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...a blog by Richard Flowers

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Day 3800: DOCTOR WHO: The Almost Title-By-Ben-Aaronovitch

Saturday:


No, I'm getting confused with that OTHER Doctor Who episode where they nearly use one of Mr Ben's titles and the Doctor goes {spoiler deleted}*1 at the end: "Remembrance Tanks of the Daleks".

THIS is the one where {spoiler deleted}*2 turns out to have been {spoiler deleted}*3 shaped by {spoiler deleted}*4. Hang on…that's INTERFERENCE again…

Anyway, it CAN'T be the Daleks, because the Mr Moffster has announced that he's AXING them. Apparently this ISN'T because of the reaction to his Dalek redesign but because they've been defeated, like, four-hundred times. IRONICALLY, their last adventure was "Victory of the Daleks".

Though it DOES look a teeny-tiny bit like he's reacting to the fan backlash by throwing his shiny, plastic, multi-coloured toys out of the pram afterthat redesign went down like a bucket of cold sick. Seems like the Grand Moff has got the hump. Right after they did.

All of which has nothing at all to do with Saturday's episode of Mr Smith the Space Assassin…

Although there are other things to talk about, I really can't start without addressing "THAT THING" that happens at the end, and it's such a big "thing" that I've even censored Millennium's intro gags. So we'll cut to the Spoiler Curtain and then get into it.

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One wave of the sonic and Amy is reduced to a woman in a fridge while the Doctor murders the flesh-ganger shaped by Amy's mind that has taken her place for the last several weeks.

It certainly looks like the Doctor kills Amy. And that is what Karen Gillan, interviewed on "Doctor Who Confidential", seems to think happens.

I'm pretty much in agreement with Jennie's views on the Doctor's actions here. Although where I do disagree with her is when she infers that Amy's pregnancy is against her will: come on, given the nature of the show surely Amy's baby has got to be Rory's baby too, possibly affected by time in the TARDIS. Rape and forced pregnancy would be too much for the audience. And the thought of the Doctor cuckolding Rory wouldn't be so much game-changing as shark-jumping and series-ending. Besides, he prefers bunk beds.

Let's trot through the excuses:

First, are we sure he actually kills the flesh? Yes, he waves the sonic and f-Amy "bursts" or "melts" and turns back into base flesh which collapses out of shot. But then we cut immediately to h-Amy and her inside-a-tube point of view. So we don't actually see a steaming puddle of dead flesh on the floor of the TARDIS. It's not completely impossible that next week will start with the Doctor mopping it up into a bucket and whispering: "there there, all better now; no nasty being forced into human shape any more".

(Quick note on terminology: I'm not going to buy into the real-Amy/ganger-Amy distinction as the episode is at pains to remind us that both are equally real; so instead I will refer to f-Amy for the one who started out as flesh and h-Amy for the one who started out as human. Which I think avoids hierarchy between the two as much as possible. Slightly clumsily, this leads to the f-Doctor and the tl-Doctor, but what can you do?)

If the flesh is sentient in its liquid form – and that does appear to be the whole point of the Matthew-Graham-written bits of the episode – then turning it back into yoghurt could justifiably be claimed to be liberation, not murder.

Admittedly, if that's the case, the episode really needed to say that was the case. And the way that he does it, doesn't seem to tie in with "I'll be as humane as possible". Although "Amy, come and stand in this bucket… no, no reason" doesn't seem entirely credible either.

Alex suggests a second plausible excuse: at the end the Doctor drops off h-Cleaves and f-Dicken at a press conference to spill the beans on the company and the abuse of gangers. We assume that this is to assert some rights for the flesh as a sentient being, and the gangers as real people; but, suggests Alex, what if the Doctor's ulterior motive is to impress upon the company that they need to ensure that "later" versions of this technology have to be absolutely, definitely non-sentient. That is, he's arranging matters so that his intended elimination of f-Amy won't be murder.

I like that as a solution, it does tie in to the seventh-Doctor vibe that Matt Smith has got going on, but once again it relies on us reading more into the episode than is actually spelled out on screen.

The excuse that I'm not buying is one I've seen trotted out several times, including by the episode's writer, that f-Amy "doesn't count as sentient" because she's only receiving h-Amy's consciousness by "telephone wire". If anything this makes the matter worse. What this is saying is that there is a sentient creature – the flesh – whose sentience is then brutally crushed aside by imposing h-Amy's thoughts and actions on its physical body. We call this possession and in Doctor Who deposing someone's mind and walking around in their body is universally portrayed as A Bad Thing.

