7X03 A Town Called Mercy (Grading/Discussion) (SPOILERS!)

[Samurai8472]

The Doctor gets a Stetson (and a gun!), and finds himself the reluctant Sheriff of a Western town under siege by a relentless cyborg, who goes by the name of the Gunslinger.


But who is he and what does he want? The answer seems to lie with the mysterious Kahler-Jex, an alien doctor (yes another one!) whose initial appearance is hiding a dark secret.

[Takeru]

Great episode, I'd like the Moffat era more if it had more episodes like this.

[Lonemagpie]

Not bad, but not as good as the first two. A bit too lecturing on the Doctor's - and by extension the writers' - morality. Felt like being preached to.

Music was disappointing too.

On the upside, I loved that the rogue simulant - er, I mean, the Gunslinger - ended up as the town's legendary guardian angel.

[Bob The Skutter]

That was my favourite episode of the series so far. Very engaging, nice little story with strong characters. Wish more were like this.

[Ghost Bones]

It was ok. At least it wasn't neoplasmically dreadful like the previous two. The ending did look like Buzz Lightyear nicked Woody's badge.

Why was the Cyborg dressed like a cowboy anyway?

[MacLeod]

Not as strong as the first two episodes.

[Wereghost]

NuWho's Episode Three syndrome strikes again, though not as heavily as last year or the year before. It wasn't terrible by any stretch but it did feel like a wasted opportunity and as if the dialogue lacked a once-over by someone like Moffat. It also felt like a storyline from the recent US comic book, which had variable quality and imo deteriorated towards the end. Full disclosure, though: I was distracted a bit while watching this, so may not have been giving it its full due. Nice Henry VIII quip, too.

So the Doctor's 1200ish now? I wonder what the thinking behind this rapid relative ageing is. Is the show's 50th anniversary to be the Doctor's 1000th? Has he been slowly closing he gap between his stated and real ages? Has he been bringing up a new race of Time Lords with River?

[wamdue]

I actually really enjoyed it, the focus on the Doctor is a really nice change, and the way it scales down the Doctors bigger battles works very well.

That said I am left wondering something about the Doctor, exactly how up himself was his 10th self? for the whole "men who never would thing" it seems the Doctor is far from a stranger to doing something, ok I guess we knew this from the Time War, BUT 10 really over plays the other way around, the Doctor is clearly capable of loosing his best side when travelling alone.

This may have always been true, and its just that the 10th Doctor liked to deny it alot, pretend that wasnt the case. The show is also using it (and certainly talking about it) too much.

That said, with the focus on the Doctor, again it feels pointless keeping Amy and Rory around, when this could have worked with almost any companion.

The lack of female characters is hardly unsurprisingly in this, given its a Western.

As for the over all plan, it is basically giving Kahler a head start, but its not like the Doctor should not have suspect he may kill himself, but that was I guess his choice, as it was when he didn't step over the line the first time, after the Doctor stopped pointing the gun that is.

[Ghost Bones]

Scrawny71 wrote:

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NuWho's Episode Three syndrome strikes again, though not as heavily as last year or the year before.

...eh? The Unquiet Dead, School Reunion and Gridlock all have reasonable claim to being the best in their respective series.

[MacLeod]

Ghost Bones wrote:

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...eh? The Unquiet Dead, School Reunion and Gridlock all have reasonable claim to being the best in their respective series.

Only if you don't count episodes like "Dalek", "The Girl In The Fireplace" and "Blink"

[Wereghost]

School Reunion was really good. TUD, though far from terrible, I didn't care for very much coming off the previous two episodes. Gridlock wasn't really to my taste and seemed a little pedestrian (no pun intended). VOTD was a near-total misfire and COTBS wasn't nearly as good as it should have been. It was the latter two I was mainly thinking of. In both cases, the season IMO had opened pretty strongly, so it's as much a relative drop in quality as a standalone quality thing. Could just be that the first couple of episodes have been receiving more care and attention from the writers etc.

[Pindar]

Not top bad at all, didn't feel like Ben Browder was in it enough for me.

It looked amazing and I liked what they did with the themes but it was all a bit heavy handed.

More of Rory's dad next week!

His name is Susan and he wants you to respect his life choices.

[MacLeod]

Yep, Ben Browder wasn't in it that much.

[Holdfast]

Distinctly average.

Nothing particularly awful, nothing particularly brilliant. Lots of elements felt vaguely derivative enough to come across as tired, admittedly probably without being direct influences. Still, who wasn't reminded of either Westworld or TNG's The Hunted while watching?

Having said that, I thought it was a much better story than last week's Dinosaur claptrap, though far weaker than the opening Asylum episode. What it really needed to lift it out of the mire of mediocrity was a really killer psychologically-explosive exchange between the two Doctors about death, guilt, morality, justice & personal responsibility. After all, they both had quite a unique perspective on making choices that impacted on wars. I thought we were going to get it at one point but the conversation at night in the sheriff's office just drifted into nothingness. Shame, really.

On another note, I've never really warmed to Amy & Rory anyway, but I really thought they didn't need to be in this episode. The only thing they had to do was Amy's cringeworthy speech to the Doctor stopping him from surrendering the other doctor to the cyborg. The writers could have given the ethical essence of that speech to the Sheriff and it would have probably sounded less forced coming from a character so embedded in town's story rather than from a companion.

[Guy Gardener]

Awful.

bak of my head the hole way through I'm thinking even Red Dwarf had a better Western than this... But shouldn't this have been a Davros story? Compared to Davros, this mad scientist was dissecting frogs.