Doctor Who: The Almost People

“Why?”

The brief tour of previous Doctors is fairly inconsequential, I suppose, but it’s fun. And it’s good to hear Tom Baker’s voice again. And it’s fine for Cybermats to get a mention. Just let’s never see them again, ok?

There are now two Doctors; the Doctor in stereo. Both of them are loving it, bouncily encouraging each others’ Doctorish ways. Still, you can tell them apart from their shoes, of course... But why are both Doctors imploring Amy to “breathe”? And you can tell that underneath it all they’re stressed. They’d never normally use words like “yowser”.

The whole ethical can of worms opened by the Gangers’ existence is dealt with much more effectively and powerfully in this episode, although this leads us to a bit of awkwardness at the very end. Flesh Jennifer is starting to remember her previous lives: the eyes are the last bit to go, as we’ll later find out with a more horrifying wall of eyes than anything we saw (or would have, if there was any footage) in Marco Polo. But we’re getting splits; Flesh Jennifer wants all-out revolution but Flesh Cleaves, in contrast to her counterpart, just wants a quiet life. It’s an interesting microcosm of the politics of resistance- Malcolm X vs. Martin Luther King, perhaps. The only trouble is that this feels pretty much exactly like every Silurian story there’s ever been- the same ethical dilemma, reheated. It’d Old Silurian vs. Young Silurian all over again.

Amy is clearly not prepared to accept the Flesh Doctor, insisting that only the original is “really” the Doctor. Everyone else, with varying degrees of subtlety, implicitly accepts this, and they are both treated differently. It’s an interesting commentary on everyday racism; “Smith” is tolerated only conditionally, treated with suspicion and, as we’ll find, not really considered “human” or deserving of the same rights. This is the most chilling thing about this episode, and Amy is absolutely complicit.

Amy sees the eyepatch woman again, and this time mentions it to the Doctor; we know that this sub-plot is going to come to a head now, as if we didn’t already know as soon as we saw the recap of last week’s incident in the “previously on Doctor Who” bit. And even if we didn’t suspect it already then the Doctor’s pooh-poohing is a dead giveaway.

There’s a real awkwardness between Amy and “Smith” , but she still thinks of him as “almost” the Doctor, and takes the opportunity to confide in him because she saw the Doctor die at his own invitation. But that’s ok, because he’s not the “real” Doctor. Right? Certainly the real Doctor would never lash out at Amy like that.

Rory, meanwhile, gets taken for a ride by Flesh Jennifer, bless him. Still, Jennifer has a sort of point, if she can indeed remember her previous “selves” being slowly and horribly killed every single day, rotting away while fully conscious. Still, there’s no denying that Rory comes across as a bit of a gullible twonk.

There’s a very revealing scene in which “Smith” and Buzzer find the dead “real” Jenny, who’s been unconscious all this time. Buzzer just knocks him out on orders from “the boss”. After all, he’s not human.

It’s quite a contrast when “Smith” wakes up among the Gangers, who instantly accept him. After all, he’s one of their own.

We’re starting to see how similar both versions of the same character are, though. Both versions of Cleves are stuck with an inoperable blood clot. And both versions of Jimmy love the same little boy, even if he isn’t exactly the greatest of child actors.

The end of the main plot, shortly after Jenny goes all Lazarus Experiment, is sudden but well-judged. The TARDIS tumbles into the correct underground chamber in the nick of time. Everyone piles into the TARDIS, but Cleaves’ Ganger stays behind for a bit of a noble sacrifice. I’m glad to see that the character (both versions)  is actually rather more well-rounded than seemed the case last episode.

Joining her in the heroic death stakes is none other than the Doctor. Or rather the Ganger Doctor; they swapped shoes, meaning we’ve had them the wrong way round all along, a nice trick. But that means Amy told… oops. At last she comes to realise that the Flesh is as real as the original Doctor. After all, he’s managed to convince her of that for most of the episode. Interestingly, though, as she gives hem a farewell hug, he tells her to “Push, Amy. But only when she tells you to.” What’s that all about, eh?

The “real” Doctor also lets slip that he understands exactly what Amy has told him. As the Flesh Doctor muses that “My death arrives, I suppose”, the “real” Doctor adds “But this one we’re not invited to.” Oh dear.

There’s a bit of handwavium in evidence as the Doctor miraculously cures Cleaves and the TARDIS miraculously “stabilises” the surviving Ganger versions of Jimmy and Dicken. But why’s the Doctor telling Amy to breathe so often now? We find out immediately, as the contractions start. It seems both Amy and the Doctor have been keeping secrets from each other. The Doctor announces that he “needed to see the Flesh in its early days. That’s why we were here in the first place.”- he just needed enough information to block the signal to the Flesh. The Flesh, that is, that Amy’s mind is currently inhabiting while her body goes into contractions, many light years and many centuries away.

But there’s a problem with the Doctor just zapping Flesh Amy. Yes, we get a “Given what we’ve learned I’ll be as humane as I can”, and yes, it’s a quick death with no slow, fully-conscious rotting with lingering eyes. But we’re left with a very nasty sense that the Doctor has just murdered a sentient being. It’s a pity, especially as a quick line of dialogue to the effect that later Flesh aren’t sentient would have been all we needed.

