shivver | (Reply)

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shivver13.livejournal.com

Well, the episode does not state when it took place. It did say it's one of the first human colonies, so it can't be too far in the future - we know that Mars was the first, and that's this century. The other two exoduses (exodi? :) from Earth that I can think of are from "The Beast Below" (3295 AD) and "The Ark in Space" (set in 16087 AD, but it's stated that the episode is several thousand years after the actual exodus from the planet). Nothing prevents the humans from returning to Earth (and in fact, "The Ark in Space" is all about the humans returning to Earth after the planet becomes habitable again), and indeed they must have, since the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire is in 200,000 AD. So this episode isn't quite as contradictory as it might appear.

That said, DW's continuity has always been rather loose. I try my best to make it fit together, but it's a fool's errand for me, since I try to include the extended universe in the timeline.

They haven't yet managed to really interest me in the vault yet. So far, the episodes have a "Hey, look, there's a vault here and someone made the Doctor guard it" mention, without any real information or anything that the viewer can start speculating about. Sort of like "Hey, look, there's a crack here". Or "Hey, look, there are eyes spying on Amy". Or "Hey, look, the Doctor thinks there's something strange about Clara". Or "Hey, look, there's this Missy woman collecting dead people's souls." Or "Hey, look, there's that word 'hybrid' again". If this pans out the way Moffat always writes his arcs, we'll just get reminded that the vault exists every episode, and then the finale will tell us why we were supposed to be interested in it.