Doctor Who: The Almost People review
Monday 30th May 2011, 2:10PM BST.
Well, that was an ending and a half, wasn’t it?
Certainly was. I never saw that coming.
Me neither. A real bolt from the blue. It rounded off a very strong two-parter.
I thought that as well. There was a bit of something for everyone in this episode. Some good jokes – it was nice to have a mention of jelly babies again – plenty of shocks and, let’s be honest, some disturbing images.
You mean that bit when the ganger Jennifer melted in the acid? Yes, that was a bit creepy, wasn’t it? And as for that pile of discarded ‘Jennifers’ all left to rot while alive…
I know. Nightmarish.
And then there was the Doctor. Wasn’t it clever the way they left you thinking that one Doctor was the Doctor and the other Doctor wasn’t the Doctor, and then it turned out at the end that the Doctor you thought was the Doctor wasn’t actually the Doctor at all but the other Doctor. My head hurts just thinking about it.
Yes, and you had some of the humans dying and being replaced in real life by their gangers. Do you think that little boy will realise that his dad isn’t really his dad at all?
Ah, but he is his dad, isn’t he? He has the same memories and looks exactly the same. So, really, he is his proper dad. Except he isn’t.
Mmm. But it wasn’t all perfect, was it?
True, there were negatives. I don’t much care for the way The Doctor becomes all shouty for no real reason, such as the way he spoke to Rory before tricking the ganger with the video telephone call from his ‘son’. It seemed a bit inconsistent in terms of the character. And I really didn’t like the way he bellowed at Rory to step away from his beloved. I didn’t think that was very Doctorish.
And if you think about the escape from the factory it didn’t make any sense. Why did the ganger Doctor need to sacrifice himself? The factory was being melted by the acid and there’s no way that the evil ganger Jenny would have escaped. If they hadn’t spent all that time whittering on they could have got into Sexy – sorry – the Tardis and sauntered merrily away.
Yeah, I thought that. Talk about great minds!
Indeedy. But I’ve got a question for you.
Go ahead. Shoot.
Well, you know how you were in the shower this morning and you thought it would be a really fun idea to write this review as if it was a conversation between yourself and your TV reviewer ganger. True?
Yes, that was the idea. Why, don’t you like how it’s turning out?
Not really, I think you’ve stretched the ‘joke’ to breaking point now. Perhaps you should just wrap it up?
Oh… Okay, you’re probably right. So, there were some plot inconsistencies, and the monster Jennifer seemed a bit chucked in to please the youngsters who couldn’t get their heads around the plot. But that ending – poor, terrified Amy Pond waking up from what she thought was reality to find herself stuck in some mystery birthing chamber and about to pop… Next week’s episode could quite possibly be the best thing ever shown on television.
Yeah. But I knew all along that Amy Pond was a ginger.
Ganger. You mean ganger.
I know what I said.
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Excellent review, but I must disagree with the shouty Doctor. The best thing Matt Smith has brought to the role is that he is a little more unhinged (a bit more akin to Patrick Troughton’s Doctor).
Even in his first series, Smith went from nice to shouty. In my opinion it is how this reincarnation expresses his frustrations, both that other people are not as clever as him and that he is in a situation he can do nothing about.
Therefore his yellings at Rory fit perfectly – particularly with the Amy situation as his frustration boiled over. I will concede that the moment when he hurt Amy may have been taking it a tad too far, but overall, this side of him makes the Doctor more dangerous and more alien – and that is how he should be.
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I’ll take an Eleventh Doctor who gets shouty over a Ninth who becomes verbally cruel (“stupid ape”).
Excellent and entertaining review.
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