Doctor Who 7x03 - A Town Called Mercy

[keep_counting]

I have had a shitty, shitty weekend. That's neither interesting, nor relevant. And the site I used to watch this ep was unbelievably slow and kept stopping to buffer. I've also spent the entire weekend writing a statistics-report and I am still not done. It's due tomorrow evening. Screw everything. It's time for points.

(spoilers below)

THE GOOD:

- Western. My dad forced me to watch The Good, the Bad and the Ugly when I was little, and ever since then Westerns have had a soft spot in my heart. +5 simply for the premise (even if I am dissatisfied with how it was carried out)

- Amy's clothes are amazingly beautiful. +10

- 'I see Keep Out signs more as suggestions'. Me too Doctor, which is why no-one in my neighbourhood likes me. +5 ;)

- Matt Smith rocking the accent and definitely not rocking that toothpick. +10 for making me laugh soo much

- It's a horribly overdone cliché, but I have to give points for the undertaker. +5

- 'He shoots peoples hats??' How dare he. +5 for Smith's delivering of this line.

- 'Why would he wanna kill you? Unless he's met you...' This line made me laugh so hard, especially because of the matter-of-fact way it was said. +10, because most days, everyone really does want to kill the Doctor

- Toast-crumbs on the console: little signs of domestic like this make me very happy. +5

- 'I speak horse. He's called Susan, and he wants you to respect his decisions in life.' +20 for the transgender horse. What? Don't look at me like that. This episode needs more points. And more transgender people.

- I love polite self-destruction software. It's the best kind their is. +10

- 'You wouldn't' - 'I genuinly don't know'. I have to give Matt points for his acting in general this episode, even if there were so many things about this sequence that I very much did not like. His furious 'sit down... SIT DOWN!' gave me chills as well. +10

- Amy taking charge and rightfully pointing out: 'this is what happens when you travel alone for too long.' THANK-YOU FOR FINALLY ADRESSING THIS. +5 (not any more points, because its probably going to come up again when never)

- 'Marshall... ma'am... fella'. Aw, give Rory some more respect. Still, +5 for Arthur Darvill's look of exasperation. He's getting so good at those. I wonder why.

(points: 105)


THE BAD:

- The accents were weird. I mean, they were all over the place kinda? I'm not even going to pretend like I am any kind of authority on american accents, but I do watch a lot of shows, American as well as British, so I am alright in pinpointing certain dialects by this time. It might be just me though, and everything was perfectly normal? Anyway, it was enough to actually distract me, so -5

- The whole dramatic teleportation with the Cyborg was simply just super weird. Why not just stay right next to the city when all you do all the time is wait for Jex to come out so you can kill him? Where you off befriending a cactus or something? What does one do in a desert? I don't know, so I'm taking away -5.

-  The whole conversation between Amy and Jex was just weird. He could tell she was a mother because she was kind, yet she looked sad? If my husband and best friend was in danger, I would look sad too, but it wouldn't stop me from trying to be kind to the person we were all trying to help. Yet I am not a mother. Sorry, but like, what? Also, Amy was a mother for like five minutes (okay, what was it, three weeks or months?) and yet that defines everything about her kindness? -5 because it was just such an odd jump in the conversation.

- The Cyborg failed to do much for me, tbh. The voice was grating, the make-up was weird and I failed to feel much sympathy for him at all. Also, he's now stuck with babysitting a town called Mercy. residence 81 people who are all extremely uninteresting and lax, for the rest of eternity. Ha, Cyborg. You're so goddamn lucky. -5

- Speaking of the towns-folk, when Isaac was shot, there was no reaction at all. I have to take away at least -10 for lazy extras. There was not a single shout, not a single tear or raised voice. Your sheriff and good friend just died - your population is now down to 80 - he died saving a man you're not sure you want to have here anymore - he died right in front of your eyes. REACTION PLEASE. I got nothing.

- Actually, -10 for Isaac dying. And then -10 for awkward angling of the camera doing the post-death scene.

- I have to take away -20 for the music. It kept distracting me. Normally, Who is SO GOOD with the soundtrack, but especially this episode, it just felt off every single damn time an important scene was coming up. What is happening? Is Murray and the music department smoking a lot of weed? I wouldn't blame them, to be honest. They are sitting with the scripts, yeah?

