T: There’s an interesting sociology experiment in which a teacher is told at the beginning of the year that six pupils are the best, and six others are trouble. A year later, the top six and bottom six in the class match what she had been told – and yet, the kids had initially been picked entirely at random. And this is what has happened with The Gunfighters... back in the days when so much of Doctor Who wasn’t commercially available, Doctor Who – A Celebration (1983) famously informed us that The Gunfighters wasn’t just a bad Doctor Who story, it was the bad Doctor Who story, and it’s suffered from an inherited negative perception ever since. I vividly recall, in fact, overhearing a young fan ask another (they must have been 11 or 12, the little whipper-snappers – this is when I was a wise old sage of, ooh, 15), “What’s the worst Doctor Who story... apart from, of course, The Gunfighters, which everyone knows is rubbish.” I very much doubt that they had seen it, of course, and yet these young rascals felt certain that this adventure was horrid – even though, I would argue, it’s got far fewer shortcomings in the departments of writing, direction and acting than so much of what surrounds it.
As you say, Rob, this is nothing like as bold as Cotton’s script for The Myth Makers... nor should it be. It’s a witty pastiche that asks us to have fun with the conventions of a popular form. The comedy works very well – Hartnell is great (and slightly more restrained than normal; his grasp of the deadpan is much better than all that dotty giggling), I particulary like his exhortation to his “fellow thespians” and the way he keeps referring to Wyatt Earp as “Mr Werp”. Speaking of whom, John Alderson is splendid in the role – he’s comfortable in the genre (he acted in the States a lot, and indeed died there), and has the authority to pull it off. There’s an openness and a lightness of touch about him, which means he can handle the funnies too. When the slightly embarrassed Steven is forced to apologize, “No, you see, I’m not really a gunman...”, Alderson’s polite response – “You did kinda make that look obvious, didn’t you, boy?” – is charmingly amusing.
And if we’re highlighting the key actors on display this, Peter Purves is game, isn’t he? If ever there’s a lack of consistency in his character, he adapts his performance to fit whatever style the week’s script demands from him. So today, he’s come over all Morton Dill, with a blizzard of comedy double takes and nervous bravado. The zealous comic gusto Steven displays here is completely different to the angry pragmatism he used to make events in The Celestial Toyroom have the appearance of being even vaguely threatening. In this era where the lead character is being more and more sidelined, Purves is an unsung hero.
For good measure, this first episode also gives us a dentist’s shop advertised by a massive molar hanging outside, and a great scene between the Doctors Who and Holliday, where the latter offers a bash on the bonce as an anaesthetic before removing the Doctor’s tooth, and whose response to our Doctor’s haughty “I never touch alcohol” is to say “Well I do...” and knock back a mouthful before operating. It’s wonderful stuff! I hate to say it, Rob, but perhaps the reason this story isn’t very beloved is that they don’t understand that it’s not taking itself entirely seriously? Is it wrong of me to point out that some quarters of fandom aren’t famed for their sense of humour? I’ve even seen the Doctor’s response to Holliday’s “Good bye and good luck” – “The same to you and many of them!” – listed as a mistake, as a goof, when it’s clearly a deliberate choice. With every scene, Donald Cotton is trying to strip away all the dour seriousness and gritty moodiness of this genre and muck about with it. If some people don’t get how much of this is meant to be a joke... well, don’t shoot the writer.
February 28th
Don’t Shoot the Pianist (The Gunfighters episode two)
R: The thing is, though, you can see why fandom didn’t embrace The Gunfighters. They weren’t (just) being curmudgeonly, or failing to have a sense of humour. The plotting is slow, to say the very least. And it’s a story that hinges entirely on the Clanton brothers wanting to kill Doc Holliday, and mistaking him for the Doctor. That’s it. There are no other frills to this. It’s structured very oddly, so that every time you think the story is getting somewhere, the Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon pops up to make you feel distanced from it. (It’s not that it’s a bad tune, or that Lynda Baron can’t sing – but we’ve heard it in so many contexts already by the end of episode two, performed by Peter Purves and Sheena Marshe as well, that it does begin to grate.) And although the acting from all the supporting cast is pretty strong – especially Anthony Jacobs as a charming Holliday – the accents are abysmal. Across the board. And from line to line. You might feel that within the comedy they’re intentionally bad, but they’re not – there’s nothing intrinsically funny in being pulled out of the action every time someone opens their mouth.
