ANDREW'S
DOCTOR WHO REVIEWS 
This is a sort of middle-of-the-road kind of story which
looks really good, but in the end isn’t quite as satisfying as you hope it’s
going to be. The conclusion of the story is, perhaps, a little too obvious from
early on and so there aren’t many surprises throughout.
The Doctor picks up Amy and Rory once again and they arrive
at Mercy, an American frontier town, which is under siege by something called
‘the Gunslinger’ (Andrew Brooke) who is some kind of cyborg and is demanding
that the townsfolk handover Kahler-Jex (Adrian Scarborough) who is a criminal
on his own planet. The people of Mercy, however, were saved by Jex and are
reluctant to hand him over.
The Doctor escapes from Mercy and encounters the Gunslinger
who confirms that Jex is a scientist without morals who helped create cyborg
soldiers, experimenting on and killing many Kahler people in the process. The
Gunslinger has tracked down all of Jex’s colleagues and killed them – only Jex
remains. The Doctor returns to Mercy and drags Jex to the edge of town where
the markers are that the Gunslinger cannot pass. Amy stops him from handing Jex
over, saying he has changed from travelling alone. The Gunslinger gives them a
deadline of the following day at noon.
Jex convinces the Doctor that he repents his behaviour and
is trying to atone for his crimes. The Doctor hatches a plan to allow Jex to
escape. Jex does this, but decides to blow his ship up to stop the Gunslinger
from pursuing him or taking revenge on the town.
The Doctor then convinces the Gunslinger to become a
guardian for the town of Mercy.
This story looks superb, filming in Spain makes a very
convincing Western Desert and the town of Mercy is really well realised. By and
large, the acting is great. Matt Smith is now so at home playing the Doctor
that it feels effortless but in both this story and the previous one he is
given this hard edge which doesn’t quite sit right with his gentler Doctor and
even Amy calls him out on it.
Adrian Scarborough is so good at playing this sort of
shifty, rather oily character, that he does it so superbly and it is one of the
key strong points that hold this story together. The Gunslinger cuts a very
menacing figure – somewhere between Schwarzenegger and Eastwood – and is very
effective but in the end a bit underused.
It’s a story that has some really good bits but is a tad too
obvious and in the end sits somewhere in the middle ground of new Who.
NEXT UP: THE POWER OF THREE
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2022
