Doctor Who S32e5 "Rebel Flesh" [Spoilers]

[Revy]

The ganger Doctor isn't a ganger like the other ones - he has never been controlled by anyone, for starters. The Doctor sonic'ed him out of the goo, but from the start ganger Doctor has been his own man and controlled by no one. Somehow, I don't think he'd submit to the original Doctor strapping on a harness and and attempting to control him. I also have trouble imagining the Doctor doing that to a copy of himself that he sees as a fellow sentient being. If that was the ganger Doctor in S06E01 he had to be a willing collaborator.

No no, I didn't mean that it was the ganger Doctor from the current episode - I meant that the Doctor used the same tech to make a regular remote control ganger and used that. Not a sentient living ganger, but one he uses as an avatar himself. So the future Doctor would be sitting in a harness somewhere out of sight and remote controlling the one we saw.

Oh, gosh, I don't think I could stand living with a duplicate of myself. Neither of us would want to do housework, for starters. The arguments would be both loud and epic. We'd definitely have to go off and live separately, then there's the issue of who'd get the spouse, as there is only one of him....

I'd love to have a duplicate of myself, but then I don't have any friends or family to share. Besides, I think the only person that could possibly stand to be around me is myself. I'd finally have someone who would laugh at my jokes as well.

[Shroom Man 777]

The Doctor did touch the ganger goo and connect with its mind or something.

[Hillary]

I really enjoyed it - 45 minutes flew by.

I am really loving Rory's character development. He's turning into a real hero - brave, caring, protective, loyal and honest. As Broomstick says, his behaviour in this episode is entirely consistent with his career choice and his experience of being an Auton.

Gurachn - I have no idea where you're coming from in all honesty. It sounds like projection to me

I don't have a problem with the repeat schrodinger pregancy bits - The Doctor is clearly concerned about and would continue to monitor the situation - it's not like it's a major feature of the episode; just a few seconds which has dialogue over the top of it.

The flesh Doctor was signposted, I agree - so I'm not sure why the need for the big reveal at the end of the episode. I guess they needed something to end part one with.

I think Revy's being a little harsh on Amy. This story isn't really about her; it's a Doctor/Rory thing, so Amy doesn't get much screen time - you can't blame her for that (although we got the one-eyed woman bit again). I did see the jealousy vibe going on, but I thought it was nicely underplayed actually. She knows he is a nurse and a kind person; she knows he helps and looks after others; she knows he loves her enough to guard her for 2,000 years. Still she's only human and can't help but be a little jealous - but she's hardly likely to be giving him the evils for portraying the characteristics that make her love him. Hence she's trying to hide it as best she can - not to mention there are more important things to worry about at this particular moment in time.

I gave it a 4. I have to say this series is already better than the last one - bravo Mr Moffatt.

[Raxmei]

But it was sweet when Amy kissed Rory's finger to make it all better.... I am actually pleased at the Rory love shown in this episode. He's being sensible. He's being kind. He didn't die. And he's pouring out the empathy: “I thought I was going to die”/ “Welcome to my world.” I think Rory's 2k years as a plastic copy is giving him a unique insight to this predicament. I would really like that to be a key part of this story. It was so touching to have him go after Flesh Jennifer after she scared the living piss out of him, she scared him but he didn't reject her as a person. I also thought for a moment he was channeling the Tennant doctor (“Amy's a lucky girl.” / “Well.... yeah.” with the inflection 10 used to use). Actually, he's acting rather Doctor-like the way he protects Flesh Jennifer, don't you think? And bravo, Rory, for tackling the Insanely Scared Lady with the Cattle Prod! I just hope he doesn't eventually get killed for good one day playing hero like that.

Sweet, but practically speaking foolhardy. Your husband touched something that gave him a chemical burn on contact. Quick, kiss it and make it better. That acid seems like it should be fantastically toxic if you were crazy enough to put some in your mouth. Or inhale the fumes, for that matter.

