Doctor Who 6x06: The Almost People
In brief: Remember how I said I wanted to see a Moffat take on doppelgangers? Well, I got it this week. SPOILERS below...
Where the first episode felt like it was less clever than I thought it would be, this one had more of the sort of twists that I'd hoped for. And some of the character stuff it dealt with was genuinely ambitious.
After last week's problems with motivation, this time Matthew Graham does a good job of portraying reasonable people caught up in an unreasonable situation -- Cleaves facing her ganger, and the two Jimmys in particular, each convincingly showed why they would go along with the action, and at what points they finally refused to go any further. But there's still a problem when Graham tries to show us characters who are being unreasonable by our standards, like Cleaves last week and Jenny this week... The script doesn't quite do enough to motivate that they would react in so extreme a way. It makes a pretty good effort; Jenny's visceral feelings of outrage as she remembers the previous experiences of the gangers make sense, but the link between that and hunting down and killing the sweet girl whose memories she shares -- who would conceivably react the same way -- is still tenuous.
The story does a good job of not making the same character be The Hothead all the time this week, with everyone from Rory to Buzzer playing fairly sensible roles which still exacerbated the situation... but it still didn't make Jenny's transition from sweetie to baddie convincing. (Perhaps if we'd seen her run scared from the Doctor's gathering in part 1, then immediately encounter the decaying fleshpile or something else which further radicalized her, that might have got her to the "us and them" place more convincingly.) And once she had played her hand and left all the humans facing certain death, I couldn't follow why she didn't just kill Rory now that she'd finished with him.
On the plus side, Cleaves became a much more interesting character, as they let the real Cleaves finally catch up with the sensibleness displayed by her other self. If we'd seen more of this wry, thoughtful character before all hell broke loose last week, we might have been able to sympathize more with her mistakes. Cleaves being smart enough to realize that the Gangers might be able to intercept their call, but not smart enough to realize that her Ganger might be able to work out her code word, struck me as a realistic balance. And her blood clot complicated things nicely, as a symbol of how they were both in the same boat; as Rutger Hauer would put it, they both wanted more life, f***er. Pity only the human one got handed it, though.
Plotting-wise, we got a mixture of twists I'd been hoping for (the Doctor's gambit with the shoes), plot twists which became apparent at just the right moment (Amy), and plot twists which made sense with hindsight. I genuinely got confused about which scenes featured the Ganger Jennifer, thanks to the bit of misdirection with the her performance at the hand-scanner -- a bit of a cheat, but reasonably plausible given Ganger-Jennifer's sense that she is Jennifer. I haven't seen anyone question how Jenny was able to create a second Ganger version of herself; if this was a sentient copy, how did she animate it without a convenient solar storm, and if it wasn't sentient, how was it working without someone driving it around from the control rig? But regardless of logic glitches, the effect of this scene was clever -- it looked like it was doing the classic telling-the-evil-duplicate-apart sequence, while in fact going one twist farther. (Even the "you can't fake a burn" bit is a careful bit of misdirection -- the audience flashes back to Ganger Cleaves failing to notice that the plate is burning hot in part one, and is primed to accept this as a solution: a classic case of rigging Chekov's Gun to backfire on you.)
Then there's the way much of the action -- and even the preview -- is constructed to make it look like the Ganger Doctor is going to end up fighting against our Doctor. Ironically, he gets the sort of clear radicalizing throughline which Jenny and Cleaves don't! That's a sensible way of manipulating audience expectations of the Evil Twin Story, while actually being up to something different.
But the more interesting thing about the doppelganger twists isn't the plot cleverness, but the way they illuminate this Doctor's character. I'd guessed that the Doctor would probably switch shoes with his double at some point; I didn't guess why, or what he'd do in his other self's place. His stated motive for switching places with his duplicate was to "learn about the Flesh", and whether they were truly identical, and that it's vital for some reason that they learn through Amy's eyes. It's a neat reversal for reversal's sake... but there are all sorts of implications slipped in under the surface there, which the surface action distracts us from. For a start, why is it so important that Amy in particular not be able to distinguish between the original Doctor and the duplicate? Oh, I dunno, possibly something to do with the future of his which she's just let slip?
More to the point... This is the most overtly manipulative we've ever seen him be towards Amy. He was pulling her strings in The Big Bang, but here he's not just pulling a fast one on her but deliberate pushing her boundaries to see how she'll react. (BTW, extra bonus marks for keeping Amy's attitude towards the doppelDoctor from being over-the-top -- as she says, she's happy to accept that he's a good guy, but he's not the Doctor, just a Doctor. It's not just prejudice at work; she knows that this Doctor actually has had different experiences from hers, and it's quite sensible to think that those experiences may have shaped him differently.)
