Doctor Who - Earth Story (The Gunfighters/The Awakening) [DVD]

Is there an end of term feel at 2 Entertain as they approach the end of complete classic story releases? Do they have a DVD boxset party game and is it beverage related? Who knows, but if they do it has given us Myths & legends and now The Awakening and Gunfighters, stories only connected by taking place on Earth (like that's a rarity). Still, they are both fun stories. They've been remastered as per usual, nice clear picture for Awakening & Gunfighters is a bit better than it looked on VHS.
The Gunfighters used to in the pre-video days have the reputation of lowest ratings ever & biggest Who turkey ever. the former was never true and the latter is unfair. The 2nd of 2 scripts by Donald Cotton*1, it's more like Dennis Spooner's the Romans in it's mix of comedy and drama than it is like Cotton's previous tale The Myth makers ( a recommended CD). Cotton's set up is very Abbott & Costello- the Tardis crew land in Tombstone on the eve of the Gunfight at the OK Corral and the Dr gets mistaken for Doc Holliday, something the infamous gunslinger himself encourages. The scene where the mistake occurs as the Doctor sits in Holliday's Dental surgery awaiting treatment is great;

"Doc?"
"Yes?"
"Holiday?"
"I suppose so"

The comedy elements are the most successful and you get the feel Hartnell really enjoyed it. He plays the comedy for all it's worth knowing he's getting the best lines, like the T-shirt worthy "People keep giving me guns, I do wish they wouldn't!" All the cast make the most of the comedy and it's a good cast all round. The top honours go to Anthony Jacobs (Pa to Matthew Jacobs who wrote the McGann Who movie) as the incorrigible yet likeable Holliday, Sheene Marshe as his world weary girlfriend Kate & Laurence Payne as a psychotic Johnny Ringo. Watch also for Shane Rimmer (Scot in Thunderbirds) & David Graham (Parker in Thunderbirds plus Dalek voices and Kerensky in City of Death).
Good costumes and great sets.

Where does it go wrong a bit? Well the direction by Rex Tucker, a man with a cowboyish sounding name and 1st Producer of Who *2, is very uneven with the dramatic material. While the callous gunning down of an innocent is one of the most shocking deaths in 60's Who, a threatened lynching & the gunfight itself fall flat.
Then there's the Ballad of The Last Chance Saloon. Fitting, well sung by Lynda Baron and a clever way to track the plot, but it's used too many times and grates in places.

All in all a very fun even if flawed tale, worth checking out if you've enjoyed what you've seen of Hartnell so far.

The Awakening is a fun but quiet little Peter Davison story by Eric Pringle. The tardis crew hop off to Earth to visit Tegan's grandad (you don't want to be in her family, 1st Auntie, then Cousin and now Grandad's in peril!).
they discover a village Little Hodcombe where historical re-enactment is taking a strange turn, all connected to the mailgn force of an alien entity called the Malus, which has been affecting people since the English Civil War. The Malus feeds off negative energy and is represented by a static figure which can burst through walls. It's a nice change to have an alien which is not a man in a costume for once and relies on the acting for atmosphere.

There is atmosphere but it never quite gets scary lacking say the operatic if slightly OTT quality of the Daemons, a story it resembles in many ways.

Good performances with Polly James & Denis Lill making the strongest impression amongst the guests & Peter Davison as with most of his last year giving a relaxed and charming performance. There's a nice link to the Visitation as the Terileptils are mentioned.

Nothing outstanding but an enjoyable 2 parter for Davison fans.

Peter Purves, Shane Rimmer and David Graham do a fun commentary for Gunfighters joined by Richard Beale (Bat Masterson) who reveals he was in the Green Death (he plays a minister who asks the PM to have a word with the Brig). They dicuss the pros and cons of Director Rex Tucker and that song! They mention John Alderson (Wyatt Earp) was a stalwart of Hollywood westerns and mention nuances such as how Steven's outfit looks like a costume rather than authentic weterns garb. All think it stands up well now.

