S33 (7) 3 – A Town Called Mercy

[Craig @craig Emperor]

Repeated on BBC3 on 16 March. The Doctor gets a stetson (and a gun!) and finds himself the reluctant marshal of a Western town under siege by a relentless cyborg.

You can watch it here until 23 March: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01mxx3h/

Here’s what you originally thought: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2012/sep/15/doctor-who-town-called-mercy

[Oochillyo @oochillyo]

hey everyone 🙂

Just going round couple eps from 10th and 11th Doctors

I guess some of these specific ep posts havnt been discussed in a while , mayby I will need to put this on the comfy sofa 🙂

Just watched ‘A Town Called Mercy’ 🙂 I think its actually pretty good.

Used to think it was slow or wasnt special I guess and I didnt like the Cyborg guy but the re watch really helped in many ways and not in others.

I think its too quick actually, we are sort of missing the big emotional elements cause are intensive to care for the people is sped up.

Bit knee jerking how quick the Doctor when from singing the praises of this blue mark guys species to kicking him out the town from pure rage.

1. I dont understand the guys character fully, I get that he wants to help people after what he has done, one I am not sure if the ep tells us thats fake just so people will let him live but then it tells us its real he feels sad about it all and wants to help others bit wonky which we are meant to feel.

2. After watching Amy’s choice you know the Dream Lords desire and how he pushes people makes sense but in this ep the blue guy is absolutely terrified when The Doctor snaps on him and throws him out the town, but in other scenes he provokes The Doctor making him angry and saying my life is in your hands sort of thing even The Doctor asks him if he really wants him to throw him out the town.

It felt strange, one min the guy is nice trying to make up for his mistakes and wanting to live, the next he is tempting The Doctor to kick him out to end his life and at the end after we get the actually smart big plan where he is happy with running to the hills to flee he changes his mind again and destroys himself and then the ep plus the Cyborg wants you to feel sorry for him like what ?? its not working emotionally as it could/should causes its soo flip floppy and the ep feels like its flying ahead (not slow in my mind anymore) so the whole issue once you try working out why The Doctor is soo mad and what blue mark guy wants its at the end and its soo weird.

Apart from that which is the big error in this story for me everything else was pretty fine for what we are looking at – a fun western with a twist.

Positive notes – At times you can see The Doctor working it out the solution and I like sometimes a character will says something and The Doctor focuses on what was said and uses that to have a eureka moment and find the solution, I have seen this a lot with 11 , in The Angel Two Parter a lot, I think in Amy’s Choice ect ect which is cool to see how The Doctor is working which I dont think happens with The 13th but mayby she has a different way of showing that she is working something out.

I liked the Cyborg a lot more this time round and at the end he felt genuinely human 🙂

The Western environment and the character were nicely realized 🙂

7/8-10

Regards – Declan Sargent

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

Is this really the only comment thread on A Town Called Mercy?   (Not minimising Declan’s comment but there should be lots more).    I didn’t think that Jex flip-flopped too much.   He was a prey to conflicting emotions – he wanted to be a good guy.   He had done terrible things in the past and wanted to atone.   He also (like all of us) wanted to stay alive.   I thought that was quite well done.

I obviously wrote some comments and posted them somewhere (can’t remember where) because the file’s still on my hard drive.   Here’s what i said:

A Town Called Mercy – I really like this episode. Had some nice dialogue.

Why would he want to kill you? Unless he’s met you. – Amy (to the Doctor).

I speak horse. He’s called Susan, and he wants you to respect his life choices. – The Doctor.

Everyone who isn’t American, drop your gun. – The Marshal (to Amy).

Frightened people. Give me a Dalek any day. – The Doctor.

There was real tension when the Doctor faced off Walter (the 18-year-old) with a gun and talked him out of shooting. Marvellous scene.

I hardly recognised Bill Browder (Crichton of Farscape) as the Marshal, but he was a really good character. I was *not* expecting him to get shot half-way through.

What I liked was that nobody was simply malicious or evil, not even Kahler Jex or the gunslinger. All their questionable actions – the Doctor trying to throw Jex out of town, Walter and the townsfolk wanting to do the same, Jex trying to avoid the gunslinger’s attentions, the gunslinger wanting to kill Jex – were all based on either self-preservation, wanting to protect themselves and their families, or a desire for justified retribution. The gunslinger just wanted Jex and absolutely didn’t wish to hurt innocent people (in that way Jex had programmed him well). Jex’s terrible actions in the past – creating killer androids – he made a powerful argument that they were prompted by patriotic motives in a terrible war. And Jex redeemed himself at the end by blowing himself up.

He behaved with honour at the end. Maybe more than me. – The gunslinger.

As Western episodes go, this was a really good one. Well-written, and the motivations of all the characters were entirely convincing. And visually striking.

[winston @winston]

@dentarthurdent and @oochillyo    I guess this one aired before this site was started so no comments. It is a really good episode asking that age old question “Does the end justify the means?”. Tyrants everywhere have always thought so but so do good guys sometime.

The Doctor is great in this one , he wears a cowboy hat and talks to horses and chokes on toothpicks. He also totally loses his temper which always makes me happy.

It was sad that the marshal died but the gunslinger stayed there to protect the town which gave him a purpose.We all need a purpose.

Stay safe.

 

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

I’m not so much a fan of original TV western series (because they rapidly ran out of ideas and just started repeating the same plot, just shuffled) but I do quite like most ‘western’ episodes of sci-fi series, because they all bring their own flavour to the genre.

And they’ve just about all done a western at some point, from The Prisoner to Red Dwarf to Farscape, with varying degrees of success.   Doctor Who’s version is, I think, one of the better ones, helped by the fact that the Tardis can arrive at any time and place in history or legend  (so the western setting isn’t an anachronism in the series).

Also, as in A Town Called Mercy, the desert settings always lighten the episode visually.   (As they did in Impossible Astronaut, Hell Bent and others).

@winston liked the Doctor losing his temper  (I know what you mean, it’s an unusual event and quite dramatic when he does).   I liked it that Amy actually drew a gun on the Doctor.    Not that she knew how to use it properly and she let off a couple of accidental shots, but nevermind.   She had got a lot better by The Wedding of River Song.

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

Just watched this again. This has become one of my favourite episodes, beautifully written by Toby Whithouse.

I wasn’t going to comment again, but my fingers itched, as they do when an episode delights me.

“Why would he want to kill you? Unless he’s met you.” Amy, you cynic.

(Why is the power cable from Kahler-Jex’s egg to the town sparking? That’s usually a sign of shorted insulation and imminent failure. I think the Beeb’s FX department just got a little enthusiastic.)

“Thank you for choosing Abaraxas Security software. Incinerating intruders for three centuries.” I love these ‘user-friendly’ automated death threats.

And I love the armed confrontation between Amy and the Doctor. “you’ve clearly been taking stupid lessons since I saw you last.” (Contrary to my previous post, Amy’s little massacre in Wedding of River Song pre-dates this episode. For some reason she’s way more competent with a sub-machine gun than a six-gun).

The confrontation between the Doc and the young wannabe gunfighter outside the Sheriff’s office is beautifully written and acted. And absolutely believable.

And I do like the Doctor’s trick at the gunfight with the Gunslinger, to confuse and overload his targeting with running people tattoed like Kahler-Jex, and let Kahler-Jex escape. And, implicitly, trusting the Gunslinger not to massacre anyone out of revenge/frustration.

But the strength of this episode is that nobody is black-and-white, good or evil. And there is no easy ‘right answer’. (Contrast that with Solomon, last week).

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