|
|
Post by johne on May 21, 2011 19:54:15 GMT
Spoilers in this post for part 1 ('The Rebel Flesh') only. ]
Well, that was a very traditional episode, wasn't it? An awful lot of it seemed to come straight from the Troughton Base-Under-Siege playbook, what with the vaguely near-future setting, the remote location, the external threat and the possibility -- nay, certainty -- of internal treachery, lots of corridors, the trigger-happy paranoid base commander, and even a crack about one of the staff being better than a computer. Plus Salamander-esque duplicates of everybody (I saw the duplicate Doctor coming at 29:30 when the vat started saying 'trust me').
Did anyone else find it quite hard to make out what people were saying, this and last week? Either my hearing's going funny, or the sound levels are off-kilter.
We actually got some day scenes in this one. Not too many, of course; light seems to be a carefully-rationed resource.
While it's all very nice of the Doctor to say the gangers are every bit as much people as the originals, they still differ in important respects. Among other things, they can morph into snakes -- and I haven't seen a snake effect quite that ropey since Kinda ;D
Rory really seems to have a death wish, doesn't he?
Judging by what was telegraphed in part 1, here's what I'd expect to see in part 2:
- There is Something Wrong with the flesh-golem process; the Doctor knows what it is, and he's not saying. Maybe there's a 20% chance they end up psychotic, or die after a month.
- A scene where someone distinguishes Proper Doctor from fleshgolem!Doctor by his footwear.
- Some payback on Jennifer's recounting of her childhood memory of being lost on the moor and wanting to be saved by a stronger, tougher version of herself. Probably fleshgolem!Jennifer saving the real one -- or, perhaps, vice versa.
- fleshgolem!Doctor not to survive the serial, just so we don't get any bright ideas about him being the one the spacesuit killed back in Impossible Astronaut.
- Can the vat generate more than one flesh golem of each type? If it can create one Doctor with no outside intervention, what's to stop it making two or more?
What might be fun to see, but I don't expect, is fleshgolem!Doctor regenerating ;D
[ |
|
|
|
Post by clocketpatch on May 22, 2011 1:22:51 GMT
Thought one: Creepy this is
Though two: Rory playing darts makes my heart go thud-a-thud-thump
Thought three: I'm surprised that the writer got away with those cockerel lines.  
The episode was creepy and nail-biting. I saw the Ganger-Doctor coming from before the episode aired, but the execution was still creepy as anything. I liked Rory's sympathy to the Gangers. It makes sense - he was plastic himself once (still is?).
The stretch neck effect really reminded me of the Rokurokubi: www.scaryforkids.com/long-neck/ and the referencing (intentional or not) of a traditional Japanese monster in the middle of a Troughton-esque episode was jarring in the most brilliant sort of way. The creepy in this was really put down liberally, from the "death" in the opening sequence, to the acid, to the body snatching - it's just pure nightmare fuel and I love it.
the solar storm slightly confuses me, because they're clearly on Earth. So is the storm supposed to be effecting the whole planet? Because if it's just the island, then, what? Also with the cracks in the ground... I'm relatively certain solar storms don't work like that. The electricity thing is right though. And yowsers, that fall looked like it hurt Doctor. With the one hour thing I was wondering at first if the Doctor and Amy and Rory who woke up were all gangers and the "real" ones were still hidden somewhere...
And finally, the eye patch lady. What's up with her? Really? And Amy's pregnancy?
**** |
|
|
|
Post by jjpor on May 23, 2011 20:16:03 GMT
*Yes, it was somewhat "trad" wasn't it, and extremely Troughtonesque. I certainly think it was much better than the pirates story. Reminded me a lot of the Silurians story from S5 too, which I hated, but I didn't hate this, mainly because it managed to compress the events of that two-parter into a single episode, in order to concentrate, presumably, on the doppelganger Doctor and the struggle itself next week. And it was just generally less annoying and like Clocket I did appreciate the creepiness factor really.
Although, I did wonder - what is it with Eleven-era Who always casting women in the role of trigger-happy warmongers destroying fragile peaces between human and non-human factions? Well, twice counts as always if you're only talking two stories!