End of the Line is a top notch look at Who's 3rd (& Hartnell's last) year. Interviewees include Peter Purves, Anneke Wills & Donald Tosh plsu there are soundbites (textbites?) read out from interviews with people like producers John Wiles & Innes Lloyd. there's also a Galaxy 4 clip of a Rill which I don't recall seeing before. 1st class doc!
It's well supplemented with Tomorrow's Times which has clearly found it's stride telling the story of the press loving Who for the 1st year or 2 then becoming disenchanted & how a paper writer tried to predict the "great success" of the Voord (from Keys of Marinus)!

Director Michael Owen Morris and Script Editor Eric Saward comment on Awakening, enjoyably recalling the shoot, script probles, JNT and comparing Matt Smith to Peter Davison e.g. both young men who can convey wisdom beyind years.

There's a double look at the Awakening locations with a now and then (nicely put together as always) plus Return to Little Hodcombe a making of documentary shot at the location used. It's a good doc with a range of interviewees including our commenters, actors Keith Jayne who thinks the famous outtake has earned him more in repeat fees than the story & Janet Fielding who wonders if treading lightly with an inexperienced director sold him short. A bit short but using the location is a definite plus as is interviewing residents who recall the show's visit
Making the Malus is a look at the creature, recalling its creation & showing it now in a collector's hands-a fun short.
Some extended and deleted scenes are included, notably Kamelion's lost scene and the Golden Egg Award from Noel Edmonds' Late, Late Breakfast Show where a horse destroys a lych gate is there too.

A trailer for Paradise Towers rounds things off.

It's a good all round package very well put together

*1 Cotton also wrote either a script or storyline called The Herdsmen of Venus/Aquarius where aliens herd creatures one of which ends up in Loch Ness but it was never made. He also novelised Myth Makers, Gunfighters & Romans. All written in the 1st person and all recommended.

*2 Tucker did pre-production work on Who prior to Verity lambert's arrival and briefly alongside her but the 2 clashed.

Not that either one is bad, but The Awakening suffers from the same fault as many 'filler' episodes of the 21st century series, in that forty-five minutes isn't enough in which to develop the story. We're given a picturesque location and a mystery involving clashing time zones that Sapphire and Steel would stare at each other for six whole episodes in. But in typical Davison fashion we get urgent running around instead, and like the Doctor, we don't get time to admire the scenery, nor piece the puzzle together in our heads. It's all rather lightweight really, and in the end the Malus could just be any old generic monster. Even the subplot concerning Tegan's family ties - especially after Aunt Vanessa - ends up feeling less substantial and important than it should be.

As for The Gunfighters, it's a story with a reputation that's definitely improved with age. It could hardly have got any worse - Doctor Who Magazine, in the dark days of a series tainted by more extant episodes and folk memories that were, at the time, unchallengable, latched onto The Gunfighters' low Appreciation Index figures and mercilessly beat the story to death with it. Yes, the style and nature of the beast seem utterly bizarre and corny now; but first and foremost, it's a comedy, and not a bad one. Embittered fans just don't seem to want to recognize this. As the first Western serial the BBC ever produced, it's also an experiment that could have gone much more awry than it did. But mainly, right up to the final climactic shootout, The Gunfighters has a genuine sense of fun about it. The principles are clearly having a much more enjoyable time than in the Celestial Toymaker before it, which rubs off onto the less closed-minded viewer; and Gerry Anderson fans will have even more fun spotting the familiar voices that turn up in the supporting cast.

It's late October 1881 in Tombstone and the Clantons are waiting in the Last Chance Saloon to knock off Doc Holliday when three (very) strangers drift into town: a Doctor calling himself Caligari (William Hartnell) who's looking for a good dentist, a singer calling himself Regret (Peter Purves) and a pianist called Dodo (Jackie Lane). When they mistake the eccentric Doctor for the gunman, Holliday decides to let them kill him to get a bit of peace and quiet once the Clantons assume he's out of the way. Naturally, things don't quite work out that way... especially since the Doctor is a time traveller whose TARDIS has just landed at the OK Corral. Yep, The Gunfighters is Doctor Who way out west - well, West London on a small TV soundstage masquerading as Tombstone's main street and populated by British actors with cowboy hats and dodgy accents and the odd Canadian like Shane Rimmer.

