Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/The Gunfighters


 * Episodes one and two have the world's quietest gunshots, and in episode four's climactic gunfight Earp and Masterson apparently walk through a withering barrage of fire unscathed.(it helped that nobody was aiming at them).
 * This is part of Johnny Ringo's plan to distract the Earps while he attacks from behind: he orders the Clanton's to open fire while still out of range. When the Earps get close enough, however, they take cover.


 * The Clanton gang have amazing accents, Billy obviously having been to finishing school, and Johnny Ringo to the RSC.
 * It's possible that their actual accents were so incomprehensible to the Doctor that the TARDIS translated them for him.
 * Truthfully, this would be more of a production error/choice than a "plot hole".


 * Johnny Ringo, Kate and Steven arrive back in Tombstone before Doc Holliday and Dodo, yet they departed first.
 * They didn't arrive at Tombstone, they arrived at the Clanton farm.


 * At the end of the first episode, the Doctor is seen outside the Saloon yet Kate gets there before the Doctor and she left the dentist after the Doctor.
 * The Doctor had been quite obviously walking very slowly due to the distress of having his tooth pulled. So it is quite understandable he took longer than her.


 * There are several historical errors. Johnny Ringo did not take part in the gunfight, and was not killed at this time; Pa Clanton died weeks before; there is no Reuben Clanton or Warren Earp; Ike Clanton survived; and Phineas Clanton did not take part.
 * Some events in the Whoniverse are different than in the real world and the events of the Gunfight are likely not a fixed point in time and can be altered.
 * Additionally, actual historical events are not always recorded 100% accurately by historians.


 * In the ballad, 'earning your gunfighter's wings' is anachronistic, the phrase being coined in WWI.
 * Incorrect. It might be anachronistic if that were the phrase they used, but the lyrics are "earning your gunfighter's fee". (See The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon.)


 * Why is it that when somebody gets shot, their are no wounds?