The Almost People (TV story)

The Almost People (TV story)

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The Almost People
Doctor:	[[doctor::Eleventh Doctor Eleventh Doctor (Ganger)]]
Companion(s):	Amy Pond/Ganger Rory Williams
Main enemy:	Gangers Jennifer Lucas (Ganger)
Main setting:	22nd century
Key crew
Writer:	Matthew Graham
Director:	Julian Simpson
Release details
Story number:	217b
Release number:	Series 6
Premiere broadcast:	28th May 2011
Format:	1x 45 minute episode
Confidential:	[[confidential::Take Two|Take Two]]

The Almost People was the sixth story in the sixth series of Doctor Who. In a major plot twist, it revealed that Amy Pond had been replaced by a Ganger some time before. It saw the real Amy Pond reappear and the nature of the "Eye Patch Lady" revealed.

Synopsis

As the solar storm rages, Jennifer, a Ganger driven mad by the memories of being “decommissioned”, is seeking revenge. She can remember every excruciating second of every “execution” and is determined that the humans will pay. She isn’t just talking war; she’s talking revolution. As the crumbling factory fills with toxic fumes and drips lethal acid, the “Originals” wait desperately for the shuttle from the Mainland to rescue them. Jennifer, however, has other ideas. Can the Doctor convince the terrified factory workers to embrace their own humanity and work together with their Gangers to overcome a monster of their own making?

Plot

The Ganger Doctor finalizes his shape and eventually, after the Flesh finds difficulty coping with past regenerations, stabilizes. While Amy is initially horrified, the Doctor quickly takes a liking to himself - Ganger Doctor doing the same. Both cannot believe how brilliant it is to be able to talk to each other - furthermore, unlike the other Gangers, Ganger Doctor appears to be more friendly towards the others. With two Doctors, the group finds an escape route out of the chapel - which supposedly had only one entrance - through a maintenance duct in the wall.

The group makes its way to the control room, where it is established that the "real" Doctor, having changed shoes since coming into contact with the acid, can be distinguished from the Ganger Doctor. However both Doctors maintain that they are as good as equal, which both Amy and Cleaves find difficult to believe despite the two Doctors continually completing each other's sentences. Cleaves eventually makes the decision to evacuate, leaving the gangers behind, and then burn the factory down.

Rory, meanwhile, has tracked Jennifer down after her flight, but he finds that there is also another Jennifer. At first he cannot distinguish between them but eventually realises that one is limping. The intact Jennifer attacks the injured one, which ends in the "real" Jennifer throwing the ganger into a puddle of acid. The two make their way to give the oxygen a stir to remove some of the gas coming off the boiling acid, which is causing the inhabitants of the factory to choke.

Ganger Cleaves and the other gangers contemplate what to do. The real Cleaves transmits to the mainland, asking for evacuation. Ganger Cleaves intercepts the transmission, but the real Cleaves types a codeword, which Ganger Cleaves cannot see. This will be used in further transmissions.

The Doctors realise that before they head to the evacuation tower, Rory and Jennifer should be tracked down. The real Doctor finds out that he can track them with the sonic screwdriver, since Gangers and humans cause a slightly different response from the tool. Meanwhile, Ganger Doctor follows Amy outside. She maintains that he isn't the Doctor. The ganger reacts, shoving Amy against a wall and stating that all the Flesh can say upon deactivation, or rather execution, is "Why?" Eventually, he calms down, but is sent to track down Rory and Jennifer with Buzzer. He finds Jennifer, who is lying in the courtyard, but she dies just as he arrives. Buzzer incapacitates Ganger Doctor on Cleaves' orders.

Rory and Jennifer make it to the thermostatic control room. Jennifer uses Rory to shut off the thermostatic regulators. Upon heading back to the rest of the group, though, Jennifer points out a pile of discarded gangers - Rory decides that this is wrong, since they still feel pain, and decides to help Jennifer stop this from happening. After he leaves, Buzzer soon finds Jennifer comforting the dying Flesh. When Buzzer angrily tells Jennifer that the real Jennifer is dead, Ganger Jennifer tells him that she is stronger than the Real Jennifer, and that she can grow. She promptly stretches her jaws wide and advances on Buzzer, who screams as she kills him.

