In which I review Rebel Flesh and Almost People

(Not that anyone actually cares, because my review is so bloody late. Sorry about that, reason is in the post below this one.)

So this'll be shorter than usual, but that's because I didn't really give a shit about the plot in this two-parter since it was all so obviously just a setup for tomorrow night (EDIT: last night, which I have not watched yet but SRSLY I AM ON IT RIGHT AFTER I POST THIS). Seriously. Something happened and blah blah blah clones are just like humans blah blah find our own humanity blah blah FLESH SPIDER blah. If there was anything about the plot that held my attention and made me care, it was the Doctor-Amy-Rory threads culminating in the big reveal of Amy as Flesh and the final cliffhanger. For real, that entire team and their Gangers could have dropped into the acid vat and bubbled away and I would have given exactly zero fucks.

But I promised I would review these two, and so here goes. Besides, these episodes weren't all bad...apart from their central plots, anyway. I'll start with the good bits.

So the cinematography in these episodes - Rebel Flesh in particular - was nothing short of gorgeous.

There was also some great acting, both in expected and unexpected places. Smith shone as both True Doctor and Flesh Doctor, being truly creepy in his "Flesh" Doctor role, although I'll have more to say about the ethics of that later when I'm in bitch mode. (This is nice mode, in case you couldn't tell.) Other shoutouts go to Mark Bonnar ("Jimmy") who gets it just for this expression:

Also Rory, just for this.

Finally, the plot threads that led to the culminating cliffhanger were done very nicely, I think. Though Amy being a Ganger all along was not the biggest twist ever - when people on the Internet are guessing it barely five minutes after the first part has aired, you know the Moff's not up to his usual standards - but I'm being overly harsh there, since it made up for whatthefuckery by being done EXTREMELY well. Eleven's instructions to "breathe" and "push" finally made sense, and the final scene of Amy in labour was lovely and creepy. Very, very well done.

Sadly, nice mode ends here.

Those were pretty much all the things I liked about this two-parter, and most of them fell into the second part. The main thing that bugged me about this story was the fact that out of the entire factory team, there was not one single person I cared about. Seriously, Unconvincing Revolutionary and Grey Hair With Son and Like Adelaide Brooks but More Annoying With A Stupid Smirk and The Fourth One could have all just bubbled away in an acid pit - with their Gangers - and I would not have cared one bit. And that never bodes well.

But the weird thing about this episode is, in spite of the horribly cliched clone/humanity storyline, it could have been good. At times, it actually was good. But every time it appeared to be somewhat engaging, the mood was ruined with clunky, heavy-handed writing. Ganger Jennifer's line about "the eyes are always the last to go" seemed like it could lead into a clue about how the Flesh could come back from dissolution, but instead ended up being a stilted, uninspiring revolutionary speech with all that "WHY? WHY?!" bullshit. And her constant reference to little Jennifer in her red welly boots made me want to go NO, NO, THAT ANECDOTE DID NOTHING FOR ME THE FIRST TIME YOU TOLD IT, THERE'S NO NEED FOR YOU TO REFERENCE IT AT ALL LET ALONE MULTIPLE TIMES. And Jimmy/Ganger Jimmy's conversation about their son was almost, almost effective but just stopped short and augh I'm raging now so I'm going to stop.

Basically, if I had to sum my frustration up in a nutshell: The acting was good. With the exception of Miranda, who seemed to have a case of Marthaitis (aka "I only have one facial expression") with that goddamn smirk, all the factory worker characters were portrayed well. But they could have done so much more. Sarah Smart, in particular, could have been far better used instead of being stuck in her abortive revolutionary role that sent shivers down absolutely no one's spine.

And speaking of writing? The plot holes. Holy GOD, the plot holes. To start with - though this isn't a plot hole per se rather than something that just pissed me off - why, WHY did "Ganger" Doctor shove BOTH Rory and Amy? This may be a small thing, I don't know, but I don't see what purpose he had in pretending to be violent and unstable. At all. Even the whole stupid social-experiment thing he was trying to pull on Amy ("oh look, all along you didn't know who was who, THAT JUST GOES TO SHOW HOW HUMAN WE BOTH REALLY ARE") doesn't justify him being a complete asshole to her in that one scene. I just don't get it. What purpose did that seeming bipolarity serve? How was that lackluster Deus Ex Machina "here's an oniony red cure for you and woop de doo the TARDIS automatically stabilizes Gangers hooray and cookies for everyone" cobbled-together ending supposed to make us feel anything other than "cool, they've been shipped off to go fight the evil Space Slave Corporations, let's get on to the real plot now"?

Also, why this. Just...why.

Anyway, it would appear that once more I have to stop before I rage all over everything. Let me just conclude with this: it was predictable, it was aggravating, and Eleven was pretty much my absolutely least favourite person in the world for parts of it. When you actively dislike the Doctor, as a character, there is something very very wrong.

So in conclusion, my scores for each part go like this:

Verdict for Rebel Flesh: 2/5

Verdict for Almost People: 3.5/5 (just because of the last fifteen minutes and the cliffhanger, really)

But fuck all of that, MID-SERIES FINALE TOMORROW NIGHT LAST NIGHT (or next Saturday night, except I can't watch it on TV because I'm going out for my birthday and am anticipating being passed out on the floor of a dive bar with my hair on fire. Yes, at 8pm. What?)