So although I’m really enjoying The Gunfighters, I can understand completely why a fandom who was picking its way through the black and white stories, and looking for monsters while doing so, might prefer The Dalek Invasion of Earth. It’s all a matter of context. More than ever, watching these stories in order, day after day, I can appreciate The Gunfighters for its charm and its sense of fun – it really does feel like a breath of fresh air, and to be given permission to laugh at something is a joy. And William Hartnell continues to shine. I just love the Doctor here – watch his childlike delight in being able to show “Mr Werp” that he can swivel a pistol, and his bemused irritation that everybody keeps giving him guns. It’s a performance that recalls the dotty old grandfather from Season Two, but played with less fumbling about, less tics, and more down-to-earth accurate comic timing. This isn’t the greatest story of the Hartnell era, or the greatest comedy of its time either – but it may just be a collection of Hartnell’s finest moments. And if for nothing else, that makes it something to cherish.
T: I’m a bit reluctant to lay into accents – it’s usually something done by lazy critics, and often erroneously. (A number of my mates mocked the American accents in some of the new series episodes until I pointed out that the actors in question were actually using their own native brogue.) But on this occasion... well, your highlighting of the vocal shortcomings is fair enough. John Alderson’s Wyatt Earp is spot on, but the baddies are all over the place, save for Shane Rimmer’s Seth Harper. So it adds insult to injury when Harper is the first person to get killed! What? Why didn’t they cast Rimmer (a Canadian) as Ike Clanton? The man they’ve cast instead, William Hurndell, is giving one of the oddest performances I’ve ever seen – it’s not just the accent; physically and verbally, he’s a real mush. At times he reminds me of the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz! And it’s to this charisma-free plank that they’ve given the job of rallying the lynch mob.
Otherwise, William Hartnell continues to give a kind of performance that really suits him; he’s blithely pulling this off with all the skill of an old sweat who knows what the gags are and how to throw them out. Peter Purves likewise hurls himself into this and emerges pretty unscathed, although there are occasions where he flirts with reminding us of Roy Castle in that Dalek movie! And it’s a bit odd that Purves is singing live, whilst Sheena Marshe (as Kate, Doc Holliday’s girlfriend) is so badly dubbed, you think for a moment she might have been replaced by a Dalek-made robot double. But I love that everyone seems to be having fun with this – it’s a great moment when the actors playing the baddies opt to deliver the line “Alive, that is!” in unison, even if they spectacularly fail to pull it off. And isn’t Anthony Jacobs terrific as Doc Holliday? I adore the way he tips his hat to Harper’s corpse, then smacks Dodo’s bum!
It sometimes happens in entertainment that when the tone is comic, everyone decides that that’s enough and they don’t really bother in any other department... but that’s not the case here. For all we might enjoy the comedy aspects of The Gunfighters, it’s wonderfully designed – the sets are absolutely fantastic, the costumes work both in terms of authenticity and what they say about the character of the people wear
ing them, and they’ve even got a horse in the studio! And there’s an underlying current of tension to all of this – the darkened scene in Holliday’s salon is moodily lit, benefitting from the sly quips and mutual respect issuing from the veteran gunslingers. There’s also a shocking moment in the pub where Bat Masterson shoves the Doctor with some force. It’s quite unusual to see the leading man (played by an actor we know is frail) chucked about quite so unceremoniously.
For my money, this Corral is a lot more than OK.