The episode itself does appear to support this interpretation: when he has his "why why why" fit that so frightens Amy, the tl-Doctor (pretending to be the f-Doctor) speaks of the flesh working all day and knowing it will be discarded and killed at the end.

So when you say that f-Amy "doesn't count", you are missing an entire victim. The sentient creature who the Doctor murders is not "the being who thinks it is Amy", but "the being who is being possessed by Amy's mind ".

So all I can think is that the Doctor has been driven mad with fury.

I've spoken before of how angry the eleventh Doctor is. He's been skating on ever-thinner ice for a while now, trying to hold it in, making mistakes – messing up Amy's life, letting the Daleks get away again. From his perspective, this "flesh creature" is implicated, complicit in the abduction and incarceration of his current best friend and he just, simply, loses it.

It is a categorical error to think of the Doctor as "nice". The sixth tried to strangle Peri. The seventh blew up Skaro. The eighth blew up Gallifrey! The ninth had a death wish. The tenth went berserk as the Time Lord Victorious. And each step is taking him closer to the Valeyard.

There is a chance of redemption. It is just possible that the two-hundred-years-older Doctor who dies in "The Impossible Astronaut" does so with grace because he has accepted that he has to let go. "I thought I'd never get done saving you." It's not just a recognition that he is going to die, but that he has set himself free to do so.

Moffat's clumsily heavy-handed insistence, also in "Confidential", that the flesh Doctor isn't just a copy but is the Doctor clearly flags up that he at least considers this one possible "get out" of the dead Doctor corner into which he's painted himself. The f-Doctor has all of the Doctor's experience and wisdom, but is innocent of his actions. Yes, I'm suggesting that the Doctor really will die, and that the flesh is his replacement.

Assuming of course that being turned back into liquid flesh allows you to survive an exploding acid factory.

Mind you, the Master turned into a liquid snake and survived extermination by the Daleks, so you never know.

Slightly less contentiously, there are a couple of big questions of "when?": When was Amy swapped? When did the Doctors swap places?

The two Matt Smiths were both brilliant, bouncing off each other and finishing each other's… character ticks. Loved the moment they both spring into action with the same little bob and jump. Loved seeing the Doctor getting on with himself, in a way that he traditionally doesn't when it's two different incarnations. And – let's overlook that ending for the moment – loved that both of them lived up to the principled stance that they were each as real as the other. Swapping the shoes to convince Amy – and the audience – of this fact was genius. Amy was right: he is twice the man we thought he was.

I think that the only logical point for them to have swapped shoes is right back at the start: after the f-Doctor has his funny turn and vocal flashbacks, the tl-Doctor asks him about Cybermats (foreshadow, foreshadow?) and they agree that they have to do something to settle if there's any difference between them. Then the camera cuts to the mining team trying to barricade the door against the gangers. Then, when we cut back, the two Doctors are side by side, wibbling on about "agreeing a protocol" between them and basking in each other's glory. That "agreeing a protocol" must mean they've swapped shoes.

And swapped the sonic as well.

There's some suggestion that there is a continuity error with the sonic, but I'm not seeing it myself. The f-Doctor (pretending to be the tl-Doctor) chucks it to the tl-Doctor (pretending to be the f-Doctor) who takes it out to look for h-Jennifer while the f-Doctor clearly doesn't have it when he and the others go to investigate the thermostatic controls (which is probably why he can't fix them). At the end, the tl-Doctor chucks it back to the f-Doctor before leaving in the TARDIS. Yes, yes, he then has another screwdriver in the TARDIS, but we do know he gets new screwdrivers from the TARDIS console. It might have been clearer if we'd seen the TARDIS fabricating it as a new one, but it's not an error as such.

My suspicion is that the flesh can copy organic matter – clothes as well as people – but not metal. Though where that leaves the metal eyelets on the Doctor's boots where they lace up, I don't know. The clue would be that it's the tl-Doctor (still pretending to be the f-Doctor for a few more moments) who has the key to open the TARDIS. Also, h-Jimmy gives f-Jimmy his wedding ring on a chain from round his neck. Which would be pointless if the flesh had copied it along with the rest of him.

