Rate and Discuss 6.5: The Rebel Flesh

[SiHart]

Will Matthew Graham come up trumps, or will it be another Fear Her (which I didn't think was actually that bad really, bet hey, never mind)... let us know what you think, if the rapture doesn't finish us all off!

[Zbigniev Hamson]

I thought it was/will be great.

[Rob McCow]

That's what I like to hear! A nice, positive response.

I think you are/will be loving it.

[egdcltd]

I think the makeup department has watched too much DS9.

The gangers are early Nestenes maybe?

[Paul Monk]

That wasn't too bad. Could probably have done with the pace being picked up a little bit but me and the kids sat through it and enjoyed it well enough.

[Dino]

I didn't enjoy it as much as the rest of the series. But it was still pretty good and the cast were great. Especially the LOM/ATA actor who isn't Dean Lancaster. And I loved the spooky special effect in the toilets.
(ANOTHER sequence where something alien happens in a toilet!)
I was wondering how much would have been script edited in to make the story arc with the others. So far this looks like it's mainly the vision of Chris Chibinl. As we all know there are two directives from the EU about him that I am duty bound to follow.
One is the misspelling of his name and the docking of everything he writes by one point.
Hopefully the second episode won't contain a "peace conference". It never works with the size and weight of Chris's hands!

8.

[Andrew Curnow]

I did feel it was a bit slow - presumably because they wanted to spin it out so they could do that cliffhanger. Must admit, though, by about 10 minutes in it was pretty obvious the c/h was going to be (at least) one of the regulars turning out to have a 'ganger.

Not sure about the episode itself - there was nothing wrong with it, but I was just left a little unmoved. I'm surprised they didn't make more of an effort at letting us get to know, and like, the people on the island - as a story about, other things, identity it would seem important for us to care about the characters. As it is, I don't feel I know much about either the 'originals' or the 'copies' (I don't even know the names of Scotsman or Sneezing Boy).

As a fan of Fear Her, I wasn't expecting this to be a disaster (unlike some) and I'm pleased that it wasn't - but it just wasn't quite as good as maybe it could have been.

Oh, and did I miss the explanation, or do we not know why they're mining acid?

[Andrew Curnow]

Oh - and also, I'm sure Jason & Jon will be able to answer this - what exactly is a solar tsunami, and would it really only hit one tiny island (rather than, say, the entire daylight half of the world)?

[Andrew Curnow]

So far this looks like it's mainly the vision of Chris Chibinl. As we all know there are two directives from the EU about him that I am duty bound to follow.
One is the misspelling of his name and the docking of everything he writes by one point.
Hopefully the second episode won't contain a "peace conference". It never works with the size and weight of Chris's hands!

Er, Dino, this was written by Matthew Graham not Chris Chinball.

[Paul Monk]

Oh - and also, I'm sure Jason & Jon will be able to answer this - what exactly is a solar tsunami, and would it really only hit one tiny island (rather than, say, the entire daylight half of the world)?

I'm no Jason or Jon but I would say that that was largely rubbish. I suspect its getting muddled with a solar flare, which would affect electrical equipment. There was some rubbishy science in this episode such as the older acid being a lot less corrosive than the newer acid!

[Darren]

3 out of 10

And we're back down with a bump. Frankly underwhelming stuff tonight. Trapped and cut off from anywhere under siege-Fairly predictable and cliched plot.
The subplot with Rory becoming emotionaly involved with GangerJennifer was contrived and unconvincing. The GangerDoctor was no great surprise, and the characters were barely fleshed out (sorry). Who lives who dies who cares.

The shoehorned pregnancy/ Eye Patch Lady is increasingly annoying.

[Martin Curnow]

So, will the gangers be destroyed by the common cold? You don't usually have some sneeze in Doctor Who unless it's plot related.

[J.R. Southall]

Horror of Fang Rock with all the character taken out and a large dollop of Avatar added in its place. Might prove a lot better once the second half is added - disappointing first halves often do. "It's scanning me too!"

[Awesome Wells]

A muted six out of ten that might - and hopefully will - rise depending on my opinion of The Almost People which obviously cannot be discussed yet. The Rebel Flesh is a good, solidly traditional base-under-siege Who story, and the Gangers are an excellent idea (although their concept of themselves as a race seemed to develop far too quickly; the us-against-them mentality didn't make sense, really, because as far as the Gangers were concerned, they were humans who had woken up in a body made of yoghurt, not some alien race - why suddenly develop a grudge because a silly person shot somebody who looked like that bloke out of Ashes To Ashes?) but I wasn't hugely impressed.

