Grade: A
Overall, this mid-season two-parter is quite intense. There is a bit of lagging in the middle of the story, but we get a gripping premise, a set of interesting secondary characters, some huge steps forward in the season-long story arc, fascinating situations for the main characters, and a few bits of spectacular CGI to go along with the very convincing and imaginative set. Definitely a solid, enjoyable installment, complete with a major twist ending.
In the 22nd century, the Doctor, Amy, and Rory arrive on a desolate island bearing what appear to be the dilapidated remains of a medieval convent. Exploring the structure, they discover that the majority of the interior has been outfitted as a futuristic factory, the most noticeable element being a collection of harnesses bearing unconscious human forms. Confronted by a delegation of the factory staff, a shocked Amy notes that the people they're speaking with are exact duplicates of the unconscious figures strapped to the harnesses. The Doctor bluffs his way into the facility by claiming to be a meteorologist sent to investigate the effects of a recent solar storm; Cleaves, the officer in charge of the factory, confirms that they felt the effects of the storm, but escaped without major damage to the plant. The Doctor warns her that another, bigger solar flare is on the way, and that the factory, which is employed in mining and pumping a corrosive acid to the mainland, should be shut down at all costs. Meanwhile, Cleaves allows the supposed inspectors into a central room of the factory, which contains a large vat of unidentifiable white matter. She explains that recent developments in technology have allowed the matter, referred to as the Flesh, to be manipulated into exact copies of any given life-form; she and the rest of the five workers are all themselves remote-controlled doppelgängers, or Gangers, of the real staff located in the harnesses. This easy production of disposable bodies allows a small group of workers to man the entire factory, as the Ganger bodies can die or be injured as often as need be without damage to their originals. A young woman named Jennifer, the only original currently out of her harness, plugs herself back in and creates another Ganger; the duplicate emerges from the Flesh within a span of seconds as the Doctor and his companions observe. Examining the Flesh, the Doctor experiences a frightening moment in which he claims that the matter was scanning him; unsettled, he continues his insistence that the factory must be shut down as quickly as possible before the next solar flare strikes, but Cleaves refuses to cease production until she receives orders from the mainland. Leaving with Amy and Rory, the Doctor takes it upon himself to reach the weathervane which channels solar energy into the factory and attempt to disable it before the flare can strike; however, he doesn't reach it in time and is knocked unconscious as a massive flare hits the factory. Elsewhere, the factory crew are jolted awake in their harnesses, as their Ganger doubles flicker back and forth between a fully human appearance and half-formed flesh.
An indeterminate amount of time later, the Doctor revives alone in a courtyard beneath the weathervane, while Amy and Rory regain consciousness inside the factory. Proceeding to the main control room, they find the original factory crew, badly shocked, disoriented and painfully detaching themselves from their harnesses. Jennifer appears particularly perturbed, and Rory is forced to calm her as she becomes rapidly hysterical. The Doctor appears shortly afterward, inquiring anxiously after the state of the Gangers, and explaining that he believes them all to have been unconscious for far longer than any of them suspect. Cleaves confidently assures him that the Gangers revert to unformed flesh as soon as the link with their controller is broken; however, a record which one of the men recognizes as his own begins playing elsewhere in the monastery, and the group in the control room slowly realize that they're not alone in the building. Proceeding through the factory, which has become riddled with dangerous acid leaks, the originals enter a dining hall to discover that all of their possessions have been gone through. The Doctor explains that the solar storm not only severed the links between the Gangers and their controllers, but have animated the Gangers into individual entities with all of the memories and personality traits of their originals. To the originals' indignation, he claims that the Gangers have as much right to their possessions as the former controllers, and that they have taken nothing but what the originals willing gave them. Jennifer, claiming to be overcome, runs to a restroom with Rory worriedly following her; there, her face begins morphing back and forth between human and Flesh, and in a panic she assaults Rory, displaying an ability to contort her Flesh body to impossibly extremes. Back in the dining hall, the Doctor tricks Cleaves into taking a hot plate from the microwave, revealing her inability to properly distinguish physical sensations and proving her to be a Ganger as well. Despite the Doctor's sympathetic offers of help, Cleaves morphs into her Flesh face and runs from the hall.
