The final push to the mid-series finale has begun. Neil Gaiman set a high quality bar last week, let’s see if Matthew Graham can match it with the final two parter of the first half of Series 6. Here is my review of Episode 5: The Rebel Flesh.

WARNING – THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS, INCLUDING A FULL PLOT SUMMARY – READ AT YOUR OWN RISK – YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

NOTE: The Plot Summary will be in normal type, my comments will be in bold.

On an island in the 22nd century, Jennifer (Sarah Smart) , Buzzer and Jimmy are walking around an abandoned monastery. They enter a room and open a large vat, making sure their acid suits are fully closed, to reveal a large amount of acid. Why are they mining acid? What possible use could the mainland have for it? Jennifer accidentally pushes Buzzer into the vat, but they seem more concerned with the loss of the suit than Buzzer. Oops. More paperwork to fill out. Some things never change. As Jennifer and Jimmy leave, Buzzer enters with no suit, though he is still seen in the vat of acid. And, the real Buzzer is looking for Workman’s Comp. Hilarious. “No one was hurt.” Tell that to the melting duplicate. And, 2:45 in, here are the opening titles.

In the TARDIS, the Doctor (Matt Smith) is scanning Amy (Karen Gillan) for pregnancy, and is still getting strange readings. Meanwhile, Amy and Rory are playing darts, and Rory (Arthur Darville) is “rubbishy, rubbishy, rubbish.” The Doctor tries to get rid of Rory and Amy,  but Amy is having none of it. “Whatever you’re up to, I personally would like to be a part of it.” The TARDIS gets hit by a solar tsunami, and ends up on the island. Fantastic SFX of the tsunami. Hilarious crash scene “Assume the position.” This scene contains one of my favorite lines from the episode. The Doctor: “Behold, a cockerel.” The Doctor notices a supply pipe, and deduces that it’s there to pump acid off the island to the mainland. Also, whoever is here, they seem to like Dusty Springfield. But, as the Doctor says “who doesn’t?” By the way, why does the Doctor pull a snowglobe out of his pocket? They enter the monastery, setting off the alarm. The Doctor: “There are people coming. Well, almost.” Amy: “Almost coming?” The Doctor: “Almost people.” Well, now my curiosity is peaked. They enter a room full of harnesses in which people are sleeping. Alarm Voice: “Halt, and remain calm.” The Doctor: “Well, we’ve halted. How are we all doing on the calm front?” They are quickly surrounded by exact doubles of the people in harnesses (including Jennifer, Buzzer and Jimmy). They pretend to be from the meteorological department, and warn them that a bigger solar wave than the one they just survived is on the way. The Doctor asks to see their “critical system”.

Miranda Cleaves (apparently the leader) leads them to a vat of ‘flesh’; fully programmable matter which they can manipulate to replicate any living organisms. Thats’ right. It’s time for this series’ mysterious goo. They reveal that all the workers in the room (apart from Jennifer) are flesh, being controlled by the real people in the harnesses, as the site is too dangerous; they were losing a worker every week. With flesh ‘gangers’, they can mind the site without putting anyone in danger. The Doctor seems concerned with their low opinion of the flesh, stating that it is a ‘living thing’. Jennifer leaves to create her ganger. The Doctor scans the flesh, but instead feels it scanning him. As Jennifer steps into the harness, the Doctor, Amy and Rory watch flesh pour into a tub. “The Meter is running.” The liquid flesh drains, leaving an exact copy of Jennifer.The part of this scene where the face forms out of the goo is really creepy.

The Doctor reminds them of the solar wave, but Cleaves refuses to let the team leave the island. She’s quite cold, that one. Gosh, I hope nothing happens to jeopardize their safety….. The Doctor notes that the factory runs on solar energy, meaning there will be a huge power surge when the wave hits. Jennifer directs them to the monitoring station. The Doctor sees that the solar energy is absorbed via the weather vane, and heads up to the roof. “I’ve got to get to that cockerel before all hell breaks loose.” Classic Doctor line. Acid pipes begin to leak everywhere, including near the TARDIS, which begins dissolving the ground around it. Acid spills out everywhere. The TARDIS? Fine. The ground it’s sitting on? Not so much. As the power surge occurs, the gangers switch between their full human forms and their semi-flesh forms. This is a creepy little split-second scene.

The Doctor is knocked back from the weather vane, and wakes up on the roof to see the vane gone and the stump smoking. Rory and Amy, also having be knocked unconscious, wake up. Rory: “For want of a better word, ow.” Great line. The Doctor greets the real Cleaves, who is deeply shaken and worried for her team. Oh, NOW she’s worried. He reveals that they’ve been unconscious for an hour, rather than a few minutes as Cleaves believed. Amy and Rory return to the harness room to find everyone awake. Jennifer is apparently in a state of shock, and Rory comforts her as Amy watches. The Doctor and Cleaves join them, and Cleaves says that the gangers should have returned to pure flesh, but is interrupted by someone playing Jimmy’s record- the gangers are controlling themselves. Cleaves should know that “should have” is a dirty phrase in Doctor Who.

The group run to the main room, where they discover that everything has been searched. The Doctor explains that the gangers were searching for confirmation of their identities. The workers have trouble accepting the fact that they gave their identities away, and that all their possessions are equally the possessions of their gangers. This line of reasoning does not sit well with the “Originals.” Jennifer begins to feel ill and heads to the toilets, quickly followed by Rory. is Rorey going to go to the LADIES ROOM with her?

