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Class S1.6 Detained
I’m sure one reason there’s been such a gap between the other reviews and this one, is that I’m not sure I can do this one justice. The final three episodes are all so good (and in such different ways) that I just sort of falter.
On principle I adore bottle episodes, as one of my criteria for finding characters interesting is being able to put them in an empty room and just watch them spark off each other. And with this episode my cup floweth over…
I want to be lyrical and poetic about it all, but I’m not sure I can be. There is so much that happens. If a lot of it feels rushed [overall, like say Ram/April], then that is partly due to Doylist reasons – it’s a very short season, and they had a very ambitious arc, so I refuse to deduct points. ☺
So far we have built the characters up – they have learned to work together, and become friends in the process. But it’s not that simple…
The stories meet, cross, splinter; truths spilling out, characters retreating. Intimate moments and fierce arguments – back and forth, complicated emotions and stark pain vying for attention. There are so many issues, but I have narrowed my focus down to two, even though there are a hundred more I could touch on… (I will be writing actual meta later on - dealing with all the imagery etc.) Please talk to me in the comments!
The Outsiders
“Every single person down there is ignoring your pain because they're too busy with their own. The beautiful ones. The popular ones. The guys that pick on you. Everyone. If you could hear what they were feeling. The loneliness. The confusion. It looks quiet down there. It's not. It's deafening.”
Buffy, S3, ep 18, Earshot
They all feel like outsiders (and I will tackle them all later), but Charlie and Matteusz fit this more literally than the others, and I have wanted to delve into this in more detail for a while.
Because this is where it’s important that Matteusz is Polish. (And where it gets complex.) We have two POCs, yes, but both Ram and Tanya are British in a way that Matteusz can never be. He may be white, but he just has to open his mouth and a whole host of connotations get added to him. It’s especially poignant now, what with Brexit… Have a look at the chart in this article – and I’m sure Matteusz will have faced his share of prejudice. (‘That lot, coming over here…’) The show handles it lightly, but it’s there:
APRIL: Oh, well, you're making it easier by the second!
MATTEUSZ: Yes, you're being a real [Polish word]
RAM: Who are you anyway? Why are you always hanging around with us?
Again, it’s the little touches that makes it. Charlie, unfailingly, uses the correct pronunciation of Matteusz’s name (it should end with a ‘sh’ sound). The others sometimes default to the simpler ‘Matteus’, which is easier to pronounce and sounds less foreign. I don’t think it’s at all malicious in any way, and Matteusz doesn’t seem to mind – I have known a Marcin who went by Martin and a Piotr who went by Peter. It makes life simpler. But I think it matters to Matteusz, a lot, that Charlie takes care to get it right. And Charlie is also free of all the issues that Matteusz is dealing with – they discuss families and expectations and love in episode 3, and there is a sense of a shared bond in their differences. Matteusz parents (father) won’t accept who he really is. Charlie’s parents never cared enough to find out, he was merely a pawn for them to use.
Of course Charlie is an actual alien, and Matteusz has probably been able to help him with his feelings of being an outsider. Superficially Charlie can blend in better than Matteusz, although his accent does set him apart, and he comes across as somewhat autistic (when the actor read for him initially, not knowing that Charlie was an alien, he presumed he was somewhere on the spectrum, acted him like that, and carried on as it fitted well). Most of the time he manages to fit in, but in this episode his frustration comes spilling out. He doesn’t understand so many of the things the humans take for granted, and quite simply deals with a whole host of issues in a completely different way.
We also have a moment of rather unpleasant xenophobia
RAM: You ever wondered about that? You ever wondered what kind of a guy would date an alien? I mean, that's a really special-ass fetish, mate.
MATTEUSZ: I'm sorry, are you challenging me to a fight?
CHARLIE: None of this is natural.
RAM: Well, neither is alien-shagging. How many knobs does he have?
Tanya wondered the same thing in an earlier episode (albeit in a much more coy way), and was met with incredulity by Matteusz (who of course refused to answer). As I said back then, it’s one of the moments when Charlie can be read as trans, and the issue of his physical characteristics are somehow other’s people’s business, and labelled ‘un-natural’. It’s not a nice moment, but it’s not unrealistic. (Sadly.)
The painful arguments apart – triggered by the ‘truths’ – the two of them are mostly supportive throughout. When Charlie suffers from the panic attack Matteusz calmly and gently talks him through it, setting all their issues aside without a second thought. Similarly Charlie defends Matteusz when Ram starts attacking his role in the group:
RAM: Who are you anyway? Why are you always hanging around with us?
CHARLIE: Whoa!
RAM: What, you're defending him? You said he's afraid of you.
CHARLIE: He's my boyfriend.
Their shared loyalty (both borne out of love, and the fact that they – in one sense – only have each other) is quite something for a couple so young. But then they have both had to deal with adversity in the shape of loss and rejection. However love does not overcome all, and the truth can be a dangerous thing, as Matteusz acknowledges when speaking of the overheard conversation in the Narnia books:
MATTEUSZ: …it's a moment of weakness for the friend, but the friendship is ruined forever. Do you never complain about your friends? Do you never complain about me? Even in the privacy of your head?
CHARLIE: That's the thing. I never actually do.
Of course as we will discover, Charlie’s truth is much darker…
~~ Truth ~~
Pilate asked him, ‘What is truth?’
John 18, 38
The Prisoner forces our little gang to reveal two truths:
A Past truth
A Present truth
The Past truth is objective, fairly simple statements or stories of what happened. Difficult moments, which is why they’ve made a lasting impact, but in and of themselves straightforward: ‘Tell the truth’.
The Present truth is a much more complex affair. It’s subjective, emotional, complicated. And in great part built on fear; fear of rejection, fear of loneliness.
Tanya
Past truth: Stole sweets and was forced to confess. This in and of itself says a lot about Tanya – she is young. Her truth is a moment from childhood which most people have probably experienced, but it is still very much a child’s perspective she falls into here. The basic difference between truth and lie. Very simple, very black and white.
