A Bluffer’s Guide to Doctor Who: The Gunfighters

Tomas Thomas
5 min readJan 3, 2022

Is it good, bad or ugly?

Yew better give me the particulars of dis ‘ere story, faster than a fly takes to horse dung, or I’ll shoot yew thru off holes and use you to strain spaghetti!
A self-aware take on Wild West stories.

And outta all these ‘Doc Who’ tales, how’d do I spot dis one, like a prospector spots gold among rocks?
This is… the one with the gunfight at the OK Corral.

Do you count the pricks on a cactus?
Episodes: 115–118 out of 869

Now when did all this ‘ere happen?
30 April — 21 May, 1966

Anybody be a darn-tootin’ rat making all this?

Not really. Pre-production went well. Writer Donald Cotton had previously written The Myth Makers which was received well by outgoing producer John Wiles and his outgoing script editor Donald Tosh. So, Wiles and Tosh commissioned a comedic story focusing on the American Wild West.

Difficulties only began when Wiles and Tosh left, to be replaced by producer Innes Lloyd and script editor Gerry Davis. They had a more serious version of the programme in mind, apparently, and had inherited this script in the same way they had inherited The Celestial Toymaker. They also wanted to change the programme by changing the companions and began making arrangements.

Rex Tucker was the director, who had been involved in the early stages of Doctor Who’s development. Recording was standard. However, Tucker and Lloyd had a disagreement over the editing of the final gunfight scene. As a result, Tucker requested his director credit be removed from the final episode.

It’ll be high noon soon. Give us a story an’ I’ll be on my way.

The Doctor, Steven and Dodo land in Tombstone, 1881 in the events leading up to the gunfight at the OK Corral. The Clanton brothers mistake the Doctor for their target: Doc Holliday.

As tensions flare up, Steven is held hostage by the Clantons, Doc Holliday and Kate escape from Tombstone with Dodo in tow, and the Doctor becomes first a prisoner of Wyatt Earp and then the sheriff.

Finally, though, history takes its course. The gunfight at the OK Corral happens. Johnny Ringo and the Clantons are killed, and the Wild West proves to be wild.

Is that yew thinkin’? I can hear a noise louder than a rattlesnake’s tail in matin’ season. Spit it out.

Well, this story has a reputation that is mixed to say the least. It was panned by fandom in the mid-1980s which is were a lot of fan orthodoxy stems from. And, the VHS wasn’t released until 2002 as the range was dying (in a boxset with other unloved Hartnell stories, so it was a bit pricey with no classics. Basically, if you were into Doctor Who for the Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker or Peter Davison stuff, a boxset of unpopular Hartnells was not going to be were you started branching out). A very good description of its changing reputations can be found here.

For my purposes, while recognising that this story has flaws, it’s rather delightful.

It’s Doctor Who wearing genre-awareness on its sleeve (Westerns having been very popular for a decade, and the anti-Western about to appear).

The Doctor trying to make excuses about not going to the dentist is adorable.

I love how Doc Holliday devises the mistaken identity (a play on Yetaxa/The Abbot of Amboise/Zeus). It also makes him appear as a charming anti-hero. His scene with Dodo taking him on is another delight.

The Doctor being wrong for a Western is a highlight: Mispronouncing Wyatt Earp’s name (“Mr Werp,”), the Johnny Ringo poster gag (“You’ve got a picture of him right here,”) so it’s a shame that he isn’t part of the OK Corral more. But then, how? The Myth Makers approach doesn’t work here: We don’t like the Clantons and won’t mourn for them. Indeed, the actual gunfight is — while certainly bloodthirsty — bloodless seeing as no-one will actually care about is at risk, in the same way King Priam and Paris were.

Cotton has learnt all the right lessons from Spooner except aliens: With aliens included it allows there to a subplot the Doctor is suited too and can be involved in without any concern for time-travel non-interference ethics on his behalf (The Time Meddler still an outlier, then). That notion, more than viewing figures or audience appreciation indexes, appears to be the real reason the pure historical dies out.
(Fans love to cite this serials low viewing figures as evidence that it’s terrible. But two points: One, surely that’s the fault of The Celestial Toymaker being rubbish. And two, The Gunfighters didn’t even get the lowest figures of the season: That’s the contemporary re-imagining of show in The War Machines that Lloyd will use as his template going forward. If anything, it’s more likely that BBC Enterprises’ feedback about the historical serials doing less well in conjunction with the scripts being variable that made the production team ease them out).

The song instantly adds a sense of fun. Doctor Who has been missing this. (And if you find it grating, than that’s a matter of taste.)

--

--

Tomas Thomas

Tomas lives on the proper side of the planet: Australia. He dabbles in education while building defences against spiders, snakes, and spider-snakes.