History Recap / DoctorWhoS32E6TheAlmostPeople

* GenreSavvy: Like many viewers, Amy immediately realizes that the death of the Doctor she witnessed in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E1TheImpossibleAstronaut "The Impossible Astronaut"]] could have been the Ganger Doctor being killed instead. The Doctor is understandably rather cross with her for jumping to this conclusion.

* RedHerring: The gangers immediately led [[GenreSavvy both Amy and the viewers]] to the hypothesis that the Doctor who died in "The Impossible Astronaut" was a ganger.

* NotSoDifferent: The point of the Aesop is that the Grangers are not different at all from their Human counterparts. The Doctor and his Granger prove this with the TwinSwitch they pull on Amy.

* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Cleaves, responsible for the whole mess by murdering Granger Buzz, becomes one in the end. At the press conference she is accepted as "boss" by one of the remaining Grangers after saying they would confront the matter "side-by-side".

%%* ShapeshiftingSquick

* CaptureAndReplicate: At the end of the episode it's revealed that the Flesh technology has been used to do this [[spoiler: with Amy]].

** Rory appears to understand why the Doctor is telling him to step away from Amy, which would make sense for someone who was himself a duplicate.

* BatmanGambit: By the Doctor, as usual, by banking on the Gangers trying to his Ganger, he shames them into acting human.

* HiveMind: The two Doctors manage to act as if they were still occupying the same skull. Which, in a way, they are. Both being essentially exactly the same person, it would make sense that they would know exactly what the other was thinking. And the fact that Time Lords are telepathic couldn't have hurt, either.

** The climax basically revolvez around the poetic irony that while the other Gangers either die heroically (and thus assist in proving their species "humanity" to their originals) or actually take over the lives of dead originals as desired (albeit under far more noble terms), Ganger Jennifer has come to find such actions "weaknesses" and dies a literal inhuman monster willing to kill even her own out of spite.

* IdiotBall: Ganger Jennifer, after apparently being proven human, inexplicably uses Rory's hand-print instead of her own to access the factory controls, and the computer says loudly, "Human identity verified". Rory doesn't notice anything odd about this.

* NotSoDifferent: The point of the Aesop is that the Granger are not different at all from their human counterparts. The Doctor and his Granger prove this with the TwinSwitch they pull on Amy.

* ScreamingBirth: Although Amy could just be screaming out of terror, she' also giving birth.

* UsedToBeASweetKid: Ganger Jennifer

* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: Carrying over from the last episode, the miners and Amy say "nothing" and the Doctor and Rory say "everything". In the end, surviving miner agrees with the Doctor.

The Doctor's own Ganger has some initial glitches. But the Doctor calms him down and, [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E13JourneysEnd as usual]], effortlessly teams up with himself. He tells Amy that they can still be told apart because the original Doctor's shoes dissolved last episode, and he's wearing different ones now.

Amy is ''very'' freaked out by seeing the Doctor's Ganger. She treats it coldly and pretty much stops just short of "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E6TheDoctorsDaughter generated anomaly]]". The Doctor keeps asking her why, and she explains that the friendship she has with the Doctor can't suddenly be directed towards his Ganger, regardless of whether or not they have the exact same feelings and memories.

Amy sees the eye-patch woman again, and finally decides to tell the Doctor about it. He brushes her off. When the Doctor's Ganger takes her aside, she freaks out and asks him if he can die. [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E1TheImpossibleAstronaut Because she may have seen that.]] And the real Doctor invited her to come see it. The Ganger takes in that information, but is distracted when his innate psychic Time Lord powers pick up the screams of the decaying discarded Flesh. He heads back to confer with the Doctor, and hesitantly agrees to keep his distance from the main crew as a safety precaution.

Rory teams up with Jennifer, and is tricked by her to trap Amy, the Doctor and the remaining crew. Jennifer turns out to have had ''two'' Gangers, and the real her is [[DeadAllAlong long since dead]].

Jennifer's remaining Ganger morphs into a freakish long-limbed monster. Eventually, the factory is about to be blown up, and the Doctor reveals to Amy that he's not the Doctor at all. He's the Ganger -- and has been all along. They switched shoes to see how Amy would respond to them. The Doctor's Ganger sacrifices himself while the Doctor, Amy and Rory escape. The two remaining Gangers are dropped off safely, together with the last living human crew member. They decide to let the world know what happened, together.

