New Who 6.5: The Rebel Flesh

[strange_complex]

Obviously it's always hard to judge a two-parter from the first part alone, but this has seemed pretty good so far. It has the same kind of cabin-feverish, who-can-we-trust vibe that I enjoyed so much in Midnight - with the Doctor once again playing the role of trying to understand and reconcile both sides. The issues of identity which it explored also had a pleasingly meta-referential edge to them - even the 'real' people were played by actors, after all. Of course, Matthew Graham's previous Doctor Who story, Fear Her, also explored the blurred relationship between real beings and representations of them, with real people becoming drawings and a drawing of Chloe's father threatening to become real - but so far, this story seems much stronger on both plot and characters.

The location settings were obviously excellent - I'm just enjoying seeing how they were all put together on Confidential right now. And I loved the Frankenstein-ish atmosphere, and suitably Gothic music to match. People listening to Dusty Springfield records in a monastery reminded me of The Time Meddler, where the title character's pretence of being a monk touches lightly on the same identity issues which are more central here. It is distressing to learn the solar flares which will make the Earth uninhabitable by the 29th century (according to The Ark in Space and The Beast Below) will already have started causing problems in the 22nd century. And what fun to get an evil!replicant!Doctor for next week, too - just like The Chase, Meglos, and doubtless others which I can't remember right now (or haven't yet seen).

But that's about all I seem to have to say about it for this week.

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Comments

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

I think they'll move to the centre of the focus pretty soon - we've got one more episode of the current story, and then it is the half-time season finale, which will apparently change the parameters of the Whoniverse, and leave us crying out to know what will happen in the second half of the season (to be broadcast in the autumn). I reckon that at the end of this story, both the Doctor and Amy will finally be ready to address the strange, unexplained things which they are seeing.

Meanwhile, parrot_knight has put forward some very interesting speculation about the yes/no pregnancy, the Eyepatch lady, and their particular relationship to this story, which you can find here (http://parrot-knight.livejournal.com/765307.html), and which sounds very convincing to me.