And when he's playing not-the-Doctor -- is that an act, or a real side of the Doctor? Was his rant to Amy in the corridor about the Flesh a calculated attempt to raise her suspicions, or was it sincerely meant -- or both? Which is the truer expression of his feelings for her, at the end -- his promise that he will find her, or the coldness with which he breaks the link? I think they're both real. In that scene, with its mix of feelings, they're underlining that this is a Doctor who can be practically two people at once even in the same body.
Or to put it another way: ladies and gentlemen, we have the New Adventures Doctor.
We've got the two sides of the seventh Doctor, the endearing silliness (though turned right down from Sylv's TV days) and the fearsome calculation. We've got his long game, stretching across a whole string of stories. We've got him being both practically and emotionally manipulative throughout -- and not just in Amy's part of the plot; he tips the entire balance of power with one premeditated bit of emotional blackmail, setting up the phone call from Jimmy's son. And we've got the combination of careful forethought and oh-dear-it's-all-gone-cockeyed improvising... mixed with Matt's perennial sense that his brain is thinking so fast that even he can't always catch up with why he's doing things.
A little while ago, Kate was talking to me about how she still couldn't get a grip on how this Doctor works. I think we've finally got it... ironically, where the last two Doctors were very much in line with where we left him in the EDAs (I had a weird experience re-reading Fallen Gods a while back and hearing Eccleston in the role), now we've gone forward by moving back to the seventh Doctor.
And yes, I know that just like in the NAs, this will mean that some of the things this Doctor does will make me uncomfortable. I've already had friends be offended by the Doctor being so callous to Amy, or her Ganger. I still want them to bring it on. What delights me is that these points are consciously arguable again -- that the Doctor doesn't seem clear-cut. It's been a couple of years since the last time the Doctor went into dangerous territory, and I've missed it.
You think the Doctor's being a bastard by cold-bloodedly killing Amy's Ganger after telling us for an entire story that Slimy Duplicates Are People Too? Well, on the one hand, there's a perfectly sensible reason given for why this isn't the same thing -- the Gangers in the main body of the story are early versions, and explicitly malfunctioning, and the Doctor has deliberately gone back to the beginning of the Flesh to find out his answers. Amy's duplicate is from a time far beyond that, when the consciousness-related bugs have presumably been worked out, and is functioning properly (hence Amy snapping out of it when the control signal is broken).
So it's not actually unreasonable. And yet... after a whole story full of sympathetic independent Gangers, it still sits uneasy. Our instincts say it's wrong.
Good.
I like a Doctor where we actually have to work a bit to reach his point of view on things. Where matters are murky, rather than completely excused or completely condemmed. I love a Doctor who can be incredibly kind and incredibly ruthless, as he sees fit. Who believes deeply in these creatures' right to live, but who if you harm his friends will quite coolly break you into tiny pieces. I love a Doctor who can surprise me. I love a Doctor who can simultaneously reassure little Amelia as he prepares to open the crack in her wall, and simultaneously tell her that that reassurance is a lie. Who can be the most wonderful man in the universe, and also live up to his words to Elton in Love & Monsters: "Don't ever mistake me for nice." His two faces go all the way down to the bone.
And I love that all this stuff is there for close viewers to seize onto, while the rest of the world just sees a straightforward story of the Doctor fighting monsters. The story's action actually distracts us from thinking about these questions, of what he knew and when he knew it and why he did what he did, right at the moment -- leaving these as questions for the fans who want to look closer to ponder after the fact.
In writing terms, this two-parter is another good example of how these stories have to serve multiple masters. The audience which wants a standalone adventure can see a neatly-resolved two-parter with a hell of a cliffhanger for next week... and a cliffhanger which relates directly to the adventure that's just concluded. That's a smooth trick, paying off the Amy doppelganger in the same episode which establishes the evil duplicates; a show like Lost would be more likely to introduce the idea of duplicates in one story, and then later reveal that Amy had been one, making their reappearance a callback for the regular viewer. (See also the Interference arc in the EDAs; by my calculation next week will be the Shadows of Avalon point...) But this way, even one-off viewers can get the impact and the implications for the future. It doesn't feel like X-Files plotting, because you get the setup and payoff in one unified hit. On the other hand, the part of the audience which grooves on continuing storylines is also satisfied; now that we know specifically what the Doctor knew, suddenly the forward motion of the plot is obvious in hindsight (if that makes sense).
