Ketina here! New site, new format. Alas, no more summaries (at least not yet, we might add them later) and no more story wrap-ups (at least not yet). And, in order to get the stories to line up, and any current event references to make sense, all posts from here out are dated by the date we viewed the stories, not by the date of the site post. This also meant that I modified the dates from “The Massacre – Wrap-up” through part 4 of the “Celestial Toymaker” to get everything to line up correctly.
Anyway, there’s my boring explanation.
The Gunfighters. The first (and likely only) Doctor Who story that could be described as a musical. And since this one exists on DVD, we’re unlikely to add a summary later.
This week’s discussion we had The Historian, Ketina, Mr Mother, Ronelyn, Photobug, Altair, Spoo, Schmallturm, Mini-Spoo, and Cz.
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H = Historian
K = Ketina
M = Mr Mother
R = Ronelyn
P = Photobug
A = Altair
Sp = Spoo
Sc = Schmallturm
MS = Mini-Spoo
Cz = Cz
K: That was Doctor Who?
M: That was Doctor Awesome!
H: So, going into this I made the prediction to myself that the Project members would be absolutely horrified by this or absolutely love it.
R: The answer to that is… yes.
P: It’s not or, it’s and.
A: Well, I liked it. It was extremely campy, but it was enjoyable.
R: I kind of expected the cowboys to run into town on pantomime horses.
H: And how about that cowboy who was from the north of the Wild West?
R: Yeah, some of the Clantons in particular had intriguing and unidentifiable accents.
P: I thought “Wow, Australia” at first. Then I thought, “no, it’s just really bad.”
M: They’re obviously from North Misaroado.
R: Doc Holiday, nice accent.
K: And Wyatt Earp wasn’t bad.
R: And the Sheriff…
H: Bat Masterson?
R: Yeah, he was okay.
M: I thought the whole thing was adorable. And they even got in a “Doctor Who” joke, which always makes me happy.
H: “Exactly!”
R: And again, when she actually remembered her accent, Dodo’s was spot on.
H: When she remembered to use it.
R: In the two sentences that she used it. But Dodo shifts accents all the time anyway.
P: She’s playing a part of an English person playing the part of a Western person.
M: And we finally got Steven wearing something other than his buggaloo shirt and sansbelt slacks.
R: And he still looks gay.
M: Fabulously so, yes.
H: I want it noted that 20 – 25 years before Michael J. Fox did it, Peter Perves did it. Same joke.
<In Back the Future 3, when Michael J. Fox dressed as a movie cowboy.>
P: Can we talk about the total lack of physics here. You can shoot a bottle and the bullet doesn’t go into the wood behind it?
H: That’s just a TV Western kind of trope thing.
P: They are almost going for it on purpose.
H: They are definitely going for it on purpose.
Sp: More power and less singing to them.
H: Oh yes, “the Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon.”
R: Sung by a Welsh woman.
M: For gunfighters too, they’re awfully cavalier about waving their guns around.
H: I loved Doc Holiday with his “ah, Doctor” waving his gun around at the tooth, actually.
Sp: Yeah, the physical comedy, and just the timing was really good this week. Arming the Doctor, the gun exchange, it was real subtle. Genuine humor was well done.
H: It was Donald Cotton, the writer of the Myth Makers.
Sp: I would have run the singer out of town, but I was afraid that she would run into the Matte Painting.
P: Would she have chewed the scenery.
M: I enjoyed the singing…?
H: Well, you’re going to get a lot more.
M: I don’t know if I need a lot more of it, though.
Sp: My favorite bit was them reigning in the horses the instant before they ran into the Matte Painting. It fooled me for just a second… They couldn’t have horse on a set… oh wait, that is a set!
M: They would NEVER really film Doctor Who in the American West?
H: I have a tooth ache. Tooth aches are cool. 🙂 Anyway, what I was going to say that my memories of this story are mainly bad accents and the “Last Chance Saloon” song. Something that I’m noticing this time is that it’s very much capturing the feel of old west TV shows of the time. Down to the Matte Paintings and store fronts. They’re really capturing that feel nicely on a much smaller budget than the actually shows are. The matte paintings are actually making it even more charming for me, somehow.
Sp: Oh yes, it’s adorable. It’s like someone told an alien about a western, and then the alien told a 6-year-old, and then the 6-year-old told a British film crew. And then we had Doctor Who.
R: And since it hasn’t gone into the write up yet, when we talk about bad accents, we’re talking about American accents so bad that we had to stop the episode 30 seconds in so that every person in the room could laugh hysterically and recover.
Sp: Mostly Ketina.
K: Hey. Okay, you’re right! I’m going to type for a while now. Ladedadada. I have control of the write up! Muhuhahahahaha!
H: Do you actually have anything to say, Ketina?
K: <laugh>
H: I’ll go on record, by the way, ignore the history of this story. This story is the most a-historical historical ever.
K: Even more than the Myth Makers?
H: Well, that was a myth.
Sc: So was the shoot out at the O.K. Coral. We all know who these people are, because it’s shown over and over again.
H: Yeah, it’s a myth of the old west.
Sp: They can just tell the myth.
P: They are taking advantage of the existing commonly known myth and dropping a story into it.
H: You can argue that with most of the historicals. But this is more mythic than historical.
P: Are we being more defensive because it’s American?
