that’s like 90% of the reason he’s my favourite character in the story. the song playing over his death is so funny, and it happens multiple times
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This one just good. It knows what it wants to be, and it’s success in what it wants to be. Something which a few Episodes failed at it, one of those Cases was just the previous Story for Hartnell.
But back to this Story, well to put it shortly, I had a blast watching it. While not a favorite of the Hartnell’s Era, the Comedy here works quite well, even better than with the Myth Makers. I think Jackie Lane’s Dodo is at her best here and gets a lot of fun things to do here. Steven getting threading to be shot if he stops singing will never not be good. And in general, this Story is just filled with good or funny Moments.
The Songs are great here, people who say they are the worst in Who certainly need to rethink their Word of Choice, they are GOOD!
Really I must admit I don’t get why this one is so disliked, after having quite a few dark Stories having such a silly Story is really refreshing and a nice change of pace!
Also, @MrColdStream you should definitely record this eventually 
!
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This episode is an acid trip in the best way. It’s like the TARDIS carried some of the weirdness of the Toymaker’s domain back with it when it landed in Tombstone and subsequently made everyone act like a cartoon character. The acting is hokey, the accents are terrible and you can’t go a single scene without fearing the return of that song. I loved every minute, no notes.
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I fixed this crucial part of your post!
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It’s the true monster of the story. Always lurking, hiding, ready to pounce at any given moment…
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First time watch, gloriously silly & great fun. Definitely influenced by the popularity of western shows like Bonanza & Rawhide - Westerns were basically the superhero movies of the day. But it feels more like Carry On Cowboy & I am more than happy with that. It’s all about Hartnell, he is great in every scene.
Trivia: The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon was sung by Lynda Baron who would go on to be superb in Enlightenment. & was also in Closing Time.
They missed a trick though. The Doctor’s toothache should have been a season arc, ending with Dentistry of the Daleks.
Remember kids, don’t eat sweets! & “it don’t do to delay dental treatment.”
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Hurrah! I’m in a minority again!
First of, I have an ingrained hatred of Westerns. The entire aesthetic of them bores me. I went through a period in my personal History of the Universe marathon where I hit a run of them in succession - A Town Called Mercy, A Town Called Fortune (a Companion Chronicle), Peacemaker (a 10th Doctor novel), Dead Man’s Hand (an 11 comic strip) and The Gunfighters.
With most of them, I actually found myself enjoying the stories despite myself and I really, really wanted to go in and reassess the legendary ‘worst story of all time’ - The Gunfighters. This was the one ‘received wisdom’ told us was terrible because it had such low Audience appreciation figures. This was the one with the awful accents and the godawful song.
I wanted to like it. I wanted to buck the trend. And even though I love the fact that fandom has managed to reassess the story divorced from the half remembered opinions of the old guard of fandom, I just can’t get past the many things in it I don’t like.
Peter Purves is wonderful as are Anthony Jacobs and Sheena Marshe. This is easily Dodo’s best story and her scenes with Holliday are great.
But, and try not to sharpen your pitchforks, I don’t think Hartnell is very good at all in this. In my review I admit it might be the writing more than the performance but my two main issues are the Doctor being hoodwinked so easily by people and him being completely superfluous to the story (he’s not even in the climactic scenes).
And no, apart from Purves, this isn’t funny at all. (But humour is so subjective I can see why some might find it so).
The rest of the guest cast are awful!
The song is absolutely fine till it isn’t (it is used thoroughly inappropriately in the later episodes).
10 Likes
You are not alone. I’m glad people enjoy this story… I found it a massive slog to get through. And I don’t think it was necessary to punctuate every scene change with a recap of what just happened in song form. (Just so I don’t feel like I’m being deceptive I feel like I must add that this is based off a watch from a few months ago not one explicitly for TV club.)
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Admittedly, I didn’t like it but I haven’t rewatched it, either, so I hadn’t really been commenting on it.
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I thought the story was mediocre, but not terrible. I did find some of the jokes funny, even if the serial is not the best at maintaining my interest. The American
accents were a little bizzare, especially Doc Holliday’s. The return of Peter Purves’ American accent in Part 1 is easily the most frightening part of the serial. 3/5.
6 Likes
Of course it is, with the attention spans people have today! That’s why Netflix is producing movies where the characters say out loud what they are doing so that you can scroll on your phone while ‘watching’.
I respect your totally incorrect opinion, of course! I’ll give your review a read a bit later; it’s surely going to be an enjoyable read.
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It was enjoyable at first, but then got old very fast.
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A real struggle of a story to get through. Cool idea, but so boring. And so many bad accents.
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I’ve just started this one— horseeees 
5 Likes
I love this serial personally and yes its a musical,love it so much,I wish it got more praise tbh.
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The Gunfighters is peak comedy Who.
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@Mattie1711, don’t forget that we have the Television > TV Club where we’re currently working our way through both Classic and Modern Who story by story. We covered The Gunfighers back in February, it currently has 34 posts on the topic. The Club topics are eternal, meaning that they’re never over and anyone can comment on them at any time. There’s also a rating poll in the first post of each club.
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hello MR.REGRET!