A Town Called Mercy
This is about as tedious as the show has been since its return. Even very bad episodes can be entertaining in their way. Toby Whithouse… God, does he ever make a surprising or difficult decision? On purpose, I mean?
It’s not just that the plot is obvious, though that’s certainly true. It’s that it’s written on the most dim, simplistic level I can imagine and treats the platitudes that take the guise of themes as if they are deep and meaningful insight.
I mean, hell. Amy actually says (in whatever phrasing the script uses) “No, don’t kill him; you need to be better than he is!” As if there were the slightest concern that this would actually happen — which is another problem. Nearly every dramatic moment falls flat because there is nothing to back it up. There is no real peril, and the one casualty — the sheriff — just feels arbitrary. It looks like we’re meant to mourn his loss, but we’re never given anything about him except that he seemed to be a pretty good guy, and his death doesn’t come out of any kind of tragedy; it comes out of his arbitrarily throwing himself in front of a gun because That’s What People Do at moments like this in scripts like this.
Things happen not out of actual character or thematic development, but because those are The Things That Happen in scripts like this. People do things not because they actually make sense given their personalities and the present circumstances but because those are The Things That People Do in scripts like this. Dramatic situations arise not through the natural clash of characters and contextual conflicts, but through the insertion of stock dramatic concepts that the writer felt that the script should exhibit. And having made that decision, he didn’t — you know — try to integrate the concepts and explore them in an organic way; he spelled them out verbatim, as if he were actively leafing through his screenwriting 101 textbook. “Aha!” Whithouse yelped. “I will use that one!”
The end effect is that the plotting is obvious. Sure. Who cares; most plotting is. Who cares about plot anyway. What’s insulting is the presentation of all of this facile, half-assed, superficial garbage as something meaningful and original. It’s transparent. It’s cloying. It’s vapid. And the fact that this is essentially a kids’ show makes it even worse, as children’s entertainment should be better than this. It’s so insulting to fob off the kids on any old piece of shit because, hey, they don’t know any better. It’s so insulting. And the thing is, if kids know one thing they know when they’re being talked down to. Usually better than adults.
Under Davies (and nearly any previous era), even at the show’s most daft or bizarre I always felt that there was something of substance underneath. Even The Sarah Jane Adventures explored difficult, even painful concepts in terms that children could understand. To contrast, what is the takeaway from Whithouse’s writing? That… what, people aren’t always all bad or all good? That sometimes they have two stark, diametrically opposed aspects to them? Brilliant insight, there.
It’s a totally reasonable theme, but a theme like that needs more than lip service for it to carry more weight than a fortune cookie. The way that it’s handled here is so simplistic as to be ridiculous, and thereby — in this context — to render the question risible. There’s no gray at all, in a scenario that connotes an infinite monochrome spectrum.
It’s so weird. It’s like Whithouse took the yin yang absolutely at face value. Characters can be a mix of black AND white!
Something odd, and to me suggestive: just a few years ago one of Davies’ scripts made a really big point about the precise definition of “decimate” — so why does Whithouse make a reasonably big point of using it incorrectly? Unless by “decimating half the planet” he meant killing off 5% of the population.
It’s not just recent continuity, of course; the script also seems to forget its own premises, so it keeps boring us with scenes like the one where the Gunslinger storms into the crowded saloon and stomps around, assessing the townspeople. Is there supposed to be tension in that scene? We (again) know he’s not going to do anything, so why does it take so long?
For me another problem is that the script gives Rory almost nothing to do. Considering that he’s the only thing that I really enjoy about the show right now and that he’s going to be gone in two weeks, that kind of annoyed me. It’s just one more waste among many.
So. As usual for Whithouse, that was a tired lump of facile storytelling bulwarked by trite platitudes presented as sober insight — this time, infused with clumsy Holmesian pastiche.
Not terrible, but pretty boring. Actually a little insulting. Someone I know commented that until this series they never understood why people classed Doctor Who as a kids’ show. That’s about right.