Doctor Who: the Almost People Addendum

[miss_s_b]

To all those of you who disagree with my assessment yesterday that the Doctor committed cold-blooded murder, how do you explain his line about all the gangers being made into proper humans by Tardis energy?

He doesn't add any qualifiers to that. Not one. And even if he does so retrospectively in a future episode, that's BAD WRITING and makes him look like a total arse.

If all the gangers are turned human by Tardis energy, surely that includes Amy!ganger? She's spent LOTS more time in the Tardis than any of the other gangers...

Lots of people posted handwavey theories on my last entry as to how this action of the Doctor's could be made acceptable, but that's all they were: handwavey theories. None of them are clear or inarguable from the episode.

I think this issue is caused by bolting on arc-plot stuff written by Moffat to a non-arc-plot episode written by someone else. The two don't gel together, and the waters are therefore muddied (if you'll pardon the metaphor mixing). I'm not sure which writer to blame, although I'm inclined towards Matthew Graham purely because he hasn't written good Who before and the Moff has, and also the bits that were really bad writing - the continuity errors with the sonic, Rory being so stupid as to fall for Jennifer!Ganger's helpless female act, random acts of cringeworthy dialogue - were all so clearly part of the base story. ETA: although, to be fair to Matthew Graham, the arc-plot of "Ha-ha! You thought the main female character was a character but actually she's an avatar and has had no agency whatsoever all season, maybe longer, and has been kept prisoner, undergoing a forced pregnancy (and therefore presumably raped)" is all Moffat, and is utterly disgusting.

Still really really cross about this.

Comments

[leoniedelt]

i have to say i am unimpressed with Rory's behaviour... what kind of twunt falls for the helpless female act? I guess if it makes for the right heart-string pulling emotional sledgehammering... [eyeroll]

[(Anonymous)]

I think it goes beyond that though. I think he felt a connection with her, as he knows how it is to wake up and realize you're only a copy. After all he was made of plastic for 2000 years.

[rankersbo.wordpress.com]

I actually initially thought there were two JenGangers, before the psycho one let on that she'd been the one he'd talked to at the beginning.

But Rory is a nurse and he cares. Is that so bad?

Then again I think Rory is ace, he's so normal, not that slightly useless characterisation that writers do in order to draw a contrast between the heroes and normal people, actual solid normal.

[davegodfrey]

Because Amy!Ganger's still being driven by Amy. Its the only way out of this that I can see. Whereas the other gangers are now independent entities, but weren't completely stable until they got into the Tardis and were stabilised. If Amy stopped driving the Amy!Ganger then the Amy!Ganger would continue to be a stable, fully functional copy of her.

Unfortunately this is still a bit too handwavey. I'd like to see how they sort this out, but having seen the previews and prequel to episode 7 I think they're going to go with Angry!Doctor and Angry!Rory smacking cybermen around. Which will be fun, but isn't going to help resolve these issues.

[miss_s_b]

But again, that's not clear from the episode, especially given that there is a big deal made about all flesh is grass sentient.

And that's without even going into the major big squick about your major female character having been a prisoner who is forced to undergo pregnancy, presumably after being raped, and now has no agency at all...

[lonemagpie]

I doubt Amy's pregnancy is a result of being raped - this is a family show. More likely she was taken somewhere in episode 1, and the baby is Rory's.

I thought the two-parter overall has been the best of the season so far, and proves that Moffat is at least playing the game honestly - if you pay attention and observe, you can work out where it's going and what the outcome will be.

But it is also full of plot holes and production goofs (aside from "isn't ganger Amy human and therefore shouldn't have been melted anyway" there's the question of how could the Doctor's swap shoes when ganger-Doc's are part of him, like Odo's uniform in DS9, and the fact that there are two Sonics - RealDoc gives it to GangerDoc, but then still has it, then GangerDoc gives it back, then RealDoc gives it to GangerDoc at the end to melt the Jennifer-monster, but also still has it in the TARDIS afterwards!)

