Review of A Town Called Mercy
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.
I don’t know what it is about S7/S33, but I’m just not feeling it. Each episode has been beautifully rendered – good acting, good effects, and in this case a gorgeous location – but I have yet to feel a visceral connection with anything going on in the lives of the Doctor, Amy and Rory. Maybe it’s because we’re not really following their collective lives anymore.
Whatever is going on, I still liked this episode better than the last one. In Dinos, everything from the title on down was designed for the kiddies, with a few incongruous bits of very adult themes thrown in for good measure. Here’s its rather the opposite. We’ve got a cool-looking cyborg, but that’s the backdrop for a huge ethical exploration of what it means to be a war criminal. As Sue of Adventures with the Wife in Space would say: Not. For. Kids.
Maybe that’s why I enjoyed Mercy more than Dinos, though. Westerns aren’t my favorite; I vastly prefer The Seven Samurai to The Magnificent Seven. Despite that, I really felt like this was a story I could sink my teeth into – the spaghetti Western bit was just set dressing (as opposed to the first time the Doctor was coerced into becoming a lawman in America’s Old West). Really, it could have been set anywhere, anywhen – they just happened to decide to put it in the 1870 U.S. frontier.
While I can’t honestly say I was surprised by much of the plot – for example, the cliffhanger of the pre-credits sequence would have been more convincing if we hadn’t just seen that same I’m-looking-for-the-Doctor-except-I-don’t-actually-mean-this-Doctor trick in last week’s episode – I did like the way some of the ethical ambiguities were presented. On which side of the question would each of us find ourselves? Would we execute someone who had committed such atrocities, claiming justice for the victims? Would we find some other way to “make things right”?
This whole philosophical debate is the heart of the story. It’s more poignant because – like Jex – we recognize the Doctor in his story: “There’s rage there, like me; guilt, like me; solitude…” When Jex dares to question the Doctor’s nerve, though, he snaps like Severus Snape and then takes the darker road. It takes Amy’s “we can’t be like him. We have to be better than him” to pull him back from that edge.
I feel obliged at this stage to pass along something that was pointed out to me last week in a Twitter conversation: the Doctor really seems to be on a journey toward the Dark Side. In other words, he’s in danger of fulfilling the path of time in which he becomes the Valeyard(!). We even got an echo from Amy (“See, this is what happens when you travel alone for too long”) of what Donna told Ten way back in Runaway Bride: “sometimes you need somebody to stop you.” It was there with The Waters of Mars‘ Time Lord Victorious, it was there in AGMGTW, and it was there last week when he decided to deal with Solomon as he did (and why didn’t Amy throw her “When did killing someone become an option?” ire at the Doctor then?). This is the only thing resembling a longer story arc we’re getting this series, so I’m interested to see where it will go, even as I’m a bit afraid to watch.
Speaking more broadly about the episode, there were, as always, ups and downs. Among the downs were the fact that Amy and Rory were completely irrelevant except for the aforementioned Moment. Someone like Isaac could (almost) as easily have fulfilled that role, so the Ponds seem to have been there only to fulfill contractual obligations.
In the not-hot-but-not-unforgivable category were things like the way Amy waltzed into town in a micro-mini without anyone batting an eyelash (a far cry from Nine’s warning to Rose, “you’ll start a riot, Barbarella!”), an untested 18-year-old kid (in a town presumably full of war veterans) being influential enough to get most of the town to follow his say-so, and the somewhat obvious direction of the overall plot (was anyone surprised that Jex’s “fatherhood” was in the same sense as Dr. Frankenstein’s? or that he was actually the Kahler equivalent of Oppenheimer?).
But I liked that Jex was believably dichotomous. One moment he’s all genial caretaker and the next he’s a coldly unapologetic slaughterer of untold thousands. And he’s believable as either. I think he perhaps underestimated the Doctor in claiming that “the fact that I’m both bewilders you,” though. From our end of the narrative rather than Jex’s, it feels pretty obvious to me that the Doctor’s reaction is more one of recognition and self-loathing than anything. And the idea that the Doctor’s “prison” is his morality is intriguing and deserves more thought.
