A Town Called Mercy - More Westworld Than Western.

The seventh series of Doctor Who continues, and despite getting my wish of more stand alone episodes I'm now left feeling that an arc would have helped things greatly. Three episodes down and two to go until the Ponds' big farewell, but as was the case with Dinosaurs the two are sidelined here with little to do. Despite Moffat introducing a little drama into their relationship in his season opener, these last two episodes feel like they could have been picked from anywhere in the last two years without anything having changed. 

It was Moffat's intention that these five episodes feel like 'mini-movies', and while Asylum invoked feelings of Escape From New York and Dinosaurs struggled as to what it really wanted to be, we actually have an episode here that isn't a play on any particular movie but rather a genre as a whole. Sadly, however, the genre isn't utilised to great potential here, and while it could have invoked feelings of Clint Eastwood's more haunting, ambiguously fantastical films like Pale Rider or High Plains Drifter, it's left feeling like the bastard son of Westworld and Cowboys and Aliens instead. 

Initial disappointment aside, however, Mercy is not entirely unwatchable. Unlike the shows first foray into the genre in 1966 with The Gunfighters, Mercy is helped with a largely American cast and the same Spanish locations favoured by Sergio Leone in his famed Dollars trilogy, never missing an opportunity to utilise to great effect. Sadly it's the script that isn't up to scratch, for while it offers scenes of moral anguish for the Doctor, building upon his decision to kill Solomon last week and foreshadowing his reaction to Amy and Rory's impending departure, the rest of the characters are all useless. Farscape's Ben Browder is eliminated all too quickly, whilst the other town's folk are left standing awkwardly in the background, unsure of what to say or do until otherwise instructed. Karen Gillan makes use of her one big scene, confronting the Doctor in his descision to kill Kahler Jex, but it's a role expected from Amy and doesn't move her story forward. Arthur Darvill's Rory, on the other hand is reduced to the role of one-time decoy alongside Browder's Sheriff Isaac, where no meaningful dialogue is passed and the two merely hide behind a rock. 

The plot here is a lacklustre affair as well, though the episode should be praised for allowing the all too predictable revelations to come early on. Kahler Jex makes for an unengaging 'villain' whilst the Cyborg is more Terminator than Man-With-No-Name, an already limited performance lost beneath layers of questionable prosthetics and giant blaster cannons. 

In the end, the underlining problem with Mercy is that it forgets it's a Western. Deserts and stetsons will take you so far, but Westerns are built upon characters, and it's the characters that Mercy dismisses. I believe that Doctor Who is a show that could lend itself perfectly to the Western genre since, like the Eastwood greats, it's all about an unnamed hero. The Doctor is the Man With No Name, and cowboys, at their core, are alien themselves. They're travellers who come into a town and adapt to survive. The genre doesn't bend around them, they bend around the genre. There is no need for the stark contrast between cowboys and aliens that Mercy offers because there simply isn't one. Less is more with westerns, and that should have been the case here.