pubs
Some good stuff in here. It kind of falls apart once Gwen actually finds the island. It becomes icky, and it seems like Chibnall was searching for an excuse for all of those people to be held there. Then since the excuses he found weren’t particularly persuasive, he lumped in some ham-handed philosophy about whether some things are too horrible to know. On the basis of the last part of the episode, and the lingering annoyance it’s left me, I’d say maybe. I’m not sure that’s the parallel he was looking for, however.
What a weak and uninquisitive mind Chibnall seems to have. One of the things I like about Doctor Who is its sense that knowledge and experience sets a person free. That whatever the hardship, however difficult the knowledge, it’s better to know and have done than not. It’s better to grow than to sit and cower about what might happen. But Chibnall… he consistently writes shrill characters who go histrionic when presented with anything they can’t immediately understand. And whose minds MELT when forced to deal with anything outside themselves. This… is not enriching my life.
Again, though. Some neat character and myth stuff in the first thirty-five minutes or whatever.
I always think of that as the characteristic attitude of SF-flavored horror writers like Lovecraft, and of some 1930s SF writers like Edmond Hamilton: the freaky thing makes men go maaaad on sight! Better to have not known about it. Lovecraft could at least build up an atmosphere of evil and foreboding that was intense enough to make it almost plausible. But it was a large part of what the Golden Age core group like Clarke and Asimov were rebelling against.
Yeah, the reason Lovecraft works to the extent he does is his eccentric prose style. It sounds like something out of another age, and you can hear a troubled mind chewing around the corners of the narration. It’s so completely subjective that even when it’s a bit silly and over-the-top you can appreciate the reality of the horror, at least upon this fragile, intelligent person who is speaking.
Chibnall… doesn’t quite have the knack.
Also, Lovecraft paints a certain wonder into his horror. It’s always like archeology, reading his stories. Like you’re discovering some kind of artifact, that just hints at a piece of a larger picture that you need to fill in with your imagination. You get a sense that there’s more out there than you ever realized, and though some of it is horrible, some of it is glorious. Sometimes both at once. The problem is, there’s so much that it’s impossible to take it all in and rationalize it. And the hints that you do get are often very ominous.
Yet there’s the inclination. There’s always the sense that maybe you could understand if you just knew a little more. Which is why all the boring mythos popped up after his time. As if a taxonomy makes things more interesting.
There is, I guess, the other side to the coin. It’s often better to strive to know than actually to know. While you’re on a journey, there is so much more epistemological potential than when you’re sitting still. I’m sure Newton would have some things to say about this.
Yes, I guess that’s the thing. However horrible Lovecraft’s knowledge, it is still considered important and worth passing on. The reader simply MUST know what the narrator has to say. However difficult it is to accept. The world must know the lie under which it has been living. Yet it’s so hard to relate… There’s too much to understand.