10 Most Cringeworthy Doctor Who Moments From The 60s

2. The Ballad Of The Last Chance Saloon - The Gunfighters (1966)

The idea of having a Doctor Who story set in the Old West is in and of itself not a bad one. There was even something of a vogue for this kind of story in 1960s sci fi programmes, if Star Trek's Spectre of the Gun is anything to go by. And if you were to read the novelisation, you'd find that it's also not that bad of a story. In fact, there's really only one reason that The Gunfighters has such a poor reputation among Doctor Who fans. That song. That damned, damned song. "The Ballad of The Last Chance Saloon" begins playing at the start of the first episode and carries on intermittently throughout, narrating the events we're seeing even when we don't need it to. If this had been a missing story, this might have been seen by fans as a positive boon, but wouldn't you know it: this story never got erased. Power of the Daleks? Apart from a few clips here and there, it's gone. Evil of the Daleks? We have one episode out of six. The Gunfighters? We've got every single last second, and it's all narrated for us by an annoying yet catchy song that we can't get out of our heads. What's worse is that it's not just Lynda Barron who gets to sing it (though, frankly, she does have the pipes for it). At one point, Steven Taylor is forced by the regulars at the Last Chance Saloon to sing it - or rather, Peter Purves is forced to, and it shows. Here he is not enjoying himself, and neither are we: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKSocNFdsbc Between this and Morton Dill, Purves was really earning his paycheck back then, wasn't he? Anyway, every time the music starts up in this story, you may find yourself wanting to run from the room. Go right ahead. Or better yet, don't put the story on at all and curl up with Donald Cotton's entertaining novelisation of it instead. There are plenty of copies on eBay.