Howling:Doc Murders a Ganger



I don't ... I ... why isn't... how isn't... how can people... (and now please pretend the following is written in allcaps, while I refuse to assault your eyes with allcaps) ... Why has nobody apparently noticed that, at the end of a 2-parter extolling that the Flesh-people are perfectly valid people, the Doctor murders one in cold blood? And Rory lets him do it?

Rory, who spent 2 episodes protecting the Jen Ganger, is perfectly OK with letting the Doctor murder his wife's Ganger? With next-to-zero information? Based on just a foreboding facial expression?

I'm honestly aghast as to how this question isn't pouring out of people's mouths like an angry Double Rainbow. What did Ganger Amy do to make her so much more vile and murderable than the others? Did I miss a scene where she eats live kittens slathered in the living embodiment of purity, after throwing the living embodiment of purity into a wood chipper? Because the Doctor is generally not in the habit of murdering innocents and neutrals in cold blood. In front of their husbands. Agonaga 01:58, May 31, 2011 (UTC)
 * The only answer I have so far is that she was created by an evil/malicious source so who knows what traps may have been laid in her mind or on her person. It seemed he was very upset over having to do kill the ganger but I'm sure the only reason he did it is because she was created as a trick/trap so she could not be trusted to live. V00D00M0NKY 02:59, May 31, 2011 (UTC)
 * There should have been another way. :-/ But I hated every minute of this episode... so I was definitely predisposed to flying into a nerd rage over something that may be explained later. To me it just looks like a horrible writer undermining his entire episode and committing character assassinations without even realizing it. Agonaga 03:05, May 31, 2011 (UTC)
 * Ganger Amy is not sentient. She's just a body, being remotely controlled (unknowingly) by the real Amy in her soporific stupor (refer to what the Doctor says about 'the signal' to/from the Flesh a few minutes before dissolving her). I don't think the Doctor should have any problems with destroying her, since she's not sentient on her own. I thought this was quite obvious. :\
 * Ganger Amy is not sentient. She's just a body, being remotely controlled (unknowingly) by the real Amy in her soporific stupor (refer to what the Doctor says about 'the signal' to/from the Flesh a few minutes before dissolving her). I don't think the Doctor should have any problems with destroying her, since she's not sentient on her own. I thought this was quite obvious. :\
 * Ganger Amy is not sentient. She's just a body, being remotely controlled (unknowingly) by the real Amy in her soporific stupor (refer to what the Doctor says about 'the signal' to/from the Flesh a few minutes before dissolving her). I don't think the Doctor should have any problems with destroying her, since she's not sentient on her own. I thought this was quite obvious. :\

That's true. The gangers in the old monastery became independently sentient because of the solar "tsunami". Ganger-Amy remained a duplicate body controlled by real-Amy's mind. 89.240.247.33 13:16, May 31, 2011 (UTC)

Which brings me back to my original point... they spent the whole episode trying to beat it into our heads that -all- forms of Flesh abuse is wrong, whether or not the Gangers get independence due to freak accidents. Then they undermine it because the plot demands a shocking reveal. 76.188.199.142 14:59, May 31, 2011 (UTC)

ganger amy had no real emotions and was controlled by real Amy. it was like destroying remote control car. (Unsigned)

The complaint that the ending undermines the message of the preceding 2 episodes does have some force, even though there's an important difference between Ganger-Amy and the gangers who became autonomous. What the Doctor did can be justified but I think the writers did miss a trick. 78.146.191.14 17:48, May 31, 2011 (UTC)

The writers missed nothing. The doctor said "Given what we've learnt, I'll be as humane as I can." The writers clearly considered this but thought it important that Ganger Amy was killed. Also as both doctors stated, they dont know for sure that there wasnt a way back for the gangers so I guess we will have to wait and see. --188.221.207.214 21:13, May 31, 2011 (UTC)

Are you saying that it would be OK to kill someone as humanely as possible, just because you think it's important that they should be killed? If you are, you ought to bear in mind that gas chambers using Zyklon B were devised as a humane way of killing people it was thought important should be killed. Even if you were to add not being sure there wasn't a way for the victims to come back, it would still be a disastrously bad piece of reasoning.