The thing was - oddly for Doctor Who - the direction really let The Rebel Flesh down: it was edited without pace and there was no real sense of jeopardy or tension. Yes, half of the guest cast's characters were cyphers and the story, such as it was, was obvious as hell (although the big shocks are still to come next week), but I would've been more than happy with this if there hadn't been such a dragging tempo and a lack of the menace and an "eek!" factor of about minus five. Even the bits that should have been scary - Ganger Jen in the toilet with Rory, Ganger Doctor materialising from the shadows in the chapel - were rendered mundane by poor execution. If the (real) Doctor is asking, "where are you?" to something unseen, don't cut away to something else; and don't have Amy react to his unexpectedly weird behaviour by not reacting at all.

That's all for part one; but three other things before I nod off: Matt (strangely more old-fashionably Doctor-ish than at any point so far this season: compassionate but with fairly calm authority and moments of flustered excitement, making me think of Peter Davison) and Arthur (in particular; thanks, Matt Graham, for finally giving him something to do) were excellent; Karen had little to do but will next week; oh, and Frances Barber is getting paid a lot for saying one line over and over again.

A rising six, like I said - but what did "Pond... breathe" mean?

[SiHart]

I liked the slow pace and the slow build up personally. I felt there was a real sense of tension building up throughout the episode that I really liked.

Yes, the cliffhanger was fairly predictable, but it looked great. The make up was really good.

I really liked the Rory/ Jennifer subplot personally- Arthur Darvill made it very sympathetic and grounded the story's emotional side rather well I thought.

I just liked it!

[SiHart]

I also really liked Rory and Amy listening to Muse and playing darts in the control room at the start. It felt really homely!

[Rob McCow]

Here's Flying Beastie's Featured Review of The Rebel Flesh, from the Facebook site - in it's unedited glory!

When you devote a good 15 seconds of your episode to having the Doctor fix how he parked the Tardis in-between two garbage containers you should step away from the laptop and really think about how much you are about to simultaneously bore and aggravate your audience.

Apparently Matthew Graham didn’t adhere to the above memo and, for whatever reason, the powers that be (*coughMOFFATcough*) decided to give the man who wrote “Fear Her”- an episode so bad I would rather watch “Timeflight” in a 12 hour marathon as Gary Busey violently wet-willied me periodically every 10 minutes whilst yelling at me that he’s going to rip out my endocrine system- a two-parter and the highest episode budget of the series by the looks of it.

Off the bat I knew it was bad- the characters, wearing futuristic anti-acid suits, need to give an oral command in order to activate the lighting system. Like, really? That’s almost as bad as having them do the whole “clap-on, clap-off” thing. Not to mention that whole sequence was (once again) filler that didn’t contribute anything of consequence to the episode.

But enough with the nitpicking- my main gripe with this episode is that it’s boring. So incredibly boring to the point where my eyes kept rolling over to see whether I was due for the rapture yet, cos’ I sure wouldn’t have minded being yanked from watching this episode.

But alas, no…

As far as I can make out from the actors mumbling their lines- seriously, Karen Gillan needs to pack it in with the ciggs cos’ she delivers every line with this breathlessness as if she’s just run down an Escher staircase- we’re dealing with a bunch of people who collect acid at a monastery and the job, being a hazard within itself, has required them to use clones of themselves they can control through some psychic link-

*yawwwwn*

I just couldn’t care less about these people or their clones. Not to spoil Moon for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet, but the moment that turned out to be the premise I was quite disheartened. I mean, in the end it’s a tolerable movie, but you were dealing with Sam Rockwell and Kevin Spacey.

Here, we’re dealing with a bunch of people we don’t know much about and even when we do get some character development (i.e. Jennifer) it’s marred by, well… I don’t even know.

The fact Cleaves is no different than the Silurian Captain from “Hungry Earth” (she’s established as a bitch for no reason other than to drive the plot)? Also, could someone turn the lights on? All of these episodes look so dark and drab and it only adds to the dullness of the series.

Also, Amy and Rory are once again preventing Matt Smith to shine in his role as The Doctor. I praised Neil Gaiman’s episode because not only was it imaginative and obviously an episode written from the heart, but we finally got to see Matt Smith’s Doctor act and drive the story! And we’ve taken a big step backwards in “The Rebel Flesh” by having him lurk in the background, Amy sneaking around with a flashlight, and Rory being given something to do because Arthur Darvil’s check hasn’t cleared yet.

