Alden Bates' Weblog

Because I was lazy last weekend, and because we're only getting half a season, because the BBC hates us, here's my coverage of the remaining episodes of this half season!

The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People
It must be annoying having to come up with two titles every time someone writes a two-parter - I find it hard enough to come up with just one! The Flesh two-parter come off as one of the weaker stories of the half season. Much of it is people running around no achieving much, and the only real highlight of the story is seeing Matt Smith playing against himself as the Doctor and his Flesh duplicate. It could almost have been trimmed back to one episode. The moral of the story that Flesh people are people too seems a bit old hat when you consider that that last season we had the Doctor and Amy talking Professor Bracewell into thinking he's a real person.

A Good Man Goes to War
The plot of this episode is pretty much: The Doctor grabs some friends, gatecrashes someone else's party, rescues Amy, wins, then it turns out he hasn't won after all, and River Song turns up to explain what just happened. The guest characters are all wonderful and well drawn, and it's little wonder people are clamoring for spin-off series featuring them.

The problem with River's revelation, and the knowledge that she was the child in the Impossible Astronaut two-parter, is that, well, it doesn't actually resolve the conflict. Madame Kovarian gets away with baby River, and there's no need for the Doctor to go after her, because it's already been sorted out in the past. Instead he leaves River to get Amy and Rory home, and rushes off in the TARDIS (where?) and apparently the next story is going to involve Hitler somehow. I find that marginally unsatisfying, but that's how it was written.

Rating the half-season in order of preference:

• The Doctor's Wife


• A Good Man Goes to War


• The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon


• The Curse of the Black Spot


• The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People