Midnight and the land of the Midnight Sun

[zeborah]

On Sunday afternoon I watched the second-most-recent Doctor Who episode (S4 ep10), and in the evening I rewatched the Top Gear episode where Our Heros race to the North Pole (Hammond with a team of dogs, Clarkson and May with a Toyota Hilux).

My brother had all sorts of statistics, gleaned from Wikipedia, about how the Doctor Who episode was the first to do this that and the other, but the thing I noticed was that the tension building was the same in each one.

Both start with typical light-heartedness:

• Clarkson, May and Hammond ribbing each other about skiing and practising falling into ice water and the usual. Sir Ranulph tells them off for not taking things seriously.
  
• The plane is a parody of current-day planes; the Doctor 'fixes' the entertainment system and interacts with everyone with his normal bonhomie.

We discover danger:

• Potential frostbite, soft ice, hard ice, warnings to keep away from a shore they physically can't keep away from, impossibly far from rescue services... but still it's not that scary, everyone's doing fine and joking alone as usual.
  
• A mysterious delay, shadows, banging on the walls... but I was more curious than nervous: I think the lights were too bright, and I suspect especially the characters were too noisily scared for me to feel it myself. At the time it seemed a fault in the direction, but in retrospect I'm not so sure.

Then... it's not so much the individual events, but just a slow, steady, buildup of tension:

• Clarkson and May's friendly ribbing takes on an edge; Hammond's cheerful out-of-waterness becomes less cheerful. Clarkson and May shout at each other; Hammond admits to having a "bit of a weep". Clarkson and May get so furious at each other they run out of words; Hammond tells how it's taken three times to count to ten.
  
• The mimicry, the Doctor's charisma failing to reassure the humans, the simultaneous speech, the increasing fear and paranoia, the stealing of the Doctor's voice, the humans ready to sacrifice him while he crouches there frozen and vulnerable and more helpless than we have ever seen him before.

Finally the unsatisfying triumph:

• Clarkson and May make it to the North Pole and, tired but happy they call Hammond with the good news. "Bad luck," May says gloatingly. And Hammond -- physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted -- so close to the same goal -- his face dropping like a rock -- can say nothing more than a dull "Oh."
  
• The Hostess saves the Doctor; he's released to motion and speech; and he lies there gasping for breath and looking up at these humans -- this species which he loves, for which he's risked his life and his Companions' lives time and again -- these humans who have been, reluctantly and readily, willing to sacrifice him.

These are deeply uncomfortable, disturbing, and painful episodes to watch.

My brother says this was the only Doctor Who episode where the monster was neither seen nor named. I'm not so sure of that. We saw half a dozen monsters in this episode, and every one of them but the Hostess -- every one but the woman who finally saved the day -- was named.

Comments

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Interesting comparisons. I doin't watch much Top Gear but I did see that ice-race episode without (at the time) drawing comarisons between it and antfictional works, but you're right, of course. (I didn't watch it back to back with Dcotor Who, though.)

[zeborah]

<nods> I'd seen the ice-race episode before and didn't think of it more than "poor Hammond" at the time; it was only the back-to-backness of the thing that made me draw the comparisons this time.