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


 * 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.


 * 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 (DW: 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.


 * 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.


 * 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 talking to.