Johnny Ringo (The Gunfighters episode three)
R: It’s the first time since Kublai Khan popped up on our screens that a character (apart from the Doctor) has been deemed worthy of taking the title of an episode. And the first time since then too that by making a late appearance in a story, a real-life historical figure has changed the entire tone of the drama. As Johnny Ringo, Laurence Payne blows like a cold wind through the plodding comedy of The Gunfighters. Death suddenly seems more serious, the stakes more tense. We go from one scene where it’s inferred that Doc Holliday has gunned someone down just to steal his breakfast, to Payne’s fantastic introduction, in which he amiably terrorises poor barman Charlie and then shoots him dead before turning in for the night. Payne is excellent; he crafts Ringo as the first character in this story who isn’t hiding behind a silly accent or comic shtick, and by playing it so completely straight, he allows the rest of the comedy to seem much funnier in retrospect. Certainly, the scene where Dodo orders Doc Holliday at gunpoint to take her back to Tombstone has a different feel to it in the context of Charlie’s death – but it’s probably the high point of the episode, and Jackie Lane’s finest moment on the series, as she so reluctantly turns protagonist and then visibly crumbles with relief once her demands are met, asking her victim for a glass of water.
T: Anyone doubting the intentions behind this story need only to listen to the fantastic (but irritatingly catchy) ballad, which goes bonkers this week! “So pick him up gentle/And carry him slow/He’s gone kinda mental/Under Earp’s heavy blow.” You say that he’s gone kinda mental, Lynda? Well, if he has, he’s not alone!
The comedy is again superb, and the actors are clearly relishing the opportunity it presents. The Doctor’s suggestion that Holliday is a friend of his (“He gave me a gun, extracted my tooth, what more do you want?”) and Steven’s sotto voce repudiation of it are very funny, and Hartnell is also great in the prison scene – the moment where he innocently shows Earp Ringo’s Wanted poster is blissful, especially when Earp rolls his eyes and chucks the picture away.
That some of the acting is rubbish (the Clantons are, at least, consistently awful) is less of a hindrance here than it would be in other stories – this is supposed to be a send up, after all. I don’t think these actors deliberately chose to play it that way, but that almost adds to the charm – there’s a really odd moment, after Phin has been arrested, where Ike Clanton suddenly gets very camp and minces off, which is very bizarre but also a bit wonderful.
But I absolutely agree that the episode belongs to Laurence Payne, who is all subtle menace and impressively cool in his black leather trousers. It’s great how his method of chatting up Kate entails threatening her with a pistol (“Marry me or I’ll shoot you” – try it lads, it works!), and his scene with Charlie is fantastically amoral and effortlessly menacing. And with my having fallen off the non-smoking wagon and only just climbed back on it, I also note with annoyance how cool he looks puffing on his cheroot.
After New Earth was broadcast in 2006, Payne wrote to one of the national papers (The Times, I think) praising the imagination of the new series. I therefore find it doubly sad – especially when I’ve just watched his performance here, in which he’s strong, powerful, robust and untouchable – to hear that he died just a few days ago. In real life, regrettably, we can only travel through time in one direction.
March 1st
The O.K. Corral (The Gunfighters episode four)
R: It’s the last time that Doctor Who uses individual episode titles (that is, until that Slitheen story in 2005 upsets the apple cart, provoking wails of concern about whether it should be called Aliens of London or World War Three), and by doing so spoils the fun for fans arguing about how they should actually refer to all these adventures. Personally, I don’t see why the fun should stop. I’m still going to think of, say, The Sontaran Experiment as The Destructors (as made canon by the BBC Sound Effects Album!), or Delta and the Bannermen as Flight of the Chimeron, or Dalek as The One Where I Panicked Over Deadlines For Seven Months.
