S07E03 - A Town Called Mercy

What do you get when you add two teaspoons of ‘Back to the Future III’, 100ml of ‘Terminator’ and a whole heap of ‘Doctor Who’?

A Town Called Mercy…

With two episodes left until Christmas, I feel saddened that Who is nearly over once again, yet this doesn’t stop me enjoying the three fabulous episodes we’ve had thus far – and coming in for a third week we have ‘A Town Called Mercy’. WHAT an episode! Proper Western, filmed on the set of many previous Western films in none other than sunny Spain! And recognise some of the familiar mountain-y landscape? Yeah, same place they filmed the exterior scenes of ‘Asylum of the Daleks’ – thought that fact may interest you. Well, if not than it doesn’t matter, does it? On with the review I say!

Now, when I heard about the concept of the Doctor and co. in a Western, I had to think simply ‘why has it taken so long?’ Doctor Who is perfect for a Western – and anything else in time and space to be honest – and this episode just proved it! Even with the twist of there being a somewhat ‘Terminator’ within the plot itself, this episode proved to be just fantastic. The casting was so perfect, with Adrian Scarborough (an actor I’ve grown to like over recent years) playing the wonderfully polite-yet-troubled alien doctor Jex, not to mention that awesome dude from ‘Farscape’ and ‘Stargate’ (Ben Browder) and that wonderfully comedic performance from the actor whom played the Undertaker (in a scene similar to that to ‘Back to the Future III’), it all added to be something joyous to watch.

Of course, let’s not forget the most important part of the episode before we go any further: the Doctor got to wear a Stetson again! Never claiming it was cool though, but he got to wear one and there was no sign of River Song to shoot it off either, so he must have been proud! That said, it has to be remarked to Matt Smith’s acting within this episode, starting with some comedic and very convincing American-accented Doctor (“Tea, the strong stuff. Leave the bag in.”) in some classic Eleventh moments, including the Transsexual horse, Susan, all the way to the dark, troubled, quite frightening Doctor to which we’ve seen echoed, although not in full, from the previous episode and quickly in previous seasons. One has to wonder, if this is the route the Doctor will be taking this half-season, what will that make for the so-called ‘Fall of the Ponds’? It’s hard to find them tedious now after this episode, yet even so, as a fan and viewer, I hope that the Doctor’s alien anger doesn’t inadvertently lead the death of the Ponds…

But yes, in the some-what present again, Amy proved a tremendous point within ‘Mercy’ by stating quite clearly the reason why the Doctor doesn’t, and shouldn’t, travel alone: he gets too alien. In fact, one could go deeper and reason that the Doctor chooses (mainly) Humans as his companions because, as a race, they are more compassionate, caring, understanding and, most of all for some, rebellious. Companions have proved throughout the history of Who to put the Doctor in his place, to lead him to make the right choices and let nature, for the better part, take it’s course. Come to think of it, the act of leaving Jex to his possible fate, was a similar act to which the Tenth Doctor failed when trying to save Adelaide from death way back in the ‘Waters of Mars’ – the Doctor was pretty damn scary then too.

Keeping on the subject of Jex though, the reasons that lead to the Doctor practically disowning him halfway through the episode, and also leading the Doctor to, not only point a gun but be ready to shoot it at someone, may have lead down to precisely what Jex was trying to prove: that he and the Doctor were more similar than the Doc wanted to think. Okay, it may be true that the Doctor didn’t test out, kill and convert his species into Cyborgs so as to win a war, yet he did go so far as to wipe his whole lot out just to stop a war. The Doctor ‘disowning’ Jex was only the Timelord’s way of disconnecting himself from the scientist and his own personal past, to fail in re-accepting the acts he once did in the Timewar. Although I could be entirely wrong and you lot are shaking your heads as you read, I like to think I’m getting somewhere with something…

Moving on then! True Western feeling though this episode had, still in keeping with the feel of Who it did, yet there was something missing, for me. Maybe it’s simply a Whithouse-ism, his two previous inputs to Who (‘Vampires in Venice’ and ‘The God Complex’) not being the series’ highest of points, yet this episode did feel GOOD. For me it didn’t quite add up to the previous two episodes, and the dark points to the Doctor really did make me, as a viewer, feel more disconnected to the character than would like, finding reliance moving upon Amy for reassurance that the Doctor isn’t going to turn into some horrible baddie of season’s past. One must remember though: Timelords have a temper!

So, apart from a Dark Doctor, the Amazing Amy and not to mention the Raucous Rory, what else has this episode informed me, as a viewer, as to what to enjoy about Who? Well the Gunslinger for one! A cleverly conceived Cyborg Terminator with the only aim in which to kill it’s makers while attempting to leave innocent lives as innocently as possible – the phrase “He’ll live” comes to mind thanks to ‘Terminator II’ – is a familiar yet wonderful idea and one not used too frequently in Who before, and the man behind the mask, Mr Andrew Brooke; such a brilliant performer, the prosthetics and gun-arm alone must have been hard to handle so Stetsons off to the man!

What else is there to say? I’m sure there’s a tonne you want me to address, or not as some cases may be, but apart from the atypical scenes of a town in turmoil, a rather wooden logo, ooh and a clever ‘Final Showdown’ scene in which the Sonic Screwdriver was involved, there’s not much on my mind TO say. Matt Smith was excellent, Karen was amazing, Arthur was quirky-yet-underused (I thought), and Adrian was just brilliant! The episode itself, although in lieu with the previous two episodes of season seven, seemed somewhat lacking but still just as awesome as the season’s quickly becoming and with a slow invasion of little cubes and the re-reintroduction of UnIT next week, all that can be said now is: bring on the boxes!