I am Me.
This story had everyone in a tizzy with who Ashildr was prior to it and The Girl Who Died's airing. Once her secret was revealed, the air was let out of the balloon and these two stories got left in the dust of more interesting stories. As with the previous story, there are nuggets of good things in this story but it suffers from focus issues, though of a different variety than the prior story.
Plot Summary
The Doctor arrives in 1651 looking for a piece of lost alien technology. He stumbles across a highway robbery being performed by a criminal called the Knightmare. His interruption allows the coach to speed away before either of them can get the lady's amulet which appears to be the alien technology the Doctor is looking for. After they have gone, the Knightmare reveals himself to actually be Ashildr.
Ashildr takes the Doctor back to her manor house though she does not go by Ashildr any more. She now only refers to herself as "me" and operates as a highwayman for the adventure. She relates to the Doctor her various lives that she has lived over the past 800 years, much of which she has forgotten but has written down in a vast library. Knowing where the noble couple's home is, Ashildr tells the Doctor they will leave in an hour and steal the amulet from there.
The Doctor reads through her journals, noting two particular periods where a lover died of old age and her children perished in the Black Death. Those experiences hardened her to live her life alone. As he reads, Ashildr heads outside where she meets with an alien hidden in the shadows, informing him that she and this visitor will be heading out to find the lost artifact and that he has no idea of their true purpose.
The Doctor and Ashildr travel on foot to a nearby manor where they break in through the kitchens. They light a candle and search the house. Eventually they discover the amulet with an iridescent purple gem at the center. They pocket the amulet and sneak downstairs. But they accidentally wake the lord of the manor, having fallen asleep on the couch, and are forced to escape by climbing up a chimney.
The head back to Ashildr's manor where they are accosted by another bandit named Sam Swift with a couple of helpers. Ashildr disarms him but he tries to get the upper hand while the two companions restrain the Doctor. Ashildr eventually pins him and has the gun. Sam pleads for mercy but Ashildr is not inclined to give him quarter until the Doctor vows to become her enemy if she kills him. She lets him up and the three men run away.
In the morning, Ashildr comes down, dressed as an upper class lady and attended by an old, half-blind butler named Clayton. She expects the Doctor to leave again but he promises to stay and keep an eye on her. She begs him to take her away as she has lost so much and feels so trapped on Earth but the Doctor refuses, not trusting her.
At that moment the alien who had been waiting outside bangs on the door. The Doctor opens the door to let him in. The alien is called Leandro and claims to be the last of his kind. The amulet is his and will open a doorway to the afterlife and his people. In exchange for her help, Leandro has offered to take Ashildr with him through space. But the gem requires a death to activate it. Leandro is inclined to use the Doctor but Ashildr refuses to see the Doctor killed as payment for his saving of hers, no matter how much she might curse him for it.
Ashildr intends to kill Clayton but they are interrupted by two pike men who are here to warn the lady that the Knightmare has been seen in the woods and that Sam Swift has been captured and is going to be hanged at noon. Ashildr changes her mind and decides to use Sam's death instead. She had already tied up the Doctor when she announced that she would kill Clayton. She then turns the Doctor over to the pike men, telling them that he is the Knightmare's assistant. Ashildr and Leandro then drive off in her carriage.
The pike men take the Doctor haul him to the door, noting that they intend to collect a reward for him. The Doctor counters, pointing out that he knows where the Lady Me keeps a chest of gold. They release him, he shows them the chest and then rides to town to stop her.
In town, Sam forestalls his hanging by entertaining the crowd with humor. Ashildr and Leandro get impatient and call for his hanging. The Doctor arrives and he and Sam continue with the jokes, getting the crowd back into the entertainment. As they tell jokes, the Doctor offers the hangman his psychic paper, pointing out that Sam has a pardon from Cromwell. The hangman gives in but the crowd is unruly. Noting that the Doctor has a wanted poster for abetting the Knightmare, the crowd calls for his hanging.
Ashildr, not wanting the Doctor hanged, pulls out the amulet and stabs Sam in the chest with it. The gem extracts his life force and shoots a beam of purple light into the sky, opening a porthole to a waiting fleet of spaceships. The ships begin firing on the crowd. Ashildr realizes that she was tricked and that Leandro was only a scout sent to create a doorway for his species to invade. She pleads with the Doctor to help her save the people.
The Doctor tells her that the only way is to close the porthole by bringing Sam back to life. Ashildr then grabs the second Mire health chip and places it on Sam's head. The chip brings him back to life and ejects the amulet from his body. The porthole closes before any of the ships can pass through and Leandro is incinerated by his own kind for his failure.
The trio celebrates in a pub afterward and Ashildr asks if Sam is also now immortal. The Doctor doesn't know given how much power might have been drained to counter the amulet. Ashildr, now realizing that she does still care for the lives of others decides that she will change and now devote herself to watching over those impacted by the Doctor and then left behind like herself. This meets with the Doctor's approval and they promise to see each other in the future.
The Doctor arrives back in modern London where Clara greets him. She offers him a selfie taken by one of her students as a thank you for helping her with a history report. Looking over the picture, he notices Ashildr standing in the background and staring directly at the camera. The Doctor then offers Clara the chance to pick the location of their next adventure.
Analysis
If this story were 45 minutes of the Doctor and Ashildr running around committing crimes and playing a bickering duo, I think this story would have been much higher rated. The interplay between Ashildr and the Doctor, especially with no Clara to act as a third wheel, is quite amusing, even if Ashildr's whining about being left behind by the Doctor gets a bit grating after a while. Where the story falls apart is when they get to the "invasion".
The Doctor is in good form in this story and is quite entertaining. The Twelfth Doctor doesn't give in to comedy that much even in Series 9 but here there is a lot of bit play that is reasonably funny, especially in his getting offended at being referred to as the assistant and in the jokes in regard to his age. But he also has that moral streak which puts an underlying note of seriousness in things and also punctuates the comedy with the dark edge. He has pratfalls but not so blatant and over-the-top as were seen in the previous story. He's just fun to be around.
Ashildr is a mixed bag. She is better when she has the darker edge and false bravado to her. Her moments of softness, of opening up and recalling the old Ashildr seem weaker. I'm not sure how the set up would have really worked but I feel that the story might have been better if we didn't have any of the set up about Ashildr from the prior story and instead came in cold with a jaded woman who had known the Doctor previously but that story was left unknown. There is just something about knowing the girl from whom this woman came from that undercuts her edge or takes away from the tragedy.
Still, she is witty and clearly of a good mind. What doesn't make a lot of sense is why the Doctor wouldn't take her away, especially after she saved Sam. I can understand the Doctor not taking her while she acts like a petulant child, but once she shows that the she does care about life and people, why not take her on a trip here and there? It just feels like a plot convenience not to have the Doctor promise to take her to a new place if she shows growth or reform.
And on the subject of plot conveniences... the entire plotline with Leandro doesn't work on all kinds of levels. It feels slapped on with Leandro not being properly introduced until halfway through the story. With all the wit and intelligence Ashildr shows through the rest of the story, she has to be portrayed as very naïve to not see through Leandro's plot and that does not mesh with the hard, cynical character we have come to know. Then, after all that, Leandro is vaporized by his own people when the invasion porthole is closed. Never mind how that was done, that is the laziest means of getting rid of a villain and a loose plot thread that I've seen in quite a while. There was just very little about the second half that I found enjoyable.
Actually, there's not much else to say after that. None of the secondary characters add much, even Sam as he is also introduced late. The direction is adequate but not overly memorable and the scene of the fighters firing on the crowd gathered had a rather cheap look to it. Even the selfie scene at the end had a rather forced feel to it, though it did give Clara a chance to be genial. Honestly, if it wasn't for the fun repartee between Ashildr and the Doctor, this story would clearly be in "1" territory. But that interaction was good enough that I'll give it some additional consideration.
Overall personal score: 2 out of 5
Tuesday, March 20, 2018
The Girl Who Died
I am the Doctor and I save people. If anyone has a problem with that, to hell with them!
I debated long and hard as to whether The Girl Who Died and The Woman Who Lived should be done separately or together. Series 9 was made up of several two-parters and this set up in a similar fashion. However unlike the others, these two had no real plot tie-ins other than that they featured the character of Ashildr and showed the Doctor doing a follow up to her story. I thought that a loose enough thread that it would be better to evaluate each story on it's own merits rather than trying to weave it together as a single narrative, despite The Girl Who Died trying to shoehorn a "To Be Continued" at the end of the story.
Plot Summary
After taking a short side trip, the Doctor rescues Clara floating in space with a brain sucking spider roaming in her suit. After stomping on the spider, he lands the TARDIS on Earth to wipe his shoe. The two of them are then apprehended by a group of Vikings. The Doctor tries to impress them with his sonic sunglasses but the lead warrior snaps them in half. They are then taken back to the Viking village.
In the village, the Doctor tries to pass himself off as Odin but is interrupted by an image of Odin in the sky. Several armored figures appear and transport the warriors away. Clara notices that one of the Viking girls was given half of the Doctor's sonic sunglasses and she rushes forward, telling the girl how to activate them. This registers with the armored warriors who transport the girl and Clara as well before transporting back themselves.
The group finds themselves on a ship in space, trapped in a holding room. One of the walls pushes the group to a second room where the warriors are broken down into their chemical essence, which is consumed by the aliens. However Clara and the girl, called Ashildr, are spared as the leader of the aliens is curious about the technology of the sunglasses. Clara starts talking and bluffs the warriors into thinking that they are opposed by a race of much stronger aliens. Ashildr then jumps in and challenges the warriors to combat, pulling the aliens out of their second thoughts. They accept her challenge and promise to return the next day to fight.
Clara and Ashildr are returned to the village where Clara relates what happened to the Doctor. The Doctor in turn tells Clara that the aliens are known as the Mire, a strong warrior race who will destroy the village without a second thought. The Doctor urges the villagers to flee, letting the Mire declare victory and leave the rest in peace. But the villagers refuse to abandon their homes and vow to fight, despite none of them having any combat experience.
Clara asks the Doctor why he won't fight and the Doctor responds that he is worried about upsetting time, for if he defeats the Mire, it will increase the standing of Earth in the minds of other Mire raiding parties and bring further invasions. But the Doctor changes his mind after listening to the cries of a baby, who can sense the danger coming.
The Doctor takes command of the villagers and attempts to train them in basic swordsmanship. The results are poor and the Doctor feels discouraged. Clara urges the Doctor to stop trying to be a soldier and instead think of something else.