On the subject of past experience, Rory remembers being a duplicate of himself while Amy remembers being shot dead by a duplicate of Rory. Different perspectives on the same event could be coloring their impressions of the present circumstances and the subject of dopplegangers. Rory knows how scary it is to be confronted with the fact that you are not who you know you are. Amy knows what it's like to tell a duplicate of your fiance that he's real and you love him and then get shot by a gun that grew out of his arm. Empathy on one side, suspicion on the other.

[Gurachn]

I'm trying very hard to see the positive elements that Rory adds to the series, but frankly, I'm just not feeling it.
Yes, I admit that he does seem to 'care' about things, and I guess that counts for something, but he comes off as just so damn ineffectual that his empathetic elements are (imho) far out weighed by his pathetic ones.

And please don't mention that he was a 'roman centurion who waited 2000 years for love'.
Honestly, I felt that his character was the weakest part of the otherwise excellent Pandorica episodes. He just doesn't have the stones to even pretend to be a believable hardcore roman legionaire. And the fact that he supposedly survived all those years without even a scratch (he is basically just a plastic mannequin) just seemed like an idea that was tacked on without much real thought. I mean the box was basically indestructible, right?
Considering that Amy was basically untouchable while safely locked inside, it seems a significant plot hole that the doctor would even let him stay, knowing that the most likely result was that he would be melted or maimed or dismembered.

The most annoying element is that unlike Mickey, I can't imagine that his character will ever credibly progress far beyond his current state.
Of course not every companion has to become a heroic "cyberman-hunting leader of men", but it would be nice to imagine that he could eventually become something a bit more than the helpless but caring Mr Amy "punching bag" Pond.
Who knows, I may be proved wrong, but I very much doubt it.

[NecronLord]

I'm trying very hard to see the positive elements that Rory adds to the series, but frankly, I'm just not feeling it.

Yes, I admit that he does seem to 'care' about things, and I guess that counts for something, but he comes off as just so damn ineffectual that his empathetic elements are (imho) far out weighed by his pathetic ones.

I can honestly not see how different that is from Amy.

Yes, I'd love a TARDIS with the companion being Dalek Sec, or someone actually super-competant and effective.

And please don't mention

Please don't mention his most remarkable good point

that he was a 'roman centurion who waited 2000 years for love'.
Honestly, I felt that his character was the weakest part of the otherwise excellent Pandorica episodes. He just doesn't have the stones to even pretend to be a believable hardcore roman legionaire. And the fact that he supposedly survived all those years without even a scratch (he is basically just a plastic mannequin) just seemed like an idea that was tacked on without much real thought. I mean the box was basically indestructible, right?

Time Lords can live over four thousand years, millions in one isolated example, the Racnoss can live billions and you're complaining about an auton being able to survive two millennia without damage on a low-tech world?

Considering that Amy was basically untouchable while safely locked inside, it seems a significant plot hole that the doctor would even let him stay, knowing that the most likely result was that he would be melted or maimed or dismembered.

By what. The first crude guns won't be invented for centuries. An Auton has the ability to fucking erase people (Spearhead from Space). They can survive physical impactors going right into their faces without blemish (Rose). Guys with swords pose no threat at all to an Auton.

An Auton could quite possibly walk up to a tank, challenge it to a fight, and leave it a smoking ruin, certainly they can make hundreds of kilos of matter vanish in one shot.

[Revy]

Well they just had Matt Smith on The One Show on BBC1, and they showed a clip of the next episode. In it:
Spoiler

Both Doctors were actually getting along fine and co-operating with each other. Finishing each other's sentences before hurrying off together to help the others. I suppose they might turn against each other later in the episode. Matt also said there would be a massive cliffhanger at the end of the episode, something that about made him fall out of his chair when he found out about it.

[Broomstick]

Oh, that's just precious...! And a tad bit egotistical.

However, I can't see the rest of Doctor Who for eternity having two Doctors. It would seem necessary to either kill one off, or shuffle him off to someplace else like 10.5 a.k.a. "Handy".

