The Doctor In The TARDIS

Hello all. It's been a few weeks since a new story was posted, thanks to pesky Christmas getting in the way, but we return now with the First Doctor story, The Gunfighters.

Arriving in the town of Tombstone, the First Doctor finds himself involved with gunmen, out to kill Doc Holliday...

The Gunfighters was the eighth story of Season 3 of Doctor Who. Its final episode, "The O. K. Corral", was the last individually-titled episode until The Five Doctors, the ninety-minute 20th Anniversary special.

This story saw Doctor Who's take on the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. William Hartnell would later claim that the Wild West setting was his idea, a statement which was confirmed on the DVD bonus features. The director, Rex Tucker, was originally chosen to direct An Unearthly Child but filming interfered with a holiday he had booked. This was Tucker's only Who credit.

The Gunfighters was the only serial to have a song written especially for it until The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, decades later. "The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon" was sung off screen by Lynda Baron who would later appear in Enlightenment and Closing Time.

The role of Johnny Ringo was offered to veteran actor Patrick Troughton, but he was too busy. Troughton would later be asked back, and won the role of the Second Doctor. The actor playing Doc Holliday, Anthony Jacobs, brought his son, Matthew Jacobs onto the set. Matthew would later write the telemovie.

The poor AI ratings received by The Gunfighters strengthened Donald Cotton's argument that historical stories should be axed.

The next story will be posted on Sunday January 8th.

It will be interesting to see how people take to this one. It never has been very popular. I've not rewatched it since I got the DVD so this is a good excuse I guess.

I've never seen this one. It seems to get mixed reviews though so I don't hold out much hope for excellence.

This gets a 3 from me. Generally I quite like the historicals but this one felt a bit like it dragged, despite only being 4 eps long. I also wasn't keen on the song that came in to change every scene. It was a novelty at first but got tedious towards the end.

That said though, I love the setting and the costumes and given the budgets and restraints they faced I think they did a pretty awesome job. I have to admit I was sort of dreading this one. I'd heard it was awful and that it was the worst rated story ever, but I think that it was actually pretty good. There were things I didn't like so much but it definately doesn't deserve to be the story with the lowest ever AI.

I think this is one of those stories that looked good on paper but didn't really come off on screen as well as it could have. It's probably down to budgets more than anything else, though it did feel a bit like this story could have been done over two episodes. With that in mind though it does have its moments where it's pretty good and some funny lines mixed in too. It's also worth it just to see the look of shame on Stevens face as he sings along beside the piano ;D

I'm giving it a 3

I gave it a three as well. Doctor Who in the early days did like an historical romp - and the wild west seemed tailor-made for Who travellers. Unfortunately as K.E.P. and Exterminate both say, it just didn't quite work for me either. The script was a little laboured and the whole situation was a bit forced. Sadly, the Wild West never looked so middle class and RADA'd - and I don't think that helped. I agree with the general consensus - some nice moments but nothing that couldn't have been done in two episodes

I'm going with a four. It's never been a popular story and it's not one I put on very often, but it's sort of a bit of a guilty pleasure I guess. It was definately punching above it's weight, no doubt about that, but at least it gave it a go. It's better to try and fail, as they say.

I gave it a two, and that's only because of Hartnell and Purves's comic sense.  The whole thing's a pantomime version of the Wild West, it's historically all over the place, and the accents are appalling.

I've given it a three. I love 'wild west' type stuff and this is bad, but I still find it enjoyable enough. It's not a great story and factually it was all over the place, but if you don't take it too seriously it's not a difficult watch.

I'm going to go with a three as well. It was one of those stories where it just feels like everything should come together and work brilliantly, but never really translates onto the screen. It's also one of the very few historicals where the lack of sci-fi feels really obvious and not in a good way. The cast was all good though and I love some of the costumes.

I have gone with a 2. This had all the potential to be so much better, even on 1960s budgets, but they squeezed in too many characters, had that dreadful song in the background and fictionalised events that were actually well documented. It was acted well though and had some funny bits so that's why it didn't get a 1.

I don't mind that too much though. Unless it's the news or a documentary then I think it's pretty much a given that the truth will be poked, prodded and stretched to fit the story being told. Every 'based on' story does it to some extent. Come to think of it, often so does the news and documentaries.

Not one of my favourites, this, but by no means one of the worst of the First Doctor era. I really didn't like the song that kept playing and it was about 45 minutes longer than it needed to be, but when it was good it was really quite enjoyable.

There's a difference between poked, prodded and stretched, and cut into small pieces and reassembled in a completely different order.  It always annoys me when a film totally rewrites a well-known story - if they're going to write their own story, why pretend it's something else? *coughTroycough*

Awww no, don't pick on Troy. I know there are quite sizeable liberties taken within the script, but I love that film

It's definately not an educational film, put it that way, but I like Troy too.

Doctor Who for the most part has been pretty good with historical accuracies I think. More often than not they tend to just write themselves into the action without disturbing the actual known events. Off the top of my head I think The Gunfighters was one of the worst offenders.

Like the beginning, the middle and the end  :-\  It probably is an entertaining film if you just take it simply as it is, but it's just plain not the story of the Trojan War, which is one of the greatest stories of western literature.  Like I said, if they wanted to write their own story, why couldn't they have just called it their own?

I wouldn't recommend it to someone who was looking to learn about Troy and the war, I know that much, but just as a film without concentrating too much on fact I think it's a good film.

I love Troy. It's one of my favourite films.

This though, I was a little less keen about. It's not as bad as it's reputation would have us believe, but it's not really worthy of buckets of praise either. It has it's funny moments, but the downside to that is that I don't think they were all intentional. I like western stories, but this isn't a great one and the song made it that little bit worse. I'm going with a 3

OK, last word on Troy - I suppose it depends how much you care about the real story of the Trojan War.  I care about it passionately, so this irritates the !$!/! out of me.  Each to their own, though.