[thepotterblogger.blogspot.com]

Isn't the bit where Amy gets taken obviously the bit in the orphanage in episode 2?

Yeah but no but!

[awesomegore]

Okay, so the doctor went to that planet to learn how to sever the connection to the Flesh because Amy's consciousness was in a Flesh body, which would make going through childbirth a bit lethal to Amy's real body. At some point Amy was always going to have to go back into her real body, and the Amy Ganger wasn't autonomous like the electricity zapped ones.

There's a massive difference between what the Doctor (and John Smith) did with their sonic screwdrivers and what the miners did to their Gangers: The Doctor returned the Flesh to its raw state - something John Smith was excited about exploring the possibilities of - while the miners left them as partially formed, conscious, discarded waste, which is The Bad Thing that the whole two parter was about. The Company doesn't have the technology to do it properly. They're not really aware they're even doing it wrong. The Doctor did it right.

It's not murder because the Flesh is still alive, in a puddle, at the bottom of the TARDIS.

Having said that, I basically agree with you that this two parter was rubbish, pretty much the worst of Matt Smiths I think. It was always going to be hard following Gaiman but this didn't even try. Moffat probably told the writer he needed something about Avatars, so that the big cliffhanger wouldn't be entirely out of the blue and we'd understand what was happening. Somehow they managed to fail.

Re: Yeah but no but!

[miss_s_b]

They could have had a bit in the Tardis of the Doctor explaining to Rory and Amy!ganger that in order to find real Amy they had to sever the connection. Ganger!Amy would probably have volunteered then. And Rory would not have looked like he was basically giving permission to the Doctor for him to murder his wife.

[chrisjc]

It is pretty grim. I suspect Joe and I will be taking a lighter tone on the podcast and agree that there are little things in the plot that enable the viewer to construct a scenario which doesn't seem QUITE so appalling but some statement of this fact in the episode (not least for younger viewers - I know they're brighter than many give them credit for but they can't operate on no information at all) wouldn't have hurt. Not pissing about with the stupid Jennifer monster would have bought some time to be more explicit in. The island collapsing due to acid erosion would have been threat enough, I'm sure.

[miss_s_b]

"the stupid Jennifer monster"

It's Mark Gatiss with a ladyface! What a marvellous idea!

Cthulhu, I'm going into rant overdrive. Better get off the internet for a bit...

[telegramsam]

I'm still withholding judgement on this whole mess until the season wraps up, myself. I kind of want to wait until I have the whole picture I guess?

Though I do agree that this 2-part story was pure filler. I liked the pirate episode better, to be honest, this is my least favorite so far this season. Still loads better than a lot of Rusty scripts, but yea, sloppy sloppy.

But I guess everything can't be "The Doctor's Wife" unfortunately...

[(Anonymous)]

When two people are in a room, there are three perspectives, those of the two people and reality.

Actually if one is Aspergic, it's closer to two perspectives, with the one with the perspective closer to reality perplexed that they can neither comprehend perspective two, nor get the other person to understand the difference between what they perceive and reality.

[gwenhwyfaer]

Speaking as an aspie (I've got paperwork!) I find aspies to be just as capable of failing to distinguish personal perspective from reality as everyone else. We tend to be really bad at lying to ourselves, sure, but that doesn't mean our perceptions or axioms are accurate. If anything, aspies are more prone to forgetting to adjust their mental models to cope with new data - probably because we consume that much more data before forming those models in the first place.

...that's my perspective, anyway...

[rankersbo.wordpress.com]

I see what you're getting at, and you're right to point out that getting aggressively neurotypical is not good.

While I would agree that there are other ways of viewing the story, I did think the ending jarred.

On certain Doctor Who forums people seem to cry out sloppy plotting when they've been studying the programme so hard that they've missed something obvious that a casual viewer would easily grasp. They'll call clearly signposted plot details "blink and you'll miss it moments." BUT while there is material in there to explain why the destruction of AmyGanger wasn't murder, it still jars. It could, this time, have been made clearer.