Amy wakes up, and the Eyepatch Lady tells her to push…

Doctor Who: The Rebel Flesh

“I thought I was going to die!”

“Welcome to my world…”

I didn’t like Fear Her very much, which doesn’t exactly make me much of a contrarian, I know. Still, Life on Mars was very good, if not quite as good in hindsight as we all thought it was, so I was glad to see Matthew Graham get another chance,. We end up with this, a two parter which is really quite good, if nothing particularly special, with only a couple of little niggles.

Anyway… it’s a picturesque setting: a kind of Yorkshire St. Michael’s Mount being used as an acid factory in the 22nd century. It’s near Whitby, apparently- is this some sort of Dracula allusion? It’s as ruggedly industrial as any early Pertwee, but with much nicer architecture. And to add to the nostalgia factor we get quotes from The Invasion (“pettier than a computer, isn’t she?”).

The pre-titles sequence introduces us to our three factory workers Jennifer, Buzzer and Jimmy. The underwhelmed reaction to Jenny’s accidental “killing” of Buzzer hints at this story’s McGuffin, as does the reappearance of Buzzer, played by Life on Mars’ Marshall Lancaster.

The TARDIS is almost like a city centre pub these days, what with the dartboard and Muse’s Supermassive Black Hole. But the fact that the Doctor is having a sneaky scan of Schrodinger’s foetus at the beginning of the story, not the end, should alert us that something’s up, story-arc wise.

The Doctor, Amy and Rory disembark, and for some reason are instantly fascinated by a pip. Er, how very interesting. It’s a bit like the beginning of Fury from the Deep, except without all the tiresome suspicion for the TARDIS crew. Thank the heavens for psychic paper, which has delivered us from having to sit through loads of boring scenes with the Doctor being mistrusted by those in authority.

We meet the rest of the crew: Cleves, the boss, played by Raquel Cassidy off of Lead Balloon, and the strangely anonymous Dicken, who might as well not even be in the story. We’re also introduced to the Flesh, “fully programmable matter”, which is used to create “Gangers” to do all the dangerous work. Oh, and there’s going to be a big solar storm. Gosh, I wonder what’ll happen. After all, lightning striking artificially created human-type creatures isn’t in any way known in popular culture for bringing them to life, is it?

The inevitable happens, they’re all out for an hour, the TARDIS starts ton sink into the ground, and the Gangers have gone walkabout. Surprised? Thought not.

Rory, being a nice bloke and a burse, starts to comfort the terrified Jennifer, to Amy’s obvious annoyance. We really should realise, as the plot has been fairly predictable so far, that she’s a Ganger, and it’s not long until we get confirmation by CGI. And Cleves, it turns out, is a Ganger too. It’s all quite effective, even though it does little but run through an established list of tropes. The whole existential aspect of the Gangers being just as much a continuation of the previous self as the original is touched upon but not with any real passion or creativity. This isn’t a bad episode, but there’s certainly an element of going-through-the-motions with the plot. There just aren’t any real surprises.

Interestingly, the Doctor comments quite early on that “This is early Flesh- the early stages of the technology”. He obviously has some sort of agenda- even Jimmy can spot that. Then again, the Doctor seems to think there’s a word called “defendable”, so what does he know?

Jenny’s big speech to Rory is quite awkward, too. Sarah Smart delivers the lines well, but the dialogue is neither naturalistic nor poetic enough to get away with not being naturalistic. Again, the existential crisis of realising your memories are not your own (or are they?) is touched upon but not with any real depth.

The Doctor is forced to abandon his shoes (and in a script this predictable we know that’ll be important later), but manages to bring everyone- human and Ganger- together. It’s an ominous sign, though, that the Gangers have all the acid suits.

Arthur Darvill shows how great he is in portraying Rory’s embarrassment when Ganger Jennifer tells him that “Amy’s a lucky girl”. And as for Amy, she’s seeing that Eyepatch Lady again. She’s rather less convinced of the Gangers’ humanity than Rory, and I don’t think this is really to do with any jealousy for Jennifer. You can tell from glances between her and Rory that she knows her jealous instincts are just instincts. She’s actually being quite rational about the whole thing. Rory waited two thousand years for her- she has nothing to be jealous about and she knows it.

There’s an interesting scene in which the two Jimmys ponder the fact that they both have the same son but, again, the whole philosophical angle is quite plodding and superficial. And the Doctor’s northern accent has declined somewhat since the days when he was Christopher Eccleston.

If this already feels a bit like last year’s Silurian two-parter in that its quite good but predictable and never-really catches fire, we get a more blatant parallel in which Cleves becomes this story’s Ambrose. Once again it’s a woman who makes it all kick off. Hormones and wandering wombs? It’s like feminism never happened. Well, perhaps that’s a bit harsh; I’m sure it wasn’t actively meant like that. But it’s a little awkward.

Oh, and here’s a Ganger Doctor. Like everything else that happens it’s hardly a surprise, but it’s quite an appetiser for the next episode.