The Doctor follows Ashildr into a barn and watches her put on a shadow puppet show to distract herself from her fears. The Doctor is amused and joins in but is distracted by the baby crying again. He sees her father taking her to a building near the water and Ashildr tells the Doctor that watching the fish in barrels amuses her. The Doctor is puzzled at first but then puts together her "fire in the water" comment and comes up with the plan.
Clara sees his excitement and follows him into the building. The Doctor shows her barrels filled with electric eels, giving off the surges of current: the "fire in the water." He then pulls the villagers together and creates a plan with various props to defeat the Mire.
In the morning, the Mire transport to the village and find it strangely deserted. They enter the great hall and find the Doctor and villagers dancing. They are confused by this, also finding no weapons. The Doctor asks if they will kill unarmed people and Odin responds that it wouldn't be the first time. The banter distracts the Mire while a villager from above lowers a wire on to the Mire soldiers. The Doctor gives a signal and the villager excites the eels, sending electric current down the wire and stunning the soldiers.
The Mire recover and advance on the scattering villagers. As a group walks to another part of a hall, the eels are excited again and the electricity is used to make a magnet which rips the helmets of a couple of the Mire soldiers. The Doctor grabs a helmet and puts it on Ashildr. The villagers then open the doors of the hall and the Mire see a dragon-like serpent advancing on them. Immune to their weapons, the serpent advances and the Mire retreat and transport back to their ship, leaving Odin behind.
The Doctor then kills the signal from the helmet and the "serpent" is revealed as a puppet made from the prow of a longboat. The Doctor also reveals that Clara had recorded the whole attack on her phone but without the images transmitted through the helmet to the Mire, it appears the Mire are retreating before a wooden prop. The Doctor tells Odin that they will leave and never come back or he will upload the video to the universal hub and every species wronged by the Mire will attack them as being revealed as a race of cowards. Odin vows revenge but the Doctor grabs his transponder and sends him back to his ship. The ship then flies back into space.
The villagers celebrate but when they take the helmet off Ashildr, they find her heart has given out from the stress of using the helmet. The villagers mourn her while the Doctor mopes in the fish house. Clara comes to comfort him. While she does so, the Doctor suddenly realizes that he chose the face of Caecilius to remind him that he saves people. He runs out and pulls a chip out of the Mire helmet. He modifies it to adapt to human physiology and places it on her head. The chip is absorbed and repairs the damage to her heart, bringing her back to life.
The villagers thank him and the Doctor gives Ashildr's father a second chip to give to her with the instruction that it is for her to give to someone special. Walking back to the TARDIS, Clara asks about the second chip and the Doctor tells her that the Mire chip may continually repair Ashildr, rendering her unable to die of natural causes. Immortality is a curse of watching others die while you live and the Doctor gave her the chip to give her companionship should she find someone she can't live without.
Ashildr is then seen watching the sky as time passes around her. Her expression of hopeful innocence turns first to tired sorrow and then to cold cynicism.
Analysis
The Ashildr stories got a lot of attention when Series 9 debuted, mostly due to the prominence she got in the trailers and the crazy theories that came about due to her. Being removed from the hype and just watching this story for what it is, I have to say that it is a bit thin. It's got some entertainment and can be fun at points, but it feels like there should be more.
In addition to being a bit thin in plot, there's something slightly off about this story and I think it's the tone, both in the writing and in the acting. The story can't quite decide if it wants to be a full bore comedy or drama and I think that pulls the story and the actors in different directions.
The Doctor is one of the worst sufferers of tone. Much of dialogue is clearly meant to be funny, either in that "guy talking nonsense out of his butt" way or just his general treatment of the Vikings. But peppered in are these dark, dramatic moments where the Doctor speaks of the baby's fear and his lashing out at the consequences of time in deciding to save people. The lashing out especially is reminiscent of the Time Lord Victorious (The Waters of Mars) which took a suicide to bring the Doctor back to humility. Here he just rails, makes his decision and then leaves with no one to challenge him on his actions until his own conscious starts to gnaw at him.
I enjoy his performance for the most part but the swings are a bit hard to latch on to. I also have to admit that I'm not a fan of humiliation comedy where a character is going off, like the Doctor with the yo-yo, claiming to be Odin, when you know he just looks like a fool. I always found that rather painful to watch but that's a limitation of my own taste rather than anything wrong with the show in particular.
The character who actually came out the best here is Clara. There is an interesting conclusion to a previous adventure which has her both a full participant but also with the wherewithal to be scared. During the main adventure, she is bold and Doctor-like with the Mire but not to the point of arrogance which develops later. She uses the Doctor's reputation as a sword and it would have worked had Ashildr not intervened which shows both cunning and intelligence.
Yet when reunited with the Doctor, she takes a backseat to him, knowing that he will turn and come up with a plan. She prods him when she knows he's going down the wrong path and encourages him when he feels discouraged. Even after Ashildr's death, she doesn't drive him to fix it. She offers comfort instead, noting that the plan worked. Her compassion does prompt him to make the decision to save Ashildr but she doesn't hammer on him that that is what needs to be done. It is a restrained performance and one of her better outings.
The Vikings themselves, and I would even include Ashildr in this, are pretty non-descript. The warriors act like warriors and the villagers are used mostly for comic relief, being shown mostly as near incompetents in anything not involving their actual craft. Ashildr herself gets very little development as well. She is shown as an imaginative yet pessimistic girl who serves only to both thwart Clara's deception of the Mire and to be the driver of the mental dragon. The screen time and development she gets is actually rather minimal and it is a bit strange that the Doctor regrets her death any more than if one of the other villagers had been killed. Perhaps it's guilt since he put her in the situation that killed her.
The Mire are also a rather non-descript villain. They pop in, kill a few warriors, disappear while the Doctor and the villagers make their plans and then retreat after their battle in less than five minutes. The Mire are functionally just not on screen enough to offer any particular opinion. Any race of aliens or even human could have been put in and it would have had the same effect. The two things that you needed from the Mire, prompting their insertion is that they need to have a sense of self preservation (as opposed to Sontarans) and the use of a projected screen that could be hacked. Use of natural vision would have thwarted that plan as well. But the Mire feel like they were created for their flaws rather than developed independently.
One of the complaints I remember people making about the resolution was how much it reminded them of Three Amigos in that the villagers are working at a deception rather than any meaningful fighting skill. I didn't think it was quite that bad but I could see how some would find it disappointing. The Doctor did point out that their victory needed to be deceptive because an actual military victory would only encourage the Mire to send more ships as humans would be seen as a worth foe. So I didn't have any problem with the resolution there, except for the underdevelopment of the Mire as an actual threat.
The direction and setting were nice though the voice work on Odin was a bit strange. At the very least the story looked like it was set in a real village with real considerations for the limitations of the time. It was pleasant on the eyes and most of the problems I had were with the writing.
If it wasn't for the use of Ashildr later in Series 9, I think this would have been a very forgettable story, along the lines of The Eaters of Light in Series 10. Its most memorable aspect outside of her is that it can't make up its mind whether it wants to be a farcical comedy or a cautionary tragedy. That gives inconsistent writing and poor character development. There is nothing overtly bad about it and the comedic points are legitimately amusing. It also has decent acting from the Doctor and Clara which gives it a little extra boost. But it's a story that slides off the brain very easily. Easy in, easy out.
Overall personal score: 2.5 out of 5
I debated long and hard as to whether The Girl Who Died and The Woman Who Lived should be done separately or together. Series 9 was made up of several two-parters and this set up in a similar fashion. However unlike the others, these two had no real plot tie-ins other than that they featured the character of Ashildr and showed the Doctor doing a follow up to her story. I thought that a loose enough thread that it would be better to evaluate each story on it's own merits rather than trying to weave it together as a single narrative, despite The Girl Who Died trying to shoehorn a "To Be Continued" at the end of the story.
Plot Summary
After taking a short side trip, the Doctor rescues Clara floating in space with a brain sucking spider roaming in her suit. After stomping on the spider, he lands the TARDIS on Earth to wipe his shoe. The two of them are then apprehended by a group of Vikings. The Doctor tries to impress them with his sonic sunglasses but the lead warrior snaps them in half. They are then taken back to the Viking village.
In the village, the Doctor tries to pass himself off as Odin but is interrupted by an image of Odin in the sky. Several armored figures appear and transport the warriors away. Clara notices that one of the Viking girls was given half of the Doctor's sonic sunglasses and she rushes forward, telling the girl how to activate them. This registers with the armored warriors who transport the girl and Clara as well before transporting back themselves.
The group finds themselves on a ship in space, trapped in a holding room. One of the walls pushes the group to a second room where the warriors are broken down into their chemical essence, which is consumed by the aliens. However Clara and the girl, called Ashildr, are spared as the leader of the aliens is curious about the technology of the sunglasses. Clara starts talking and bluffs the warriors into thinking that they are opposed by a race of much stronger aliens. Ashildr then jumps in and challenges the warriors to combat, pulling the aliens out of their second thoughts. They accept her challenge and promise to return the next day to fight.
Clara and Ashildr are returned to the village where Clara relates what happened to the Doctor. The Doctor in turn tells Clara that the aliens are known as the Mire, a strong warrior race who will destroy the village without a second thought. The Doctor urges the villagers to flee, letting the Mire declare victory and leave the rest in peace. But the villagers refuse to abandon their homes and vow to fight, despite none of them having any combat experience.
Clara asks the Doctor why he won't fight and the Doctor responds that he is worried about upsetting time, for if he defeats the Mire, it will increase the standing of Earth in the minds of other Mire raiding parties and bring further invasions. But the Doctor changes his mind after listening to the cries of a baby, who can sense the danger coming.
The Doctor takes command of the villagers and attempts to train them in basic swordsmanship. The results are poor and the Doctor feels discouraged. Clara urges the Doctor to stop trying to be a soldier and instead think of something else.
The Doctor follows Ashildr into a barn and watches her put on a shadow puppet show to distract herself from her fears. The Doctor is amused and joins in but is distracted by the baby crying again. He sees her father taking her to a building near the water and Ashildr tells the Doctor that watching the fish in barrels amuses her. The Doctor is puzzled at first but then puts together her "fire in the water" comment and comes up with the plan.
Clara sees his excitement and follows him into the building. The Doctor shows her barrels filled with electric eels, giving off the surges of current: the "fire in the water." He then pulls the villagers together and creates a plan with various props to defeat the Mire.
In the morning, the Mire transport to the village and find it strangely deserted. They enter the great hall and find the Doctor and villagers dancing. They are confused by this, also finding no weapons. The Doctor asks if they will kill unarmed people and Odin responds that it wouldn't be the first time. The banter distracts the Mire while a villager from above lowers a wire on to the Mire soldiers. The Doctor gives a signal and the villager excites the eels, sending electric current down the wire and stunning the soldiers.
