Damn you, Doctor Who, damn you.  For my paltry 45 years on this planet I have proclaimed my dislike for Westerns.  I’ve never watched a (non-Doctor Who) Western all the way through.  I haven’t even seen Blazing Saddles.  I’ve never watched a film with Clint Eastwood or John Wayne.  Back in the mists of time, Doctor Who’s only contribution to the genre was The Gunfighters.  Growing up, it had the reputation of being the ‘worst’ Doctor Who story ever.  This, as we now know, was an erroneous claim made on the basis of a low AI figure.  Many fans have come to reassess it (along with many other formally derided stories) and found much to enjoy.  I, on the other hand, still don’t like it.

However, when I rewatched A Town Called Mercy, Doctor Who’s most recent visit to the Western genre, I found much to enjoy.  And then I listened to A Town Called Fortune, the Companion Chronicle, which was a very enjoyable listen.  Following that came the short story, A Town Called Eternity, a slightly bonkers 5^th Doctor short story which, again, was a lot of fun.  Having decided to polish off all the Doctor Who Westerns whilst I was on a roll, I pulled Peacemaker off the shelf.  And goddammit if James Swallow hasn’t written a novel which had be enthralled from beginning to end.

The 10^th Doctor and Martha pitch up in the Wild West and quickly find themselves investigating a snake-oil salesman, Alvin Godlove, whose medicines actually seem to be curing people of smallpox.  Also on his trail are two gun-toting mercenaries and it soon becomes apparent that highly-advanced alien technology has found its way to the American Frontier.

The alien tech are intelligent, sentient guns called the Clade.  Created by a distant alien race, they have crash-landed on Earth.  With both the power to kill and heal, one of the guns has attached itself to Godlove and has been curing smallpox.  At the same time, however, the recipients of the cure are suffering from terrible nightmares and the effect on Godlove is even more extreme. His own identify is eventually subsumed and his body is used as a carrier for the Clade’s intelligence.
The presence of this fake medicine man is one element of the Wild West that hasn’t been touched on before.  My main cultural reference point for Alvin was Jim Dale’s villain in Pete’s Dragon which is where I first came across this sort character.  Another point of reference was the Quantum Leap episode A Single Drop of Rain which involves Sam leaping into a similar charlatan, this time a fraudulent ‘rainmaker’.  These men would often travel the American West, usually with an assistant, peddling false hope and fake medicine to the isolated towns they came across.  I’ve mentioned before what a great story the Doctor meeting PT Barnum (the ultimate ‘faker’ of 19^th Century America) could make and it’s a shame the Doctor and Godlove don’t actually get much of a chance to converse before he is taken over by the Clade.

Taking a staple of the genre and giving it a sci-fi twist, the idea of intelligent guns is a great fit for the Wild West.  It actually feels a bit more of a natural extrapolation than the Gunslinger from A Town Called Mercy.

With the fake medicine man, a Native American, a kindly school mistress, a tough Sheriff and other sundry locals most of the Western clichés are present and correct but fortunately most of these were well-written and seemed like believable characters.  Unfortunately, moving locations halfway through the story means that the residents of the first town the Doctor and Martha arrive in are left behind and the latter half of the book is only the Doctor, Martha, Nathan (a recipient of Godlove’s cure) and Walking Crow (the Native American who formerly worked alongside Godlove).  Quite a nice bond forms between Martha and Nathan but it is a shame to lose some of the other characters from the narrative, particularly the feisty school mistress, Jenny.

There’s a great sequence halfway through the book where the Doctor, Martha and Nathan ride from one town to the next.  It’s written really well and I got a great impression of Martha’s Wild West experience.  It also occurred to me, whilst reading it, that this was the first time in one of the Doctor Who Wild West stories that the main characters had actually been seen riding horses.  Of course, afterwards I realised that the 11^th Doctor has a riding scene in A Town Called Mercy, but it says something about the writing for this scene that it seemed so fresh and unusual.

The resolution of the story is suitably dramatic with the Doctor almost sacrificing himself to save Martha’s life – and it all ends with a big explosion.I really did enjoy this novel and, just as with A Town Called Fortune, I find myself highly recommending a Doctor Who Western!  I’m now trying to decide whether to read Colony of Lies, a futuristic ‘Western’ although I haven’t heard great things about it and would rather leave my new found appreciation of Wild West Doctor Who on a high, rather than bring it crashing to the ground.