The Original Doctor Who: The Gunfighters (Story 25, 1966)

Bidding farewell to the infamous Doc Holliday and turning to enter back into the TARDIS, Dodo stops for a moment. She overhears the saloon piano belt out another round of The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon, but the refrain dies away as the Doctor comments: "My dear Dodo, my dear Dodo... you know you're fast becoming prey to every cliché-ridden convention in the American West." That is a very apt description of the first Doctor's 25th adventure, The Gunfighters.



As though the historicals were losing steam by this point, and as if they knew that it would be the pentultimate one of the series, the writers decided to take a different approach. Rather than a straightforward episode of Doctor Who, what we get is a fairly straightforward Western with all of those cliché-ridden conventions. And on top of that, we get them with a farcially fake American accents.

All of the quintessential Western stuff is there: saloons and saloon girls, sheriffs and marshalls, outlaws and dusty streets. To add to the air of cinematic unreality is the everpresent Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon, being a musical narrative in twinkling piano that mirrors the Ballad of Davy Crockett. Not five minutes goes by without the unseen singer catching us up on what we just saw happen. The story itself is set during the most enduring myth of the Old West: the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

The show does have a bit of fun with it, however, and the levity prevents us from looking too far down our noses at it. Prefiguring Marty McFly, Steven is duded up the way he figures folks in the West were, all satin and fringe like a Fifties Country singer. A good deal of the plot is taken up in the Clantons mistaking the Doctor for another Doc by the name of Holliday. In the course of mistaken identity and temporary deputization, the pacifist Doctor is forced to admit that "All these people are giving me guns, I do wish they wouldn't."



There isn't a speck of the historical event that is related accurately, even once the Doctor, Dodo and Steven are taken out of the equation. It is unlikely that this had much to do with the poor reception that The Gunfighters got at the time it aired. Though not the lowest-rated episode ever, as is sometimes maintained, it did receive terribly poor Audience Approval ratings and is widely panned by critics. However, like plenty of Westerns from then to now (the big budget Wild Wild West feature film comes to mind), they seem to have been taking it far more seriously than the writers and cast did themselves.

Not that any of the cast or crew lacked in the adequate performance of their duties, but this serial is so obviously meant to be a corny Western that it's hard not to like it. The Wild West is one of the most versatile of all settings, lending itself quite easily to everything from lighthearted comedy to the roughest of historical realism. The Gunfighters is certainly one of the bloodiest stories involving the First Doctor - given the intimate attention to gunfighting and the cheapness of human life in the climactic meeting at the O.K. Corral - but Doctor Who can hardly be blamed for taking the more lighthearted approach. It was originally intended as childrens' programing, after all.