Present truth: Feels excluded, young. It’s not incorrect, because she is younger than the others – still a child whereas they are on the cups of being young adults, having relationships, and sex – things she is automatically excluded from due to her age. This is not a bad thing, it’s just life, but it’s a pre-existing frustration that finally spills over. Her strengths – her brains, her leadership qualities, her no-nonsense approach – also exclude her from her peers, and when it comes to her new friends there is, as she says, a big difference between 14 and 17. She effortlessly takes charge, forcing the others to deal with the issue at hand rationally and methodically and not caring if she steps on people’s toes, and is in many ways very mature for her age – but also very very defensive. Which in many ways works to her detriment here.
Matteusz
Past truth: Coming out to his grandmother. This is a much more complex truth. It’s a personal truth, a question of who he is, and something Matteusz probably struggled with, scared what would happen if his family found out. Where Tanya the young child was scared of punishment, Matteusz is scared of rejection. (And indeed, he has now been thrown out of his home, for the sake of who he loves.) His truth is tied to family, to identity, to the person he loves. And it has cost him dearly.
Present truth: Afraid of Charlie (even though he loves him). Again, very very personal truth, although a more complicated one. He has literally been thrown out of his family home for Charlie’s sake, and there is no doubt as to how much they love each other. But love does not automatically fix everything. Charlie is an alien, and that on its own would be a big hurdle (“Show me one person who knows how to do what we're doing.”) – but Charlie also has the power of genocide at his fingertips. And his worldview and culture is very far from Matteusz’s, and something we have seen Matteusz try to carefully negotiate (CHARLIE: I'm not being monstrous. I'm being just. Please don't question the morality of my culture./MATTEUSZ: He doesn't like it when you do that.); attempting to put across his own feelings without jeopardising their relationship. But here it is all forced out into the open, and something has to give. Can they survive this?
Ram
Past truth: Told his father about his leg. This is another kind of coming out – of explaining something that has happened to him, the way in which his world has changed. As we saw the scene play out on the show it’s only briefly referenced, but it’s important. It’s not just the reality of the Tear and the aliens, it’s also the physical change he has undergone, the way his injury might impact his future life. And kudos to the show for taking that seriously – sport is not dismissed as ‘trivial’, and Ram’s ambition and talent and hopes are shown as being as important and relevant as any other.
Present truth: Confesses his love to April. This is unrelated to his past truth, and a scary step. However literally you take Ram’s claims of ‘shagging around’, he’s obviously played up to the footballer stereotype – fit and popular and with a gorgeous girl on his arm. To profess such deep feelings scares him (we see him work himself up to pick up the rock), and then in turn makes him very defensive of them. And we must not dismiss his feelings just because he’s young – he is immature, and not handling this new world of emotions very well (and presumably also suffers from a bit of PTSD and so on), but going on the defence makes sense as the simplest way to protect himself from the chances of future pain.
There is also a continuation of the Toxic Masculinity theme here – they all agree that the Prisoner is male, and his anger is affecting them. And possibly Ram most of all.
April
Past truth: Testifying against her father, looking him in the eye and say what he did. The ordeal must still be etched on her mind – not the least because her testimony would be instrumental in putting her father behind bars. For a child this is an incredibly difficult thing to process – that not only did her father try to kill them all (for reasons that must have been difficult to grasp), but also that she is one of the people now deciding his fate. That she has to do this in order to keep herself and her mother safe from someone who should be a protector, not a danger. It made a huge, huge impact on her, which continues until this day.
Present truth: Does not trust Ram’s love, and does not love him back in the same measure. April’s truth ties in directly with her past truth. It’s hard to overstate how much her past impacts her, and Ram (very devoted, but also very inexperienced in how to handle emotions) doesn’t help… April does her best to soften the blow, and does not (although she’d have been more than entitled to do so) point out how she obviously has a great deal of trust issues tied up with her past and her father. Nothing happens in a vacuum – her father’s actions back then are impacting her now, and possibly helping to destroy a very new and hopeful relationship.
Charlie
Past truth: Now this is where it gets interesting. First off, Charlie has a genuinely angry outburst (even though he has so far not been touched by the Prisoner’s anger), and tells the others how he had no friends growing up, living an isolated life as a royal; how bewildered he is by human life and customs, how he doesn’t understand the norms he has to fit into and the way the others have been judging him. And more than that he volunteers a truth: “You think, you think you know me. You think I'm this pampered prince. You want confessions? I'll give you confessions. I want to murder the Shadow Kin. Every last one. I want to use the Cabinet of Souls to wipe them from the face of existence.”
It’s horrific, but in its own way it ties in with his past as much as April’s truth – his whole planet was murdered, everyone he ever knew, and he is still only beginning to process the impact (Anger is the 2nd step of the stages of grief). Ram’s trauma we can relate to, but genocide is too big to wrap our heads around in any meaningful way. And he sees the issue as regards to Matteusz very clearly: “I think of every day, and the only thing that stops me is you, and sometimes, sometimes I hate you for it. And that's who I am.” It’s a terrible thing to have another person be in such a position. Love can be a two-edged sword, and that is very clear here.
Present truth: Loves Matteusz – but is scared he will lose him if he goes through with his first wish:
CHARLIE: I.
MATTEUSZ: What?
CHARLIE: I love you. It's the truth. It's also true that I'll lose you.
(Sidebar: This moment basically made me curl up into a little ball. It is ridiculously shippy (and Matteusz’s smile when he hears Charlie’s ILU!), but it was also the moment that absolutely highlighted for me who my favourite character was. And although the rational side of me was going ‘Surely this means that Charlie will use the cabinet [or something similar] and thus lose Matteusz’s love’, every other part of me (which is familiar with how storytelling often works and which was kicking into overdrive to PROTECT MATTEUSZ!!) was going ‘By ‘losing’ the writers are foreshadowing that Matteusz will die and leave Charlie bereft because he Can’t Have Good Things and they love nothing more than stabbing the viewers in the back and then twisting the knife!’