[gwenhwyfaer]

Me too. I hadn't quite got all that you had from the episode, but melting FleshAmy stands out for me as Just Wrong. ESPECIALLY after the Doctor had explicitly, deliberately, spent all bloody episode bashing it into our brains that there really wasn't any perceptible difference between the Flesh version of X and the real original version of X. (Except for the relative wisdom of sitting on radiators.)

[gwenhwyfaer]

...And also a bit bloody stupid, considering that if there were a link between Amy and FleshAmy, it could presumably have been traced back to find Amy (whose location is obviously not known, otherwise she would have been retrieved already). No chance of that now, is there...?

Two Things, I suppose

[(Anonymous)]

Don't have an account but have followed your blog for a while (muchly like) and had a couple of thoughts:

1. I'm interested that so many people have taken the act as murder, because I personally thought the story was quite clear. The way I took it, they spell out that the flesh is not sentient when the human "driver" is in control. When hooked up to their harnesses the two bodies are a single individual, hence the gangers do not start going off and doing whatever they feel like. Or, perhaps, (and this is an area of ambiguity I'll grant you) they *are* sentient, but they're like in exact parallel with their operators, "driving" as it were along the exact same course. In other words, operator and ganger are precisely equal to one another at that point. However, when they are injured, or die the driver disconnects, leaving behind a sentient body with all of the memories of the operator. The one entity has then become two. What the Doctor did, was go back to examine the technology to work out how you block the signal and dissipate the flesh, so that rather than separate the single entity into two, you just destroy one half of it, leaving a single entity

Compare it to this: In Star Trek they have those transporters that beam you up onto a ship from a planet. Now, in that show the transporters scan you into data, send that data up to the ship, buffer it, and then rebuild you like a replicator. Arguably, the transported person has just been killed and brought back to life, but we would never see it like that because the act is instantaneous and only one individual ever existed. Now, say instead that they scan you, create a copy up on the ship but wait five minutes to destroy the original down on the planet. At a single point in time there are two separate entities with a separate existence now having separate experiences and memories. Suddenly, to our perspective, killing the original becomes murder, because the two are no longer one. Rather than (to use computer parlance) cutting and pasting a file from one folder to another, you have copied it, checked it arrived ok, and then deleted the original. Morally, philosophically, that makes a huge difference.

I get that this is nuanced for the casual viewer, and it could probably be better signposted, but I think that what I have outlined is absolutely the implication of the episode if you think it through (I would respectfully and tentatively suggest that you sort of half thought it through). They never suggest that the flesh is an independent consciousness and able to exercise free-will while being controlled by a human, it is only upon the moment of disconection that they become independently "alive" and aware as a separate being.

2. I might be misreading what your saying (there's a slight ambiguity), but you seem to suggest that Moffat's writing of this arc twist is in some way reprehensible:

"the arc-plot of "Ha-ha! You thought the main female character was a character but actually she's an avatar and has had no agency whatsoever all season, maybe longer, and has been kept prisoner, undergoing a forced pregnancy (and therefore presumably raped)" is all Moffat, and is utterly disgusting."

Well, yes. That's the point isn't it? Amy has been kidnapped, presumably raped, forced to bear a child, and deceived that actually she was walking around being ok all this time. That is horrible, the people who did that to her are vile, it is *terrifying*. And now they're going to pay for it, presumably?

I read an interview with SM where he described his central thought regarding the mid-season finale as "What would the Doctor do if you really pissed him off? If you took someone he loves and hurt them terribly?" Well yup, they have now done something utterly horrific to Amy, and the Doctor is coming after them. That's good, surely? It's not as if the Doctor seemed *happy* that Amy was a ganger, or that Amy was blase about her predicament. And whilst, yes, Amy is now a pregnant girl in distress with the male characters coming to save her... Rory is put in distress plenty, and Amy saves him plenty, and the central character of the show is male so you're a bit stuck there. Like I said, perhaps I misread, but I wasn't quite sure why this made you "Really really cross".

