The Gunfighters

Watching Donald Cotton’s “The Gunfighters” is simply put, a test of endurance. How many times can you stand listening to the same refrain, over and over again? Across the four episodes of this story, Tristram Cary’s "Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon" bookends almost every scene in the whole damn story! If you do as I foolishly did, and sit down to watch all four episodes in one sitting, I swear by the end of it you will feel your grip on sanity sliding. At least back in 1966 when it first aired, the assault on the eardrums was spread out over a month!

It is hard to believe that the same season that spawned the intergalactic blockbuster, “The Daleks’ Master Plan,” futuristic stories like “Galaxy 4” and “The Ark” and even mind-bending serials like “The Celestial Toymaker” could farm out something like this – a tongue in cheek pastiche Western, telling of events culminating in the legendary gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona back in 1881. If nothing else, it proves the flexibility of the series’ format! To be fair, it’s not all bad. Well… in terms of the story it is absolute pants, but it is good for a laugh and at the end of the day, that’s exactly what Cotton was aiming for when he wrote it.

“The Gunfighters” sees Steven and Dodo dress up as cowboys, put on Yankee accents and even take to singing in saloons! Even the Doctor dons a Stetson! Remarkably, even Dodo isn’t as annoying as usual – in fact, with retrospect, this is probably her least offensive outing; for once her inherent stupidity and feeble-mindedness fits in well with the comic theme. She even looks a bit better than usual with her hair extensions! 

The plot itself revolves around the Doctor being mistaken for Doc Holliday, and that’s about it really! The shoot out in episode four (which is the last episode to have an individual episode title until “Rose” 39 years later!) looks quite good on screen, there’s a busty singer thrown into the mix to help things along, and William Hartnell gives one hell of a performance considering what he had to work with. In all honesty though, unless you’re a hardcore completist you should probably write this one off. There are worse Doctor Who serials out there, but you’ll struggle to find one with a weaker plot and you certainly won’t find one with as annoying a jingle!