The Mire recover and advance on the scattering villagers. As a group walks to another part of a hall, the eels are excited again and the electricity is used to make a magnet which rips the helmets of a couple of the Mire soldiers. The Doctor grabs a helmet and puts it on Ashildr. The villagers then open the doors of the hall and the Mire see a dragon-like serpent advancing on them. Immune to their weapons, the serpent advances and the Mire retreat and transport back to their ship, leaving Odin behind.
The Doctor then kills the signal from the helmet and the "serpent" is revealed as a puppet made from the prow of a longboat. The Doctor also reveals that Clara had recorded the whole attack on her phone but without the images transmitted through the helmet to the Mire, it appears the Mire are retreating before a wooden prop. The Doctor tells Odin that they will leave and never come back or he will upload the video to the universal hub and every species wronged by the Mire will attack them as being revealed as a race of cowards. Odin vows revenge but the Doctor grabs his transponder and sends him back to his ship. The ship then flies back into space.
The villagers celebrate but when they take the helmet off Ashildr, they find her heart has given out from the stress of using the helmet. The villagers mourn her while the Doctor mopes in the fish house. Clara comes to comfort him. While she does so, the Doctor suddenly realizes that he chose the face of Caecilius to remind him that he saves people. He runs out and pulls a chip out of the Mire helmet. He modifies it to adapt to human physiology and places it on her head. The chip is absorbed and repairs the damage to her heart, bringing her back to life.
The villagers thank him and the Doctor gives Ashildr's father a second chip to give to her with the instruction that it is for her to give to someone special. Walking back to the TARDIS, Clara asks about the second chip and the Doctor tells her that the Mire chip may continually repair Ashildr, rendering her unable to die of natural causes. Immortality is a curse of watching others die while you live and the Doctor gave her the chip to give her companionship should she find someone she can't live without.
Ashildr is then seen watching the sky as time passes around her. Her expression of hopeful innocence turns first to tired sorrow and then to cold cynicism.
Analysis
The Ashildr stories got a lot of attention when Series 9 debuted, mostly due to the prominence she got in the trailers and the crazy theories that came about due to her. Being removed from the hype and just watching this story for what it is, I have to say that it is a bit thin. It's got some entertainment and can be fun at points, but it feels like there should be more.
In addition to being a bit thin in plot, there's something slightly off about this story and I think it's the tone, both in the writing and in the acting. The story can't quite decide if it wants to be a full bore comedy or drama and I think that pulls the story and the actors in different directions.
The Doctor is one of the worst sufferers of tone. Much of dialogue is clearly meant to be funny, either in that "guy talking nonsense out of his butt" way or just his general treatment of the Vikings. But peppered in are these dark, dramatic moments where the Doctor speaks of the baby's fear and his lashing out at the consequences of time in deciding to save people. The lashing out especially is reminiscent of the Time Lord Victorious (The Waters of Mars) which took a suicide to bring the Doctor back to humility. Here he just rails, makes his decision and then leaves with no one to challenge him on his actions until his own conscious starts to gnaw at him.
I enjoy his performance for the most part but the swings are a bit hard to latch on to. I also have to admit that I'm not a fan of humiliation comedy where a character is going off, like the Doctor with the yo-yo, claiming to be Odin, when you know he just looks like a fool. I always found that rather painful to watch but that's a limitation of my own taste rather than anything wrong with the show in particular.
The character who actually came out the best here is Clara. There is an interesting conclusion to a previous adventure which has her both a full participant but also with the wherewithal to be scared. During the main adventure, she is bold and Doctor-like with the Mire but not to the point of arrogance which develops later. She uses the Doctor's reputation as a sword and it would have worked had Ashildr not intervened which shows both cunning and intelligence.
Yet when reunited with the Doctor, she takes a backseat to him, knowing that he will turn and come up with a plan. She prods him when she knows he's going down the wrong path and encourages him when he feels discouraged. Even after Ashildr's death, she doesn't drive him to fix it. She offers comfort instead, noting that the plan worked. Her compassion does prompt him to make the decision to save Ashildr but she doesn't hammer on him that that is what needs to be done. It is a restrained performance and one of her better outings.
The Vikings themselves, and I would even include Ashildr in this, are pretty non-descript. The warriors act like warriors and the villagers are used mostly for comic relief, being shown mostly as near incompetents in anything not involving their actual craft. Ashildr herself gets very little development as well. She is shown as an imaginative yet pessimistic girl who serves only to both thwart Clara's deception of the Mire and to be the driver of the mental dragon. The screen time and development she gets is actually rather minimal and it is a bit strange that the Doctor regrets her death any more than if one of the other villagers had been killed. Perhaps it's guilt since he put her in the situation that killed her.
The Mire are also a rather non-descript villain. They pop in, kill a few warriors, disappear while the Doctor and the villagers make their plans and then retreat after their battle in less than five minutes. The Mire are functionally just not on screen enough to offer any particular opinion. Any race of aliens or even human could have been put in and it would have had the same effect. The two things that you needed from the Mire, prompting their insertion is that they need to have a sense of self preservation (as opposed to Sontarans) and the use of a projected screen that could be hacked. Use of natural vision would have thwarted that plan as well. But the Mire feel like they were created for their flaws rather than developed independently.
One of the complaints I remember people making about the resolution was how much it reminded them of Three Amigos in that the villagers are working at a deception rather than any meaningful fighting skill. I didn't think it was quite that bad but I could see how some would find it disappointing. The Doctor did point out that their victory needed to be deceptive because an actual military victory would only encourage the Mire to send more ships as humans would be seen as a worth foe. So I didn't have any problem with the resolution there, except for the underdevelopment of the Mire as an actual threat.
The direction and setting were nice though the voice work on Odin was a bit strange. At the very least the story looked like it was set in a real village with real considerations for the limitations of the time. It was pleasant on the eyes and most of the problems I had were with the writing.
If it wasn't for the use of Ashildr later in Series 9, I think this would have been a very forgettable story, along the lines of The Eaters of Light in Series 10. Its most memorable aspect outside of her is that it can't make up its mind whether it wants to be a farcical comedy or a cautionary tragedy. That gives inconsistent writing and poor character development. There is nothing overtly bad about it and the comedic points are legitimately amusing. It also has decent acting from the Doctor and Clara which gives it a little extra boost. But it's a story that slides off the brain very easily. Easy in, easy out.
Overall personal score: 2.5 out of 5
Wednesday, March 14, 2018
The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People
I was going to drop you off for fish and chips but then things happened. There was stuff and shenanigans. Wonderful word: shenanigans.
This story is often derisively referred to as "The Pudding People" two-parter. That is both a bit harsh but also a somewhat apt description when you look at the effects in how they brought the gangers to life. My initial recollections for this one are of a story that had some decent promise but that fizzled out into a generic monster story with some unanswered questions. I also recall it feeling a bit drawn out and not quite worth a two-part entry. But my memory could be off and influenced by negative comments that surround it. Let's see what a second viewing does.
Plot Summary
The Doctor, Amy and Rory are caught in large solar flare which drives them down to Earth in the near future. They land outside a medieval castle that has been converted to a factory to process large volumes of acid. They enter and find four workers linked to machines. Those same workers enter the room when an alarm sounds, along with a fifth.
The Doctor poses as a representative from the Meteorological society, come to inspect things after the flare and warn them about a second. The leader, Cleaves, takes the Doctor to a vat where a substance known as "flesh" is kept. The liquid is poured into a vat and when a worker is hooked into a machine, it forms into a body that is controlled while keeping the worker safe from the acid. Cleaves has the fifth worker, Jennifer, demonstrate by hooking herself up. The Doctor is wary, sensing the emotions and intelligence the flesh has absorbed from them every time they hook themselves up.
A quick surge alerts the Doctor to the approaching solar storm. He warns Cleaves to abandon the factory but she declines to do so, not wanting to extend the tour. The Doctor runs out to disconnect the solar array from the power grid but he is electrocuted while doing so and the flare knocks out everyone else in the facility as well as knocking out the power.
The Doctor wakes up an hour later and re-gathers everyone. Everyone has disconnected from their machine but their flesh bodies are not where they remember being. They examine the crew quarters and find things disheveled there. The Doctor informs them that the power from the flare has given the flesh the spark it needed to become independent, harnessing the emotions, memories and thoughts that were poured into it from the workers.
Jennifer is the most affected by the event and runs to the bathroom, thinking she will be sick. Rory goes after her to help in case she is sick. In the bathroom, a piece of flesh falls off Jennifer revealing her to be a ganger. She lunges at Rory, demanding to be left alone and he runs away. Ganger Jennifer runs after him.
In the quarters, the Doctor microwaves some food and hands it to Cleaves. He then tells her the plate is hot and she drops it, but her reaction was too slow and she is also revealed to be a ganger. She too runs off to join the other gangers, who have assembled in the acid room. The group then splits up. The Doctor goes looking for both Rory and the TARDIS. Jimmy and Amy head out for supplies while Buzzer and Dicken go to get the acid suits.
The Doctor heads down to the flesh pool and triggers something within the pool. He then heads out to the TARDIS to find that it is sinking into a hole caused by a pool of acid. That pool has spread and is now melting his shoes so he retreats back into the building barefoot. Buzzer and Dicken find the acid suits gone and head back to the crew quarters. Amy splits off from Jimmy to look for Rory when he heads back with the supplies.
Rory and Jennifer reconnect and Rory feels compassion to her appeal for help. They head back to the quarters to get help from the Doctor. The Doctor then finds the gangers in the acid room and convinces them to come back to the quarters so they can negotiate a peace between the two sides. As a carrot, he offers to use equipment in the TARDIS, when it has been fished out, that will help stabilize their bodies into a fully human form as they have been oscillating between normal and white flesh.
The gangers come back to the quarters where they tentatively agree to work together. However the original Cleaves, who had been hiding, emerges and declares a state of war. Ganger Buzzer approaches her and she shocks him, stopping his heart. The gangers flee the room as the Doctor grabs the electrical equipment from her. The gangers retreat to the acid room where ganger Jennifer takes command and declares war. Original Cleaves also declares war and the group retreats to the flesh room, which is the most well defended part of the castle, the gangers having seized the weapons.
As the gangers approach the room Rory runs off, having heard the original Jennifer screaming, to help her. The rest are forced to barricade themselves in where they find themselves with a ganger version of the Doctor. The ganger Doctor has trouble adjusting to the download of information from the previous iterations of the Doctor but eventually stabilizes with a set of the Doctor's original shoes while the original Doctor wears a pair borrowed from the factory workers.
