Doctor Who: The Almost People – Dork Review

In the second part of Doctor Who’s putty-kneading adventure, our hero must persuade the nasty humans to make nice with a bunch of (doppel)gangers, including one of himself. This show doesn’t paint a nice picture of our species, does it? I’ve read the Daily Mail, I know some people suck, but still.

So aside from homo sapien PR, how is this episode? Does it deliver on last week’s decent set-up, or grind to a halt? And will I be spoiling the twist ending? (Yes.)

Rory Is An Individual, A Stupid Individual

Basically, this is an episode of two halves: the first 40 minutes, then the ending. (They are not very even halves.) This takes care of my subsections nicely. The larger chunk, of course, is resolving the human/ganger mess from last week and I thought it went well. Rather than grinding boringly towards an obvious ending (see: that Silurian thing last year), there are fights, twists and surprise decisions a-plenty.

It’s not perfect by any means – Rory acts like a moron at times, though manages to stay alive for once, and that child actor towards the end was so bad that I felt my review slouching downbeat as I watched. The huge gangly monster was also out of nowhere, but these are niggles. As mid-season Doctor Who two-parters go, this is one of the better ones. It took last week’s set-up and lit it up. Good job.

Spoilers Below, Don’t Complain

And then the ending happened. It’s certainly ambitious, and ties together some of those loose ends they’ve been teasing us with. Revealing the Doctor deliberately went to investigate the Flesh makes him look less like a man staring impotently at a scanner, which is good, although where was his concern for humane treatment of gangers in that final scene?

Also, I guess we’re meant to assume the big switch happened when Amy was taken by the Silence in Day Of The Moon, but didn’t she first see the eyepatch lady before that? This is the kind of thing that will hopefully be explained next week. Also potentially being revealed: River Song’s identity? All signs point to her being the Spawn Of Amy, as that would be both strange and coherent, but there may yet be another twist.

But for now, this was a surprising, fun episode and I find myself excited about the show again, having flagged a little of late. Alas, next is the mid-series finale, after which no more until September. Still, check out The Almost People on iPlayer, and if you have any thoughts on the episode, or theories about River Song, share below while you still can.

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Nick Bryan

Nick learned to read and write at an early age. This has developed into an unhealthy need to either write stories or consume them for later dissection. He reviews film and TV on Dork Adore and The Digital Fix, lives in London and enjoys a nice white beer.

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