Doctor Who (TV Series) The Almost People (2011) User Reviews

Doctor Doctor...

[Xstal · 7/10 · 24 December 2021]

Just imagine what you would do, if you popped out of a vat of goo, a doppelganger in every way, except not sharing the same birthday. And then it starts to think it's you, identical rights, can do what you do, and it wants to get you out the way, the polar opposite of your birthday.

Nothing like the Thompson Twins, they've little to lose and all to win, the Doctor's got a double too, separable only by their shoes. As daft as these last episodes sound, the climax is genuinely profound, and certainly fleshed the story out, now Demons Run from the fallout.

The Almost People

[MrFilmAndTelevisionShow · 8/10 · 9 April 2021]

A satisfying conclusion to the two-parter. This wasn't the best two-parter of the series, but it wasn't the worst either, I did like it and it was enjoyable I just wonder if it really needed to be two parts, I think they could have slimmed it down to just the one episode and it would have made for a more action packed and gripping tale.

Almost amazing it falls a little short

[dkiliane · 8/10 · 24 March 2019]

This episode tried very hard to capitalize on the premise of part one, "the rebel flesh." It does succeed in continuing to developing the theme of what makes us human individuals (exploring such aspects as memories and emotions) and the right to one's own life, but never quites arrives at satisfying answers. Perhaps the point is that there are none.

The other theme explored in this episode I found much more intriguing - - the corruptive influence of hate. It turns Jennifer's ganger from a sweet girl to homicidal maniac, hypocritically murdering another copy of herself (presumably also alive) to achieve her own ends of revenge against the humans, even when the other gangers realize the fallacy of her arguments and prefer the violence to cease.

At first I really hated Amy's presumptuous prejudice against who she thought was the ganger Doctor. And while she redeemed herself at the end it made her a tad less likeable for me. But it also highlights to a differing degree the corruptive influence of hate, more specifically, how it can start. Fortunately, the Doctors work together to adjust her attitude.

This episode maintains the creepiness factor while uping the stakes til the frenetic climax of the escape from the monster Jennifer ganger, which unfortunately had rather weak cgi. The ending too, was a little convenient with only one version (if even) of each character surviving, somewhat sidestepping the issues raised through both episodes. So while, yes, the conclusion does add to the premise of part one, it fails to drive most of these issues home satisfactorily. 8.5/10

Quality sci-fi with a shocking end

[Tweekums · 10/10 · 28 May 2011]

The previous episode introduced us to the Gangers; creatures made in the image of people but used as slave labour in hazardous areas; after an accident brings them to life they understandable aren't that sympathetic to their human creators. This week's episode starts with The Doctor's Ganger having difficulties due to the nature of the Doctor; it looks as if he might not survive but once the credits have rolled he is fine; although Amy does not trust him. While they are deciding if he can be trusted the group is still struggling to prevent the rest of the Gangers from breaking into the room. While this is going on Rory is finding Jen; unfortunately he finds two of them! As the two fight one falls into acid and exposed as the Ganger... it looks as if Rory is with the human Jen. As if the conflict with the Gangers wasn't enough the whole place could explode at any time so they must get out without getting killed by the Gangers or the acid.

This was a great episode with some genuinely scary moments; the pile of still living discarded Gangers was like something from a horror film; I wouldn't be surprised if it disturbed some viewers; if that didn't I'm sure that when Jen turned into a monster some younger viewers will have hidden behind the settee! After many hints at the series story arc where Amy keeps seeing a woman with an eye-patch looking through a hatch we finally learn something about her; something surprising and rather frightening. It wasn't all scares though; there was a touching scene where one of the Gangers takes a call from 'his' son and learns that he is close enough to being human that he must help the others. As is usually the case with Doctor Who the acting was great, from both the regular cast members and guest starts. It was fun seeing two Matt Smith Doctors interacting and two Jens, played by the excellent Sarah Smart, fighting. Following the shock revelation at the end I can't wait to see next week's instalment.

Great surprise ending

[gridoon2024 · 8/10 · 27 March 2015]

For the most part, this continuation of "The Rebel Flesh" is an average "Doctor Who" episode. It doesn't really expand on the themes of its predecessor (how much do memories and emotions define us?), and it doesn't do as much as it could with the unprecedented (if you don't count the sloppy finale of "Journey's End") idea of two identical Doctors (it does contain a clone-catfight, though!). But that ending....to quote the Doctor, Yowza! Suddenly, this two-parter that seemed to be marking time (albeit quite passably), turns out to be an essential part of the progression of the bigger story, in more ways than one. Now let's see if the second half of season 6 can deliver on the promises of the very promising first half. *** out of 4.

The almost people

[Landisnicholas · 7/10 · 30 May 2011]

The Almost people was the conclusion of The Rebel Flesh.

