Season 3, Episode 7 | 4 parts | First broadcast: 30 April – 21 May 1966 | Writer: Donald Cotton | Director: Rex Tucker
Cast
- William Hartnell as the Doctor
- Peter Purves as Steven Taylor
- Jackie Lane as Dodo Chaplet
- Anthony Jacobs as Doc Holliday
Summary
The TARDIS lands in Tombstone, Arizona in 1881, where the Doctor visits a dentist to have a troublesome tooth pulled, unaware that the dentist is the notorious gunfighter Doc Holliday. Mistaken identity and old grudges quickly draw the Doctor and his companions into the escalating feud between the Clanton gang and Holliday’s allies, the Earp brothers, as the story builds toward the legendary shootout at the O.K. Corral.
Interesting Facts
- This is the last serial of the classic series to give each of its individual episodes a unique title, a practice abandoned afterward in favour of numbered episodes within a single story title.
- Its tongue-in-cheek Western pastiche is bookended by a recurring comic ballad, “The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon,” sung between scenes to advance the plot.
- The story received some of the lowest audience ratings of any First Doctor serial on original broadcast, though it has since been reappraised more favourably by fans and critics.
- All four episodes survive in the BBC archive.
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