The Highlanders

The Highlanders is an important serial for a number of reasons – not only is it Troughton’s second serial, wherein we see him settle into the character further following his rather strange first serial, it is also the introduction of fan-favourite Jamie McCrimmon and the last real historical for some 16 years.  Sadly, this serial doesn’t really serve its primary function; Troughton’s Doctor is still as unDoctorly as ever, flipping frequently from persona to persona. 

The first thing about this serial of note, however, is the incredible violence on display; whilst the serial is set during one of the most bloodthirsty periods of British history, quite how much violence is displayed is shocking even now.  Interestingly, until now the travellers have always arrived either before or after the most horrific periods of history – looking at stories like The Reign of Terror and The Myth Makers – but here, instead, the group of time travellers arrives right in the middle of a skirmish, and subsequently are thrown head-first into the historical events.    Not only is their grim realistically realised death aplenty on screen – some of which we’re able to glimpse briefly thanks to censored material – we’re also told of the disgusting acts taking place off-screen.  Women and children are being murdered, Scots are being hung left, right and centre, and, perhaps most appallingly of all, the English are making a tidy profit from the sale of prisoners as slaves.

Following the grim violence, the TARDIS materialises, with Ben as chipper and optimistic as ever, declaring that they’re home.  Of course, trouble isn’t far away, and Ben and Polly fling themselves to the ground as a cannonball comes roaring at them.  The Laird, injured in the Redcoat attack, is laid in bed, surrounded by Jamie and the other Scots.  Outside, the Doctor removes his stovepipe hat to replace it with a Tam O’Shanter, more in keeping with the locale.  Accused of being English spies, the travellers are taken prisoner by the Scots, Jamie and Alexander.  Once the Scotsmen promise not to “molest” the travellers, the Doctor begins to administer aid to the Laird.  Ben’s nonchalance with the weapon he was handling leads to the arrival of the Redcoats.  The humour in this serial is incredibly dark, but at no point detracts from the serious undertones.

The Redcoats surround the cottage, led by Ffinch, and they swiftly deal with the Scots within – what is telling of the time is that they must “shoot first and take no risks”, as the battle has led them to be reckless and desperate.  Alexander’s fruitless death, trying to draw the Redcoats away, shows just how easily life hung in the balance during the time, again providing a stark contrast from the humour which underlies much of the dialogue.  The complaint about there being no “pickings” for the Redcoats nicely foreshadows the subplot soon to arise.  Ffinch is wonderfully performed by Michael Elwyn, all stiff upper lip and no nonsense.  Once the Redcoats are inside the cottage though, things become rather more frivolous once more, as Troughton’s Doctor dons a bizarre German accent and the pseudonym “Doktor Von Wer”.

The action is observed by Solicitor Grey, played with malevolent malice by the brilliant David Garth.  Grey is a man with no regard for human life whatsoever – in contrast with many of the soldiers, who fight for their King and country, Grey is only interested in the financial benefits which arise from the war.  Perkins, his assistant, played with obsequious charm by Sydney Arnold is wonderful too, and the pair’s dialogue is laced with sardonic wit.

The group are very quickly split up, with the Doctor and Ben ending up with the Scotsmen as Polly ends up lost with a local girl, Kirsty.  Polly’s character is fascinating here; as in The Smugglers, Polly is a powerful female, taking control of the situation.  Kirsty is a whining, snivelling peasant, idiotic and simpering to the extreme, and it allows Polly’s character to step to the fore magnificently.  Her suggestion that girls of the time can do nothing more useful than cry and whine is brilliant, and Kirsty’s sullen responses to the danger they are in are brilliantly realised.

The Doctor and Ben, meanwhile, get into trouble with the invading forces of Redcoats, to the point that they are strung up on the gallows alongside a number of Scottish insurgents; saved from certain death, by no less than Grey and Perkins, the group are carried away to be placed in prison rather than hung.  That the Doctor claims his freedom using the “Aliens Act” is fantastically delivered, and the group are escorted first to prison, and then “perhaps a sea voyage?”  The first episode ends with Polly giving up on the moaning Scottish girl and heading off into the moor, falling into an animal trap on her way.

