Dr Who And The Gurning Fighting Men

Dr Who And The Gurning Fighting Men

The Complete And Utter History Of Dr WHO? (Part Twenty-Six)

Doco Whoo were in need of being seen to by a dentist, so he went to the Wild Old West, where there was less of a waiting list.

Here he encountered a race of men known as the Gurning Fighters. They were so called because they would often shoot at each other with their weapons and if a man were hit he would pull an unpleasant face to signal his discomfort to his friends and relations.

This were the town of Touchstool and life was mostly rough and so was the bedsheets. This story soon signalled that it were different to the one previous in that it had a catchy song that you could join in with if that tickled your fancy. Subtitles were available in a primitive way, because you could fill in a form in the 'Radiotimes' and a man would come round from the BBC and stand in your living room next to the telly and hold the words up on a sheet of cardboard at the appropriate juncture. This were the 'Ballad Of The Chance In A Million Saloon' which were played live by Stefano and Doo-Doo in the hotel where they shacked up.

It proved to be a popular addition to the story and there is now a tradition in Britain that this song be sung whenever a new hotel is opened.

Docwra Hood were mistaken for the localised dentist, Doctor Willoway, mainly because they had a slightly similar hat which sounds unlikely, but the man who done the mistaking had eyes like snakes, according to local gossip, so maybe he did not see too well indoors.

Episnode Four of this story ('The O.K. Coracle') were the last episode to be called by a name - in future times to come they would have numbers instead. This is because the sheets of lettering the Graphics Department always bought had a row of numbers at the top and they were fed up throwing them away each week as it were wasteful.

In the end this did not work out as cheap as they thought as they found they were buying extra sheets just for the letters 'T', 'H' and 'E' which the new system used up quicker. But by then they were stuck with it.

There was much gunfire in this story, but thankfully none of the actors could hit a barn door at thirty paces, and so there were not too many accidents. The climatic gunfight scene at the end took place without William Hartley-Hare as he had popped out to get a copy of 'The Evening Standard', but he come back in time to do the end bit. This scene were between the Claytons and Wvorps who tended to rub each others backs up and it sort of escalated from there.

For many years, peoples thought that this story got the LOWEST viewers of all time, but this turns out to be a case of crossed wires. In fact according the BBC Records And Tapes, it had the SHORTEST viewers of all time, for they had printed some new Audience Research forms for people to fill in that week. These new sheets asked you for your age and height, whereas the old sheets did not ask for the latter.

But they still had some old sheets to use up, so some people did not have a box in which to put their height. If someone did not enter their height, the BBC computer thought they was less than an inch tall, thus when they did the averaging, the typical viewer for this story were apparently in possession of only 2 feet with 8 inches, which were patent nonsense, but that is statistics for you...

Then DrWoh went to a different horizon and there was a man in furs on the scanner and you could see his knobbly club!

Next Episode:

"This way."

(By Andrew Trowbridge)