As for when Amy was swapped: three possibilities present themselves. Probably the most likely, certainly the most obvious, is sometime in the "three months later" between "The Impossible Astronaut" and "Day of the Moon". In the former episode, she thinks that she's pregnant and – perhaps significantly – the 1103-year-old Doctor says she's put on a couple of pounds suggesting that this Amy is pregnant. It's not until the start of "Day of the Moon" that she says she's not pregnant after all, and of course shortly afterwards she has her first vision of the "Eye Patch Lady" in the door of the child's room in the spooky children's home. The Silence kidnap her after she sees the Eye Patch Lady, so clearly they kidnap f-Amy rather than h-Amy, which probably confuses them no end.

(I have seen a suggestion that the Silence kidnap her from the room where she discovers them hanging from the ceiling, replacing her with f-Amy and then kidnapping her again from the child's bedroom. Though that seems barkingly over-complicated, even for them!)

It's possible that the Doctor in "Day of the Moon" already knows that Amy's been swapped, hence his rather casual lack of swift action to rescue her from the Silence. (Five days pass with Amy in the Silence clutches: she is kidnapped as Apollo Eleven launches, but rescued as the Eagle touches down on the Moon which is, as the television announcer tells us in the episode, five days later.)

The second possibility is that h-Amy is kidnapped at a point between "A Christmas Carol" and "The Impossible Astronaut". That would, in a way, make sense of the rather confusing opening to the series where the Ponds have apparently left the Doctor and settled in at home in, probably, Upper Ledworth. If you recall, I said in my review of "The Impossible Astronaut" that, Sarah Jane aside, it was unusual for companions to be set down for a breather. If Amy and Rory have travelled and adventured with the Doctor for a while following "A Christmas Carol" and then eventually left him, and then she is kidnapped, it could explain why the older Doctor starts "waving at them from history" and eventually sends them the TARDIS-blue invitation that re-unites them with his younger self.

The final option is that h-Amy was taken at some point during the previous season (One or Five or Thirty-One according to taste). It's been suggested that during "The Lodger" is a possibility, because she sees something in the TARDIS and then forgets; I shall have to check.

I don't like this possibility, because it seems to betray the point of "The Big Bang", that Amy was special enough to remember the Doctor back into being, but I feel I have to raise it because if the Amy in "The Pandorica Opens" is actually f-Amy, a ganger that might be partially under the control of the Silence, that could explain how they were able to program the TARDIS to collide with her wedding day and explode: i.e. they had her do it for them.

Another theory is that she was gone before "The Time of Angels": when Idris whispers "the only water in the forest is the river" was she referring to the forest on the Byzantium? There was "River" and "Pond" in that forest, but only if Pond was real. Where would that leave the Doctor's backwards-in-time conversation with Amy to remember what he told her when she was six? It's a nice theory, but I think, to that one, no.

Let's look at the rest of the episode.

I thought that it was rather too convenient that at least one each of the humans and gangers was killed, leaving us with no inconvenient doubles at the end. H-Dicken, in particular, tosses is life away in a pointless horror-cliché death, when it would have been more satisfying to have had twin Dickens to enter the concluding press conference side-by-side.

H-Cleaves, much as I liked her world-weariness and bitter sense of humour, seems to have undergone another personality swerve from the h-Cleaves who, last week, zapped f-Buzzer in cold blood. I didn't quite spot the point where she switched from "them and us" to signing up for "Friends of the Gangers", either. F-Cleaves had a much better character arc, essentially going along with f-Jennifer's "war" for a quiet life, until f-Jimmy showed a bit of backbone and she realised that f-Jen's mission of vengeance was pointless.

The fact was that f-Jennifer had gone completely round the twist – better illustrated by her using her own flesh to create a Cocteau-esque tableau of accusing eyes then by turning first into a slack-jawed impression of "The Mummy" and then a bad CGI monster of the "Lazarus Experiment" school. Her hypocrisy in creating another f-Jennifer with the intention of killing it to convince Rory that she was the "good" one, was underplayed or possibly overlooked in a busy script. Yes, she was just as bad as the humans, creating a ganger intending it only to be killed when she was done with it.

(And given how obvious this development was, you could have had a slightly more interesting conversation between the two f-Jennifers where either the new ganger presents the older one with this accusation, or they creepily agree that it doesn't matter which of them is killed since they are both the same flesh. Or is that too suicide pact?)

