My Dog's Got No Nose: Doctor Who - 'The Rebel Flesh' and 'The Almost People' DOUBLE REVIEW

So after a two week finals-induced hiatus, the weekly Doctor Who reviews are back (although not for long as this Saturday sees the last one before the mid-season break). Plenty of other pop culture tidbits and nibbles to come over the next few weeks for your edification and delectation. Om nom nom.

A/N: Part 1 was written some weeks ago (on Rapture Day, in fact), Part 2 today. Enjoy.
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Part 1 - The Rebel Flesh

I'm not actually going to apologise for this review title because it comes from my mum's favourite joke ever in the world, which I reproduce now in full for your benefit:

-Doctor, doctor, my dog's got no nose!

-How does it smell?

-Terrible!

Never trust a joke with more than one exclamation mark in it.

Anyway, having resoundingly failed to get raptured up to heaven today (still have to take finals, damn) I settled down to watch Doctor Who with mixed expectations. On the one hand, two-parters are a tricky business, as the series' opener attested: always a danger of too much set-up and not enough pay-off. Plus, anything after last week was going to have a tough job. On the other hand, the premise looked pretty good and it was written by Matthew Graham, creator of Life on Mars, everyone's favourite time-travelling, coma-victim-starring 70s cop show (and featuring Marshall Lancaster, who will always, always, be LoM's Chris to me).

And I really enjoyed it. It wasn't scary per se, but definitely creepy, with the Gangers solidly hitting the middle of Uncanny Valley. Uncanny Valley, by the way, is a concept originated by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori, basically stating that the more something looks like a human, the more we empathise with it, up to a point where the resemblance grows too strong and it's just really fucking creepy, like zombies or ventriloquists' dummies or pod people. Or Gangers. Anyway, there's a graph or something that goes steadily up, along the axes of 'Resemblance to Humans' and 'Acceptance by Humans', and then drops drastically. The drop is known as Uncanny Valley.

Back to the episode. It was basically very entertaining. A good premise, some recognisable stock characters, it showed off the talents of our regular cast nicely and, yeah, it was a little goofy in places but Doctor Who's supposed to be goofy. Just not really, really patronising, Stephen Thompson (yeah, I'm never going to let it go). A return to formula but if the formula works, you can't fault it. Also very impressive considering that Graham's last contribution to Doctor Who was the Series 2 clunker "Fear Her'. About the 2012 Olympics? The monster was a little girl with some crayons? Nope, me neither. I probably couldn't hear the plot over the sound of David Tennant's gurning anyway. (Sorry, David, finals are making me extra bitchy today.) In terms of two-parters, I'd rank it above the Dalek Episodes of Which We Do Not Speak and last year's slightly disappointing Silurian jaunt, somewhere on a par with the Series 2 Satan Pit/Impossible Planet, probably slightly above. (Nowhere near as good as The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances or Human Nature/Family of Blood, of course, but that goes without saying. I wouldn't want you to think I'm patronising you.)

I found it oddly comforting the number of boxes it ticked, actually. It fulfilled the Industrial People in Jumpsuits episode, the Man is Our Greatest Threat episode and the Near Future episode, all while riffing off that classic sci-fi theme of cloning. (And was anyone else getting Old School Who vibes off those acid suits? Very Zygon.) It always bemuses me when people watch sci-fi or fantasy or any genre really and complain about plots being unoriginal or 'borrowed', as though we haven't been recycling the same few story archetypes since the beginning of time. Especially when it comes to science fiction - episodes like this one go all the way back to Frankenstein so it seems short-sighted, to say the least, to complain about Bladerunner rip-offs. Anyway, the point is, some of the best episodes of Doctor Who are the ones that take familiar stories or villains and dust them off a bit, shake them down and say "Look, here's how we do this story in 2011".

