Reaction Post: That's a beautiful word, shenanigans (Doctor Who, Glee)
I am late to all the parties, apparently, but this stuff makes job-scrounging feel better. :)
This contains extensive spoilers for "The Almost People," and, strangely enough, all of Glee Season 2, but nothing for the mid-series finale. I intend to remain a pure and unspoiled as the driven snow. Or something. Do not read if you have BBC America and don't happen to believe in Megavideo. (ETA: And that was not aimed at anyone specific, thank you.)
I was worried that this second half wouldn't measure up to its predecessor - like in the first two-parter - but managed it handily. Every bit as good as last week's episode, with a tighter pacing and more character development. It is not precisely New New Who's analogue to "The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit," because that two-parter works as a stand-alone; plenty of moments in "The Rebel Flesh / The Almost People" would make no sense out of context, and the last five minutes change gears completely to rev up for the larger story arc. After last week's "meh" cliffhanger moment, though, it was nice to see a pre-finale cliffhanger that, in my mind, was second only to Donna saying "Bad Wolf." (I had honestly been wary of the "ENDS WITH A HUGE TWIST" promotion, but they did pull it off brilliantly here.)
I have a lot of thoughts on this episode.
Called that both Jennifers were really gangers by the end of her first scene with Rory - and guessed that Amy was a ganger about halfway through. The line about the "early stage of flesh" was when it really clinched for me. And, um, I did describe that mysterious door-hatch-in-the-wall woman as the Eyepatch Midwife, but I was not really serious.
Ended the episode loving Cleaves, by the way, both of them. I didn't catch that she had a blood clot - after rewatching that line three times, I couldn't make it out - but the actress pulled it off well, and I caught that she had some affliction, along with all the stress she was going through. I've heard her compared to Ambrose, the woman from the Silurian two-parter who killed a Silurian warrior, but she's so much deeper and more human. Cleaves struck out because she was scared and helped Jennifer incite a few rebels to go to war, but Ambrose killed a lizard who had endangered her grandfather and taunted Ambrose over and over again to turn her into a martyr. Besides, Cleaves was a badass who tried to predict the actions of her own brain and succeeded - and lots of props to that actress for portraying the two of them
The double Elevens were also good, surprisingly deep in their scenes with Amy. And the beginning with the regeneration-flux was hilarious; I loved seeing bits of Three ("reverse the polarity of the neutron flow!") and Four (jelly babies are cool) in there. There was apparently a line where he had a Tenth Doctor callback too, but I guess I missed that. Did he say "allons-y" or something?
Something seemed a bit off about Jimmy's son during the hologram call, but that's probably just because he sounded like the empty child and Moffat has a history of creepy children. After half a minute I accepted that he was harmless and cute, so that was okay. And by the end of the episode, it was just a pretty adorable character moment. I wonder if his son will find out what happened to his original father.
I do have to wonder about the Doctor's reasoning for sending Cleaves and the other surviving ganger worker (not Jimmy the Dad or Buzzer the Dead) to speak to the flesh-making corporation. I haven't seen anything for the mid-season finale yet, because there was no trailer (although I've heard there's a prequel out there), so I can't tell for certain, but it seems like they're taking a sharp left turn away from the flesh and the gangers next episode. I hoped that was just a good conclusion to the factory workers' story. On the other hand, considering the way Series 5/6 have gone so far, Eleven's mysteriousness about the factory, and those weird eyes that never got explained, that's yet another loose thread to be tied up sometime by 2013. (Remember that time the Silence blew up the TARDIS? Remember that time when Eleven recognized the Lodger faux-TARDIS and didn't tell anybody?)
If that is the case, I'm sure Cleaves and her friend will end up affecting the future of the flesh, and I'm intrigued as to how they'll change it. Does this mean they're there when it's "matured" to the point where they can swap out Amy with flesh!Amy and people don't notice? Perhaps they succeeded in changing the corporations' minds about the flesh, which led to the gangers being treated as individuals with rights, like the plague humans in "New Earth." Then the flesh, no longer being seen as a disposable tool, progressed to the point where it could duplicate people without their knowledge.