I figured maybe “Fear Her” was written under some sort of duress or perhaps it was as awful as it was due to a production and casting gaff. So I gave Graham the benefit of the doubt on this one (Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes- this guy is obviously doing something right!)

But, no. We should just keep him very far away from Doctor Who; he’s giving it a rash.

Oh and do they think our memories get wiped by the Silence each week? We GET IT- HER PREGNANCY IS IN LIMBO. THERE’S A LADY WITH AN EYEPATCH WHO’S SPYING ON THEM THROUGH THE MAIL FLAP OF HER FRONT DOOR.

WE GET IT!

Before I close, I’d just like to say that for these past two series’ we’ve had the most boring two-parters. I know I shouldn’t judge how bad the next episode is going to be based on this one (for all I know it might blow us all away and we needed to suffer through this vacuous black hole of an episode to get to the good stuff)

BUT, can I just remind everyone how well paced “Sontaran Strategem”/“Poison Sky” were? Look at the character development we were given there (since we were dealing with clones in that one too)

Now, I’m not saying that that two-parter was perfect, but at least I wasn’t mulling over joining the rapture party while watching it.

1/10

[Larry]

not quite as good as last weeks episode but still enjoyable enough - 7/10

[Darren]

I pretty much agree with Beastie.

I did like the nod to the McCoy era, with the Doctor clearly knowing about the Flesh in advance and deliberately taking the TARDIS to the outpost, following his own agenda.

The special effects were pretty good, though the scene in the bathroom were unnecessary other than to create an moment. The scene where Cleeves twisted her head around 360 degrees was far more unsettling.
Ultimately, Matthew Graham fals into the same catergory of writers as Chris Chibnal and Helen Raynor- keep them away from Who.

[Perry Vale]

Well that was a......two parter. Nothing exactly wrong with it, but for some reason very unengaging. And continuing the trend of "new" writers being unable to do justice to the two episode format. The only ones who've done it well since the show returned in 2005 are Moffat & Cornell, in my view.

Didn't think too much of the cast either really, finding myself distracted by it's 'genre casting'. Lancaster (ATA/LOM), Mark Bonnar (Paradox)...I wonder if Raquel Cassidy's role had first been offered to Julie Graham. Sarah Smart was very good though.

Favourite scene - Amy & Rory on the ockey.

[Jason Thompson]

I thought it was a potentially interesting idea very poorly executed.

The central premise of programmable biomatter being used to generate remote controlled copies and gradually developing sentience as a result of constantly having human minds attached to it was good, and should have opened up a whole bunch of issues for decent discussion and plot development. Instead we get the Doctor repeatedly telling us they're people, a couple of scenes too many of a Ganger establishing that it has all the memories and personalities of the original, and then suddenly it's become an 'us and them' battle for no readily apparent reason. And the cliffhanger was way too obvious for about 20 minutes. The interesting bit which I hope will be developed in the second part is that the Doctor appears to have deliberately set the Flesh up to duplicate himself.

Only two episodes ago we had Amy (badly) performing CPR on Rory. Here someone gets their heart stopped by an electric shock and no-one in a room full of people including a nurse thinks to try re-starting it?! No, instead the Doctor just goes on about how awful it is without even trying to save him.

Why do the Gangers wear acid suits when they evidently don't do much good (since Buzz doesn't have time to get out of the acid before it eats his legs despite having the suit on), and why does their work involve anyone balancing on the edge of a huge vat of lethal acid (why indeed would there even be a vat big enough for anyone to fall into?), and why would anyone be so stupid as to physically jog someone who was doing so?

The solar tsunami and mining acid was just utter tripe. Any acid that corrosive would not be sitting around in vast underground reservoirs, as it would eat and react with the rock (as it evidently did enough to cause the TARDIS to sink into it. The way it is portrayed as only dangerous if the liquid gets onto you is also absurd. As anyone who has breathed in anywhere near a beaker of concentrated hydrochloric acid will tell you, everyone should have been coughing and rasping with incredibly sore throats. And what exactly does the mainland need such dangerous acid for? As for the solar tsunami, we're only one step up from Helen Raynor's gamma strike. At least this one hits in the middle of the day!

The scene in the toilet should have been scary but was instead absurdly comical, with the head on a wavy long neck floating around all over the place.

