Review: A Town Called Mercy

You know the drill.

Spoilers.


































Okay, still there?

So "A Town Called Mercy". The third episode of the seventh series of "Doctor Who".

And the first one I didn't like.

Set in an "Old West" town in the United States, the Doctor, Amy, and Rory pop in the middle of a scattered mess of a plot involving a cyborg gunslinger, a fugitive alien war criminal, and a lot of uncharacteristic nonsense.

I'm honestly not sure I want to get into the plot too much. It's too... just... ragged, random, and jarring.

Toby Whithouse wrote some episodes of "Doctor Who" that I truly disliked. "The God Complex" and "The Vampires of Venice". I can now add "A Town Called Mercy" to the list.

What a waste of Ben Browder in a role.

[EDIT: updated 9/17/2012]: I owe this episode a bit more than "I didn't like it" as a review. Since it's pretty much aired everywhere, I'm going to get into more detail.

The ep starts off randomly. A cyborg ("the Gunslinger") kills some guy with a weird squiggle on the side of his face (Doctor Who is taking makeup tips from "Star Trek the Next Generation", I guess). The Gunslinger ominiously tells his victim that he has one last person to kill: "the doctor". Yes, I didn't capitalize that on purpose.

Cue credits. Next thing you know, the Doctor, Amy, and Rory are in front of an old western town circled by a ring of wood and debris. No sign of the TARDIS. No segue getting our trio there. They're just plopped in midway.

Our plucky TARDIS gang wanders into town and meets the locals. When the Doctor introduces himself, the locals ask if he's an "alien". When the Doctor admits to such, they toss him out of the town anxiously.

In the distance, the Gunslinger starts ominously teleporting into view. Slowly. A few yards at a time.

The Doctor is brought back into the town's "safe zone" (demarked by the debris line) by Isaac (Ben Browder), the town's sheriff. Isaac knows the Doctor is not the Gunslinger's target.

They go to the sheriff's office where they find the true "alien doctor" sought by the Gunslinger: an alien named Kahler Jax (Adrian Scarborough). Jax is of a race called the Kaher (see what they did there?) who are famous for their building skills. Jax has even added electricity to the town (named Mercy) years too early for the timeline and saved the folk from an outbreak of Cholera.

Isaac intends to save Jax from the Gunslinger's tender mercies.

The Doctor finds Jax's crashed spacecraft and accesses the ship's archives.

Turns out the Gunslinger wants Jax dead because Jax was one of the medics who made him into a cybernetic killing machine.

The plot falls apart from there.

The Doctor quickly opts to try to kill Jax by giving him over to the Gunslinger.

Isaac disagrees.

There's contrived conflict as Rory sides with the Doctor's un-Doctor-ish behavior while Amy wants to protect Jax.

Isaac winds up getting killed by the Gunslinger, who demands Jax or he'll kill the whole town.

Isaac, with his dying breath, makes the Doctor the town sheriff and asks him to keep everyone safe.

Okay. Pause a minute. There's nothing saving this town from the cyborg killer. The cyborg killer actually made the debris line around the town. He's a "good guy" in that he doesn't want to unnecessarily kill innocents. He's got high-tech targeting and all that fun stuff. He can teleport and shot energy beams.

WHY THE HELL IS THIS CHARACTER PLAYING WEIRD GAMES WITH THE PRIMITIVE EARTHLINGS???? WHY NOT JUST GO INTO THE DAMN TOWN, OFF JAX, AND BE ON HIS MERRY WAY TO CYBORG ORGY-VILLE OR WHATEVER???????

There is no answer for that.

The Doctor proves he can mess up the cyborg Gunslinger using his sonic screwdriver. So why not incapacitate the cyborg? Who the hell knows?

Why does the Doctor suddenly get into homicidal mode so quickly? There's an off-the-cuff comment that he's been "traveling alone for too long" but there's no indication how long Amy and Rory have been with him this time. Seems the Doctor hasn't really been alone, so... wtf?

Long story short, Jax sacrifices himself. The Gunslinger remains as a guardian of the town in perpetuity as some kind of "legend" watching from the distance.

Toby Whithouse should be banned by law from ever penning another television script for "Doctor Who" for the rest of eternity.

Thus endeth my edit and the balance of my opinion on this travesty of an episode.