For those who want to chew on the mystery, this story gives you plenty to consider about the Doctor's previous actions. Why didn't he go after the little girl in Day of the Moon? Well, most likely because he'd worked out he had a whacking great spy for the opposition on board... whoever the opposition may turn out to be. Precisely how much he knew, and how much the opposition knew, is still up for debate -- but it's a reasonable guess that he's already sussed the connection between Amy and the girl.
But the question is, who's playing who?
Given my track record so far (note the distinct lack of divergent timelines resulting from The Big Bang), I'm hesitant to guess where things are going. But here's one point which comes to mind: remember that the Silent in Impossible Astronaut apparently told Amy to tell the Doctor her secrets. Looks like he wanted the Doctor to know about her pregnancy ("what he must know"), and about his death ("what he must never know"). Now follow the thinking here... It's because Amy changed her story about the pregnancy that the Doctor knew something was up with her. The Silents were tipping him off that Amy had been Gangerized, and that her baby was being stolen. Why? Well, what if Madame Hard-Faced Bitch and the rest of the various aliens turning up next week aren't in league with the Silents, but opposed to them? (The Pandorica Alliance, still fighting the ones who actually are out to annihilate the universe they know?) That the child is meant to be a weapon against the Silents? Maybe the Silents are using the Doctor to do their dirty work, trash their enemies, and inadvertently deliver the baby to them? (That would make the Silent's meeting with Amy the moment where they close the loop which brought the child to them; note that the girl only gets free after that point.)
And then that raises the question of the "what he must never know"... which Amy has now also told him about, by confessing his death to the "wrong" Doctor. How's that going to change the game? And how much do the Silents already know about it's going to play out?
Now: as with my previous theory, I have to wonder if this idea passes the fundamental test of new-Who arc plotting: is it simple? Or rather, can it be presented simply, as a discrete episode with no more plot complexity in itself than, say, Pandorica Opens? Would it be possible to bring that key idea across to the audience in one easily digestible piece, the way this story brought across the Amy doppelganger and all its associated implications? Complex for those who want to go digging for complexity, but simple to those who want a straightforward story?
I'm doubtful -- which is why I'm not convinced that Moffat is actually going down that road. But he might be able to get it across simply, in that Utopia sort of way which both forms a compelling story for those who don't know the background, and gives an oh-my-god-so-that's-what-it-is click moment to those who do.
The Rebel Flesh / The Almost People is not my favorite style of Doctor Who; it's a little too consciously gritty and dark to hit the instinctive yeah level of the best of the series. But what it does, it does better than expected, and increasingly well. The last few minutes are Fenric-worthy, even though the story as a whole isn't playing on that kind of level. But I admire their ambition, to slip us something a bit more complex hidden inside a familiar skin.
Short takes:
* Amy! The Ginger Ganger! Or, as Kate put it, the Ranga Ganga! And Rory's been a Ganger banger for months now!
* The eyes. Oh man, brrrr.
* So, the Ganger Doctor explicitly says that he and Cleaves will be reabsorbed into the Flesh, and possibly survive in some form. Hmm, I wonder how many weeks before we see him again?
* In fact... a forum poster pointed out that it would actually have been quite possible for the *real* Doctor to wield the sonic screwdriver and disintegrate the Jennifer creature, meaning that no one actually needed to sacrifice themselves at all. Which would mean that the Doctor arranged this *deliberately* so he could get himself reabsorbed into the Flesh...
* The series continues its trend of being surprisingly economical, by the standards of past seasons. Six episodes in, and the only monsters which have been built are head-and-hands jobs like the Silents and the Gangers, with a bare minimum of prosthetic work, and about nine shots' worth of the Jennifer monster. Set-wise all they've used are the Silents' timeship (reused from last year), the TARDIS corridors (bound to be reused), the Oval Office (used in five of the six episodes so far with different redressings -- it was the acid room in this story and the spaceship bridge in Black Spot), House's crashed spaceship, Avery's pirate ship, and the PVC-sheeting medical ward. This whole two-parter used no more CGI than The Doctor's Wife. And next week? They raid the prop closet again.
Ratings: 5.0 million on overnights, AI of 86. Curiously, this puts us *exactly* where we were this time last year, with Vincent and the Doctor... (ETA: finals 6.7m, 21st place. So, a tenth below Vincent.)
