10 Criminally Underrated Doctor Who Stories

4. A Town Called Mercy

Doctor Who A Town Called Mercy
BBC

Saddle up for a wild ride, pardner! In this episode, the Doctor goes to the Wild West for a rootin’-tootin’ cowboy caper. Or so you might think. At first glance it might seem like you’re in for a cheesy charmer of an episode here, but in fact A Town Called Mercy is surprisingly subdued and contemplative, offering fascinating insight into The Doctor’s character.

Sure, it has plenty of fun playing with the Western genre, but at its core this is a tense slow-burner of a story focused on a moral dilemma. The Gunslinger, a cybernetically-augmented warrior created by alien scientist Kahler Jex, arrives in the town of Mercy to hunt down his creator and take revenge. The Gunslinger has established a patrol boundary around the town, preventing anyone from entering or leaving, so its populace are slowly starving.

Jex, meanwhile, has integrated himself into the town and is helping the townsfolk by treating their ailments and providing useful technology. Once the Doctor learns all this, he is conflicted: does he allow the tortured Gunslinger to take revenge against Jex? Jex fashioned dozens of his own species into weapons against their will, but he now seems repentant and is helping innocent people. Does the Doctor show mercy, knowing that Jex may have learned nothing and may simply default back to his evil deeds? A fascinating conundrum, and one which makes this episode one of the most introspective stories in the show’s history.

Advertisement
In this post: 
Doctor Who
 
First Posted On: 
Contributor

Patch is a pop culture enthusiast and purveyor of puns. He writes about media in a vague attempt to justify the alarming amount of time he spends consuming it. Nobody's convinced... but nobody's told him that yet. He spends his spare time working on Portal 2: Desolation, an ambitious fan-made sequel to Valve's beloved puzzle games.