MR 079: Night Thoughts

This is just the era of killing people to preserve history as we know it huh? Why was this plot point all the rage in the mid-00s? This is the third time it's happened now. But unlike the Sixth Doctor, who absolutely did commit murder against a friend; and the Eighth Doctor who went mega-Hitler and committed a mega-genocide; the Seventh Doctor doesn't actually go through with it. Though the episode absolutely says he should have.

There's an old creepy house on an old creepy island where a bunch of scientists are working on experiments together. Only people keep dying in a slasher horror kind of way. First a taxidermist and then a chaplain in the military. It's all very weirdly gory for Doctor Who and that was already kind of a turn off for me before we find out what's happening. I'm not at all a fan of slasher horror films. That's not my thing. If I do horror, I prefer something more cerebral or suspenseful. Not just gore or jump scares for the sake of it, like in this story.

There is very weirdly a kid in this house with these scientists and it turns out she is there because her and her mother and sister came to the house one night. I'm really not sure WHY they were there on the creepy island at all, but sure. The older sister had ravinax poisoning from the island which had been used as a military testing sight before being scrubbed clean. So the scientists euthanized her so she wouldn't suffer and then her mother jumped into a lake and killed herself, a gruesome sight that Ace sees when they first arrive because the body is still in the lake after ten years apparently. Nobody thought to burry it I guess?

Only it turns out that she didn't have ravinax poisoning. It was a misdiagnosis and the scientists are working on a time travel technology to send a message back through time to tell themselves not to kill her. BUT THEN that turns out to not be the case either because a military man amongst this group, Major Dickens, planned this whole thing ten years ago as an experiment to see if he could change the future by having them send a message back and killing her on purpose.

This is where the weird mechanics of time travel come in. Edith, the girl they killed, is now both alive and dead, a walking corpse, for some reason. Because sending the message back in time isn't enough to change the timeline or whatever, just make it confused. So the zombie Edith is maybe walking around and killing everyone.

There's also a weird horror thing going on with bear traps and with taxidermy and eyes. The body was preserved ala taxidermy like all the taxidermy animals. There's a giant bear taxidermy animal that presumably has Edith's preserved corpse inside of it that looks like it's been ripped open. It falls on the woman who came up with the time travel technology.

Before I get to the time travel stuff, I'll also just mention there's a weird sexist thing here that threw me out. The Doctor tells Ace to tend to the wounded person instead of Hex.... who is literally a nurse???? Because he says that Hex is better equipped to fight the military man. Which is very strange considering that's very clearly Ace's role. There was no reason why they did this either, this part could have been done by Hex easily.

Anyway, the time travel stuff very much so turns me off. The Doctor even goes back in time to try to make sure they do kill Edith instead of bring her back to life, which is gross and immoral as the scientists say in the scene. But then he can't go through with it, so zombie Edith is still walking around even with the Doctor going back in time to save her instead of kill her.

The implications of this are that any time we save anyone with time travel, it creates a shambling zombie person in the future where their corpse is buried. And this is... disgusting! Thanks I hate it. It's just very mean spirited and hateful. It goes against everything I like about this show and makes me think retroactively about all the people that Doctor Who has saved over the decades. Every time there's shambling corpses popping out of their graves. No thank you.

It has great atmosphere if you like horror and slasher movies. But I do not and the implications of its time travel mechanics are mean and hateful. So nope, massive turn off.