- (sorry for being so snarky, it's late and as I said, shitty couple of days. I can be nice, I really can! this episode is making it a bit hard though...)

- What happened with the sudden shift between Amy and Rory's opinions? Remember back in The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People, when Amy was much more unforgiving - without being ruthless - and Rory was all 'we have to help everyone, okay?'. It was completely role-reversal here! I felt like Rory's character was beaten with a stick. He doesn't even get to do anything much this episode, except getting shot at, and now he's all for letting a man die? What happened to the good, kind nurse? -10

- The Doctor holding a gun. I gave points for this above, because of the dialouge, but I have to take away -5 for him pulling the gun, especially when it was completely unnecessary. He'd thrown him over the line, the Gunslinger was coming for him. Control yourself, Doctor.

- I'm not going to take away point for this, but I want to comment on the overall 'morale' theme of this episode. Think about it. In the end, he isn't willing to risk Jex's life to save 80 others, yet he killed millions, billions of Time Lords, to save the rest of the universe: and you can't put lives up against each other like that, but when it comes down to it, is it only different because it was one man, right in front of him? The Time Lords, their faces must blur into one, but surely they weren't all evil. They can't all have been. So why won't he sacrifice just one man - who is clearly guilty -  to save others, when he murdered so many before. This is so fascinating to me, because when is it murder and when is it heroic? Is what Jex and the others did really so bad? It helped stop the war, and the Gunslinger still has a conscience: he actively does almost everything he can to not harm innocents. He deems himself a monster, but is he really? I'm going to be up all night if I continue like this, but fascinating. However, the episode did not delve enough into this, not at all. I was annoyed. Not enough to take away points, but enough to not give any for raising an interesting subject.

- Why didn't the Doctor use his sonic when the towns-people came out and that young guy pulled his gun? It's not a wooden gun! I get that he wants to talk to them, but things could have gotten seriously out of hand... -5

- 'You don't get to decide when and how your debt is paid.' Hello pot, this is kettle, have we met before? -10 because this line, more than anything, applies to the Doctor, and he is the one nearly shooting another man for this exact thing. I know it probably scares him because him and Jex are so alike, but that is not an excuse. Not at all.

- There weren't nearly enough Amy and Rory in this episode. This could have easily been a companion-free episode, with some frisky young woman in-town filling in for Amy and yelling at the Doctor, getting him back from the brink. My peeps are leaving soon, use them better! -10

Points for this episode: -5. You still got more points than the ballet-Daleks of AotD, so that's something!

Points for the season: 219. We're starting to go downhill people, though not as much as I had actually thought. I just think generally I couldn't bring myself to care that much about this episode. Luckily, next episode features Brian Williams yet again, so be still my heart, I think we can come out on top ;)

Comments

[bardingtide.livejournal.com]

"You don't get to decide when and how your debt is paid."

I think at that point the Doctor was actually talking about himself. The reason he was so angry was because he sees himself in Jex and he's angry that Jex seems to have found a mesure of peace, that continues to allude him.

[keep-counting.livejournal.com]

I definitely think he was talking about himself as well, but the writing was soo clunked and all-over the place that his anger didn't feel quite justified to me about it all, exactly because of that. It is a very good line though, the whole conversation between them was quite brilliant :) I like your meta on how Jex seems to have found a measure of peace, while he's 'adrift'. It is an awesome parallel: Jex is grounded in one place, the Doctor is traveling. Who's happier and carry their burdens with most ease? I don't think its the Doctor.

[10littlebullets.livejournal.com]

I think it's also that, especially if the subtext to all of this is war and the Time War in particular, there's nobody left to decide how the Doctor's debt should be paid, and he knows exactly how fucked-up that is.

[bardingtide.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

He carries all this guilt - because what ever Jex says he does have the nerve to do what needs to be done - but because he did he's all alone. With no one to absolve him.

[keep-counting.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's a very good (and extremely scary) point.

[mrs-tribble.livejournal.com]

That's what I thought too - I could see it in his eyes.