‘You can’t build an empire without getting a mite unscrupulous’: Music, ethics, and cold war criticism in doctor who’s ‘the gunfighters’ (1966)

The Doctor Who four-episode serial ‘The Gunfighters’ (1966) draws upon conventional visual elements, themes, and situations of the American Western while reimagining the hours leading up to the battle of the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona on 26 October 1881 (Pelkey 2011; Rodman 2011; Cornell, Day and Topping 1995). As such, ‘The Gunfighters’ is an early example of the re-location or translation of the Western as a genre, set of cultural practices, and source of musical materials into a science fiction television frame. Later examples include Star Trek, ‘Spectre of the Gun’ (1968) (which also recreates the Battle of the O.K. Corral), Star Trek: The Next Generation, ‘A Fistful of Datas’ (1992), the series Firefly (2002), Enterprise, ‘North Star’ (2003), and Doctor Who, ‘A Town Called Mercy’ (2012) (Pelkey 2011).