Re: Two Things, I suppose

[davegodfrey]

Arguably, the transported person has just been killed and brought back to life, but we would never see it like that because the act is instantaneous and only one individual ever existed.

China Mieville discusses this in Kraken. Its actually an important plot point, so I probably shouldn't say more to avoid spoilers. Suffice to say he doesn't agree.

Re: Two Things, I suppose

[miss_s_b]

1. The flesh is signposted as sentient before it is programmed too, and i have always had an issue with trek transporters too.

2. Yes, i have an issue with a cliched misogynist use of the main female character. I'm not denying that the male characters get pissed about too, but the quote from moff about the only point of Amy being to motivate the Doctor does not make things better. Look up women in refrigerators.

Re: Two Things, I suppose

[andrewhickey.info]

There is a long, long tradition of female characters only existing to provide motivation for male characters (see the character of Rachel in the otherwise excellent The Dark Knight for example). Joining that long tradition is not a good thing to do.

We've also had a series where so far it's been about the Doctor, and Amy, and Rory, and sometimes River, all having agency and making decisions that matter. While the Doctor is clearly the most important character, the others are characters who act, rather than just react. All of a sudden that agency has been pulled away from Amy and, worse, made retroactively false.

[(Anonymous)]

Ganger!Amy and the other gangers are different. The solar storm fucked up the equipment that allowed the Gangers to be controlled by their human counterparts, whereas the equipment that allowed Amy to "pilot" Ganger!Amy is, presumably, wherever the hell Ganger!Amy is, and intact.

Running free, the miners' Gangers have their own will but must excercise effort to remain in human form (line of dialogue from part 1), which was cured by the TARDIS--it essentially baked them. If merely being in the TARDIS "baked" you, it would have happened a long time ago. Given that the TARDIS has been given agency this season, we can only assume that there was a reason it chose to selectively apply that power.

The Doctor's actions in the TARDIS are extensively planned to ensure that no danger is planned to Amy. Amy's Ganger is not sentient, and it is also made clear through dialogue spoken by both the Doctor and Ganger!Doctor that dissolution does not equal death for the Flesh.

Tl;dr Even if it is made manifestly clear that the miners' gangers are alive, it is clear and delineated in dialogue that Amy's ganger is different from the others--not only is it never apparent that Amy's ganger underwent the same transformation that the miners' Gangers did, we are told over and over again by the Doctor that the miners constitute the Flesh in their early days. The Doctor painstakingly ensures that no harm is done to Amy by his actions, and dialogue confirms that the Sonic commits no specific harm done to Flesh.

(Don't have a Dreamwidth account, but I'm @teambates on Twitter.)

[eviltigerlily.livejournal.com]

If the plot of the episode doesn't gel with the arc then Moffat is to blame by definition of his job. He is the head writer, it is his responsibility to make sure the characters and plot remain consistent across scripts by other writers. If something doesn't fit he should have made sure the relevant parts of the script were altered. Just as the inconsistency in Rose's character between School Reunion and TGITF is RTD's fault. Whatever the source of the problem, the head writer's job is to make sure it is fixed before the show airs (preferably before it is shot).

[pmoodie]

I agree with you, but I'm hopeful that the Doctor's actions will be addressed at some point. His handling of Ganger/Amy reminds me of the way he dealt with the Silents. He's getting a lot of blood on his hands. I remember Moffat saying in an interview that this series was going to be about consequences - maybe the Doctor needs to be taught that he can't just go around killing people. Still, the Doctor shouldn't really need to be taught that lesson!

[davegodfrey]

As a general rule isn't the Doctor usually the one telling people they can't just go around killing people?

[leoniedelt]

Hey Jennie, did you watch this?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/dw/news/bulletin_110601_01/Who_is_River_Song

its Rory's baby, not some forced pregnancy or rape...