| Chapter The 172nd, when the Doctor brings a sonic to a gunfight. |
Plot:
The Doctor, Amy and Rory arrive in the old west c. 1870 and visit, well, a town called Mercy. The town has anachronistic electric lighting, 10 years ahead of its time. The townsfolk are under siege by a cyborg cowboy terminator, the Gunslinger, until they give up to him the "alien Doctor". This leads to brief confusion where the Doctor is nearly thrown to his doom, but the townsfolk know deep down to whom the Gunslinger is referring. In recent years, a member of the Kahler race, Jex, arrived in their town. They sheltered him, and he provided the electricity supply, using his spacecraft - hidden in the surrounding desert - as a generator. He also brought advanced medicine, saving many lives as Mercy's doctor. Unfortunately he's Space Mengele, his altruism a self-imposed penance for the genetic experimentation he did on his home planet. The Gunslinger is one of the enhanced super soldiers Jex created to end a war. There follows lots of arguing about what to do, during which Mercy's marshal gets accidentally shot and killed. The Doctor takes up the badge, and arranges a deception to allow Jex to escape in his spacecraft and take the battle to another world. Jex has a sudden change of heart and kills himself, which he could have done at the start and saved everyone 45 minutes. The Gunslinger remains out in the desert for generations afterwards serving as the town's protector.
Context:
We're falling into a pattern of watching a Doctor Who story every Sunday in November. As on the last few weekends, last Sunday saw myself and the children (boys of 14 and 11, girl of 8) collected together to watch A Town Called Mercy, from the series 7 boxset blu-ray. The younger two stuck with it to the end, but the eldest got bored at about 20 minutes in and wandered out of the living room never to return. Comments from the children during the course of the action included questions about what happens when you put Dry Clean Only clothes in the washing machine (after the Doctor made an offhand comment early on about ignoring such instructions) and lots of concern during early scenes - even from the eldest - about the welfare of the horse that the Doctor says is named Susan. Later, the youngest mentioned that this story was "The trolley problem again". Once it was finished, I asked the two remaining kids what they thought. The 8-year-old gave A Town Called Mercy a thumbs-up; her brother said it was "Meh".
First time round:
Watched on the day of its debut BBC1 broadcast in September 2012, almost certainly timeshifted to later in the evening as the youngest child was particularly young back then, and we would have been in the process of putting her to bed during Doctor Who's slot. I can't remember anything about that first watch, or my initial impressions of the story beyond thinking it was just okay. Casting my mind back to the time, I believe I would have resumed commuting to my London-based day job in the week leading up to the story's broadcast, after having worked from home for the entire period of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games. I don't know how bad travel was when the games were on as I didn't ever chance it, but I remember having to trudge round a snaking queueing system to get out of the station even though the games were all finished. This added a few minutes to my door-to-door journey time, and mildly pissed me off. Eight years on, I can remember that long and winding escape route from London Bridge, but nothing about the Doctor Who story I watched after the working week had ended. I suspect this is because A Town Called Mercy does not provoke any emotional response in me, not even annoyance.
Reaction:
A Town Called Mercy is, so far, only the second Doctor Who story in the show's long history to be set in the old west. It's a UK show, so the genre wasn't as culturally important as it might have been if it had originated in the US; but, the series has been going so long and has sampled every other genre multiple times. Why is it so rare for it to do a western? It may have something to do with the first attempt. This was The Gunfighters in 1966, which wasn't very well received on original broadcast based on the audience appreciation surveys commissioned by the Beeb at the time. Probably because of the lingering memories of a handful of the taste makers of early organised fandom, who were mere boys when it went out, the story got an increasingly bad reputation in the 1970s and 80s. It was often stated as fact that it was one of the worst - if not the worst - stories in Who's history. The two showrunners of modern Who up to 2012, Russell T Davies and then Steven Moffat, were both fan enough to know of The Gunfighters' bad rep, but they were and are also TV professionals. I doubt they'd have let that put them off. It's more likely that it was the root cause of negative reaction to The Gunfighters that made a similar story something to shy away from from 2005 to 2012, just as it did to the successive producers making the show from 1966 to 1989, i.e. that it's all but impossible for a UK production to do a western well.
This is why I suspect that Steven Moffat commissioned this story from writer Toby Whithouse only after the location was found. This was Fort Bravo, an area in the desert near Almeria in Spain. It's a permanent film set and theme park, and has been used for many western-themed shoots over the years. This allows some wonderful sweeping vistas of which the cramped, studio-bound 1966 story could only dream. Or maybe the genre came first - this was the "movie marquee" period, after all - and Moffat trusted that it could be done. Either way, what's delivered by the writer, cast and crew definitely delivers on a brief to showcase the location, or to pastiche the genre. Whithouse includes as many tropes as he can including a scene of townsfolk staring from doorways with suspicion at newcomers walking down main street, a saloon going quiet when someone walks in, the Doctor riding a horse in the desert and donning a sheriff's badge. There's also a showdown at high noon, and lots of people staring at each other, hand poised over holster, waiting to draw. All that is fun enough, and there's some not bad jokes: "Tea. But the strong stuff. Leave the bag in." The plot too is a neat sci-fi twist on a western staple, the rogue hiding out in a small town looking for redemption whose old life comes a-callin'.