After running from her in the restroom, Rory re-encounters Jennifer, still half-Flesh but more emotionally stable. She tells him stories of her life as a young girl, fervently claiming herself to be a real person, and not just a factory part. Touched, and obviously recalling his own past as a plastic duplicate, Rory promises to protect her. Meanwhile, Amy begins to suspect that the Doctor knows more about the Flesh than he's letting on; exploring the site of their landing, the Doctor finds the TARDIS sunk to its roof in a pool of acidic ground, leaving both humans and Gangers without an escape route from the island. Amy and several original crew members eventually locate Rory and Jennifer, and Amy is surprised to find her husband determinedly defending the Ganger. Discovering that the Gangers minus Jennifer have laid claim to all of the protective suits in the building, the entire group proceeds to a central room of the factory. Approaching the small cohort of Gangers sequestered in a control room, the Doctor convinces them to attempt making peace with their originals; he leads the Gangers, who are maintaining their full human forms with difficulty, to the room in which Rory and Amy have retreated with the originals. This marks the first meeting of the entire contingent of factory inhabitants, with original Jennifer and Cleaves being the only ones missing. The majority of the originals initially react to their Gangers with disgust, despite the Gangers offering ample proof that they possess all of the memories and experiences of their former controllers; meanwhile, the Doctor is forced to borrow a pair of shoes to replace his own, which have been destroyed by the acid pools. Slowly, the tension in the room begins to ease; however, everything is disrupted when the original Cleaves, furious at what she views as the Doctor's betrayal, arrives in the room with an electrified weapon. After she viciously refers to the Gangers as mistakes which need to be annihilated, the argument culminates in Cleaves opening fire upon one of the Gangers; to the Doctor's rage and horror, the man dies instantly. The negotiations for peace irrevocably shattered, the Gangers retreat back the stronghold where they have stored their acid suits. To the Doctor's frustration, both sides choose to draw dividing lines between originals and Gangers, with the original Cleaves encouraging the former controllers to resist the Gangers' encroachment on their lives at any cost, while Ganger Jennifer rallies the other Gangers against the originals. Original Jennifer wanders the halls of the factory lost and alone, the only member of the staff not to have chosen a side. Realizing this, Ganger Jennifer sets out to destroy her original self while the Doctor warns Cleaves that she crossed a line in murdering one of the Gangers, who will now be returning with a major advantage. Learning that the factory's most defendable and fortified room is the former chapel, the Doctor and original factory staff begin heading in that direction with the intention of procuring a stronghold against the Ganger onslaught. En route, however, Rory hears the distressed cries of the original Jennifer, who is being stalked by her Ganger, and, ignoring Amy's pleas, sets out to help her. As the Gangers approach, the Doctor and Amy are forced to barricade themselves into the chapel without Rory. As the original factory workers prepare to defend the door against the Gangers, the Doctor and Amy begin to hear the Doctor's voice emerging from another portion of the room; shocked into silence, they watch as a Ganger version of the Doctor, features still half-formed Flesh, emerges from the shadows and tells Amy to trust him.
As Part Two opens, the Ganger Doctor writhes in agony as he attempts to cope with his myriad of lifetimes, cycling frantically through memories of his various regenerations. The original Doctor attempts to console his Ganger while the original factory workers desperately defend the chapel door against the onslaught from outside; as the Ganger Doctor slowly regains his equilibrium, both he and his original, distinguishable only by their footwear, begin searching for an alternate escape route, while privately agreeing that their long-term plan should be to rescue as many humans and their counterparts as possible. The acid-suited Gangers burst through the chapel door only to find that the originals have fled through a small drainage pipe; deducing what her own plan would likely be in a similar circumstance, Ganger Cleaves guesses that her original will lead the escapees to an evacuation tower, where she can restore enough power to send a signal through to the mainland. True to form, as the group from the chapel begin suffering from a noxious gas as a result of the puddles of acid making contact with the stone of the monastery, original Cleaves leads her group to the evacuation tower, aware that without acid suits, their lives are in peril as long as they occupy the lower levels of the factory. As soon as they arrive at the tower, both Doctors set to work as restoring the room's power, reveling in each other's company; however, a chill is thrown over their dynamic when Amy makes clear her preference for the original Doctor, believing the other to be an empty, meaningless copy. The original staff show the original Doctor similarly preferential treatment, despite both Doctors' disgust at the situation. As the original Doctor plans to retrieve the TARDIS from its encasement in the acid pool, Amy follows the Ganger Doctor into a corridor outside; after awkwardly apologizing for her attitude towards him, she hesitantly inquires whether he is able to die. When he doesn't respond, she tells him that she has witnessed the moment of the Doctor's death, and inquires point-blank whether it might have been the Ganger instead. However, rather than responding to her questions, the Ganger Doctor blindly lashes out at her, unable to cope with the overwhelming pain of the myriad of Gangers who have been "decommissioned" on the island. Terrified by the Ganger Doctor's outburst of rage, Amy demands that he be kept away from her; meanwhile, in the chapel, Ganger Jennifer has a similar experience, remembering in horror the multitude of times her consciousness has died. Galvanized into action, she convinces the others, even the reluctant Cleaves, to join her in a plan to destroy the originals once and for all.
