Line #64 Recap/DoctorWhoS3E8TheGunfighters


1	[[WMG:[[center:[-''[[Series/DoctorWho Doctor Who]]'' [[Recap/DoctorWho recap index]]\
2	'''First Doctor Era'''\
3	'''Season 3:''' [[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E1Galaxy4 1]] \| [[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E2MissionToTheUnknown 2]] \| [[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E3TheMythMakers 3]] \| [[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E4TheDaleksMasterPlan 4]] \| [[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E5TheMassacre 5]] \| [[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E6TheArk 6]] \| [[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E7TheCelestialToymaker 7]] \| '''8''' \| [[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E9TheSavages 9]] \| [[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E10TheWarMachines 10]]\
4	'''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS2E1PlanetOfGiants <<< Season 2]]''' \| '''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E1TheSmugglers Season 4 >>>]]''']]-]]]
5	!The Gunfighters
6	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/gunfighters_8132.jpg]]
7	[[caption-width-right:350:"[[Franchise/ToyStory I'd like to join your posse, boys, but first I'm gonna sing a little song...]]"]]
8	->Written by Donald Cotton\
9	Directed by Rex Tucker\
10	'''Production code:''' Z\
11	'''Air dates:''' 30 April - 21 May 1966\
12	'''Number of episodes:''' 4\
13	'''Episode titles:''' "A Holiday for the Doctor", "Don't Shoot the Pianist", "Johnny Ringo", "The O.K. Corral"
14
15	->''"You can't walk into the middle of a Western town and say you've come from outer space! Good gracious me. You would be arrested on a vagrancy charge!"''
16	-->-- '''The Doctor'''
17
18	JustForFun/TheOneWith singing.
19
20	This is the last story to give the episodes individual titles instead of labeling them as "Episode 1", "Episode 2", and so on.
21	----
22
23	Now the Doctor has broken\
24	A tooth on a sweet.\
25	The TARDIS arrives in\
26	An old Western street.\
27	And the dentist that's nearest\
28	Is Doc Holliday,\
29	Who looks just like Theta Sigma\
30	When he's seen the right way.
31
32	Holliday and the Clantons\
33	Are at loggerheads.\
34	The Clantons they try to\
35	Make Steven Taylor dead.\
36	And they think that the Doctor\
37	Is Holliday, too.\
38	Meanwhile Johnny Ringo shows up\
39	At the Last Chance Saloon.
40
41	Clantons shoot Wyatt's brother\
42	ItsPersonal now.\
43	A showdown ensues at\
44	The OK Corral.\
45	And the Clantons and Ringo\
46	Are deaders quite soon.\
47	Doctor, Steven, and Dodo\
48	Leave the Last Chance Saloon.
49
50	'Tis the last story with\
51	Episode titles, see?[[note]]Until 2005[[/note]]\
52	Like "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS2E4TheRomans The Romans]]", "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E3TheMythMakers The Myth Makers]]",\
53	'Tis a humor piece.\
54	And that ''Who'' ain't our timeline\
55	This story it proves.\
56	In our world things went quite diff'rent\
57	Near the Last Chance Saloon.
58
59	----
60	!!Tropes:
61
62	* AccidentalMisnaming: The Doctor repeatedly calls Wyatt Earp "Mr. Werp".
63	* AllGirlsWantBadBoys: Kate has a thing for outlaws.
64	* AllKnowingSingingNarrator: Always recaps what has just happened and occasionally foreshadows between scene changes. Also really likes to end every verse in "...at the Last Chance Saloon."
65	* ArtisticLicenceBiology: The giant tooth 'sign' at Doc Holliday's dental salon doesn't bode well for his professional know-how: it's got four roots, and the most any normal human tooth can have is three.
66	* ArtisticLicenceHistory: The events in the story bear only a vague resemblance to actual history. Even the participants in the famous gunfight were largely different in real life. The novelization plays with this by framing the whole thing as a story being told years later by a dying Doc Holliday.
67	* BalladOfX: The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon.
68	* BigBad: Pa Clanton is the head of the family and encourages his sons in their vendetta against Holliday and the Earps.
69	* BlastingItOutOfTheirHands: Doc Holliday does this to Seth Harper.
