A Town Called Mercy. DW S7.3. Meta
This got long. I remember this - this scrambling to just cover the main things I saw, and never having time to really delve down... But here it is - most quotes from memory as I've not had time to transcribe properly, sorry.
I actually feel my last post was rather prescient, as A Town Called Mercy struck me as being subtitled ‘A Man in Search of a Mirror’. I counted four...
Mirrors
We begin with Doctor Jex - a mirror the Doctor readily embraces, as the other is a benevolent genius. Subsequently it turns pitch black when he discovers Jex’s crimes (and why he has a killer hunting him down), and the Doctor turns to his default mirror, Amy:
“Yes. I don’t know. Whatever Amy said.”
Then Jex says exactly the wrong thing (will get back to this in a little while) and the Doctor dives right back in, fully assuming his Jex mirror. Again it takes Amy to drag him out of that darkness, although there is a sense that his heart is not in it - he points out that he’s still betting on the gunslinger.
What happens next is that Isac dies and gives the Doctor his mantle and burden and the Doctor immediately assumes this mirror (one which suits him well) - and he very carefully follows Isaac’s wishes.
Finally, the gunslinger himself. What can someone bred/created for war do? Become a protector. And right there we have the Doctor’s final mirror, and the one which bodes well for the future. The monster torn apart and re-created for war can find a use after the war is ended.
Indeed, the gunslinger is the overarching mirror - the episode is the story of the gunslinger, the ‘guardian angel’ who fell from the sky to protect the people of Mercy. He’s now a story, a living myth, very much like the Doctor.
But there is so much more to this episode, so let’s dig a little further...
River
Because every episode has River in it... It begins with the way we learn that the gunslinger shot the hat, and the parallels come thick and fast afterwards. I’m just going to do a big copy & paste of what Promethia wrote:
I like how, if you take Jex and the gunslinger as mirrors for the Doctor and River, it metaphorically removes a lot of the mediating agents and other buffers between them. This Doctor created his own psychopathic killing machine himself. This Doctor is sitting in prison himself. Kovarian and the Silence are a very useful . . . vessel for a a lot of the darkest stuff in the Doctor/River relationship, which thus allows them to move beyond it together, but there is something powerful when you suggest, metaphorically, that the Doctor himself made River into a weapon, and that River wants to kill him because of the misery he inflicted on her. It also metaphorically conflates what the Doctor did to end the Time War and what the Doctor did to inspire the creation of River into exactly the same act? I feel like that's a very interesting thing this season is doing, to more directly tie the journey the Doctor went through in season six into what happened with the Time War.
Without Kovarian to act as a scapegoat, though, there can be no real resolution to the conflict between Jex and the gunslinger.
And, of course, because the Doctor and River are mirrors, Jex can be sitting in prison and the Doctor can be a mirror for the gunslinger as well as Jex. And, well, he made himself into a weapon too. "Why would a Time Lord be a weapon?"/"Well, they've seen you."
"America is the land of second chances." Not a coincidence that both the events of Utah and this episode take place in America.
"War only ended five years back. That old violence is still right under the surface. We give up Doc Jex, we're handing the keys over to chaos." Oh, Doctor. "Good men don't need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many."
"How are you going to get past the gunslinger?" "With a little slight of hand." / "Next time you get to wear Jex's clothes!" Getting past the "gunslinger" with a fake Doctor in a Doctor suit!
Marble House
One of the things that struck me very forcibly was that this episode was an answer, a response, a second half to a terrible catch-22 first explored 5 years ago in Human Nature/Family of Blood. (If you want the argument in its bluntest form, go watch hollywoodgrrl’s Marble House). If you'll allow me, I shall use some images that finally offer an answer to all the accusations & questions thrown up then and my god can I just say how much I love Amy?
It's what I argued myself in this post, but it is truly wonderful to finally have it addressed in-show. The Doctor is not the police man of the universe, nor should he be. Plus of course all the lovely stuff about being better than the bad guys. Yes, there are horrible catch-22s in the world. But this is not the way to deal with them. All the love for Amy. ♥
Eggs
This one’s gonna have to wait, sorry. Eggs, and arks, and death and re-birth and all that jazz. Too much right now. Ditto eyes. I'll get back to it at some point...
Doctor Who? (The Doctor and his gun)
However, the stand-out moment for me was when the Doctor officially lost his temper. I have no idea how many times I've re-watched it. It's magnificent. Here, have a few more screencaps.
In AGMGTW he was furious because someone dared threaten the people he loved. It was a long, slow burning anger that finally was allowed to surface. But this time... This time it was someone saying the very worst thing possible...
After what the Doctor did to save the universe, after the unspeakable atrocities he's committed, no one gets to question how far he's willing to go. He would never do what's necessary? Don’t you dare!