Unlike The Gunfighters, this story manages to get at least one American actor, and the accents throughout are okay (at least to my ear). The ensemble, regulars and guest performers alike, give solid but unsensational performances. This is clearly at least partially intended - for all the pastiche elements and the running around, the story is not pitched at the level of shoot outs and adventure. Instead, it is a more meditative piece on the morality of war. The trouble is, that's a bit boring. Ben Browder as the town's marshal Isaac is a TV SF casting coup, having starred in both Stargate and Farscape. He gives a solid performance of a solid character, but that character does not have anything significant to do. He is just a spout for exposition. The top billing of the guest cast is Adrian Scarborough as Kahler-Jex, who is one of those actors one sees in everything and they rarely disappoint, always delivering the goods no matter how big or small the role (I just watched 1917 where he shines in the tiniest of roles, about three lines tops, as an army sergeant). He gives his Doctor Who performance everything he's got, but it doesn't work because he's miscast. He's just too cuddly to be a Doctor Frankenstein war criminal, even a reformed one. He also has some unactable stuff to handle in the script like "It would be so much simpler if I was just one thing, wouldn't it?" hammering home the theme in case someone missed it. The character says a lot, but does very little, and that's true of everyone in the story.
It's such a well made piece - good location, good production design, decent acting - so why is it leaving me cold. Why are good actors giving decent performances not involving or moving me? There's a movie rule that says that while a good script can lead to a bad production, a bad script can never succeed, no matter how good the production is. I think this is very apt when considering A Town Called Mercy. It's not that the script is bad per se, it's just clumsily constructed. This is probably because the central moral dilemma of the story, should Jex be given to the Gunslinger or be left alone, doesn't provide an engine with enough horse power (pun intended) to get through 45 minutes. It's going to end with one way or the other, all that's left is a decision. The narrative has to put that point that off with lots of earnest discussions, and lots of action that doesn't change anything related to the plot or characters. The ending is inevitable, so inevitable as to be telegraphed. Unfortunately, the TV comedy The Good Place (see last time's blog on Kill The Moon for more details) has blown the secret of how to resolve the Trolley problem - with a self sacrifice. Even if you haven't seen it, or anything covering similar ground to A Town Called Mercy, it's still obvious Jex will have to die at his own hand. Doctor Who is not a show that will leave a war criminal unpunished, or allow vigilante justice, so what else is left? Despite being inevitable, though, it still feels wrong, as Jex has up to that moment wanted to survive, and he doesn't go through any Damascene moment to explain why he's decided to do the 'honourable' thing at the end.
Connectivity:
A Town Called Mercy is the third 21st century one part story in a row; also, like Kill The Moon it has at its heart a Trolley problem style moral quandary about whether taking a deliberate action to sacrifice one life is worth it to save multiple other lives.
Deeper Thoughts:
Goldman, Ryan and Mercy. To quote a wise man of a few moments ago: Doctor Who is not a show that will leave a war criminal unpunished, or allow vigilante justice, so what else is left? This turns out to be a very good question indeed, because the obvious answer is - Jex should stand trial. There's a line where the Doctor suggests this early on, and the gun-crazy vigilante robot says no dice, and that's the last time it's mentioned. Well, that's alright then, he said sarcastically - the vigilante wants to kill Jex personally, why not let him?! No. Wrong. This is not how the Doctor should behave, which Amy even points out, but it doesn't change his actions: he still believes - and the story behaves - as if the only options are to hand Jex over to his death, or let him escape. It's reminiscent of a blisteringly negative review of Saving Private Ryan by the late great William Goldman. You can find it online with a simple search, and it is well worth a read. I came out of seeing Ryan at the cinema back in the day feeling uneasy about what I'd just watched; there was something wrong with the film but I couldn't put my finger on exactly what. Turns out there were about 10 things wrong with the film, and Goldman puts his finger on every one of them.
One such flaw is the construction of a phoney dilemma, ignoring an obvious third option. Private Ryan, if you remember, doesn't want to be saved, and wants to stay on to fight with his unit. There is then a discussion about whether the squad under orders to bring him home should leave without him or stay and fight with him. The option of obeying their own orders and bringing Ryan home, which one would think would be their preference being soldiers and all, is forgotten about. Goldman suggests a fix for this that would also work for the Doctor Who story: create urgency by having the third option removed by events. It's easier to do in Saving Private Ryan (the Germans would arrive before they can get the private out, forcing their hand) than it would be in A Town Called Mercy. The Gunslinger would have to block the way to the TARDIS somehow, but that still leaves Jex's spaceship that could be used to take him back to face true justice on Kahler. Other options are difficult too: you can't make the Gunslinger an official agent of Kahler justice, as there's then no reason not to hand him over, and no story; you could say that Kahler's destroyed and the Gunslinger and Jex are the last Kahler people alive, but that makes a mockery of Jex's saving his planet by ending its war; it also muddies motivations further. There'd have always been the Shadow Proclamation anyway, or some other neutral arbiter.
Essentially what's missing is the Doctor at least trying to bring Jex to proper justice, a scene perhaps with him escaping the town using a distraction elsewhere and trying to get to the TARDIS, but finding his way blocked. This would be very similar to the scene that exists already where he goes to Jex's ship to retrieve exposition, but you could move that to the TARDIS perhaps, and the Doctor get the historical information about Kahler's war from its data banks. He steps out and the Gunslinger does something weapon-y and clever using his Kahler tech which blocks the doors of the Doctor's ship thereafter. That way you could make the Kahler ship more damaged, so there's no option to use that either. But then the ending would need to change, as there would be no escape - and perhaps no final self-destruct - available. Any option necessitates a big rewrite, and maybe that was the problem. Perhaps there just wasn't time, and those other lines were added to cover - they do give the impression of an attempt at papering over the cracks. Still, even though I seem to have talked myself into accepting that A Town Called Mercy isn't as good as The Gunfighters or Kill the Moon, I'd still rather watch it a hundred times over than see Saving Private Ryan again. Awful, awful film.
In Summary:
For all this story's good qualities, I would rather watch The Gunfighters.
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