Doctor Who : A Town Called Mercy

A cyborg threatens the remote village of Mercy. A western sci-fi.

What could go wrong?

*SPOILER WARNING* For those who are still yet to see it obviously don't look any further!


Actually not much went wrong for it. But it still wasn't that enjoyable!

The plot centers around the village (town whatever) of Mercy. Being a western the BBC went out to Spain to shot at one of the old Spaghetti Western sites (therefore its as authentic as possible!) A Cyborg won't let anyone in or out of Mercy, and its all because of a alien called Jex.

The center of the story comes from the story of the week before, it is all about the Doctors morals. He lets people go, he's like Batman very rarely does he kill people. He wins by using his intelligence and gives second chances.

But what happens when he gives these chances to people who just go and abuse it? Like the Master or the Daleks? Well we have a whole load of evidence of what happens next, and the Doctor knows it.

At first he wants to help Jex, but in helping him the Doctor finds his big secret. Jex actually experimented on people to produce specimens like the cyborg, and now he (like all the others who worked on the project) are slowly being killed off by the cyborg.

So in the end the cyborg (named the Gunslinger in the episode) is actually more of a good guy than Jex.

THAT is what the story has going for it. Adrian Scarborough is wonderful as Jex, Ben Browder is amazing as the sheriff and as always I loved Karen, Matt and Arthur.

Where it went wrong was that a lot of the time the episode seemed to have a lot of words and no context.

It probably is just a personal thing, but I heard the characters talking and none of it mattered much in the long run.

Ben Browders character died saving Jex who didn't really deserve saving, the Doctors morals were sorted out by a short talking too by his mother-in-law. Rory hardly said a word let alone do anything. But everyone lived happily ever after.... Well except for Jex, after the sheriff died to save him and the Doctor decided to save him and people put their lives on the risk to save him Jex went and killed himself anyway using the self destruct on his space ship. The Gunslinger became the new "sheriff" though he lived outside the town hidden away.

It really was a story that just went through the motions, the story was there but the emotion was lacking.

Surprisingly this will probably be the episode I watch more than once even if it was the one I disliked most.

Out of 10 I'd give it 5.

*Though I would like to point out I watched this episode at the end of a bad week and I might not have been paying enough attention, the week after this episode didn't get any better and I haven't re-watched it so on a re-watch I might re-write this because I'll probably like it more*