With the gangers breaking down the door, the group slips into an air duct and the Doctor seals the entrance behind them with his sonic screwdriver. They pass through the lower tunnels of the castle but are blocked by clouds of gas formed by the acid interacting with the stone. They head to the tower with the communications equipment where Cleaves and the Doctor are able to reactivate the power and get the radio working.
Ganger Cleaves is aware of what they are doing but opts not to engage, knowing it will be too well defended. Instead they monitor on their own equipment and try to break up the radio transmission. Cleaves does manage to get through to the mainland and requests both emergency evacuation and destruction of the facility.
Ganger Jennifer meanwhile makes her way down to the thermal controls but can't access the codes since she is not human. She makes her way back to a bathroom and calls out to Rory, who is nearby. Rory enters and finds two Jennifers, both claiming to be the real one. One is limping and pulls up her pants to show a burn. Rory immediately sides with her, assuming her to be the human one. Angered, the other Jennifer attacks the first one. They fight but the second Jennifer is knocked into a pool of acid that is leaking from the floor and her flesh form quickly dissolves.
In the communication tower the ganger Doctor has a fit, responding to emotions from the other flesh bodies. Amy, who came to check on him, is terrified when he confronts her. She retreats back into the room and refuses to have anything to do with him, already feeling biased against him.
Rory and Jennifer make their way to the thermal controls. Jennifer tells Rory that it will clear the air and has him deactivate the controls. She then takes him to a pile of discarded flesh bodies, viewed as defective and left to rot but still with sentience. Rory is appalled and offers to help show the world how the flesh is being treated.
In the tower the group becomes aware of the deactivation of the thermal controls, which destabilizes everything. The factory has now become a bomb. Worse, the rescue shuttle signals that the atmosphere is too unstable for them to pull the people from the communications tower. Cleaves signals for them to land in the courtyard but the system shorts out before she can finish her transmission. Monitoring, ganger Cleaves finishes the transmission, correctly guessing the code word Cleaves had set up.
While the rest of the group make their way to the courtyard, the ganger Doctor and Buzzer go looking for Rory. They find the body of human Jennifer when Buzzer knocks the Doctor out. He heads down towards the courtyard but is distracted by a noise. He finds ganger Jennifer soothing the pile of discarded flesh bodies. She then attacks and kills him.
The rest of the party is intercepted by Rory who leads them down to the acid room and then locks them in. He had intended to show proof of the discarded flesh but he is soon surrounded by the gangers and ganger Jennifer. He realizes he has been tricked as she drags him away. Cleaves then offers a taunt to her ganger, noting that she will die soon anyway as they are both suffering from a fatal blood clot in the head. Trapped in the room with the acid beginning to boil over, the group tries to buy themselves time by lowering the cap on the reservoir.
In the crew quarters, Rory reacts angrily to Jennifer's trickery. He lashes out at the Doctor as well who distracts him with a received telephone call. The call is one the Doctor had reserved earlier to Jimmy's son. The Doctor asks the boy if he wants to talk to his dad and he starts to call for him. Ganger Jimmy recalls all the emotions and memories and bolts out of the room to rescue the people from the acid room. Thwarted in her desire for a war, Jennifer also storms out, vowing revenge.
Ganger Jimmy opens the door while the humans are trying to seal the tank. The lid ruptures under pressure and human Jimmy has acid projected on him, burning through to his heart. As he dies, he gives his ganger his wedding ring and tells him to go be a father. The whole group returns to the crew quarters and ganger Jimmy talks to his son with the Doctor encouraging him.
With the site nearing critical, the group tries to get to the courtyard but is cut off by Jennifer who has morphed into a more bestial shape. The group retreats to an inner chamber but the door lacks a lock. A second door further down the hall does and human Dicken runs to close it. It is stuck and though he does manage to close it, Jennifer attacks him before he can lock it.
Ganger Cleaves and the Doctor hold the door shut while the ganger Doctor points to a point in the ceiling. The spot gives way and the TARDIS fall though. Ganger Jimmy and Dicken head inside along with human Cleaves. Rory urges Amy but Amy insists that the Doctor come too. It is then that he reveals that the Doctor and the ganger Doctor had switched shoes to learn more and test Amy. The real Doctor tosses the ganger Doctor the sonic and bids him good luck. Ganger Cleaves also insists on staying behind. The rest enter the TARDIS and disappear. The two gangers open the door and as Jennifer moves on them, the ganger Doctor activates the sonic, turning all three of them into puddles.
In the TARDIS, the Doctor stabilizes the gangers, allowing them to stay in their human forms permanently. He also gives Cleaves a vial of liquid that will clear the blood clot in her brain. They drop Jimmy off with his son and then take Cleaves and Dicken to their corporate headquarters where they will explain what happen and advocate for better treatment of gangers.
As they prepare to leave, Amy doubles over in pain. The Doctor takes her and Rory into the TARDIS where he tells Amy that she is going into labor. Amy is confused as she is not visibly pregnant. The Doctor then tells her that he and Rory will find her and to not worry. He points a new sonic screwdriver at her and her flesh body dissolves.
Amy wakes lying in a white tube with a large pregnant belly. A panel slides open above her to reveal the woman with the eye patch whom she had seen randomly ever since The Impossible Astronaut. The woman urges Amy to push and Amy starts to scream.
Analysis
A retread of the territory of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Android Invasion, this is a decidedly mixed story. For just about every positive thing you can say about it, there is a countering negative. That in and of itself is not bad but the fact that it is a two-part story and one that gave a huge reveal about Amy at the end makes it feel like we should have expected more that what it is.
My single biggest gripe of the piece is the convoluted story. The set up through the first half of The Rebel Flesh worked well with tension and a real sense of unease. There was even the good set up where two of the crew had already been replaced with their ganger versions. But after that it starts to fall apart. Cleaves and Jennifer had been replaced by gangers but where were the human versions. We are shown Cleaves hiding and then discovering the group while Jennifer comes limping out of nowhere to be attacked by her ganger. Where were they and why weren't they part of the group of humans that were clustered in the control area?
Things get even more convoluted with the almost schizophrenic difference between human Cleaves and ganger Cleaves to force the fight between the two sides. Ganger Cleaves is shown to think just like her human counterpart but she is also more rational, thoughtful and empathetic. Human Cleaves bursts in and threatens the gangers without any consideration of what is going on and overreacting while her ganger version sits back and lets it happen. The ganger version also lets Jennifer take control where the human Cleaves barely let the Doctor take charge. There is a difference in Jennifer as well but given the mutations ganger Jennifer was undergoing, you can head cannon those into the idea that Jennifer became the primary outlet for the flesh's anger and she was its personality rather than Jennifer's.
All through the remaining parts, characters are constantly doing things that serve the plot. Rory may have compassion for Jennifer but would her well-being overcome his affection for his wife and the desire to be safe? Rory's separation and his manipulation by Jennifer drives most of the action in the second part but it involves him being especially dumb. Why does the Doctor need to get Amy to trust the flesh Doctor when she herself is in a flesh body that it going to be destroyed by the Doctor? Exposing Amy as a "flesh racist" does nothing for the plot other than give her something to do. In fact, the flesh Doctor is mostly unnecessary except that it allows a version of the Doctor to be in both camps.
Consistently, it felt like their were too many characters or versions of characters and they were being pushed in ways to drive the plot, but with bits left hanging. Dicken has exactly one line per episode and mostly stands around doing nothing except to killed by Jennifer in the final attack. Jimmy gets the emotional arc of his son but is also otherwise just there for a body. Buzzer's ganger is killed to start the war while his human counterpart is ganger Jennifer's token victim before becoming a full monster. A larger cast makes sense with the running of a factory, but it makes for a very crowded story, especially when you insert four additional characters in.
It was also rather disappointing that after all the hullabaloo about racism and the definition of what it means to be human, the story ends with just another monster coming at the group. Jennifer goes warped and comes at them like a beast. Keeping everyone looking human and letting the threat be from within would have been a lot more interesting of a resolution. I think it would have actually amplified the tension rather than defusing the situation by giving everyone an ugly bad thing that we all can oppose.
That is a lot of negativity to start things off. So on to the positives. I thought the story was well acted. Those that had enough lines and development to get fleshed out characters (pardon the pun) were genuinely interesting, even if they diverged from what you are conditioned to expect. While the Doctor, Amy and Rory's behavior might have been a bit strange at times, they were all well performed and you genuinely believed in their emotions, especially the enraged outburst by the Doctor that set Amy off against him. I thought it a well controlled bit of acting.
The location and direction was nice as well. The use of the color pallet especially really helped set the mood of the situation. The only real drawback of the location, which looked very nice, was that some of the audio might have been affected. There were several points where I had trouble hearing what was being said and I think that was because the audio was oddly affected by the location. It's a small quibble but when you're having trouble keeping track of why someone is behaving as they are, it goes a long way in influencing the overall mood.
It's frustrating to see a story that has so much potential be wasted. It's not bad at its core but there are so many wanderings, dead ends and loose threads in the plot that it just gets frustrating to watch it rather than enmeshing you in the story as you would hope it would. It is pretty to look at and well acted so it's not a slog to get through. But when you get through a story with that amount of frustration at the plotline, you can't mark it particularly high.
Overall personal score: The Rebel Flesh - 2 out of 5; The Almost People - 2 out of 5
This story is often derisively referred to as "The Pudding People" two-parter. That is both a bit harsh but also a somewhat apt description when you look at the effects in how they brought the gangers to life. My initial recollections for this one are of a story that had some decent promise but that fizzled out into a generic monster story with some unanswered questions. I also recall it feeling a bit drawn out and not quite worth a two-part entry. But my memory could be off and influenced by negative comments that surround it. Let's see what a second viewing does.
Plot Summary
The Doctor, Amy and Rory are caught in large solar flare which drives them down to Earth in the near future. They land outside a medieval castle that has been converted to a factory to process large volumes of acid. They enter and find four workers linked to machines. Those same workers enter the room when an alarm sounds, along with a fifth.
The Doctor poses as a representative from the Meteorological society, come to inspect things after the flare and warn them about a second. The leader, Cleaves, takes the Doctor to a vat where a substance known as "flesh" is kept. The liquid is poured into a vat and when a worker is hooked into a machine, it forms into a body that is controlled while keeping the worker safe from the acid. Cleaves has the fifth worker, Jennifer, demonstrate by hooking herself up. The Doctor is wary, sensing the emotions and intelligence the flesh has absorbed from them every time they hook themselves up.