/the downside of falling for a show and a ship and all the characters with all your heart)
But there is more going on than the pain of two young people in love…
CHARLIE: Come on. Come and get me. Force the truth out of me. You think you can handle the guilt of the Prince of Rhodia?
VOICE [OC]: Confess!
CHARLIE: I already did. What else you got?
VOICE [OC]: Confess!
CHARLIE: Tell us how to get out of here. Tell us what you're lying about.
RAM: Lying?
CHARLIE: Come on! What are you hiding from us?
And this is where it gets complicated… So far the Prisoner has been in charge, and the group have been trying to work out how to manipulate him into divulging information, trading their truths for his. But Charlie pushes back, using all the privilege and anger, and goes on the attack:
VOICE [OC]: You.
CHARLIE: Yes?
VOICE [OC]: Are
CHARLIE: I am what?
VOICE [OC]: My murderer.
CHARLIE: Yes. Yes, I am.
It’s a gorgeous scene, raw and terrible and extraordinary, and with many implications…
CHARLIE: He was looking for death. He wanted someone guiltier than him to end his suffering.
TANYA: And you stopped him?
CHARLIE: Yes. Because I am not innocent. Not in my heart. For on Rhodia, a wish is the same as an action.
TANYA: That's messed up.
Tanya says ‘messed up’, but it’s actually (in some respects) very sound theology:
You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery.” But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
Matthew 5: 27 – 28
And unless I am entirely mistaken, Charlie in some way killed the Prisoner… It’s slightly unclear, but it’s hard to find another interpretation – is ‘my murderer’ the fact that Charlie has murder in his heart wrt the Shadowkin, or the fact that he will be the one to murder the Prisoner? Or both?
CHARLIE: You think you know me, but you don't. You want to know who'd the last one standing out of the five of us? I would.
He was a pampered prince, yes, but he is also The Last of His Kind, and in the context of the story very much the one in the Doctor’s place. Angry and bereft and wishing to kill those who destroyed his people. The Doctor’s issues are more complex – he was the one to destroy Gallifrey (if we parallel Charlie with Nine, Ten or Eleven), and he is very old, with many a battle under his belt. Charlie is painfully young, and the only thing stopping him from avenging his kin are the Doctor’s words, his own moral code, and Matteusz’s love. How long can they hold?
And if it hadn’t been for Quill he would have ended up taking the Prisoner’s place – and oh, there is a whole other story:
QUILL: It's the Arn. I'm no longer your slave, Prince. I have my free will back. And I have my gun. And things, ah. Oh, things are going to change around here.
Seriously. This show.
♥
(PLEASE KEEP COMMENTS SPOILER FREE! Thank you.)
On principle I adore bottle episodes, as one of my criteria for finding characters interesting is being able to put them in an empty room and just watch them spark off each other. And with this episode my cup floweth over…
I want to be lyrical and poetic about it all, but I’m not sure I can be. There is so much that happens. If a lot of it feels rushed [overall, like say Ram/April], then that is partly due to Doylist reasons – it’s a very short season, and they had a very ambitious arc, so I refuse to deduct points. ☺
So far we have built the characters up – they have learned to work together, and become friends in the process. But it’s not that simple…
The stories meet, cross, splinter; truths spilling out, characters retreating. Intimate moments and fierce arguments – back and forth, complicated emotions and stark pain vying for attention. There are so many issues, but I have narrowed my focus down to two, even though there are a hundred more I could touch on… (I will be writing actual meta later on - dealing with all the imagery etc.) Please talk to me in the comments!
“Every single person down there is ignoring your pain because they're too busy with their own. The beautiful ones. The popular ones. The guys that pick on you. Everyone. If you could hear what they were feeling. The loneliness. The confusion. It looks quiet down there. It's not. It's deafening.”
Buffy, S3, ep 18, Earshot
They all feel like outsiders (and I will tackle them all later), but Charlie and Matteusz fit this more literally than the others, and I have wanted to delve into this in more detail for a while.
Because this is where it’s important that Matteusz is Polish. (And where it gets complex.) We have two POCs, yes, but both Ram and Tanya are British in a way that Matteusz can never be. He may be white, but he just has to open his mouth and a whole host of connotations get added to him. It’s especially poignant now, what with Brexit… Have a look at the chart in this article – and I’m sure Matteusz will have faced his share of prejudice. (‘That lot, coming over here…’) The show handles it lightly, but it’s there:
APRIL: Oh, well, you're making it easier by the second!
MATTEUSZ: Yes, you're being a real [Polish word]
RAM: Who are you anyway? Why are you always hanging around with us?
Again, it’s the little touches that makes it. Charlie, unfailingly, uses the correct pronunciation of Matteusz’s name (it should end with a ‘sh’ sound). The others sometimes default to the simpler ‘Matteus’, which is easier to pronounce and sounds less foreign. I don’t think it’s at all malicious in any way, and Matteusz doesn’t seem to mind – I have known a Marcin who went by Martin and a Piotr who went by Peter. It makes life simpler. But I think it matters to Matteusz, a lot, that Charlie takes care to get it right. And Charlie is also free of all the issues that Matteusz is dealing with – they discuss families and expectations and love in episode 3, and there is a sense of a shared bond in their differences. Matteusz parents (father) won’t accept who he really is. Charlie’s parents never cared enough to find out, he was merely a pawn for them to use.
Of course Charlie is an actual alien, and Matteusz has probably been able to help him with his feelings of being an outsider. Superficially Charlie can blend in better than Matteusz, although his accent does set him apart, and he comes across as somewhat autistic (when the actor read for him initially, not knowing that Charlie was an alien, he presumed he was somewhere on the spectrum, acted him like that, and carried on as it fitted well). Most of the time he manages to fit in, but in this episode his frustration comes spilling out. He doesn’t understand so many of the things the humans take for granted, and quite simply deals with a whole host of issues in a completely different way.