70	* BreakingTheFourthWall: Played with: As the Doctor and Steven climb the stairs, the barkeep looks directly at the camera and says, "Looks like Doc's next extraction's gonna be a bullet," supposedly to the pair.
71	* BriefAccentImitation: Steven and Dodo adopt absolutely horrible [[note]]pity the actual American characters' accents aren't much better[[/note]] American accents while trying to be cowboys in 1880s Tombstone. The natives of Tombstone just assume Steven and Dodo are insane. The Doctor sticks to his usual English accent and blends in a lot better.
72	* BottomlessMagazines: Despite the two Earp brothers and the three Clantons only having a single six-shooter apiece, they manage to keep up a constant hail of gunfire while Doc Holliday and Jonny Ringo have their showdown.
73	* CharacterizationMarchesOn: The Doctor claims that he doesn't touch alcohol, preferring milk instead. Later Doctors would throw this rule out the window.
74	* CouldntFindALighter: Johnny Ringo lights his cigar from a lantern in the saloon.
75	* CowboyEpisode: A surprisingly rare genre in ''Doctor Who''. The next one wouldn't be until the Eleventh Doctor visited [[Recap/DoctorWhoS33E3ATownCalledMercy "A Town Called Mercy"]] in 2012, although the Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones did have a Literature/NewSeriesAdventures story set in 1880s Colorado.
76	* DeadSerious: Ringo killing Charlie. Also an EstablishingCharacterMoment.
77	* DeconReconSwitch: The idea of good, honest law men is deconstructed through Wyatt, his brother and his friend Doc. Wyatt will do knowingly illegal things like keeping in jail an innocent man to both protect him while lying to him and using him to save his friend; his brother is probably a deputy because of family relations, because he seems to have no experience; Doc is a bit of a hustler, and a spineless one who would frame someone of being him; on the other hand, they're all ''good guys'' and not just designated, as Wyatt will protect the spirit of the law and his town's citizens, his brother is brave, and Doc has some morals and is a good gunslinger.
78	* {{Deconstruction}}: On the other hand, while the outlaws seem to be fun guys, they're both dangerous in groups and cowardly in small numbers. (And those are ''the Clantons''). The idealist outlaw type is completely deconstructed by Johnny Ringo (though reconstructed by Doc), who has no honour, as a gunfighter or as a human being. Ringo is the only one who isn't shown to have ''any'' redeeming qualities.
79	* DepravedDentist: Doc Holliday. The Doctor of all people doesn't seem to see it.
80	* DoesntLikeGuns: Everybody keeps trying to give the Doctor guns, which he really doesn't want.
81	* EvenEvilHasStandards: The Clantons are appalled by the Doctor suggesting he'd gun down unarmed men, and later by Ringo that he'd shoot people in the back.
82	* GenreDeconstruction: The whole [[TheWestern Western genre]] is deconstructed and reconstructed, gone as far as to lampshade it at the end by mentioning Dodo's love and knowledge of western tropes.
83	* GreekChorus: The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon.
84	* GunTwirling: The Doctor does this. Steven attempts to copy him and drops the gun.
85	* HeKnowsTooMuch: Now it's curtains for Charlie...
86	* HistoricalDomainCharacter: Every one of them. But after this, no further real people would appear on screen in ''Doctor Who'' until George Stephenson in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS22E3TheMarkOfTheRani "The Mark of the Rani"]].
87	* IdiotBall: The Doctor, in addition to being more of a CloudCuckooLander in general, forgets that frontier dentistry is MeatGrinderSurgery, [[TheTeetotaler refuses whiskey]] even to numb the pain of a tooth extraction, and refuses to believe that Doc Holiday is trying to use him as a decoy and is not actually his friend even though it's blatantly obvious.
88	* ImMrFuturePopCultureReference: The Doctor introduces himself and his companions as touring actors. He calls himself [[Film/TheCabinetOfDrCaligari Dr. Caligari]].
89	* INeedAFreakingDrink:
90	-->'''Doctor''': (''sees the bottle Holliday's holding'') I never touch alcohol.\
91	'''Doc Holliday''': (''takes a swig'') Well, I do.
92	* ImpracticallyFancyOutfit: Steven and Dodo get "western" outfits from the TARDIS wardrobe that are wildly over-elaborate and stagey, lampshaded by all the genuinely western characters.