Question: will the UK get the next episode this coming weekend, or will there be a one week skip in the run like in the US?

[Broomstick]

For those interested in the preview stuff, here are links to what's up on YouTube. Any spoilers will be minor, but hey, it is a preview so yeah, you're seeing bits and pieces of what's coming.

"Next Time"

Clip One

Clip Two

Clip Three

[Revy]

Question: will the UK get the next episode this coming weekend, or will there be a one week skip in the run like in the US?

Well I skipped ahead one week on my Sky tv guide thingy and the next episode is due this Saturday as normal. I actually checked out the info for it before the first part started, so I knew it was going to be a two parter based on the blurb.

[Hillary]

Of course not every companion has to become a heroic "cyberman-hunting leader of men", but it would be nice to imagine that he could eventually become something a bit more than the helpless but caring Mr Amy "punching bag" Pond.

No, the man only risked his own life to help someone he had only just met - without having any need to do so whatsoever.

There are ways to be a hero without having to tote a laser gun to shoot the baddies. What Rory did was actually much braver than that.

[Lusankya]

No no, I didn't mean that it was the ganger Doctor from the current episode - I meant that the Doctor used the same tech to make a regular remote control ganger and used that. Not a sentient living ganger, but one he uses as an avatar himself. So the future Doctor would be sitting in a harness somewhere out of sight and remote controlling the one we saw.

I don't think the Doctor would do that. He was empathising with the Flesh from the first time he came into contact with it - well before the gangers gained proper independence. I can't see him deliberately leading even a controlled ganger to death except under very dire circumstances, such as whole worlds or the universe relying him doing so. He certainly wouldn't do such a thing merely in order to circumvent his own death. It's not in his character to do so.

[Broomstick]

Absolutely not - the Doctor has repeatedly shown a willingness to die himself rather than send someone else to their death (nevermind he's also committed genocide on occasion). Such a scenario would have the Doctor and the Doctorganger stumbling over each other in an attempt by each to save the other, assuming a Doctorganger pretty much is the Doctor.

I really hope the Doctorganger doesn't devolve into a cliched Evil Twin. I'm hoping they're more inventive than that.

[Revy]

Okay, then I'm back to square one and not having a clue how he pulls it off. Unless he does some kind of time loop twist temporal copy of himself, so the only person who dies is his actual self. That, or the whole thing was just an SFX show and River was in on it from the get go.

Has anyone figured out what all that stuff at the start was? How he kept turning up in history books and old tv shows? I never did figure out what he was trying to do with that, I mean it didn't seem necessary.

[Lusankya]

Eh. That stuff was probably "it's the first episode of the season, and we have to remind everyone who's forgotten what this show is about that this guy can Time Travel".

Also, it all seems like something that the cute Doctor would do. It fits in with his quirky sense of humour. He also possibly thinks that it's "cool".

[Broomstick]

Has anyone figured out what all that stuff at the start was? How he kept turning up in history books and old tv shows? I never did figure out what he was trying to do with that, I mean it didn't seem necessary.

He is a bit of a show-off.

According to Amy, he was trying to get the attention of the Ponds*. When they meet up with the Doctor in Utah after getting off the yellow bus if you listen you can hear Amy refer to this and the Doctor calls her "Stalker". It's quick and relatively quiet.

It's not necessary in one sense, but it does establish some of the Doctor's character. This regeneration seems much more of a meddler than some of the prior ones, and he doesn't seem to mind being spotted at it either. Then again, it's not like there's anyone to stop him, unlike earlier versions where the Time Lords got mad at him for mucking about, put him on trial at times, and so forth.


* Does anyone remember that Rory's last name is Williams? Traditionally, that would make them the "Williamses" and Amy now "Amy Williams" but the Doctor still calls Amy "Pond" and he calls Rory "Mr. Pond". Either they're a non-traditional couple re: naming conventions or it's just the Doctor being the Doctor again. Also note that while he calls Amy by "Pond" he always calls Rory just Rory when it's not Mr. Pond.

