Note possible spoilers…
As you’ve probably noticed I’m reviewing certain episodes of season 6 and when the second half of the season premieres I’ll review every episode. Now lets get to the review shall we?
The Rebel Flesh began as a typical monster-ish episode where we were taught that everyone deserves to live, and it picked up with a war going to ensue between doppelgangers and their human counterparts. Now while I enjoyed the Rebel Flesh for what it was, it’s the Almost People, the second part of this two parter, that will go down in history, mostly for that ending.
The Rebel Flesh begins with the Doctor, Amy, and Rory, going to an island inhabited by workers who use living flesh to create ‘gangers’ of themselves to work with the dangerous equipment. If one dies, they just create a new one. But a solar storm causes everything to go awry, as per usual on Doctor Who.
The gangers just want to live and so on and so forth, and while the episode is certainly enjoyable, I always favor the second parts of the two parters for the payoff and boy was there a payoff in The Almost People.
With the Doctor encountering his own ‘ganger,’ at the end of The Rebel Flesh, it was time for some antics with the two Doctors and to teach Amy a lesson about how the flesh is still human. With some characters deaths, and the problem solved by the end of The Almost People it was time to go back to the TARDIS. However, there was one last twist that no one saw coming.
Throughout the season Amy has been seeing a woman with an eye patch pop up every so often and no one else can see her. The Doctor reveals the shocking truth, the reason they had to come to the island, and why Amy was suddenly in labor when she didn’t look pregnant. Its this ending, an ending that would make the Lost writers cry because they couldn’t write something this awesome, that makes The Almost People a historical episode.
You react physically when you see the truth, when you watch the scene unfold and you realize all along that you’ve been fooled. Your jaw drops and you utter one gasp as The Doctor explains it. The acting on the show has always been top notch and you feel every word and its that ending that makes the wait for the next episode unbearable.
Written By: Ariel Schmiedhauser
Twitter: @SchmidHappens48