Episode 2 continues with Polly trapped, and Kirsty swiftly joining her in the pit.  With the arrival of Ffinch and his men, however, the opportunity for the girls to escape arrives.  These scenes are where Elwyn is at his best, all bluster and dour acerbic shouting.  He is a typical Lieutenant of the time, promoted by rank of birth rather than by earning his way, and the way in which the two girls are able to trick him highlights his stupidity wonderfully.  Likewise, the way in which he deals with the men is brilliantly over-the-top, as he threatens them all with hundreds of lashings every time he gives them a simple order – “Fetch my horse, and if you’re not back within the hour, three hundred lashes a piece!” is one of my favourite lines in the entire serial, preposterously overblown as it is.  The comedy here is brilliant, as Ffinch is left grumbling in a pit, robbed of his food and money and left tied up.  Ffinch’s character is petty, childish and yet all the more charming for it.

In the prison cell, meanwhile, the Doctor, Ben and the Scots are all having a rather terrible time of things.  There’s an interesting discussion about the values of the medical system in place at the time, wherein Jamie is baffled by the Doctor’s credentials on the basis that he hasn’t even bled the Laird yet.  The Doctor, here, becomes even more unpredictable – his behaviour has been erratic since his regeneration, and his cries of “Down with King George”, as well as his encouragement of the Jacobites to sing their anthem, it seems rather frivolous and dangerous – whilst he is taken away, as requested, still under the guise the German Doktor, the others are left in the prison, under the angered gaze of the Redcoat guards.

This second episode also sees the introduction of Trask, played with unmitigated relish by Dallas Cavell.  As the pirate captain, he is all “arr”s and stereotypical sayings like “What in thunder?” and “You swab!”  The discussion between Trask and Grey allows us a glimpse at what the future has in store for the prisoners; the promise that the Highlanders will work twice as hard as “one of your black slaves” is ominous.

Once the Doctor is taken to Grey’s office, we are once more confused by the Doctor’s behaviour.  It seems that, once more, he is betraying the Scots to save his own skin; of course, it is all a ruse, and the standard is used to confuse the solicitor, and he is gagged, bound and swiftly thrown into a closet.  The Doctor’s quip “I’ve never seen a silent lawyer before” is brilliantly delivered, with a quirkiness only Troughton is capable of.  Perkins re-entrance leads to one of the most disturbing scenes, with Troughton’s Doctor taking great pleasure in the trick which he plays upon the clerk, forcing him to head-butt the table repeatedly to clear the noises which he is persuaded are subconscious, although actually emanating from the trapped Grey.  The physical abuse seems to be relished by the Doctor, as he purposefully fools the paper-pusher into closing his eyes to deal with the banging headache caused by too much reading. 

The comedy continues to be ramped up as we cut back to Ffinch in his hole, becoming discovered by the soldiers he sent for his horse.  His desperate attempts to bribe the soldier to pull him out of the pit, despite his predicament of having been robbed by the girls, are fantastic, and again he resorts to threats of lashes – 500 this time – if they don’t get him free.  What is wonderful is the dead pan way in which the Sergeant pushes Ffinch’s buttons.

The subplot involving Trask’s prisoners and the slave market has strong echoes back to The Romans, when we last saw a companion being manacled and man-handled onto a ship intended for slavery.  The discussion with the former skipper, Willy, is both disturbing and comical – particularly the repetition of the misunderstanding of Ben’s terminology with the word “fiddle”.  At this point, the serial splits into three separate storylines, all occurring at once; Whilst he is loaded into The Annabelle, and Polly and Kirsty are heading back to Ffinch’s base to blackmail him.  The Doctor, meanwhile, is continuing on his unpredictable mood swings with a touch of transvesticism, this time donning a peasant woman’s garb to infiltrate the base too. 