The casting isn't all bad, though: John Alderson makes a convincing Wyatt Earp, Anthony Jacobs is a decent Doc Holliday while the barkeep is played by David Graham, Brains from Thunderbirds and the voice behind many of Gerry Anderson's puppet shows including, perhaps most appropriately, the cowboy show Four Feather Falls. Best of all is Laurence Payne, usually typecast as tortured and ineffectual types (not surprising with a name like that) but clearly having a ball playing a charismatically rotten Johnny Ringo, a character who seems to have posthumously made up for missing the real gunfight by turning up in almost every fictional version of it.

Although from the last days when the series did historical adventures with no science fiction elements as part of a dimly remembered educational remit that had been part of the original pitch, this plays fast and loose with history with such rampant dime novel abandon that even Ned Buntline himself might have told writer Donald Cotton to hold his horses there for a moment. Urban legend has it that this was the lowest rated Doctor Who story ever (it wasn't, though it scored the worst audience appreciation rating of Hartnell's tenure), and while it does come from a period when it looked like the wouldn't be needing to regenerate its hero - then still a grumpy old traveller in time rather than a lord of it - it's more fun than its dismal reputation implies. It's certainly one of the more ambitious Who stories of its era, although that ambition isn't always realised and it often gets repetitive - the Clanton boys sure do spend a lot of time in the saloon talking about killing the Doc while Tristram Cary's Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon (sung by Lynda Baron) starts off as a nice nod to old Westerns but is quickly diluted by constant overuse, bookending just about every scene with only minor variations until you're hoping a stray bullet will shut the chanteuse up. The gunfight itself caused some friction behind the scenes, with director Rex Tucker taking his name off the credits because of the way it was re-edited, but despite one shot where the roof of the soundstage and its arc lights creep into view it's shot with some real panache.

It's hard to make a case for The Gunfighters as anything other than a modestly entertaining diversion, but it's a long way from the worst of the series even if its DVD release does treat it somewhat as leftovers, clumsily doubling it with an equally leftover story from the Fifth Doctor's third season and calling it a boxed set.

The Awakening is one of those Peter Davison stories that seems almost in danger of seeming overstretched at two episodes, and that when the series was still in its 25-minute format. With the Doctor, Turlogh and the less obnoxious than usual Tegan finding themselves in a 20th century English village where the local squire is disastrously turning the clock back with his increasingly draconian war games recreating the English Civil War - naturally part of a plot to revive a malignant alien that has been buried for centuries - it's an okay story that seems designed to fill in a gap between more ambitious stories. Once again it nods to Nigel Kneale's Quatermass and the Pit with its alien explanation for the Devil, but it never really builds up much tension or fear along the way as it hits the story points professionally enough but without much verve or inspiration. Rather like the character of Will Chandler, originally intended as a new companion along the lines of Jamie McCrimmon from the Patrick Troughton years but quickly discarded, you get the feeling that no-one knew quite how to make this one stand out from the crowd and just tried to salvage something passable from it all with only minimal interest.

Extras on The Gunfighters are an audio commentary by Peter Purves, Shane Rimmer, David Graham, Richard Beale, Tristan de Vere Cole and Toby Hadoke, a couple of featurettes (the best, The End of the Line, about the show's troubled future prospects at the time, while Tomorrow's Times - The First Doctor deals with contemporary press coverage of the show), stills gallery and trivia track. The Awakening gets an audio commentary by Michael Owen Morris, Eric Saward and Toby Hadoke, extended and deleted scenes, a trio of featurettes dealing with the troubled production, the making of the monster and the locations, an outtake and extract from the Golden Egg Award, isolated score, stills gallery and on-screen production notes.