We also have a moment of rather unpleasant xenophobia
RAM: You ever wondered about that? You ever wondered what kind of a guy would date an alien? I mean, that's a really special-ass fetish, mate.
MATTEUSZ: I'm sorry, are you challenging me to a fight?
CHARLIE: None of this is natural.
RAM: Well, neither is alien-shagging. How many knobs does he have?
Tanya wondered the same thing in an earlier episode (albeit in a much more coy way), and was met with incredulity by Matteusz (who of course refused to answer). As I said back then, it’s one of the moments when Charlie can be read as trans, and the issue of his physical characteristics are somehow other’s people’s business, and labelled ‘un-natural’. It’s not a nice moment, but it’s not unrealistic. (Sadly.)
The painful arguments apart – triggered by the ‘truths’ – the two of them are mostly supportive throughout. When Charlie suffers from the panic attack Matteusz calmly and gently talks him through it, setting all their issues aside without a second thought. Similarly Charlie defends Matteusz when Ram starts attacking his role in the group:
RAM: Who are you anyway? Why are you always hanging around with us?
CHARLIE: Whoa!
RAM: What, you're defending him? You said he's afraid of you.
CHARLIE: He's my boyfriend.
Their shared loyalty (both borne out of love, and the fact that they – in one sense – only have each other) is quite something for a couple so young. But then they have both had to deal with adversity in the shape of loss and rejection. However love does not overcome all, and the truth can be a dangerous thing, as Matteusz acknowledges when speaking of the overheard conversation in the Narnia books:
MATTEUSZ: …it's a moment of weakness for the friend, but the friendship is ruined forever. Do you never complain about your friends? Do you never complain about me? Even in the privacy of your head?
CHARLIE: That's the thing. I never actually do.
Of course as we will discover, Charlie’s truth is much darker…
Pilate asked him, ‘What is truth?’
John 18, 38
The Prisoner forces our little gang to reveal two truths:
A Past truth
A Present truth
The Past truth is objective, fairly simple statements or stories of what happened. Difficult moments, which is why they’ve made a lasting impact, but in and of themselves straightforward: ‘Tell the truth’.
The Present truth is a much more complex affair. It’s subjective, emotional, complicated. And in great part built on fear; fear of rejection, fear of loneliness.
Tanya
Past truth: Stole sweets and was forced to confess. This in and of itself says a lot about Tanya – she is young. Her truth is a moment from childhood which most people have probably experienced, but it is still very much a child’s perspective she falls into here. The basic difference between truth and lie. Very simple, very black and white.
Present truth: Feels excluded, young. It’s not incorrect, because she is younger than the others – still a child whereas they are on the cups of being young adults, having relationships, and sex – things she is automatically excluded from due to her age. This is not a bad thing, it’s just life, but it’s a pre-existing frustration that finally spills over. Her strengths – her brains, her leadership qualities, her no-nonsense approach – also exclude her from her peers, and when it comes to her new friends there is, as she says, a big difference between 14 and 17. She effortlessly takes charge, forcing the others to deal with the issue at hand rationally and methodically and not caring if she steps on people’s toes, and is in many ways very mature for her age – but also very very defensive. Which in many ways works to her detriment here.
Matteusz
Past truth: Coming out to his grandmother. This is a much more complex truth. It’s a personal truth, a question of who he is, and something Matteusz probably struggled with, scared what would happen if his family found out. Where Tanya the young child was scared of punishment, Matteusz is scared of rejection. (And indeed, he has now been thrown out of his home, for the sake of who he loves.) His truth is tied to family, to identity, to the person he loves. And it has cost him dearly.
Present truth: Afraid of Charlie (even though he loves him). Again, very very personal truth, although a more complicated one. He has literally been thrown out of his family home for Charlie’s sake, and there is no doubt as to how much they love each other. But love does not automatically fix everything. Charlie is an alien, and that on its own would be a big hurdle (“Show me one person who knows how to do what we're doing.”) – but Charlie also has the power of genocide at his fingertips. And his worldview and culture is very far from Matteusz’s, and something we have seen Matteusz try to carefully negotiate (CHARLIE: I'm not being monstrous. I'm being just. Please don't question the morality of my culture./MATTEUSZ: He doesn't like it when you do that.); attempting to put across his own feelings without jeopardising their relationship. But here it is all forced out into the open, and something has to give. Can they survive this?
Ram
Past truth: Told his father about his leg. This is another kind of coming out – of explaining something that has happened to him, the way in which his world has changed. As we saw the scene play out on the show it’s only briefly referenced, but it’s important. It’s not just the reality of the Tear and the aliens, it’s also the physical change he has undergone, the way his injury might impact his future life. And kudos to the show for taking that seriously – sport is not dismissed as ‘trivial’, and Ram’s ambition and talent and hopes are shown as being as important and relevant as any other.
Present truth: Confesses his love to April. This is unrelated to his past truth, and a scary step. However literally you take Ram’s claims of ‘shagging around’, he’s obviously played up to the footballer stereotype – fit and popular and with a gorgeous girl on his arm. To profess such deep feelings scares him (we see him work himself up to pick up the rock), and then in turn makes him very defensive of them. And we must not dismiss his feelings just because he’s young – he is immature, and not handling this new world of emotions very well (and presumably also suffers from a bit of PTSD and so on), but going on the defence makes sense as the simplest way to protect himself from the chances of future pain.
There is also a continuation of the Toxic Masculinity theme here – they all agree that the Prisoner is male, and his anger is affecting them. And possibly Ram most of all.
April
Past truth: Testifying against her father, looking him in the eye and say what he did. The ordeal must still be etched on her mind – not the least because her testimony would be instrumental in putting her father behind bars. For a child this is an incredibly difficult thing to process – that not only did her father try to kill them all (for reasons that must have been difficult to grasp), but also that she is one of the people now deciding his fate. That she has to do this in order to keep herself and her mother safe from someone who should be a protector, not a danger. It made a huge, huge impact on her, which continues until this day.
