Well! What an episode what a fantastic twist at the end! Well, when I say ‘what an episode’ I mean that ‘The Almost People’ was pretty much alright. Was better than last weeks, as most second parters are, but pretty meek in content; is that even a word, meek? Never mind, of course it was full of twists and turns as any episode of Who should righty be, to which I cannot get that ending out of my head! But more of that later, one has to concentrate on the main episode, the humanization of the Gangers and the, for lack of better phrase, dramatic mental breakdown of poor sweet Ganger Jennifer.
Actually, let’s concentrate on that for the moment; Jennifer. The real one out in the cold, dying, scared and alone, while Ganger Jennifer creates yet another Ganger of herself, only to fool Rory, to make poor lovely Rory turn against his friends at the worst of hours. It was all rather clever, one of the Gangers obtaining the wound, limping; obviously had most of the audience fooled—definitely got me until about half way through, that ‘hang on…’ moment. Of course, one might ask how, or even why, the Ganger of Jennifer turned insane, well it’s pretty simple: Jen was the only one injured during the Solar Storm, her Ganger, connected to her at the time felt the pain, remembered the pain and this in turn brought back all the times her previous Ganger Jennifer’s were injured or killed during working hours. The memories drove her simply insane.
Of course, Ganger Cleaves and the rest of the crew didn’t remember, how could they? They just wanted a normal life, as Cleaves pointed out, even with the deadly blood clot to the brain. In the end isn’t that what anybody—thing or monster—wants though? A life, normal to their own standards (whether that includes a million worshippers/slaves or just a few gnomes and a fish pond) in which to live out, bar the Doctor of course, but he’s special, isn’t he?
Ganger Doctor! Now wasn’t that simply fantastic? “I reversed the Jelly Baby of the Neutron Flow” has to be the best mix of catchphrase EVER; simple as that. What a fantastic idea though, although slightly similar to the ‘Human Doctor’ of Journey’s End, yet completely different at the same time. Of course another fantastic idea was shoes: the Ganger Doctor, having been formed from a pre-melted shoe Doctor, having the correct shoes, but swapping with the borrowed shoes of the Original Doctor, only just to gain her trust (and lose a fragment of Rory’s) and see if theories, revealed at the end of the episode (squee!) were true. That and to simply have a fantastic banter with himself, get his shoes back free of charge and get Amy to reveal the dreaded secret she had been hiding from him since they were called back together…
Now, was it simply me, but from most of this episode and the whole of the previous, I though there were only a few places using Gangers, and even less WITH Gangers, but as revealed at the end of the episode it’s seen that there are in fact millions of the beings (well not seen, but expressly referenced nonetheless)—it just seemed that there was a slight inconstancy within those pointers, or maybe just the need not the mention them until actually needed. Correct me if I’m wrong of course!
Also, some of the plot points in the episode were almost predictable; the main one being with doubles of the workforce on the island and only one life for each, some Gangers were bound to take over the lives of their Original counterparts, even if extremely reluctantly at first. Jimmy being the main concern of this, with his son making a holo-call to the monastery on his birthday and the Ganger simply not being able to face up to the fatherhood of his Original, only to have the Original die moments later. Talk about a life-changing moment!
Now, just before I move onto THOSE final few minutes, may I take your time to point out something very… familiar about the mutated Ganger Jennifer of the end of the episode? Now according to Matthew Graham, the mutated form was originally inspired by a picture found within an illustrated copy of ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’, depicting the central character in mid-growth after eating the ‘eat me’ biscuit. In the aforementioned picture, Alice is shown with a rather long neck: a sweet girl’s face upon this rather stretched and horrifying body… now SOMETHING of that was depicted on screen, but I just couldn’t help thinking that the creature looked more like the mutated result of Professor Lazarus from The Lazarus Experiment… just sayin’.
With great excitement I can now move forward to that ‘game-changing’ (certainly for Amy!) final few moments, and to Amy, all I can say is ‘breath’. Following on from Amy’s confusion back in ‘The Impossible Astronaut’, the Silents trying to inform her of the possible through their complex and confusing threats, the poor woman suddenly starts experiencing contractions. Then within the TARDIS, everything changes. Amy, the one we’ve come to know since Impossible Astronaut, is a Ganger, although firmly mentally linked to the Real Amy, envisioning some of the things she sees (the Eye Patch Lady!) and obviously sharing the same thoughts and memories, thusly the Doctor informing the Ganger Amy that he will find her. He always finds her…
- Doctor = 10/10 – Doctor and Doctor, the perfect combination. I recon when all companions have been and gone, the Doctor’s greatest friend will be himself…
- Amy = 10/10 – Wow, that’s all I have to say. And Karen: YOU are fantastic!
- Rory = 10/10 – Poor sweet manipulative Rory, we love you nonetheless.
- Jennifer = 9/10 – Sarah Smart is such a fantastic little actress, and this proves it so still.
- Cleaves = 10/10 – I had to do this for Cleaves, she’s just fantastic and I now love Raquel Cassidy.
- Plot = 8/10 – Predictive in places, gob-smacking in others. Definitely better than last week’s!
Episodic Rating: A solid 9 out of 10; the ending sealed the deal for me, definitely.
And then to wake in a confined strange place, with no knowledge of how she got there, pregnant and in labour with the only form of life being the one thing that’s been popping up and scaring her at the most inconvenient of moments; Amy must be fearing for her life! And of course, there’s the identity of the child to consider… Speculation starts now, people! Will Amy’s child be River Song? Why was/could Amy be force to put her child in the orphanage if the hint in Day of the Moon suggests? If so, how could the girl regenerate, or show the ability to? Is Rory the father? I for one pray it’s in no way the Doctor’s—that would be breaking a barrier too far, companion/Doctor-wise… Anyway, the countdown is on, and next week A Good Man Goes to War.
2 comments:
Good review, Jonno!
This episode was fun, but it could have been better, in my opinion. I thought the concept behind it was interesting, but the execution was... messy. It also never fully explained if 1. the Gangers were mentally exactly the same as their original humans, and it was just the way they were treated that made them turn murderous (at first) or 2. if there was something about the Flesh itself that made them malevolent. I think the writers were probably trying to convey point 1.: that it's nurture, not nature that made them turn violent. But because they turned "evil" so quickly, it came across as more like point 2.: that the Flesh itself was to blame.
I also noticed that inconsistency you mentioned, about them talking about there being millions of Gangers in India, when I'd got the impression from the previous episode that the island was the only place that had Flesh and therefore Gangers.
I was a bit surprised that the doctor was so quick to vaporise Ganger Amy, though, after showing compassion to the other Gangers on the island, he was pretty cruel to her...
It's always easy to nitpick, though. I loved the location, the double Doctors were wonderful and hilarious ("Jelly baby?") and the secondary characters were also well done, especially Cleaves.
- Jen
You raise a really good point there actually; the writer, i think, was trying to point out that the way they were treated, as Gangers and not people prior to the solar storm, turned them rebellious, but that of course leads straight to the problem being in the Flesh, not the people...
And the Doctor 'melting' Amy, that was rather harsh, but one could put that down to the Doctor concentrating more on the fact that the Original Amy would be in a far more danger if he didn't get rid of the Ganger one; but then he could have used the Ganger Amy to get to Eye Patch Lady for the next episode.... although she was WAS going through labour, so maybe he wanted to put the Ganger Amy out of the unnecessary pain.
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