And that raises the most interesting question – who exactly is the real Doctor? (If you’ll excuse the pun!)  At no point since the Doctor regenerated into his current form has there seemed to be any stability to his performance.  From his third-person dialogue in The Power of the Daleks, and his madcap behaviour with recorders, daggers and diaries, to his impersonation of an Earth Examiner, to his seeming disregard for human life and relishing of physical abuse here, to his strange German accent and his fetish for headwear – “I’d like a hat like that!” – and now his newest persona of an old washer woman, we never know exactly where we stand with Troughton’s Doctor.  Whilst Hartnell had flashes of comedy genius, usually hidden under his gruff exterior, this Doctor is quite the opposite, predominantly a clown with the occasional serious outburst.  But that is what is so magnificent about Troughton’s portrayal.  We, as an audience, are helped to empathise with the companions rather than the Doctor simply because we, too, don’t know quite where we stand with him. 

Ben is due to be punished, meanwhile, for the destruction of the contracts, and there is a sardonic humour to this; the obsession with bureaucracy is wonderful, and the insistence that the ship cannot sail without the three-copied forms completed is the saving grace for the Scottish.  The third episode ends, then, with the Doctor, in drag, approaching Perkins, Polly and Kirsty and forcing himself into their game of whist to pass the time.  He draws a pistol on the hapless clerk, and the three escape the inn with Perkins having to wait for ten minutes, in fear of his life.  Meanwhile, Ben is bound and thrown out to sea, with only a stream of bubbles breaking the surface...

Of course, Ben hasn’t died, but has freed himself from the ropes and swam to shore, when he is spotted by an armed soldier – none other than the Doctor, in yet another disguise.  This entire final episode is, once again, laced with extreme violence and uncompromising images of death and brutality.  Whilst Ben is reunited with the other time travellers in the inn, the Doctor decides to head to the pirate ship to seek an audience with Captain “ARRRR” Trask, Grey and Perkins.  Blackmail is used once more as a plot device, as the Doctor claims to know the whereabouts of Bonnie Prince Charlie, but will only share the information if the price is right.

In the meantime, Polly and Kirsty are rowing up alongside the Annabelle, seeking a reunion with her father.  This scene is rather touching – following Colin’s claim that he’d do anything to hear his daughter’s voice one last time before he dies, he believes he is dreaming when he hears her calling from outside.  They deliver weapons and share their plan with the Highlanders trapped within the hold, and then, as Grey, Trask, Perkins and two sailors enter, led by the Doctor, the Highlanders break from their slumber with cries of “Creag An Tuir!” 

My only issue with this particularly serial, in fact, is that it feels very much like a retread of The Smugglers, which was only aired 11 weeks prior to this.  Due to the season breaks, The Smugglers was included as part of season 4.  Had it aired as the final story of season 3, with the break before season 4 began, this repetition would be forgivable.  Here, though, I find it simply too similar to the last historical to have aired.  It would have been nice, for the last historical of the run, to have had a complete change of tact and pace.  Instead, it all feels a little familiar.

Of course, the time travellers save the day, former skipper Willy gets his boat back and sets sail to France with the Highlanders on board.  The turncoat clerk Perkins gets a lovely moment to shine where, once he has allied himself with Willy and the Scots, snaps his fingers in Grey’s face – something which provides him with tremendous “pleasure”.  Trask has been dealt with, shoved overboard by Jamie into “the firth”, and Grey is given his comeuppance from the wonderful Ffinch after he has, once more, been blackmailed into aiding and abetting the Doctor and his companions, including the newly arrived Jamie.  Polly’s flirting with Ffinch is a wonderful little touch, something which has been hinted at all the way through, and the group are now truly grateful to him – by his own volition, he has had Grey arrested and removed, whereby saving them.  As such, he has earned that peck on the cheek.

The group return to the TARDIS, and despite his apprehension, Polly leads Jamie into the ship, and they dematerialise once more...

If I’m honest, I’ll be sad to see the traditional historical go.  Whilst the sci-fi stories, and the pseudo-historicals, are the real ‘bread and butter’ now of what the series is aiming for, it gripes me somewhat that people still claim the historicals are boring or pointless.  They include some of the finest performances, and certainly some of the strongest scripts, of the entire show’s run.  Lucarotti in particular is something of an unsung hero, and along with Donald Cotton’s The Myth Makers, these are some of the greatest scripts the show has ever produced, performed with aplomb by all involved, with magnificent set design and costuming.

