Welcome back to your weekly Doctor Who Review (say that ten times fast (Oh, who am I kidding, that’s probably easy – do it fifty times)). After last week’s surprisingly great Neil Gaiman penned episode, we have supposedly set a precedent for this season’s serials: great, meh, great… and maybe meh?
There’s only one way to find out. Take a look after the cut for some thoughts on Matthew Graham’s first episode in a two-parter, “The Rebel Flesh.”
Before we begin talking about the episode in any kind of detail, let’s first figure out where we know Matthew Graham, this week’s writer, from. If the name isn’t immediately memorable to you, don’t feel bad – I’m not sure it should be. Graham is responsible for the for the season 2 episode “Fear Her,” in which the Tenth Doctor and Rose travel to the year 2012 to see the Summer Olympics in London, where they get trapped in an apartment where a young girl named Chloe can capture people in pictures she’s drawn, culminating in an attack from her evil father. It wasn’t a particularly great episode, and one that is as much a filler episode as this season’s pirate episode.
That being said, “The Rebel Flesh was a pretty great beginning to the two-parter. While last week’s Gaiman-penned episode certainly gave the rest of the non-Moffat episodes a standard to live up to (and an admittedly impossible one at that), this episode manages to succeed in at least one of the elements needed on any given Who episode, and that is a plot that is discernably worth following. Where Graham certainly does not maintain Gaiman’s penhcant for snappy and quick dialogue, this week’s episode features a rather interesting premise. The Doctor, while trying to get ready of Amy and Rory so he can figure out what the heck is going on with her quantum pregnancy, accidentally brings the whole gang to a facility that is run by a small group of “normal” people, and a group of clones, or “gangers” (for doppleganger). These gangers share the entire memory of their real counterpart, but they are certainly not treated as such since they aren’t real people, but simply clones created from living skin. Of course, because this is Doctor Who and things can’t just go right, a solar flare causes the gangers to actualize, and thus begins a war between the real and not-as-real.
It’s certainly an interesting premise for an episode that can certainly be seen as a metaphor for other areas of existence. If science created a clone, what rights would that clone have? And just because someone isn’t the “original” version of someone else, does that in turn strip away their rights? Obviously there are parables to various race and religious issues, but taken on it’s own accord it offers up an interesting dilemma for the Doctor, who is sworn to protect all life – and as you can imagine (and I suppose this is a mild spoiler), the Doctor gets a ganger of his own at the episode. While the Doctor certainly does his best to mediate the situation, what exactly will he be forced to do? Can’t there be only one Doctor?
It’s kind of hard to judge the episode in total due to it being a two-parter, but as far as the first story goes, it creates a nice amount of tension and suspense to warrant interest in the finale. The end sees everything essentially going to hell, and while the episode does have it’s fair amount of tension and violence throughout, the real kickers will all be in the next episode as the Doctor is forced to make the tough calls. We’ll see then if Graham can really nail the landing on the story.
However, one element that Graham has done that no other writer can seem to do as of late is make Rory matter. I will assume that anyone watching the show will know that poor Rory gets a rough deal more than any other character on the show. He’s lucky enough to land a babe like Amy Pond, but then she runs off with an attractive and eccentric alien to go explore the galaxy, and he gets erased from existence! How unfair is that? Then he waits 2,000 years for her as a Centurion only for her not to remember him, because he’s not fully real. Now we have a new season, and he plays second fiddle to Amy and the Doctor, as Amy consistently gives hints that she cares for the Doctor more (who doesn’t?), and Rory gets killed or screwed in every episode. Poor Rory! Yet, Graham has written Rory a purpose. While the Doctor is obviously pro-ganger, Rory is the only character on the show who doesn’t immediately go postal against the gangers, instead allying himself with one and trying to protect her while keeping everyone else calm and level headed as much as possible. While of course things can’t just go well for Rory because that’s his lot in life, I will admit that when Rory got caught against the ganger my immediate thought was “Well, this is how he dies this week.” I was surprised to see Rory not be the stories go-to red shirt. Arthur Darvill is incredibly unutilized on the show since Amy is the “main” companion, so it’s always nice to see him get a shot – especially since now that we know him to be the useless character, whenever he does do something worth of note it’s always worth the extra mention.
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In addition to Arthur Darvill’s performance, the new cast members for the episode also add a nice touch to the episode. Sarah Smart as Jennifer, the “good” ganger, really outperforms the rest of the newcomers as she is the only character to not just right away scream “murder, death, kill!” to the real humans. With Smart and Darvill playing off each other as the only characters in the episode to not be torn in either direction, it just goes to enhance the episode beyond it’s base metaphorical elements. Raquel Cassidy also adds to the cast greatly as Cleaves, both in her “normal” and “evil” selves, while Mark Bonnar and Marshall Lancaster work well as the smaller cast elements of the episode. And, as always, Matt Smith continues to do great justice to the legacy of the Doctor, although this episode sees a much more serious than usual version of Eleven. It’ll be very interesting to see what Smith does with two roles next week.
So “The Rebel Flesh” is, for all intents and purposes, a success. It’s too early to define this episodes place in the season given that we have another half to the story, but in a show where it’s easily recognizable that any episode not written by Moffat is a “filler” episode, it’s nice to have filler episodes that are actually enjoyable like this one. The gangers, in all their flat faced creepiness, offer up a great plot device to work the Doctor around, and the show still manages to keep the running plotline of Amy’s pregnancy and the weird woman in the wall in the episode. It’ll take “the Almost People” to make me fully put my thumb up or down on the episode, but for now I’m leaning towards up.
