A Town Called Mercy review [Toby Whithouse]

The Doctor, Amy and Rory land in the wild west where electricity is brand new (although ten year early), a gunman is at large (and he's a cyborg) and a doctor helps keep a community alive and well (but he caused the deaths of millions on his home planet).

When and Where: Amy asked the Doctor to come back for her and Rory a few months into their future, so this is presumably a number of months after Dinosaurs on a Spaceship.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "Tea, but the strong stuff. Leave the bag in."
• "He shoots people's hats!?"
• "Two alien doctors! We're like buses."
• "His name's Susan and he wants you to respect his life choices."
• "Oi! Get out of it."
• The Doctor leaving Solomon to die seemed very uncharacteristic, particularly of the new series Doctors. In this episode, however, he has more of a reason to because giving Jex up to the Gunslinger will save lives in addition to avenging the millions whose deaths he caused, whilst nothing was to be gained from killing Solomon other than as retribution for a few thousand Silurians. Both are understandable but the latter is entirely un-Doctorlike and here his actions present a moral quandary and are challenged rather than just being accepted as they were in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship.
• The Gunslinger is a villain that feels genuinely powerful and threatening, mostly because of his appearance, his gun design and how heavy he sounds when stomping around. We only see him kill two people (and one of them was accidental) but he still manages to be a domineering presence throughout the episode. Him getting a purpose and protecting the town is an unexpected but fitting ending to the story. His self-destruction would have been far less satisfying.
  
• Jex is an interesting parallel to the Doctor, both having committed atrocities during wartime and trying to make up for it afterwards by saving people. Interesting, then, that the Doctor's first instinct is to throw Jex to be killed by the Gunslinger.
• Matt Smith's performance in this episode is absolutely stellar: the comedy, the anger, the difficulty he had watching Jex's records... By the end of series 7 he's mostly a jumble of quirks, but this is the Eleventh Doctor at his absolute finest.

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "You're a mother, aren't you?" Surely women can be kind without having had children.
• "The fact that I'm both bewilders you."
• I heard that Amy and Rory were leaving in The Angels Take Manhattan, but it seems that Rory's already left. He contributed very little to the plot and wasn't given the opportunity to explain more fully why he believed that Jex deserved to die.

This Reminds Me...:

• Amy confirms that she's a mother.
• The Doctor wore a stetson in The Impossible Astronaut.
• The Doctor mentions the victims of the Master and the Daleks.

This Doesn't Remind Me... even remotely of The Gunfighters. Thank God.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: A scary villain, an ethical dilemma and an excellent performance from Matt Smith make this an episode to remember. The Doctor doesn't often get to go through any real development, so it's good to see him learn a lesson. It's sort of like Boom Town with a budget and set to eleven, pun intended, and is a highlight of the Matt Smith era. This episode is a masterpiece, and that earns it an A*.

Doctor Who (Series 7)

Dinosaurs on a Spaceship  |  A Town Called Mercy  |  The Power of Three