Yes, good call on the boots, johne - I too am betting that will come into play next week! ;D
Good to see Chris from Life on Mars - but it would have been even better if he'd had Raymundo with him... ;D
l also expected that they would ALL turn out to be doppelgangers after the blackout, on very limited evidence, and was kind of disappointed when it turned out not to be the case. I guess Amy and Rory still could be. Agreed on Rory and his deathwish, although here it was motivated by selfless compassion I guess. What's the betting there will be a Ganger Rory before the end of the story, who will die so that they can keep up their record of fake!Rory deaths? ;D
Actually, this was a pretty good episode for Rory - I liked his empathy with the character Jennifer and just his general nice-guy demeanour. I'm going to miss Rory when he goes (that wasn't a spoiler - I'm just assuming he's going to leave at some point either at the end of S6 or soon after, NuWho being the way it is). I agree he's probably channelling his inner Auton at points in this.
Clocket - I don't think solar storms work that way either ;D. However, in some of the future-set 70s stories, wasn't there some bit of future history where the Earth got rendered uninhabitable by solar flares or something and everybody had to get off, leaving it behind for unscrupulous Sontarans and the like? If they're referencing that, I'm glad they're referencing some old-Who future history other than the infamous 51st Century (not that it isn't cool to try to piece together a picture of the 51st Century from all of the various references).
I think the big question coming from this story though is what is the Doctor up to? Becasue he's clearly up to something. Not only do I not believe for a second that they came to this place by accident, but I agree with johne that he obviously knows far more about the Flesh technology than he is letting on. I also notice a lot of people jumping to the conclusion that the duplicate!Doctor here could provide a way out of the Doctor death scenario outlined at the start of the series. I think that's probably a bit too obvious, given Moffat's apparent determination so far to avoid the obvious solution where he can. I'm not saying it will definitely not prove to be the case, but I will be very surprised if it does for no other reason than that it seems like such an obvious red herring.
And what's the deal with Eyepatch Lady? She didn't even say anything cryptic this time. *shrugs* - your guesses are as good as mine... ;D*
|
|
|
|
Post by librarylover on May 24, 2011 0:03:08 GMT
Some thoughts . . .
** I agree with John about the boots. I also wonder if that is why the Doctor suddenly started speaking with a Northern accent for no apparent reason - like the ganger Doctor won't be able to do that or something. I totally expect to see ganger Amy and Rory in the next episode.
I couldn't help but notice that the way the gangers are made was very similar to how the Sontarans cloned Martha in the Series 4 Sontaran episodes, including accessing the memories of the real Martha. I also thought that the acid suits looked like a Sontaran - same shape to the helmet anyway. The acid interacting with the rock and forming a gas that choked them really harked back to those episodes too. So, cracky theory, could this in some way be the start of Sontaran cloning techniques? The era of this episode wasn't really clear, but given the Dusty Springfield playing on a record player I'm thinking it isn't in the distant future.
Overall I really liked the Frankenstein-like atmosphere, and loved Rory's empathy for ganger Jennifer. **
|
|
|
|
Post by clocketpatch on May 24, 2011 0:47:21 GMT
Throughout a lot of it I kept thinking of The Waters of Mars. Something about the smooth, white make-up reminds me of the water parasites, and the factory owner (I can't remember her name, sorry) made me think of Adelaide Brooks.*
|
|
|
|
Post by johne on May 24, 2011 12:45:05 GMT
* What's the betting there will be a Ganger Rory before the end of the story, who will die so that they can keep up their record of fake!Rory deaths? ;DI think this is highly likely ;D ] Those are a few centuries further on, aren't they? As I recall they're more in the 28th or 29th century, whereas this is set in the 22nd. I do wonder whether it's supposed to be before or after the mid-century Dalek invasion, assuming there still is a Dalek invasion post-Time War.
[ |
|
|
|
Post by jjpor on May 24, 2011 23:05:05 GMT
*Ah, right you are, johne. I was a bit hazy on the date of this, actually, even after a second viewing. Although maybe solar activity like that takes place over the course of centuries...? Good point about the Dalek invasion... Hey, could the Flesh thing be somehow related to Dalek duplicate technology as seen in things like Resurrection of the Daleks?