[2000AD]

1) How The Doctor lasted 200 years on one regeneration - assuming that wasn't a blatant lie, but let's go with it for now. Since Two he's been lucky to go even 10 years in a body, much less 200 years. That has bothered me since the series opener. But, if gangers are in some way more durable (possible, with their flesh being at least potentially more malleable) then maybe a ganger Doctor could last 200 years. Hell, maybe even 1103 years since crawling out of a vat of goo. We just don't know.

Why is The Doctor lasting 200 years on one regen seen as a problem needing explanation? Of the 9 regens we know the details of only 1 has been because of natural causes, the first one. If we take the 900 and something year age that's oft quoted then with your estimate of 10 years per regen average still puts his age at the first regen at over 800 years.
So 200 years isn't a stretch, all he has to do is avoid getting killed.

[Broomstick]

That's the problem, isn't it? Avoiding getting killed. Have you noticed this guy's lifestyle?

According to Sexy Thing they've been together for 700 years. Assuming he isn't lying wildly about his age (something he actually has been accused of as far back as Four, by Lady Romana, and claims by Three of already being thousand or plural thousands of years old), that means his first 200 years were presumably spent on Gallifrey, which was presumably pretty safe and tame. (Apparently too tame for both the Doctor and Sexy). One was, I hate to say it, a bit of a coward less aggressively brave than subsequent regenerations and supposedly was around 500-700 when he first regenerated. So... that's probably around the "natural" lifespan of a Gallifreyan before Time Lord technology gave them a way to cheat death.

Which means 10 regenerations over as many as 400 years (by one end of the range of possible age) or 10 in 200 years. Given that some of his life takes place off-screen, so that what we see in a run of an incarnation is only part of what he experiences, he's still going through bodies at a pretty good clip. As you noted, only one of these death's was natural. Since then it's been

2 to 3 - forced regeneration by the Time Lords
3 to 4 - radiation
4 to 5 - fell off a tower (keep in mind, he seems able to fall 30 feet, get up, and not just walk but run away so it was quite a fall)
5 to 6 - lethal dose of poison/toxin
6 to 7 - radiation/energy overload
7 to 8 - caught in crossfire then subject to medical technology that didn't agree with him
8 to 9 - we didn't get to see that one, but it may have been during the Time War which would argue against natural death
9 to 10 - radiation/energy overload (again)
10 to 11 - radiation megadose (again!)

His regenerations aren't nicely spaced out, they're concentrated into his relatively recent history. So... nine times out of ten he "dies" it's unnatural causes. Assuming he maintains the same lifestyle - and there are no signs he will do otherwise - the odds rather heavily favor Eleven not lasting more than 20 years on his own timeline at best. Some versions of the Doctor have much shorter "lives" than others. Thus, the odds of him ever experiencing a "natural" death by old age ever again are rather low, and lasting 200 years with the same face likewise extremely low. More likely, given his current pattern, he'd regenerate at least ten more times over 200 years.

The other thing is, Time Lords do age (despite Ten telling Rose the contrary, but hey, given the way he goes through bodies it's probably easier to put it that way than "I get my damn fool self nearly killed on a regular basis"). So, if he DID keep the same face 200 years you would expect it to age... but he didn't. And it's not like the BBC can't afford age effects (Ten got a lot of that during a season finale at one point).

So...

1) Either the "1103" Doctor in "The Impossible Astronaut" is lying (possible)
2) Or he didn't age (which seems to contradict what little canon exists in the Whoniverse)
3) He regenerated into the same form twice (not explicitly forbidden, but seems unlikely as no other character using Time Lord regeneration has ever done that, though Lady Romana did copy the appearance of someone else for her regeneration)
4) 1103 was using a perception filter
5) Despite what OldCanton said, it wasn't the real Doctor. Whatever "real" might mean in this context, as a Doctorganger apparently, once stabilized, would have Time Lord anatomy.