There were some good bits in it. Sadly they were not enough to lift it into the realms of decent. hopefully next week will give us a decent resolution, but I have a feeling it will actually be more of a setup for the second half of the season.

[Junkyard]

I thought it was a potentially interesting idea very poorly executed.

The central premise of programmable biomatter being used to generate remote controlled copies and gradually developing sentience as a result of constantly having human minds attached to it was good, and should have opened up a whole bunch of issues for decent discussion and plot development. Instead we get the Doctor repeatedly telling us they're people, a couple of scenes too many of a Ganger establishing that it has all the memories and personalities of the original, and then suddenly it's become an 'us and them' battle for no readily apparent reason. And the cliffhanger was way too obvious for about 20 minutes. The interesting bit which I hope will be developed in the second part is that the Doctor appears to have deliberately set the Flesh up to duplicate himself.

Why do the Gangers wear acid suits when they evidently don't do much good (since Buzz doesn't have time to get out of the acid before it eats his legs despite having the suit on), and why does their work involve anyone balancing on the edge of a huge vat of lethal acid (why indeed would there even be a vat big enough for anyone to fall into?), and why would anyone be so stupid as to physically jog someone who was doing so?

The solar tsunami and mining acid was just utter tripe. Any acid that corrosive would not be sitting around in vast underground reservoirs, as it would eat and react with the rock (as it evidently did enough to cause the TARDIS to sink into it. The way it is portrayed as only dangerous if the liquid gets onto you is also absurd. As anyone who has breathed in anywhere near a beaker of concentrated hydrochloric acid will tell you, everyone should have been coughing and rasping with incredibly sore throats. And what exactly does the mainland need such dangerous acid for? As for the solar tsunami, we're only one step up from Helen Raynor's gamma strike. At least this one hits in the middle of the day!

There were some good bits in it. Sadly they were not enough to lift it into the realms of decent. hopefully next week will give us a decent resolution, but I have a feeling it will actually be more of a setup for the second half of the season.

This pretty much sums up my feelings about this episode. I'm hoping things improve next week. Or maybe Neil Gaiman has raised my expectations?

[Jon Masters]

5/10 so far, and pretty much everything that Jason said - I had high hopes for the concept, but the execution was pretty dire.

There were things that could have been done so much better, but the fault lay very much with the writing and the pacing. The idea that they were unconscious for a lot longer than they thought was dumped in far too quickly, as was the concept that the Gangers had all the memories of their originators, not just their appearance - these could have been discovered far more gradually and added to the tension.

Other things have been so heavily handed too - I'm sure the sneezing, and the Doctor's borrowed shoes, are going to be very helpful in identifying Gangers next week (or maybe I'm giving the writer too much credit for being even that imaginative)

AND FFS WITH THE PREGNANCY SCAN / EYEPATCH WOMAN !!!!!

[Andrew Curnow]

Good review from Beastie, and very quick with it too!

In the interests of balance, I would heartily disagree with:

When you devote a good 15 seconds of your episode to having the Doctor fix how he parked the Tardis in-between two garbage containers you should step away from the laptop and really think about how much you are about to simultaneously bore and aggravate your audience.

Because I really like that bit, and it's surprising it took 40+ years for somebody to do that actually fairly obvious 'gag'.

But I wholeheartedly agree with this:

Also, could someone turn the lights on? All of these episodes look so dark and drab and it only adds to the dullness of the series.

You've very neartly put into words something that's been niggling at me this whole season so far. Even in the big two-parter, there's very little of sunny US exteriors, and much more dark warehouses, or spooky orphanages, or lamplit Oval offices, etc. The pirate one was all at night, and 'the junkyard beyond the universe' last week was all nighttime too. I'm sure years ago we used to hear that night filming was much more expensive, which is why (just for one example) all of Destiny's exteriors are daytime - maybe this year they've spent too much money on expensive nightshoots, and perhaps not quite enough money getting their scripts up to scratch. It's telling that the only one that's really felt properly finished to me, was Neil Gaiman's - and that's had 18 months or more to be written!

[Stuart Wallis]

3/10, for much the same reasons as Darren and Jason gave - decent enough ideas, but not much thought gone into execution or pacing. Plus the science did indeed come from The Baker And Martin Book Of Unconvincing science. Solar tsunami? Affecting a time machine in flight? And if the acid were that strong, why does the Doctor still have his feet? No, so far not convinced.