What the writers missed, I think, is not the internal logic of the plot. There was a very important difference between Ganger-Amy and the gangers who became autonomous. What the writers missed was the need to draw far more attention to that difference than they did draw, in order to avoid producing the emotional effect that led a viewer to create this page. 78.146.176.60 22:56, May 31, 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Agonaga. Despite the attempts of the writers to fix it, it's still a problem. Boblipton 22:58, May 31, 2011 (UTC)

It is still a problem. As I said, above, there actually is a genuine difference but it needed to be made far, far more obvious than it was. And I'm not really sure it could ever have been made obvious enough to avoid the trap into which they fell. 78.146.176.60 23:08, May 31, 2011 (UTC)

The mind controlling Ganger-Amy was real-Amy's mind. It looked to me as if, towards the end of the episode, Amy had begun to suspect that she was wandering around in a ganger body. She's intelligent and, by that stage, had learned about gangers. She was also experiencing the contractions that indicate the onset of labour but knew that the body she seemed to be inhabiting was not pregnant. The Doctor had also dropped several hints, like telling her that they could understand the gangers properly only "through your eyes". The writers could, therefore, have had Amy and the Doctor make it explicit that Amy had realised she was inhabiting a ganger body, that she could be returned to her real body only by destroying the ganger and that she trusted the Doctor to do that. That would have meant that Amy was knowingly consenting to the destruction of her second (Flesh) body and actually said so on screen. That would have lost some of the "dramatic" surprise of seeing the ganger dissolve and real Amy wake up but would have gained by avoiding the appearance of the Doctor unilaterally "murdering" Ganger-Amy. I'm not sure if that would have been enough to prevent the problem that gave rise to this page being created but it would have been better than what was shown. The Doctor did have to do what he did. He was not killing an autonomous entity. But the writers, I think, put the "dramatic" surprise ahead of protecting the Doctor's character by making that clear enough. The plot logic was OK, the presentation was not. 89.241.77.204 08:02, June 1, 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, I agree it could have been handled better, I have a count of four people I've had to explain to now that amy's ganger wasn't independant,it was a traditional ganger. I think it makes sense for the doctor to 'kill' amy, so she could wake up, and to prove to rory it was a ganger, and also as we know, the doctor is prone to minor anger issues, and in desperation, not to mention an iminant birth, the doctor did what he thought was best in the current situation. Whether all that was clear from the script is another matter all together, but from a narrative point of view, I reckon it works out.--UnicornandtheWasp 09:05, June 1, 2011 (UTC)

Like you, I think the real problem was the way it was shown, not the plot itself. I also think that the writers/producers went for the dramatic revelation and lost sight of the importance of making it clear what the Doctor was doing and, even more important, what he was not doing. Something along the lines of having Amy agree -- perhaps reluctantly and nervously -- to what the Doctor did would have made it easier to see that her ganger wasn't independent, the way the others were. 89.242.72.182 10:21, June 1, 2011 (UTC)

I think evrybody is forgetting the scene a bit earlier when the ganger Doctor and ganger Cleaves essentially committed suicide by sonicing themselves and they were sentient gangers, by using the sonic it was over in an instant no leaving the eyes to ask "why?" and the real Doctor could have sensed/known that this was an acceptable way to return the flesh to its preformed state  just my opinion Tooty1967 09:52, June 2, 2011 (UTC)

Again, there's a difference between suicide and murder, even "humane" murder. 89.240.247.98 12:09, June 2, 2011 (UTC)

We seem to have divided into two camps: those who think that it has been handled adequately and those who don't.  I don't think we're going to gain much from that once we've reached the "Yes it is"  and "No it isn't"  point. Boblipton 12:16, June 2, 2011 (UTC)

Actually the more I think about it we dont get to see what happens to the flesh after he sonics it, it just disrupts and returns to liquid we then flash to Amy waking up and then we get the "to be continued" screen, for all we know at present the Flesh may still exist in its liquid form ready to be mopped up and contained elsewhere. So as yet we havent seen that its murder suicide humane despatch or suchlike, in effect if you take an ice cube and melt it you are not destroying the water or its constituents you are merely altering their state, I await Saturday with much interest.Tooty1967 12:20, June 2, 2011 (UTC)

If you kill someone, you're not necessarily destroying their chemical constituents, either, but you're still killing them. 89.240.247.98 12:26, June 2, 2011 (UTC)

I get that Amy's 'ganger was different to the autonomous 'gangers that were the subject of the episode. It is clearly shown though that discarded non autonomous 'gangers left to decompose slowly is something that is of concern to the Doctor. These corpses are shown to have some form of response and movement (however minimal). Therefore it suggests that the flesh is somewhat alive over and above the interaction of the user. So the Doctor did kill something, even if it was only like moss. However I don't see this as any different to the Doctor's previous behaviour. Remember in the Beast Below he was willing to destroy the mind of the space whale to protect "Britain". In this case, either Amy must remain trapped, or the flesh that is Amy's 'Ganger will suffer a long death. This is the most kind response for the flesh, under the circumstances.--Lambr5 18:36, June 2, 2011 (UTC)


 * Honestly, I'm over it. I'm now in the camp which says "this will probably be totally satisfactory after the wash, but they sure could have handled it a lot better in the meantime." That, and, I still say the guest characters' motivations were some of the worst writing I've ever seen in Who... which is what predisposed me to hate whatever they were going to put in front of me for a finish.  The fact that an episode with such pizzle-poor writing, ended with pizzle-poor writing, has finally stopped holding any fascination for me. Agonaga 18:39, June 2, 2011 (UTC)