A Town Called Mercy
Review
Immediate Reaction
After last week’s dinosaur romp, A Town Called Mercy was an altogether more thoughtful and measured
affair. It’s good to see that, amid the movie-size plot ideas, there’s still
room to explore a concept thoroughly. The presentation of Doctor Kahler-Jex as
a man haunted by the terrible things he has done in the name of war, seeking
redemption in helping others yet forever wracked by the guilt of his
atrocities, uncomfortably mirrors the Doctor. Although the presentation of a
line that the Doctor crosses by showing Jex no mercy at all is a rather too
literal one, we again see a brutal side to the Eleventh Doctor, building on his
treatment of Solomon last week. Without a constant companion, he will let his
enemies die without even the second chance the Tenth Doctor offered. This
darker, crueller Doctor is causing Amy and Rory to grow ever more distant and
he seems to know it, but he doesn’t appear to be able to do anything to stop
their gradual separation.
Matt Smith is well-served by a script that offers him comedy
and dramatic confrontations in equal doses. A
Town Called Mercy is tonally more balanced than Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, although it might have been too talky for
a casual audience. The western tropes were all present and correct, yet they
were merely background details for the studied examination of the two Doctors
in the story.
Amy and Rory were given much less to do, although Jex’s
observations about Amy’s motherhood were sharp and beautifully written. Rory in
particular was sidelined massively with no real standout moment for him.
Oswin aside, Marshall Isaac, Kahler-Jex and the Gunslinger
are the most fully-rounded characters this season has offered us so far. Ben
Browder is excellent in everything he does, and that run is certainly continued
here. He is the conscience of the story and his death forces the Doctor to
assume that mantle. Isaac is the only character who believes in redemption;
despite all the evidence both Jex and the Doctor provide to the contrary, he
believes them both to be good men. Jex and the Gunslinger are both morally
ambiguous creations. Both have committed unforgivable crimes but both are also
misunderstood and seeking redemption and indeed mercy.
Toby Whithouse has produced a string of thoughtful scripts
that have a strong moral centre and incisive character development. That run
continues here, meaning that, as it stands, he is fast becoming the heir
apparent to the Doctor Who show-runner
mantle, should Steven Moffat choose to relinquish it in the future. He is to
Moffat’s reign what Moffat himself was to the Russell T Davies era; a writer
who will take a given idea and turn it into something much better.
The story was beautifully shot. The town and the desert were
totally convincing and it was very easy to accept that the TARDIS crew were
genuinely in the Wild West. The image of the Gunslinger phasing in and out of
the desert was actually quite scary, particularly the first time when he
threatens the Doctor and his intentions have not yet been established.
I very much enjoyed A
Town Called Mercy. Much like Whithouse’s The God Complex from last year, Mercy
is a story that will certainly benefit from a second viewing, as the
maturity of the theme and the character motivations and ambiguities reveal
themselves. It’s the most adult of the stories so far this season, and once
again proves, as if it ever needed reiterating, that Doctor Who can be anything it wants to be. An excellent adventure,
very well-told.
Oh, and I can’t complete a review without mentioning Susan
the gender-confused horse. Genius.
Considered Opinion
(After Second Watch)
I’ve no doubt that some viewers tuned into A Town Called
Mercy expecting a pastiche of the Western genre, much like Back to the Future
Part Three. What we got instead was a mature study into the Doctor’s darker
side and the most ambiguous set of villains that I can remember seeing in
Doctor Who. I’m quite certain that Mercy’s talky nature lost a great many of
its younger audience, but as I touched on above, Doctor Who is many different
things, often at the same time. Therein lies the key to its success and
continued longevity.
Toby Whithouse’s intelligent script referenced all the elements we expect from a cowboy,
such as the saloon sequence, the duel at midday, the local gaol and the
Marshal/ Sheriff who believes in the good of his town. Yet these elements are
merely dressing for the main element of the plot; the Doctor coming face to
face with a war criminal who has done terrible things but is seeking redemption
for his past sins. In truth, the Doctor is coming face to face with himself.
