DOCTOR WHO: What’s going on?
The stories in time and space (normally Earth in the very near future or past) continue this week with The Rebel Flesh (BBC1 Saturday, 6.45pm), with a script penned by Life on Mars co-creator Matthew Graham.
Essentially the story is about some humans who make copies of themselves for some reason but the copies go a bit mad and the Doctor has to point a screwdriver at them and sort it all out very quickly in the last ten minutes of the second part next week.
Anyway, there are theories floating around about what is going on this series in the OVERALL ARC of things: is Amy really pregnant? Who is that woman with the eye patch? Why did a little girl in a spacesuit regenerate? Does the TARDIS have a toilet?
The
real question – and the possible answer to this series’ mystery – is beards. Whether you noticed or not, I’m thinking head-writer Steven Moffatt has cleverly introduced beards in every episode which will build up to the “big bad” for the finale – a big beard.
Think about it. In episode one (The Impossible Astronaut), the FBI agent Canton Everett Delaware III had a beard while chilling out with the TARDIS crew following the Doctor being shot by a mysterious spaceman who had popped out of the lake.
In the second episode (Day of the Moon) the Doctor himself had a beard. In the third episode (The Curse of the Black Spot), all of the pirates had beards. And in last week’s episode (The Doctor’s Wife) Rory was spotted sporting a beard after hanging around the TARDIS corridors for 50-odd years.
So now we’ve established the real enemy in this series, we must ask where do these beards come from? I’m thinking the planet Chinneryhare 45.
Thousands of years ago there was probably a civil war between the two factions of beards – the neatly trimmed ones and the wild bushy ones. The ensuing nuclear war resulted in terrible disfigurements for the beard people and they launched into space to try and find a new home planet.
Taking with them their children (their offspring being designated “moustaches”), the beards travelled in fine spaceships made of razors and Brylcreem.
Arriving on Earth millions of years ago they just about outlived the dinosaurs (they couldn’t take them over with their terrifying powers, hence there was never a T-Rex with a beard or a Stegosaurus with a moustache). But then when humans arrived they pounced. Mercilessly.
Starting slowly with a pair of sideburns, soon the whole face of humanity was taken over. Think about it, have you ever seen a caveman without a beard?
It all links up and I am sure that in three week’s time when the finale airs, beards will be taking centre stage in an exciting stand-off with the Doctor. But the Doctor will not be fighting them alone.
Earth has had many alien visitors and all of them have been infected with a beard too. Expect the Doctor to join up with goatee-Cybermen and Craig David inspired Daleks in a battle to the death.