Sadly h-Jennifer has the indignity of only being seen as a dead body. Which is a shame. My suspicion is that early drafts of the script had Jennifer being the aggressive one on both sides. When we initially meet the miners, Jennifer is the only one not in a ganger. A subtle suggestion, perhaps, that she is revolted by the gangers? Replace h-Cleaves with h-Jennifer for the scene with the electric zapper and a lot of the characterisation issues are resolved. If she's already borderline phobic of the gangers, being copied would be enough – at least for TV pop-psychology – to send her screaming over the edge. Likewise, f-Jennifer would literally "hate her own flesh" and hence get her own dose of paranoia and madness. I can imagine that Graham or Moffat between them may have looked at that and thought "well, that's a bit boringly symmetrical" and swapped some of the action beats around, only for it to turn the characterisation to total dribble.

It is equally a shame that Rory is portrayed as a gullible duffer. He starts off well, seemingly about to tell the Jennifers that they are both real, but then slightly lets one kill the other before falling for her pity-me act and agreeing to trick the Doctor and Amy into a trap. He also loses points for actually backing away from Amy in the scene at the end. He nearly doesn't… but then does. Though to be fair, the Doctor's gone a bit scary at that point.

Incidentally, if you want continuity errors… Rory appears to be following f-Jennifer after she makes the eyes in the corridor and then… isn't. She has time to go back to the other gangers, try to switch of the thermostatic controls, duplicate herself and only then get found by him again. Plus, Rory and f-Jennifer seem to leave the discarded ganger bodies together, only for h-Buzzer to discover f-Jennifer there alone. Of course, it could be that there are dozens of f-Jennifer copies around the castle by this point, but we never see more than one except for the "let's fool Rory scene".

And speaking of "huh?" moments – why do the gangers think that the tl-Doctor is one of them? Yes, he's fooled the humans and the audience into thinking he's the flesh-Doctor, but how do the gangers even know that? Is it just because h-Buzzer has bashed him over the head? Or can they smell his made-of-flesh shoes?

All of this welter of complaints serve to disguise the fact that actually, there is a good, solid story underneath all of the cack-handed characterisation and bolted-on curlicues. The monastery makes a great setting and looks visually stunning, but it doesn't fit the story. Simon, I think correctly, says that setting it on Earth makes the bonkers science intrusive in a way that they could have got away with on an alien planet. And, murderous coda aside, the morality of the story – "gangers are people too" – is bang on, even if the episode produced goes and makes it easy for itself by killing off all the "spares".

A case, possibly, of a good story spoiled by too much script editing.

Could it be that this was Moffat trying to prove that he could do what Russell achieved with "Human Nature": taking a brilliant stand-alone story (about, er, human nature) and seamlessly weaving it into the season story arc, both in plot and theme. Trying and failing rather badly.


Next Time… At the moment, it looks awful. But the possibility exists that Moffat's intention is for Doctor to recognise that he has fallen to the dark side. This is his darkest hour. The battle of Demon's Run is about to begin and "A Good Man Goes to War"



PS:

Those spoilers in full:

*1: all planet-killing/companion-murdering psycho bonkers

*2: Dr Woo's ginger-haired new-best-friend

*3: made out of goo

*4: the ideas and memories of a real person.

13 comments:

hardy24 said...

In regards to the doctors shoes, is it possible f-doctor stole them while everyone was out cold for an hour in rebel flesh? This theory might not work if f-doctor wasn't spawned yet, so I'd have to go back and check.

Amy being swapped during 3 months unseen during day of the moon, it's also the best explaination of why F-Amy has no clue she's flesh, she was simply spawned and swapped with the silence in sight, turn around and she doesn't remember any of it.

Suggested moment The doctor knows F-Amy is flesh (for certain), we see him point the sonic at Amy and say "human and flesh give off different readings" (or similar)

Gareth Aubrey said...

Some amateur thoughts in no particular order;

I think the key to the moral maze (if I may mix my metaphors) is that the f-Doctor has all the Doctor's memories, including the ones where he's ahead of the game; f-Doctor knows why tl-Doctor has come to the monastery and he knows what tl-Doctor already does about the flesh (as exposed when tl-Doctor talks about it while pretending to be f-Doctor)

The result is that f-Doctor doesn't have to have the almost literally existential conflict that the gangers have; by being the Doctor, he's already pre-programmed with the answers (and perhaps is more willing to sacrifice himself as a result of that understanding.) As it's the existential conflict that's the only difference between the gangers and the humans (beyond the biochemical) it's not too surprising the gangers can't tell the two Doctors apart.

