The Almost Rebel Flesh People

One of my very best friends and I are in dispute. The Rebel Flesh and The Almost People, that curious two-parter from Series 6, is not really held up in fan circles as exemplifying the pinnacle of anything. Nevertheless, he feels that The Rebel People is thoroughly entertaining and that it “never stops you thinking” whereas I see The Almost Flesh as a dreadful piece of television and one I shall hopefully never endure again.

To put our respective theories to the test, we decided to watch together and make notes. Hopefully, I felt I might change my mind and be able to see precisely what he saw in this grim adventure. If anything, our viewing experience made my opinion of The Almost Rebel even worse. I’m not in the habit of writing about Doctor Who without a sense of joy but I feel compelled to put my case forward chiefly because my friend wasn’t swayed. He still felt the story was a strong one, as did the other fans in the room, whilst they almost all universally derided Dark Water! I reach out to you, faithful reader, to agree with me. If you disagree, please don't leave comments: My friend will be insufferable.

To take the positives of Rebel/Almost first: there are several visually arresting showcases in terms of the direction. The solar tsunami hitting the TARDIS is dynamic and full of energy. Later, when it hits the factory, there is a real sense that Julian Simpson is doing everything he can to create a set-piece moment. The flesh avatars line up, their faces changing suddenly in the lightning; The Doctor is thrown from the monastery tower in a burst of electricity; and in the flesh room, the lights go out. It’s viscerally exciting. Music, images and sound effects work in harmony to create unforgettable moments of peril. Later, we have the flesh Jennifer, her head floating atop an impossibly long neck, and the flesh Cleaves racing from the dining hall screaming. There’s also that fairy-tale like POV shot from Rory’s perspective, as he hides behind the crates watching a lost Jennifer wandering helplessly through the monastery grounds. Some of the images on show here are beautiful in their conception.

Also, the music is really good.

At its heart, The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People does have a strong central concept, if an unoriginal one: do clones have the same rights as human beings? Unfortunately, it goes about exploring that theme in a cack-handed, over-complicated and awkwardly contrived way. 

Let me take two major aspects of the scripts and analyse them in order that I might understand what exactly is wrong with this two-parter. 

The Dialogue

It’s bloody awful. For several reasons:

1.       Its attempts to build the world of The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People stumble badly. The talk of “potency stats” and “unrefined” acid feel false. Early mention of “gangers” (later abandoned) is clunky and simply doesn’t feel natural. Characters say things like, “We may have to take that read again,” and you realise that the writer, be it Matthew Graham or Steven Moffat, is trying to create a future world through language but they’ve chosen the wrong vocabulary to change, like someone’s first stab at sci-fi. Why change the word to read when reading would do just as well?

2.       It is clunky. Characters don’t for a minute sound like real people. To give a few examples - At one point, Cleaves – standing on her own – delivers a monologue that goes: “That’s it, Doctor. Befriend them. Team up with them, why don’t you? Make a football team. How about that? You’re going to have us all together singing campfire songs.” Why would someone speak to themselves in such staggeringly stagey dialogue? It’s toe-curlingly bad. Later, we have the Doctor exclaiming, “It is too dangerous around here with acid leaks.” I don’t know about anyone else but the lines makes my skin crawl. They’re so very, very cumbersome. Worst of all is Jennifer’s: “I can still feel how sore my toes got inside my red welly boots.” And Sarah Smart just cannot handle any of her dialogue. 

3.       It’s not funny. It does try to be but it’s not. Rory says, “For want of a better word…ow,” after the tsunami hits. This reads like a joke but there’s no punchline. It’s witless. This irritation extends to the script’s tiresome quirk of repeating phrases seemingly to create cool gags. “Yes, it’s insane and it’s about to get even more insanerer.” It’s not funny; it’s annoying. This is a script that not only gives us “chinny chin chin” but also “rubbishy rubbishy rubbish” and “Things to do, things involving other things.” And just what is that Northern bit about the “foot o’ t’ stairs?”

4.       It’s full of clichés. See: “Who the hell are you?” “This circus has gone on long enough.” “Thems the breaks.” “Strike at will.”