A quick surge alerts the Doctor to the approaching solar storm. He warns Cleaves to abandon the factory but she declines to do so, not wanting to extend the tour. The Doctor runs out to disconnect the solar array from the power grid but he is electrocuted while doing so and the flare knocks out everyone else in the facility as well as knocking out the power.
The Doctor wakes up an hour later and re-gathers everyone. Everyone has disconnected from their machine but their flesh bodies are not where they remember being. They examine the crew quarters and find things disheveled there. The Doctor informs them that the power from the flare has given the flesh the spark it needed to become independent, harnessing the emotions, memories and thoughts that were poured into it from the workers.
Jennifer is the most affected by the event and runs to the bathroom, thinking she will be sick. Rory goes after her to help in case she is sick. In the bathroom, a piece of flesh falls off Jennifer revealing her to be a ganger. She lunges at Rory, demanding to be left alone and he runs away. Ganger Jennifer runs after him.
In the quarters, the Doctor microwaves some food and hands it to Cleaves. He then tells her the plate is hot and she drops it, but her reaction was too slow and she is also revealed to be a ganger. She too runs off to join the other gangers, who have assembled in the acid room. The group then splits up. The Doctor goes looking for both Rory and the TARDIS. Jimmy and Amy head out for supplies while Buzzer and Dicken go to get the acid suits.
The Doctor heads down to the flesh pool and triggers something within the pool. He then heads out to the TARDIS to find that it is sinking into a hole caused by a pool of acid. That pool has spread and is now melting his shoes so he retreats back into the building barefoot. Buzzer and Dicken find the acid suits gone and head back to the crew quarters. Amy splits off from Jimmy to look for Rory when he heads back with the supplies.
Rory and Jennifer reconnect and Rory feels compassion to her appeal for help. They head back to the quarters to get help from the Doctor. The Doctor then finds the gangers in the acid room and convinces them to come back to the quarters so they can negotiate a peace between the two sides. As a carrot, he offers to use equipment in the TARDIS, when it has been fished out, that will help stabilize their bodies into a fully human form as they have been oscillating between normal and white flesh.
The gangers come back to the quarters where they tentatively agree to work together. However the original Cleaves, who had been hiding, emerges and declares a state of war. Ganger Buzzer approaches her and she shocks him, stopping his heart. The gangers flee the room as the Doctor grabs the electrical equipment from her. The gangers retreat to the acid room where ganger Jennifer takes command and declares war. Original Cleaves also declares war and the group retreats to the flesh room, which is the most well defended part of the castle, the gangers having seized the weapons.
As the gangers approach the room Rory runs off, having heard the original Jennifer screaming, to help her. The rest are forced to barricade themselves in where they find themselves with a ganger version of the Doctor. The ganger Doctor has trouble adjusting to the download of information from the previous iterations of the Doctor but eventually stabilizes with a set of the Doctor's original shoes while the original Doctor wears a pair borrowed from the factory workers.
With the gangers breaking down the door, the group slips into an air duct and the Doctor seals the entrance behind them with his sonic screwdriver. They pass through the lower tunnels of the castle but are blocked by clouds of gas formed by the acid interacting with the stone. They head to the tower with the communications equipment where Cleaves and the Doctor are able to reactivate the power and get the radio working.
Ganger Cleaves is aware of what they are doing but opts not to engage, knowing it will be too well defended. Instead they monitor on their own equipment and try to break up the radio transmission. Cleaves does manage to get through to the mainland and requests both emergency evacuation and destruction of the facility.
Ganger Jennifer meanwhile makes her way down to the thermal controls but can't access the codes since she is not human. She makes her way back to a bathroom and calls out to Rory, who is nearby. Rory enters and finds two Jennifers, both claiming to be the real one. One is limping and pulls up her pants to show a burn. Rory immediately sides with her, assuming her to be the human one. Angered, the other Jennifer attacks the first one. They fight but the second Jennifer is knocked into a pool of acid that is leaking from the floor and her flesh form quickly dissolves.
In the communication tower the ganger Doctor has a fit, responding to emotions from the other flesh bodies. Amy, who came to check on him, is terrified when he confronts her. She retreats back into the room and refuses to have anything to do with him, already feeling biased against him.
Rory and Jennifer make their way to the thermal controls. Jennifer tells Rory that it will clear the air and has him deactivate the controls. She then takes him to a pile of discarded flesh bodies, viewed as defective and left to rot but still with sentience. Rory is appalled and offers to help show the world how the flesh is being treated.
In the tower the group becomes aware of the deactivation of the thermal controls, which destabilizes everything. The factory has now become a bomb. Worse, the rescue shuttle signals that the atmosphere is too unstable for them to pull the people from the communications tower. Cleaves signals for them to land in the courtyard but the system shorts out before she can finish her transmission. Monitoring, ganger Cleaves finishes the transmission, correctly guessing the code word Cleaves had set up.
While the rest of the group make their way to the courtyard, the ganger Doctor and Buzzer go looking for Rory. They find the body of human Jennifer when Buzzer knocks the Doctor out. He heads down towards the courtyard but is distracted by a noise. He finds ganger Jennifer soothing the pile of discarded flesh bodies. She then attacks and kills him.
The rest of the party is intercepted by Rory who leads them down to the acid room and then locks them in. He had intended to show proof of the discarded flesh but he is soon surrounded by the gangers and ganger Jennifer. He realizes he has been tricked as she drags him away. Cleaves then offers a taunt to her ganger, noting that she will die soon anyway as they are both suffering from a fatal blood clot in the head. Trapped in the room with the acid beginning to boil over, the group tries to buy themselves time by lowering the cap on the reservoir.
In the crew quarters, Rory reacts angrily to Jennifer's trickery. He lashes out at the Doctor as well who distracts him with a received telephone call. The call is one the Doctor had reserved earlier to Jimmy's son. The Doctor asks the boy if he wants to talk to his dad and he starts to call for him. Ganger Jimmy recalls all the emotions and memories and bolts out of the room to rescue the people from the acid room. Thwarted in her desire for a war, Jennifer also storms out, vowing revenge.
Ganger Jimmy opens the door while the humans are trying to seal the tank. The lid ruptures under pressure and human Jimmy has acid projected on him, burning through to his heart. As he dies, he gives his ganger his wedding ring and tells him to go be a father. The whole group returns to the crew quarters and ganger Jimmy talks to his son with the Doctor encouraging him.
With the site nearing critical, the group tries to get to the courtyard but is cut off by Jennifer who has morphed into a more bestial shape. The group retreats to an inner chamber but the door lacks a lock. A second door further down the hall does and human Dicken runs to close it. It is stuck and though he does manage to close it, Jennifer attacks him before he can lock it.
Ganger Cleaves and the Doctor hold the door shut while the ganger Doctor points to a point in the ceiling. The spot gives way and the TARDIS fall though. Ganger Jimmy and Dicken head inside along with human Cleaves. Rory urges Amy but Amy insists that the Doctor come too. It is then that he reveals that the Doctor and the ganger Doctor had switched shoes to learn more and test Amy. The real Doctor tosses the ganger Doctor the sonic and bids him good luck. Ganger Cleaves also insists on staying behind. The rest enter the TARDIS and disappear. The two gangers open the door and as Jennifer moves on them, the ganger Doctor activates the sonic, turning all three of them into puddles.
In the TARDIS, the Doctor stabilizes the gangers, allowing them to stay in their human forms permanently. He also gives Cleaves a vial of liquid that will clear the blood clot in her brain. They drop Jimmy off with his son and then take Cleaves and Dicken to their corporate headquarters where they will explain what happen and advocate for better treatment of gangers.
As they prepare to leave, Amy doubles over in pain. The Doctor takes her and Rory into the TARDIS where he tells Amy that she is going into labor. Amy is confused as she is not visibly pregnant. The Doctor then tells her that he and Rory will find her and to not worry. He points a new sonic screwdriver at her and her flesh body dissolves.
Amy wakes lying in a white tube with a large pregnant belly. A panel slides open above her to reveal the woman with the eye patch whom she had seen randomly ever since The Impossible Astronaut. The woman urges Amy to push and Amy starts to scream.
Analysis
A retread of the territory of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Android Invasion, this is a decidedly mixed story. For just about every positive thing you can say about it, there is a countering negative. That in and of itself is not bad but the fact that it is a two-part story and one that gave a huge reveal about Amy at the end makes it feel like we should have expected more that what it is.
My single biggest gripe of the piece is the convoluted story. The set up through the first half of The Rebel Flesh worked well with tension and a real sense of unease. There was even the good set up where two of the crew had already been replaced with their ganger versions. But after that it starts to fall apart. Cleaves and Jennifer had been replaced by gangers but where were the human versions. We are shown Cleaves hiding and then discovering the group while Jennifer comes limping out of nowhere to be attacked by her ganger. Where were they and why weren't they part of the group of humans that were clustered in the control area?
Things get even more convoluted with the almost schizophrenic difference between human Cleaves and ganger Cleaves to force the fight between the two sides. Ganger Cleaves is shown to think just like her human counterpart but she is also more rational, thoughtful and empathetic. Human Cleaves bursts in and threatens the gangers without any consideration of what is going on and overreacting while her ganger version sits back and lets it happen. The ganger version also lets Jennifer take control where the human Cleaves barely let the Doctor take charge. There is a difference in Jennifer as well but given the mutations ganger Jennifer was undergoing, you can head cannon those into the idea that Jennifer became the primary outlet for the flesh's anger and she was its personality rather than Jennifer's.
All through the remaining parts, characters are constantly doing things that serve the plot. Rory may have compassion for Jennifer but would her well-being overcome his affection for his wife and the desire to be safe? Rory's separation and his manipulation by Jennifer drives most of the action in the second part but it involves him being especially dumb. Why does the Doctor need to get Amy to trust the flesh Doctor when she herself is in a flesh body that it going to be destroyed by the Doctor? Exposing Amy as a "flesh racist" does nothing for the plot other than give her something to do. In fact, the flesh Doctor is mostly unnecessary except that it allows a version of the Doctor to be in both camps.
Consistently, it felt like their were too many characters or versions of characters and they were being pushed in ways to drive the plot, but with bits left hanging. Dicken has exactly one line per episode and mostly stands around doing nothing except to killed by Jennifer in the final attack. Jimmy gets the emotional arc of his son but is also otherwise just there for a body. Buzzer's ganger is killed to start the war while his human counterpart is ganger Jennifer's token victim before becoming a full monster. A larger cast makes sense with the running of a factory, but it makes for a very crowded story, especially when you insert four additional characters in.