Because Jex is an amateur in comparison, and he has no idea what the Doctor is capable of. And killing an image of himself ("...there's only one person in the universe who hates me as much as you do.") - oh he's all over that. And again - like with Solomon - he owns it. He is not making excuses for himself, he is quite genuinely ready to kill Jex in cold blood in order to save the town/punish Jex. Remember, he’s just watched exactly what Jex did. Don’t underestimate the power of that - and the Doctor hates torture...
Jex doesn't think he's willing to kill the one in order to save the many? Well the Doctor will show him. Like Gallifrey, he will reduce him to dust and ashes, for the sake of the greater good and the people of this town which he can save. (Unlike the many who died at the hands of the Family of Blood...)
Now this all ties in with our overall theme: Doctor Who? Who is he? Who is he becoming? Why is he disintegrating now? Is it just because he’s more or less anonymous - because he can, because he's travelling alone, because he's lost accountability? I don’t think so. The Doctor is a very moral character, someone who’s spent a thousand years navigating choppy and difficult and complex ethical waters, yet now he is deputising... Why?
Because this suddenly struck me: The Doctor 'outsources' his moral decisions [re. Jex] to Amy. First when he's barely paying attention (“Whatever Amy said”), and then again when she challenges him. And it suddenly struck me what a huge, vast, incredible change this is from Ten 'I-Am-the-Moral-Absolute-of-the-Universe'. Not that Ten didn't have companions advise or help change his mind, but the Doctor defers to Amy.
And I think there’s a lot more to it than travelling alone. (If you’ve not seen the Prequel to Asylum of the Daleks, then do so now!)
I believe that all these things are related:
Last season the Doctor thought he was going to die. He ran and he hid and he actually died and he accepted his sentence (all very much like Jex) and he found a way out (which made him luckier than Jex!)... And surely that should be it, shouldn’t it? He’s free. The Silence are fooled and so is a Fixed Point, and he can just live.
Except now he knows that there is something out there, trying to catch him. Something that can invade his dreams and toy with him and he has no idea what it is or what it wants - except that it is focussed on him to an alarming degree and very powerful.
This knowledge must be gnawing away at him constantly. Is someone coming for him, the way the gunslinger came for Jex? What is this web he is caught in and why? He is feeling helpless, and that is never good. No wonder he is beginning to get somewhat desperate - he doesn't know what's coming, or what he might be called upon to do...
And so we see him snap, see him overly cheery and overly moody, see him leaning on others for moral stances, because he's beginning to doubt himself.
He can guess however. Whatever is coming will probably involve Trenzalore and his unmasking...
(This is our theme, this is our story. So yes, we should be asking 'Doctor Who?')
I actually feel my last post was rather prescient, as A Town Called Mercy struck me as being subtitled ‘A Man in Search of a Mirror’. I counted four...
Mirrors
We begin with Doctor Jex - a mirror the Doctor readily embraces, as the other is a benevolent genius. Subsequently it turns pitch black when he discovers Jex’s crimes (and why he has a killer hunting him down), and the Doctor turns to his default mirror, Amy:
“Yes. I don’t know. Whatever Amy said.”
Then Jex says exactly the wrong thing (will get back to this in a little while) and the Doctor dives right back in, fully assuming his Jex mirror. Again it takes Amy to drag him out of that darkness, although there is a sense that his heart is not in it - he points out that he’s still betting on the gunslinger.
What happens next is that Isac dies and gives the Doctor his mantle and burden and the Doctor immediately assumes this mirror (one which suits him well) - and he very carefully follows Isaac’s wishes.
Finally, the gunslinger himself. What can someone bred/created for war do? Become a protector. And right there we have the Doctor’s final mirror, and the one which bodes well for the future. The monster torn apart and re-created for war can find a use after the war is ended.
Indeed, the gunslinger is the overarching mirror - the episode is the story of the gunslinger, the ‘guardian angel’ who fell from the sky to protect the people of Mercy. He’s now a story, a living myth, very much like the Doctor.
But there is so much more to this episode, so let’s dig a little further...
River
Because every episode has River in it... It begins with the way we learn that the gunslinger shot the hat, and the parallels come thick and fast afterwards. I’m just going to do a big copy & paste of what Promethia wrote:
I like how, if you take Jex and the gunslinger as mirrors for the Doctor and River, it metaphorically removes a lot of the mediating agents and other buffers between them. This Doctor created his own psychopathic killing machine himself. This Doctor is sitting in prison himself. Kovarian and the Silence are a very useful . . . vessel for a a lot of the darkest stuff in the Doctor/River relationship, which thus allows them to move beyond it together, but there is something powerful when you suggest, metaphorically, that the Doctor himself made River into a weapon, and that River wants to kill him because of the misery he inflicted on her. It also metaphorically conflates what the Doctor did to end the Time War and what the Doctor did to inspire the creation of River into exactly the same act? I feel like that's a very interesting thing this season is doing, to more directly tie the journey the Doctor went through in season six into what happened with the Time War.