In the toilets, Jennifer vomits up flesh. GROSS! Suddenly terrified upon realizing she is a ganger, she disappears into one of the cubicles. When Rory steps in front of the mirror, her arm extends and she punches through the door, aiming for and missing him. Ladies and Gentleman, Plastic Girl! Her neck then extends through the hole in the cubicle door, and she tells Rory to “just let [the gangers] live!” She looks a bit like Prisoner Zero in snake form. Rory runs out of the room.

In the main room, the Doctor heats up some food as Jimmy talks about arming themselves. The Doctor says that, as Jimmy isn’t a violent man, there is no reason why his ganger should be. The Doctor hands Cleaves a hot plate, but she doesn’t feel it. He explains that her nerve endings aren’t what they should be, though he reassures her that she’ll stabilise. Cleaves turns away, and turns back with a flesh face, revealing herself as a ganger. And now, let the paranoia commence. She proclaims that “[the gangers] are living!” and runs out. Amy remembers Rory and goes to search for him with Jimmy and the Doctor. “Always with the Rory.” They arrive at the toilets and realize that Jennifer is a ganger. The Doctor says that, though they aren’t violent, they are scared, and that he needs to talk to them if he’s going to fix it. He runs off to get the TARDIS, and Amy goes to look for Rory.

Rory finds Jennifer’s ganger, who tells him how when she was a little girl, she got lost. She expresses that she is Jennifer Lucas, and does not feel like a mere factory part. She takes offense when Rory asks her where the real Jennifer is, and she takes on full human form. This is a very well acted scene. You can really feel Jennifer’s pain.

The Doctor returns to the vat of flesh and scans it again before leaving. The tub fills with flesh again, and drains enough to reveal a mouth that says “Trust me.” Anybody else see where this is leading? The Doctor returns to where he left the TARDIS to find only the top inches remaining above ground, and he also realises that he’s burnt his shoes. Meanwhile, all the gangers except for Jennifer have gathered with the remaining acid suits. And, what is the real Cleaves doing hiding in the shadows?

While searching for Rory, Amy sees the Eye Patch Lady again. Rory and Ganger Jennifer find Amy, as do Buzzer and Dicken. Rory says that the ganger needs protection, and says that “no one touches her”. Amy is visibly concerned at her husband’s sudden affection for another woman. The group return to the main room with Jimmy, and the Doctor soon arrives with the rest of the gangers in full human form. He explains that the gangers are now truly alive, and that can’t be changed. The Ganger Jimmy confirms this as he explains what happened the day his son was born. The real Cleaves enters, refuses to work with the gangers, and kills the Ganger Buzzer, using an electric probe. Well, so much for the spirit of co-operation. The Gangers conclude that the humans can’t be trusted and run out. Cleaves tells the humans that it’s war, as does the Ganger Jennifer with the gangers.

The humans go to take refuge in the chapel. Rory refuses to enter the chapel, and goes to search for Jennifer instead. The Doctor hears a voice and tells whoever is in the room to show themselves. A Ganger Doctor steps out of the shadows, saying “Trust me. I’m the Doctor.”

THE VERDICT: Last week, we basked in the glory that was Neil Gaiman, with a light-hearted romp that offered a brief respite from the gravitas that this series began with. This week, we were plunged back into the darkness with part one of a dark, creepy and, at times, quite scary story that takes it’s inspiration from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and John Carpenter’s the Thing. The setting of a 13 Century monastery is fairly creepy. The acid pumping is a situation I cannot remember seeing before, and it presents a plausible explanation of the need for the “gangers.” The “gangers” themselves are not a new concept by any means. Indeed, the idea of the clone or doppelganger is one of the oldest sci-fi ideas. But, in this case, the “gangers” are created from “The Flesh”, which is fully programmable matter. It looks like a big puddle of white goo, but it is really creepy when a face starts coming out of it. Anyway, the “gangers” are simply slaves, much like the Ood, having no memories or emotions and controlled by the “Original” from a harness. The “Originals” take a fairly cavalier attitude towards the “gangers”, treating them as simple servant stock who are readily expendable and easily replaceable. Again, as it did with the Ood, Doctor Who takes a harsh look at racial intolerance and slavery.  This is perhaps one of the darkest thing about this episode. The Frankenstein moment comes, not through means of a lightning bolt, but, though a solar storm. The storm causes a power surge which brings all of the gangers to life. The prejudice of one of the “originals” results in the death of a “ganger” and the battle lines are drawn. The Doctor is cloned himself, and it remains to be seen how this will affect the dynamic of the standoff. Also, one of the other things in this episode that sets it apart is the fact that it is Rory, not Amy, running off on his own this time. I like this bit of character development for Rory. The biggest problem with this episode is the pacing. Although things really get moving once the power surge brings the gangers to life, it seems to take FOREVER to get to that point. All of the exposition they go through once the TARDIS trio arrive, feels like it could have been shortened. The audience is able to grasp the situation long before they finish explaining it onscreen. I will say that the concluding portions of these episodes are quite scary as the gangers prepare for war and the humans run and hide. And, although you may have been able to figure it out and you might even be expecting it, the sight of the “ganger’ Doctor is still a little bit unnerving. This episode, while good, is definitely the unfortunate low point of series 6 thus far. I am holding out hope that next week’s episode can salvage the story, but I don’t suspect that it will redeem this episode any.