5.       It tries hammering home perfectly obvious points. See: “Who are the real monsters?” “You’re twice the man I thought you were.” “Beware of imitations.” "This is war." If the viewers were stupid enough not to get the points being made in the first place, they really didn’t need to be tailored to with crass, punch-you-in-the-face billboarding. (And it's not a damn war!! It's a small fight. At most, it's a minor skirmish. Why do these four people independently decide that they're suddenly fighting a war?)

6.       The mirroring doesn’t work. So in order to show that the gangers and humans are very similar, the equivalent bodies say very similar lines in different, unconnected rooms. “If it’s war then it’s war.” “Us and them.” They’re phrases said towards the end of Part One but, annoyingly, not by the same people! Cleaves starts in the dining hall with “Us and them” and it’s repeated by Jennifer in the Acid Room! Honestly, what is the point of mirroring the dialogue to show the avatars are the same if you’re going to use a different character's bloody avatar! Which brings me to my next point:

Characterisation

I cannot get past the dialogue, I’m afraid. It’s like hearing forks on a plate every few seconds. But the characterisation is just as bad.

One character throughout all 90 minutes of this Doctor Who story is defined by the fact that he sneezes. He’s given about five lines and there are two versions of him. Both sneeze. And that’s him. Hello Dicken! “Who the hell are you?”

Buzzer says a little more but it’s all contradictory. In the pre-titles sequence, he’s all about his rights. “I could get compensation.” Shortly afterwards, he has an issue with Jennifer’s treatment of the flesh: “Then who the hell cares, right Jen?” and he’s all about flesh rights. So far, so obvious. But then in the same scene, he’s suddenly all, “No need to get poncey. It’s just gunge.” Just who is this guy supposed to be? I don’t know because he’s dead sooner than Dicken and his ganger seems to be a mute.

Jennifer is an utter psycho. I’ve no idea what her motivation is or what she wants. Or even how many of her there are supposed to be. And isn’t there a dead one on the ceiling at the end of Part One or is she just being weird?

Cleaves has the worst dialogue of any of the guest characters and it’s a credit to Raquel Cassidy that she pulls it off and makes it sound even a little bit natural.

Mark Bonnar is similarly brilliant, although despite his relatively ampler screen time, he’s still just the "one with the son."

Rory, you know – Amy’s husband and audience viewpoint cut-out– follows another woman he barely knows into a toilet and stands there watching her like a sad sap. Later, he abandons Amy and runs off to find the weird flesh girl he was earlier hiding from. His behaviour is eccentric to say the least. Maybe it's a side affect of the solar tsunamis that come in two waves - pre-shock and fore-shock - that have suddenly started hitting the Earth so regularly they've built standardised weather cocks to combat them? (Probably using refined acid.) 

Bizarrely, for a programme which seems to be trying to persuade the viewer to value the lives of everyone, gangers included, it doesn’t do very much to help us empathise with its characters. Even Matt Smith’s Doctor (the real one) completely unforgivably throws Amy Pond into a stone wall and screams in her face – a full monologue – as she looks on terrified. It is the most appalling behaviour the Doctor has shown in all the episodes of the revived series and it should never have been filmed.

Bluntly, the characters are all over the place and all speak with the same irritating dialogue. I can’t hear any characters speaking; I just hear a writer, trying desperately and unceasingly to be “cool.” 

Now I could just about forgive the dreadful characterisation if it were replaced with something else, something striking, something other, but I’m still not sure what the script is actually trying to achieve. Because after banging on about the value of all life, flesh or human, after smashing us round the head with its themes, via a Doctor on a rant and characters accusing humans of being “monsters” for discarding the flesh, as soon as the Doctor realises that Amy is made of the white stuff, he turns around, zaps her with a screwdriver and presumably leaves a sticky patch on the TARDIS floor, thus devaluing the flesh-Amy’s life entirely.¹ I wonder if her eyes are the last to go, only asking one question: Why? Why on Earth did we have to endure The Rebellious Flesh People in the first place and why can’t my mate see what a festering piece of amateur dross it really is?

¹ Yes, I know Matthew Graham explained why he wasn’t really killing her on Confidential afterwards but why did he need to? Was he aware how unclear, muddy and in need of an explanation the whole thing was?

JH