I tried.  I really tried.  I really really tried.  I actually went back and rewatched the first two episodes when I realised I hadn’t really been paying proper attention to them.  I paid proper attention.

Nope.  Don’t like it.

Dull, slow, poorly acted, boringly directed and that interminable song!

Let’s get that song out of the way first.  It starts off okay.  It works quite nicely in the first episode, setting the scene and emphasising the tone.  But it just goes from bad to worse.  When the song starts narrating events happening on screen, particularly the numerous deaths in the final two episodes, it is ridiculous and the slow, tragic arrangement of the tune sounds awful.  Why on earth they didn’t simply transfer to an instrumental version of the story as the tone of the episodes darkened is beyond me.  Ugh.
The deaths the song tortuously narrates are also appalingly acted.  Not a single death convinces as actor after actor takes a gunshot and then falls into their pre-arranged position.  Warren Earp and Charlie the Bartender are bad enough, but most disappointing is the death of supposed ace gunslinger and notorious outlaw, Johnny Ringo who is pushed over (or something) by Dodo, and then shot unconvincingly by Doc Holliday.

I’ve said this story is poorly acted, although I should qualify that statement.  The cast is of variable quality.  At the good end are Peter Purves being the standout of the TARDIS crew, Sheena Marshe’s Kate, Anthony Jacobs’ Doc Holliday and John Alderson and Richard Beale as Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson respectively.  At the terrible end are all the Clanton brothers, especially David Cole’s Billy, David Graham’s Charlie the Bartender, Victor Carin’s Virgil Earp and, I’m sorry to say, Laurence Payne’s Johnny Ringo and…..William Hartnell.

A principal problem in the story is the American accents.  They come and go from scene to scene, and the final gunfight at the OK Corral sees Laurence Payne and David Cole barely even bothering to affect an accent (I assume this, as it is on film, was filmed prior to the studio scenes, but that’s hardly an excuse).  But the delivery of lines is sorely lacking.  Laurence Payne, in particular, seems bored and makes no impact in any scene he appears in.  Bearing in mind, he is supposed to be this notorious outlaw, he singularly fails to convince.

But Hartnell….  I’ve read other reviews praising his performance in this story, commenting on how he clearly enjoying the comedy.  Now, aside from the fact I don’t think this is a particularly funny story anyway, I just don’t see it.  The first episode sees him wandering around moaning about his toothache and being hoodwinked by the locals.  Maybe its this scripting I have a problem with more than Hartnell’s performance; I just don’t believe the Doctor would be a stupid as this story portrays him.  The Doctor would know Holliday and Kate were manipulating him; the Doctor would be much more on his toes when confronted by the Clantons in the saloon.  The Doctor would be far more concerned about Steven going off with Ringo and Dodo being kidnapped by Holliday than he is.  But Hartnell also seems bored.  His performance is so lacklustre.  The gag of him calling Wyatt Earp, Mr Wearp isn’t funny and nor is the ‘I do wish people would stop giving me guns’ bit.  When he is deputised by Earp, he goes to stop the Clantons but arrives after they’ve left and then has no part in the final gunfight.  He doesn’t prevent it, he doesn’t get involved, he doesn’t mourn the outcome.  Now, I realise this is part of the point, established in his reticence to hold a gun, but it just means that, yet again for a Hartnell historical, he hardly has any impact or influence on events, merely letting them wash over him until he can get back to the TARDIS.

On the flipside, Peter Purves is great.  He plays Steven’s comedy well and  the scenes in the saloon where he is forced to sing at gunpoint feature some great expressions from him.  Unfortunately, Steven also becomes more and more pointless as the story progresses to the point where he disappears for the whole final gunfight (along with the Doctor).  He is pushed from pillar to post by the Clantons and even his brief alliance with Ringo goes nowhere and provides nothing in the way of interesting scenes (partly due to Laurence Payne’s aforementioned lacklustreness).  It’s a shame Steven is wasted in this way.  Purves does a good ‘Steven trying to do an American accent’ bit though and his costume is gloriously silly.