93	* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Again, Doc Holliday. He has qualms with letting the Doctor die, and helps Dodo.
94	* KarmaHoudini: Pa Clanton escapes unscathed by virtue of not being at the O.K. Corral during the gunfight, although he does lose all his sons.
95	* KnightOfCerebus: Ringo is '''much''' more threatening than the characters introduced in the first two episodes.
96	* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: The ballad is used as a narrative device which the characters don't hear for the most part, but the Episode One cliffhanger has Steven and Dodo performing it.
97	** Also:
98	---> '''Masterson''': Doctor who?\
99	'''Doctor''': (''not really listening'') Yes, quite right.
100	** Dodo and Steven mime piano playing, but Steven's line "Let's hope the piano knows it!" hints that it's a player piano.
101	* MusicalExposition: "The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon" comments on the action throughout.
102	* OohMeAccentsSlipping: Where to start?
103	* OutOfGenreExperience: This is the show's only MusicalEpisode, though [[MusicalWorldHypotheses most of the singing is not done by the characters]]. (There has been a stage musical and an audio drama musical in the ExpandedUniverse, though.)
104	* ThePianoPlayer: There's a subplot about the saloon trying to find a new piano player because their old one was shot last week. Eventually the Doctor's companions are forced to play at gunpoint.
105	-->'''Dodo''': "Do you know the song?"\
106	'''Steven''': "Let's hope the piano knows it!"
107	* QuickDraw: Steven demonstrates his quick draw to the Doctor, [[FailedAttemptAtDrama only to drop his gun]]. When he picks it up again, it gets shot out of his hand by a ''real'' gunslinger, Wyatt Earp, who fortunately realises Steven was just showing off thanks to his less than impressive skills re this trope.
108	* RailingKill: The final shootout includes the obligatory instance of someone getting shot and flipping forward over a railing. (Though he has less distance to fall than usual -- he's only halfway up a stairway instead of all the way up on a higher floor -- probably because the show didn't have the budget for a proper stunt fall.)
109	* RecklessGunUsage: Oh so much from the Doctor, Steven and Dodo. Special points for the moment when Doc gives the Doctor a pistol and he repeatedly points it at Doc and Kate, as each in turn pushes his hand away from them and towards the other one.
110	* ReliablyUnreliableGuns: Steven tries some gunslinging at the start of the serial, only for it to go off when it flies out of his hand.
111	* SelfPlagiarism: The story had the same writer as "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E3TheMythMakers The Myth Makers]]" and has the same plot and story structure - the TARDIS arrives in Earth's past with an injured member, the Doctor is mistaken for someone famous, wacky hijinks ensue before a violent climax. At one point, Cotton's novelizations of the two episodes were even published together in the same book.
112	* ShooOutTheClowns: When Charley gets shot, the tone is obviously going to move from comedic to dramatic, as the final gunfight is fastly approaching anyway and it just needs a catalysis. This is actually introduced with the appearance of Johnny Ringo [[ShootTheDog Shooting The Dog]], but it fits/makes the context.
113	* TheSmurfettePrinciple: Kate is the only female guest character in this story.
114	* TitleDrop: The Doctor introduces himself to the Earps with a very long, muttered name, provoking the response "Doctor who?"
115	-->'''The Doctor''': "Precisely".
116	* TooDumbToLive: The Doctor takes the IdiotBall and holds on to it ''hard'' in the serial. It starts when he decides that the Old West is the best place to find a dentist for his toothache, not realising that pain killers hadn't been invented yet. After being set up to be (at least) confused with Doc Holliday by Doc himself and almost being killed and lynched because of this, when questioned by the barkeeper about his relation with Doc, the Doctor says "He's my friend, he gave me a gun, he pulled out my tooth...". The barkeep correctly comments that at this rate, they'll be pulling bullets out of him.
117	** Lampshaded later, when [[Recap/DoctorWhoTVMTheTVMovie an anesthetic slows down his body chemistry too much when he is near death, almost cancelling his regeneration]] and it certainly didn't help things afterward in that particular story.
118	* UnwantedAssistance: Doc Holliday eventually tells Dodo to stop helping him.
119	* TheWildWest: Being a western, this is the obvious setting.

Context Recap / DoctorWhoS3E8TheGunfighters