It was also rather disappointing that after all the hullabaloo about racism and the definition of what it means to be human, the story ends with just another monster coming at the group. Jennifer goes warped and comes at them like a beast. Keeping everyone looking human and letting the threat be from within would have been a lot more interesting of a resolution. I think it would have actually amplified the tension rather than defusing the situation by giving everyone an ugly bad thing that we all can oppose.
That is a lot of negativity to start things off. So on to the positives. I thought the story was well acted. Those that had enough lines and development to get fleshed out characters (pardon the pun) were genuinely interesting, even if they diverged from what you are conditioned to expect. While the Doctor, Amy and Rory's behavior might have been a bit strange at times, they were all well performed and you genuinely believed in their emotions, especially the enraged outburst by the Doctor that set Amy off against him. I thought it a well controlled bit of acting.
The location and direction was nice as well. The use of the color pallet especially really helped set the mood of the situation. The only real drawback of the location, which looked very nice, was that some of the audio might have been affected. There were several points where I had trouble hearing what was being said and I think that was because the audio was oddly affected by the location. It's a small quibble but when you're having trouble keeping track of why someone is behaving as they are, it goes a long way in influencing the overall mood.
It's frustrating to see a story that has so much potential be wasted. It's not bad at its core but there are so many wanderings, dead ends and loose threads in the plot that it just gets frustrating to watch it rather than enmeshing you in the story as you would hope it would. It is pretty to look at and well acted so it's not a slog to get through. But when you get through a story with that amount of frustration at the plotline, you can't mark it particularly high.
Overall personal score: The Rebel Flesh - 2 out of 5; The Almost People - 2 out of 5
Monday, March 5, 2018
Tenth Doctor Summary
The Tenth Doctor was a real up and down case, due mostly to the whims of Russell T. Davies. He is probably the darkest of all the Doctors and one of the quickest to resort to lethal violence. More than that, he seems to relish the violence once he has been tipped into it. It can go to a further extreme when you also contrast it to the very bubbly and happy personality that he tries to keep on most of the time. All of which make for an interesting and complex character that draws you in to his world.
But you also have some of the dumbest and most self-aggrandizing stories at the same time. You have to deal with the Tenth Doctor-Rose relationship which not only is the most annoying in terms of the romance but also with their smugness. There is the pining of Martha to deal with, which undercuts some rather good story premises. It's really not until Donna that the Tenth Doctor settles in to just having adventures and even then there is the constant joke about them being a couple.
As annoying as the romance can get, the real problem with the Tenth Doctor is the Jesus moments. Before the era of the Tenth Doctor, the Doctor was just a guy bumbling around the universe, exploring and trying to help out. This ultimately became a quest to save everyone from every evil imaginable and his legend began to take on messianic tones. This is both contrived (the messiah metaphor is overused in many forms of media) and washes out the character of someone who just gets caught up in things.
But on the other hand, there is excellent writing with the Tenth Doctor. There is also genuine drama, apart from the series finales, in most episodes. RTD, in contrast to Steven Moffat, didn't seem to have a problem taking well liked characters that passed through the show and either killing them or giving them terrible resolutions. A viewer when then be invested in the peril of the character because there was a real chance that the bad thing would stay bad: Rose was left in the alternate dimension, alternate universe Jackie stayed dead after being converted, most of the likeable characters on the Titanic died in their escape attempt, etc. One of the great complaints against the various series enders and the end of the Tenth Doctor in general is that RTD went back and tried to undo some of his most dire consequences.
As far as overall feel goes, my watching of the Tenth Doctor era depends on my mood. For darker, more dramatic stories, definitely the Tenth Doctor era. Good adventure runarounds and the occasion psychological thriller, also good for the Tenth Doctor. Not great if you want something lighter and comedic and the era was not immune from shake your head silliness either. But overall, I like the Tenth Doctor and his era a lot. It's fun, engaging and a good balance between what the show is capable of, even if it does fall on it's face here and there.
Highest Rated Story: The Waters of Mars - 5.0
Lowest Rated Story: Last of the Time Lords - 0.5
Average overall rating: 3.26
The Christmas Invasion
New Earth
Tooth and Claw
School Reunion
The Girl in the Fireplace
Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel
The Idiot's Lantern
The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit
Love & Monsters
Fear Her
Army of Ghosts/Doomsday
The Runaway Bride
Smith and Jones
The Shakespeare Code
Gridlock
Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks
The Lazarus Experiment
42
Human Nature/The Family of Blood
Blink
Utopia
The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords
Voyage of the Damned
Partners in Crime
The Fires of Pompeii
Planet of the Ood
The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky
The Doctor's Daughter
The Unicorn and the Wasp
Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead
Midnight
Turn Left
The Stolen Earth/Journey's End
The Next Doctor
Planet of the Dead
The Waters of Mars
The End of Time
But you also have some of the dumbest and most self-aggrandizing stories at the same time. You have to deal with the Tenth Doctor-Rose relationship which not only is the most annoying in terms of the romance but also with their smugness. There is the pining of Martha to deal with, which undercuts some rather good story premises. It's really not until Donna that the Tenth Doctor settles in to just having adventures and even then there is the constant joke about them being a couple.
As annoying as the romance can get, the real problem with the Tenth Doctor is the Jesus moments. Before the era of the Tenth Doctor, the Doctor was just a guy bumbling around the universe, exploring and trying to help out. This ultimately became a quest to save everyone from every evil imaginable and his legend began to take on messianic tones. This is both contrived (the messiah metaphor is overused in many forms of media) and washes out the character of someone who just gets caught up in things.
But on the other hand, there is excellent writing with the Tenth Doctor. There is also genuine drama, apart from the series finales, in most episodes. RTD, in contrast to Steven Moffat, didn't seem to have a problem taking well liked characters that passed through the show and either killing them or giving them terrible resolutions. A viewer when then be invested in the peril of the character because there was a real chance that the bad thing would stay bad: Rose was left in the alternate dimension, alternate universe Jackie stayed dead after being converted, most of the likeable characters on the Titanic died in their escape attempt, etc. One of the great complaints against the various series enders and the end of the Tenth Doctor in general is that RTD went back and tried to undo some of his most dire consequences.
As far as overall feel goes, my watching of the Tenth Doctor era depends on my mood. For darker, more dramatic stories, definitely the Tenth Doctor era. Good adventure runarounds and the occasion psychological thriller, also good for the Tenth Doctor. Not great if you want something lighter and comedic and the era was not immune from shake your head silliness either. But overall, I like the Tenth Doctor and his era a lot. It's fun, engaging and a good balance between what the show is capable of, even if it does fall on it's face here and there.
Highest Rated Story: The Waters of Mars - 5.0
Lowest Rated Story: Last of the Time Lords - 0.5
Average overall rating: 3.26
The Christmas Invasion
New Earth
Tooth and Claw
School Reunion
The Girl in the Fireplace
Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel
The Idiot's Lantern
The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit
Love & Monsters
Fear Her
Army of Ghosts/Doomsday
The Runaway Bride
Smith and Jones
The Shakespeare Code
Gridlock
Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks
The Lazarus Experiment
42
Human Nature/The Family of Blood
Blink
Utopia
The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords
Voyage of the Damned
Partners in Crime
The Fires of Pompeii
Planet of the Ood
The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky
The Doctor's Daughter
The Unicorn and the Wasp
Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead
Midnight
Turn Left
The Stolen Earth/Journey's End
The Next Doctor
Planet of the Dead
The Waters of Mars
The End of Time
Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks
I am a human-Dalek.
This is what putting off unpleasant things does to you. I had not intended to finish the Tenth Doctor with the Series Three two-parter involving the Daleks but here we are. These two episodes were very poorly received by the fans, enough so that they somewhat poisoned the well for the Sontaran two-parter in Series Four. When the writer, Helen Raynor, went back and read comments about both stories, she turned about face and never wrote for the show again. I don't recall enjoying this one that much but I also don't recall having the avowed hatred that some fans did.
Plot Summary
In 1930 New York, a man named Lazlo is wishing good luck to his girlfriend Tallulah as she heads on stage for a performance. He is distracted by a noise and follows it down to a store room where he is attacked by a humanoid pig.
The Doctor and Martha arrive on Liberty Island two weeks later where the Doctor is immediately keyed in to a series of disappearances in the Central Park shantytown called Hooverville. In the shantytown, they observe a man named Solomon breaking up a fight between two people. The Doctor notes his leadership and asks him about the disappearances. Solomon acknowledges them but they had been unable to do anything as they happen too fast and the authorities don't care about missing vagrants.
Meanwhile at the nearly completed Empire State Building, the lead engineer, Mr. Diagoras, is threatening the foreman to finish the spire of the building by that night. The foreman refuses and Diagoras tells him to take it up with the new bosses. A Dalek emerges from the elevator with two pig-men who seize the foreman and take him below. The Dalek then orders Diagoras to bring in additional labor.
Diagoras arrives at the Hooverville and offers money to clear a blockage in the sewer. Curious, the Doctor volunteers, joined by Martha, Solomon and a young man named Frank. The four journey into the sewers under the Empire State Building but find no blockage. Instead, they find a glowing sample of alien tissue. The Doctor is unsure of what it is and pockets it. They then see a pig-man sitting in one tunnel. The Doctor goes to examine him but is surprised by a larger group of pig-men who emerge from the shadows.
The mutants chase the group down the tunnels until they find a ladder. The Doctor unseals the manhole cover and he, Martha and Solomon climb to safety. Frank, who had lagged behind to fend off the pig-men, is grabbed off the ladder and dragged away. The Doctor prepares to plan to go after Frank when Tallulah emerges with a gun, demanding to know where Lazlo is.
After setting the workers to install the new panels on the spire, Diagoras is summoned to the lair of the Daleks in the basement. There he is confronted by Dalek Sec, leader of the Cult of Skaro, who escaped with three other members of the cult after their defeat at the Battle of Canary Wharf (Doomsday). Sec sees potential in Diagoras and orders him dragged to a holding cell while the plan is carried out.
After admitting she is using a prop gun, Tallulah tells the Doctor of Lazlo's disappearance from the same theater she performs at. That theater has an entrance to the sewer in the prop storage room, which is where the Doctor, Martha and Solomon emerged from. Martha stays with Tallulah while the Doctor cannibalizes some equipment to examine the alien tissue. Solomon heads back to Hooverville to rally the men to a defense and possibly rescue Frank.
Tallulah goes on stage while Martha watches from the wings. On the other wing, she sees a deformed man watching from the shadows. She tries to sneak across stage but trips over a dancer. She points out the man who then runs off. Martha runs after him but is grabbed by a pig-man and dragged back into the sewers.