As for the murder bit, I think it's too early to judge; we don't yet know exactly what the sonic does to the flesh. What we do know is that f-Doctor knows what it does to the flesh and still uses it on himself (though that may be his Doctorness overcoming the suicide). I suspect your instinct about the 7th Doctor vibe is the right one (says the massive 7th Doctor fan, natch...)

Anton said...

'...but once again it relies on us reading more into the episode than is actually spelled out on screen.'

Personally I don't have a problem with that. I like to employ critical imagination rather than have everything spelled out. But you do have to do it quite a lot in Doctor Who.

Oh and I'm not ruling out a double double bluff. Are we sure that was the F-Doctor left at the base? Do we need to go back and check the Doctor's boots (with plastic eyelets I imagine) in Impossible Astronaut?

Tat said...

All right, several points here: the explanation you reject out of hand is exactly what Matthew Graham says is happening in 'Confidential'*- f-Amy is just a puppet to stop h-Amy realising where she is and the Doctor has, as it says in the dialogue, merely severed the link. Never mind the shoes having metal bits, the Flesh can copy a whole functioning Sonic Screwdriver (and please can people stop calling it a 'Sonic'?) And f-Amy obviously has a whole wardrobe of f-couture, unless the Doctor chose that precise moment to go to the Monastery simply because Amy was finally wearing clothes that would dissolve as well (watch it again). This reminds me of the argument I had with my brother about Broton, Warlord of the Zygons, and which part of his original body became the Duke of Forgill's natty homburg.If the Flesh can copy several changes of clothes over a number of episodes then metal bits of boots aren't a problem.
(*The main point of interest in that, other than the sheer bravado of filling 45 minutes with people talking bollocks in a tent).

Millennium Dome said...

Dear Mr Hardy24,

The Doctor did say "a lot can happen in an hour", but then the episode never seemed to make much more of it, so maybe there is more to learn about the lost hour. However, I don't think that the f-Doctor had formed by that point, because later than that we saw the tl-Doctor return to the flesh's crypt and see a pair of lips form in the flesh repeating the words "trust me", which I assume was the start of the f-Doctor.

You're quite right about the Doctor scanning Amy with the Sonic Screwdriver and casually saying "human and flesh give off different readings", it’s a good line and all part of the deception being played on the audience (and Amy)

And I like your theory for the involvement of the Silence.

Millennium Dome said...

Dear Mr Gareth,

Ooh, another fan of Dr Sylv! Yay!

I like your case for the f-Doctor being more sorted than the other gangers, though you appear to be making a case for them to assume he is human rather than the other way around. (If gangers are gangers 'cos they have angst, and he doesn't have angst, then he's not a ganger…, to coin a syllogism.)

Regarding "that thing that happens at the end": I agree that it may be too early to judge (although I also think it's entirely plausible that this adventure and the particular incident with the flesh at the end will never be referred to again!) My problem is that that is the second time this year that the Doctor has done something that in the episode looked massively morally questionable, and I'm not sure how many more times I want to put up with "but we haven't seen the whole story yet" as an excuse.

Millennium Dome said...

Dear Mr Anton,

I love a good retcon as much as the next fluffy elephant, but when we're weighing it against what we actually see and hear in the episode, then I do think that we need more than a bit of hand-wavey post-factor justification. Just a line or a nod would help. I don't want spoon-feeding, but I'd prefer not to be actively rewriting the episode after it's finished.

You'll notice how most people's theories and excuses hang on that one offhand remark by the Doctor that this is an "early version" of the flesh, so that – by inference – they can say that the ganger Amy is different and that all the rules we've just learned over the last two weeks don't count. But the Doctor never says what the new rules are and performs a complete volte face on how he has been demanding the gangers be treated so far.

Millennium Dome said...

Dear Mr Tat,

Of course Amy's clothes shouldn't dissolve into flesh with the rest of her. But I think we have to file that one under "dramatic licence" on the assumption that either no one thought of that or, even if they did, it would be too expensive to get the Mill to animate falling clothes around Amy turning to liquid. If you can watch "Invasion of the Dinosaurs" and stick with the series, you're pretty much accepted that Doctor Who's visual effects are more an "indication of what probably happened" than "an exact visual representation".

On the subject of clothes, I think it's pretty likely that the flesh does not work like Broton (or Odo from Deep Space Nine) in that body and clothes do not have to remain continuous: one volume of flesh forms the body; another volume forms the clothes. Which presumably means that the clothes – not being directly controlled by a mind – are actually more independently sentient than the ganger wearing them. See also "Next Time: Doctor Who's Talking Shoes". No, let's not go there.

