11.19: The Rebel Flesh

In which the Doctor meets himself. But not in the usual way.

Broadcast: May 2011

Watched: December 2021

“I’ve to get to that cockerel before all hell breaks loose! I never thought I’d have to say that again. Amy, breathe.”

Can never decide about this one. It’s a bit messy, trying to play both the “new life form/slaves rise up” story and the “what if there were two of you” one, and never seeming quite sure which it’s going for. Also, it puts a lot of the action on Jennifer, and Sarah Smart is quite the worst actor to show up in this show in ages. (Most of the others - Cassidy, Bonnar, Lancaster - are great; the other guy who isn’t only gets a few lines.)

On the other side of the ledger, though, it’s incredibly atmospheric: there’s some great incidental music, which highlights the unsettling nature of the flesh technology and a new ganger being “born” before we even get to the bit where it all goes wrong. Setting it in an industrial facility in a medieval monastery on an island is a really great way of both giving it character and ramping up the Frankenstein vibe; ditto the solar storms.

And it’s quite nicely paced: the unnerving scenes in rooms that someone has already been in; the way there’s a single scene given over to both peace talks and their immediate breakdown. I also like the New Adventures-style return of the Doctor with his own agenda he hasn’t told anyone about, who’s researched the setting before he arrives (the way he keeps telling Amy to breathe is *really* creepy).

One striking thing about this story: it makes Rory the primary companion. He has agency for once, he isn’t just “the companion’s boyfriend” (though it’s not massively explained why he’s so drawn to Jennifer and to be honest Amy would have a perfect right to be mad at him). 

Anyway, aims high, but I think this is in the “once upon a time we would have killed for this, but RTD/Moff Who is so good that it gets lost because it doesn’t entirely work” box. That often happens with episodes in which the Doctor has to climb something tall to fix a thing, for some reason.

Other things:

• It’s kind of cool to have a story set in the future that doesn’t do anything space-y. This is the 22nd century, but there’s no evidence humanity is anything other than completely earthbound.

• The opening, with no one seeming to care that Buzzer is apparently dead, is hilarious. Two years after this Marshall Lancaster quit acting to become a plasterer.

• The scene with Amy and Rory playing Darts while listening to Muse and the Doctor proposing fish and chips, is an odd sort of texture to life in the TARDIS that we never normally get.

• Extremely boring “next time” trailer.

• WTF is acid mining anyway?