Back inside the TARDIS, the Doctor explains his reasoning for the switcheroo. And why he told Amy to "breathe" earlier. She's going into labour. Or rather, her very pregnant ''actual'' self is. Because Amy was kidnapped even before America, and has [[ParanoiaFuel unknowingly]] spent months experiencing all her adventures through a Flesh body. The Doctor knew all along, because [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E5ThePoisonSky the Flesh has never been able to fool him]]. He just needed to know more about it before taking action: how it feels, how it works and how it can judge.

And as the Doctor dissolves the Flesh of Amy's Ganger, telling Rory to be very brave, we cut to where Amy really is: on a bed, giving birth. And the eye-patch woman who Amy keeps seeing through doors and walls is staring at her, real this time, happy that the baby is about to be born. Amy ''screams''.

* BatmanGambit: By the Doctor, as usual.

* BodyHorror: The rotting Gangers -- partially melted but still conscious. And eyes in one of the walls, made of more living Flesh.

* FantasticRacism: Cleaves towards gangers in general. Amy demonstrates repeated prejudice and anger towards the one she thinks is the Ganger Doctor.
* FinishingEachOthersSentences: The Doctor and his Ganger.

* HeroicSacrifice: All over the place. Final list includes human Jimmy, human Dicken, Ganger Cleaves and the Ganger Doctor.

** There's a downplayed case at the end. After spending two episodes preaching about the rights and freedoms the Gangers deserve, the Doctor quickly melts Amy's Ganger in order to learn the original Amy's location. He says he is going to be as "humane" about it as possible and he's not at all happy about it.

* KillEmAll: Almost the entire secondary cast is killed off in this episode -- Cleaves is the ''only'' human to survive. The gangers of Jimmy and Dicken survive, however.

* NightmareFace: Ganger Jennifer sports two of them this episode.

* NotSoDifferent: The point of the Aesop is that the Granger have no difference at all from their human counterparts. The Doctor and his granger prove this with the TwinSwitch they pull on Amy.

* PseudoCrisis: The last episode's cliffhanger was the revelation of the Ganger Doctor. He and his original get along just fine.

* BrokenAesop: The episode ends with a FantasticAesop that the gangers (remote controlled bodies) should be treated as just as human as the originals they're copies of. This is after a ganger [[JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope jumps off the slippery slope]], creates another ganger just to kill it so that it can kill more humans, and goes AxCrazy and tries to kill everyone. Counts as an inversion too. It follows the "Gangers are people too" Aesop through to its logical conclusion -- just like humans, some are bad, some good, and some in between. The villain ball passes between human and ganger over the course of the story and by the end, the survivors are a mixed group of gangers and humans working together to escape from the aforementioned AxCrazy.

* CaptainObvious: There is a massive cracking sound. Amy: "Something just cracked; I heard it!" REALLY?

* HollywoodAcid

** The climax is basically revolved around the poetic irony that while the other Gangers either die heroically (and thus assist in proving their species "humanity" to their originals) or actually take over the lives of dead originals as desired (albeit under far more noble terms), Ganger Jennifer has come to find such actions "weaknesses" and dies a literal inhuman monster willing to kill even her own out of spite.
** After spending two episodes preaching about the rights and freedoms the Gangers deserve, the Doctor quickly melts Amy's Ganger in order to learn the original Amy's location.
* IdiotBall: Ganger Jennifer, after apparently being proven human, inexplicably uses Rory's hand-print instead of her own to access the factory controls, and the computer says loudly, "Human identity verified". Rory doesn't notice anything odd about this. This really borders on TooDumbToLive.

* [[IncurableCoughOfDeath Incurable Headache of Death]]: Both Human Cleaves and Ganger Cleaves suffer from one caused by a blood clot in their brains.
* KarmaHoudini: No-one seems to make much of a fuss over the fact that Cleaves murdered Ganger Buzzer in cold blood. In fact, it goes unmentioned. Considering that, by the end of the episode, she's working with Ganger Dicken to try and make humans sympathetic to the Flesh, it could be easy to label her as TheAtoner. Of note, she does so while considering her and Ganger Dicken "side by side".

* MindScrew: [[TheEndingChangesEverything The ending]].

* NotSoDifferent: Arguably the entire point of the episode.

* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Cleaves, arguably responsible for the whole mess, becomes one in the end.

* RetCon: Cleaves seems surprised at the thought the Doctor is an alien because "Earth is all that's available." It's the 22nd century and there have been plenty of alien encounters known to the public in the Whoniverse by that point, besides colonies on [[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E6TheMoonbase the Moon]] [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E16TheWatersOfMars and Mars]].

