Doctor Who: the Almost People

[miss_s_b]

I liked the first five minutes of that. Then the continuity errors started annoying me - how many sonic screwdrivers? - then Rory falling for Jennifer!Ganger doing the helpless female act annoyed me. Then Jennifer!Ganger/monster looking like Mark Gatiss in the Lazarus experiment really annoyed me.

Then the Doctor committed murder. He's spent the entire two-parter telling us that gangers are people too, that the flesh remembers, that it is sentient, that it feels pain... And then he murders Amy!Ganger in cold blood. I'd figured out that Amy was going to be a ganger, and was wondering how they would resolve it, but I never, never thought they would do it like that.

And yes, I know, he has killed before - notably sending the hand of omega after the daleks - but only EVER after giving people a choice. He gave Davros a choice. He gave the silents a choice. He didn't give Amy!Ganger a choice. He just aimed and fired.

My Doctor is not a murderer. This episode is going into the Definitely Not Canon box in my brain.

I feel genuinely quite ill after that.

Comments

[andrewhickey.info]

In which case the 'Doctor' wouldn't say "Given what we've learned, I'll try to do this as humanely as possible."

He was killing a sentient, sapient being, and knew he was doing so. A sentient, sapient, being that was defenceless, that had done nothing wrong, and that trusted him and thought of him as her best friend. And he did so *unnecessarily*. We have seen that the 'gangers' can have separate existences along with their originals. The 'Doctor' killed an innocent, over whom he was in a position of power, rather than be bothered to think of a way to rectify the situation.

That is, simply, as evil as it gets.

[davegodfrey]

The only way around that is if ganger's don't have an independent existence while they're being controlled by someone.

I'm not quite sure what that line means- possibly the fact that breaking the connection between Amy and the ganger and having Human-Amy wake up when/wherever she is is going to be unpleasant. And that breaking the connection is going to destroy the Flesh-Amy, or at least revert it to its unformed state. We then of course have the problem of what happens to the white goo sloshing round the Tardis that remembers being Amy.

I suspect that the only way the Doctor could break the link from his end was by destroying the ganger. The Confidential episode does state that "no Amys were harmed in the process"- but of course that doesn't quite fit with what they've told us about gangers. I have enough faith in Moffat that he'll be able to write his way out of this, but as I said, I do worry that he won't bother and we'll be left with a really problematic plot hole.