For a hook that seemed to suggest we’d be seeing the conception of Frankenstein this week, “The Haunting of Villa Diodati” never actually gets around to the writing of that iconic novel. More than that, it never even really gives Mary Shelley (Lili Miller) the kind of esteem that Doctor Who episodes of late have been known to do for important historical women. Instead, it opts to take the setting of the Villa Diodati at Lake Geneva, where during that harsh summer of 1816, Mary and Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, John Polidori, and Claire Clairmont held their famous ghost story contest that ultimately produced Frankenstein (also Polidori’s “The Vampyre”) -and just throw its characters into a ghostly mystery of their own.
And that’s honestly not a bad premise for an episode of Doctor Who, providing writer Maxine Alderton with easy access to a handful of historical figures to play with and an environment that off the bat has a gothic atmosphere due to that very company. Perfect for a horror episode, which is exactly what this is. I’ve talked a lot this series about the show trying to up its’ scare factor and none do that with more commitment or better than this one.
I credit a lot of this to director Emma Sullivan who sets an authentically creepy mood early on, and does a great job throughout the early parts of the episode ratcheting up the tension and fermenting creepy ideas. There is a lot of great ghost story imagery in this episode, largely through how skillfully she shoots the most important scenes for that effect, utilizing perspective, lighting, and quick cuts to reveal spectres as well as any haunted house film. My favourites are a scene of Graham climbing a staircase in the foreground with a still maid in the background who disappears with a lightning strike out the window, and a ghostly transparent figure who Ryan, Yaz, and Mary witness in the kitchen below rendered in a kind of double exposure technique reminiscent of silent movies like The Phantom Carriage and Sunrise. And speaking of Murnau, there are seriously shots in this episode that straight up recall Nosferatu. The spatial geography, for how limited it might often be, is so well-used, and as the place becomes more an inescapable puzzle these areas take on an increasingly foreboding air.
Additionally, there are just visuals tinged with an unmistakable dread somewhat outside of the wheelhouse of Doctor Who: bold choices such as the discovery at one point by Mary of a skull and bones where her infant son William was formerly sleeping -in context merely a decoy for a kidnapped child, but so much more horrifying if you know that Mary has already lost a child, and that William would die within three years time. Similarly the image of that phantom figure out on the lake that Percy had seen takes on a whole new meaning if you’re aware that Percy died in 1822 -by drowning in a storm.
In the midst of these dark premonitions and labyrinthine spaces, the Doctor had merely brought her friends to this time and place to sit in on “Storytime with the Romantics” when the first great mystery presented itself in the conspicuous absence of Percy Shelley from the nights’ activities. Also, the story contest not happening tips the Doctor off that something weird is going on (all the more strange then that we never see said contest). Then we start to notice that Polidori (Maxim Baldry) and Byron (Jacob Collins-Levy) are acting a bit unusual and creepy themselves. And then we realize that’s just Byron being a dick, who spends a fair bit of the episode hitting on the Doctor, often in front of his mistress Claire (Nadia Parks) -whom he often treated poorly it must be said. I did find it amusing though when the Doctor compared a piece of his writing unfavourably to his daughters’ (Ada Lovelace -is this the first series where the Doctor met two related historical figures in separate stories?), though I was wondering why Byron was walking about so comfortably all episode in seeming ignorance of his well-known clubfoot. Comic exchanges like these, Polidori challenging Ryan to a duel (in fairness Ryan was a bit of an asshole), and Ryan freaking out at being touched by ghost that turned out to be Yaz (he’s having some fun this episode), are well done bits of levity to compliment the gothic horror aesthetic, allusions to darker subject matter, and the clues the Doctor is gradually collecting to figure out what’s actually going on.
Of course, this being Doctor Who, the Villa Diodati is not actually haunted, everything going on is the cause of something alien within the estate. In perhaps a rather banal plot contrivance, the key to navigating the fluctuating reality of the house’s ‘perception filter’ is to close ones’ eyes and just be drawn to real entrances and exits -sometimes in the middle of walls giving the illusion of passing through them. I kind of wonder if Alderton wrote these freaky anomalies purely for their spooky potential and then forgot she had to come up with a reason to explain them, because that’s a necessity with this show; though the loose thread brought up in the ending suggests she was able to maintain some degree of genuine supernatural mystery to the whole affair.
Sometimes the frustration with Doctor Who is this commitment to a relative status quo in how the universe operates. And given how well the horror aspect was handled through the first half of the episode, I was sure the reveal of what’s actually going on was going to be disappointing by comparison. In one of the episodes’ best surprises, it’s not -but it does get a lot more complicated.
The fact that the “Lone Cyberman” foreshadowed by Captain Jack back in “Fugitive of the Judoon” would have some part to play in this episode isn’t a big shock on its own. From the first time we see that mysterious entity out on the lake, it definitely has a familiar silhouette (especially if you remember “Army of Ghosts”) that might clue you into what’s coming. The shock comes from the characteristic of the Cyberman himself, how he’s used and how he fits in with the remainder of the episode.
