First broadcast 15 September 2012.

Coming back to Doctor Who‘s seventh 21st century season seemed a simple matter at first. I remembered both “Asylum of the Daleks” and “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship” very well, and liked the former while loving the latter. The third episode, however, was a different matter. I remember watching it. I think I remember lightly enjoying it as a sci-fi western pastiche. When it came to remembering the details, however, I could not recall the episode at all.

Shooting Season 7 in part on location in Spain was a smart idea. It contributed some unexpected mountainous scenes to “Asylum of the Daleks”, which were a pleasant and eye-catching contrast to the typical rocky outcrops and quarries that were generally Doctor Who‘s stock-in-trade. It also allowed the series to shoot an episode where the Italian ‘spaghetti westerns’ of the 1960s and 1970s were shot. The result might not accurately resemble a 19th century North American frontier, but it definitely resembles an Italian movie adaptation of it. When faced with a choice of historical fidelity or charming pastiche, Doctor Who owes its premise to choose the pastiche every time. It is a take that is winningly expressed by Toby Whithouse’s knowing, archetype-happy screenplay and Saul Metzstein’s pitch-perfect direction. No genre convention goes unconventioned: strangers ride into town, people drink in dusty saloon bars, and showdowns take place at noon.

The frontier settlement of Mercy is under siege from a cyborg cowboy with one demand: give up the ‘alien Doctor’ or face the consequences. When the Doctor (Matt Smith) arrives with his companions Amy (Karen Gillan) and Rory (Arthur Darvill) it looks like a recipe for trouble – only he isn’t the Doctor being targeted.

To be honest, the pastiche only dominates for as long as it needs to. The core of the episode is all about Kahler Jex (Adrian Scarborough), an alien in hiding who turns out to be his world’s equivalent to a post-war nazi scientist. In Jex’s case, his side won the war. There is no sending him back to his home planet because he won’t find any. Handing him over to the cyborg, however, is effectively handing him a death sentence without trial.

Scarborough is very good in his guest role, as is Farscape‘s Ben Browder as the local sheriff. Matt Smith gets some darker material to toy with for the third week in a row, but at this stage the overall theme of “the Doctor needs friends to rein in his bleaker impulses” is feeling rather repetitive and strained. The character never used to need guard rails against murdering people. Since David Tennant’s later episodes it has been something of a recurring theme – and like William Hartnell – coincidentally the last Doctor to headline a western story – it’s wearing a bit thin.

There is only so much depth and complexity one can add to a single episode of family drama, but within its constraints “The Town Called Mercy” does a reasonable job. This is solid, self-contained Doctor Who, with a story that actually fits its running time without feeling truncated or rushed. Clearly it is not too memorable though: I wonder if I will remember what happens the third time around.