Dodgy Geography of the Week: your winner is...... 'Terror of the Zygons.'
‘It exists all right,’ said Sarah indignantly. ‘Last night it chased the Doctor half-way across Tulloch Moor.’ ‘What’s more,’ added the Brigadier, ‘we believe it has been attacking the oil-rigs.’ ‘Loch Ness is seven miles from the coast. Are you suggesting the monster can cross that distance to the sea without being seen?’ ‘Maybe there’s an underground river,’ suggested Sarah. ‘Hardly. Loch Ness is too high above sea level.’ ‘But there is an underground channel, your Grace.’ The Doctor spoke with calm assurance. ‘It runs from Loch Ness to the Devil’s Punchbowl, the small Loch near the village, and close to the sea. That’s the monster’s back door.’
(-excerpt from Terrance Dicks' novelisation, 'Doctor Who and the Loch Ness Monster')
Tulloch Moor doesn't exist. Let's just get that out of the way, although it is not my biggest quibble here. There is town called Tulloch about 40 miles away from the head of Loch Ness.
The head of Loch Ness is in fact about 8 miles from Inverness, which sits on the Moray and Beauly Firths. Basically a big fjord, and no oil fields in the firth itself. The closest rigs are off the coast of Moray, Aberdeenshire, and Caithness, and they are very far away. The second map shows the locations of North Sea oil fields. Note the scale at the bottom.
If 'Nessie' crawled out of the North Sea and made it to Inverness, I'm sure someone might have noticed a large monster sauntering through a city of 40,000 people. Just saying.
Guess how far it is from Drumnadrochit, a town halfway down Loch Ness, to the east coast of Scotland? Over 100 miles. And it's about 80 miles to the west coast. The only place Loch Ness is within 7 miles of the sea is around Inverness.
Loch Ness is AT FUCKING SEA LEVEL. Okay, 16m above it if you're being pedantic, but that's sea level for all intents and purposes.
Doctor, there's a FUCKING RIVER between Inverness and the head of Loch Ness. An actual river! That's not underground. It's called the River Ness. See? Even has the same name as the loch.
There's no loch called The Devil's Punchbowl anywhere. A corrie on the Isle of Arran has that name. Arran is off the Ayrshire Coast. That's over one hundred miles away. The monster would have to get around Glasgow (and the rest), and he'd probably get the shit kicked out of him first.
Yeah, 'village'...Doctor. You mean that city of 40,000 people??
I know this is a show about a time travelling alien, and it mostly makes up the laws of physics as it goes, but please....guys....can someone look at a map now and then?