Where the first episode felt like it was less clever than I thought it would be, this one had more of the sort of twists that I'd hoped for. And some of the character stuff it dealt with was genuinely ambitious.
After last week's problems with motivation, this time Matthew Graham does a good job of portraying reasonable people caught up in an unreasonable situation -- Cleaves facing her ganger, and the two Jimmys in particular, each convincingly showed why they would go along with the action, and at what points they finally refused to go any further. But there's still a problem when Graham tries to show us characters who are being unreasonable by our standards, like Cleaves last week and Jenny this week... The script doesn't quite do enough to motivate that they would react in so extreme a way. It makes a pretty good effort; Jenny's visceral feelings of outrage as she remembers the previous experiences of the gangers make sense, but the link between that and hunting down and killing the sweet girl whose memories she shares -- who would conceivably react the same way -- is still tenuous.
The story does a good job of not making the same character be The Hothead all the time this week, with everyone from Rory to Buzzer playing fairly sensible roles which still exacerbated the situation... but it still didn't make Jenny's transition from sweetie to baddie convincing. (Perhaps if we'd seen her run scared from the Doctor's gathering in part 1, then immediately encounter the decaying fleshpile or something else which further radicalized her, that might have got her to the "us and them" place more convincingly.) And once she had played her hand and left all the humans facing certain death, I couldn't follow why she didn't just kill Rory now that she'd finished with him.
On the plus side, Cleaves became a much more interesting character, as they let the real Cleaves finally catch up with the sensibleness displayed by her other self. If we'd seen more of this wry, thoughtful character before all hell broke loose last week, we might have been able to sympathize more with her mistakes. Cleaves being smart enough to realize that the Gangers might be able to intercept their call, but not smart enough to realize that her Ganger might be able to work out her code word, struck me as a realistic balance. And her blood clot complicated things nicely, as a symbol of how they were both in the same boat; as Rutger Hauer would put it, they both wanted more life, f***er. Pity only the human one got handed it, though.
Plotting-wise, we got a mixture of twists I'd been hoping for (the Doctor's gambit with the shoes), plot twists which became apparent at just the right moment (Amy), and plot twists which made sense with hindsight. I genuinely got confused about which scenes featured the Ganger Jennifer, thanks to the bit of misdirection with the her performance at the hand-scanner -- a bit of a cheat, but reasonably plausible given Ganger-Jennifer's sense that she is Jennifer. I haven't seen anyone question how Jenny was able to create a second Ganger version of herself; if this was a sentient copy, how did she animate it without a convenient solar storm, and if it wasn't sentient, how was it working without someone driving it around from the control rig? But regardless of logic glitches, the effect of this scene was clever -- it looked like it was doing the classic telling-the-evil-duplicate-apart sequence, while in fact going one twist farther. (Even the "you can't fake a burn" bit is a careful bit of misdirection -- the audience flashes back to Ganger Cleaves failing to notice that the plate is burning hot in part one, and is primed to accept this as a solution: a classic case of rigging Chekov's Gun to backfire on you.)
Then there's the way much of the action -- and even the preview -- is constructed to make it look like the Ganger Doctor is going to end up fighting against our Doctor. Ironically, he gets the sort of clear radicalizing throughline which Jenny and Cleaves don't! That's a sensible way of manipulating audience expectations of the Evil Twin Story, while actually being up to something different.
But the more interesting thing about the doppelganger twists isn't the plot cleverness, but the way they illuminate this Doctor's character. I'd guessed that the Doctor would probably switch shoes with his double at some point; I didn't guess why, or what he'd do in his other self's place. His stated motive for switching places with his duplicate was to "learn about the Flesh", and whether they were truly identical, and that it's vital for some reason that they learn through Amy's eyes. It's a neat reversal for reversal's sake... but there are all sorts of implications slipped in under the surface there, which the surface action distracts us from. For a start, why is it so important that Amy in particular not be able to distinguish between the original Doctor and the duplicate? Oh, I dunno, possibly something to do with the future of his which she's just let slip?
More to the point... This is the most overtly manipulative we've ever seen him be towards Amy. He was pulling her strings in The Big Bang, but here he's not just pulling a fast one on her but deliberate pushing her boundaries to see how she'll react. (BTW, extra bonus marks for keeping Amy's attitude towards the doppelDoctor from being over-the-top -- as she says, she's happy to accept that he's a good guy, but he's not the Doctor, just a Doctor. It's not just prejudice at work; she knows that this Doctor actually has had different experiences from hers, and it's quite sensible to think that those experiences may have shaped him differently.)
