Pcture from RadioTimes.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating *****
Cast: Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill, Ben Browder, Adrian Scarborough, Dominic Kemp, Rob Cavazos, Joanne McQuinn, Andrew Brooks, Garrick Hogan, Byrd Wilkins, Sean Benedict.
Time is running short for Amy Pond/Williams and her husband Rory, there is a reckoning coming and it seems that time for the Doctor is fraught with perceived future knowledge of Amy’s demise and this knowledge is changing the Doctor in ways not really seen in on television.
Not only are these dark days for possibly two of the great companions of the Doctor; but the Doctor’s noted pacifism and abhorrence of weapons is sorely being tested the further this series goes, more dark than almost any other previous series to date and only being topped by the tenth Doctor’s bittersweet story line of The Waters of Mars. A Town Called Mercy, the third episode of the new series sees the Doctor, Amy and Rory land in American frontier, 200 miles from where they wanted to be. However, as faithful viewers are always aware, the Tardis always takes the Doctor where he needs to be rather wants to be and not even the sight of a cyborg gunslinger can stop the Doctor from tipping even more uncomfortably into the dark zone.
As with the David Tennant episode The Waters of Mars sit in a realm of unquiet and brooding consequence as the tenth Doctor showed his triumphalist contempt for the laws of time, the brooding nature of Matt Smith as he falls briefly between judge, jury and executioner is one of the real turning points in the series direction and one that cannot be ignored for too long. The use of a Doctor turning frustratingly to mechanised weapons in order to force the alien Doctor Kahler-Dex out of Mercy is out of character but also a bold step that might prove to be decisive by the time the series takes a break before the Christmas episode.
The interchange between Kahler-Dex, played by Adrian Scarborough and The Doctor lit up the screen as the realisation that the two men were more alike than even the Doctor felt comfortable to admit. Both had killed and both had run away to escape the revenge sought by others and in the end as the creation of Kahler-Dex sought to exterminate him, the Doctor’s is never truly that far away either. One of the most poignant lines in the episode was where Kahler-Dex told the Doctor of his people’s belief that when you die, you carry the souls of those you have wronged up a large mountain, if this is the case then the Doctor is in serious trouble at some point.
A Town Called Mercy is perhaps the highlight of the series so far in a run of programmes that have been creatively as high as they have been since the return in 2005.
Ian D. Hall