Word of Matt Smith is that the upcoming episode "The Almost People" has a massive cliffhanger at the end of it, which I confess makes it more intriguing for me than it would otherwise be, one that he said "knocked me out of my chair" when he first read the script. I'm guessing that has to do with how the spare Doctor is eliminated. If the Gallifreyan Doctor is the one killed (and remember, it's been hinted/rumored/etc. that one of the principal characters gets killed off for real this series) that would leave the Doctorganger as the real Doctor going forward... which really would "change everything" in a sense, wouldn't it? And what have we been hearing? About how everything will change?

It's the only way I can see at this juncture to kill the Doctor for real but still have the Doctor around for the future.

It could also account for the "fall farther than he ever has before line" because, really, what is it going to do to Doctorganger to see the original Doctor die, particularly if Doctorganger expected to be the temporary guy (if that even applies - I suspect Doctorganger would have the same survival drive as the original Doctor). I mean, that's gotta seriously mess with his head.

Is that what's going to happen? Damn if I know. I want to watch the next episode not so much because I care about the acid miners and their stupid castle but because I want to know how they resolve the two Doctor dilemna and what that cliffhanger is.

Edit: because crap keeps occurring to me and I left out some punctuation.

[2000AD]

I know that given the lifestyle he has he's unlikely to have a regen last 200 years, but I was making the point that it isn't something that is impossible and as long as he doesn't get himself killed (and he has a lot of experience of getting out of dangerous situations intact) it shouldn't be considered strange for a regen to last less than half as long as his current longest regen.

As for the lack of apparent ageing, as you pointed out we haven't had a chance to watch him age naturally before as he keeps getting himself killed. Chances are time lords appearence changes with age a hell of a lot slower than humans given their much longer life spans.

[NecronLord]

As you noted, only one of these death's was natural. Since then it's been

One's death wasn't natural either, though it was age related. He was killed by the energy drain from Mondas, he's progressively weaker and weaker throughout Tenth Planet.

He also survived for some time exposed to an aging weapon used by the Daleks that crumbled a woman with him to ashes, the season before. While that was reversed, it's implied that it's not all the way, so you can add some extra time to his natural span there.

[Bedlam]

Does anyone remember that Rory's last name is Williams? Traditionally, that would make them the "Williamses" and Amy now "Amy Williams" but the Doctor still calls Amy "Pond" and he calls Rory "Mr. Pond". Either they're a non-traditional couple re: naming conventions or it's just the Doctor being the Doctor again. Also note that while he calls Amy by "Pond" he always calls Rory just Rory when it's not Mr. Pond.

I think thats mentioned in the wedding episode, the Doctor calls Rory "Mr Pond" and he says that Amy's actually Mrs Williams now then they look at Any and agree that yeh, he's Mr Pond. So I guess the names on the wedding certificate is Mr and Mrs Williams, but Rory realises that Amys the more dominant partner in the relationship and if she wants him to be Mr Pond he can go along with that.

[Broomstick]

Yep, I remember that. The Other Half and I were watching when he nudged me and said "Is that like when we used to hang around airports I was Mr. Broomstick?" Yeah, I guess so.

Rory is quite laid back about such things, apparently.

[Lusankya]

Even thought he Doctorganger will, once stabilised, become a near perfect replica of the Doctor, the Doctorganger's cells will still be "younger" than the original Doctor's, and would not have undergone any regenerations. The BBC's got to be starting to think around this stage, "How do we deal with the fact that the Doctor only has one regeneration left?" Replacing the Doctor with a new Doctor who is 100% the same as the original, save for the fact that he is much younger would be one way for the BBC to continue milking the cash cow making quality entertainment well into the future.

[neoolong]

Not necessarily. I believe the Time Lords offered the Master another regeneration before in The Five Doctors; the limitation seeming to be artificial in nature and not something that necessarily always has to just stop. And there's the throwaway line in that episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures.

[NecronLord]

Even if it's an artificial limit, the Master at least, couldn't remove it.