Firstly in appearance he’s certainly one of the most unique and subtly horrifying Cybermen ever encountered on the show mainly due to the emphasis on how human he is. His armour is heavily rusted and coming off in places, his arms almost bereft of it -making a scene where he’s strangling someone for instance much less alien-looking. And he’s missing almost half his face-plate revealing a distinctly human visage of actor Patrick O’Kane as though he were some Cyberman Phantom of the Opera. And yet he still talks in a Cybermans’ voice but without the limited vocabulary and robotic candour that has characterized these villains. He’s precise, intelligent, conversational. Indeed, he’s still plenty human and plenty emotional as he violently looks for “the Guardian” (not to be confused with the Guardians referenced last week). But because he’s got all that emotion funneled through a determination that’s nonetheless remorseless, he feels like a real great threat. And there’s something unnerving too in that unavoidable humanness on display when he kills the housekeeper and takes little William, the camera lingering on him as he does, terrifying you in the possibility he may kill the kid. He doesn’t, because Doctor Who doesn’t want to completely alienate family audiences, but his comments later to Mary that he only spared her child out of his uselessness and boasts about having slit the throats of his own children is some of the most vividly violent language used on this program. And it’s not being said by an emotionless robot. There is no othering of this creature, he is brutally, painfully like us.
And that’s where the Lone Cybermans’ function in this episode for more than just fulfilling continuity becomes clear. On the one hand I really like how the show was able to organically integrate a Frankenstein metaphor into a plot development purely meant to set up the story and stakes for the final episodes of the series. Cybermen naturally fit into that mould of the cautionary tale of playing god, and in fact one can make the argument they are among the many descendants of Mary Shelley’s magnificent Modern Prometheus. But I do feel that in blatantly implying this is what inspired her to write her novel, the episode falls into the same offense as that disappointing Mary Shelley movie from a few years ago in not giving enough credit to her own imagination. It’s not possible she could have come up with the details of Frankensteins’ monster on her own -clearly they had to be shown to her in fairly literal terms. This cliché in movies and T.V. that everything in art has to come from a specific stroke of inspiration is annoying and condescending to artists, and I don’t like seeing Doctor Who partake in it.
But the metaphor aside, the storytelling in this part is very intriguing and the acting terrific. Once again, Jodie Whittaker gets a chance to shine by showcasing the Doctors’ angst, delivering a very powerful monologue about the Cybermen and how she refuses to let any of her companions or the poets put themselves in danger of being assimilated by following her into this confrontation. Of course it does no good, the companions will come to her aid anyway, but before they do, there’s a great scene between her and the Cyberman, well-acted by both (Whittaker cleverly using humour to hide the Doctors’ anxiety) where she learns he’s specifically looking for a Cyberium, a cybernetic A.I. that has travelled back in time with the full history of the Cybermens’ conquests and genocides and wars to alert the past and prevent that future. The Cyberium found it’s way to Lake Geneva (it is suggested to be the real cause of that extreme world weather crisis of 1816) where it was picked up by Percy Shelley (Lewis Rainer) who we finally meet as that Guardian -host to the Cyberium with the knowledge of all these future events and a determination to stop the Cyberman, while also being the cause of the house’s perception filter and a number of the strange anomalies everyone had been encountering. But the Cyberium is also slowly killing him, the Doctor is faced with the quandary of what to do with it, and the episode goes to a ponderous place.
Her companions desperately trying to dissuade her from letting the Cyberman take the Cyberium back, Ryan is the one to suggest Shelley’s life is just one against billions, and the Doctor comes back at him about the power Shelley’s poetry will have and the ripple effect that would change the future morphing into an assertion of her authority, and her eternal responsibility. “Sometimes this team structure isn’t flat, it’s mountainous, with me at the summit in the stratosphere alone left to choose. Save the poet, save the universe. Watch people burn now or tomorrow. Sometimes even I can’t win.” It seems to be consciously hearkening back to the great moment of ethical conflict in Doctor Who in “Genesis of the Daleks” when the Doctor had the opportunity to destroy the Daleks forever and chose not to. “Do I have the right?” he asked; does she now? Here the Doctor is making a similar controversial choice to save Percy Shelley and let the Cyberman get what he wants in explicit defiance of Captain Jack’s urges as relayed through her companions. She extracts the Cyberium from him and attempts to host it herself, but when the Cyberman threatens to destroy her reality from a ship above the atmosphere she sees no choice but to relinquish it to him, leaving the universe to its fate. All for the life of one Percy Bysshe Shelley. I hope “Ozymandias” was worth it.
“The Haunting of Villa Diodati” is exemplary; moody and creepy and mysterious like few other episodes are, making great use of its setting and guest characters (if the actors themselves never truly stand out -except maybe Collins-Levy) so as to be a truly gothic realization of its subject matter. It’s unafraid to allude to darker more difficult ideas, introduces a compelling new villain as frightful for his humanity as much as his zealous Cyberman identity, manages to insert a good parallel to a work of classic literature surprisingly underrepresented elsewhere in the episode, sets the stage for the series’ endgame nicely, and poses tough moral questions for both the Doctor and audience to grapple with.
Is one life worth saving if it’s at the cost of many others? For the Doctor, who seems to consider all life valuable, it’s a question of personal conviction as well as a philosophical challenge. She’s so used to saving people it’s nigh unthinkable for her to let one die. But in this context it’s also a matter of saving one future or preventing a darker one, and it drives home both the immense power and the unbelievable burden she has. Which is why it’s no surprise she refuses to see this as a binary. Why can’t she save both Shelley and the billions of the future destined to suffer at the hands of the Cybermen? At the very least she’s going to try as hard and as much as her spirit will allow, because she wouldn’t be the Doctor otherwise.
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