Oldest town in Britain with the River Avon acting as a transit route. Evidence of frogs' legs being eaten as well as 31,000 flints and animal bones have also been found. Colchester claims to be Britain's oldest "recorded" town. Its claim is based on a reference by Pliny the Elder, the Roman writer, in his "Natural History" ("Historia Naturalis") in 77 AD. He described Anglesey as "about from Camulodunum, a town in Britain", where Camulodunum was the Roman name for Colchester. It is claimed that this is the first known reference to any named settlement in Britain, although coins minted by Tasciovanus mention the
A Town Called Mercy called the Gunslinger. However, the Gunslinger is a product of experiments by Jex to win a civil war on his planet, and the Doctor is unsure of what is the right thing to do. Showrunner Steven Moffat pitched the Wild West theme to Whithouse when thinking of ways to give each episode a distinct theme. Whithouse further developed the theme, including classic Western tropes and a sympathetic villain. "A Town Called Mercy" and the previous episode "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship" were the first to enter production for the seventh series. Much of the episode was filmed in March 2012 in