Back in the evacuation tower, the power is successfully restored, allowing the original Cleaves to get in touch with a rescue mission on the mainland; predicting her original's movements, Ganger Cleaves intercepts the call, and the Gangers learn that the originals plan on being air-lifted from the evacuation tower while an emergency squad is left behind to exterminate the Gangers. Rory, still wandering the abandoned monastery corridors in pursuit of Jennifer, eventually encounters two versions of her, both claiming to be the original. The argument devolves into a fight between the Jennifers, culminating in one of them being thrown in a puddle of acid, where she promptly melts. The other hastily leads a horrified Rory away from the scene, claiming that if they can make it to a specific control room, they should be able to clear the noxious air. Arriving there, Jennifer uses a scan of Rory's hand to gain access to the humanity-locked factory controls, where she adjusts several settings; in the evacuation tower, Cleaves notes in bewilderment that Jennifer and Rory have disabled the factory's temperature stabilizers, which will cause the acid stores to rise to dangerous heat levels and begin a series of deadly explosions. Cleaves manages to briefly contact the mainland, telling the incoming shuttle that the evacuation tower is no longer a viable rescue point; however, the power to the room cuts off before she is able to give a pre-established code word. In another room, still relatively safe from the acid explosions, Ganger Cleaves is able to pick up contact with the shuttle and transfer the code word, thus re-routing the shuttle's course to a location only known by the Gangers.
Elsewhere, Rory and Jennifer, making their way through the castle corridors, encounter a heap of half-disintegrated Flesh bodies, some former Jennifer Gangers among them. In horror, Rory realizes that the Gangers are regularly melted down and discarded while still conscious, leaving them in extended agony. He claims that the world should be made aware of how the Gangers are treated, and Jennifer convinces him to trust her. The Ganger Doctor discovers the body of the original Jennifer in an abandoned courtyard, but is knocked unconscious by a distrustful original before he can alert Rory of the danger he's in. As the group of original workers, including the Doctors and Amy, make their way from the evacuation tower, Rory joins up with them; he claims that Jennifer has discovered an escape route from the main acid repository, and that the entire group should be able to leave through it. Despite Cleaves' doubts, they are left with no other option and proceed to the supposed exit; however, as soon as the entire group of originals is inside, Jennifer closes and locks the door, leaving only herself and the other Gangers, as well as Rory, outside the room. Revealing herself to have been a Ganger all along, she drags a terrified and infuriated Rory away with her, bringing him to a relatively safe dining hall along with the other Gangers. To Rory's horror, the Ganger Doctor refuses to let him leave the hall; believing the Doctor to have sided with the other Gangers, Rory succumbs to despair, while the group trapped inside the locked chamber try in vain to stem the rising flow of hot acid. Just as the situation becomes desperate, a holographic call comes through from the mainland; scheduled by the Doctor earlier in the day, it is the five-year-old son of Jimmy, one of the factory workers. Seeing the child he regards as his own son and realizing that boy's original father is going to die at any moment, Ganger Jimmy rushes from the room to release the entrapped group, with Cleaves supporting his decision. As Jimmy reaches the acid chamber and unlocks the door, Ganger Jennifer leaves the dining hall in a fury, planning on wreaking her own revenge without the aid of the other Gangers. Ganger Jimmy rushes into the acid chamber just as his original is hit with a scalding blast of the corrosive liquid and dies within moments, bequeathing his former life to his Ganger. With everyone except for Jennifer exhausted of the destructive conflict between the originals and the Gangers, the Doctor collects the rag-tag remnants of the factory staff and leads them in an alternate direction, to an underground corridor where he predicts the TARDIS should land after sinking through the acid-soaked earth. On the way, however, the group encounters Jennifer, driven mad with hatred and transformed into a monstrous Flesh creature intent on killing them all. They are able to fend her off until they reach the TARDIS, but lose one of the original workers in the process; upon arriving at their destination, Ganger Cleaves and the original Doctor declare their intent to stay and fight the monster, which the Doctor believes he can neutralize with his screwdriver. Amy protests in horror at this development; however, the Doctors quietly inform her that they switched shoes earlier in the day, and that she has been interacting with the Ganger Doctor as the original, and vice versa. Humiliated and ashamed, Amy apologizes to the Ganger Doctor for her treatment of him, and hugs him affectionately; however, she is thrown off when he cryptically tells her to "push". With the mutant Jennifer just outside the door, the departing group leaves in the TARDIS, while the remaining Doctor sets the screwdriver to disable Flesh creatures; he uses it against Jennifer, simultaneously destroying himself and Cleaves.