Without Kovarian to act as a scapegoat, though, there can be no real resolution to the conflict between Jex and the gunslinger.
And, of course, because the Doctor and River are mirrors, Jex can be sitting in prison and the Doctor can be a mirror for the gunslinger as well as Jex. And, well, he made himself into a weapon too. "Why would a Time Lord be a weapon?"/"Well, they've seen you."
"America is the land of second chances." Not a coincidence that both the events of Utah and this episode take place in America.
"War only ended five years back. That old violence is still right under the surface. We give up Doc Jex, we're handing the keys over to chaos." Oh, Doctor. "Good men don't need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many."
"How are you going to get past the gunslinger?" "With a little slight of hand." / "Next time you get to wear Jex's clothes!" Getting past the "gunslinger" with a fake Doctor in a Doctor suit!
Marble House
One of the things that struck me very forcibly was that this episode was an answer, a response, a second half to a terrible catch-22 first explored 5 years ago in Human Nature/Family of Blood. (If you want the argument in its bluntest form, go watch hollywoodgrrl’s Marble House). If you'll allow me, I shall use some images that finally offer an answer to all the accusations & questions thrown up then and my god can I just say how much I love Amy?
It's what I argued myself in this post, but it is truly wonderful to finally have it addressed in-show. The Doctor is not the police man of the universe, nor should he be. Plus of course all the lovely stuff about being better than the bad guys. Yes, there are horrible catch-22s in the world. But this is not the way to deal with them. All the love for Amy. ♥
Eggs
This one’s gonna have to wait, sorry. Eggs, and arks, and death and re-birth and all that jazz. Too much right now. Ditto eyes. I'll get back to it at some point...
Doctor Who? (The Doctor and his gun)
However, the stand-out moment for me was when the Doctor officially lost his temper. I have no idea how many times I've re-watched it. It's magnificent. Here, have a few more screencaps.
In AGMGTW he was furious because someone dared threaten the people he loved. It was a long, slow burning anger that finally was allowed to surface. But this time... This time it was someone saying the very worst thing possible...
After what the Doctor did to save the universe, after the unspeakable atrocities he's committed, no one gets to question how far he's willing to go. He would never do what's necessary? Don’t you dare!
Because Jex is an amateur in comparison, and he has no idea what the Doctor is capable of. And killing an image of himself ("...there's only one person in the universe who hates me as much as you do.") - oh he's all over that. And again - like with Solomon - he owns it. He is not making excuses for himself, he is quite genuinely ready to kill Jex in cold blood in order to save the town/punish Jex. Remember, he’s just watched exactly what Jex did. Don’t underestimate the power of that - and the Doctor hates torture...
Jex doesn't think he's willing to kill the one in order to save the many? Well the Doctor will show him. Like Gallifrey, he will reduce him to dust and ashes, for the sake of the greater good and the people of this town which he can save. (Unlike the many who died at the hands of the Family of Blood...)
Now this all ties in with our overall theme: Doctor Who? Who is he? Who is he becoming? Why is he disintegrating now? Is it just because he’s more or less anonymous - because he can, because he's travelling alone, because he's lost accountability? I don’t think so. The Doctor is a very moral character, someone who’s spent a thousand years navigating choppy and difficult and complex ethical waters, yet now he is deputising... Why?
Because this suddenly struck me: The Doctor 'outsources' his moral decisions [re. Jex] to Amy. First when he's barely paying attention (“Whatever Amy said”), and then again when she challenges him. And it suddenly struck me what a huge, vast, incredible change this is from Ten 'I-Am-the-Moral-Absolute-of-the-Universe'. Not that Ten didn't have companions advise or help change his mind, but the Doctor defers to Amy.
And I think there’s a lot more to it than travelling alone. (If you’ve not seen the Prequel to Asylum of the Daleks, then do so now!)
I believe that all these things are related:
Last season the Doctor thought he was going to die. He ran and he hid and he actually died and he accepted his sentence (all very much like Jex) and he found a way out (which made him luckier than Jex!)... And surely that should be it, shouldn’t it? He’s free. The Silence are fooled and so is a Fixed Point, and he can just live.
Except now he knows that there is something out there, trying to catch him. Something that can invade his dreams and toy with him and he has no idea what it is or what it wants - except that it is focussed on him to an alarming degree and very powerful.
This knowledge must be gnawing away at him constantly. Is someone coming for him, the way the gunslinger came for Jex? What is this web he is caught in and why? He is feeling helpless, and that is never good. No wonder he is beginning to get somewhat desperate - he doesn't know what's coming, or what he might be called upon to do...
And so we see him snap, see him overly cheery and overly moody, see him leaning on others for moral stances, because he's beginning to doubt himself.
He can guess however. Whatever is coming will probably involve Trenzalore and his unmasking...
(This is our theme, this is our story. So yes, we should be asking 'Doctor Who?')
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