Doctor Who: The Almost People

Let me give you one of my pet theories here. The most important scene in the film Psycho is not when the apparently main character decides to take a shower, but rather when the real killer is actually revealed. The fact that the knife-wielder is Bates rather than his mother is one of those great moments when a story pulls the rug from under your feet and leaves you wondering what the hell just happened. It is a very effective way of rounding off a story if only because it can be, if done right, so wonderfully effective. Hell, M. Night Shyamalan has tried to build a career based on trying to pull off this sort of twist.

Of course - as the career of M. Night shows - it can be a dishonest way of telling a story, since the twist can hide a mulititude of sins within the story as a whole. So before we consider the cliff-hanger that ended The Almost People, let's pause for a moment and think about the forty odd minutes that preceded it.

In a sense, it was a bit of a gamble to use Matthew Graham, if only because he has a track record of turning in both outstanding and utterly disappointing endings to his stories. Anyone who has seen the superb final episode to Ashes to Ashes will know just what a genius he can be; anyone who has sat through the largely nonsense conclusion to otherwise really rather good The Last Train. So The Almost People, based on Graham's track record, was either going to be very good or really rather poor. Which was it?

Somewhere in the middle, really. In fact, it felt a lot like a typical ending for an generally good Doctor Who story. It managed to end with a more emotionally satisying twist than just flicking a switch to solve everything, and there were some wonderful moments - especially hearing the voices of previous incarnations when the Almost Doctor first spoke. But equally some elements of the plot seemed a little to contrived. Plus, the final monster was completely unneccessary, and rather undermined the whole idea that the Flesh were meant to be basically human (as did the X-Men 3 style "curing"of the Flesh in the TARDIS). Although the twist with the Doctor's shoes was nice, even if I did see it coming. There may be a lot to come, as well, from the fact that Amy revealed to the real Doctor that she saw him die.

So satisying but not outstanding. The sort of Doctor Who you would want to watch again...

... especially when you factor in that cliffhanger. And that's what I mean by the twist ending, the jaw-dropping moment when the whole story changes. I mean, I knew that the Doctor was up to something from the beginning of the last episode (on the grounds that he had some sort of a plan). But what happened at the end...

Of course, the comments section is there for you all to speculate, but in the interim between now and the next episode I'd like to ask some questions:

Amy's pregnant. Who's the father? (No pun intended)

Where is she?

Who took her?

And for what reason?

And who is the eye-patch Lady who's been breaking into the Almost Amy's adventures?

But for me, the absolutely crucial question - the one that could define not only the next episode but the rest of the episodes when the show returns after the summer - is when was she taken?

Hopefully, we'll learn more next week when a good man goes to war. Of course, I thought that good man would be the Doctor, but given what's happened to Amy, it might just be Rory...