Previously on Doctor Who: The Rebel Flesh (1).
Oh, good God. This is shaping up to be breathtaking.
Right. If the Amy who’s been travelling with the Doctor and Rory since Day of the Moon was just Flesh—then when did the Silence and Eye Patch Lady knock her up to have her have a baby that’s going to be made into a weapon to kill the Doctor? I mean, she told the Doctor she thought she was pregnant down in the basement in The Impossible Astronaut. Therefore, something must have happened to her during her first encounters with the Silence, perhaps something we didn’t see because we were following her perception of the time she spent there. And it has had to be earlier, because they mustn’t both be pregnant. If the kid can regenerate, then I’m still sticking to my theory that the Silence have artificially insemenated her with Time Lord DNA, it can’t be Rory’s baby, and I’m not sure travelling in the TARDIS would have any side-effects, the TARDIS would always protect her passengers from anything of that kind.
At least now I understand why Amy has been wearing the same clothes every episode—the Ganger probably wouldn’t care about that since the Flesh is programmed to be the exact duplicate of the template at the time when the copy was made. Which is another thing that makes the Flesh so extraordinary: Amy and the Doctor, especially. I never suspected Amy not to be the real Amy, and I did not believe that the presumed Ganger!Doctor would turn against the others; there was the same sheer disbelief in my brain as on Rory’s face when the Doctor didn’t let him go back to get the others out. Amy’s right, he is twice the man she thought he was—simply because he is not a man. The Doctor values different things than humans do, would always be willing to sacrifice himself for others, and that consciousness would always win out; as humanity won out in the Gangers, except for Jennifer. I did get scared when the Doctor argued with Amy and shoved her, but that moment afterwards, when she runs back to the others, that pain in his eyes, that was the Doctor, no matter whether Flesh or Time Lord. And that’s also a very important thing about Rory and the Doctor’s relationship. In that moment when the Doctor calls Adam, Jimmy’s son, Rory realizes that the Doctor is the Doctor, and that he can always trust him—which is why he later steps back when the Doctor tells him to, trusts the Doctor to be right about Amy, to help her. They’re on their own now, Rory has to put on his Roman armour for battle, they have to go to war and plan how to save her—which wouldn’t work if they didn’t trust each other implicitly. Not against this new alliance—humans, Cybermen, Silurians, Sontarans (according to the BBC website), and weird cloaked figures with crackling swords.
By the way: the Doctor now knows that Amy has seen him die, will see him die. He’s probably already put the pieces together that he recruited himself to do something about it. And he knows that it’s got something to do with that kid. Amy’s child. Also, look at this comment from Mr Birdsong there: if the Ganger!Doctor’s the one on the beach, if Amy just gave the Doctor that weird idea, then there truly might be a way out of vaporization. Oh, dear. Three Doctors to keep track of—three because the younger Doctor doesn’t know anything about it (I don’t think he was acting), and there must be an older Doctor the Ganger can be in contact with, otherwise how’s he going to travel through time to get Amy and Rory’s attention? The younger Doctor did say he blocked the connection with the Flesh to vaporize Amy, but I don’t think that would keep him from feeling when his Ganger becomes active again and noticing what he’s up to.
Anyway. Before this becomes an essay about next week’s mid-series finale, let’s talk about this episode. In the middle of it all, I thought, ‘Jesus, cut with the confusion already, Matthew!’ Again, I had this feeling that nothing was actually happening, it was just… running around, cutting from one location to the other. There were great bits in it, but they felt disconnected sometimes, and at some point I had to force myself not to skip ahead, to be honest.
The conflict and its resolution was still interesting, though: at the end, there’s only one of each left, except for the Doctor and Cleaves—who stayed behind to get rid of Jennifer. It was quite nicely done, because after Jimmy’s grand gesture of letting his Ganger take care of his son, humanity just breaks through. Buzzer didn’t get to work it out anymore, but Dicken, for example, let Jennifer devour him to get the door locked and protect the others. His Ganger is now stabilized and just as human as Cleaves.
However, I didn’t really understand why the part about the Flesh being discarded though still alive was put in like this, it should have gotten more attention, should have been part of the main plot. Like this, it was like an idea squeezed in to evoke Rory’s pity and to have something to pressure the company’s board with. Bit meh.
‘RORANICUS PONDICUS!’
Now, that’s a good name.
See, this is what I’m talking about: this is it. This is all I can say about this episode, which isn’t much. What about the evacuation shuttle, anyway? They were supposed to re-route to the courtyard, what became of them, eh? And did the factory eventually blow up? With them? If it blew up, what do the Doctor and Cleaves want to do about that vaporization thing, now that their remains are scattered?
Favourite moments:
- Everything with both Doctors. I mean what I said about Time Lord Weasley twins, it’s exactly like that. Yes, Doctor, it is awesome to hang out with you, don’t let it get to your head. Whoops, too late.
- The Ganger!Doctor going through reconnecting with former regenerations: goodness, Eleven with Four’s and then Ten’s voices. LET ME DIE. Jelly baby?
Next: A Good Man Goes to War.
