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Saturday, May 21, 2011

Doctor Who: "The Rebel Flesh"

Season 6, Episode 5
The first half of a two parter is better with ideas than story
“Well I see why you keep it in a church: The miracle of life.”
-The Doctor

I took Intro to Philosophy my first semester in college (because that’s the sort of thing that’s required of someone who attends a liberal arts university). Though I kind of hated the class – a lot of what were we required to read was from professional philosophers, meaning that the ideas were written about in a way that I couldn’t fully grasp them – there were certain ideas that appealed to me, at least as I understood them in class. One of these concepts was the Mind-Body Problem, a debate (or a series of debates) surrounding the question of how a person’s physical body and intangible soul relate, be it that they exist together, or whether they are two separate entities.

Doctor Who, it appears, is on the Monist side of the debate, as seems to avow in tonight’s episode that the exact same personality can exist in two separate yet identical bodies. The idea of what constitutes a person, and how many human characteristics it takes before something can be considered human, has always been one of my favorite sci-fi tropes, as it’s just heady enough to make me think, yet not too complex as to be confusing/distracting. And “The Rebel Flesh” used this idea to great affect tonight, mostly by making sure that we don’t see the Gangers (couldn’t the show have come up with a less suggestive term?) as straight-up evil versions of the “actual” workers.

The other deep idea at play here tonight – and the other reason this episode worked fairly well – was the idea of being forced to come face to face with oneself and the morality that it implies. About halfway or so through the episode, The Doctor makes it very clear that the Gangers in fact think of themselves as real people, and that all actual persons should treat them as such. But, as he warns, they may not behave normally, as they have becomes driven by fear and self-preservation. Yet neither can all of the humans maintain their normal status, as the real Cleaves goes a bit mad and kills one of the Gangers. This not only keeps from absolving the humans from their side of this civil war, but it also plays into this idea of “nature versus nurture”. Given two Cleaves in the same environment, one chooses sanity, the other senseless violence. Either one was capable of it, and it was only happenstance that the human Cleaves choose to act aggressively.

The reason that I have waxed on about the philosophical concepts present in this episode is that frankly that’s really are there is to talk about. As often happens with the show, the inconsequential two-parters tend not to really kick into gear until the second episode, which leaves the first halves always feeling a bit staid. This of course creates problems for episodic reviews such as these, as it sometimes becomes difficult to know what is important within the first half, or what plot point that we don’t like will end up look much better in retrospect after the second half.

But let me say this: The twists were never as shocking as the show pretended them to be. As much as I was intrigued/entertained by how the show was attempting to delve into these philosophical issues, it didn’t distract me from the fact that the episode was semi-predictable. Once I saw that there was a remote location that produced doppelganger, I knew that there would be a mix-up between at least one human and its Ganger counterpoint. And once The Doctor touched the liquid plastic, I knew it was only a matter of time before is copy came from out of the shadows. Sure, The Doctor facing off against his counterpoint next week could provide some nice moment, as did the Ganger face-offs tonight, but the fact that it took this long for that section of the story to take off was frustrating, especially since it shined an even bigger light on how much of this episode was just setup.

(Another distracting moment: Faux Jennifer’s breakdown with her beating her chest as she returned to full human form reminded me just a bit too much of certain scenes from the movie Pleasantville:



“Amy’s a lucky girl.”
-Faux Jennifer

How you react to Rory’s part in this episode may depend on how you have viewed the instances of the Amy/Rory relationship in the past few episodes. Though I used to think it was cute to have the solidity of their relationship confirmed, it’s getting a bit old to see their relationship “tested” week in, week out, especially here since a) we know they won’t break up and b) the whole of this episode was just about the testing of the relationship, and without the follow-up affirmation (which will mostly likely come next week), it just became even more depressing/stupid.

Yet I recognize – even without the assistance of this week’s Doctor Who Insider vignette – that Rory’s looking after Jennifer wasn’t about his relationship with Amy so much as it was the fact that he was finally able to take care of somebody. Yes, in a way that is in a way connected to his relationship with Amy – seeing as how she just doesn’t let him take care of her like that – but I’m not really sure if the show is going to go there. Instead, they seem content with focusing on Amy’s jealousy, and I think that distracts from what’s really going on here. For once, Rory gets to play the hero, and as important as it is for him, I also like seeing him finally becoming a stronger character, so it bugs me that the show isn’t focusing on this as much as it could. At some point, the show is going to have to break out of this rut with the two of them, and I hope they can do it in a way that doesn’t end up with somebody dying. Until then, it’s all just diminishing returns from here on out

In Two Weeks: The story continues in “The Almost People.”

Quotes, Etc.:

Five weeks in, and I still haven’t gotten used to the exposition-heavy credits sequence. I know that little monologue of Amy’s applies to this version of the show, but it doesn’t apply to the others, and I can’t help but feel that this new intro doesn’t capture everything that Doctor Who is really about.

Oh yeah, Eyepatch Lady was back. Not that it meant anything.

“I tell you, when something runs toward you, it’s never for a nice reason.”

“I thought I was going to die.” “Welcome to my world”

“Rory, Rory. Always with the Rory.”

The Doctor is a great parker.

“Oh great. You see that? That’s just so typically me.”

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