* ScreamingBirth: Although Amy could just be screaming out of terror....
* ShapeshiftingSquick

* SpotTheImposter: The Doctor's shoes have been burnt by acid; Ganger Doctor's are still intact. Subverted when it turns out they swapped shoes so the original Doctor could understand the ganger's perspective.
** Similarly, human Jimmy wears his wedding band on a cord around his neck, which Ganger Jimmy takes after he dies.
* StupidSacrifice: There was no particular reason that Ganger Jenny had to be taken down by Gangers (who knew they would be destroyed in the process) rather than originals (who would not have been harmed). [[MoreExpendableThanYou But the Gangers insisted on it.]] Their claim that they had to hold the door shut isn't quite held up by the special effects. The door is very clearly doing just fine, even when one of them steps away.

** Though it may also be referring to some lingering resentment the Doctor himself had over his previous regeneration. Which makes sense, given that his predecessor wasn't exactly a fan of the process.

* TookALevelInJerkAss: Amy can be unfeeling at the best of times but she dislikes Ganger Doctor before she has any reason to.

* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman

* YourPrincessIsInAnotherCastle: The real Amy is.

* GenreSavvy: Like many viewers, Amy immediately realizes that the death of the Doctor she witnessed in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E1TheImpossibleAstronaut "The Impossible Astronaut"]] could have been the Ganger Doctor being killed instead.]] The Doctor is understandably rather cross with her for jumping to this conclusion.

** After spending two episodes preaching about the rights and freedoms the Gangers deserve, [[spoiler:the Doctor quickly melts Amy's Ganger in order to learn the original Amy's location]].

'''WARNING! THERE MAY BE UNMARKED SPOILERS!'''

[[caption-width-right:350:Me and Mr. Smith]]

** Later, he calls himself John Smith, his most common alias over the series. More specifically, [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E8HumanNature it was his name the last time]] he was "only ''almost'' the Doctor".

-->'''The Doctor:''' (''Tenth's voice'') Hallo, I'm the Doctor. (''normal'') [[BigNo noooOOOOOOOO!!]] ''Let it go, we've MOVED ON!!''
:: Though it may also be referring to some lingering resentment the Doctor himself had over his previous regeneration. Which makes sense, given that his predecessor wasn't exactly a fan of the process.

->''I have a plan and it'll destroy them all.''

-> Written by Matthew Graham

Continued from the last episode, and all-out war is going on between the human crew and their rogue [[UncannyValley Gangers]], both of which fear the other group too much to stay rational. As the solar storm rages, Jennifer, a Ganger driven mad by the unnatural memories of being "decommissioned" over and over, is seeking revenge. 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.

The Doctor's own Ganger has some initial glitches. But the Doctor calms him down and, [[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS4E13JourneysEnd as usual]], effortlessly teams up with himself. He tells Amy that they can still be told apart because the original Doctor's shoes dissolved last episode, and he's wearing different ones now.

It turns out that the factory is full of discarded bits and pieces of Flesh... still fully conscious.

Amy is ''very'' freaked out by seeing the Doctor's Ganger. She treats it coldly and pretty much stops just short of "[[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS4E6TheDoctorsDaughter generated anomaly]]". The Doctor keeps asking her why, and she explains that the friendship she has with the Doctor can't suddenly be directed towards his Ganger, regardless of whether or not they have the exact same feelings and memories.

Rory teams up with Jennifer, and is tricked by her to trap Amy, the Doctor and the remaining crew. Jennifer turns out to have had ''two'' Gangers, and the real her is [[DeadAllAlong long since dead]].

Jennifer's remaining Ganger morphs into a freakish long-limbed monster. Eventually, the factory is about to be blown up, and the Doctor reveals to Amy that he's not the Doctor at all. He's the Ganger -- and has been all along. They switched shoes to see how Amy would respond to them. The Doctor's Ganger sacrifices himself while the Doctor, Amy and Rory escape. The two remaining Gangers are dropped off safely, together with the last living human crew member. They decide to let the world know what happened, together.

Back inside the TARDIS, the Doctor explains his reasoning for the switcheroo. And why he told Amy to "breathe" earlier. She's going into labour. Or rather, her very pregnant ''actual'' self is. Because Amy was kidnapped even before America, and has [[ParanoiaFuel unknowingly]] spent months experiencing all her adventures through a Flesh body. The Doctor knew all along, because [[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS4E5ThePoisonSky the Flesh has never been able to fool him]]. He just needed to know more about it before taking action: how it feels, how it works and how it can judge.

