The Gunfighters

Story Title: The Gunfighters
Series: 3 Story No: 8 Episode Count: 4
Doctor: 1st Companions: Steven & Dodo
Date(s) Watched: Tuesday 30th June 2009

A story that many a fan dislikes, mainly due to the “Last Chance Saloon” song that opens & closes nearly every scene in each episode, however I rather liked this story, mainly as it’s a lot of fun at least if anything else. The sets & costumes are very convincing indeed, for me at least, you get a feel that The Doctor, Steven & Dodo are actually in the Wild West. A lot of the American accents are rather passable as well, especially Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, the Clanton brothers, Kate & Charlie. However a couple slip up several times (Virgil Earp) and Johnny Ringo sounds more like a Cockney that a Wild West cowboy, most of the time.

However I managed to look past the dodgy accents & song that even got to me a bit by episode 4 and just enjoyed the story. It’s rather fast paced & does have plenty going on it, Peter Purves & Jackie Lane seem to be enjoying themselves throughout the story & the support cast also give their all in their parts. Hartnell however is great in this, first off with the rather convincing acting with his tooth ache & then his reactions to everything going on around him, first off being wrongly identified as Doc Holliday, then being handed a gun every episode, much to his disgust & then finally being made Deputy Sheriff for a brief period.

Speaking of The Doctor’s tooth ache, it seems a very odd thing to include in the story, of which it originated from the closing moments of The Celestial Toymaker, but I put this down to the start of the First Doctor’s deterioration that was kicked off in The Daleks Master Plan, when the Time Destructor ultimately aged him before Steven reversed the process somewhat to stop the Doctor dying. The Toymakers interference, where by he made the Doctor invisible, probably also didn’t help & I imagine that this event also somewhat weakened the Doctor, which may explain why he hurt his tooth so easily.

From what I understand the recounting of the event is completely inaccurate in Who but I still find the story highly enjoyable and wouldn’t hesitate to watch it again.

Overall Rating: 4/5 – Yes the song is irritating & the accents are all over the place, however the story is a bit of fun & bumbles along at a nice entertaining pace & is certainly not as bad as some make out, now if only they could edit out that song when it finally makes it to DVD.