Episode Review: Arc 89, The Face of Evil
Did you know Classic Who has three separate episodes named ‘Noun of Evil’? Two ‘The Noun of Fear’s? Three ‘Terror of the Nouns’? NINE ‘The Noun of the Daleks’?! I kind of love the corny Boys’ Adventure novel-style predictability of Classic Who serial titles. They’re just so cheesy!good!
The Face of Evil starts strong with Classic Sci-Fi Tropes I Am A Total Slut For. 1) The Crazed Computer (i.e. the enjoyable bit of the film 2001) and 2) social regression and the fetishization of technology.
We play with something kind of existential and cool with the computer’s identity crisis, but I’m not sure it’s all that well dealt with? In the control chamber when the Doctor first tries to reason with Xoanon the Computer (cousin to ZARDOZ, obviously), he’s vulnerable to its psychic attack and Leela, who busts in to free him, isn’t. And yet later the computer tries to kill the Doctor through intermediaries, and the Tesh and the Sevateem alike prove vulnerable to its influence, while the Doctor can’t feel it? What’s going on there?
And as far as the computer gaining life/sentience, it’s all a bit muddled, isn’t it? The situation having been at its root entirely the Doctor’s fault is always a cool trope, but the plot mechanism of this thing’s sentience is a bit unfathomable. I mean, the Doctor says he knew the computer before it gained sentience, absorbed his personality, and went mad all in sort order, and speaks of it as if it had a personality (he claims it was holding dinner parties, even), so in what real way was it insensate back before all of that?
A computer absorbing the Doctor’s knowledge and personality and being unable to really conceive of the Doctor as an entity separate from itself is an awesome idea, but here that seems to mean it has bits of the Doctor’s voice and shares with him some idea of self-image. But did it in any way really jack chunks of his personality? It doesn’t seem to have done, and that would have been way more interesting: crazed computer thinks it has to BE and out-Doctor the Doctor for survival.
Though I LOVE the invisible monsters being electric externalizations of its own madness, which is keeps around and in check via the electric perimeter and also uses to keep its bold Sevateem in line. But speaking of the ‘experiment in eugenics’ plot, it’s not really clear why, even crazed, the computer would have had any investment in doing that? And it’s bred the Tesh as psychic, but not necessarily intelligent-they’ve devolved and come to fetishize technology too, even living inside the remnants of the ship. Why would it make such an awkward split? Not overall mental vs. physical development, but specifically psi-power?
Though I do like the self-denying Cartesian duality in the Tesh-they have that really cool rhyme/prayer about mind/body separation and blood binding what shouldn’t be bound-kind of Gnostic-esque.
Leela has a strong introduction: we meet her during a trial in which she's exiled from her people for her iconoclastic, rationalist tendencies, which sort of predisposes her to getting along with the Doctor. The fact that when offered power and burdensome responsibility at the end of the episode, she runs screaming from the top of the hierarchy straight into the TARDIS shows that the Doctor and Leela are clearly BFF, especially given that this is directly preceded by Deadly Assassin, which is the first instance of the Doctor being offered the presidency and disappearing in a puff of commitment phobia.
Though what ARE women doing in the Sevateem and the Tesh? Is Leela like that one Smurfette who had to make do for the whole damn village? We never see any other women at all, and they seem to be excluded from the war party. The Tesh seem really monastic, and there’s no evidence of women in sight. And yet at the end of the episode there’s some serious consideration on compromising and making Leela the now-joined peoples’ joint leader: weird given that all signs pointed to WOMG PATRIARCHY in both cultures.
I really like Leela-she’s bold, far from dumb, quick to decide her loyalty lies with the Doctor, and determined to go off exploring with him of her own initiative. But there’s clearly this huge implication with Leela for the dialogue of primitivism/the whole trope of the Noble Savage that I don’t really know how to go about parsing. I watched Fang Rock today as well, and by then, in the classic mode of depiction of primitives, she’s lost her contractions-I didn’t remember her omitting contractions at all in Face of Evil, but perhaps I missed it? There must be some reason why everyone does this-maybe an attempt to render the stilted English of non-native speakers? If so it’s awfully weird, given that she’s apparently speaking her own language with the Doctor, and as such would speak fluidly.