Present truth: Does not trust Ram’s love, and does not love him back in the same measure. April’s truth ties in directly with her past truth. It’s hard to overstate how much her past impacts her, and Ram (very devoted, but also very inexperienced in how to handle emotions) doesn’t help… April does her best to soften the blow, and does not (although she’d have been more than entitled to do so) point out how she obviously has a great deal of trust issues tied up with her past and her father. Nothing happens in a vacuum – her father’s actions back then are impacting her now, and possibly helping to destroy a very new and hopeful relationship.
Charlie
Past truth: Now this is where it gets interesting. First off, Charlie has a genuinely angry outburst (even though he has so far not been touched by the Prisoner’s anger), and tells the others how he had no friends growing up, living an isolated life as a royal; how bewildered he is by human life and customs, how he doesn’t understand the norms he has to fit into and the way the others have been judging him. And more than that he volunteers a truth: “You think, you think you know me. You think I'm this pampered prince. You want confessions? I'll give you confessions. I want to murder the Shadow Kin. Every last one. I want to use the Cabinet of Souls to wipe them from the face of existence.”
It’s horrific, but in its own way it ties in with his past as much as April’s truth – his whole planet was murdered, everyone he ever knew, and he is still only beginning to process the impact (Anger is the 2nd step of the stages of grief). Ram’s trauma we can relate to, but genocide is too big to wrap our heads around in any meaningful way. And he sees the issue as regards to Matteusz very clearly: “I think of every day, and the only thing that stops me is you, and sometimes, sometimes I hate you for it. And that's who I am.” It’s a terrible thing to have another person be in such a position. Love can be a two-edged sword, and that is very clear here.
Present truth: Loves Matteusz – but is scared he will lose him if he goes through with his first wish:
CHARLIE: I.
MATTEUSZ: What?
CHARLIE: I love you. It's the truth. It's also true that I'll lose you.
(Sidebar: This moment basically made me curl up into a little ball. It is ridiculously shippy (and Matteusz’s smile when he hears Charlie’s ILU!), but it was also the moment that absolutely highlighted for me who my favourite character was. And although the rational side of me was going ‘Surely this means that Charlie will use the cabinet [or something similar] and thus lose Matteusz’s love’, every other part of me (which is familiar with how storytelling often works and which was kicking into overdrive to PROTECT MATTEUSZ!!) was going ‘By ‘losing’ the writers are foreshadowing that Matteusz will die and leave Charlie bereft because he Can’t Have Good Things and they love nothing more than stabbing the viewers in the back and then twisting the knife!’
/the downside of falling for a show and a ship and all the characters with all your heart)
But there is more going on than the pain of two young people in love…
CHARLIE: Come on. Come and get me. Force the truth out of me. You think you can handle the guilt of the Prince of Rhodia?
VOICE [OC]: Confess!
CHARLIE: I already did. What else you got?
VOICE [OC]: Confess!
CHARLIE: Tell us how to get out of here. Tell us what you're lying about.
RAM: Lying?
CHARLIE: Come on! What are you hiding from us?
And this is where it gets complicated… So far the Prisoner has been in charge, and the group have been trying to work out how to manipulate him into divulging information, trading their truths for his. But Charlie pushes back, using all the privilege and anger, and goes on the attack:
VOICE [OC]: You.
CHARLIE: Yes?
VOICE [OC]: Are
CHARLIE: I am what?
VOICE [OC]: My murderer.
CHARLIE: Yes. Yes, I am.
It’s a gorgeous scene, raw and terrible and extraordinary, and with many implications…
CHARLIE: He was looking for death. He wanted someone guiltier than him to end his suffering.
TANYA: And you stopped him?
CHARLIE: Yes. Because I am not innocent. Not in my heart. For on Rhodia, a wish is the same as an action.
TANYA: That's messed up.
Tanya says ‘messed up’, but it’s actually (in some respects) very sound theology:
You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery.” But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
Matthew 5: 27 – 28
And unless I am entirely mistaken, Charlie in some way killed the Prisoner… It’s slightly unclear, but it’s hard to find another interpretation – is ‘my murderer’ the fact that Charlie has murder in his heart wrt the Shadowkin, or the fact that he will be the one to murder the Prisoner? Or both?
CHARLIE: You think you know me, but you don't. You want to know who'd the last one standing out of the five of us? I would.
He was a pampered prince, yes, but he is also The Last of His Kind, and in the context of the story very much the one in the Doctor’s place. Angry and bereft and wishing to kill those who destroyed his people. The Doctor’s issues are more complex – he was the one to destroy Gallifrey (if we parallel Charlie with Nine, Ten or Eleven), and he is very old, with many a battle under his belt. Charlie is painfully young, and the only thing stopping him from avenging his kin are the Doctor’s words, his own moral code, and Matteusz’s love. How long can they hold?
And if it hadn’t been for Quill he would have ended up taking the Prisoner’s place – and oh, there is a whole other story:
QUILL: It's the Arn. I'm no longer your slave, Prince. I have my free will back. And I have my gun. And things, ah. Oh, things are going to change around here.
Seriously. This show.
♥
(PLEASE KEEP COMMENTS SPOILER FREE! Thank you.)
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NGL, this ep just didn't do much for me. Glad you liked it, though.
ETA: amused me that you divided your review into Fe/Ti (harmonizing/truth). And, of course, each contains the other within it.
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On my biiiiirthday! :D
NGL, this ep just didn't do much for me. Glad you liked it, though.
It's... very Fe? All character stuff. And if you're not overly invested...
ETA: amused me that you divided your review into Fe/Ti (harmonizing/truth). And, of course, each contains the other within it.
Very true! Hadn't thought of it in those specific terms, although I knew where my focus was. (And ALL THE OTHERS THINGS that I didn't mention...)