However, it is easy to see why, with the role being taken over by Troughton, the decision was made to abolish the straight historical.  With Hartnell, the Doctor fitted in perfectly regardless of the scenario, playing it straight, as in The Aztecs and The Reign of Terror, or playing it purely for laughs as in The Romans and The Myth Makers.  Troughton, though, is always too frivolous.  More than that, though, is his proactivity.  Unlike Hartnell’s Doctor, who seemed happy to go along with things and was heavily invested in his own mantra about not changing “one line” of history, it is difficult to imagine Troughton’s Doctor having the same level of restrain.  He enjoys getting his hands dirty, throwing himself fully into stories.

That Troughton is so proactive a character may well be the reason that the show has lasted as long as it has, but it is also certainly what killed the historical.  Still, swings and roundabouts, eh?

The Smugglers

Season four opens magnificently with The Smugglers, seeing Hartnell in his last historical – in fact, the second-to-last historical of the black and white era – Hartnell’s penultimate story, but with some wonderful characterisation, location filming and introducing Ben and Polly as companions-proper to the Doctor.

The serial picks up where the last story ended season 3, with Ben and Polly literally barging their way into the TARDIS console just as the Doctor takes off.  Hartnell’s great displeasure at their presence there is swift and brutal, as he had clearly contemplated a brief stint alone.  That said, he very swiftly changes his tone, as he gloatingly shows off the ship.  The exposition here is rather clunky – with Hartnell essentially giving us a guided tour of each and every one of the ship’s functions, and reminding us that he is unable to steer the vessel – but as a viewer I get the impression that this info-dump is more for the contemporary viewers than Ben and Polly; opening a new series, it provides a brief recap for viewers of old, as well as introducing newer viewers.  The TARDIS swiftly materialises on Earth again, though, and Ben and Polly leave the ship, their disbelief – particularly that of Ben – still ringing in our ears.

What is most interesting about these opening scenes is the ease with which Ben seems to readily accept that the police box has transported them from London city centre to the South coast in the blink of an eye, and that the inside of the box is far larger than the outside allows, and yet he refuses to believe that they have really travelled through time.  His stubbornness is rather grating at first, although it is easy to quickly warm to Michael Craze’s performance, and Polly’s girlish glee is utterly adorable.

Oddly, despite Polly’s aforementioned girlish glee, she is instantly mistaken for a boy by the locals, on the basis that she is wearing trousers.  Now, whilst this serial is missing in its entirety, I can clearly see from the stills that she is wearing the same costume as at the end of The War Machines.  And she’s hot.  Like, ridiculously hot; Anneke Wills’ beauty is undeniable.  Quite why no one picks up on the makeup or the high pitched voice is utterly unfathomable.  The first local to mistake her for a “lad” is the Churchwarden, Longfoot, a man evidently haunted by his past, having heard the word of God “too late”.  The warden is played wonderfully by Terence de Marny, albeit briefly – despite the rather frivolous tone in the build-up, the slow-burn pays off with some existent clips, including Longfoot being murdered with a knife to the back.  It’s all rather brutal, and wonderful for it.

The episode ends with the crew separated – the Doctor is kidnapped, taken aboard a pirate ship, whilst Ben and Polly are imprisoned, accused by the locals in the nearby tavern of being murderers – two male murderers.  The cliffhanger involving Hartnell’s introduction to Pike sounds wonderful – the menace is dripping from Michael Godfrey’s voice, and it sounds genuinely threatening.  Episode 2, meanwhile, focuses on Ben and Polly escaping from their prison cell and the Doctor trying to keep one step ahead of the pirates. 

Which brings me to my biggest bugbear about this serial – the way in which Ben and Polly manage to escape is preposterously convoluted, and involves the tricking of Tom, the simpleton, by claiming to be able to use a voodoo doll, tricking the young man out of sheer fear.  Never before have we seen the time travellers so indulgently mocking history, revelling in the lack of education of others.  It is telling that these scenes occur whilst the Doctor is not with them – Ben and Polly are from the future, thrust into history with no guidance, or moral centre, and are coping as best they can.