As the Doctor deposits the factory workers, some of them former Gangers who have been permanently stabilized by the TARDIS energy, at their various destinations, he expresses the hope that Cleaves will be able to use her story to make a positive change in the way that the Flesh is misused. As Cleaves bids them farewell and departs for a press conference in a mainland factory, Amy begins complaining of severe abdominal pain. The three retreat into the TARDIS, and the Doctor distractedly informs them that Amy is going into labor. Upon Amy and Rory's incredulous, frightened response, he admits that he had a prior interest in the Flesh and intentionally brought them to the monastery in order to examine the Ganger technology in its early stages. As Amy panics, the Doctor orders Rory to stand away from her; despite his misgivings, Rory follows the Doctor's orders. Gently, the Doctor assures Amy that however far away she has been taken, they will find her. She insists that she is present in the TARDIS, but he sadly informs her that he hasn't been with them for a long time. Using his screwdriver, he dissolves her into a puddle of Flesh, causing her to wake up in her real body, heavily pregnant and contained in a medical chamber. A woman gazing in at her from above tells Amy to push, and she screams in terror and pain as she goes into labor.
The moral and ethical underpinnings of this two-parter are its major plot-driving elements; after the initial, obvious questions regarding the value and nature of beings only technically non-human, we are handed a duplicate set of secondary characters who are forced into battle against each other, as each pair of doubles grows further apart in their aims, beliefs, and personalities. The original Cleaves starts out as a hate-filled, psychotic bigot with a gentle, quietly sardonic Ganger who gradually influences her controller to a more balanced view of the world; conversely, both Jennifers begin as sweet, slightly naive young women who are spun out of control by unrelenting circumstances, as one allows her rage and desire for vengeance to consume her, leading to the death of the other. The Doctor, caught in the middle, is forced into an even more difficult situation as a duplicate of his own makes an untimely appearance.
Throughout the story, the main cast is divided in odd ways, with Rory spending the majority of his time either alone or with one of the Jennifers, a state of affairs Amy takes issue with. Her objection to the Gangers as a group becomes more apparent after the Doctor's duplicate appears, leading her to side violently with the "original" Doctor and disparaging the Ganger's ability to measure up, a viewpoint she is forced to rescind when the Doctors reveal their ruse. The exact point at which the Doctors swapped shoes is left unresolved, leaving several questions unanswered. It would appear that, due to Amy's candid conversation with what she believed to be the Ganger Doctor, the original is now aware of his impending death and the actions he is destined to take regarding it.
After the Doctor manages to resolve the situation with a limited measure of success, the episode packs its final punch: the revelation of Amy's true nature. The journey to the factory was no chance adventure, but a vital part of the Doctor's overall plan, as he looks to examine the early stages of the technology by which Amy has been duplicated. The crude edges appear to have been filed off the process by the time the Ganger of Amy is created, as the unwieldy harnesses appear no longer necessary, and all glitches regarding the operation of the Flesh have been ironed out. Examining the pattern in Amy's choice of clothes in Season 6, she would appear to have been duplicated somewhere in between her short-lived domesticity with Rory and her journey to America on the Doctor's behest. Overall, this installment raises even more pressing questions than it answers, questions we will certainly have to wait to have resolved.
Complaints:
- As mentioned above, the narrative drags along the middle, especially towards the end of the first half, in which cryptic running about on the part of nearly every character makes rather poorly-disguised filler for time during which it is clear the plot had nowhere much to go.
- There are quite a few instances in which it is nearly impossible to distinguish between original and Ganger or Ganger and Ganger, plot-wise. On a first viewing or in deliberately ambiguous scenes this is obviously par for the course, but even on multiple careful rewatches the script/editing remains rather vague and muddled in this regard. The distinction could have used clarifying in several spots.
- Rory and Jennifer's storyline really deserved to go somewhere slightly more complex than where it did; we had a subtle, intricate emotional bond established between them in the first episode, only for Jennifer to become an evil, manipulative villain in almost no time flat in the second half. The murder of one of their own kind was admittedly traumatic for the entire group of Gangers, but Jennifer was given virtually no time to internalize the occurrence before abruptly changing her attitude and allegiance to become the designated antagonist of the piece.
Thoughts:
- The interaction between the two Doctors is one of the highlights of the episode; they play off of one another incredibly well, and it's hinted towards the end that the Flesh Doctor may make a later reappearance. One can only hope.
- Presumably, the original Doctor is now aware of his future death, marking the first major advancement in said subplot established at the beginning of the season.
- The effects in these episodes are overwhelmingly good, but the set in particular deserves mention. It struck just the right balance between "medieval ruins" and "futuristic factory", and was thoroughly convincing from first to last.
- The last five minutes of the story are particularly outstanding; the quiet, serene farewell to Cleaves (filmed on yet another gorgeous set piece) segueing nicely into the terror and confusion of the episode's final moments, as a decidedly not-pregnant Amy begins experiencing labor pains. Amy panics, Rory panics, the Doctor is cryptic and pained and obviously not telling everything he knows. As he "decommissions" Amy and she awakens in a claustrophobic tube, heavily pregnant, with the woman who has been looking into her life for months peering in at her, the tension and fear work perfectly to propel the audience into the next episode.
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