Spoilt by the ending.

So we ended Saturday night’s episode on an amazing cliff hanger. Amy is not really Amy, and is now about to give birth. I’m starting with cliff hanger first, because it changes the episode.

The Almost People is going to be reviewed and rated by the ending. I’ll talk about the cliff hanger itself, later on, but I feel that the cliff hanger changes the story. The Almost People, like the Rebel Flesh, suffers from a poor story.

Last week, in my review, I talked about how the story feels bity. It suffered because instead of flowing from one scene to the next, it jumps, with large leaps. We don’t get to feel the story evolve and grow.

This week the story is better, were treated to a more emotional resolution. With the Doctor, teaching the Gangers and the humans to live in harmony. Its nice to see emotional response from characters. I have discussed with my fellow reviwer about how some stories suffer from stock characters. Planet of the Ood is a good example of this. Here we see our characters, whether human or ganger, being human. Crying, looking forward to their kids birthday and so…

There are many good things to praise with the story. Matthew Graham’s deciding to make two Doctor and deal with the complicated issue of racism was a superb choice. We love Amy, she can’t put a foot wrong, but here she did. However, it was clear that the Doctor would swap shoes to make Amy learn about herself.

The character of Jen is, however, a negative side to this story. She, for no apparent reason, decides to go on a murderous, killing all humans, rampage. Her motives are clear, but how she came to them is not. The rest of the flesh are portrayed as being confused. They want to be treated as nothing more than people. However, Jen, from the onset, is portrayed as spoiling for a fight.

Matt Smith, having to play two doctors, was a fine performance. You couldn’t work out which was the ‘fake’ Doctor and which one was real. That, I suspect, was down to the Director deliberately not showing you his shoes. It was also nice to hear the Doctor speak some of his old lines as well.

I praised the production team for this episode, and I want to do it again. They have chosen perfect locations and got the tone of the episodes right.

So the cliff hanger was brilliant. There is no doubt about it. We expect the story to wrap up nicely with the Doctor, Amy, and Rory leaving them behind in the Tardis, then we go and get this game changer.

I love this cliff hanger, its brilliant and its has been often in my mind over the last week. That is a problem. It has overshadowed the preceding 40 minutes in such a way, that I can barely remember the story. That, to me, is a problem.

So all in all, if I exclude the cliff hanger, this was a disappointing episode. I give the story,

6/10
And the two parter as a whole
6/10

Lets see what next week brings.