Good point on the Sontarans, LL - and the whole thing is slightly reminiscent of Autons too, isn't it? This thing was full of that sort of thing - I'm sure they weren't even deliberate allusions, but there were so many beats here that seemed derived from all sorts of different influences (like the Frankenstein imagery too - good call!) and fused together. "Derivative" is usually a pejorative term, but...well, whatever the non-judgey equivalent of "derivative" is, this story is it. ;D In a good way, in many cases.
I don't know about anybody else, but if I'd gone into this story knowing literally nothing about it at all, then I would have been going "medieval monastery? Dusty Springfield?? No, surely not the Meddling Monk!" ;D
And I think I thought the same thing, Clocket - something about the weird pale eyes and odd-looking mouths, I think.*
|
|
|
|
Post by clocketpatch on May 27, 2011 0:49:47 GMT
It wouldn't be the first time the Sontaran Experiment solar flares were brought up in Eleventy Who either - they were the driving force behind that whole star whale plot (got the dates right and everything)*
|
|
|
|
Post by merrythemad on May 27, 2011 11:27:23 GMT
hahaahaha, what is it with whovians? A nearly infinite amount of creation to play in and immediately we think everything we seen is something we've already seen...and I AGREE!! I LOVED this episode, now it reminded me more of a Four era than a Two era but that could be as I've seen precious little of Two esp. as opposed to Four. Also, LL, I DO think it could be early Sontaran tech, or even, dare I say, Timelord? The control panel was reminiscent of a TARDIS and those vats could be early looms....
So supposedly this coming week (for the UK-ians) is "the cliffhanger to end all cliffhangers"...there already seems to be a lot going on.
Am I the only one who thinks the Doctor is doing more than his usual amount of keeping things close? He's meaning to land there and pretends it's an accident, he KNOWS the almost people are coming and he keeps checking that blessed snowglobe, which leads me to believe he's either already done this and is retrying (hence the whole "If i don't get to that cockerel all hell will break loose-never thought I'd say that again) or he's working from some sort of crib sheet (that came in a TARDIS blue envelope perhaps?)
I agree with one and all who've said watch the shoes, we'll clearly have to. I'd like to add sneezing to that as it seems the gangers don't. I'm not really sure what else at this point aside from I LOVED this episode and I really wish it wasn't almost the damnable break, I'm sick of waiting on the little girl and other loose ends. Is it just me being ungrateful?
EDIT Sorry Johne n JJ I didn't ignore you, I had read your posts previously and forgotten to include bits from them. I shall remedy this now.
** I hate, hate HATE Rory running about with Jennifer don't tell me any compassionate reason that this could be (i.e. Jennifer needs him he's never been needed et cetra) fidelity and loyalty are the defining characteristics of this man (to the point he waited 2000 years for this woman) now he's just gonna run about with some bit of fluff because...nope nothing makes sense and I think it's VERY out of character (like Ten telling Wilf he's nobody out of chartacter).
As I mentioned above the Doctor is up to something but Johne n JJ said it first and I failed to recognise that, sorry). GRRR darn it all I had more but I've forgotten again perhaps I ought to stick to that no posting before coffee especially when pain meds are involved.
**
|
|
|
|
Post by johne on May 27, 2011 18:27:14 GMT
hahaahaha, what is it with whovians? A nearly infinite amount of creation to play in and immediately we think everything we seen is something we've already seen... The Whoniverse is infinite. Writers are finite. Fans are finite. Zathras is finite...] I think, from his point of view, it's strictly professional: he's a nurse, she's a patient, he's trying to help her recover from a terrible shock she's had. She, on the other hand, may see things a little differently.[ |
|
|
|
Post by johne on May 28, 2011 19:15:25 GMT
[Tips panama hat]
[Flourishes ?-handled brolly]
That's the way to do it ;D
Although (spoiler for second part) ]When the TARDIS arrived, shouldn't she have been accompanied by a large quantity of acidic sludge?[
|
|
|
|
Post by clocketpatch on May 28, 2011 22:39:27 GMT
Well, you did all say watch the shoes.