The rebel Flesh introduced the creatures of the Gangers, the gangers are creatures of programed flesh that are sampled by a live being, so not only do they look like the person, they act and have the same memories as the host. This causes a war between the species when the gangers start an uprising against their host selves Of course the Doctor believes both species deserve life. and the rebel flesh ended with the revealing of a Ganger Doctor.

The Almost People, continues as Rory continues to try and find Jenifer, Amy has trouble trusting the Ganger Doctor, even though the Doctor (The real one) tries to convince her he's as real as him. Amy doesn't trust the Ganger Doctor, to the point of her calling him John Smith. The battle rages on and then it get's interesting. Cause what happens next...

nope your going to have to watch it to find out!

Not as good

[warlordartos · 7/10 · 30 March 2021]

Doesn't quite live up to the first episode. It is scarier and more war like than the first but there is less plot within the same time frame and it doesn't quite work. It becomes running away from the monster type episode ONCE AGAIN. We have had too many of these.

Dull and uneven

[wolfordcheyenne · 7/10 · 22 March 2020]

Not much of substance happened during the 45 minute runtime. The story failed to properly explore the complex moral issue that it's trying to address. A perfect example of this is when the Doctor destroys the flesh Amy without a second thought. He does this even though he spend the whole episode and the previous one trying to convince the humans that the Gangers had the right to exist. I felt like this two parter could've been combined into one episode. The Rebel Flesh and The Almost People only exist to setup the cliff hanger at the end. I thought the first part was uninteresting, but this part was so much worse.

What A Piece of Work Is A Man

[boblipton · 4/10 · 4 June 2011]

Reaching back into the techniques of the classic series, Steven Moffat's team has revived the idea of separating one or more companion from the Doctor, giving them each a bit of the overarching plot to work, and adding in the problem of getting them back together as a plot point. In THE DOCTOR'S WIFE, for example, Amy and Rory wound up in the TARDIS, and it was their job to distract the villain and help the Doctor get back; in this, the second half of a two-parter, it's Rory who gets separated from the Doctor and Amy; it is he who recognizes that the Gangers, the temporary humans, are just as real as the people they are modeled on. If he stumbles and makes the wrong choices in executing that position, well, it's all part of the structure of the piece.

SPOILER: However -- and you could probably feel that coming up -- there is a big problem with the ending. After having spent two episodes establishing that the 'almost people' are real people, capable of evil, as Jennifer shows, and sacrifice, as Cleaves, and of simple love, as Ganger Jimmy takes over the role of father, we have established that these are real people, with real rights, including life, the whole idea falls apart when the Doctor sonics what turns out to be the ganger Amy, destroying her in order to pursue the real one, who is about to give birth. Yes, it's the season's overarching plot; yes, it's a heck of a cliffhanger to lead into the half-season's big episode. Yet it still makes a hash of the two-episode story.

Doctor Who has always handled the big issues symbolically, and the symbolic point of this particular story has been that we all deserve a chance at life, to do with it as we see fit. So what does it say when the Doctor effectively murders a person? It denies everything that has been said and done. I have the impression that it was set up that way as a shocker, and it works that way. However it wrecks the entire story in and of itself.

Surely the matter could have been handled in a better way.In Season Five's two-parter, THE HUNGRY EARTH/COLD BLOOD, Rory had to be erased from reality for a space, and this was done by having him sacrifice himself. Why not do it in the same manner? I think they wanted the shock value of the Doctor seeming to turn on Amy. In doing so, they overreached themselves.

Well, even Jove nods, and we'll just have to write this one off as a bit of a botched job. On to the next one.

Planned Pregnancy

[Theo Robertson · 3/10 · 31 May 2011]

You can imagine the DOCTOR WHO production team sitting around the desk with Steven Moffat telling his gang:

" Okay this story The Rebel Flesh / Almost People isn't going well . You've played all your cards in the first episode so the story has nowhere else to go . Any ideas how to get around this ? "

" Well Moff if I have people running around every few minutes and have the characters speak absolutely gibberish then th audience might be either too bored or confused to care where the story is going "

" Yeah you've got a point . I'll have a word with a director and have put some atrocious CGI in it so that the audience will be either too irritated or be too busy laughing to realise nothing is happening plot wise . However we've been doing substandard stories since last year and not even the most loyal fan will be fooled by this any longer "

" Hey Moff why don't you do what you did with the Silurian rubbish last year we got away with and have a companion get killed off in the last 5 minutes and everyone will claim you're a courageous genius "

" Oh you mean Rory . We've killed him off in every story this season . Even the most brain dead fan can see through it by now "

" No we do something else "

" Oh you mean the opposite ? we could have Amy die and it's not really Amy it's a ganger and she wakes up pregnant in the care of a sinister alien midwife . But that's maybe too leftfield " ( Pause ) " But if I go back and rewrite the other episodes where there's a pregnancy subplot shoehorned in to every story we might be able to get away with it . Hey I can see the headlines now - OMG this weeks episode was the most awesome thing in the history of television "

I'm not saying this actually happened of course , but this is the impression you're left with after seeing this week's rubbish

I wasn't crazy about the first part, but this sucks!!