The episode opens with the Doctor and the Earps taking off their hats in respect of the dead – and it’s a marked change in tone from the merry comedy of the past three instalments. As if to acknowledge this, there’s a lovely moment where Hartnell rests his hand upon the table – only to realise grimly that he’s touching a corpse. Just as he did in The Myth Makers, Donald Cotton here lets the laughs die outright, and we’re presented with a massacre. What began as a running joke – with the Doctor protesting against being given guns – becomes an earnest appeal for peace and reason, as he tries to dissuade both Wyatt Earp and Pa Clanton from a course of action that can only result in bloodshed. The odd thing about this new, more sober approach is that it doesn’t really leave any room for our series regulars at the climax, and for the first time since The Reign of Terror, the show is somewhat gazumped by proper history. Dodo gets to be a hostage for Johnny Ringo for a minute, but otherwise it’s remarkable how unimportant the TARDIS crew are to the resolution of this adventure – especially considering that Cotton clearly wasn’t concerned with the accuracy of the history. He tries to rectify this in his novelisation by allowing the Doctor to shoot Billy Clanton accidentally – but by doing so, of course, he keeps the comedy coming even through the death-filled finale. I rather prefer the TV version, even if it means our heroes are sidelined. Rex Tucker stages the gunfight impeccably, and for a few minutes the BBC really are doing a Western, and there are no holds barred – for once, there’s a climax to a story which genuinely feels grand and effective. Truth to say, that’s only because there’s no sign of the Doctor anywhere – it only works because you can let yourself believe for a while you’re not watching Doctor Who at all.
T: The grand finale of this story entails us leaving the studio (and the medium of videotape) behind for an impressively staged gunfight, all done on film, with sweeping crane movements, high angles and loads of gunfire. The Earps look cool walking calmly up the street, and even the ballad suggests things ain’t so much fun any more. What was a comedy for so long ends with brutal stuff: Doc Holliday coldly shoots Billy again and again, and Ike’s doomed ascent up the stairs is pretty horrifying. He finds himself out of bullets and with nowhere to turn, as the “good guys” calmly and calculatedly take aim and take turns shooting him down. The only thing missing from this slaughter is Johnny Ringo’s parting shot from the wonderfully witty novelisation – in which, having been shot, Ringo quips that his gall has just been divided into three parts.
There’s more substance to this episode than the final shootout, though – Hartnell has a commanding face off with the excellent Reed de Rouen (who as Pa Clanton gets to wear a fab costume), and Sheena Marshe acquits herself well in the same scene; she’s full of faux coquettishness before delivering a killer revelation. John Alderson’s grief at Warren’s death is dead straight, and his hoarse voice is laced with proper emotion. But it’s Doc Holliday himself who provides most of the colour for this episode – his hand-on-hip, self-aware entrance is as much fun as his cackling when he’s asked about “his way” of dealing with Johnny Ringo and the Clantons.
But ultimately the whole gunfight (the whole episode even) gives lie to Doctor Who – A Celebration’s hypothesis about this story. In labelling this the worst Doctor Who adventure of all time, that book accused the script of being pure Talbot Rothwell (it ain’t – there is silly wordplay sure, but it’s actually much more sophisticated than a Carry On film), of having acting
that’s bad vaudeville (there’s a plethora of worse performances in The Ark and The Keys Of Marinus, to name but two) and direction that’s more West Ham than West Coast (a nice bit of wordplay there, but with no basis in truth). The piece then says this story was “not good – it was bad and ugly” – again, that’s well punned, but it’s also the sort of thing it accuses the script of doing. And then, of course, it’s blatantly wrong to say that this was the lowest-rated story ever (the worst of these episodes, at 5.7 million, still outperform the best of the very next story in line, at 5.6 million).
I worry here, Rob, that nothing we can say, and no amount of proof we can offer, will alter the embedded, general feeling that The Gunfighters is somehow worse than most of the black and white era – it really, really isn’t. Still, I should stop defending it – otherwise, some reviewer might get annoyed with my stroppiness and decide that the book they’re holding is the worst Doctor Who project ever. Even worse, they may that write that down, and then everyone might believe it for the next 25 years at least.
Running Through Corridors: Rob and Toby's Marathon Watch of Doctor Who (Volume 1: The 60s) Page 35
