This episode got some particularly low ratings by viewers. I wouldn't rate it as low as the Web Planet, for instance, because it did have some laugh factor and forehead slapping moments that other episodes of the same quality did not. This episode is much like that original Star Trek episode Spectre of the Gun. Doctor Who came first though, so fans should be very proud of the fact that Star Trek is copying from D.W. and not the other way around.
The thing that made this funny for me, was that it was a British show set in a famous American timeline. British actors pretending to be Old West Americans? HAH! I loved their attempts at a good American accent. Some of the actors just didn't quite have it.
There was a funny factor in this episode. The TARDIS has landed in the old West, at the time of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. The Doctor has broken his tooth with the candy that Dodo gave him [Really Dodo, now you are breaking people's teeth?], and he is in search for a dentist, not realizing where he has landed.
As he calls himself the Doctor, he is mistaken for the real Doc Holliday. This was before they had the internet, and the FBI's Most Wanted pictures for your iPhones, so no one apparently knew what he looked like.
The Clantons are in town, and they are looking to kill Doc Holliday, who has killed one of their brothers. They think that the Doctor is Doc Holliday [he calls himself the Doctor after all], and want to kill him. Local marshal Wyatt Earp and Sheriff Bat Masterson know that he is not Holliday, and try to keep the Clantons away from him by putting him in a jail cell.
The real Doc Holliday is hiding away with the bar maid, Kate. Of course this story has to have the sleazy bar wench!
It's a merry adventure, as the Clantons try to lynch Steven [poor Steven] because he is trying to help the Doctor escape.
Dodo gets kidnapped by the real Holliday, as leverage to get out of town. However, Dodo acts like it's some kind of vacation, instead of being concerned that she has been kidnapped.
Marshal Wyatt Earp's brothers have come to help him fight the Clantons, and one of them gets shot while the Clantons rescue one of their brothers from jail. For some reason this enrages Wyatt Earp --- I mean wouldn't you have suspected this sort of thing was going to happen --- and he swears to take out the Clantons once and for all. The Clantons join up with Johnny Ringo [who suddenly appears in the very end for no reason], and Holliday and Earp get together and there is that infamous gunfight at the O.K. Corral in which Ringo and the Clantons are all killed.
Was it me or was the Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon deadly long? It just kept going and going.....I guess that's why they are called ballads, right? It's still ringing in my head.
The writers took a lot of liberties with the real story. It was not historically accurate, unfortunately. If you want to know the inaccuracies, go look them up yourself. I'm moving on because I want to finish this season before I ruin my teeth from all this grinding.
The Doctor, Dodo and Steven go back to their TARDIS and take off.
Next Up: The Savages
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