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I think Charlie basically killed the Prisoner with his mind.
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Yes, that was pretty much the conclusion I came to as well. At least, I can't see any other interpretation that makes sense.
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And I really loved Charlie and Matteusz as well. They're both just lovely, and lovely together.
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Me too! And it rings very true - Patrick Ness has obviously spent time with teenagers, seen how they function. How capable they can be, and yet how in some things they can still be very child-like.
I think about April and Ram's relationship, and how true it feels, with Ram head over heels and April a little more cautious, and both of them uncomfortable with the power imbalance. It hurt, but it felt right as well.
*nods a lot* And their strengths and weaknesses don't change, we can see them play out in how they deal with being a couple, and they are not yet mature enough to realise they can help each other by being what the other lacks. But then, this is how they learn. No matter how sweet they are now, it's highly unlikely the relationship will last, and whoever ends up as their long term partner will be grateful for lessons learnt in the past.
And I really loved Charlie and Matteusz as well. They're both just lovely, and lovely together.
They are ridiculously adorable, and it is just a delight to watch them. ♥
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♥
You and me both :)
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The lurker who waited
(Anonymous) 2017-03-26 11:57 am (UTC)(link)And hey, analyses from you? Cool. After all, you don't focus on the logic, you do characters and META!
And what *I* do is try to lure everyone to the Dark Side. Come on! Waste all your time too! You know you want to! Fiiiiiics!
This reminded me, with the obvious Doctor parallels (I mean again, I had forgotten it), of a scene from the AU Theta Tau, which I have recommended before:
"Okay. Okay." You sigh, feeling all the air deflate from your chest. "We're safe for six minutes?"
"Should be," Rory says.
"How do I …" You look from one to the other, then decide on the truth, because good boys don't lie to their parents. (Well. Not often.)
"Look … d'you think I'm a nice person?" you say. "Honestly?" when they nod.
You laugh a bit, close your eyes - shut hard against the light that you're letting in. You don't know if you're starting in the right place, or even saying the right thing, but talking feels absolutely glorious, so you plough on.
"It's not … I … the truth is, I want them all dead. The Daleks, the Cybermen, the Silence. Any monster that's touched our lives."
You stop. To properly explain, you should go on, tell them about all the filth that goes past righteous anger and into sadism, pride, hatred. But you don't. How could you? How could you say any of that out loud?
And cut. This is me sneakily trying to persuade you to give in to the darkfics. To my personal detriment I might add, this one is not mine! (wiggles fingers trying to hypnotise you) Read it. READ IT!
Re: The lurker who waited
There are only 8 episodes, so if you ever find some spare time...
But I would look up what was going on because OCPD: Expanded Whoniverse, I MUST know EVERYTHING. Even if it doesn't make sense. I have to *decide* "okay, that part doesn't make sense when it comes to the rest, I will pretend it's its own, cool thing, not DW".
Well it fits in very well - there are references to f.ex. UNIT, Coal Hill itself is of course important in Doctor Who lore, and the history is touched upon (but lightly - f.ex. Danny & Clara are on the big board of staff/students who have died) and of course the Doctor guest stars in the first episode... But oddly enough he feels like an intruder. Like, the show is so much its own thing, it doesn't need him. (I mean, I can absolutely see why they added him, but it's nice when he leaves and the show can get back to the actual characters.
And hey, analyses from you? Cool. After all, you don't focus on the logic, you do characters and META!
Hey! I care about logic, hence being so good at fanwanking, should the need arise. (Although it's true, if the story is good enough, I can handwave the plot holes.) However, there are exceptions, like how Torchwood: Miracle Day is just an abomination (which was eaten by the crack from S5), and End of Time makes NO SENSE plot wise, but it has so much Doctor/Master that I don't care. So yes, I guess you're right, character stuff & META any day rather than bitching about how the plot is contradicted by something from 1973...
And what *I* do is try to lure everyone to the Dark Side. Come on! Waste all your time too! You know you want to! Fiiiiiics!
The problem is that it's hard to find time for reading when writing... Also which Dark Side precisely? Just darkfic? Your specific ones? /mildly clueless
This reminded me, with the obvious Doctor parallels (I mean again, I had forgotten it), of a scene from the AU Theta Tau, which I have recommended before:
Yes, spot on. And I think that's a very natural reaction.
Re: The lurker who waited
(Anonymous) 2017-03-27 12:24 pm (UTC)(link)Yeah, if only several someones hadn’t insisted that I watch Community amidst everything else… (joking)
Well it fits in very well - there are references to f.ex. UNIT, Coal Hill itself is of course important in Doctor Who lore, and the history is touched upon (but lightly - f.ex. Danny & Clara are on the big board of staff/students who have died) and of course the Doctor guest stars in the first episode...
Well, these are cool Easter Eggs/small added parts to the canon. By “fitting” I was more referring to “does it break established rules and tone of the Whoniverse and/or introduces new possibilities we have to keep in mind”. But to be fair, the main show itself does this ALL THE TIME + it already has other spin-offs/audio dramas/comics/novels that do that or are technically incompatible. Again, one can very well say “well, big, contradictory Verse, they are all true simultaneously/that bit was AU”. And there is no canon that’s more selective –by necessity- than that of DW anyway; this is just an example of my unreasonable perfectionism, need to control everything, and impose order into chaos.
Hey! I care about logic, hence being so good at fanwanking, should the need arise.
I know! But I’m saying precisely that: It is so much *easier* for you to say “you know, this show has people turning into trees, sentient suns, Buddhist mythology, a crossover with Star Trek, Santa Claus, resurrections, “physics” and “biology”, totally ludicrous aliens, super-heroes, absolutely-not-magic, Lovecraftian monsters, the Power of Love saving the day, and every possible version of how time-travel should work ALL AT THE SAME TIME; just this once, screw logic”. I usually try to reconcile EVERYTHING and write 20 pages of notes before I give up. I envy you.