The Doctor discovers the tissue is artificially constructed with Skaro DNA. Realizing that the Daleks are involved, he goes to look for Martha but Tallulah tells him that she has disappeared. Suspecting that she was taken, he runs into the sewers with Tallulah insisting on following him. In the sewers, they are forced to hide as a Dalek roams around on patrol.
They discover the disfigured man hiding nearby. It is Lazlo who managed to escape before the transformation is complete. His mind still functions but his features are a blend of human and porcine. The send Tallulah back through the sewers for the safety of the theater but she gets lost on the way. The Doctor and Lazlo find Martha and Frank being herded by two Daleks to the laboratory for further experimentation. The Doctor slips in between them while Lazlo poses as a pig guard.
The group is brought into the lab where Dalek Sec has taken Diagoras into his casing. The Daleks announce their new evolution and from the casing emerges a bipedal creature, calling itself a human-Dalek. Sec orders the humans to be processed with the other Daleks but the Doctor shows himself, distracting the Daleks. He creates a noise through a radio that induces pain in the Daleks and the pig-men and he and the group of humans flee through the sewers.
The return to Hooverville and the Doctor urges everyone to flee New York. Most resist, with no where else to go, and the camp is attacked by pig-men. The humans beat the creatures back but two Daleks come after them and begin to destroy the camp. Solomon steps forward to try and negotiate but the Daleks kill him.
The Doctor, angry at Solomon's death, offers himself up but Sec orders the Doctor taken alive. As he is taken away, the Doctor gives Martha his psychic paper. He is then taken back to the lab where Sec explains how he intends to blend Dalek and human DNA in people who have become empty shells and lay in stasis. The power for this will come from a gamma ray infused lightning on the spire of the Empire State Building. Seeing a glimmers of emotion in Sec, the Doctor agrees to help.
In Hooverville, Martha realizes that the Daleks needed a workforce and would lure men with the promise of work. Frank tells her that most men were hired to work on the Empire State Building. She, Frank and Tallulah use the psychic paper to get into the building and up to the planning office near the top. They find a set of blueprints that had just been updated and comparing them with an older set, they realize that the Daleks have installed extra panels on spire of the building.
The Doctor and Sec finalize the serum to infuse the human shells with the hybrid DNA. However as it flows, an alarm goes off and they realize that it is pure Dalek DNA being pumped in. The other three Daleks have rebelled against Sec for threatening Dalek purity and order him and the Doctor seized. The Doctor is grabbed by Lazlo, who had also summoned the elevator. When it opens, the two dash into it and head up to the top floor.
At the top, Martha tells the Doctor where the Daleks have installed their panels. He orders Martha, Tallulah, Frank and Lazlo to fight off the pig-men pursuers while he removes the panels. Lazlo collapses, the mutation designed to end the life of the pig-men after a few weeks, leaving them a man down. Martha then realizes that with a lightning strike, she can electrify the elevator by channeling the bolt through sets of metal tubing. She and Frank work to set this up.
On the spire, the Doctor removes one panel but drops his screwdriver before he can finish removing the second and third panels. Unable to remove them, he wraps himself around the spire as the lightning hits. It electrifies him and passes through the building. The pig-men emerging from the elevator are electrocuted while the human shells injected with Dalek DNA come to life. The Daleks arms the humans and send them through the sewers to ambush sites throughout the city. Martha wakes the Doctor, having passed out after the lightning strike and they head back downstairs.
Needing a large space, the group breaks into Tallulah's theater and the Doctor alerts the Daleks to his presence with his sonic screwdriver. The Daleks dispatch a group of humans to destroy them along with two of the three Daleks, dragging Sec in tow. The Daleks move to kill the Doctor but Sec stands up and steps in the path of the beam, killing him. The Daleks order the humans to destroy the Doctor but they refuse to fire, questioning why. The Doctor tells the Daleks that he infused a small amount of Time Lord DNA into the mix, giving them the ability to question orders.
Angered, the Daleks start killing the infected humans who return fire. The Daleks kill several but the shots overwhelm their armor and both Daleks are destroyed. Seeing the humans rebel Dalek Caan, who had taken over the leadership role, activates a self destruct in the hybrids, killing all of them. The Doctor return to the lab, offering Caan compassion as the only Dalek left. Caan instead activates an emergency temporal shift and disappears.
Martha, Frank, Tallulah and Lazlo enter the lab and Lazlo collapses, nearing the end of his adjusted life cycle. The Doctor however grabs genetic equipment from the lab and develops a serum to counteract the shortened span. In the morning, they take Lazlo to Hooverville and Frank arranges for Lazlo to stay there. The Doctor and Martha then depart, the Doctor sure Dalek Caan will emerge once again.
Analysis
Because Doctor Who is a family oriented show, you expect plots and stories to come along that are rather silly. Many of these are made more palatable for adults with comedy, witty writing and good acting. The downfall of stories that are poorly regarded is a general deficiency in these areas. Unfortunately, Daleks in Manhattan and Evolution of the Daleks falls into that category. The plot is generally silly but I can take that is certain doses. Where the story really falls flat is in the annoying nature or ambivalence generated towards the various characters.
This story puts the shoe on the other foot in terms of understanding how British people feel about Dick Van Dyke's accent in Mary Poppins. The accents in this story are atrocious. To disguise their own British accents, the characters are all adopting extreme versions of the New York gangster accent that is usually associated with James Cagney or Edward G. Robinson. But those accents have become a joke in and of themselves and to hear them taken a level further shifts it from just being tired to outright annoying. Frank has a southern accent but it is also done in an exaggerated fashion that feels fake.
The one exception on the accent front is Solomon. He is more understated in his American accent and that plays better. But he has other drawbacks. He is painted as the natural peacemaker who abhors violence but a number of his characteristics come across as tropes that have been done many times before. Even his death falls into the cliché. A true subversion of it would have been if the Dalek had shot him mid-sentence, cutting things off. Instead, he is allowed to finish his speech and deliver the full weight of his nobility to Sec.
As silly as the human-Dalek Sec was in his appearance and his initial delivery of lines, he did start to grow on me as Evolution of the Daleks progressed. His halting speech wasn't great, but I wonder if some of that was because the actor couldn't breathe under the mask. But in a similar fashion in Dalek, the infusion of humanity and the realization of the horror of their purified existence made the modified Dalek become more sympathetic. It's still not a particularly good adaptation but it at least it creates a certain level of interest and drama in an otherwise boring character.
As this story is in the first half of Series 3, it lingers quite a bit on the Martha pining for the Doctor plotline. This does generate a couple of amusing lines from Tallulah, suggesting that the Doctor is gay, but other than that, it is just as tedious as the other times where Martha complains about the Doctor not returning her affection instead of appreciating his friendship or the adventure they are currently on. I also didn't care for the leap of logic that she had to make to find the Doctor at the Empire State Building once he was taken. That whole scene just played out like writer's convenience, to say nothing of the silliness of hearing Martha and Tallulah saying "Dalekanium" every couple of minutes.
I did enjoy the Doctor's performance. It was probably one of the few things I genuinely enjoyed in this story. There is a certain level of gravitas that the Doctor brings that feel genuine no matter how silly the situation or the level of acting around him. He conveys deep emotion as well as intensity, which can go a little off the rails at times. He did get a tad over the top when swearing to save Lazlo but it was only a quick scene and easily overlooked.
Unlike The Angels Take Manhattan, this story didn't really use New York. It was fairly obvious that the whole thing was just a series of sets and that the skyline and backdrop pictures of New York were taken by a second-unit crew, sans actors. This didn't bother me but it did feel like they missed a trick as a quick shot of some of the characters in a real New York location would have been a nice touch. Still, the setting and overall layout was actually done fairly well and was one of the stronger parts of this story.
I've railed on the acting quite a bit but I can't dismiss the writing either. Its not bad, but its also not particularly good either. There is no real spark in the dialogue and the lofty talk of Solomon is built more on clichés and sincerity of the actor. I found some of the timing and set up with the Dalek's plan needlessly overdone. There was no need for the run around story about getting the Dalekanium pieces put on the spire at the last minute. That was just a device to give the Daleks a weakness in their plans as well as kill some time.
I think it's the time thing that gets me. This did not feel deserving of a two-parter. Fat could easily have been cut and if you combine a few scenes and reduce the amount of doubling back, this could have been a tight 42-minute story that would have really zipped along. It would have reduced the exposure of some of the lesser actors and let the Doctor and the Daleks go hard mono-y-mono. But with bloat comes drag and exposure of the lesser elements and that certainly happened here.
I think it's safe to say that this is the worst of the two-parters from the Tenth Doctor era. There are some ideas here but they mostly cover ground that's been gone over before and then a large amount of bad acting and silliness get tossed on top of it. I hate to end on a down note but I think I was right in wanting to avoid this story as its just not one that is worth revisiting on any kind of regular basis. Even if it does have an early Andrew Garfield sighting.
Overall personal score: Daleks in Manhattan - 1; Evolution of the Daleks - 1
This is what putting off unpleasant things does to you. I had not intended to finish the Tenth Doctor with the Series Three two-parter involving the Daleks but here we are. These two episodes were very poorly received by the fans, enough so that they somewhat poisoned the well for the Sontaran two-parter in Series Four. When the writer, Helen Raynor, went back and read comments about both stories, she turned about face and never wrote for the show again. I don't recall enjoying this one that much but I also don't recall having the avowed hatred that some fans did.
Plot Summary
In 1930 New York, a man named Lazlo is wishing good luck to his girlfriend Tallulah as she heads on stage for a performance. He is distracted by a noise and follows it down to a store room where he is attacked by a humanoid pig.
The Doctor and Martha arrive on Liberty Island two weeks later where the Doctor is immediately keyed in to a series of disappearances in the Central Park shantytown called Hooverville. In the shantytown, they observe a man named Solomon breaking up a fight between two people. The Doctor notes his leadership and asks him about the disappearances. Solomon acknowledges them but they had been unable to do anything as they happen too fast and the authorities don't care about missing vagrants.
Meanwhile at the nearly completed Empire State Building, the lead engineer, Mr. Diagoras, is threatening the foreman to finish the spire of the building by that night. The foreman refuses and Diagoras tells him to take it up with the new bosses. A Dalek emerges from the elevator with two pig-men who seize the foreman and take him below. The Dalek then orders Diagoras to bring in additional labor.
