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Ten Thoughts About Doctor Who: The Rebel Flesh

Another week, another Doctor Who. I just love typing that still. Anyway, spoilers for this week's episode, obviously. Let's talk.

1. There Are Some Things Man Is Not Meant To Know.

An old gothic castle on an abandoned, isolated island. At night. With a lightning (solar) storm. And inside amidst dark and moody corridors, mysterious pipes, machinery and large metal slabs, a creature is creatured and now has life. This is Prometheus unbound by time and space. A new Frankenstein keeping many aspects of the old. The very very science fiction novel, radically reinterpreted through today's manufacturing culture, just as the original reflected its own dark satanic mills. So, yes, all that.

2. Just Call Claims Direct

It's one thing when I start making jokes like "have you had an accident at work?" when watching, and then the show starts making them, and better ones. Kind of puts me in my place. Stops my in my tracks. Almost as if they're reacting to what I'm saying. Freaks me out just a little bit.

3. Love A Bit Of Bully

Darts in the TARDIS? Surely there must be SOMETHING else to do? Infinitely bigger on the inside than on the outside and there's nothing except for a few feathers and a dartsboard to while away the hours? What about that bubk bed? Though with Rory's luck of late, I was half-expecting the dart to bounce off the board and hit Rory in his eye, killing him. Or something, Anyway, it gave the Doctor wnough time to keep Amy's Schrodinger prenancy spinning.

4. Subtext For Everybody

Oh everyone can take what they want from this. The left can see an underclass rebelling against a state that doesn't even see them as human, forcing them to acknowledge them as equals and rioting when that doesn't happen. The right can see the unborn foetus seizing control against the parents that created it but don't want the responsibility of dealing with and wish to dispose of it as quickly as possible. And the  everyone can have a good fight over it on the internet.

5. He Knows

The Doctor knows a lot about this flesh stuff, and seems to know where it's going as well. Is he deliberately playing his part, making a history he knows play out as it should, just as if this were a historical episode? Which, or course to the Doctor, every episode is? Did that plan include deliberately creating his own ganger?

This couldn't be where the Nestene Consciousness began could it?

6. Snow Globes Make For Great Solar Storm Predictors

Who knew? Beats the 3D Glasses.

7. Rory And The Copy

One of the sweeter moments, as the humans are full of suspicion and hate, and the Doctor is full of reason and calm, that Rory has compassion. After all, he spent two thousand years as a plastic copy of himself, he's probably in a unique position to empathasie with a ganger coming to terms with itself. The man who waited.

8. Acieeeeeeeeeeeeeeed!

So what's this then? Something rotten in the state of Denmark, the acid undermining the very structure of the castle, to see everything collapse upon itself, just as the state that uses gangers will too? Also a way for one side to gain advantage over the other, in acid-resistenat suits. An effective way to run chases through stone corridors where one side can break the rules. And a reason to get rid of the TARDIS as an escape hatch too.

I would prefere a touch of acid music to the Dustry Springfield though.

9. Man's Inhumanity To Man

It seems we are a rum lot given half a chance. Whether in Midnight or in The Hungry Earth, give us the chance ans we'll turn into warring monsters. Snarling and everything. I'm surprised the Doctor hangs around us quite so much.

10. The Two Doctors

Well this is one way for the Doctor to get a new pair of shoes, I guess. Size ten, wide at the feet.

To Be Continued…

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