For the most part, I think this one did it well. Nice choice of location (betting it saved a few quid on the budget as well, Wales being conveniently full of abandoned monasteries and assorted ruins) and used to good effect (it's not Doctor Who if there isn't a bit of running down corridors). Really liked Rory and Amy this week - it's weird how drastically they can change from week to week - especially Rory's interactions with "Jen". Something of the auton!Rory side coming through to empathise with the plight of the plastic folk? A round of applause here for Sarah Smart as well who is a greatly underrated actress and pops up on my TV screen every couple of years to generally outshine everyone else in whatever Agatha Christie she's in. Loved her "red welly boots" monologue, but I guess I'm just a sucker for a girl with a timey-wimey backstory (hi River). Rory's reactions to being hit on by a piece of sentient goop were pretty wonderful too, the right mix of oddly flattered and completely weirded out. And I'm so so so glad they didn't go down the 'jealousy' route for Amy, apart from a natural side-eye or two, because really, he waited for her for 2000 years, it would be pretty silly to start feeling insecure now. Some lovely couple-y moments too: liked her kissing his thumb better and her blank-faced "Yeah, well, what are you gonna do" as she stomped off to go and find her husband. In a dark, twisty monastery. Full of murderous doppelgangers. Flooding with acid.

Someone needs to start realising that Rory dies a little too often though. The Doctor almost seemed to forget he existed at all at one point, although he seems to be trying to shift Amy and Rory out of the TARDIS altogether - timey-wimey pregnancy? Actually, the Doctor seems to be keeping a lot of cards close to his chest at the moment: the landing-by-accident moment (a throwback to last week or something more?), aforementioned pregnancy, what exactly this Flesh stuff is anyway ("early technology"? What now?) . I'm not entirely sure I like it. There's a line between having the Doctor as a complex, mysterious being with a Dark Past and having him as a complete cipher. I think that's why I enjoyed last week so much, we actually got to see Our Eponymous Hero up close and personal. Anyway.

I though Matt Smith was actually particularly good this week - for a series of scripts that aren't giving him much to play with aside from some quirky references to bow ties and Dusty Springfield (great line actually - seriously, who doesn't like Dusty?), there's a palpable sense of weariness and concern underpinning his performances that suggests maybe his elusiveness is deliberate and temporary. I keep coming back to Amy's pregnancy but, of course, he also knows that the rest of the gang are withholding something pretty important from him. It's also always interesting to see the Doctor pitted against the human race, given how much time he spends trying to save them. I always enjoy the moments where the Doctor turns on them and we're reminded how different he really is and, for my money, Smith excels at these. He has that particularly alien oddness that makes it work. Like getting told off by a teacher who you were larking around with and you step over the line and suddenly it's all "Intelligence can only get you so far, Rafaella, it's no license to be rude, now stop being so attention-seeking and do some work". May have stumbled across an issue or two there. Sorry.

Sadly, the one thing that didn't work for me was Raquel Cassidy's character, the token Skeptical Moneymaker, Foreman Cleaves. A shame because Raquel Cassidy is great, putting in sterling work in, amongst other things, Teachers and Party Animals starring (drumroll) a young Matt Smith. Well, a younger Matt Smith. Foreman Cleaves was one of those characters who acts as the plot demands it - all vulnerable and "I left my team" after the storm so we can begin to empathise, then a snarling psychopath because something needs to push the Gangers into open rebellion. Nice stuff going on with her Ganger being the sardonic, laid-back one though and, noticeably, the most hesitant to kill the 'originals'. I hope this is plot-related, that the Gangers are the opposite personalities (or just other side of the existing personalities) of their original bodies and not just lazy writing. Gruff Northerner With Son (didn't catch his name) seemed pretty identical in both incarnations but Sarah Smart's timid Jen turned into a war machine, so we'll see I guess.

So all in all, a pretty good episode: good story, good acting, good execution. I'll just say one thing though: Plastic Doctor? Come on BBC. There's no way I want to tap that.

Part 2 to come!