H: I don’t think so. In the Reign of Terror we can map it to historical events. In The Massacre we can map it to historical events. But this time they’re really working off the story of the story, as it were.
K: How is this more “mythical” than the others.
H: Because none of the events that take place in the story actually took place the way they are shown. In The Massacre they added some characters and compressed some events, but it took place that way.
Sc: There’s the story of the O.K. Coral, and there’s the fictional. What actually happened and what was told were very different.
M: But the same thing could be said of the assassination of the admiral in The Massacre.
K: The difference between these two particular stories we’re talking about, is that The Gunfighters is more recent and there’s more documentation about it. We know that’s not what really happened. We don’t about the Massacre, or any of these other stories because they happened much longer ago…
M: And during great periods of social upheaval, making recording unreliable.
Sp: Was this was a last minute rush drop-in story?
H: As far as the writing and production? I’ll have to check, but I don’t think so.
Sp: It seems they left in a lot of fluffs.
H: That’s just the way it was filmed.
R: I think part of the problem was carrying those really heavy accents.
H: Final thoughts?
A: I enjoyed it overall. I liked how detailed the sets were. I liked the singing at first, but after a while it got ridiculous. The story was fun. It was a good cliff hanger too.
P: I agree with you on the cliff hanger. I think they lead to that point in the story very nicely. I liked the exchange of the Doctors, so to speak, pun intended. I kind of had problems with the lack of realism involving guns. Someone shoots a gun out of your hand and it sounds like a pea? Kapwing!
R: Have you seen American TV westerns of the time.
K: I have. Not much different than the Lone Ranger.
P: I think this story is refreshing in that this is one of those stories that we get to laugh about in more than one way.
Sp: You mean intentionally?
P: Yeah. The writers are clearly having fun dressing up the actors the way they do.
M: Which does beg the question of who selects Peter Purves’s wardrobe.
P: So, for the guy who usually brings the audio comments, I don’t need to do that today. But I think that this is clearly a very fun episode for the actors and the audience. Well, I hope for the actors.
Sp: The writing was genuinely funny. The acting was genuinely funny. The change in scenery and setting was a nice break from the last couple of stories.
P: No jungle!
Sp: Radically different and lots of fun all around. And some of Billy’s better work too.
K: Yeah!
Sp: And the quality of the recon this week was amazing. They were moving. The audio was crisp. They’d really outdone themselves.
<Just a reminder, this one wasn’t actually a recon.>
MS: Well, I’m just speechless right now. Because it was just so good I don’t even know how to describe it. I loved everything!
A: Did you like the singing?
MS: Yep.
Sp: Editorial note, Mini-Spoo did have his ears covered with his hands during the singing.
M: He’s obviously learning how to handle having forgotten to do his book report.
H: I’m surprised that he didn’t say that his dog ate his watching of the episode.
Sp: I think Mini-Spoo’s favorite part of the episode was “game over, press start to continue.” He was playing his D.S. for much of it.
Cz: That was the most pathetic Western I have ever seen.
H: How many Westerns have you seen?
Cz: Enough to know that was the most pathetic.
Sc: Did you know who those historical people were supposed to be?
Cz: No.
Sc: Well, there you go. We grew up with enough of it that we know who the characters are. Now Westerns are not as popular.
H: They weren’t as popular when we were kids either, but still more so than now.
Sc: Because everyone knows who the characters are and the settings, the screen writers don’t have to explain what is going on and they can just jump into the plot.
Sp: Thinking back on The Project, most of the places where stories go bad is too much setup and too much exposition. It drags it down. You skip over the land mine that early Doctor Who seems to have, and you skip to the meat of the story.
H: Westerns were the most popular genre on American TV at this point. I don’t know about Britain.
Sc: I can say from looking at my British uncles’ books and comics from this time period that Westerns were popular in Britain too. From the 50’s and 60’s. The only other thing I have to say is that you people are really hung up on accents and quality of the sets. That’s a manner of money, and obviously Doctor Who doesn’t have the money.
P: I thought the sets were superb.
Sc: But using matte paintings instead of filming on location.
M: Yeehaw!
H: That it?
M: That’s it. Bring on part 2.
K: Oh my god, primitive tooth surgery. The Doctor is very brave!
Sc: It’s kind of funny. He wears Victorian clothes, but he’s not prepared for Victorian dental surgery.
M: Looking at his clothes must have made them want to do this story. Because he dresses like Doc Holiday – just put a cowboy hat on him.
R: I do like the idea of “ow, tooth hurts, just pull over. Where ever is fine!” He’s really lucky that they didn’t end up in a Viking village or something. And second of all, by 60’s British standards, that was high tech dentistry.
<groans from everyone>
H: Dirty pool!
R: Sorry, I should have made a joke about France.
M: Hey!
Sp: I’m sorry, I was too stupid to get that joke.
<both Mr. Mother and Spoo are of French descent.>
M: Why did they have to wait until the morning to leave? Does the TARDIS only have a one a day limit on trips?
K: I think because the Doctor wanted to give his tooth / mouth a while to heal before leaving somewhere there is a dentist.
H: That’s as a good a reason as any.
M: Or he was hoping that Dodo would get shot.
H: We are SO MEAN! Anyway, barring the “Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon,” this was a lot more fun than I remember it being. I remember it being pain. So I’m really looking forward to next week.
K: Actually, I think it’s more fun because I’m seeing it with a bunch of friends.
H: I think you’re right.
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