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“Hold on. We’re coming for you, I swear it. Whatever happens, however hard, however far, we will find you.”
“I’m right here.”
“No you’re not. You haven’t been here for a long, long time.”
Now, that ending really was a doozy, wasn’t it? Completely unexpected, and pleasing in a way that only a successful cliff-hanger can be. But a good cliff-hanger does not a good episode make, and there are a solid 43 minutes of episode to get through before we can get to talking about the shock ending.
Last week, it very much seemed that we were getting an old-fashioned two-parter, in the mould of last year’s ‘Hungry Earth/Cold Blood’. That was indeed very much what we got, and I have to say, it was much more effective than last year’s effort. The “who are the real monsters?” stuff was rather overplayed, especially as Ganger Jennifer morphed from a sympathetic character last week to an out-and-out villain here; making her a saint wouldn’t have worked, but having her remain so determined to the end to conquer humanity rather weakened her argument that the humans were the only monsters. The fact that the Flesh was replicating itself, presumably the reason that Jennifer could manipulate her body, was a bit garbled, and the CGI monster was nowhere near as effective as the Ganger prosthetics.
But under the heavy-handed metaphors, there were some good moments, too. The pile of rotting, discarded flesh was a surprisingly affecting image, while the Doctor’s use of Jimmy’s son was an excellent example of how well he understands humanity at times, and how he’s able to use that to his advantage. They also had great fun with the double Doctors, especially the shout-outs to old Doctors with jelly beans and reversing the polarity of the neutron flow. Matt Smith played both Doctors wonderfully, and having two of his beautiful face on my screen at one time was always going to make me happy. Of the guest characters, only Dicken failed to have a real impact; the rest were all well-drawn enough to give the climax emotional resonance.
And yet, ‘The Almost People’ will almost certainly be remembered for precisely none of this, and precisely all of the last two minutes. Watching the Doctor during adventure makes so much more sense when you know why he’s there; using Amy’s reactions to investigate how the Flesh really works, and his comments in 'The Rebel Flesh' that indicated this was more than just a jaunt. I’ve consciously been avoiding any form of speculation about this series, and that paid off here, as I really did have no idea what the cliff-hanger would be, and this didn’t disappoint in the slightest.
The questions raised by this episode are many and varied. Which Doctor did Amy talk to about his death? When did the real Amy get swapped out for the Flesh version? Where exactly is she? Is the fact that she seems to have worn the same shirt since the first episode important? And how does all this link into the regenerating girl at the end of ‘The Day of the Moon’?
Of course, the real success if a cliff-hanger depends as much on its resolution as its immediate impact. At the moment, I’m on the edge of my seat to see where this will go, and that really is all that I could wish for going into the mid-series climax of this series.
Next week, ‘A Good Man Goes to War’ as the Doctor and Rory the Roman battle to save Amy, and we finally start to get some answers about the enigmatic and increasingly camp River Song.
Jelly beans?
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