Who Review: A Town Called Mercy

It's the one with the cyborg cowboy. He shoots a guy, the guy asks "Am I the last one," and the cyborg says "there's one more: the Doctor."

The Doctor arrives at a town called Mercy and finds a load of stones and lumps of wood. The cyborg is tracking him. Mercy may look familiar: it's the set of pretty much every Spaghetti Western ever. Mercy has electricity too early, and the Doctor mentions his Christmas list for the second time in two episodes.

Everyone in the saloon looks up when the Doctor enters. When he says he's the Doctor, the undertaker starts measuring him for a suit. Then when he says he's an alien, they pick him up and carry him out of town. And then point a lot of guns at him. And then the cyborg shows up. The townsfolk start praying, which has to be a first on this show. Then the sheriff - That Guy From Farscape - orders the Doctor back across the town boundary.

Inside the sheriff's office, the sheriff explains everything. The cyborg has erected a boundary around the town and kills everyone who crosses it. The Doctor works out that "the alien doctor" isn't him. It's a guy named Kahler-Jex. He crashed here, and he saved the town from an outbreak of cholera.  And he also rigged up the electric lights.

The Doctor decides he's going to take Jex out in the TARDIS, which is problematic because the TARDIS is outside the boundary. While Rory and Sheriff Crichton distract the Gunslinger, the Doctor rides off on a horse and we learn that Murray Gold can't do Ennio Morricone.

Jex tells Amy he'd rather stay in Mercy and help people.

Meanwhile, the Doctor decides he wants to stop and check something out. He finds a cable buried in the sand and follows it to Jex's spaceship, which appears to be singularly undamaged. It looks like a giant egg. Sonicing it sets off an alarm, drawing the Gunslinger away from Rory and Sheriff Crichton. Digging through Jex's files, he finds that Jex was a war criminal, which might explain his coming-and-going German accent. Then the Gunslinger finds the Doctor and reveals that he's out for "justice," which explains why he hasn't gone and shot up the town yet.

Jex holds Amy at gunpoint, but then Sheriff Crichton reads the script, realizes Jex is a bad guy, and saves her. The Doctor confronts Jex, who says he's a war hero. Jex's people had been at war for nine years, a war that had decimated half his planet. His cyborgs brought peace. Then he decommissioned the cyborgs, and one of them went rogue, because that always happens. Hey guys, don't make cyborgs or AIs, please. If every science-fiction story, ever, is anything to go by, they will go rogue and start killing people.

Jex notes that the Doctor is also a war "hero," although he thinks the Doctor doesn't have the nerve to do what must be done (and, again, having seen Genesis of the Daleks, I'm inclined to agree with him).  The TARDIS crew debates the good, the bad and the ugly of their current situation. Amy wants to forgive Jex, as does Sheriff Crichton, Rory and the Doctor want to chuck him out of town. The Doctor does that and then holds him at gunpoint, waiting for the Gunslinger to show up. Then Amy holds the Doctor at gunpoint. And won't take her frickin finger off the trigger I mean DAMN!

I have to pause the DVD and go into a rant now. I get that Brits are babies when it comes to self-defense and that they're perfectly happy relying on other people to save them when bad guys show up. Fine. Cultural differences. And I guess that explains why Amy doesn't know Gun Safety 101. But it's played for comedy, and that bothers me. Okay, back to the review.

The Doctor admits that he's treating Jax horribly because of his own guilt at not killing the Daleks or the Master or anyone - and I punched the air here - and Amy says he has to be better than him.  The Gunslinger shows up and holds Jex at gunpoint. Jex reveals that he remembers all the cyborgs' names. The Gunslinger shoots, but Sheriff Crichton pushes him out of the way and takes the bullet instead. He dies, telling the Doctor that he and Jex are both good men, they just forget it sometimes. (Okay, his character's name is Marshall Isaac.)

The Doctor sends Jex to his cell, and the Gunslinger says they have until noon tomorrow to hand over Jex or he'll kill everyone. Hey, Doctor, if you'd just gone and gotten the TARDIS like was the plan, Sheriff Crichton would still be alive and the town wouldn't be in jeopardy now.

That night, a gang arrives to take Jex and deliver him to the Gunslinger. There's a standoff that's not at all shot like a standoff. The Doctor gives a speech about how violence doesn't end violence - hey, Doc, tell that to Harry Truman.

The Doctor and Jax have a discussion. Buffy did this sort of thing as an art form - "whose problem are we really talking about here?"  He says "We all carry our prisons with us," and that gives the Doctor an idea.

High noon. The Gunslinger walks into town. There's a kinda-sorta-proper standoff this time, before the Doctor sonics the Gunslinger. Various decoys distract the Gunslinger before he cottons on and goes to the church. The Doctor tells Jex to run for it. The Gunslinger waves his arm cannon around before deciding not to kill anyone. Jex makes it to his ship and uses the tech he's wired up the town with to communicate with the Gunslinger. Jex blows himself up using the ship's auto-destruct, and an appallingly bad effects shot makes it look like his ship was hidden right behind a barn.

The Gunslinger decides to follow him because he's a creature of war with no role to play during peace. The Doctor says he does have a role: to protect it. So the Gunslinger stays as the town's Batman. Or RoboCop.

7 out of 10. Always nice to see the Doctor deal with the whole Time War thing in an episode that doesn't involve the overexposed fascist pepperpots.