Is it totally odd that her father gets killed in the first five minutes and we don’t even get a big emotional reaction from Leela? I feel like her trauma is awkwardly sublimated like Nyssa’s was, or not allowed to exist because it would push the plot in an uncomfortable direction incompatible with the script’s direct progression from point A to point B. Is that’s the case, I wonder why they even include it at all?
Four’s distaste at Leela’s use of Janis thorns (aka generic incurable natural poison), is a good Doctor moment. I don’t know about Four-I liked him better in this than I have in a lot of things, but he’s really not one of my favorite Doctors? I don’t know what it is. I like him, and I flat-out adore his voice, but I don’t have that ‘oh, Doctor’ fondness for him. Am I subconsciously angry that he replaces my favorite or something? Hm. I hope I get to enjoy Four more.
Flotsam, inc. ‘Other Sevateem Tribesmen Who Aren’t Leela’:
Is the guy who comes to bring Leela back in the woods in the first episode totally in love with Leela, or what?
I find the leader-character kind of compelling, but he gets killed pretty quickly, so we don’t get to know a ton about him. Not the guy who WANTS to be leader really badly-the Charlton Heston one who’s really Machiavellian-he’s very well constructed for a random one-off character. I also enjoy the Shaman’s progression from fevered religious devotion to being willing and able to kill his god, and the Doctor’s admission that he’s underestimated him. It reminded me a lot of the end of Kushner’s Dybbuk, with the rabbi swearing vengeance on an uncaring god. I also love the cool visuals of his disintegrating space equipment cum vestments.
Is Leela of Futurama descended from this Leela? Sure seems like.
Dumb moment of the day: It took Leela mispronouncing ‘technicians’ as ‘teshnicians’ in Fang Rock for me to get that’s what ‘the Tesh’ is a corruption of.
The Face of Evil starts strong with Classic Sci-Fi Tropes I Am A Total Slut For. 1) The Crazed Computer (i.e. the enjoyable bit of the film 2001) and 2) social regression and the fetishization of technology.
We play with something kind of existential and cool with the computer’s identity crisis, but I’m not sure it’s all that well dealt with? In the control chamber when the Doctor first tries to reason with Xoanon the Computer (cousin to ZARDOZ, obviously), he’s vulnerable to its psychic attack and Leela, who busts in to free him, isn’t. And yet later the computer tries to kill the Doctor through intermediaries, and the Tesh and the Sevateem alike prove vulnerable to its influence, while the Doctor can’t feel it? What’s going on there?
And as far as the computer gaining life/sentience, it’s all a bit muddled, isn’t it? The situation having been at its root entirely the Doctor’s fault is always a cool trope, but the plot mechanism of this thing’s sentience is a bit unfathomable. I mean, the Doctor says he knew the computer before it gained sentience, absorbed his personality, and went mad all in sort order, and speaks of it as if it had a personality (he claims it was holding dinner parties, even), so in what real way was it insensate back before all of that?
A computer absorbing the Doctor’s knowledge and personality and being unable to really conceive of the Doctor as an entity separate from itself is an awesome idea, but here that seems to mean it has bits of the Doctor’s voice and shares with him some idea of self-image. But did it in any way really jack chunks of his personality? It doesn’t seem to have done, and that would have been way more interesting: crazed computer thinks it has to BE and out-Doctor the Doctor for survival.
