10 Doctor Who Plot Holes You Didn't Realise Were Actually Solved

One of the TARDIS’s many handy features is that it can instinctively translate any known language and telepathically transmit the results to its passengers. No matter how far you travel in either time or space you should be able to converse with pretty much anybody you meet. In fact, it’s translation matrix is so advanced that when it's unable to translate text in The Impossible Planet, the Doctor immediately takes that as a very, very bad sign.

But for some reason it can't translate the Pope?

Admittedly the Pope of all people inadvertently ruining Bill’s date works so much better if he’s babbling incoherently in Italian. But at the end of the day it's still a human speaking a common Earth language – you’d think the TARDIS wouldn’t have much of an issue with that.

This seeming plot inconsistency is once again addressed in a deleted scene, with Steven Moffat explaining in an interview with Radio Times that:

"I did write in the Doctor saying he didn’t really need the translation, and Nardole suggesting that he play along out of courtesy – but it glitched the scene, so I lost it in the edit. In fairness, the Doctor’s translation ability has wobbled before, so it’s just having another off moment."

That said, there is also another potential explanation in the episode as broadcast: this isn’t the real Pope or the real TARDIS. Almost the entirety of Extremis takes place in a simulated universe created by the Monks – a simulation that is shown multiple times to not be 100% accurate to the real world. 

More than likely this was just a glitch in the matrix. Or the Monks thought it would be funny if the Pope wasn't translated. Either or.