The scenes between Hartnell and Godfrey are wonderful – the Doctor flatters Pike beyond belief, managing to rid himself of the threat posed by Cherub, played with lascivious glee by George A. Cooper, the vicious cutthroat threatening to make him spill the secret like “blubber from a whale”.  The dialogue is rich and luxuriant, flowing as it does from such experienced performers.  Also flawless in his performance is the unscrupulous Squire, Paul Whitsun-Jones.  The scenes between the three of them are fantastic, with every one of them pretending to be a true gentleman, hiding their true intentions. This entire serial, in fact, seems to be a study of the facade of class – each wears a mask, and pretends to be someone or something that they’re not.

Once Polly and Ben have escaped from prison, they head to the church to hide, where they are disturbed by someone entering the crypt.  Suspicious, Ben is his usual act-first, ask-questions-later type, and knocks the man unconscious.  Polly then heads to the Squire’s mansion to tell him the truth, and share their suspicions of the unconscious man, only to get further caught in the machinations of these criminals – coming face-to-face with Cherub in the Squire’s study, Wills’ voice is laced wonderfully with fear as she realises that she is faced with the man responsible for the Doctor’s kidnap.  As she tries desperately to plead with them, the line “here is cord” is quickly retorted with “here is silence”, as the traveller is bound and gagged. 

Ben, meanwhile, had been following a smugglers’ route down to the beach, and returns to speak with the bound man, Josiah Blake, who claims to be a Revenue man hunting smugglers.  In this air of double crosses, Ben refuses to listen to him, and Blake, played with wonderful restraint by the magnificent John Ringham, pleads with him to trust him.  Suddenly, the pair are disturbed by the entrance of Pike, the Squire and Cherub, with the bound Polly in tow.  Forced to act according to his duties, Josiah takes Ben and Polly prisoner, leading them from the crypt, leaving the real smugglers behind.

The scenes back on the boat are rather strange – with Hartnell imprisoned – sort of – he decides to play a game of tarot with Jamaica and Kewper, the innkeeper.  What is oddest about the Doctor’s fortune telling is that he somehow manages to accurately predict the future; his predictions all come true.  Whether this is pure chance, or a hint at another ability of the Time Lord hitherto unseen is questionable – Hartnell’s “perhaps – perhaps” is strange and ambiguous to say the least – but it is rather odd all the same.  As with Ben and Polly, Hartnell’s Doctor is here using the fear and superstition of the inhabitants of this time period to his own advantage.  True, it is all just a distraction to allow Kewper to knock out Jamaica to ready their escape, but all the same it sits rather starkly against what we know of the Doctor’s character.  Kewper’s passing comment that “In these dark days, honesty surely pays” is unnerving, after all we have seen, as we are aware that the Doctor is potentially waling into a trap.  Indeed, it also foreshadows Cherub’s betrayal in the scene later, eavesdropping on the conversation between Pike and the Squire.

Of course, the Revenues man Josiah Blake is a good guy after all, and despite his imprisonment of Ben and Polly, it turns out he was yet another character acting duplicitously; whilst others like Pike and the Squire wear their masks to hide villainy, Blake does so to do good, and to protect others.  He is well aware that Ben and Polly are not the smugglers, but was rather tricking Pike, Cherub and the Squire into believing that he believed them so as to keep the travellers safe.  Such double crosses happen with such readiness and frequency that the plot to this serial is quickly complicated – even more so by the lack of moving visual.  Sadly, this is one of the few examples of a serial which suffers from absence – whilst the soundtrack is indeed filled with rich dialogue and stunning vocal performances, it is a heavily exposition-led story, and it becomes complex to follow.  Fortunately, the novelisation, by Terrance Dicks, helps to clear this confusion up; little of the plot is changed, instead choosing to embellish upon some of the sequences.

