The Gunfighters (TV story)

The Gunfighters was the eighth story of Season 3 of Doctor Who. This was the last serial whose episodes had individual titles until the 2005 series.

Synopsis
The TARDIS arrives in the town of Tombstone in the Wild West and the Doctor, having hurt a tooth on one of Cyril's sweets, decides he must visit a dentist. The local dentist is Doc Holliday, currently engaged in a feud with the Clanton family. Lawmen Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson are meanwhile doing their best to keep the peace.

The Doctor, Steven and Dodo narrowly survive a lynch mob, the attentions of Holliday and Earp and various other dangers; they finally return to the TARDIS after witnessing the famous gunfight at the OK Corral, in which the young Clanton brothers and their gunman ally Johnny Ringo are all killed by Holliday, Earp and Earp's brother Virgil.

Plot
to be added

Cast

 * Doctor - William Hartnell
 * Steven Taylor - Peter Purves
 * Dodo Chaplet - Jackie Lane
 * Ike Clanton - William Hurndell
 * Phineas Clanton - Maurice Good
 * Billy Clanton - David Cole
 * Kate Fisher - Sheena Marshe
 * Seth Harper - Shane Rimmer
 * Charlie - David Graham
 * Wyatt Earp - John Alderson
 * Doc Holliday - Anthony Jacobs
 * Bat Masterson - Richard Beale
 * Pa Clanton - Reed De Rouen
 * Johnny Ringo - Laurence Payne
 * Warren Earp - Martyn Huntley
 * Virgil Earp - Victor Carin

Crew

 * Assistant Floor Manager - Tom O'Sullivan
 * Ballad Music - Tristram Cary
 * Costumes - Daphne Dare
 * Designer - Barry Newbury
 * Film Cameraman - Ken Westbury
 * Film Editor - Les Newman
 * Lyrics - Donald Cotton, Rex Tucker
 * Make-Up - Sonia Markham
 * Producer - Innes Lloyd
 * Production Assistant - Tristan de Vere Cole, Angela Gordon
 * Script Editor - Gerry Davis
 * Special Sounds - Brian Hodgson
 * Studio Lighting - George Summers
 * Studio Sound - Colin Dixon
 * Theme Arrangement - Delia Derbyshire
 * Title Music - Ron Grainer

Quotes

 * Johnny Ringo I'd blast you down as soon as spit at you.
 * The Doctor You can't walk into the middle of a Western town and say you've come from outer space! Good gracious me. You would be arrested on a vagrancy charge!

Story Notes
This story is also a bona fide next to The Highlanders and Black Orchid.

Ratings

 * A Holiday For The Doctor (30/04/1966 17:50) - 6.5m viewers
 * Don't Shoot The Pianist (07/05/1966 17:50) - 6.6m viewers
 * Johnny Ringo (14/05/1966 17:55) - 6.2m viewers
 * The O.K. Corral (21/05/1966 17:50) - 5.7m viewers

Myths

 * The Gunfighters was the lowest-rated Doctor Who story ever. (There were a number of stories with lower ratings, including The Savages, The War Machines and The Smugglers.)
 * Sheena Marshe, who played Kate Fisher, was director Rex Tucker's daughter. (She was unrelated to him; his daughter Jane Tucker, later to find fame as one third of the Rod, Jane and Freddy group of children's entertainers, did however appear as a walk-on in the story.)

Location Filming
to be added

Discontinuity, Plot Holes, Errors

 * Episodes one and two have the world's quietest gunshots, and in episode four's climactic gunfight Earp and Masterson apparently walk through a withering barrage of fire unscathed.
 * In the ballad, 'earning your gunfighter's wings' is anachronistic, the phrase being coined in WWI.
 * The Clanton gang have amazing accents, Billy obviously having been to finishing school, and Johnny Ringo to the RSC.

Continuity
to be added

DVD, Video and Other Releases

 * This has been released on video in episodic format.
 * This has been released on audio cd in episodic format.

Target Novelisations

 * Novelised as The Gunfighters (novelisation) in 1986 by Donald Cotton.