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| 'You're both good men. You just forget it sometimes.' |
In a period of Doctor Who where mentions of the Time War are
correctly becoming more scarce, it’s good to see that, given the right forum,
the subject still has fertile areas to mine. The Doctor’s guilt at his genocide
at the end of the Time War comes to the fore as he discovers how Kahler-Jex
pretty much became the Josef Mengele of his world, surgically altering people
to become cyborg killers. Jex’s argument
that the atrocities he carried out were done in the heat of war and in the name
of peace fall on deaf ears. Or rather, they strike a chord a little tto close
to home for the Doctor, causing him to drag Jex out to be murdered by the
Gunslinger and to eventually aim a gun right at Jex’s head. It’s not many
villains (if Jex is indeed a villain in the truest sense) who can unbalance the
Doctor to the point where his companion needs to point a gun at him to make him
back down.
This exploration of the Doctor’s guilt and rage are new
areas for Matt Smith’s Doctor, and he rises to the challenge perfectly, as if
there would ever be any doubt about that. This is a Doctor in his prime, able
to switch between the emotions at will and deepen our understanding of what’s
behind the genial facade. He is given a lot of good material in A Town Called
Mercy, and once more he bats it out of the park.
If Mercy has a fault, it’s that it sacrifices its rich
background for a lot of scenes of people standing around talking. Rory and Amy
feel particularly short-changed by not being given anything heroic to do. There
was an opportunity in the middle of the episode for Jex to kidnap Amy at
gunpoint, perhaps allowing Rory to rescue her in a shoot-out, but this comes to
nothing in the end. After all, Jex is as conflicted an individual as the
Doctor, so it would be wrong to paint him in the black of an out-and-out
villain even though the story really needs one.
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| 'He's called Susan and he wants you to respect his life choices.' |
In a similar vein, the Gunslinger moves from unknown force
to sympathetic creation a little too quickly. Apart from the opening pre-credits
sequence where we see him kill another of the Kahler, the Gunslinger’s
potential as an iconic monster is slightly squandered. It would have been good
to have seen him remain as the silent threat in the story right up until the
moment he spares the little girl and the townsfolk in the chapel.
But these are niggling issues that don’t detract from the
sheer quality of Whithouse’s writing. Here is a man who is setting himself up
nicely as the Crown Prince to Steven Moffat’s King. If Doctor Who is beginning
to look at the possibilities for a new show-runner, they need look no further
than here. I would love to see him deal with a returning monster next, just to
see how he develops them. His four scripts for the series have seen him move
from romps to more serious fare, so as a writer he clearly has the range.
Oh, and there’s definitely a developing theme regarding
memory. See here for more on that. And the Doctor’s new-found dark side is only
going to lead him into trouble, perhaps when Amy and Rory are no longer there
to be the two voices of his conscience...
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| 'Violence doesn't end violence. It extends it.' |
A Town Called Mercy’s
Ten Brilliant Bits
1.
The Doctor has been forcibly ejected from the
town of Mercy. Carried aloft and thrown outside the town border line, he stands
and dusts himself off. And in the background, the Gunslinger appears, phasing
in and out of reality as he teleports ever closer. ‘He’s coming,’ says the
Preacher. ‘Oh God, he’s coming.’ The fear on the Doctor’s face is genuine. Like
the audience, he has no idea of the threat the Gunslinger poses, only that in
this moment, disappearing and reappearing at will, he is genuinely scary.
2.
Ben Browder’s Isaac is an instantly likeable
creation. In a story centred around characters and relationships, he is a
laconic and calming presence. His immediate trust in the Doctor reveals him to
be a wise man, seeing the good in others when sometimes they cannot see it
themselves. He believes in mercy, both the town and the concept, and his
self-sacrifice is the thing that, even more than Amy’s arguments, brings the
Doctor back to calmness. In a story where nobody is black or white, Isaac is
the voice of reason.
