ANDREW'S
DOCTOR WHO REVIEWS 
This is a rather good story that loses its way here and
there, but is mostly effective and makes its point very well without feeling
the need to hammer it home. It also has a role of double-bluff in Steven
Moffat’s grand plan for the season as you immediately think that the Doctor we
see shot is his Ganger (which it turns out it is not) but then still has another
hidden surprise for Amy in a later episode.
The Doctor, Amy and Rory arrive on a windswept remote island
castle/monastery in the 22nd Century. On the island is a small group
of people whose job is to mine and refine a dangerous corrosive acid which is
pumped to the mainland. In order to make it safer for them duplicates are
created from their bodies and memories using a substance called “the Flesh”,
these are colloquially referred to as ‘Gangers’ (short for Doppelgangers).
The Gangers are used as virtual slave labour, but as the
storm batters the island there is a massive solar strike and everyone is
knocked unconscious. When they awaken, the Gangers have gained independent
sentience and are planning to rebel and free their kind from slavery. The
leader of the humans, Cleaves (Raquel Cassidy) plans to wipe out the Gangers,
much to the Doctor’s disgust. He tries to broker a peace whilst Rory becomes
involved with one of the Gangers, Jennifer (Sarah Smart) who struggles with her
identity. Cleaves kills a Ganger and the Ganger Jennifer decides she must kill
her human counterpart. As the Gangers attack the humans they escape to the
Chapel where Amy and the Doctor discover a Ganger of the Doctor.
The Ganger Jennifer kills the real one and convinces Rory
that she is the human version. She then engineers an acid leak which kills the
human version of Jimmy (Mark Bonnar). When Jimmy’s son does a video call,
Ganger Jimmy is forced to play the part of his human version. Finally the
Doctor manages to convince Gangers and Humans to live and work together.
Jennifer, however, cannot accept this and transforms herself
into a massive monster which the Ganger versions of the Doctor and Cleaves
defeat at the cost of their own lives. The remaining humans and Gangers wait
for rescue.
On board the TARDIS the Doctor tells Amy and Rory that he
travelled to the island deliberately to investigate the Flesh as he has known
that Amy is not Amy at all but a Ganger double. He uses his sonic screwdriver
to revert Amy to raw Flesh and the real Amy wakes up in an unknown place being
watched by a woman in an eye patch (Frances Barber) who tells her to push as
she is having her baby.
There are some real surprises in this story, not least of
which is Amy turning to white goop at the very end and waking up giving birth
somewhere totally different! The whole story revolves around the well drawn
characters and their motivations; characters like Cleaves, Jennifer and Jimmy
all have a depth that is rare but this allows us to see the similarities (and
differences) in their Ganger counterparts, so we can see that although similar
the Gangers are living beings in their own right, not just mindless clones. The
messages around xenophobia and accepting those unlike yourself are reinforced
by the plot but there is no need for a scene of someone talking about it at
length, which allows the viewer to make their own mind up.
Rory’s almost romantic attachment to Jennifer (and Amy’s
reaction) are interesting and help drive the story and their relationship in a
slightly different direction. Until now Rory has always been reactive to Amy,
he finally starts to emerge as an independent character here and Arthur Darvill
relishes the chance to give Rory more depth.
Matt Smith is great throughout, he is fully at home as the
Doctor and plays both the goofy awkward version of his Doctor and the sad-eyed
pensive version to perfection. I really enjoyed revisiting this tale which
manages to maintain a good balance between individual story and ongoing
season-long narrative very well.
NEXT UP: A GOOD MAN GOES TO WAR
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2022