Jamaica’s death is one of those few remaining moments which still exist, thanks to the Australian censors deeming their audience to be more squeamish than the British – and it is truly unnerving, as Pike looms over him, menacingly brandishing the barbed pike upon his wrist, and uttering the threatening “It’ll be a merry night, but not for ye” before thrusting down, made even more disturbing by the gentlemanly way in which he wipes the man’s blood off with a lace handkerchief.

What is lovely about this episode, though, is that only a few weeks before he leaves, Hartnell’s Doctor is still growing as a character – When we first met him, he would have scarpered to save his own skin as soon as possible (indeed, many of the serials involved exactly this plan, with complications preventing it), yet here he point-blank refuses to follow Ben’s advice and run away.  His explanation that he is under “moral obligation” is testimony to how far he has come in three seasons. 

 

The episode ends with another fine cliffhanger, and yet another murder – Cherub, armed with a gun and a dagger, appears in the Crypt, and swiftly dispatches Kewper with a knife in the back.  A shot rings out, and Polly’s scream merges seamlessly with the end titles.  Of course, it isn’t Polly that has been shot.  Instead, the Squire is wounded, and Cherub forces the Doctor to tell the secret of Avery’s gold – apparently a list of names of deceased sailors.  Of course, whilst Pike’s pirates continue emptying the crypts of the booty, Pike has crept into the vaults holding the Doctor and his companions, and overhears Cherub’s mutinous plans.  Cherub quickly shows his less-than-angelic true face, and the pair battle it out in a sequence which sounds fabulous.  The dialogue between parries is wonderful – “ya rat-faced smiler” is a personal favourite – as the pair continue to fight, ignoring the travellers.

Cherub’s death is mercilessly vicious, having fallen and as such dispatched with great ease by Pike, and when he rounds on the Doctor, Hartnell is courageous in the face of danger, as always.  Still refusing to leave until he is certain that everyone will be safe, he has ushered Ben and Polly to safety to make a fresh agreement with Pike, stalling for time until Blake and the Revenues men return.  Ben’s parting to Polly before he gallantly returns to help the Doctor is wonderfully funny – “Put the kettle on!” – but again shows his magnificent character trait, courage.

The final scenes are an absolute bloodbath, as almost every character is killed – as Blake and his men press in on the drunken soldiers, far less useful due to the plundered rum, they are massacred one-by-one, and Blake heads for the crypt where Pike has just discovered Avery’s treasure.  The Squire finally absolves himself by holding Pike back as he attacks the Doctor long enough for Blake to shoot him, before Ben and the Doctor sneak back to the TARDIS by the secret tunnel.  Foreshadowing briefly shows its head as the Doctor warns Polly that he feels “a little exhausted”, and the TARDIS arrives in “the coldest place on Earth”, ready for the travellers’ next adventure – and Hartnell’s last...

The Gunfighters

It seems fitting that I’ve reached The Gunfighters just in time for the new episode of the new series, A Town Called Mercy, which sees the 11^th incarnation of the Doctor returning to the Wild West.  As I mentioned in my last blog, for The Celestial Toymaker, this serial was, for many many years regarded as the worst Doctor Who ever made.  In that same blog, I refuted the claims of Loficier and Haining, saying that what they saw as an absolute gem was actually pretty appalling – and here, I’ll do the exact opposite.  Whilst it isn’t my favourite Doctor Who ever, by any means, The Gunfighters is certainly not the worst serial ever produced – it isn’t even the worst of Hartnell’s tenure.  In fact, it’s a delight.

Seriously – it is.  For one thing, from the very opening, it has Hartnell back centre stage.  After weeks and weeks of gradually being written out by the former production team, and being sidelined for no perceivable reason, he is back in the spotlight, and fortunately the serial plays to his greatest strength – comedy.  And this is a comedy.  A really, really funny one.  It was unfairly referred to as Talbot Rothwell comedy at best – but having said that, Rothwell is responsible for what was voted the greatest one-liner of all time, so that isn’t really a put-down either.  Hartnell is rarely better than when he has some juicy and hilarious dialogue, and here, Cotton has provided joke after joke for his deadpan delivery.  He isn’t his giggling self here – he’s delivering zingers, turbo-charged with comedy – “Doc Holliday's a great friend of mine. He gave me a gun, he extracted my tooth. Good gracious me, what more do you want?” is a wonderful line – and so here we have him at his best.