However, there are exceptions, like how Torchwood: Miracle Day is just an abomination (which was eaten by the crack from S5)
And again, ‘tis a great show indeed that provides us with canon devices for fanwanking :) Plus, you know, established parallel universes, time-travel all over the place, timey-wimey, time can be rewritten, millions of self-contradictory rules of world-building, etc: Even now, if you don’t like something, you can just ignore it. And if someone brings it up, you can go “ah, but I know what I’m doing, have YOU read that Bernice Summerfield novel? Huh? HUH? Didn’t think so” p.e.
and End of Time makes NO SENSE plot wise, but it has so much Doctor/Master that I don't care.
Whenever someone brings up TEoT, I just shrug and go “don’t look at me , I can’t judge”. Because it was the first Who-thing that I ever watched and my reaction was “I have absolutely no idea what’s going on, but it seems important and I am entertained as fuck!”
The problem is that it's hard to find time for reading when writing... Also which Dark Side precisely? Just darkfic? Your specific ones? /mildly clueless
Understandable. And Dark Side = anything unimportant, usually fic, that makes you waste all of your time; and it feels good.
Re: The lurker who waited
(Anonymous) 2017-03-27 12:25 pm (UTC)(link)Yeah, if only several someones hadn’t insisted that I watch Community amidst everything else… (joking)
Well it fits in very well - there are references to ... is of course important in Doctor Who lore, and the history is touched upon (but lightly - f.ex. Danny & Clara are on the big board of staff/students who have died) and of course the Doctor guest stars in the first episode...
Well, these are cool Easter Eggs/small added parts to the canon. By “fitting” I was more referring to “does it break established rules and tone of the Whoniverse and/or introduces new possibilities we have to keep in mind”. But to be fair, the main show itself does this ALL THE TIME + it already has other spin-offs/audio dramas/comics/novels that do that or are technically incompatible. Again, one can very well say “well, big, contradictory Verse, they are all true simultaneously/that bit was AU”. And there is no canon that’s more selective –by necessity- than that of DW anyway; this is just an example of my unreasonable perfectionism, need to control everything, and impose order into chaos.
Hey! I care about logic, hence being so good at fanwanking, should the need arise.
I know! But I’m saying precisely that: It is so much *easier* for you to say “you know, this show has people turning into trees, sentient suns, Buddhist mythology, a crossover with Star Trek, Santa Claus, resurrections, “physics” and “biology”, totally ludicrous aliens, super-heroes, absolutely-not-magic, Lovecraftian monsters, the Power of Love saving the day, and every possible version of how time-travel should work ALL AT THE SAME TIME; just this once, screw logic”. I usually try to reconcile EVERYTHING and write 20 pages of notes before I give up. I envy you.
However, there are exceptions, like how Torchwood: Miracle Day is just an abomination (which was eaten by the crack from S5)
And again, ‘tis a great show indeed that provides us with canon devices for fanwanking :) Plus, you know, established parallel universes, time-travel all over the place, timey-wimey, time can be rewritten, millions of self-contradictory rules of world-building, etc: Even now, if you don’t like something, you can just ignore it. And if someone brings it up, you can go “ah, but I know what I’m doing, have YOU read that Bernice Summerfield novel? Huh? HUH? Didn’t think so” p.e.
and End of Time makes NO SENSE plot wise, but it has so much Doctor/Master that I don't care.
Whenever someone brings up TEoT, I just shrug and go “don’t look at me , I can’t judge”. Because it was the first Who-thing that I ever watched and my reaction was “I have absolutely no idea what’s going on, but it seems important and I am entertained as fuck!”
The problem is that it's hard to find time for reading when writing... Also which Dark Side precisely? Just darkfic? Your specific ones? /mildly clueless
Understandable. And Dark Side = anything unimportant, usually fic, that makes you waste all of your time; and it feels good.
Re: The lurker who waited
(Anonymous) 2017-03-27 12:26 pm (UTC)(link)Yeah, if only several someones hadn’t insisted that I watch Community amidst everything else… (joking)
Well it fits in very well - there are references to ... is of course important in Doctor Who lore, and the history is touched upon (but lightly - f.ex. Danny & Clara are on the big board of staff/students who have died) and of course the Doctor guest stars in the first episode...
Well, these are cool Easter Eggs/small added parts to the canon. By “fitting” I was more referring to “does it break established rules and tone of the Whoniverse and/or introduces new possibilities we have to keep in mind”. But to be fair, the main show itself does this ALL THE TIME + it already has other spin-offs/audio dramas/comics/novels that do that or are technically incompatible. Again, one can very well say “well, big, contradictory Verse, they are all true simultaneously/that bit was AU”. And there is no canon that’s more selective –by necessity- than that of DW anyway; this is just an example of my unreasonable perfectionism, need to control everything, and impose order into chaos.
Hey! I care about logic, hence being so good at fanwanking, should the need arise.
I know! But I’m saying precisely that: It is so much *easier* for you to say “you know, this show has people turning into trees, sentient suns, Buddhist mythology, a crossover with Star Trek, Santa Claus, resurrections, “physics” and “biology”, totally ludicrous aliens, super-heroes, absolutely-not-magic, Lovecraftian monsters, the Power of Love saving the day, and every possible version of how time-travel should work ALL AT THE SAME TIME; just this once, screw logic”. I usually try to reconcile EVERYTHING and write 20 pages of notes before I give up. I envy you.
However, there are exceptions, like how Torchwood: Miracle Day is just an abomination (which was eaten by the crack from S5)
And again, ‘tis a great show indeed that provides us with canon devices for fanwanking :) Plus, you know, established parallel universes, time-travel all over the place, timey-wimey, time can be rewritten, millions of self-contradictory rules of world-building, etc: Even now, if you don’t like something, you can just ignore it. And if someone brings it up, you can go “ah, but I know what I’m doing, have YOU read that Bernice Summerfield novel? Huh? HUH? Didn’t think so” p.e.
and EndofTime makes NO SENSE plot wise, but it has so much Doctor/Master that I don't care.