And when he's playing not-the-Doctor -- is that an act, or a real side of the Doctor? Was his rant to Amy in the corridor about the Flesh a calculated attempt to raise her suspicions, or was it sincerely meant -- or both? Which is the truer expression of his feelings for her, at the end -- his promise that he will find her, or the coldness with which he breaks the link? I think they're both real. In that scene, with its mix of feelings, they're underlining that this is a Doctor who can be practically two people at once even in the same body.
Or to put it another way: ladies and gentlemen, we have the New Adventures Doctor.
We've got the two sides of the seventh Doctor, the endearing silliness (though turned right down from Sylv's TV days) and the fearsome calculation. We've got his long game, stretching across a whole string of stories. We've got him being both practically and emotionally manipulative throughout -- and not just in Amy's part of the plot; he tips the entire balance of power with one premeditated bit of emotional blackmail, setting up the phone call from Jimmy's son. And we've got the combination of careful forethought and oh-dear-it's-all-gone-cockeyed improvising... mixed with Matt's perennial sense that his brain is thinking so fast that even he can't always catch up with why he's doing things.
A little while ago, Kate was talking to me about how she still couldn't get a grip on how this Doctor works. I think we've finally got it... ironically, where the last two Doctors were very much in line with where we left him in the EDAs (I had a weird experience re-reading Fallen Gods a while back and hearing Eccleston in the role), now we've gone forward by moving back to the seventh Doctor.
And yes, I know that just like in the NAs, this will mean that some of the things this Doctor does will make me uncomfortable. I've already had friends be offended by the Doctor being so callous to Amy, or her Ganger. I still want them to bring it on. What delights me is that these points are consciously arguable again -- that the Doctor doesn't seem clear-cut. It's been a couple of years since the last time the Doctor went into dangerous territory, and I've missed it.
You think the Doctor's being a bastard by cold-bloodedly killing Amy's Ganger after telling us for an entire story that Slimy Duplicates Are People Too? Well, on the one hand, there's a perfectly sensible reason given for why this isn't the same thing -- the Gangers in the main body of the story are early versions, and explicitly malfunctioning, and the Doctor has deliberately gone back to the beginning of the Flesh to find out his answers. Amy's duplicate is from a time far beyond that, when the consciousness-related bugs have presumably been worked out, and is functioning properly (hence Amy snapping out of it when the control signal is broken).
So it's not actually unreasonable. And yet... after a whole story full of sympathetic independent Gangers, it still sits uneasy. Our instincts say it's wrong.
Good.
I like a Doctor where we actually have to work a bit to reach his point of view on things. Where matters are murky, rather than completely excused or completely condemmed. I love a Doctor who can be incredibly kind and incredibly ruthless, as he sees fit. Who believes deeply in these creatures' right to live, but who if you harm his friends will quite coolly break you into tiny pieces. I love a Doctor who can surprise me. I love a Doctor who can simultaneously reassure little Amelia as he prepares to open the crack in her wall, and simultaneously tell her that that reassurance is a lie. Who can be the most wonderful man in the universe, and also live up to his words to Elton in Love & Monsters: "Don't ever mistake me for nice." His two faces go all the way down to the bone.
And I love that all this stuff is there for close viewers to seize onto, while the rest of the world just sees a straightforward story of the Doctor fighting monsters. The story's action actually distracts us from thinking about these questions, of what he knew and when he knew it and why he did what he did, right at the moment -- leaving these as questions for the fans who want to look closer to ponder after the fact.
In writing terms, this two-parter is another good example of how these stories have to serve multiple masters. The audience which wants a standalone adventure can see a neatly-resolved two-parter with a hell of a cliffhanger for next week... and a cliffhanger which relates directly to the adventure that's just concluded. That's a smooth trick, paying off the Amy doppelganger in the same episode which establishes the evil duplicates; a show like Lost would be more likely to introduce the idea of duplicates in one story, and then later reveal that Amy had been one, making their reappearance a callback for the regular viewer. (See also the Interference arc in the EDAs; by my calculation next week will be the Shadows of Avalon point...) But this way, even one-off viewers can get the impact and the implications for the future. It doesn't feel like X-Files plotting, because you get the setup and payoff in one unified hit. On the other hand, the part of the audience which grooves on continuing storylines is also satisfied; now that we know specifically what the Doctor knew, suddenly the forward motion of the plot is obvious in hindsight (if that makes sense).