("We've switched Amy Pond with a visually-identical ganger, made of a mysterious, futuristic flesh. Let's see if her husband notices!" Yeah, I just wanted to type that.)
Then the end scene was quite powerful: Rory steps away from her reluctantly, lets go of her hand - he trusts the Doctor too - and Amy disappears. You can practically feel the "I'm so sorry" unsaid in the room. Eleven can't have made the choice to dissolve her lightly, especially after just leaving his own duplicate, but ganger!Amy probably would've gone insane when she learned she wasn't real, and who knows what effect giving birth would've wrought on her ganger? Besides, this sudden lack of Amy Pond propels the story forward, because it ramps up Rory and the Doctor's urgency to find her.
And, oh, I am looking forward to the Eleven-Rory-River team-up that appears to be on the horizon.
So, considering it appears like the child is going to turn out to be the most important part of this storyline - with Ganger!Amy there as a placeholder to make the other episodes work - I'm going to talk for a bit about how Amy is knocked-up.
Did it look to anyone else like Amy's pregnancy wasn't a true birds-and-bees pregnancy? She's got that baby bump just sort of sticking up under the sheet/gown like an enormous bubble, and I couldn't tell if it was supposed to seem fake/artificial, or if that was just the way the BBC represented her pregnancy. (Clearly all the special effects budget here went to creating Monster!Jennifer, a grotesque human-flesh-insectoid thing the likes of which haven't been seen since Dr. Lazarus became a human-flesh-arachnoid thing.)
Could be like Gwen's alien "pregnancy" in Torchwood, but that's kind of a far-left-field idea. Also, that whole faux-pregnancy trope is at odds with Amy's possibly human possible daughter, and with the notion that Amy and Rory were having lots of fantastic sex since their marriage. They'd use protection, of course, but such measures aren't always foolproof.
The Doctor does say that Amy hasn't been herself for a long time, a brilliant line which Matthew Graham, channeling Steven Moffat (or just the Grand Moff, channeling himself) clearly phrased to make the fans wonder obsessively just how long Amy's been a ganger. My personal theory is that she's been flesh in the TARDIS since the honeymoon. (The one where Amy and Rory battled an Egyptian god, then went to a planet that had just married an asteroid, then joined the cast of Star Trek and had lots of cosplay fun but nearly crashed into Sardicktown, and then ended up back on the TARDIS where they joked lots about Amy's skirts, before ending up back in the United Kingdom, receiving mail like ordinary people. That one.) There's so much wibbly-wobbly junk left over from that period anyway, like when exactly the Ponds left the TARDIS the second time - I continue to be optimistic that Moffat will make all of this make sense, except for "A Christmas Carol." Either that, or Amy-to-flesh is a more recent change, only since after the encounter with the Silence. After all, she did spend three months out of sight, unaccompanied by Rory or River. That'd be plenty of time for her to realize she's pregnant. When she got back from those months, she saw Madame d'Eyepatch for the first time. Perhaps the Silence made her forget that she was the avatar for a woman in a hospital bed, since they captured her shortly afterward.
Either way, this means "The Doctor's Wife" had two women running around with heads full of memories and feelings from another life; it'd also mean that "The Curse of the Black Spot" featured two beautiful ladies who were just fronts for people who existed in another place, a hospital place. Oh, Moffat.
