Doctor Who - The Rebel Flesh

Director: Matthew Graham
Writer: Julian Simpson

Back in 2006, Matthew Graham was granted a single episode of David Tennant’s first year, Fear Her, in which an alien-inhabited terrified young girl captures the essence of the things she draws, and causes them to come to life, due to the bent up feelings of rejection from her father. It also happened to be one of the worst Doctor Who stories of all time. Time travel forward to 2011 and Graham is at it again, but this time instead of one episode, he’s been gifted two.

The Doctor and companions arrive on an isolated island in the future with a converted monastery acting to pump highly corrosive acid out of the ground and back to the mainland. The skeleton crew that operates the factory use a specifically manufactured flesh which can be programmed to take the shape of anything, in order to birth a surrogate version of themselves to harvest the high risk acid. Referred to as Gangers, these disposable bodies are operated wirelessly through the use of control beds. Whilst scanning the intangible gooey mass of flesh in the spawning pool, the Doctor sticks his hand in, stating ominously that it feels like it is scanning him. Initially posing as an inspector, the Doctor warns of an imminant  solar tsunami which will cause the facility significant damage. The foreman, Miranda Cleaves (Raquel Cassidy), refuses to shut down the operation without corresponding orders from her higher ups. Things go wrong as they usually do when people refuse to obey the Doctor, and the solar flare damages the monastery, spewing forth acid everywhere, and knocking the entire crew unconscious. When they come to they find their Doppelgangers are moving freely, infiltrating the crew and plotting their independence by any means necessary.

The Rebel Flesh is said to have a very Classic Who feeling. Although it’s not entirely awful, Graham declines to truly do anything unique or particularly interesting, and the episode is dismissed as more of a superficial Monster-of-the-Week affair. The chameleonic maliciousness haunting the occupants of the lone building on the isolated island reminds strongly of Horror of Fang Rock, in which an alien disguised as a human hunts the Doctor and the workers in an old lighthouse in the middle of a raging storm. The bio-hazards caused by the exposed and ruptured pipelines recall the eco-friendly message from the Jon Pertwee adventure The Green Death. The creation turning against its creator mimics Frankenstein and an organic I, Robot.

This episode shares many traits with The Hungry Earth, exploring themes of segregation and coping with those who are not necessarily evil, but are merely different from humans. It also feels incredibly similar, in that the entire episode merely buys time until the inevitable cliff-hanger. The obvious foreshadowing of the event means that in the downtime scenes tend to drag on and on, and several shots linger awkwardly as the pieces are manoeuvred into the position the audience has envisioned much earlier. Bar the final moments of the episode, what is presented here, like most part ones, is 100% build-up, and the sequel will be make-or-break, determining if the wait was worth it or not.

Probably the best thing about this episode is the part where Rory did not die. However, one must not get one’s hopes up; there will surely be multiple opportunities for his demise in the concluding 45 minutes. Instead of dying, Rory goes through a much more offensive character development, as he recalls his previous life living as a clone of himself, and empathises with the Rebel Flesh. This is obviously a poorly disguised attempt to redeem his ineptness, and make him seem a valuable part of the team before his predicted upcoming death, but only manages to steal screen time away from the much more deserving Amy. How out of character for Rory to betray his wife, who up until this point he’s followed blindly like a lovesick sheep.

The most disappointing part of the episode comes after an amusing scene involving the death of the Doctor’s well-worn boots, the writers missing the perfect opportunity for the Doctor to save the day in some kind of humorous footwear, similar to the Doctor saving the world in his jimmy-jams in The Christmas Invasion.

Similarly disappointing, the scenes between Doctor and companions lack a punch line, with characters rambling on without anything to say until it cuts to the next shot.

The climax brings new speculation as to the true identity of the future Doctor who was last seen when the Impossible Astronaut shot him dead at the beginning of the series, but all theories so far prove unsatisfying, and based too much on chance rather than a single thread holding all stories together. Hopefully everything comes together next week, and Moffatt hasn’t just wasted two of the precious little episodes. 


It’s interesting how this series they negate the usual balance of multi-episode stories, with the third two-parter airing in a couple of weeks’ time, getting them over and done with by the middle of the series. This means that for the first time the finale will consist of a string of consecutive stand-alone episodes. Will there be enough time? Only time will tell.

2 ½ / 5