review: 605/06: Rebel Flesh/Almost People
New Who two parters have had a habit of being either pretty fantastic or pretty horrible, so this one is pretty surprising in that it falls somewhere smack in the middle.
The episode *tries* to be excellent, and it comes close to doing so as there are a lot of really fantastic elements to it. The concept, the storytelling, the complexities regarding protagonists and antagonists, &c, there's a lot to like. But what fails to push it over the edge is pulling all of those elements together into a sense of unification from a writing perspective.
Contrary to prior reviews, i'm going to first focus on what was great about the episode first, in no particular order.
1. Matt Smith. I remember when Moff and Wenger talked about Matt before series 5 broadcast, they were impressed by Smith's mercurial qualities as an actor and this shines through in this two-parter. Matt outdid himself in these episodes, probably his strongest episode yet when it comes to truly owning the screen.
2. The Doctor. Similarity to Seven much? The direction that they started to go down with this incarnation that was birthed in series 5 is pretty amazing in series 6. Manipulative, secretive, selective, but always with a greater big picture in mind, always having at heart the best for the situation and the best for those he cares about. His scheming mind is a wonderful wonderful thing and adds a particular flavor to the show and layer to his personality that most previous incarnations lacked. It's wonderful.
3. Rory. In my review of The Doctor's Wife i commented on how nice it was for Rory to have his own role as a companion, to have a independent personality that didn't have to do with his devotion to Amy. This continues here, and shows something about Rory that makes him difficult to not love: his genuine interest in helping people, and his naïvité. He adds a sense of "rookie" that Mickey had the potential to be, and he does a great job of that, adding a genuine sense of heart and innocence that stands out from both the Doctor and Amy.
4. Plot twist. Never mind that the idea of "main protagonist is actually a body double and there's a mystery behind her pregnancy" is pretty damned similar to the end of season 4 of Farscape and the idea of exact duplicates and their individual rights as duplicates is similarly similar (err) to season 3 of Farscape, that particular reveal was immensely satisfying. Aside from the fact that it helped pull the threads together of Amy's pregnancy with the eye-patch woman that previously i was unconvinced that there would be a connection, i was starting to worry at the beginning of episode 5 that the pregnancy was going to be an annoying background arc in the same way that "Torchwood" or "Saxon" or even "the crack" turned out to be mainly an annoying background arc. I was dreading the idea that the Doctor would have a moment in every episode until the finalé where he would just stare at the positive/negative deal and it wouldn't go anywhere.
Similarly, the fact that Amy accidentally revealed to the Doctor about the events that happened in the beginning of Astronaut has now elevated that arc's potential, and i'm looking forward to seeing what becomes of that.
5. The overall complexity of the episode morale. Despite the issues that i'll outline below, the episode somehow managed to create a wonderful grey line between the typical "good guys" vs "bad guys" kind of story, and it was good that they decided to give it a two-parter to allow that to flesh out and develop in a way that would have seemed rushed in a single episode.
6. The opening scene in the TARDIS. There's something very (for lack of a better term) "futurama" about the opening TARDIS scenes in both this episode and Wife that i *really* like, which is seeing the actual story plot come in the middle of some very random activity. I'm thinking of equivalent Futurama scenes where, for instance, Fry and Leela are having a plot-advancing conversation about going on a date on Cavern on the Green while they're giant Q-tip cleaning the gun of the Starship Express, or a scene where all of the crew are amusing themselves by throwing a bunch of random food bones or whatsit to Zoidberg before Fry walks in to start up a plot point. Amy and Rory playing darts in the TARDIS was a great way to casually segue to the pregnancy deal and to break in the fish and chips conversation before the TARDIS goes bonkers.
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so given all of the strengths of the episode, what made it not rise to the top of other episode greats? a few things:
1. inconsistency and lack of focus when it came to character intent. it's one thing to have the class clash of flesh!characters vs. human!characters go through various stages of evolution, but there was too much flightiness when it came to individual character intent which made those characters unconvincing. in the first episode, you were supposed to sympathize with ganger jennifer as she was portrayed as a victim. human!Cleaves was the leader of the human conflict in that episode, and after that conflict arose, it seemed like ganger!Cleaves was going to be the leader of the ganger side given the speech she gave about it. But then in episode two ganger!Jennifer becomes the ring-leader, ganger!Cleaves is all "all i want is to be left alone" and then "let's just leave them here to rot" and then "i'm sick of all of this fighting" all within the span of about twenty minutes? All of the secondary characters had at least some degree of swapping mentalities as easily as one would swap clothes, and that lack of sensible focus from an isolated character development dampened the overall effect of the episode.
2. inconsistency of atmospheric intent. A few of the people speaking in Confidential talked about this being a scary episode and how they wanted it to be scary, including the writer matt graham. That's odd to me because i don't think the episode was scary at all. Because even though the gangers could have a scary look to them, so much emphasis was put on de-monsterizing the gangers and make them into a species to sympathize with that the actual scare factor was pretty minimal. Was i supposed to be scared when the liquid flesh turned into a mouth and then ordinary looking jennifer popped out of the tub? I might have if all of the characters didn't treat it as humdrum routine. The Weeping Angels are scary and the Silence are scary because we still don't know a lot about them, and because they're an aggressive "evil" species. Even the Daleks and Cybermen are more scary than the Gangers even though they have a "cool" factor to them versus the "creepy" factor. Not that i feel like the lack of "scary" was a problem in itself in this episode, but if scary was what they were really going for, i think they should have written a different sort of episode. Visuals alone don't make scary.
3. Obvious bluffs. In poker, there's a strong principle of "weak means strong" and "strong means weak" when reading people. In this two parter there were two principle concepts that were supposed to be "omg" moments when the truth was revealed that were not "omg" moments because too much time was spent convincing the audience of the obvious falsehood. a) ganger vs nonganger doctor. The more Amy said, "i know that you're the real one" the more it was obvious that he wasn't. b) ganger jennifer. It was clear that the scene with the two jennifers was set up as a "show one of these as obviously the ganger and of course the other one must be the real one!", particularly in the scene where Jennifer says, "we trust each other, right? well trust me on this." If she had just said, "i have an idea, come on" and that scene ended, it would have been less of a bluff signal, but that so much emphasis was placed on "trust me on this" in a context in which Rory was already trusting her stamped the fact that Jenni wasn't real.
So where does this leave us?
it's a very mature and ambitious two-parter that succeeded in a lot of ways but failed in some other ways mainly due to ambiguous intent. I place it above atrocities such as the Dalek two parter, the Silurian two parter, the Cybermen two parter, the Sontaran two parter, and (dare i say it) End of Time, but i place it below all of the Moff two parters, and the Family of Blood two parter. I probably put it on par with the Impossible Planet/Satan Pit, but i know that i don't hold the normal high opinion of that two parter (most people i know really loved that episode and i only thought it was okay).
If I were going to rank the episodes thus far in series 6, it would go like this from best to worst: 4, 1, 2, 5, 6, 3.
okay. end of big ramble. Humble thanks to all of you who take the time to read my thoughts.