The Gunslinger makes an appearance in Dr. Who‘s latest episode.
Warning: Article contains spoilers
Doctor Who is rarely subtle; the main character is a time-traveling alien with two hearts. In “A Town Called Mercy,” the Doctor and company fight a cyborg cowboy in a Wild West town called Mercy and eventually learn the value of … mercy. It’s another satisfying turn from director Saul Metzstein, with the help of writer Toby Whithouse, who penned a few previous episodes.
After the whirlwind pace of this season’s first two episodes, “Mercy” is a welcome shift to more relaxing, terrestrial settings. Not that it’s a boring episode though — the pre-credit sequence sees a bulky, deep-voiced cyborg named The Gunslinger (Andrew Brooke, PhoneShop) shooting a helpless, tattooed man and threatening to find and kill a “doctor.” Could this scary foe have a vendetta against our protagonist?
The Doctor (Matt Smith, Bert & Dickie), Amy (Karen Gillan, In Love with Coward) and Rory (Arthur Darvill, Robin Hood) soon find out, when the TARDIS drops them near Mercy, instead of the Day of the Dead festivities 200 miles south in Mexico, where they were aiming. It’s a classic setup — the wily, sentient time machine plops them in a place they did not want to go, but needed to. (Speaking of which, there have not been nearly enough TARDIS story lines in these three episodes, especially after the TARDIS-centric episodes of the previous season.)
Our crew sees a boundary line and “KEEP OUT” signs around the town of 81 residents, so they walk in, obviously. “I see ‘KEEP OUT’ signs as suggestions, more than actual orders,” the Doctor giddily says, “Like, ‘Dry Clean Only.’” But keeping out may have been the safer option, as they see electricity in the town, about ten years before it should be there.
In a great example of the show’s continued obsession with Americana, the Doctor soon strolls into the local tavern, with an atrocious fake American accent and a toothpick in his mouth. The patrons find out he’s an alien called “the Doctor,” assume he’s the prey of The Gunslinger, and throw the triad out of the town. The cyborg arrives after a series of scary, short-distance teleports and seems intent on killing the Doctor. The sheriff, Isaac, intervenes at the last second and pulls the Doctor back over the boundary line.
Exposition time! Isaac (Ben Browder, Bad Kids Go to Hell) tells our heroes The Gunslinger showed up three weeks ago, demanding to be given an alien doctor and trapping them all in the town. That alien doctor? He’s in the sheriff’s office, and he’s named Kahler-Jex. He has the same tribal face tattoo as the pre-credit corpse. The bespectacled alien (Adrian Scarborough, Mrs. Biggs) is a surgeon (so he’s the doctor — whew!) whose ship crashed out in the desert a few years back. He’s stayed in the town ever since, fighting a cholera outbreak and giving them electricity from his ship’s generator.
The Doctor rides out to inspect the damage of Jex’s craft. Inside, he finds a database that reveals Jex as a war criminal, a Mengele-like crackpot who fashioned killing machines out of Kahler citizens. The Gunslinger is there for revenge against his corrupter.
The rest of the episode sees the Doctor weighing the morality of protecting Jex or throwing him out to sate The Gunslinger. In an emotional scene after confronting Jex, the Doctor chooses the latter. Amy, incensed, protests: “This is not how we roll.” She claims the Doctor has traveled alone too long (a recurring complaint from his companions whenever he seems batty).
“We can’t be like him,” she says, “We have to be better than him.”
Jex comes back over the line, but The Gunslinger lays down an ultimatum: give him Jex by noon tomorrow or he’ll kill everyone.
After weighty conversations with Jex, the Doctor comes back to reality, and faces The Gunslinger the next day for a high noon duel in the episode’s climax. Instead of a gun, the Doctor pulls out his sonic screwdriver and messes with the town’s electricity. There’s the kook we all know and love. Jex escapes, goes to his ship, and, overwhelmed with guilt from his confrontation with the Doctor, activates the self-destruct. It’s a shocking and brutal move, made tasteless by a direct shot of the ship erupting into a fireball.
The Gunslinger, now without a purpose, tries to head out to commit suicide, too. The Doctor talks him down, and convinces him to stick around as the town’s protector. If all this denouement seems brusque, that’s because it is. The episode sometimes struggles to grasp a coherent narrative thread, or fill the runtime. But it’s another satisfying one-off from this erratically-plotted season. The emotions are in the right place, too — the Doctor relearns the importance of mercy to avoid becoming like Jex.
In the final scene, Amy and Rory tell the Doctor they want to live their lives for a little while, but they may not get a chance to do so — next week’s preview sets the Ponds up to make a choice between their normal lives and their adventures with the Doctor.
Tidbits
– Murray Gold’s score for the episode is characteristically great, with guitar plucks that could fit right in with Charles Bernstein’s “White Lightning,” which was used to great effect in the scene introducing the Basterds in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds.
– Metzstein again proves himself able behind a camera, as many shots showcase the stark beauty of the West’s dusty, sun-drenched landscape.
– Mercy’s preacher lends the Doctor a horse named Joshua, but the Doctor corrects him: “I speak horse. He’s called Susan. And he wants you to respect his life choices.”
– When the Doctor goes out to inspect the damage of Jex’s craft, he jumps around on it looking for a door in a great, peppy, Breaking Bad-esque montage.
– The Doctor’s frightening propensity for murdering Jex reminds me of the “Time Lord Victorious” story line near the end of David Tennant’s (True Love) tenure, when his Doctor lost touch with his core values and endangered his friends.
– The Gunslinger unfortunately sounds much like Christian Bale’s hoarse Batman.
– Where’s the love for Rory this week?