In the control room Cleaves realises that the coolant systems are offline. This will eventually cause the facility to explode. Not knowing how much time is left, Cleaves prepares to give the evac transport a safer landing site than the evacuation tower, but the radio dies before she can give the codeword. the group heads to the acid storage room to try and prevent any cataclysmic reactions. There, the Doctor finds that a chemical reaction is now occurring, one that he cannot stop. Jennifer locks the group in, and Rory says he has seen what happens to old gangers, and wants to stop it. However, Amy and the Doctor point out that Jennifer is dead - he has been tricked into following a second ganger. She takes Rory back to the chapel, where the remaining Gangers - plus the recovered Ganger Doctor - stay.

Ganger Cleaves completes the real Cleaves' request, giving the codeword as "Badboy". The request goes through and the evac transport is told to land at the courtyard instead. Ganger Doctor turns on Rory, believing that he is one of "them" now. He consistently pushes Rory away, while saying "Ring ring!". The phone then goes off - it is Jimmy's son. Ganger Doctor answers, and invites Ganger Jimmy to answer. Instead, he bolts, proving to Ganger Jennifer - who has been trying to enlist the other gangers into a revenge mission - that gangers and humans can, in fact, get along. Jennifer flees, believing that Ganger Doctor had instead made Ganger Jimmy weak.

Ganger Jimmy unlocks the acid containment room, just in time to see the real Jimmy get hit in the chest by spitting acid. Jimmy asks the ganger to answer his son's call. The Doctor and the remainder of the group head to the chapel, where Ganger Jimmy answers his son's call - knowing his full history.

Rory says that he found an escape route under the crypt, a route not in the schematics. The two Doctors realise that that passage could lead to just under where the TARDIS had been sinking. They head towards the passage, where they are intercepted by Ganger Jennifer, who has now become a scorpion-like creature by using the Flesh's ability to duplicate. Ganger Cleaves and the Doctor hold the door, separating Jennifer and the group, plus the TARDIS, which fell through the ceiling, shut. Realizing it won't lock, Dicken runs into the hallway to close the door at the end of it. Locking it from the other side, he's quickly killed by Jennifer, to the horror of Ganger Dicken.

Amy, having become increasingly hostile towards Ganger Doctor, tells the Doctor to come into the TARDIS, and Ganger Doctor realises that Amy thinks he should stay. The Doctor says that he is staying to hold the door shut. Ganger Doctor explains that he, in fact, is the real Doctor and the Doctor holding the door shut is the ganger. Amy at first does not believe the Doctors, but Ganger Doctor says they swapped shoes. Amy had been hostile towards the Doctor all along, and has been defending Ganger Doctor. She and Cleaves realise that the Doctor's point had been proven - the two races can get along after all. The Doctor gives his ganger the sonic screwdriver, and takes Amy, Rory, Ganger Jimmy, Cleaves and Ganger Dicken into the TARDIS and it dematerializes. Ganger Doctor opens the door, saying that the sonic could destabilize the Flesh. He uses it against Ganger Jennifer, causing her, himself and Cleaves to collapse back into raw Flesh.

Exposure to the TARDIS permanently stabilizes the Flesh, and Ganger Jimmy is dropped off to see his son on the mainland. The Doctor leaves Cleaves and Ganger Dicken at a press conference about the incident. Amy seems worried about what will happen, and the Doctor tells her to "breathe". She suddenly doubles over - the Doctor says she is contracting, and about to give birth. Back in the TARDIS, he tells Rory to step away from Amy. Rory refuses - the Doctor's anger begins to flare up, and he comes closer to shouting. He explained that he needed to be close to the Flesh to properly stop the Flesh's signal to Amy. Rory at last backs away from Amy, and the Doctor tells Amy to hold on and they will find her. A confused Amy protests that she's right here. The Doctor grimly replies that she's not and she hasn't been for a long time. The Doctor points his retrieved sonic screwdriver at "Amy" and activates it - she collapses into raw Flesh.