For those who want to chew on the mystery, this story gives you plenty to consider about the Doctor's previous actions. Why didn't he go after the little girl in Day of the Moon? Well, most likely because he'd worked out he had a whacking great spy for the opposition on board... whoever the opposition may turn out to be. Precisely how much he knew, and how much the opposition knew, is still up for debate -- but it's a reasonable guess that he's already sussed the connection between Amy and the girl.
But the question is, who's playing who?
Given my track record so far (note the distinct lack of divergent timelines resulting from The Big Bang), I'm hesitant to guess where things are going. But here's one point which comes to mind: remember that the Silent in Impossible Astronaut apparently told Amy to tell the Doctor her secrets. Looks like he wanted the Doctor to know about her pregnancy ("what he must know"), and about his death ("what he must never know"). Now follow the thinking here... It's because Amy changed her story about the pregnancy that the Doctor knew something was up with her. The Silents were tipping him off that Amy had been Gangerized, and that her baby was being stolen. Why? Well, what if Madame Hard-Faced Bitch and the rest of the various aliens turning up next week aren't in league with the Silents, but opposed to them? (The Pandorica Alliance, still fighting the ones who actually are out to annihilate the universe they know?) That the child is meant to be a weapon against the Silents? Maybe the Silents are using the Doctor to do their dirty work, trash their enemies, and inadvertently deliver the baby to them? (That would make the Silent's meeting with Amy the moment where they close the loop which brought the child to them; note that the girl only gets free after that point.)
And then that raises the question of the "what he must never know"... which Amy has now also told him about, by confessing his death to the "wrong" Doctor. How's that going to change the game? And how much do the Silents already know about it's going to play out?
Now: as with my previous theory, I have to wonder if this idea passes the fundamental test of new-Who arc plotting: is it simple? Or rather, can it be presented simply, as a discrete episode with no more plot complexity in itself than, say, Pandorica Opens? Would it be possible to bring that key idea across to the audience in one easily digestible piece, the way this story brought across the Amy doppelganger and all its associated implications? Complex for those who want to go digging for complexity, but simple to those who want a straightforward story?
I'm doubtful -- which is why I'm not convinced that Moffat is actually going down that road. But he might be able to get it across simply, in that Utopia sort of way which both forms a compelling story for those who don't know the background, and gives an oh-my-god-so-that's-what-it-is click moment to those who do.
The Rebel Flesh / The Almost People is not my favorite style of Doctor Who; it's a little too consciously gritty and dark to hit the instinctive yeah level of the best of the series. But what it does, it does better than expected, and increasingly well. The last few minutes are Fenric-worthy, even though the story as a whole isn't playing on that kind of level. But I admire their ambition, to slip us something a bit more complex hidden inside a familiar skin.
Short takes:
* Amy! The Ginger Ganger! Or, as Kate put it, the Ranga Ganga! And Rory's been a Ganger banger for months now!
* The eyes. Oh man, brrrr.
* So, the Ganger Doctor explicitly says that he and Cleaves will be reabsorbed into the Flesh, and possibly survive in some form. Hmm, I wonder how many weeks before we see him again?
* In fact... a forum poster pointed out that it would actually have been quite possible for the *real* Doctor to wield the sonic screwdriver and disintegrate the Jennifer creature, meaning that no one actually needed to sacrifice themselves at all. Which would mean that the Doctor arranged this *deliberately* so he could get himself reabsorbed into the Flesh...
* The series continues its trend of being surprisingly economical, by the standards of past seasons. Six episodes in, and the only monsters which have been built are head-and-hands jobs like the Silents and the Gangers, with a bare minimum of prosthetic work, and about nine shots' worth of the Jennifer monster. Set-wise all they've used are the Silents' timeship (reused from last year), the TARDIS corridors (bound to be reused), the Oval Office (used in five of the six episodes so far with different redressings -- it was the acid room in this story and the spaceship bridge in Black Spot), House's crashed spaceship, Avery's pirate ship, and the PVC-sheeting medical ward. This whole two-parter used no more CGI than The Doctor's Wife. And next week? They raid the prop closet again.
Ratings: 5.0 million on overnights, AI of 86. Curiously, this puts us *exactly* where we were this time last year, with Vincent and the Doctor... (ETA: finals 6.7m, 21st place. So, a tenth below Vincent.)