3.
Kahler-Jex is beautifully realised by Adrian
Scarborough. Initially genial, we see the darker side to him as his secret is
revealed and he engages the Doctor in a war of words where neither of them ends
up being the moral victor. His conscience is never far from the surface,
particularly when the Doctor tells him that he cannot choose when and how to
pay his debt. As a mirror image of the war criminal the Doctor believes himself
to be, Jex simultaneously earns our pity and our disgust. Scarborough walks
this fine line with great confidence, creating one of the most complex villains
the series has ever seen.
4.
Susan the gender-confused horse is a wonderful creation.
He (she?) deserves her own section just for the interactions with the Doctor.
Matt Smith responds to every noise his horsey co-star makes, causing me to
wonder just how much of his conversation was scripted and how much was
ad-libbed by Smith.
5.
The moment when the gunslinger bursts into the
chapel with the single intention of massacring all the residents of Mercy
cowering inside, but sees the little girl who knocked over the books in the
first place. He makes eye contact with her and for a fleeting second you see
his entire back story play out across his eyes. The Gunslinger used to be a
father before he became a parody of a man, and he cannot bring himself to kill
her. He powers down and walks away, suddenly a much more complicated creation.
6.
The Doctor has found Jex’s spacecraft, but the
ship obstinately will not open for him. What follows is a glorious few seconds
of jump cuts, as Matt Smith’ physical comedy prowess comes to the fore and the
Doctor tries a succession of failed attempts to get inside.
7.
The Doctor strides into the Mercy saloon. In time-honoured
fashion, everybody stops talking and looks at the newcomer. The Doctor leans
nonchalantly against the bar. ‘Tea,’ he growls to the bargirl. ‘But the strong
stuff. Leave the bag in.’ At the same time, he is chewing on a matchstick that
somehow manages to lodge itself in the roof of his mouth so he can’t get it
out. More effortless Doctorish behaviour from Mr Smith.
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| 'Tea. But the strong stuff. Leave the bag in.' |
8.
The confrontation between Amy and the Doctor,
which sees Amy draw a gun against her friend, hints at just how far apart the
two of them have grown. He used to be her raggedy Doctor, but now he is the
sort of man who will point a gun at a stranger in judgement. In the town of
Mercy, there is none to be found in the Doctor.
9.
After Isaac’s death, the Doctor has assumed the
mantle of Marshal of Mercy. Isaac’s death has shown him the error of his ways,
so when he is confronted by a lynch mob, out for Jex’s blood, he defuses the standoff
where earlier he caused it. ‘Violence doesn’t end violence,’ he tells Walter,
the eighteen year-old kid charged with leading the mob. ‘It extends it.’ This
is as true for the Doctor’s earlier actions as it is for how he conducts his
life. ‘You really worth the risk?’ asks Walter, swayed by his words. ‘Don’t
know,’ admits the Doctor. ‘But you are.’ Once again, the Doctor has found his
moral centre.
10.
The high noon duel plays on all the clichés of
the Western genre, with clock creaking ominously towards twelve, townsfolk in
hiding and the Doctor striking his best cowboy pose. After witnessing the
Doctor wield a gun earlier on, we are hoping he doesn’t resort to trying to
outdraw the Gunslinger. It turns out we needn’t have worried; a fast draw of
the trusty sonic screwdriver scrambles the Gunslinger enough to end the
standoff.
A Town Called Mercy continues Series Seven’s rich vein of
form. It occurred to me that I haven’t enjoyed the three opening stories of a
season since Series Three and Martha. It may have been talkier than the
previous two stories in the season, but it is a tale that rewards repeat
viewing, and that can only be a good thing.
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| When did killing someone become and option?' |
Overall Rating: 8/10
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