The Almost People

[daibhidc]

Oh. My. Flippin'. Heck.

I so did not see that coming! But it makes sense: the face in the walls, the pregnant/not-pregnant thing, and the quickly-glossed-over implication that the Doctor had come to the mining island for a reason.

(It also neatly adresses any problems that people have observed with the pregnancy. Why isn't Amy showing? Because that's not the Amy who's pregnant! Why does the Doctor let her to do the usual companion stuff? Because that's not the Amy who's pregnant! Why doesn't he discuss the situation with her? Because he doesn't know if Eyepatch Woman can listen in!)

(Okay, that last one is my own extrapolation, but it fits.)

But before we get to THE MOST AWESOME CLIFFHANGER EVER! there was a pretty good episode. I loved the back-and-forth between the two Doctors, although I predicted the "The Doctor we think is the Ganger is the real Doctor" twist quite early on. It just seemed like the sort of thing he ... they ... both of him would do. And the scene where Amy, trying to demonstrate how completely okay she is about the supposed Ganger!Doctor, actually expresses the hope that it's him who died in "The Impossible Astronaut" was cleverly done. (On which note: Oops! I can just hear River saying "Spoilers!" now...)

Ganger!Jennifer seemed to turn into a ranting maniac rather quickly, as pointed out by Ganger!Cleaves. It makes you wonder what was really going on in Real!Jennifer's head... The scenes with Jimmy's son were beautiful, and really drove home that these were the same people. I can't help wondering what Jimmy's wife makes of the whole thing, assuming anyone told her.

The problem, though, was demonstrated in Confidential, where Matthew Graham was keen to point out that Ganger!Amy isn't really alive, so the Doctor didn't kill her. Well in that case, what the heck was the preceding episode about? Yes, okay, you could argue that only solar-flare-enhanced gangers are really alive ... but the episode doesn't do that either; at the end Real!Cleaves is going to protest that the treatment of the Flesh is inhumane in general.

(And isn't it convenient that we just happen to have ended up with no more than one of anybody?)

Comments

[rob-t-firefly.livejournal.com]

I'm terribly surprised Moff avoided the temptation to not show us Ganger!Doctor melting, and letting fans freak out and argue over whether or not the proper Doctor is the one now flying the TARDIS.

[daibhid-c.livejournal.com]

Now you mention it, so am I...

[scarfman]

On the Ganger question: The difference between the Amy ganger and the others on the station - even the ones thrown onto the garbage heap - is that the Amy ganger never had an independent existence. The whole point of the revelation/cliffhanger is that it was never anything but an extension of the original Amy, and it's the only one in the story about which that could be said. It could be argued that the Doctor took out the Amy ganger when he did in order to keep it from becoming an independent entity, so that the situation Cleaves and Jimmy were bringing to the world's attention wouldn't get a chance come up on the TARDIS (and also of course in order to advance a solution to the situation Amy is in). Like chopping off an amoeba's limb just before chromosomes of its own form for mitosis, rather than waiting till the split is done and then destroying the second amoeba.

[scarfman]

And the other thing that occurs to me is that the Doctor specifically refers to the ganger technology as "early days". When Cleaves and Jimmy the third survivor whose name I never caught persuade people to stop using gangers, they don't stop people using technological extenions - the extensions just become a technology that doesn't present the same moral quandry. Amy's ganger will have been of a more advanced type. I'd put even odds there's dialog to this effect next week. But only even odds, because Moffat has failed at this sort of throwaway rationalization in the past.

[ssirienna.livejournal.com]

Just a quick point out - I don't believe that there is a wife as the thing given to Ganger!Jimmy was a wedding ring on a chain ... so I think she may be dead

Also (oooh! more spoilers :-) we think that the Dr who died was "John Smith" as one of the things that gets shoulted is for "him" to remember that his molecular "stuff" would be able to remember its shape - or something like that!

[daibhid-c.livejournal.com]

Good point on the wedding ring; I missed that.

[daibhid-c.livejournal.com]

That all makes sense, objection withdrawn.

[moustachios.livejournal.com]

Yeah, he said something like "Remember her."

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

Indeed there is some dialog just before the Flesh Doctor melts which, to my ears, seemed to imply that there's a chance he could come back again ... particularly as the Flesh itself took a patterning from just a touch of the Doctor's hand and created a full copy (down to bowtie!) and only got the shoes "wrong" ... mmmm, I'm now more intrigued about why the shoes were different, aside from being a clothes prop for the audience (as the fez was in the big roman/stonehenge/modern time hopping adventure)