Amy wakes up in a hospital gown, on a metallic table. A panel in the wall slides away, and a woman with an eye patch, whom Ganger Amy had been seeing occasionally during her recent travels with The Doctor, says that she is ready. Amy looks down - she is very heavily pregnant. As the contractions continue, the mysterious woman tells Amy to push, Amy screams in pain. The episode ends with a dramatic "To Be Continued", much like in Stolen Earth.

Cast

• The Doctor - Matt Smith
• Amy Pond - Karen Gillan
• Rory Williams - Arthur Darvill
• Jimmy - Mark Bonnar
• Buzzer - Marshall Lancaster
• Jennifer - Sarah Smart
• Miranda Cleaves - Raquel Cassidy
• Dicken - Leon Vickers
• Eye Patch Lady - Frances Barber
• Adam - Edmond Moulton

Crew

to be added

References

to be added

Story notes

• While the episode premiered in the UK on 28 May, the US premiere was delayed one week to prevent a drop in viewership over the Memorial Day Weekend. A Good Man Goes to War will also air one week late as a result.

Ratings

to be added

Myths

• The TARDIS will be cloned. This was proven false.

Filming locations

to be added

Production errors

If you'd like to talk about narrative problems with this story — like plot holes and things that seem to contradict other stories — please go to this episode's discontinuity discussion.

• Despite giving it to his ganger, the Doctor still has his sonic screwdriver. Perhaps it was duplicated with him?
• When the TARDIS falls through the ceiling, the doors are facing away from the camera. We then cut to a shot of the Doctor's ganger commenting on how "she does like to make an entrance." When we cut back to the TARDIS (at the same angle as before),the doors are now facing the camera.
• We are told the flesh can duplicate clothes, but when Miranda's Ganger melts, her acid suit melts with it. This suit was not put on until after she was duplicated and therefore should not melt as it's not part of the Flesh. The suit does melt when in contact with overalls, as shown during Jimmy's death. It would have melted as it had prolonged contact with acid.

Continuity

• While The Flesh was attempting to stabilize Ganger Doctor, he began shouting:
  • "One day, we will get back. Yes, one day," same as the First Doctor did (DW: An Unearthly Child).
  • "Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow," a phrase used only twice in its entirety by the Third Doctor and then commonly associated with him. (DW: The Sea Devils, The Five Doctors) It was said twice in full by the Fifth Doctor (DW: Castrovalva, Mawdryn Undead) and once by the Tenth Doctor (DW: Music of the Spheres).
  • "Would you like a jelly baby?" in the manner and voice of the Fourth Doctor (DW: The Robots of Death).
  • "Hello, I'm the Doctor," in the Tenth Doctor's voice (DW: The Girl in the Fireplace), before declaring in his own voice "No, let it go, we've moved on!"
• The real Doctor asks the Ganger Doctor to describe Cybermats.
• Amy tells the original Doctor about her viewing his death 200 years in his future. It was clear that she told the real Doctor due to a line he says to his ganger counterpart just before he enters the TARDIS.
• When Rory and the Ganger Jennifer lock the Doctor and the others in the acid room, the Doctor shouts at Rory angrily through the window, calling him "Roranicus Pondicus". This is a reference to Rory's Auton duplicate, who Amy called "Roranicus" when he told her his name (DW: The Pandorica Opens).
• In earlier episodes of series 6, the Doctor's TARDIS was unable to confirm if Amy was pregnant or not. Considering it was scanning Amy's Ganger rather than Amy herself, this gives an explanation for why it was confused about her pregnancy. Although the real Amy was pregnant, the Ganger Amy was not but could still feel the real Amy's pregnancy due to them being the same person. This also explains why Amy never showed any signs of being heavily pregnant in earlier episodes.
• The Ganger Doctor briefly considers calling himself "John Smith", an alias often used by the real Doctor.

Home video releases

The DVD will be released in two halves. Part One, which will contain episodes one to seven, will be released in Summer, shortly after the airing of episode seven.

External links

to be added