Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/The Greatest Show in the Galaxy

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This page is for discussing the ways in which The Greatest Show in the Galaxy doesn't fit well with other DWU narratives. You can also talk about the plot holes that render its own, internal narrative confusing.

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• When The Doctor and Mags escape from the cage, why does a simple pat on the abdomen and on the back of the head disable the robots? That wouldn't even knock out a human.

Perhaps The Doctor recognized this model of robot and knew that a tap on the abdomen and on the back of the head will reset them, a sort of "ctrl-alt-del".

Or perhaps, being clowns, they are programmed to perform unlikely pratfalls after any violence whatsoever (though that would, admittedly, be a glaring oversight in repurposing them as ruthless killers).

At another point in the story, we learn that the Bus Conductor robot can be deactivated by hitting a shutdown button on the top of its head. Presumably, the Doctor simply knows where these types of robots have their shutdown buttons and is activating them.

• Ace asks the Chief Clown if he is also a robot when she first meets him, but she is never shown being made aware that the other clowns in the circus are robots to begin with.