This is one of Dodo's better stories.  Her scenes with Holliday and Kate are quite nice although she seems to suffer from a case of rapid Stockholm Syndrome and doesn’t seem terribly perturbed by her predicament.  That said, her trusting nature is something which was evident in the previous story, The Celestial Toymaker (where she was ridiculously trusting of the treacherous Cyril) so it doesn’t seem out of character that she would take the word of Holliday (and to be fair to him, he does keep his word and return her to the Doctor unharmed).  Dodo is also actually involved, briefly, in the final gunfight, which at least means the regulars have a presence, however brief, in the actual climax of the story.   Jackie Lane continues her trek around the UK with her variable accent, adding in a few brief American twangs, although she doesn’t seem to have the conviction to stick with it as much as Purves does.  She’s a demon on the piano though!

The cliffhangers in the story are also terrible.  The first cliffhanger is Steven singing whilst the Doctor walks veerryyyy slowwwllllyy along the street.  The third cliffhanger is a shot of Warren Earp, a minor character only introduced into the story about 15 minutes earlier, lying apparently dead on the floor of the Sheriff’s office.  What tiny ounce of tension there is, is immediately dispelled by the dulcet tones of Lynda Baron wafting over each final scene.

A couple of positives: the sets are quite good and there is a large cast of extras drafted in for the lynching scene, meaning it does at least seem convincing.  Also, the direction is quite interesting with director, Rex Tucker, using different angles to shoot from.  This does serve to make some scenes rather more dynamic than the acting or script allow by themselves and was one way the story managed to hold my attentions.  A more flat direction, and I think I would have lost any interest I was clinging to.

Historically, it seems that The Gunfighters is closer to Hollywood legend than historical fact.  Bat Masterson, Warren Earp, Phineas Clanton, and most significantly, Johnny Ringo, were not in Tombstone in 1881.  Warren Earp, whose death here is partly responsible for initiating the gunfight between the Clantons and Earps did not die in real life until 1900!  Ike Clanton is shown to perish in the gunfight, but in reality he survived and Pa Clanton had died in the August of 1800 making it rather difficult for him to feature in these episodes.  The actual gunfight involved four other men: Morgan Earp, Billy Claiborne and Tom and Frank McLaury.  Apparently, Doc Holliday was only 30 in 1881, whereas Anthony Jacobs is clearly portraying a man of older years (he was 48 in real life).  In real life, there were numerous events leading up to, and provoking, the gunfight.

However, the characters of Doc Holliday, Wyatt, Virgil and Warren Earp, Bat Masterson, Ike, Phineas, Billy and Pa Clanton and Johnny Ringo are all real people.  Intriguingly, so is Kate, Holliday’s girlfriend, and one-time squeeze of Johnny Ringo.  In real life she was Mary Katherine Horony Cummings, known as Big Nose Kate.  She was Hungarian born and, unsurprisingly from the implicit nature of her character, a prostitute.  What is quite striking about Kate and Holliday is the way their obviously sexual relationship is presented on screen with a couple of quite saucy scenes.

Ultimately, The Gunfighters is my least favourite style of Doctor Who story.  No, not just a western…but also a story where the Doctor is incidental to events.  Events in the story would occur just as they do regardless of the Doctor, Steven and Dodo’s presence.  Now, this in itself, isn’t necessarily a bad thing but when the entire climax of the story excludes the Doctor it makes everything seem rather inconsequential.  I don’t find the comedy funny, the tragedy is completely undermined by the interminable song and the actings and accents are so variable it makes a lot of scenes almost unwatchable.  The few glimmers of good stuff; Peter Purves, Anthony Jacobs and Sheena Marshe, Rex Tucker’s direction and the sets and costumes are nowhere near enough to rescue this story from languishing at possibly the very bottom of my personal poll.  At least The Time Monster is entertainingly bad.  This is just boring and painful in equal measure.