The Acid House

Iain Hepburn reviews The Rebel Flesh

It’s well documented that The Doctor’s Wife was originally planned for season five, but kept in a vault somewhere in Steven Moffat’s palace until the production team could scrape together enough money to realise it. But Graham’s script appears to have been left over from season four.

The 1966 version of season four, that is.

There’s a real air of Troughton about The Rebel Flesh. Dopplegangers, base providing important job for rest of planet, said base being under siege, Doctor clowning about, ripped-from-the-headlines storyline, ridiculous accents… I know Matt Smith talks about Pat being a great inspiration in terms of the Doctor, but to do an updated tribute act to him seems a bit much.

I mean, remote-controlled clones created from what seems to be sentient matter, suddenly coming to life after a solar storm? It’s all a bit Kit Pedler, isn’t it? Turn the colour down, hum a decent version of Delia’s theme over the titles and lob in a bit of howlround, and this could be a rediscovered episode dusted down by the Restoration Team and given daft new special effects.

But then, it seems appropriate, given the episode marks the return to Doctor Who of Matthew Graham, the man who’s inspired thousands of squeezing types to bombard the 2012 Olympic organisers lobbying for David Tennant to carry the Olympic Torch next year. After five years off dipping into The Sweeney and Dempsey and Makepeace, Graham is now having a crack at plundering Doctor Who’s own back catalogue for flavours to blend.

So with The Rebel Flesh, we get a bit of Moonbase, a smidgin of The Faceless Ones and a dash of Enemy of the World, all brought to a fairly tepid heat.

Of course, this is 2011, and audience demands are a bit more sophisticated. Or, in other words, we get lots of wet-looking make-up effects and CGI to balance off the old-school splitscreen, and lots of handwringing morality about the soul, memories and spirit of the dopplegangers, or Gangers as they’re clunkingly called.

And as this is 2011, there’s a bit of role reversal going on – Rory gets to be Polly, while Amy plays Ben with a ginger wig. Although that fits with what they’ve been doing with Rory’s character this season. He is a nurse – or as we say in the tabloids, an angel – so it makes more sense that he’d be the caring, sympathetic figure in this trio compared to his emotionally damaged other half.

But there’s also another level to his friendship with Sarah Smart’s Jennifer. Having been a replica himself – especially as we now know he can remember that time when he was plastic rather than wooden – he has something in common with the Ganger questioning her own identity. It’s a subtle point perfectly brought home thanks a nicely sympathetic and understated performance by Arthur Darvill.

And, to be honest, isn’t it nice to see Rory do something other than just die this year.

He gets far more to do than Amy, certainly – whose sole role in this episode seems to be to stand around, be quantumly pregnant and give the Doctor something to worry about. Apart from a brief moment wandering off and encountering Frances Barber’s peep hole again, she’s practically redundant.

The story may seem straightforward, but there’s hints of something else going on, too. A feeling of something not being quite right. In a story where most of the cast have dopplegangers, the obvious implication is that we can’t trust our senses – that nobody really is what they seem, especially when there’s an hour of time unaccounted for with everyone. It even goes as far as the Doctor, with almost McCoy-esque hints that their arrival on the island isn’t a mistake, but Eleven going on a mission and ending up at the world’s worst Acid House party.

There’s some nice touches in The Rebel Flesh. The performances are pretty much all great – and it’s lovely to see Matt Smith reunited with Raquel Cassdy following their stint together in the criminally underrated Party Animals. And for once in a future-set Doctor Who story there’s an real and interesting sense of place, thanks to the bleak monastic setting and the almost uniformly northern accents – only Smith and Darvill sound like they come from south of Saddleworth Moor. Two Jocks and not even a token Taff in there to keep BBC Wales happy? Times really are changing, even if one of the Scots is called Jimmy.

However, it all fell a bit flat, and there’s a distinct lack of tension about the episode – replaced instead by a feeling of knowing where all this is leading. The idea of evil doubles has been done to death, no least in Doctor Who itself, and while it may well be that Graham has some swerve lined up for part two, it all just feels a little bit samey.

And then there’s the cliffhanger. The horrid, clunking, so-obvious-you-can-see-it-coming-from-last-week ending. About the only thing that saves it is that they don’t have Smith don a frilly shirt, greasepaint and have him say “Ee by gum” in a Speedy Gonzales accent.

But of course, it’s difficult reviewing one part of a two part story in isolation, because much is deliberately being held back or hinted at rather than explicitly laid bare, even if it slows down the pacing of the story somewhat. So much of what we get here is set-up rather than pay-off – foreplay for next week’s big white goo-fest, one suspects. Never has a giant golden cock on the roof been so symbolic…