A Doctor Who Story that Doesn’t Need the Doctor

People often point out that Doctor Who can do any type of fib — a murder mystery , a war story , a ghost story , etc . There ’s really only one requirement for a expert Doctor of the Church Who story : the Doctor must be important .

If the Doctor does n’t add something crucial to the account just by being there , then maybe your account just is n’t a Doctor Who story . I was trying to put my digit on what bothered me about “ The Rebel Flesh , ” and I finally decided it was the fact that the Doctor ’s comportment add nothing to the installment — at least , until the terminal here and now . In fact , the whole thing would have been considerably more interesting without the Doctor .

Of naturally , I have n’t seen part two yet , and maybe thing will look differently after that . But for now , here ’s a first response to “ The Rebel Flesh . ”

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Spoilers forward …

It ’s a bit hazardous to test and review the first half of a two - part account . You just have to take it on its own meritoriousness , and reserve a lot of the heavy - duty depth psychology for part two . ( Which , for BBC America viewers at least , wo n’t air for two farseeing workweek . )

But as an episode on its own , “ The Rebel Flesh ” started out sort of promising and then apace became a routine dull . It was the first time this time of year I have n’t been excited , or at least diverted , by an sequence . ( Some mass seemed a bit bored by the literary pirate installment , but I institute it a fun moment of fluff , which is all I really carry . )

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“ The Rebel Flesh ” had a premise that could have made for a pretty decent remain firm - alone skill fiction story : There ’s a group of humans who are in a risky work situation , pumping out some highly corrosive acid off an island . There ’s a high fatality rate in this line of work , so they ’re happy when someone invents the “ Flesh , ” a kind of synthetic life that can determine itself to look like anyone , and allow you to pilot it remotely . The Flesh even replicate the dress you ’re wearing , so there ’s no icky nakedness on British TV at teatime .

So basically , it ’s a mixture of Surrogates and Avatar and super - rapid cloning , along the melody of “ The Invisible Enemy ” ( which also had the “ cloning with habiliment ” thing . ) you may imagine all sorts of shipway this could go amiss , including the Flesh attaining a disjoined sense . ( But also let in people being unable to disengage their consciousness , or suffering ill upshot from porting their consciousness into body that keep conk . ) So it ’s not really a surprisal when it does go wrong , and the Flesh copies of people , known as “ Gangers , ” make main life and jump wanting individual rights .

It ’s not a spoilt set - up for a story , and it allow you to ask all sorts of inquiry about personal identity , and our kinship to technology , and “ Measure of a Man”-type questions about who gets to be considered a somebody , and so on . People have to confront their duplicates , which divvy up all their memories , and it ’s heavy to keep thinking of those living , feel , thinking creatures as just tools , the equivalent of a forklift truck . Like I said , as a standalone science fiction story , it has some voltage .

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The problem is , in the first half at least , the Doctor contributes nothing to this chronicle . Worse , he in reality makes the tale more tedious , by reproof us a lot and explaining and re - explaining stuff the story has already evince us . The Doctor ’s presence means that we get several redundant explanations for the same matter , and then the Doctor tells us that it ’s all going to go incorrect , and then it does go wrong . If your goal is to slow down the chronicle so you could make it last the full 42 - odd minutes , then having an additional level of lecturing and expo that allow you to show and then severalise — and then show again — is smashing . Otherwise , not so much .

Meanwhile , the episode also tries to introduce a few sources of peril besides the Gangers . There ’s a solar tempest , which is going to do something nasty to the acid place ’s solar cockerel . And then there ’s some acid spill after that . But the episode ’s heart never really seems to be in the “ peril and derring do ” stuff — it ’s much more concerned in the honorable quandary posed by the Gangers . This is the kind of fib that Star Trek : The Next Generation knew how to handle .

So if episode one feel as though it ’s a evidently older science fabrication story with the Doctor shoehorned in for no in force reason , there ’s at least a major clue in the cliffhanger that instalment two will make the Doctor more important to the story . Because the Flesh has “ scan ” him while he was scanning it with his sonic screwdriver , and now there ’s a twin Doctor running around . With all the Doctor ’s memories and whatnot — although afford that we just heard a few weeks ago that a Time Lord ’s body is a miracle , you have to marvel if it ’s really an exact extra .

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So all in all … an episode with a exceedingly interesting assumption , which just never quite seemed to get off the primer coat in its first one-half . At least we got to see Life on Mars / Ashes to Ashes co - creator Matthew Graham reunited with Marshall Lancaster . Oh , and Amy is still carrying Schrodinger ’s Zygote — and the Doctor is worried enough that he wants to send away her and Rory off at home base right away . ( I wonder why he would want to impart them to fend for themselves in that situation . Is the TARDIS part of the job ? )

What did you suppose ?

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