!!Tropes

* ActorAllusion: "You might as well call me ... [[Creator/MattSmith Smith]]!"
** Alternatively, a reference to the Doctor's favourite human alias: John Smith.
* [[ArcWords Arc Person]]: Eye Patch Lady.

* BrokenAesop: The episode ends with a FantasticAesop that the gangers (remote controlled bodies) should be treated as just as human as the originals they're copies of. This is after a ganger [[JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope jumps off the slippery slope]], creates another ganger just to kill it so that it can kill more humans, and goes AxCrazy and tries to kill everyone.
** Counts as an inversion too. It follows the "Gangers are people too" Aesop through to its logical conclusion - just like humans, some are bad, some good, and some in between. The villain ball passes between human and ganger over the course of the story and by the end, the survivors are a mixed group of gangers and humans working together to escape from the aforementioned AxCrazy.
* BuffySpeak: "It's chokey gas!"

* ContinuityNod: The Ganger-Doctor quotes his First, Third, Fourth and Tenth incarnations while trying to stabilise himself. At one point he even offers people a jelly baby in Creator/TomBaker's voice. Later, he calls himself John Smith, his most common alias over the series.
** More specifically, [[{{Recap/DoctorWhoNSS3E8HumanNature}} it was his name the last time]] he was "only ''almost'' the Doctor".
** Right before making his HeroicSacrifice, he also shouts [[{{Recap/DoctorWhoS31E13TheBigBang}} "GERONIMO!"]]]
** Also, both Doctors refer to the TARDIS as [[{{Recap/DoctorWhoS31E1TheEleventhHour}} "Se]][[{{Recap/DoctorWhoS32E4TheDoctorsWife}} xy"]]

** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E08TheHungryEarth Amy waking up in a small coffin-like space.]]

* EyesDoNotBelongThere: Growing on the castle walls, just staring accusingly at people.

* [[FinishingEachOthersSentences Finishing Each Other's Sentences]]: The Doctor and his Ganger.
* {{Foreshadowing}}: Amy, in this episode, is worried she and Rory are growing apart, and doesn't like being separated from him. Turns out they've been apart all along.

* GenreSavvy: Like many viewers, Amy immediately realizes that the death of the Doctor she witnessed in [[{{Recap/DoctorWhoS32E1TheImpossibleAstronaut}} "The Impossible Astronaut"]] could have been the Ganger Doctor being killed instead.]] The Doctor is understandably rather cross with her for jumping to this conclusion.
* GoMadFromTheRevelation: Ganger Jenny completely loses it thanks to all her memories of being 'decommissioned'.
* HeelRealization: The Doctor gambits the Gangers into this to quit their plans and save the humans, having the Ganger version of Jimmy contact their son (and thus realize he is basically killing his son's father). Only Ganger Jennifer fails to undergo this, coming to see "humanity" as a weakness.
** Doctor also gambits one onto Amy, by pulling a TwinSwitch with the Ganger Doctor she is reviled by.

* HiveMind: The two Doctors manage to act as if they were still occupying the same skull. Which, in a way, they are. Both being essentially exactly the same person, it would make sense that they would know exactly what the other was thinking. And the fact that Time Lords are telepathic couldn't have hurt, either.

* {{Hypocrite}}: The Ganger Jennifer rails against the humans for 'executing' Gangers, but it turns out she deliberately killed another Ganger Jennifer herself in order to manipulate Rory.

** After spending two episodes preaching about the rights and freedoms the Gangers deserve, [[spoiler: The Doctor quickly melts Amy's Ganger in order to learn the original Amy's location]].
* IdiotBall: Ganger Jennifer, after apparently being proven human, inexplicably uses Rory's hand-print instead of her own to access the factory controls, and the computer says loudly, "Human identity verified". Rory doesn't notice anything odd about this.
** This really borders on TooDumbToLive.

* IncrediblyLamePun: "The eyes have it."
* [[IncurableCoughOfDeath Incurable Headache Of Death]]: Both Human Cleaves and Ganger Cleaves suffer from one caused by a blood clot in their brains.
* KarmaHoudini: No one seems to make much of a fuss over the fact that Cleaves murdered Ganger Buzzer in cold blood. In fact, it goes unmentioned.
** Although she could be seen as TheAtoner.
** Considering that, by the end of the episode, she's working with Ganger Dicken to try and make humans sympathetic to the Flesh, it could be easy to label her as TheAtoner. Of note, she does so while considering her and Ganger Dicken "side by side".
* KillEmAll: Almost the entire secondary cast is killed off in this episode - Cleaves is the ''only'' human to survive. The gangers of Jimmy and Dicken survive, however.