Diagoras arrives at the Hooverville and offers money to clear a blockage in the sewer. Curious, the Doctor volunteers, joined by Martha, Solomon and a young man named Frank. The four journey into the sewers under the Empire State Building but find no blockage. Instead, they find a glowing sample of alien tissue. The Doctor is unsure of what it is and pockets it. They then see a pig-man sitting in one tunnel. The Doctor goes to examine him but is surprised by a larger group of pig-men who emerge from the shadows.
The mutants chase the group down the tunnels until they find a ladder. The Doctor unseals the manhole cover and he, Martha and Solomon climb to safety. Frank, who had lagged behind to fend off the pig-men, is grabbed off the ladder and dragged away. The Doctor prepares to plan to go after Frank when Tallulah emerges with a gun, demanding to know where Lazlo is.
After setting the workers to install the new panels on the spire, Diagoras is summoned to the lair of the Daleks in the basement. There he is confronted by Dalek Sec, leader of the Cult of Skaro, who escaped with three other members of the cult after their defeat at the Battle of Canary Wharf (Doomsday). Sec sees potential in Diagoras and orders him dragged to a holding cell while the plan is carried out.
After admitting she is using a prop gun, Tallulah tells the Doctor of Lazlo's disappearance from the same theater she performs at. That theater has an entrance to the sewer in the prop storage room, which is where the Doctor, Martha and Solomon emerged from. Martha stays with Tallulah while the Doctor cannibalizes some equipment to examine the alien tissue. Solomon heads back to Hooverville to rally the men to a defense and possibly rescue Frank.
Tallulah goes on stage while Martha watches from the wings. On the other wing, she sees a deformed man watching from the shadows. She tries to sneak across stage but trips over a dancer. She points out the man who then runs off. Martha runs after him but is grabbed by a pig-man and dragged back into the sewers.
The Doctor discovers the tissue is artificially constructed with Skaro DNA. Realizing that the Daleks are involved, he goes to look for Martha but Tallulah tells him that she has disappeared. Suspecting that she was taken, he runs into the sewers with Tallulah insisting on following him. In the sewers, they are forced to hide as a Dalek roams around on patrol.
They discover the disfigured man hiding nearby. It is Lazlo who managed to escape before the transformation is complete. His mind still functions but his features are a blend of human and porcine. The send Tallulah back through the sewers for the safety of the theater but she gets lost on the way. The Doctor and Lazlo find Martha and Frank being herded by two Daleks to the laboratory for further experimentation. The Doctor slips in between them while Lazlo poses as a pig guard.
The group is brought into the lab where Dalek Sec has taken Diagoras into his casing. The Daleks announce their new evolution and from the casing emerges a bipedal creature, calling itself a human-Dalek. Sec orders the humans to be processed with the other Daleks but the Doctor shows himself, distracting the Daleks. He creates a noise through a radio that induces pain in the Daleks and the pig-men and he and the group of humans flee through the sewers.
The return to Hooverville and the Doctor urges everyone to flee New York. Most resist, with no where else to go, and the camp is attacked by pig-men. The humans beat the creatures back but two Daleks come after them and begin to destroy the camp. Solomon steps forward to try and negotiate but the Daleks kill him.
The Doctor, angry at Solomon's death, offers himself up but Sec orders the Doctor taken alive. As he is taken away, the Doctor gives Martha his psychic paper. He is then taken back to the lab where Sec explains how he intends to blend Dalek and human DNA in people who have become empty shells and lay in stasis. The power for this will come from a gamma ray infused lightning on the spire of the Empire State Building. Seeing a glimmers of emotion in Sec, the Doctor agrees to help.
In Hooverville, Martha realizes that the Daleks needed a workforce and would lure men with the promise of work. Frank tells her that most men were hired to work on the Empire State Building. She, Frank and Tallulah use the psychic paper to get into the building and up to the planning office near the top. They find a set of blueprints that had just been updated and comparing them with an older set, they realize that the Daleks have installed extra panels on spire of the building.
The Doctor and Sec finalize the serum to infuse the human shells with the hybrid DNA. However as it flows, an alarm goes off and they realize that it is pure Dalek DNA being pumped in. The other three Daleks have rebelled against Sec for threatening Dalek purity and order him and the Doctor seized. The Doctor is grabbed by Lazlo, who had also summoned the elevator. When it opens, the two dash into it and head up to the top floor.
At the top, Martha tells the Doctor where the Daleks have installed their panels. He orders Martha, Tallulah, Frank and Lazlo to fight off the pig-men pursuers while he removes the panels. Lazlo collapses, the mutation designed to end the life of the pig-men after a few weeks, leaving them a man down. Martha then realizes that with a lightning strike, she can electrify the elevator by channeling the bolt through sets of metal tubing. She and Frank work to set this up.
On the spire, the Doctor removes one panel but drops his screwdriver before he can finish removing the second and third panels. Unable to remove them, he wraps himself around the spire as the lightning hits. It electrifies him and passes through the building. The pig-men emerging from the elevator are electrocuted while the human shells injected with Dalek DNA come to life. The Daleks arms the humans and send them through the sewers to ambush sites throughout the city. Martha wakes the Doctor, having passed out after the lightning strike and they head back downstairs.
Needing a large space, the group breaks into Tallulah's theater and the Doctor alerts the Daleks to his presence with his sonic screwdriver. The Daleks dispatch a group of humans to destroy them along with two of the three Daleks, dragging Sec in tow. The Daleks move to kill the Doctor but Sec stands up and steps in the path of the beam, killing him. The Daleks order the humans to destroy the Doctor but they refuse to fire, questioning why. The Doctor tells the Daleks that he infused a small amount of Time Lord DNA into the mix, giving them the ability to question orders.
Angered, the Daleks start killing the infected humans who return fire. The Daleks kill several but the shots overwhelm their armor and both Daleks are destroyed. Seeing the humans rebel Dalek Caan, who had taken over the leadership role, activates a self destruct in the hybrids, killing all of them. The Doctor return to the lab, offering Caan compassion as the only Dalek left. Caan instead activates an emergency temporal shift and disappears.
Martha, Frank, Tallulah and Lazlo enter the lab and Lazlo collapses, nearing the end of his adjusted life cycle. The Doctor however grabs genetic equipment from the lab and develops a serum to counteract the shortened span. In the morning, they take Lazlo to Hooverville and Frank arranges for Lazlo to stay there. The Doctor and Martha then depart, the Doctor sure Dalek Caan will emerge once again.
Analysis
Because Doctor Who is a family oriented show, you expect plots and stories to come along that are rather silly. Many of these are made more palatable for adults with comedy, witty writing and good acting. The downfall of stories that are poorly regarded is a general deficiency in these areas. Unfortunately, Daleks in Manhattan and Evolution of the Daleks falls into that category. The plot is generally silly but I can take that is certain doses. Where the story really falls flat is in the annoying nature or ambivalence generated towards the various characters.
This story puts the shoe on the other foot in terms of understanding how British people feel about Dick Van Dyke's accent in Mary Poppins. The accents in this story are atrocious. To disguise their own British accents, the characters are all adopting extreme versions of the New York gangster accent that is usually associated with James Cagney or Edward G. Robinson. But those accents have become a joke in and of themselves and to hear them taken a level further shifts it from just being tired to outright annoying. Frank has a southern accent but it is also done in an exaggerated fashion that feels fake.
The one exception on the accent front is Solomon. He is more understated in his American accent and that plays better. But he has other drawbacks. He is painted as the natural peacemaker who abhors violence but a number of his characteristics come across as tropes that have been done many times before. Even his death falls into the cliché. A true subversion of it would have been if the Dalek had shot him mid-sentence, cutting things off. Instead, he is allowed to finish his speech and deliver the full weight of his nobility to Sec.
As silly as the human-Dalek Sec was in his appearance and his initial delivery of lines, he did start to grow on me as Evolution of the Daleks progressed. His halting speech wasn't great, but I wonder if some of that was because the actor couldn't breathe under the mask. But in a similar fashion in Dalek, the infusion of humanity and the realization of the horror of their purified existence made the modified Dalek become more sympathetic. It's still not a particularly good adaptation but it at least it creates a certain level of interest and drama in an otherwise boring character.
As this story is in the first half of Series 3, it lingers quite a bit on the Martha pining for the Doctor plotline. This does generate a couple of amusing lines from Tallulah, suggesting that the Doctor is gay, but other than that, it is just as tedious as the other times where Martha complains about the Doctor not returning her affection instead of appreciating his friendship or the adventure they are currently on. I also didn't care for the leap of logic that she had to make to find the Doctor at the Empire State Building once he was taken. That whole scene just played out like writer's convenience, to say nothing of the silliness of hearing Martha and Tallulah saying "Dalekanium" every couple of minutes.
I did enjoy the Doctor's performance. It was probably one of the few things I genuinely enjoyed in this story. There is a certain level of gravitas that the Doctor brings that feel genuine no matter how silly the situation or the level of acting around him. He conveys deep emotion as well as intensity, which can go a little off the rails at times. He did get a tad over the top when swearing to save Lazlo but it was only a quick scene and easily overlooked.
Unlike The Angels Take Manhattan, this story didn't really use New York. It was fairly obvious that the whole thing was just a series of sets and that the skyline and backdrop pictures of New York were taken by a second-unit crew, sans actors. This didn't bother me but it did feel like they missed a trick as a quick shot of some of the characters in a real New York location would have been a nice touch. Still, the setting and overall layout was actually done fairly well and was one of the stronger parts of this story.
I've railed on the acting quite a bit but I can't dismiss the writing either. Its not bad, but its also not particularly good either. There is no real spark in the dialogue and the lofty talk of Solomon is built more on clichés and sincerity of the actor. I found some of the timing and set up with the Dalek's plan needlessly overdone. There was no need for the run around story about getting the Dalekanium pieces put on the spire at the last minute. That was just a device to give the Daleks a weakness in their plans as well as kill some time.
I think it's the time thing that gets me. This did not feel deserving of a two-parter. Fat could easily have been cut and if you combine a few scenes and reduce the amount of doubling back, this could have been a tight 42-minute story that would have really zipped along. It would have reduced the exposure of some of the lesser actors and let the Doctor and the Daleks go hard mono-y-mono. But with bloat comes drag and exposure of the lesser elements and that certainly happened here.
I think it's safe to say that this is the worst of the two-parters from the Tenth Doctor era. There are some ideas here but they mostly cover ground that's been gone over before and then a large amount of bad acting and silliness get tossed on top of it. I hate to end on a down note but I think I was right in wanting to avoid this story as its just not one that is worth revisiting on any kind of regular basis. Even if it does have an early Andrew Garfield sighting.
Overall personal score: Daleks in Manhattan - 1; Evolution of the Daleks - 1
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