Tag: BBC

Episode 29: The Rebel Flesh

Martyn and Gerrod look at Doctor Who: The Rebel Flesh.

“The Rebel Flesh” is the fifth episode of the sixth series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast on 21 May 2011 on BBC One and on BBC America in the United States. It is the first episode of a two-part story written by Matthew Graham and directed by Julian Simpson, concluded in “The Almost People”.

In the episode, the TARDIS is hit by a solar storm, sending the Doctor (Matt Smith) and his companions Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) and Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill) to a monastery on an island on Earth in the 22nd century, which has been converted into a factory to pump acid off the island. To prevent death from the acid, the workers have utilized a “programmable matter” called the Flesh, which creates a doppelgänger (called “Ganger”) controlled by the worker. As the solar storm hits, the Gangers become independent, and the Doctor, Amy and Rory must work to prevent the two groups from breaking into a war.

Showrunner Steven Moffat specifically asked Graham to write the episodes about “avatars that rebel”, although the Flesh and the monastery were Graham’s original ideas. The episode was filmed in the late months of 2010 with some location filming at Caerphilly Castle to represent the monastery. Prosthetics were used to create the Gangers’ facial features, while doubles of the actors were used for scenes in which a character and his or her Ganger were both in a scene, but did not both show their face.

The episode was seen by 7.35 million viewers in the UK and achieved an Appreciation Index of 85. Reviewers were generally positive about the episode; some praised the setting and characters but others commented that the story had not developed enough even though it was only the first part. The computer-generated effects used for one scene were also disapproved of by a couple of reviewers.

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Review-Doctor Who: The BBC Radio Episodes

Here’s a beautiful box-set of BBC radio plays. So beautiful in fact, I almost didn’t open it.

It’s a collection of radio adventures; there are three different Doctors, the 3rd, 4th and 6th.

The Paradise of Death and The Ghosts of N-Space

These are 3rd Doctor stories which feature Jon Pertwee, Elizabeth Sladen and Nicholas Courtney.

Neither story really works that well and they introduce an extremely annoying, new companion.

In N-Space we meet the Brigadier’s uncle, in an awful ghost tale.
The performances are strong, but the scripts aren’t that great. You can make bad audio out of a good script, but you can’t make good audio out of a bad script. It does, however, try to capture that era of Doctor Who, which even though it failed, was an interesting experiment and given the recent passing of Nicholas Courtney, it was great to hear him again

Doctor Who and the Pescatons

This is a fun little tale, which features the 4th Doctor and Sarah Jane. The Doctor and Sarah are battling monsters, that are bringing panic, to the streets of London. This is less than an audio play and more of an audiobook, with Tom Baker narrating and Liz Sladen throwing in the odd comment. It’s a fun story, but I couldn’t help but feel that it would have suited Patrick Troughton’s 2nd Doctor better.

Exploration Earth

This is the real clunker in this box set. It features the 4th Doctor and Sarah Jane investigating the start, of life on Earth, only to run into the Megaron Lord of Chaos. The performances feel a little “phoned in”.

Whatever Happened To… Susan?

This is a tongue-in-cheek tale of what Susan did after she left the TARDIS. Jane Asher takes over from Carol Anne Ford, as Susan and is talking to a documentary crew, about her life after leaving the TARDIS.

There is some laugh out loud moments here, including her tale about how The Doctor gets younger and younger with each regeneration and how companions fell in love with him.

It’s an amusing story that runs at about 30 minutes, but it completely contradicts continuity. If you’re willing to switch your brain off and just listen, then you’ll have an amazing time, if you get bogged down with continuity, you won’t enjoy it.
I couldn’t help but wish that it was a proper, serious audio drama, with Carol Anne Ford reprising the role of Susan and telling the tale. Done seriously, this could have been a brilliant audio drama

Slipback

Now, this was the first Doctor Who story made for radio and was broadcast during the show’s enforced hiatus, in 1985.
This was a very Douglas Adams story – I could imagine Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect in this. This isn’t a great story; the computer is annoying but likeable. The performances of Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant are quite good and you get a foreshadow of the chemistry that would later work so well on Big Finish.

It’s a good enough box set with a few decent tales, but also with a few poor episodes. I’d say this is one for true, die-hard Doctor Who fans. Viewers of the new series will get very little for money.