. So it's fun to see how, in 'Doomsday', Cybermen upgrade to Leader when a Leader is destroyed. It's a tiny point, but in one move it's reconciled.

And of course, in 'Fear Her', the Doctor confirms that he had a son, once. Which kind of proves that Susan was his biological granddaughter rather than adoptive one.

Can anyone think of other examples of new series retcons?

"Can anyone think of other examples of new series retcons?"

It's proved that Doctor Who always *was* the best programme on TV, and we were right all along.

Spot on!

In 'Boom Town' the Doctor explains that the Tardis is refuelling. He's parked it on top of the scar left by the closing of the rift which is leaking a form of radiation thawt the Tardis can use as power.

Fixes the whole "Eye of Harmony" thing from the TV movie and Gallifrey in general.

This comes up again in AoG/Doomsday when we learn that anyone who has travelled in time has built up some background radiation, which the Daleks have adapted to use as a power source. That's how Rose's touch is able to heal the Dalek in 'Dalek'. And also explains, at least potentially, what 'Artron Energy' is and why the Doctor is said to have so much of it (in either Invasion of Time or Deadly Assassin, cuz it was attributed to Tom and said on Gallifrey).

Oh, and here's an interesting aside: Cardiff, or Caerdydd in Welsh, has a potential translation: City of Time.

Or maybe CARDIFF is an acronym, standing for Chronology And Relative Dimension(s) In (the) Final Frontier...

I'll get me coat

Lx

Quality acronym! No coat required.

Lx

Unless you're cold of course

Some nice retcons there. When someone retcons Torchwood to Unit and the Third Doctor, let me know!

No need.

UNIT is a United Nations outfit. It has nothing at all to do with HMG.
Torchwood operates apart from UNIT, possibly in plain sight and maybe as a royal institute dealing with plain old scientific research (with a hidden side).

Now, if anyone wants to retconn Torchwood and The Forge (from the Big Finish stuff)...

There may be no direct connection, but if the Doctor was so important to Torchwood and they had been waiting for him then when he had been identified by Unit they would have moved in on him then. Why do nothing for 30 years?

Torchwood were probably thinking along these lines:

"That's him! That's the Doctor! Him in the velvet smoking jacket, surrounded by...oh. Surrounded by a dozen or so armed United Nations troops who we have absolutely no pull over. So, do we storm in there and get him, risking the wrath of a group who were legitmately set up to take care of alien menaces and thus expose our organisation to their scrutiny, or shall we let it lie and see what happens?"

Basically, at each opportunity Torchwood had to capture the Doctor they either missed the window - the Doctor does tend to move around unpredictably - or the Doctor had surrounded himself with soldiers (as he tended to do) while he was in Torchwood's reach.

from what we've seen of Torchwood so far though, we know they have the power to take the doctor if they wanted without a problem. Then looking back at all the other appearances of the Doctor and aliens throughout earth history it makes no sense that Torchwood hadn't appeared earlier.

My only theory on it is that Torchwood has now appeared to the Time Lords being erased from history.

"we know they have the power to take the doctor if they wanted without a problem."

Do we?
How do we know that?

"Then looking back at all the other appearances of the Doctor and aliens throughout earth history it makes no sense that Torchwood hadn't appeared earlier"

Torchwood is set up in the late 19th century by Queen Victoria. There probably wasn't something similar prior to this because of a lack of capability. If you remember Lady Pienforte from Silver Nemesis, she and her servant might have been considered a two-person Torchwood, but they approached things in terms of sorcery rather than science.

I don't think the appearance of Torchwood has any relation to the existence or otherwise of the Timelords. I can't see how there could be a relationship.

""we know they have the power to take the doctor if they wanted without a problem."

Do we?
How do we know that?"

They are able to control what people can access from the Internet (School Reunion), they can blow up powerful alien ships (Christmas Invasion), and they are seemingly outside of the law and with technology more powerful then anyone else on earth. The Doctor is walking down the street and they could have people pick him up ad bring him in. Considering Unit could do nothing in The Christmas Invasion and the Prime Minister turned to Torchwood shows they weild much more power.

"I don't think the appearance of Torchwood has any relation to the existence or otherwise of the Timelords. I can't see how there could be a relationship."

Anything from the New Series can be tracked back to the lack of the Time Lords. Before the Time Lords kept time in order, and if people were misusing Time (logical assumption Torchwood has futuristic technology considering Captain Jack is part of Torchwood) then the Time Lords would have kept the Timeline from being corrupted. Without the Time Lords the timeline becomes corrupted, so now the future of humanity is influenced greatly by Torchwood (shown by mentions of Torchwood in episodes set in the future) while before Torchwood was never mentioned.

"They are able to control what people can access from the Internet (School Reunion)"

- oh, they block access to a site, don't they? Do you know how easy this is to do?

"and they are seemingly outside of the law and with technology more powerful then anyone else on earth"

Except a certain Mr. Van Stanten who owns a live Dalek, the Internet and apparently the executive branch of the US Government.

Sorry. Torchwood might be privileged and might have some flashy toys but there's no evidence for 'outside the law' and 'more powerful than anyone else on earth'. Torchwood has been arounf since the late 19th century but couldn't stop Van S buying a Slitheen arm, or a cyberman head or a live-freakin'-Dalek that crashed on Ascension Island, which IIRC is part of the British territories in the South Atlantic. Definitely would have been about the time of the Dalek's arrival. Which, since Torchwood's brief is to defend the British Empire, makes them a bit less than powerful. They should have had first dibs on the Dalek, right? But they didn't own it. So what happened to the all-powerful, all influential Torchwood Institute then?

Well, they weren't advertising the spin off in Series 1, were they?

One way of retconning this would be to say: between 1900 and the Battle of Torchwood, the Institute had a public presence as a Crown funded think-tank, where scientists and engineers could explore the borders of technology without commercial pressure. This hides their covert function of swiping and back-engineering alien technology.

Also - if Torchwood are as powerful and above the law as you say...why are they hiding underneath Cardiff? What would be the need for secrecy?

i'm pretty sure the Cardiff location is one of many.

Also, in regards to Van Stanten, let's retcon history here, Van Stanten is a few years in the future, and Torchwood was quite badly damaged by the Cyberman attack, so the control base Torchwood once had it now lacks, hence being a much smaller operation in the spinoff?

Please answer the question.
If Torchwood are all-powerful, why are they hiding ?

They are like Section 31 in Star Trek. A secret organisation working behind the scenes but with great power. If Torchwood went public they would cause fear, it would reveal alien contact, scare other governments due to the level of technolody, if Torchwood went public it would lead to chaos.