Doctor Who had tackled the Western genre once before - and it had been widely regarded as a failure. That was The Gunfighters, back in 1966, which was based on the historical events at Tombstone's OK Corral. Other stories had borrowed heavily from the genre, but adapted plots for a futuristic sci-fi setting.
The Space Pirates is basically the story of Gold Rush miners and claim jumpers. Colony in Space is the story of the big company - the railway, say - using dirty tricks to force farmers off their land, with the Primitives standing in for North America's indigenous peoples. It's actually their land the other two groups are fighting over.
Looking for big cinematic adventures for the first half of the series which would lead up to the 50th Anniversary, Steven Moffat decided on a new Western story, and this time it would be more along the lines of the pseudo-historical - 19th Century US setting, with aliens.
Many of cinema's most iconic Westerns were filmed not in Monument Valley or similar, but in Southern Europe - the so-called "Spaghetti-Western" which gave us Clint Eastwood's 'Man With No Name' and the soundtracks of Ennio Morricone.
Some of the locations for these movies still existed, one of which was located at Fort Bravo in Spain. "Mini Hollywood" - the Oasys Theme Park at Tabernas - and the desert environs of Almeria were also to be used.
The European location meant that it would cost a lot less than to revisit the USA, as the series had done the previous year. Another production for Series 7 was scheduled to visit New York anyway.
The writer chosen to handle this project was Toby Whithouse, who had been contributing annually to the series since Moffat took over.
He naturally looked at various genre stereotypes from old movies, such as the enigmatic lone gunslinger and the town lynch mob. The Gunfighters had also featured a scene in which a lynch mob wanted the lawman to hand over someone who was locked in the jailhouse. Then, it was the Doctor they were after. Here, he's the lawman.
Knowing the earlier story's poor reputation, Whithouse opted not to view a copy of the Hartnell adventure in preparing his story.
The story sees a midday deadline, as in High Noon (1952). This classic Western had been the basis of another sci-fi adaptation - Sean Connery's Outland, in 1981.
1955's Bad Day At Black Rock (a film-noir Western) is also an inspiration. In this a stranger arrives in a small town that harbours secrets.
The Doctor's attempts to trick the Gunslinger at the climax are reminiscent of Eastwood's High Plains Drifter (1973).
Whithouse claimed that he had been impressed with the HBO series Deadwood (2004 - 6) which presented a realistic view of the West, so presumably some of the feel and look of that series fed into this.
The cyborg Gunslinger itself was inspired by the Frankenstein Monster, in that it was supposed to inspire sympathy as much as horror. It was originally going to be purely robotic.
The Terminator is another obvious antecedent, with its unstoppable killing machine determined to hunt someone down.
The background to Jex and the Gunslinger take us into war crimes territory, and the concept of the military developing a super-army can be seen in many sci-fi movies such as the Universal Soldier franchise. Alien super-soldiers had been a feature of The X-Files as well, in its latter seasons.
Next time: Cubular hells...
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