If he tries to sell us that Amy's been flesh since, say, "The Beast Below," or even pre-Pandorica, I will call bullpucky. Certainly at some point she was a natural-born human, right? Yes? (WARNING: CASTING SPOILERS FOR THE SECOND HALF OF SERIES 6; HIGHLIGHT TO SEE) I've heard that the girl, Caitlin Blackwood I think, who played the young Amelia Pond in "The Eleventh Hour" and "The Big Bang" is coming back for an episode in the fall. That may just be a rumor, but it could imply that something about Amy's status as human will be elaborated on. (/THOSE SPOILERS END HERE)
One last thing: Remember how the TARDIS seemed to get melted by acid in the first episode, then came back in this one and fell through the ceiling? The former moment felt weird because it came right after an episode where the TARDIS talked to the Doctor and told him she loved him, but then the latter was brilliant. She appears out of nowhere, against logic, in the knick of time, because she can't possibly lose her thief! (Or her thief's double! Or the pretty one!) Just like in "The Satan Pit."
Come to think of it, that was also the third time in four stories that the TARDIS has been damaged or lost. Hmmm.
And those are my thoughts. Come back next week, all three of you, for a lot flailing and rambling about "A Good Man Goes to War."
~
This post's too long already but man I kinda want to talk about Glee.
So I like that show quite a bit now. This is pretty much the fastest hate-love reversal I've had for a TV show, or anything. Like, I don't even know what this is; I kind of ignored it most of the year, with a vague dislike, and I can only recall seeing four complete episodes from Season 2 ("Duets," "The Substitute," "Original Song," and "New York" - plus most of the Rocky Horror Glee Show and the Justin Bieber Horror Glee Show).
Also Glee might not have as large a fandom as Doctor Who, in depth or breadth, it's certainly got plenty of batshit followers, more ship wars - downside of pretty much everything being canon - and many more RPF-shippers. (My official stance on RPF now is pretty much that it's weird and creepy, thank you girlfriend. But occasionally there are small relapses.) Kinda unrecognizable from the small-ish, spunky fandom I was in for five minutes in 2009/10.
Also it seems better-organized, by ship at least, and they have so many more memes. There's a kink meme, of course, plus an angst meme, a fluff meme, crossover meme, and crack meme. The first three are more active, but all of them are decently occupied. Too many memes.
In shipping news, Brittany/Santana is my new favorite jam, and there is so much of it out there... I mean I loved them back in Season 1, and shipped them fairly consistently then, but now they are canon! (It bugged me that I couldn't figure it out from the finale that Brittany and Artie were broken up - she seemed so tentative around Santana in the end, I figured that was to keep friendship with other possibilities left open. But I guess they're sort of together now. In a sort of official, Lebanese way.)
Quinn is another of my favorite characters, even though the writers don't seem to know how to handle her emotions and they forgot her "big New York plans." She's definitely depressed, if not really unhinged, and Dianna Agron pulls that off somehow whether she's pining over Finn or ruining relationships or just desperate for someone to love her. And in addition to being very talented, she is also gorgeous; this show is full of as much eye candy as Doctor Who, with a much lighter color scheme/aesthetic recently. And speaking of pretty blondes, I am basically in lust with Sam Evans, and I ship him with everything (Sam/Mercedes, Sam/Kurt, Sam/Quinn, Sam/Santana, Sam/Puck, Sam/Blaine and Kurt, Sam/astronomy, Sam/geekery, not in that order), depending on whether I consider him straight, gay, bisexual, or asexual that moment. Usually I think bisexual, because he clearly expresses interest in Quinn and has a secret relationship with Mercedes, but his character was meant to be gay from the beginning and they left a fair amount of clues pointing in that direction in the final, straighter scripts. And outside fandom, it wouldn't make a huge difference anyway - the school's only other queer dudes are taken, closeted, and/or violent. In other fan-shaped thoughts, Will can disappear and I wouldn't be bothered, Finn is kind of dumb but not that bad, and if Blaine transfers to McKinley and joins the New Directions this series will lose even its thinnest veneer of logic. But at least he'd only be hopping back and forth once.
I may or may not have like four fics about these glee kids written down somewhere, possibly to be completed when I finish all the various fics I've promised for Who and other fandoms. But that is for later. This is not full of fic, this is just an overlong reaction post reacting to how I am suddenly into Glee and it's a pretty cool thing.
And thus my rambling is over. If anyone's still reading this far, four for you!