Crime and Relative Dimension in Space 
ASDF THIS EPISODE HASN’T AIRED SO I HAVEN’T ACTUALLY GOTTEN TO SEE IT YET DDDX I skimmed your post just a little but not too much, so that I don’t get spoilers or something…I did pick up one thing I probably shouldn’t have though; Amy was Flesh since Day of the Moon? What? O.o Oh, never mind, I’ll shut up and come back next week when I’ve actually seen it instead of typing random crap xP
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Roranicus Pondicus. Heh. 🙂
As a stand-alone two-part story, I thought this had good moments but was a bit disjointed. The ending, however, wow! Didn’t see that coming …
Bring on next week. It’s time the unfairly maligned Rory stepped up – and it looks like he’s going to do that big time.
Any idea when the second half of the season is scheduled for?
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I loved that bit–it’s a good name for when the Doctor’s angry at you 😀
I thought it might have been a bit more gripping if it had been done in one part, but, yeah, it had its good moments; and I usually enjoy Matthew Graham’s writing greatly, so I’m sure he had his best intentions with all the confusion on- and off-screen…
Oh, yes, in his armour and ready to fight. Have you seen the trailer? “Where. Is. My. Wife?” Oh boy, someone is very unhappy. Besides, he might have been just dropped into the role as Centurion in the first place, qua costume, but he earned that rank, not just when he protected Amy for 2,000 years, but before that. He must have been a regular soldier for a while, and that surely wasn’t easy. But he fought, and then he pierced a rampant Cyberman with his sword–how can anyone still not believe that that man is a badass?
Nope, I have no idea yet.
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I’m sure that tomorrow all lucky enough to have an up-to-date broadcast will be untangling their brains after the mid-series finale (which is a ridiculous concept by the way!) but it’s nice to be able to finally contribute my 2 currency’s worth on this episode.
First – gah! Amy? What?! This smacked me utterly sideways, so well done Moff & Co. on keeping that particular card firmly chested.
As for the rest of the it, though, it’s one of those frustrating episodes that feels like it could’ve been absolutely brilliant but instead was merely interesting. It felt like the good ideas were all jostling with each other for our attention: the delving into “humanity”, some nice little riffs on Mary Shelley and Philip K. Dick, the two Doctors (wonderfully Weasley-like :D), the discarded Gangers, even the concept of the Flesh itself – all of it really interesting stuff but none of it got much of a go. Instead everyone was sort of running around the monastary (a marvelous location and another underused element) in circles, and the ep went the same way. Though the flipside of this is that it’s a perfect example of why I the show’s so good – disappointing episodes have TOO MANY ideas in them!
However I did love the Flesh-Doctor copping 900 years of memory like a ton of bricks, brilliant bit of acting from John/Matt Smith there.
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Yes, absolutely! It was just so much stuff crammed together that it ultimately felt as if nothing had really happened. Very weird.
Teehee, yes, reversing the jelly baby of neutron flow was brilliant 🙂
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Okay! Seen it! Holy CRAP that was awesome. Okay. Lots of stuff clashing in my head and fighting to be expressed first. AMY, ONE OF THE FLESH. I actually forgot about that little glimpse I caught in your post last week and I didn’t see it coming at ALL. Which was nice, cuz otherwise that would have been ruined for me. I really should know better by this point not to look at blogs of episodes I haven’t seen. Spoilers! xP
Well anyway, that explains the weird eye-patch lady and her random appearances. Now that I’ve had a night to sit on the episode, I can form a logical explanation for all the unexplained stuff. When the Silence took her they locked her up into the harness and made a flesh form out of her for the Doctor to pick up, while the real one thought she really was back with them even though she was actually closed up in some little room ready to go into labor–which is why the TARDIS couldn’t decide if she was pregnant or not, cuz she was pregnant while the flesh was not.
Okay, now you probably already pieced that together, so I apologize for my random outburst :3 Well done on the rest of the post though. I could say more about the episode but you’ve pretty much already said everything I was going to. xD
Oh, and also, even though he’s been vaporized now, the reason why flesh Doctor couldn’t have been the one who died in episode one–flesh Doctor is exactly the same age as the real Doctor. He’d have to be. But the Doctor who died said he was 100-ish years older than this one. They made a point of saying it. If he were a flesh, he’d have been the same age.
Well, that’s about it for my marvelous theories and conclusions 😛 You did a brilliant job already as I said, so for once I don’t have much else to point out xD
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Just a short thing ’cause I’ve got work to do: the Ganger!Doctor himself wouldn’t age, but it’s the Doctor’s mind and soul that travels around with the Ganger–and that ages. And because the Doctor wouldn’t be fighting it, would be one with his Ganger, he’d say he’s 1108 years old and that’s it. Besides: Rule One, the Doctor lies. He said he was older, but he doesn’t look it, well, it’s hard to prove it. If he travelled, doing weird stuff, for what would’ve been 200 years for the real Doctor, then that’s it, his age doesn’t matter, just as long as it is a future Doctor that is strapped into a harness.
It would just be a nasty pill for River to swallow–that the Doctor doing Jim the Fish with her was an avatar. Then again, he’s proven that his Ganger is him, dammit, Amy, so that shouldn’t be much of a problem.
Am I even making sense? I hope I am. I’m very tired.
Thank you! 🙂
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You’re making perfect sense to me! And as you once said, anyone else just isn’t keeping up! 😉
I suppose you’re right about GangerDoctor though. And I do often forget how often the Doctor lies. But having seen the most recent episode, I still don’t think GangerDoctor is the one who gets shot there…idk, it just doesn’t seem to fit right, first of all, and I have new theories anyway xD
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😉
New theories are always welcome, in case you’d like to share xD
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