I also liked the way the Doctor dismisses his initial apparent lack of curiosity about Kahler Jex with an, “I’ve matured. I’m 1200 years old now.” I was thrilled to hear that number tossed out, as I prefer to think of this statement as the Doctor finally ‘fessing up to his real age. I’m sure we’re meant to assume it means he’s done lots of Pond-free traveling between series, but I don’t buy it. He’s just taking the opportunity of not having Companions with him all the time to fudge things back to where they really should’ve been when he first told that white lie to Rose. (That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it.)
By far the best part of the whole episode, though, was Susan. You know – the stallion (gelding? I only ever saw the one key piece of anatomy) who wanted the preacher to respect his life choices. I loved the matter-of-fact way the Doctor explained and then defended the horse’s chosen name – though I couldn’t help but wonder whether or not he’d gotten Susan’s preferred pronouns right. I think Susan might become one of my all-time favorite one-off characters.
So I have to say, I think of Mercy as more win than fail, though it’s not a knock-your-socks-off entry. There’s far more here to make you think than we often get, and I respect that. It also had more unrelated local color than was entirely seemly (I kept thinking how much better Firefly had done certain things), but it was entertaining enough. And you can’t argue with Matt Smith playing cowboy.
Don’t the We Moan and Moan and Moan!!!
I am not sure if it the X Factor, IT, or the indescribable ineffeble unknown quantity but there is something about ATCM that left me feeling something was missing. The best I can describe it (as I have done in the twitterverse) is the whole of the story being less than the sum of its many excellent parts. Lots of nuggets that could be enjoyed, I even thought of Sirens of Time when they talked about a war criminal. Maybe I am getting curmudgeonly in my middleagedness and just a bit too demanding?
Hard to say
It could be that our expectations have been set too high. Even amongst The We, though, there is no consensus. Some people scored Dinos high and Mercy low (like yourself); others were the other way around (like me); still others had no bones to pick with either, or were unhappy with both. And that's before we throw in the permutations including Asylum.
Frankly, I think it's down to personal preference. No matter what, fans will always find something about which to complain. As for this blog, well… It's kind of my duty to pick apart each episode. 😉
story arc
There do seem to be hints of another story arc this season, as well as the Dark Doctor plot.
For a start, there are all the mysteriously flickering lightbulbs. The bulb on Amy’s dressing room mirror flickers when she’s kidnapped by the Dalek slave. Rory’s dad was fixing a faulty light fitting. And of course the lightbulbs in Mercy flickered a lot.
And as someone pointed out in another forum, there are also eggs. Eggs-terminate. Dinosaur eggs. A spaceship that looks like an egg. Is this a coincidence, or is something else going on!?!
I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled for eggs and lightbulbs in the upcoming episodes.
Red herrings are cool
Those are more along the “Bad Wolf” line, in terms of story arc, and I quite like it. (I’d seen someone point out the lights in a gif, but hadn’t noticed the egg thing yet; I’ll have to be on the lookout, too!) In fact, I much prefer that kind of “arc” to the grand, sweeping ones we’ve had of late.
And leave it to Moffat (the master of misdirection) to claim there was no season arc when there really is one. Time will tell.
Power of Three (minor spoiler)
It looks like there’s another possible clue/red herring: Henry VIII’s bedroom!
Not sure how that fits in with the eggs and lightbulbs.
Mruh?
Guess I’ll have to look at that more carefully when I watch again. Not entirely sure to what you’re referring (that is, why’s his room’s got something you consider a clue/red herring).
Second verse, same as the first
The Doctor mentions Rory leaving a phone charger in Henry VIII’s bedroom in ATCM. But this doesn’t happen until later in TPO3. There’s been speculation (e.g. here) it could be a subtle clue that the episodes aren’t happening in the same order for the Doctor and the Ponds. And maybe even that Amy and Rory will get perma-timelooped by the Angels next weeks, living the same ten years over and over again with only the Doctor aware of it.
Either that the script editor goofed when someone decided to change the running order of the episodes at the last minute.
Ooh!
Fascinating! That’s a fairly cool interpretation. 🙂
Of course, I’m always just as willing to believe in simple continuity errors. 😉