I realise that Matthew Graham said that the Doctor merely severs a link; indeed I acknowledge it in the text above. It's just not my fault that what he says is flatly contradicted by the episode that he wrote!

To be fair to Mr Graham, what he's actually saying is that the Doctor hasn't killed Amy, and I agree with him. It's just that there was a lump of sentient biomass flesh in the equation that's being overlooked.

But look at this! The new series appears to have won you over so much that you are defending it from me! That's put a smile on my face!

Rankersbo said...

I was going to write about this myself, but so far have only published my disclaimer for going into such detail...

Nice theories, not sure I agree with all of them, but I enjoyed reading them.

Yes, I figured out the switch could be in the orphanage, and that the sheer convoluted switch then kidnap the duplicate minutes later scenario being over complex made that unlikely.

It was mentioned that the duplicate has been in the series for episodes 1-6, so possibly during 3 months later or before their break in Ledworth. But this could be a production team half-truth to misdirect from the "during series 5" option.

I think the sonic swaps are misdirection, if the F-Doctor was born with a sonic screwdriver, then he could give that to the TL-Doctor who would then secretly have two, and then at the end the F-Doctor is just getting his own sonic screwdriver. Indeed it returns to liquid form like the F-Doctor and F-Cleaves.

While it isn't spelt out, there is a line indicating that this version of the flesh is early technology. Perhaps the dots could have been numbered with bolder felt-tip but they were there for those of us that like to analyse these things so closely.

I think it would have been more humane to put F-Amy in a bath before severing the link, but that would have been silly and anyway would Amy have cooperated? We don't know that the Flesh is killed by the sonic blast- yes the Doctor says he's being humane but that doesn't necessarily mean death. It's clearly not something he does lightly.

It's stated that the TARDIS has fixed the gangers into their human forms, and people have taken this to mean that F-Amy was similarly fixed. However, the idea that this was an indiscriminate process, rather than something done in-between scenes is a leap of fan logic, its reading something in to the action rather than just seeing what's there. This line does not imply anything about the state of F-Amy that means the story shows anything beyond what was intended by the writer.

My final thought: In the TARDIS the Doctor is wearing a duplicate of his original boots. Do these melt?

Rankersbo said...

PS. You seem to have been typing while I was. I should get back to my study

Simon

Tat said...

There is a huge gulf between thinking out loud, trying to make sense of a badly-written mess of episodes, and 'defending'it.I thought it best to put some ideas out there because, as everyone must have realised by now, the reason for the mid-season break is so that Moffat can see what we all think, pick the explanation that works best and then write Episode 13, swearing blind that he had it all planned from the start. The rest of it is getting actors to live out stories he made up when still playing with Weetabix cards.
Wait until Saturday before saying this isn't true.
The other thing is when Jennifer made a spare: is second-gen-Jen made by first-gen-Jen hotwiring the system (and if so is that why 2GJ needs Rory to operate the machinery)? And, as some friends and I were discussing just this afternoon, what is the point of a North Sea Acid rig? What sort of underground acid-wells need a monastery-based pumping station to get ashore? If they were burying it in disused oil-fields it might almost make sense. If it was liquid nitrogen or something f-Buzzer's pre-credit death would be more CGI-able (if even more like 'Moon' than what we got).
Yes, I grew up allowing artistic licence, but in a series made by a neurotic control-freak who expects us to observe teeny-tiny details and piece together the story from them (and expresses contempt for 'vandals' who give people hints) this isn't really an excuse any more. If they're thinking about what colour bow-tie the Doctor should wear at any point, and if we have been expected to believe that Amy stopped to consider her wardrobe options before attempting a rescue on a pirate ship then this sort of quibble is licit. And you can't begrudge me trying to extract some enjoyment from a programme supposedly made to entertain people.

Rankersbo said...

Ah yes, Tat, the how many Jens question.

I did lose track as to which Jen was which, and how many of them were there. Was the F-Jen that Rory was sympathetic to at the start the same one that was trying to stir the gangers up to take their revenge on humanity?

Were there more than 2 Jen gangers before the acid scene?

Gareth Aubrey said...

My first Who memory is watching The Happiness Patrol with my mum just before my sixth birthday (and I became a Sylv fan and a Lib Dem, whodathunkit?!)