Right, Jésus, I’ll do it! I’ll do it under duress, but I’ll do it. “The Rebel Flesh” and “The Almost People” are dull. As a story it hardly feels inspired, and looks and sounds dreadful. I think I’ve made it clear before, I don’t like the base-under-siege stories all that much, and this is one of them. Landing flat once again because I don’t care about the people (or the “‘gangers”), I don’t think of them as people. That tends to be exacerbated by their Lady Dimitrescu complexion and the “Us Vs Them” story.

So in the 22nd century, we’re sending ethnically diverse groups of White people from Britain to a lone island in the middle of the sea, with a monastery on top of a metric ton of acid to mine it. This acid makes up part of what is later identified as something to do with the Cybermats, a white liquid with a lot of viscosity, used to create doppelgängers when people die during mining. Right, now we’re on the same page there, it looks like man liquid. You know what I am talking about, if you picked up those Doctor Who toys from series 6 with the Cybermats and kept “The Flesh,” it has become… sticky.

I also really don’t like the strong regional accents, and yes I’m including the Scottish one in there. It is possibly used to subconsciously say, “we can all work together” in a story about how humans will always see ‘other’ as scary. There is no defined region, no setting that gives a reason for them being there, they just work together. All of it is plot and little character, I know about Jimmy’s son but I don’t know anything else about Jimmy. I know Miranda has a blood clot, I know Buzzer’s dad was a postman, but I don’t know who they are. As far as the Soviet bloke played by David Warner in “Cold War” with the Walkman; I know he likes Western music because he’s singing Ultravox and tries to get Clara to sing Duran Duran.

So when it is life or death, I’m just left shrugging my shoulders. I don’t have any connection and when half the episode is trying to be clever by using both the ‘ganger and the real-version of each person, it leaves me bored. I say this trying to be clever because if you are paying any sort of attention you can pin down what happens next with shocking accuracy. For example, repeatedly you are told as a viewer, “the ‘gangers share all the memories with their human counterpart” and suddenly characters forget this so we can have a, “she knew all along” moment. Which just falls flat for me.

Beyond what it is setting up, beyond the basics of the series arc, it is just a normal story stretched to be two episodes. This will be the crux of my biggest issue with “A Good Man Goes to War,” what time is used here could be used to set up the army the Doctor calls upon Demon’s Run. So much of that episode is built around setting up who is coming to Demon’s Run and what the Doctor is building to take on that woman that has been appearing in the walls to Amy. Every one of these house calls are a favor to the Doctor, but he’s a 900-year-old man. He could call in a few more favors if you ask me.

In what could be a straightforward episode, one without the cliffhanger of the Doctor getting his own ‘ganger (would you like a Jelly Baby?), where the morality and horror-lite made the whole thing imbalanced, it didn’t need 90-minutes. Yes, the references are nice, the trick he and the Doctor play on what is meant to be Amy is also nice for the morality thing. Yet at every turn, I’m met with disinterest. It’s not a fun episode, it isn’t that interesting, and it is just getting us to the next point in the arc, so I was never going to enjoy it that much. If you ask me, we could have had a 45-minute long episode, made Amy that puddle of milk and moved on just the same.

It is not a bad story, it is just not my go-to idea of a story. Being brutally honest for a moment, I don’t think I’ll ever purposefully come back to it. I’ve said it before, I think about the world of Mathew Graham, Tony Jordan, and Ashely Pharoah’s police drama/time travel series, Life on Mars. Mathew Graham on his own? After “Fear Her” I’d have said no, again after “The Rebel Flesh” and “The Almost People,” I never want to see him touch Doctor Who. Anyway, Amy was a fake all this series and she’s really pushing out a little sprog at Demon’s Run.

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Dr Who "The Rebel Flesh" & "The Almost People"

4.5

Score

4.5/10

Pros

• Fun references to 1st, 3rd, 4th, and 10th Doctors.
• When focused, morality was played well.

Cons

• Needlessly dumb characters.
• A drab and lifeless setting.
• A needless cliffhanger.