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Caves and Twins: The Almost People

The Almost People – the second part to Doctor Who’s take on The Thing, or Battlestar Galactica – or whatever.

The Almost People – the second part to Doctor Who’s take on The Thing, or Battlestar Galactica – or whatever.

Last week had some strong elements and a good cliffhanger, but it was all a little bit messy and confusing, like much of this series.

There were hints that something big was going to happen in this episode to set up next week’s mid-season finale, so are we going to start getting some answers?

Would we get Battlestar Galactica or, er, Battlestar Galactica?

Caves

I though the performances were generally up on last week, with some of the humans/gangers becoming recognisable characters.

Smith Docs – I enjoyed the interplay between the two and Smith’s performances – as well as the Doctor being at the centre of the story.

Climax – Obviously something involving Amy – and perhaps Rory too was coming – but this was a great shock pulled off with style by Moffatt.

Twins

CGI – CGI is always bloody awful. The scene with the discarded flesh – a scenes that should have been a powerful moment – was just embarrassing in how poor the effects were and the Jenny Monster was another tiresome revisitation of the Utterly Terrible New Series CGI Monster.

Jenny – An annoying and not believable character not portrayed especially well.

Characters acting out of character – In stories where plotting struggles characters begin to act out of a necessity to drive the plot along rather than believable motives. Rory’s behaviour was pretty unfathomable in this one – as was some of the Doctors’. Which leads us to…

Noble self-sacrifices – see above. Another familiar Nu series meme.

Smiths – While Smith did well in both parts it was horribly confusing to try and follow who was who (ahem). THis seemed to pay off in the climax, but if the two Doctors had swapped immediately then why was the real Doctor trying to strangle Amy?

Killing Amy – Didn’t the Doctor creaming Amy (!) negate the moral core of the previous 90 minutes? Arguably the flesh Amy (!) was simply an avatar rather than a sentient ganger, but it was another muddled point that didn’t come off well under analysis.


There was a lot wrong with this, but I still quite enjoyed it. It felt rather unlike any previous Doctor Who – and change is generally to be welcomed.

I’m still unsure about the series arc and the wisdom of leaving so many baffling answer hanging in the air and this story itself was quite hard to follow and didn’t really add up.

Still, another intriguing twist in what’s looking like the strangest series yet of Doctor Who. Let’s hope it all adds up in the end.