Though now I'm wondering more than ever what's up with Eye-patch lady.
And the Doctor... if Amy-who-is-a-ganger hadn't told the Doctor-who-she-thought-was-a-ganger about the death... now that he knows it has to happen, and he has to invite them. And when the flip did Amy get switched? It was during Day of the Moon I'm guessing, when she said she was pregnant and then later on she wasn't...
And the Doctor seemed pretty okay with blowing up ganger-Amy after an entire episode on how gangers-are-people-too. Doctor?
And I keep editing this as things pop into my head, but, well, the ending made me forget but then I remembered the actual most unexpected thing in this episode... Tom Baker?!?!**
|
|
eve11
UNIT Red Shirt
Posts: 70
|
Post by eve11 on May 30, 2011 3:09:00 GMT
Tom Baker AND David Tennant if I'm not mistaken. And then Eleven goes batshit and is like "NO WE'VE MOVED ON!" Which I heartily approve of. I also approve of crazy!Eleven trying desperately to hold on to whatever is going through his head, giving vulnerable eyes to original Eleven. And I demand smutty fanfiction.
RIght. okay. There was another 43 minutes to that episode and some stuff happened. The sonic was replicated and the writers didn't pay enough attention to it. Also did Eleven's boots (which were actually Smith!Eleven's) melt into goo when he severed a link from the TARDIS?
That aside I actually really really liked this episode. I even liked Ganger!Jennifer who apparently the rest of the Internets agree was chewing the scenery. I saw the Amy cliffhanger coming from ten billion miles away but I didn't see the shoe!swap. And that means that regular Eleven had a psychic link to the flesh that made him short circuit briefly in the hallway, which is distressing. And he now knows who invited him to that wake shindig at the start of the series.
Next week; the REAL cliffhanger of doom.
|
|
|
|
Post by clocketpatch on May 30, 2011 3:19:30 GMT
It took me a few rewinds and reading that he was there before I could pin-point Tenant. Which concerns me since his voice isn't really that close to the Matty boy's at all. Tom's was easy to pick out, though I don't think it synced up as well as it could've. Probably a combination of his voice being So distinctive and the age of the audio clip showing.
Reverse the jelly baby of the polarity is a wonderful thing.
I'm wondering if at least part of the short circuit came from ganger!Amy asking so honestly "can you die?" and Eleven knowing in his mind "Yes you can, and I'm going to do it"
That scene is mind bending to re-watch after the finale.
I've got to be re-watching The Impossible Astronaut and Day of the Moon at some point too. The Moff wasn't lying when he said that the twist would make you go back and watch the whole series.
I didn't see the shoes or ganger!Amy coming. To be honest, I thought it was Rory who was going to turn out to be a ganger or still plastic or something, hence his inability to die.
Roman Rory next week makes me wonder if I've still got some mileage on that. It would be right freaky if it turned out he was still plastic and had the Roman costume like, attached, under his clothing or something. But since we've seen him shirtless this series (yum! ...could've done without the tubes and deadness) I'm relatively sure this isn't the case.
|
|
|
|
Post by jjpor on May 30, 2011 20:14:49 GMT
Yes, johne - yes indeed - ?  It wouldn't be the first time the Sontaran Experiment solar flares were brought up in Eleventy Who either - they were the driving force behind that whole star whale plot (got the dates right and everything)* Yes, of course... I was forgetting about that. I do like it when they reference this stuff.  * You know, I actually liked this second part a lot more than I was expecting too, considering that I only sort of liked the first bit and two-parters seem to decline a bit in their second halves. But yes. Pretty good, even without the ending, but the ending -  !!?!?!! was about my reaction to it.
As Clocket says, though - it does cast a new light on some of the earlier scenes. I mean, when (we now know the real) Eleven loses it with Amy in the corridor, it takes on a whole new and slightly sinister complexion when you know he knows she's really a duplicate.