What’s more, Purves too thrives on the chance to do comedy again.  After his first appearance in the series as Morton back in The Chase, it’s great fun to see him doing his speedy double takes and eye rolling.  Even better than Purves, though, is Jackie Lane as Dodo – for the first time, she’s proactive and engaged in a storyline, not feeling like a useless spare part.  She shines in this serial – sadly it was evidently too little too late, and she’d already been told that she was to be removed within the next two storylines.

The use of the Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon is deemed by many to be the principal shortcoming for this serial, but I think that’s somewhat missing the point – whilst it is invasive, and impossible to get out of your head for days afterwards, it works in the context of this story precisely for those reasons.  This season was a completely mixed bag, an eclectic mix of styles which kept the show feeling fresh week on week.  Here, Cotton uses the ballad as a framing device for each and every important scene – for the first two episodes, it is Cotton’s arrangement, using similar phrasing and tempo, but then Rex Tucker, the director, uses it in episodes 3 and 4 to even greater effect, using it as a summative device, reflecting all that we see on screen.  It is bold and clever, and whilst it may distract slightly from the action, causing the audience to be aware that what they are watching is only a television programme, I think it serves its function perfectly.

The set design is stunning too – whilst the new series had the benefit of visiting a location in Spain for filming (the same set used by Sergio Leone, in fact, for many of his films), here, the crew have made do with a studio in London, and yet it still feels epic.  The use of props attached to painted cycloramas really helps to create a sense of depth, as does the use of live horses and props to really sell the idea that this could be anywhere in America.  Tucker, as director, has worked wonders too, mixing high angle crane shots with interesting shots taken through scenery, we can really believe in this location.  The costumes, too, are stunning, and the makeup department have done a wonderful job with the huge amount of facial hair on display.

Steven and Dodo’s excitement at arriving in the Midwest is brilliant – and their changing into apt clothing before swinging guns and nearly shooting their own feet off is fantastically funny – as is Wyatt Earp’s putdown to Steven who, when he confesses he isn’t a real gunslinger, mutters “You did kinda make that look obvious didn't ya, boy?”  Likewise providing me with some geeky entertainment was the assumed names the Doctor gives for the travellers, specifically naming himself after Doctor Caligari, the villain in one of my favourite pieces of abstract cinema from the 1920s.

One of the finest scenes in this serial is the moment in the dentist’s office, with Hartnell and Anthony Jacobs playing wonderfully off each other – the dialogue is rich and luxurious, and dripping with wit, as Hartnell claims he never touches alcohol, but Jacobs’ Doc Holliday assuring him that he does, before taking a quick snifter of liquor.  The end shot of this scene, with Hartnell gurning in displeasure as Jacobs looms into shot with the pliers is brilliant.

The episode ends with Purves and Lane being forced – at gunpoint – to entertain the Clanton brothers with their own rendition of the Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon, once again proving Purves to be a man of many talents.  His comedy double-take as he starts to lose focus, before spotting the gun pointed at his stomach is brilliant, and he belts the song out all the louder to keep the gunman happy.

Indeed, the only real fault I can see in the entire production is the casting of the Clantons and their crew– whilst Shane Rimmer shines as Seth Harper, the others from the group vary from average to appalling, sometimes in one sentence.  William Hurndell, in particular, has the most sporadic attempt at an accent heard so far in the show.  Episode 2 sees the ballad continue – although this time the performer is Kate, Holliday’s beau, who for some reason mimes it dreadfully.  It seems like an odd casting choice, since the fact that she is a barroom singer is integral to the characterisation, to have cast a woman who evidently was incapable of singing.