[Sleepin_Dragon · 4/10 · 3 September 2015]

OK, so the Doctor and co are stuck in a warehouse, with copies of people (The Gangers) trying to destroy their original human counterparts, even the Doctor exists in ganger form. Jennifer tricks Rory into activating the acid with the hope of blowing up the island. The Doctor must battle back to save them.

Matt Smith gives a good performance, I can't fault him a bit, he's really good.

Poor Amy could have sat in the TARDIS, they gave her literally nothing to do, until the very end, she has stood around looking awkward the entire episode, maybe the complexities of the story arc are very slowly beginning to make sense, eye patch lady talk about drawn out!!

The ending is at least rather shocking. Most disturbing moment must be the site of the discarded flesh, when Jennifer shows Rory the true cost of using the flesh.

When you break the story down it would have been more exciting had the Ganger Doctor been working against them. Were the gangers ever going to beat the Doctor, let alone two. Feels like the same situation they had in Kinda, too many companions, so what do they do? one is hidden and one is silent. It is very very padded out, an hour would have been good for this story, rather then two 45's it's too slow in parts. 4/10

Almost acceptable until the very bad ending.

[A_Kind_Of_CineMagic · 5/10 · 24 January 2019]

The Rebel Flesh / The Almost People

This is a two part story where the Doctor, Amy and Rory arrive at a base where human workers have doubles of themselves called 'gangers' made from a clever substance which allows work to be done by these 'avatars' of themselves.

The gangers are creepy with good make-up. They turn out, as is often the case with monsters and villains, to not be as evil or one dimensional as it first may appear. This is a double edged sword as on one hand it lessens the threat and menace of the potential villains but on the other hand it adds depth and a thoughtful aspect about what makes us who we are.

Taken on its own there are no major problems with the first part of the story (The Rebel Flesh) and it has some nice gothic horror aspects harking back to the classic stories of years gone by but this potential for a scary horror episode do not come fully to fruition: One or two characters, one or two plot elements and one or two bits of dialogue feel a bit underwhelming in some ways compared to how thrilling they could have been. Occasionally I feel it is not fully thought through. However, it is still solid and pretty enjoyable with a strong cliffhanger as a doppelganger ('ganger') Doctor appears.

The interesting cliffhanger to Part 1 brings a lovely moment at the start of Part 2 (The Almost People) when the ganger Doctor is confused with all the memories within his mind and speaks as the 10th Doctor and the 4th Doctor as well as using a phrase commonly used by the 3rd Doctor. This was a great reference to past Doctors. That is the highlight of the episode for me.

There are some other strong scenes in Part 2 as well as a nice horror feel when the gangers attack but I just feel this episode could have easily been a lot better.

The negatives for me are: There are some scenes not as effective as they could have been.

There seems to be a plot hole as the ganger Doctor and the real Doctor use the same sonic screwdriver on at least one occasion when it seems the other Doctor has it elsewhere as well.

There are some slightly below par CGI effects when a ganger turns into a monster and marauds down corridors.

There are slightly muddled plot points and rather unsatisfying turns of events that conveniently lead to gangers or their real selves getting killed leaving one of each surviving. The emotion of deaths does not quite ring true for me at times.

In the climactic scenes the ganger Doctor seems to unnecessarily sacrifice himself when escape appeared perfectly within reach.

Then at the very end there is a worse addition that really spoils it for me when it is revealed that Amy was a 'ganger' all along (for an unknown length of time prior to this adventure) using the same technology they encounter to fool the Doctor. I really do not like this ending at all for a number of reasons:

I find it overly coincidental that they happen to encounter a crisis caused by the same technology that has been used to fake Amy. Then we get the ending of destroying the ganger as the real Amy goes into labour. This is rather contrived timing and this scene effectively depicts the Doctor murdering someone the episode established is a real person in her own right! He insists gangers are living beings with a right to survive but then deliberately destroys one. That seems very unlike the Doctor.

Most importantly, I just do not like the storyline of Amy giving birth in captivity. I find it an unpleasant idea not in keeping with the family show. Kidnapping a pregnant woman and stealing her baby is extreme and sounds more like a nasty story from a grim soap opera like Eastenders or a hard hitting police drama. It does not seem appropriate for a family fantasy show looking to provide fun and enjoyment! I love darkness, scariness, creepy thrills etc but this storyline is just a bit sick in a family show, in my opinion. Amy and Rory are denied the chance to raise their baby. It is very harsh, severely dark and in my view unnecessary.

My Ratings: The Rebel Flesh - 7.5/10 The Almost People - 4.5/10 Average rating for 2-part story - 6/10.