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

[chrisvenus]

With the solar flare I could understand how it would massively disrupt their power supply and I guess I can justify that it would be able to affect the pumping stuff and maybe overpressurize the pipes as safety valves failed to function. It was just the bits that made it look like mini meteorites impacts that seemed a bit odd. Though once I can justify how it created a hole in the first place I think I'm happy with your explanation that the pipe was much stronger than the rest of the ground. :)