Hartnell continues to impress as he has staggered down the street, face drawn out in agony following the tooth extraction and looking rather glumly at the gun which Holliday foisted upon him in episode 1.  His arrival in the bar, believing that he has made friends and suspecting no ulterior motive, is great, as is his accidental shooting of Seth’s gun out of his wrist.  His dismissal of being “the great Doc” is fantastic too, as he assures them that he is “reasonably accomplished, but not great”.

A lovely side-note is that this episode was the first connection that one Matthew Jacobs ever had with the show – he was the son of Anthony, playing Doc Holliday, and was given the task of opening and closing a panel in the saloon for one of the cameras – some 30 years later, he would go on to write the script for the movie, featuring Paul McGann.

The episode ends with the rather disturbing scene of Steven being collected by a lynch mob, with the Clantons insisting that the Doctor leave the safety of the prison, before Steven is hung instead.  We are even treated to the sight of Purves with a noose around his neck – although not for long, so as not to disturb children watching.  The reprise of this in episode 3 also features a lovely moment of realism, as the girls and women from the crowd are ushered away by the men, so that they don’t have to witness the murder.

Episode 3, in fact, is my favourite of this whole serial – the tension is becoming ratcheted higher and higher, as the story makes its way to its inevitable conclusion, and the gunfight at the OK Corral.  Admittedly, there are inaccuracies abound as far as actual history goes – the people involved are almost certainly not all the actual participants of the fight, but each character is drawn nicely, and the tension is palpable.  Many of the inaccuracies actual come from films made at the time, and so the audience would probably not have known any different.   

What massively helps to sell the inevitable gunfight is the arrival of Johnny Ringo, the titular character of this episode.  Whilst his accent is miles off, Laurence Payne oozes charm and danger, and his first scene, which seems him be recognised by Charlie the Barman and, as such, executing him in cold blood, is genuinely menacing, and the lingering shot on Charlie’s corpse, spread across the bar, is moving. 

My favourite moment of episode 3 is with Jackie Lane and Jacobs – having kidnapped Dodo, Doc Holliday has put them up in a gambling den in a near-by town.  Desperate to return to the TARDIS and the Doctor and Steven, she pulls a gun on Holliday, and the performance is smashing – by far her best in her entire time with the Doctor.  The look of determination on her face is juxtaposed wonderfully with her apology for pointing the gun between his eyes, and after he agrees, her near-faint and request for water is great – as is Holliday’s acquiescence. 

The fourth episode has some oddities about it, too – going against everything the Doctor has ever told his companions, he attempts to intervene and change history.  Considering that even Dodo and Steven know about Wyatt Earp and Johnny Ringo, and that the Doctor reacted so strangely to the mention of the Clantons back at the start of this serial, it proves that this event is too well-known to be meddled in – yet the Doctor actively tries to dissuade either side from engaging in battle. 

The fourth episode pulls exactly the same trick on the audience as Cotton’s last script did – after almost an hour and a half of laugh-out-loud comedy, the jokes purposefully dry up, and we’re left with a bitter taste in our mouths.  The final showdown at the OK Corral looks incredible, shot on film and with some wonderful camera angles, again making use of the crane-mounted camera, and taking in the glorious set design.  Whilst the arrival of the Clantons sees Lynda Baron’s ballad performed with an upbeat tempo, it gradually declines into a far more sombre affair, as people are shot left, right and centre, with a grim sense of realism. 

The final sweeping shot of the battle, which sees Clanton corpses littering the streets, before coming to a stop at the feet of the two Earp’s and Holliday, is beautifully filmed, and the stark contrast between the bodies, the dark trousers, and the sun-bleached sand is magnificent.

All in all, then, this remains a firm favourite of mine – perhaps not in my top ten, but one I’ll happily rewatch over and over.  Yes, the ballad haunts me for days (I’m humming it now).  Yes, the performances aren’t magnificent from some of the supporting cast.  But what it does do is allows Hartnell to become the main character again, showcases Purves’ skills again as a comedian as well as a singer, and (for once) allows Jackie Lane to shine too.  Added to that the excellent set and direction, and the belly-laughs to boot, and this is certainly not deserving of the unfair title of worst serial ever.  I could name two worse, and we’re not even at the end of season 3.