* MoodWhiplash: The Doctor's Ganger mangling previous incarnations' catchphrases as he struggles to solidify at the beginning. Hearing him say "reverse the jelly baby of the neutron flow!" should be hilarious, but it comes with him obviously in pain and on the brink of losing his sanity.

--->'''Amy''': Doctor, I am frightened. I'm properly, properly scared.

* PreAssKickingOneLiner: [[CallBack "Geronimo."]]
* PseudoCrisis: The last episode's cliffhanger was the revelation of the Doctorganger. He and his original get along just fine.

* ReplacementGoldfish: Jimmy and Dicken are killed but their gangers resume their lives for them
** However, since they possess their memories, from the perspective of the gangers they're simply resuming their lives.
* RetCon: Cleaves seems surprised at the thought the Doctor is an alien because "Earth is all that's available". It's the 22nd century and there have been plenty of alien encounters known to the public in the Whoniverse by that point, besides colonies on [[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E6TheMoonbase the Moon]] [[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS4E16TheWatersOfMars and Mars]].
* TheReveal: We finally get to know a bit more about the Eye Patch Lady Amy has been seeing.

* ScreamingBirth: Although Amy could just be screaming out of terror...

--> '''Doctor''': [Tenth's voice] Hallo, I'm the Doctor. [normal] [[BigNo noooOOOOOOOO!!]] ''Let it go, we've MOVED ON!!''
** Though it may also be referring to some lingering resentment the Doctor himself had over his previous regeneration. Which makes sense, given that his predecessor wasn't exactly a fan of the process.

* ThroughTheEyesOfMadness: Amy's visions of the Eye Patch Lady are revealed to be what the real Amy sees when the woman opens the hatch to her cell. The image sometimes bleeds through into wherever her Ganger happens to be at that time.

* UsedToBeASweetKid: Ganger Jennifer.
* VoicesAreMental: While the Ganger Doctor is trying to cope in the beginning of the episode, he speaks in the [[Creator/TomBaker Fourth]] and [[Creator/DavidTennant Tenth Doctor's]] voices. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]], in that the Flesh, adaptive as it was, could easily rearrange itself to create a different vocal pattern.
* TheWallsHaveEyes

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: After Buzzer dies, no one ever mentions him again. Seriously, no one asks, "Hey, where's Buzzer?" or anything. It's especially noticeable since he's the only one who didn't have a Ganger, as his was killed by Cleaves last episode.
** When lead into the trap by Rory, one of the humans mentioned "We can't leave without Buzzer" but when Cleaves tried to go back to find him, they were locked in.

** After spending two episode preaching about the rights and freedoms the Gangers deserve, [[spoiler: The Doctor quickly melts Amy's Ganger in order to learn the original Amy's location]].

* ReplacementGoldfish: Jimmy and Dicken are killed but their gangers resume their lives for them.

Rory teams up with Jennifer, and is tricked by her to trap Amy, the Doctor and the remaining crew. Jennifer turns out to have had ''two'' Gangers, and the real her is long since dead.

* StupidSacrifice: There was no particular reason that Ganger Jenny had to be taken down by Gangers (who knew they would be destroyed in the process) rather than originals (who would not have been harmed). [[MoreExpendableThanYou But the Gangers insisted on it.]]

* BrokenAesop: Broken FantasticAesop, no less. Treat gangers like they're real people! ... never mind that as soon as they gained sapience they rebelled, one of them went completely AxCrazy, and created another ganger just to kill it to further her goals.
** The "Gangers deserve to live just as much as their human counterparts" aesop is kinda ruined when the Doctor leaves two gangers behind to activate the weapon that will destroy Jen. He knows the Tardis would have protected them, it is ten feet away and a human (or time lord) activating the weapon would be unharmed. The aesop instead becomes "Gangers deserve to live just as much as their human counterparts as long as the originals are dead, if they're alive then the gangers can go fuck themselves".
*** On the other hand, the humans let the situation get that bad in the first place. People responding like that to abuse are often sympathized with, and even justified. It was more a slave rebellion than artificial intelligence gone wrong. And even if the Gangers didn't insist on being left behind, it's not like senseless sacrifices aren't made all the time. They probably just did it for drama, and really what'll they do with two Doctors running around?