Though I LOVE the invisible monsters being electric externalizations of its own madness, which is keeps around and in check via the electric perimeter and also uses to keep its bold Sevateem in line. But speaking of the ‘experiment in eugenics’ plot, it’s not really clear why, even crazed, the computer would have had any investment in doing that? And it’s bred the Tesh as psychic, but not necessarily intelligent-they’ve devolved and come to fetishize technology too, even living inside the remnants of the ship. Why would it make such an awkward split? Not overall mental vs. physical development, but specifically psi-power?
Though I do like the self-denying Cartesian duality in the Tesh-they have that really cool rhyme/prayer about mind/body separation and blood binding what shouldn’t be bound-kind of Gnostic-esque.
Leela has a strong introduction: we meet her during a trial in which she's exiled from her people for her iconoclastic, rationalist tendencies, which sort of predisposes her to getting along with the Doctor. The fact that when offered power and burdensome responsibility at the end of the episode, she runs screaming from the top of the hierarchy straight into the TARDIS shows that the Doctor and Leela are clearly BFF, especially given that this is directly preceded by Deadly Assassin, which is the first instance of the Doctor being offered the presidency and disappearing in a puff of commitment phobia.
Though what ARE women doing in the Sevateem and the Tesh? Is Leela like that one Smurfette who had to make do for the whole damn village? We never see any other women at all, and they seem to be excluded from the war party. The Tesh seem really monastic, and there’s no evidence of women in sight. And yet at the end of the episode there’s some serious consideration on compromising and making Leela the now-joined peoples’ joint leader: weird given that all signs pointed to WOMG PATRIARCHY in both cultures.
I really like Leela-she’s bold, far from dumb, quick to decide her loyalty lies with the Doctor, and determined to go off exploring with him of her own initiative. But there’s clearly this huge implication with Leela for the dialogue of primitivism/the whole trope of the Noble Savage that I don’t really know how to go about parsing. I watched Fang Rock today as well, and by then, in the classic mode of depiction of primitives, she’s lost her contractions-I didn’t remember her omitting contractions at all in Face of Evil, but perhaps I missed it? There must be some reason why everyone does this-maybe an attempt to render the stilted English of non-native speakers? If so it’s awfully weird, given that she’s apparently speaking her own language with the Doctor, and as such would speak fluidly.
Is it totally odd that her father gets killed in the first five minutes and we don’t even get a big emotional reaction from Leela? I feel like her trauma is awkwardly sublimated like Nyssa’s was, or not allowed to exist because it would push the plot in an uncomfortable direction incompatible with the script’s direct progression from point A to point B. Is that’s the case, I wonder why they even include it at all?
Four’s distaste at Leela’s use of Janis thorns (aka generic incurable natural poison), is a good Doctor moment. I don’t know about Four-I liked him better in this than I have in a lot of things, but he’s really not one of my favorite Doctors? I don’t know what it is. I like him, and I flat-out adore his voice, but I don’t have that ‘oh, Doctor’ fondness for him. Am I subconsciously angry that he replaces my favorite or something? Hm. I hope I get to enjoy Four more.
Flotsam, inc. ‘Other Sevateem Tribesmen Who Aren’t Leela’:
Is the guy who comes to bring Leela back in the woods in the first episode totally in love with Leela, or what?
I find the leader-character kind of compelling, but he gets killed pretty quickly, so we don’t get to know a ton about him. Not the guy who WANTS to be leader really badly-the Charlton Heston one who’s really Machiavellian-he’s very well constructed for a random one-off character. I also enjoy the Shaman’s progression from fevered religious devotion to being willing and able to kill his god, and the Doctor’s admission that he’s underestimated him. It reminded me a lot of the end of Kushner’s Dybbuk, with the rabbi swearing vengeance on an uncaring god. I also love the cool visuals of his disintegrating space equipment cum vestments.
Is Leela of Futurama descended from this Leela? Sure seems like.
Dumb moment of the day: It took Leela mispronouncing ‘technicians’ as ‘teshnicians’ in Fang Rock for me to get that’s what ‘the Tesh’ is a corruption of.