Regarding the "murder" of ganger!Amy - I agree there was possibly a bit of vagueness on the rights and wrongs of this, but if my reading is correct, then she wasn't actually a fully sentient, independent being in the sense that the other gangers were after the solar storm zapped them. She was alive, arguably, in the sense that the Flesh in the vat and the (horrible! upsetting!) discarded gangers were, but not aware, "just" a remotely-controlled puppet if you will. In any case, it would seem the Doctor had a pretty pressing reason for doing what he did, and it was the only option out of a series of bad options, hence his deadly-seriousness as he did it. I think this was pretty heavily implied by the way real?Amy only woke up as the ganger was dissolved - and then discovered her horrible predicament.
As to Eleven's dissolving shoes - good point! I suppose we could handwave it and say that whatever technobabbly way the TARDIS managed to "stabilise" the surviving gangers at the end probably worked for the shoes too. Probably.
Yes, that was a pretty striking and disturbing closing image there. This season has definitely been a lot "darker" even than the last one, hasn't it? Some of the stuff going on in this episode - corpses stacking up left and right - the warping flesh and other body horror moments - it was pretty strong stuff for 6.45 on a Saturday, wasn't it? I agree with Merry above - the basic base under siege plot was very Two-ish, but the whole tone and look of this story was pure Holmes-Hinchcliffe, right down to the Frankenstein imagery. I approve! ;D
Not that it was perfect, by any means. I got a strong S5 Silurians vibe at times in this, especially in the contrived nature of some of the deaths and heroic sacrifices in the second part. It felt like the audience's emotions were being manipulated at times, but for some reason nowhere near as annoyingly in the Silurians story. Still.
I don't want to chime in with all the sheep on Livejournal etc, but what the hell was up with Jennifer once she turned "villainous". And Sarah Smart played the non-villainous bits so well that her bizarre smiling-baddie act just seemed even more jarring and OTT. Especially as the character was written, it seemed to me, to be disturbed and frightened rather than evil. Still, Doctor Who seems to have that effect on some otherwise perfectly good actors, unfortunately. If I was the director, I'd have had words - probably fortunate I'm not the director, then!
But yeah, the other characters were all very well-drawn I found - with various nuances that stopped any of them from being outright goodies or baddies. I was especiallly pleasantly surprised by how part one's "heavy", Cleaves, turned out to be much more sympathetic and indeed almost heroic in the end. The same qualities that made her a potentially-murderous loose cannon also made her the only one of the non-regulars who really thrived in the crisis, which I think was a very telling bit of characterisation.
As for Rory - silly boy! I don't know, though, Merry - I thought what he did with the best of intentions, at least in Pt 1. And you know, here he was also motivated by genuine concern and horror at the treatment of the gangers. There was a bit more of a frisson between him and Jennifer in Pt 2, I thought, which might be a black mark against him, but then she was doing her best to manipulate and trick him. But yes, Rory simultaneously at his least sensible and most sort of "aww, Rory!"-est for me anyway. Had to kind of shake my head and snort a bit at "I'll break out the big guns!", though... ;D
And I've hardly even commented on the jaw-dropping cliffie in all of that above, but, yes, well, what is there to say other than bring on next week? I don't think we have enough information to do anything more than wildly speculate yet, and I'm not even sure when Amy was swapped, really. Possibly sometime in Day of the Moon? Or during the 3-month gap before Impossible Astronaut, even? I wouldn't really like to guess at this point...* |
|
|
|
Post by magnusgreel on Jul 2, 2011 9:00:29 GMT
"This is wrong tool! Never use this!" Well, it's an isolated outpost story... but do the surroundings always have to go so completely against our image of an isolated outpost story? Fine, an old castle, but some more equipment please... I only get to see these once, at my friend's house, and viewing #2 is always where I really begin to follow things. So I'm going to get some details wrong. It's okay to tell me. Yes, the solar flares happened circa 3000? It's possible they started intermittently well before that, but what a depressing thought for Earth's immediate future history. In that third millennium though, the first Pertwee-ish Earth empire happened, though, so the flares couldn't have done all that much damage... unless they were what spurred us on to colonize! What was the acid for? Did they ever say? I have little to say. Maybe more later. |
