From: jblum@hamlet.umd.edu (Hi ho -- Kermit the Frog here...)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.drwho
Subject: Re: Continuity catalog part two
Date: 14 Sep 92 17:37:13 GMT
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park

In article <01GOPP8XUW1E8WW3HM@kinni.acc.uwrf.edu> steven.k.manfred@UWRF.EDU writes:
>9.	"The Invasion of Time"
>	In "The Deadly Assassin," the Doctor must be told what the Matrix
>	is, and it is clear it isn't nearly the all-knowing universe-
>	spanning knowledge bank it becomes in Invasion of Time and later
>	stories.  

No, that was the APC Net that he was connected to, a sort of subset of the
Matrix.

>	The Great Key fromThe Deadly Assassin is here renamed the Rod of
>	Rassilon and we get a new Great Key that every Time Lord
>	President is supposed to search for.

It could be that some senior Time Lords (Borusa?) didn't want to advertise
that this rod was in fact the key to something, so they re-named the Key
the Rod.  Who's going to pay any attention to what they call a couple of
creaky old ceremonial artefacts anyway?

I think what we have here is a plethora of separate keys all attributed
to Rassilon (the Key of Rassilon from Deadly Assassin, the Great Key from
Invasion of Time, the Key of Rassilon from Trial of a Time Lord part 13),
all of which have nothing to do with each other.  They all bear his name
because of the Time Lords' "Rassilon Slept Here" tradition of attributing
everything to this legendary culture hero.  Either that, or Rassilon had
one hell of a key ring.

>       The Great Key is entrustd
>	to the Chancellor, creating another problem when the Doctor
>	says in the same story that no President has ever known the
>	whereabouts of the Great Key (after he's been in th Matrix and
>	asked them all, he says he's done this), yet if it is in the
>	care of the Chancellor, then surely at some time a Chancellor
>	must have become President and he would know that the new 
>	Chancellor has got the Key!

Oh, that's a simple one.  When a President is inducted, he is linked to
the Matrix.  Once he's in there, the minds in the Matrix (i.e. Rassilon
and company) mess with his memory.  If he was Chancellor and knows where
the Great Key is, he suffers convenient amnesia.  Just like the Doctor did
at the end of "Invasion of Time".  That way the Matrix Lords protect their
secret.

>	Also suggestions are made in The Deadly Assassin that there are
>	other Cities on Gallifrey than just the Capitol, yet in
>	The Invasion of Time we are told everyone lives in the Citadel/Capitol,
>	and that everyone lives indoors, which is at variance with things
>	the Third Doctor told us about his visits to the old hermit behind
>	his house when he was a boy, and would later tell us about theem
>	again as being in the mountains of South Gallifrey in State of
>	Decay.  

So the Doctor was a rebel who actually went outside the city.  That doesn't
seem outside of his character.

>	Solutions:  To many of these there are none, and I consider muh
>	of the things we hear in Invasion of Time to be invalid since
>	they are not only at variance with established facts, but also
>	very limiting to future writers of Gallifrey stories if they
>	all have to be set within the Capitol and nowhere else on the 
>	planet.  

Why?  After all, Isaac Asimov wasn't limited by having to stay inside the
worldwide city on Trantor, or "The Caves of Steel".

Invasion of Time is one of my favorite pieces of Who, simply because it
leaves so much un-explained and for the viewer to figure out.  It's flawed
-- MAN is it flawed -- but it makes a fascinating effort.