4. "The Flesh Are Living, Breathing, & Sentient. So, Now I'll Set About Killing Several Of Them With My Sonic..."
Story: "The Almost People" (2011) - Matt Smith
Usage Rating: Letts - We're getting things done!
Nyssa Scale: 4 - Again, it doesn't HAVE to be the screwdriver.... "The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People" is a problematic story that's come up in my articles before, due to the rather, uh, curious choice of Sarah Smart to play the most demanding and complicated role. Suffice to say, even the CGI's better than her, and it was roundly attacked on internet forums before the episode was even over. However, this story also continues an unfortunate trend of using the Sonic Screwdriver as a weapon. In "Day of the Moon", we covered the Doctor playing Buck Rogers while River set back intelligent female characters in Sci-fi about 20 years. However, it wasn't clear if he was even
doing anything. Here, in the final moments of "Almost People", he definitely is doing something - He's killing life. Life that we actually just spent the story stressing
really, honestly is alive and has the same rights as we. In case you fell asleep somewhere in the middle of "Rebel Flesh" (Don't worry, you weren't alone), the whole conflict of the story is that the Flesh duplicates are fighting back because they see themselves as deserving of life. Traditionally, Doctor Who has treated a conflict like this in one of two ways: 1. Though it's agreed that in principle the aggressive lifeform is correct, they also usually are engaging the Doctor or his party/humans in a way that gives him no choice but to defeat them, usually at the cost of their life. ("Doctor Who and the Silurians" being an excellent example.) 2. The Doctor is able to idealistically take the side of the aggressor, and resolve the conflict by making the humans realize that all parties CAN co-exist together. Either usually makes for a good dramatic resolution. However, this story takes a different tack: Idealistically, the Doctor DOES take the side of the aggressor - And uses it to teach Amy Pond that she's shallow. After he's done smugly grandstanding that point to her, he saves the Flesh duplicates and allows them to make the case for their humanity to the relevant agency - Well, some of them. Two of them he leaves in the path of the most incorrigible duplicate, and lets them all kill each other with the Sonic. He then gets a new Sonic, so he can kill ANOTHER Flesh duplicate, this one posing as Amy. There are VERY few instances where Doctor Who manages to contradict itself within the same serial. This is the worst, and it's from a time and production team that REALLY should know better. That the Doctor uses his NON-WEAPON Sonic Screwdriver to end the Flesh's existence just makes the point that much more irritating. That no one caught this or even thought that there MIGHT be some contradiction involved leaves one thinking again that either 1. The Series really was "dumbing down" for its push on America or 2. Series 6 is SERIOUSLY flawed. Back on topic though - WHY not just let the Flesh duplicates live? The Doctor and Cleaves duplicates could've come in handy - Cleaves' duplicate could've proved she was indistinguishable from her original, and a Doctor duplicate would've made a hell of a lot more sense than that Tesselecta nonsense. Also, having an Amy Pond double in touch with the "actual" Amy might've been helpful. Or led to some clever misdirection. At this point, Series Six might've benefit from SOMETHING clever. So on top of this silly, dumb-action finish, the Screwdriver is just there to add insult to injury. It's bad enough that the story is contradicting everything that it tried to drive home as a point - The Sonic Screwdriver is the instrument of contradiction, and it's used with a nonchalance that almost challenges you to even question it - It's part of this show as much as the TARDIS, the Doctor, and most other staples - They're a party to this, why object?