|
|
|
Post by jjpor on Jul 2, 2011 15:41:39 GMT
Good point, Magnus - I think we might have discussed this before, but one of the things that strikes me about Earth's future history as presented in Doctor Who is that it's so...bleak? That might not be the right word, but you know, unlike the sort of utopian image you get in a lot of things (sorry to go bringing Star Trek into yet another discussion on here, but...), it's clear that wars and natural disasters and epidemics and the rise and fall of civilisations go on and on until the planet's end. There is no "end of history" in the Whoniverse, and I find that very interesting and, dare I say, realistic (even if the details are often a bit out there ) But yes, I have no idea what the acid was actually for, or indeed why they were "mining" it - acid's something you manufacture, surely? |
|
|
|
Post by magnusgreel on Jul 3, 2011 9:14:29 GMT
Star Trek's fictional future history isn't happy either, though most fans probably ignore that, as later makers of Trek have seemed to (though they didn't break continuity with it, they just neglected mentioning it anymore). Earth hit bottom pretty badly with the Eugenics Wars/WW3, and possibly retreats into fascism and brutal regimes in some places after, then first-contact while we were defenceless, good thing it was the Vulcans... though all that may be hard to fit into one coherent timeline. We basically had to be bombed nearly out of existence for anybody to learn anything.
True, though, the classic DW future really takes the long view, and doesn't flatter us by telling us we're "special", and just so wonderful that we're bound to found a utopian empire someday. I like it whenever the new series throws a bone in the direction of that DW future, and supports it. It really is a nice healthy deflation to humankind's ego, to think of a future where all solutions are temporary, but all disasters are temporary too, where the cycles just go grinding on, for eternity (those Colin "grinding engines of eternity" he complained about hearing in his head?!). It's a real stretch of the imagination, and sense of self, and sense of one's species, to think in this way. That's a real, and great contribution DW makes to science-fiction.
Yes, come to think, this is the age of synthetic chemicals, we mmanufacture those powerful substances out of more benign things. That raises the question of what this stuff was doing in the ground then, and how it got there. Silurian toxic dump?
johne: I found the first half of the first episode too hard to follow at all, because I couldn't understand what anyone was saying, and I hate the thought that after decades of UK television watching, I might now be having trouble with accents. I think sometimes actors swallow their words a little too-- not sure if that's what's happening here. I only get one viewing of these...
One thing I definitely noticed was that there seemed to be no thought put into... pacing? This is true of most stories. All the lines are spat out, bang bang bang, without pauses to show when characters are thinking or digesting what the last character just said, and no silences for the audience to digest or catch up mentally with what they've just been told. This was an old-fashioned hour-and-a-half story, so they didn't need to do that for time's sake.
I think about halfway through episode one, the pacing, if that's the proper word for this, settled down into something more human and natural.
|
|
|
|
Post by clocketpatch on Jul 3, 2011 14:07:40 GMT
I seem to remember all of the whale went extinct in Star Trek's future... I've seen very little of the canon, but that's always what I end up remembering: that movie with the whales in it.
|
|
|
|
Post by magnusgreel on Jul 3, 2011 15:54:32 GMT
I seem to remember all of the whale went extinct in Star Trek's future... I've seen very little of the canon, but that's always what I end up remembering: that movie with the whales in it. I'm unhappy to think that your impressions of Trek must come from that movie... On behalf of Trek fandom, "I'm so, so sorry!" Star Trek Lite. Entertaining I suppose. Sorry if you liked it, I can see why people do, but it's not very representative of Trek. Want hardcore, serious Trek, something to astonish, awe, and call upon you to think? It has to be season one, especially, of the original series. Deep Space Nine was consistently pretty good too. Others had good and bad patches... Anyone of a certain age (older than you, younger than me) saw those Trek movies as their introduction. They're what made them fans, and they're beloved. ST4, the whale one, especially. Rose-colored goggles of childhood memories, I suppose. I'm not posting to lay into a ST movie, but offering all this as a reason to give Trek another chance. |
|
