The Gunfighters

025 – The Gunfighters
Doctor Who serial
The Doctor, Steven and Dodo meet Wyatt Earp
Cast
Doctor William Hartnell (First Doctor)
Companions Peter Purves (Steven Taylor) Jackie Lane (Dodo Chaplet)
Others John Alderson – Marshal Wyatt Earp Martyn Huntley – Warren Earp Victor Carin – Virgil Earp Richard Beale – Bat Masterson Anthony Jacobs – Doc Holliday Reed De Rouen – Pa Clanton William Hurndell – Ike Clanton Maurice Good – Phineas Clanton David Cole – Billy Clanton Sheena Marshe – Kate Laurence Payne – Johnny Ringo Shane Rimmer – Seth Harper David Graham – Charlie
Production
Directed by	Rex Tucker
Written by	Donald Cotton
Script editor	Gerry Davis
Produced by	Innes Lloyd
Executive producer(s)	None
Incidental music composer	Tristram Cary
Production code	Z
Series	Season 3
Length	4 episodes, 25 minutes each
Date started	30 April 1966
Date ended	21 May 1966
Chronology
← Preceded by Followed by → The Celestial Toymaker The Savages

The Gunfighters

Author	Donald Cotton
Cover artist	Andrew Skilleter
Series	Doctor Who book: Target novelisations
Release number	101
Publisher	Target Books
Publication date	9 January 1986
ISBN

The Gunfighters is the seventh serial of the third season in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 30 April to 21 May 1966. This serial was set in 19th Century America on the days leading up to the famous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

In the frontier town of Tombstone, Arizona, the troublesome Clanton brothers, Ike, Phineas and Billy, are in town in search of Doc Holliday to settle an old score over the death of another brother called Reuben. They meet up with their hired hand Seth Harper at the Last Chance Saloon. He knows what Holliday looks like and describes his coat and demeanour. This is overheard by bar singer Kate, who lets her paramour Holliday know he is in danger.

The TARDIS has arrived in a nearby stable, with the Doctor in agony from toothache. He and his companions Steven Taylor and Dodo Chaplet, dressed as cowboys, soon encounter local marshal Wyatt Earp, who offers them his protection and warns them to keep his counsel. The Doctor finds the dentist – Holliday himself - while Dodo and Steven book rooms at the local hotel. There they are mocked by the Clantons, who suspect the Doctor they refer to is Holliday himself. Seth Harper is sent to the dentist’s surgery and invites the Doctor, tooth removed, to the hotel in five minutes to meet his friends. Holliday is initially happy to let him be shot in his place, allowing the real Doc to disappear, but Kate intervenes to ensure the Doctor survives. This buys some time until Holliday relents and hides in an upstairs chamber of the hotel, firing his gun at appropriate moments to con the Clantons into thinking the Doctor is indeed Holliday the sharpshooter. Soon afterward Wyatt Earp and Sheriff Bat Masterson arrive and break up the fracas, taking the Doctor into custody for his own protection. Steven now becomes embroiled in a plot to smuggle the Doctor a gun to help free him from the jailhouse, but the Doctor refuses to be armed. Steven is shortly afterward confronted by a rabble wound up by the Clantons, who are intent on lynching him as an associate of the disreputable Holliday. Once more it is Earp and Masterson who defuse the situation, and also take Phin Clanton into custody to ensure the co-operation of his brothers. The Doctor and Steven are freed and told to leave town as soon as possible.