Whenever someone brings up TEoT, I just shrug and go “don’t look at me , I can’t judge”. Because it was the first Who-thing that I ever watched and my reaction was “I have absolutely no idea what’s going on, but it seems important and I am entertained as fuck!”
The problem is that it's hard to find time for reading when writing... Also which Dark Side precisely? Just darkfic? Your specific ones? /mildly clueless
Understandable. And Dark Side = anything unimportant, usually fic, that makes you waste all of your time; and it feels good.
Re: The lurker who waited
(Anonymous) 2017-03-27 12:28 pm (UTC)(link)Yeah, if only several someones hadn’t insisted that I watch Community amidst everything else… (joking)
Well it fits in very well - there are references to ... who have died) and of course the Doctor guest stars in the first episode...
Well, these are cool Easter Eggs/small added parts to the canon. By “fitting” I was more referring to “does it break established rules and tone of the Whoniverse and/or introduces new possibilities we have to keep in mind”. But to be fair, the main show itself does this ALL THE TIME + it already has other spin-offs/audio dramas/comics/novels that do that or are technically incompatible. Again, one can very well say “well, big, contradictory Verse, they are all true simultaneously/that bit was AU”. And there is no canon that’s more selective –by necessity- than that of DW anyway; this is just an example of my unreasonable perfectionism, need to control everything, and impose order into chaos.
Hey! I care about logic, hence being so good at fanwanking, should the need arise.
I know! But I’m saying precisely that: It is so much *easier* for you to say “you know, this show has people turning into trees, sentient suns, Buddhist mythology, a crossover with Star Trek, Santa Claus, resurrections, “physics” and “biology”, totally ludicrous aliens, super-heroes, absolutely-not-magic, Lovecraftian monsters, the Power of Love saving the day, and every possible version of how time-travel should work ALL AT THE SAME TIME; just this once, screw logic”. I usually try to reconcile EVERYTHING and write 20 pages of notes before I give up. I envy you.
However, there are exceptions, like how Trchwood: Miracle Day is just an abomination (which was eaten by the crack from S5)
And again, ‘tis a great show indeed that provides us with canon devices for fanwanking :) Plus, you know, established parallel universes, time-travel all over the place, timey-wimey, time can be rewritten, millions of self-contradictory rules of world-building, etc: Even now, if you don’t like something, you can just ignore it. And if someone brings it up, you can go “ah, but I know what I’m doing, have YOU read that Bernice Summerfield novel? Huh? HUH? Didn’t think so” p.e.
and EndofTime makes NO SENSE plot wise, but it has so much Doctor/Master that I don't care.
Whenever someone brings up TEoT, I just shrug and go “don’t look at me , I can’t judge”. Because it was the first Who-thing that I ever watched and my reaction was “I have absolutely no idea what’s going on, but it seems important and I am entertained as fuck!”
The problem is that it's hard to find time for reading when writing... Also which Dark Side precisely? Just darkfic? Your specific ones? /mildly clueless
Understandable. And Dark Side = anything unimportant, usually fic, that makes you waste all of your time; and it feels good.
Re: The lurker who waited
LOL. Class is only 8 episode though. Community is... many many more.
By “fitting” I was more referring to “does it break established rules and tone of the Whoniverse and/or introduces new possibilities we have to keep in mind”.
I figured that might be the case, but it doesn't.
I usually try to reconcile EVERYTHING and write 20 pages of notes before I give up. I envy you.
Doctor Who Doesn't Have a Canon. Of course it's nice to make everything fit, if possible, but overall, ANYTHING GOES.
Because it was the first Who-thing that I ever watched and my reaction was “I have absolutely no idea what’s going on, but it seems important and I am entertained as fuck!”
I am trying to imagine having THAT episode as your first. I think my brain just broke...
Understandable. And Dark Side = anything unimportant, usually fic, that makes you waste all of your time; and it feels good.
Right. Got you now.
Re: The lurker who waited
(Anonymous) 2017-03-29 10:13 pm (UTC)(link)Yes, I know and approve of the “no canon” rule (because asking a 53 year old show to have a strict canon would be ridiculous and very restrictive). I’m just saying it usually takes some effort on my part to *stop* thinking and trying to make everything fit, and just enjoy the story.
Anyway, I go with this very basic definition/description/canon offered by Cracked: "A time traveler kidnaps some humans, hides them inside a surprisingly large box, and introduces them to some alien Nazi cyborgs with sink- plungers for arms, who along with other monsters start picking fights with the time traveler, who keeps changing into different men who are somehow the same man just with progressively worse taste in fashion, while London keeps getting invaded by aliens and the universe explodes a couple of times".
I am trying to imagine having THAT episode as your first. I think my brain just broke...
Probably says something about my personality :))) And is a handy reminder whenever someone asks me “where do I start watching DW/some other show?” Because my brain goes “WAIT. This is a normal person. Remember? You are a minority. Try to think like a normal person and answer accordingly”. It’s also a great argument when talking about episodes I haven’t watched and wondering about whether I should or the order. Like, “excuse you, avid fan whose FIRST EPISODE was THAT is talking. I can handle this”
Re: The lurker who waited
Oh absolutely fair enough. :) (I could SO use this as a springboard for delving into MBTI, but you don't need *that* rabbit hole in your life, I'm sure. *g*)
Anyway, I go with this very basic definition/description/canon offered by Cracked
I like that definition a lot!!
Probably says something about my personality :)))
Only if you chose it on purpose. Although if you have never read this post, you should. It's the best post on EoT ever.
It’s also a great argument when talking about episodes I haven’t watched and wondering about whether I should or the order. Like, “excuse you, avid fan whose FIRST EPISODE was THAT is talking. I can handle this”
LOLOLOLOL
And for this is use my most gorgeous Master icon. :)