I took a personal day today. I mean, yeah, I still did my morning workout and watched Doctor Who, but after being up late last night doing a software release and with nothing urgent happening work-wise, I took the day and spent time catching up on a few other things. And as soon as I post this, I will be back to memorizing lines. Good times.

So let's talk about cybernetic gunslingers so I can get this over with.

A Town Called Mercy

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

The nicest thing I can say about this episode: at no point does it feature The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon. It also has a guest-starring role with Farscape's Ben Browder, but he gets shot dead halfway through so  he doesn't get a whole lot of time to raise the bar at all.

The whole idea is a 19th century frontier town in Nevada that is under siege by the afore-mentioned cybernetic gunslinger. The town is harboring an alien war criminal, a doctor who has seemingly turned over a new leaf in the last several years and been a huge benefactor to the community by curing cholera and introducing electric light and heat. That, however, does not change the fact that he was previously a Nazi-esque mad scientist who tortured and terrorized his research subjects in the furtherance of creating a Perfect Weapon.

Of course, his guilt compared to his later good deeds are compared to the Doctor's own history, having committed double genocide in order to end the Great Time War (rather unsuccessfully, I might add, given that neither the Daleks nor the Time Lords are actually quite as dead as previously thought). That, at least, has some interesting drama to it. Also showcased is the Doctor's tendency to be more brutal when he doesn't have companions around him to keep him grounded. This is already well-trod territory, though, and doesn't have much interesting to say.

In the end, NotMengele grows a conscience and sacrifices his own life to save the town, and CyborgGunslinger becomes the new sheriff. Yay.

I'd say this is my least favorite story of this season, but unfortunately The Rings of Akhaten is still ahead of me. Yay again.

Alright, I need to go work on memorizing lines. I'll be back at it tomorrow with a genuinely interesting story concept. So that will be nice.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Eleventh
Companion(s): Amy Pond, Rory Williams
Episode(s): A Town Called Mercy
Steps Walked: 7,433 today, 3,227,377 total
Distance Walked: 4.04 miles today, 1,686.11 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 100 today, 6,164 total
Sit-ups Completed: 0 today, 929 total
How Many Times has Rory Died?: 4
How Many Times has Amy Died?: 3
Is Anything Cool?: Weirdly, nothing is cool in this episode. Nothing.
Weight: 251.76 lbs (five day moving average), net change -55.54 lbs