Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/The Time Warrior

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This page is for discussing the ways in which The Time Warrior 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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• Irongron's gun goes off before he fires it.

Itchy trigger finger, and Irongron clearly doesn't know how to work the gun that well.

• Surely Irongron would notice that his Robot has a fleshy neck?

Irongron knows nothing at all about robots; he may assume they all have necks like that.

• Wessex after the Norman conquest is an anachronism.

Not necessarily in this Universe.

Also just because the kingdom is gone, it doesn't mean the name goes with it, the area is still sometimes refered to Wessex today, likewise there is still referance to Bohemia and Northumbria.

We don't know when exactly this story is set. "Early Middle Ages" is consistent with the pre-conquest reign of Edward the Confessor, when there were already a large number of Normans in England.

• Why doesn't Linx just hypnotize Irongron and his men?

Why should he, if this is easier?

• Linx refers to himself as 'just a lowly commander' but in (TV: The Sontaran Stratagem) Commander Skorr ranks directly below General Staal.

In the case of The Sontaran Startagem, Skorr appears to have been Staal's second officer, so we have to assume there are other ranks between Commander and General, (as stated on the Sontaran Page). And of course, there are hundreds of years between the setting of the two stories. Regardless, that would be a discontinuity more correctly attributed to the later story.

Production error by RTD.

As we later learn from Stor, the Sontaran army "reckons its numbers in hundreds of millions." Bearing in mind that even a high-ranking Earthborn general would be lucky to command even one million troops at a time, the rank of general may well be a junior position by Sontaran standards.

• Why, when his ship landed the previous night, does Linx wait hours until morning to emerge from his sphere to stake his flag? What has he been doing in the interim?

It was only one hour until dawn. Presumably he was inspecting his ship for damages.

Even a Sontaran warrior, crashed alone on a strange and primitive planet, might be nervous enough to consider waiting till first light before venturing forth. Possibly Sontaran night-vision is not foremost among their abilities.

Sontarans need to re-charge!

• Linx demonstrates a crude but highly effective degree of temporal engineering know-how in this story - i.e. being able to kidnap multiple scientist from the future, with only the equipment he crash landed with. Yet this know-how seems to be lacking from all other Sontarans encountered in the series, despite this story apparently taking place hundreds and even thousands of years before the others were meant to take place.

Later Sontaran stories do indicate that they have very advanced technology and knowledge relevant to time travel. In particular, The Two Doctors shows that technology they contribute to has worried the Time Lords enough to attempt to interfere with its development. Regardless, any such continuity errors would be more correctly attributed to the later stories.

• The Doctor puts great emphasis on evacuating Irongron's castle before Linx's ship destroys it. But once inside, the group makes no effort to encourage the servant girls to escape, only moving out the scientists and Irongron's men.

We simply don't see them doing so, or the girls have already run off.

• Rubeish refers to two different scientists as Morrison.

Rubeish has a bad memory, and the first Morrison is visibly confused when Rubeish calls the other scientist Morrison.

Rubeish is also severely short-sighted and may quite simply have been guessing which out-of-focus blur he was referring to.

• How did Linx get his ship inside Irongron's Castle?

Irongron says that his soldiers carried Linx's ship inside, however it is never said how the ship got into Linx's workshop as the ship is wider than the door.

Many rooms have larger doors to bring in big objects, and a smaller one that people typically enter through.

• The "breech-loading" firearms supplied by Linx (according to the script / the Doctor) look awfully like muzzle-loading flintlock muskets, albeit still dangerously ahead of their time.

This is likely just a production error rather than discontinuity, presumably based on the physical props the production team were actually able to secure (securing workable historical firearms for a television drama is likely difficult enough without having to also locate those with a specific loading mechanism on top of it). Honestly, after some quick visual comparisons the differences between a muzzle-loading flintlock and a breech-loading flintlock do not appear egregiously glaring to the untrained eye, so assuming the production team themselves were aware of the difference they likely just gambled that most of their audience would be sufficiently unfamiliar with antique firearms to be unable to tell the difference, and those who would would politely overlook it.