New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

So, when last we left our heroes, they had arrived at a 13th-century monastery that was pumping out Dusty Springfield songs and incredibly strong acid. The monastery was being used by an army-controlled organisation to mine the acid, and the miners use "Gangers", avatars made from a substance called The Flesh, which they imbue with their personalities and memories, safe in the knowledge that should they fall into the acid only the Flesh would be destroyed. Unfortunately, a solar storm hit, which caused all of the Gangers to become separate entities filled with fear, anger and overwhelming existential angst. Humans, in other words. At the end of the last episode, the fear and mistrust from both sides led them to a point of conflict at pretty much the same point that the island started to fall apart from all the acid that was leaking everywhere. Oh, also, there was Doctor-Ganger walking around, which was pretty cool.

WARNING: Spoilers for the film Moon.

One of the themes of "The Rebel Flesh" that I liked a lot was the idea of the company behind the monastery being quietly and malevolently evil. There was a lot of Alien's Weyland-Yutani Corporation in the episode's depiction of an organisation that is not entirely honest about the way that they could conduct business. The idea of using surrogate creations to do dangerous work also recalled Duncan Jones' Moon, which explored very similar ideas about whether or not a clone, which is what the Gangers are, can have a soul of its own if it has been created from the memories and experiences of another person. The very best moments in "The Rebel Flesh" were the ones in which the Gangers remember their pasts whilst also realising that they aren't really their own. (The scene in which one of the Gangers remembers "his" son's birthday was particularly poignant in that regard.)

This idea was played more for laughs at the start of "The Almost People" when The Doctor-Ganger relives the past lives of his various incarnations, complete with quotes from Jon Pertwee ("reverse the polarity of the neutron flow!") and even little clips of Tom Baker and David Tennant thrown in there for good measure. I liked that scene, and I loved pretty much every scene of Matt Smith playing against himself and getting to show the sheer fun that The Doctor has when he gets to experience what it's like to hang out with him. Yet there weren't really any moments in the episode that had the emotional or philosophical import to them that some of the best moments in "The Rebel Flesh" did.

However, that's kind of the whole point of two-parters in Doctor Who, or at least when it comes to the good ones. The first episode is generally all set-up in which the new characters are introduced, the situation is established, and right before the credits role everything just goes to hell.

In that regard, "The Rebel Flesh" and "The Almost People" work as one of the very best two-parters that the revived series has ever done, since the two halves complement each other so very well; all the character-building in the first half meant the plight of the Gangers had a great deal more dramatic heft behind it in the more adventurous second episode. The fear and mistrust that the humans show toward The Doctor-Ganger purely because of what he is, even though he is a copy of the best person you could possibly want a copy of, felt less of a dramatic contrivance because it was in keeping with the theme of the previous episode. Similarly, the death of the human Jimmy, having established an emotional connection with his Ganger over "their" son, was an incredibly powerful moment because of all the work the show had gone into setting up the metaphysical ramifications of The Flesh.

Continued:       1       2