TARDIS and Transcendance 

In 2006, Doctor Who officially became “TV’s longest-running sci-fi show” of all time, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. The British TV series—about a 900-year-old, renegade alien who roams both the space-ways and timelines in a stolen, time-jumping jalopy—has garnered a plethora of awards over the decades it’s been on the air and has gained a global fan-base rivaling those of both the Star Trek and Star Wars franchises since its inception in 1963. In this paper, I will explore what it is about Doctor Who that has entranced millions of viewers in fifty-plus countries and kept the series alive—in various forms and formats—for almost fifty years now. Moreover, I will delve into what it is about the good Doctor (in his various regenerations) that explains the TV show’s unwavering worldwide popularity and televised longevity. I will argue that this success is built upon several determining factors: the overarching flexibility and the thematic underpinnings of the show; the Doctor’s super-heroic and anti-heroic duality, which makes him the perfect protagonist; the show’s ‘exquisite corpse’ infusion of both classic and contemporary science-fiction; the portrayal and conveyance of science and technology via the Doctor’s interactions with his various companions; and those aspects of the series that have influenced other science-fiction franchises and inspired scientists to replicate technology from the show. I believe that the culmination of this data will demonstrate that Doctor Who is the perfect platform for educational science, explorative science-fiction, and exciting entertainment.

As Richard Hanley writes in his essay featured in the book Doctor Who and Philosophy:Bigger on the Inside, “Doctor Who can be treated as a whole bunch of smaller fictions…we [the viewing audience] commonly regard these episodes as summaritive to make a larger story, the story…has multiple authors, has gone into hiatus, then returned, and has looked quite different in different versions…but not just any Doctor Who story counts…In canonical serialization we have symmetry…What’s true in later episodes obviously depends upon what’s true in earlier ones” (p.29). Keeping this thought in mind, it’s difficult to summarize almost 50 years of Doctor Who’s canonical serialization, but let me give it a synoptic shot…

First and foremost, it must be established that there is no-one in the series named “Doctor Who.” As John Kenneth Muir explains in his book A Critical History of Doctor Who on Television, “The main character of the program is always enigmatically referred to as ‘The Doctor.’ He is never called ‘Doctor Who’” (p.2). However, it’s worth mentioning that, during the episode titled “The Fires of Pompeii,” the Doctor—at this point, in his tenth regeneration (more on his regenerative ability soon to follow)—encounters a young Pompeiian woman named Evelina. Gifted with prophetic visions and an acolyte of the oracular Sibylline Sisterhood, Evelina is able to read the Doctor’s mind—an achievement many have tried but few can do—via her inhalation of the Vesuvian fumes carrying microscopic, alien life-forms called the Pyrovile, which, ultimately, gives her her gift of second sight. The young Pompeiian reveals that  “even the word ‘Doctor’ is false. Your real name is hidden. It burns in the stars in the cascade of Medusa herself.” Though, beyond this revelatory incident, little to nothing is known about the Doctor’s family history or personal life, let alone his given name.

Paul Parsons ponders this very issue of the Doctor’s mysterious past in his book The Science of Doctor Who. Parsons mentions, “The Doctor studied at Gallifrey’s [the Doctor’s home-world] Prydonian Academy, where his major was thermodynamics. However…he only just scraped through his final exams—and that was on the second attempt” (p.4), but as Parsons notes, “The Doctor is an enigma, a paradoxical personality” (p.4). This enigmatic quality to the Doctor not only remains crucial element to the show’s longevity but also our protagonist’s charm. For almost fifty years, the Doctor’s past has continued to be a source of mystery and fascination to the show’s viewers; in retrospect, that’s a rather amazing feat. Furthermore, Doctor Who’s writers have faithfully upheld the vagaries of the Doctor’s past, which, ultimately, has contributed to the overall allure of the television series. The Doctor’s impermanent identity—changing his physiognomy from regeneration to regeneration—coupled with his mystifying past are two very important elements to the Doctor’s continued success as a science-fiction series.

Another of these important elements is the premise of the show, which focuses on the Doctor, his companions, and their spatiotemporal exploits throughout the whole of multiversal creation (and in extremely rare cases, even beyond that or there or then). The Doctor is himself an extraterrestrial entity from the planet Gallifrey, which can be found in the (nonexistent) constellation of Kasterborous. There, life evolved much earlier and advanced much further than most other life-forms populating the universe, and on a cosmological timescale that renders evolution and advancement of life here on Earth as nothing more than a blip on the TARDIS screen; however, the exact Gallifreyan timeframe for both their biological and technological evolution and advancements has been withheld and, to this day, still remains veiled in mystery.

John Muir further elaborates on the Doctor and Gallifrey: “He [the Doctor] is a ‘Time Lord’…His advanced race has harnessed the energies of black holes and suns. More importantly, the Time Lords have unlocked the mysteries of time travel” (p.3). Although the Gallifreyans have mastered time as well as space, which, in turn, has made them practically invincible, invulnerable, and nearly immortal, the governing Time Lords refuse to interfere with the natural order of events within the spacetime continuum. Muir notes that “the Time Lords believe firmly in remaining neutral and only rarely do they use time travel for any purpose but peaceful observation of developing cultures” (p.3). This spatiotemporal neutrality instituted by the Time Lords concerning lesser species and evolving races pervades every aspect of Gallifreyan life; from their politics to their philosophy to their culture. It also happens to be the case that any dissenters to the Time Lord’s sociopolitical laws and philosophical views are banished from Gallifrey, and the Doctor just so happens to be one of these dissidents. As Muir observes, “He [the Doctor] is a renegade…an exile...a revolutionary…because he was tired of seeing the weak overcome by the strong, he abandoned his secure life on Gallifrey and decided to intervene in the…dangerous universe. He then set out…to right all the wrongs he encountered” (p.3). Thus, the Doctor has paid the price for his repudiation of the Time Lord ethos; this places the Doctor in a very contentious role as a protagonist. To the Time Lords, he is a vigilante, a rebel, and an anti-hero.

According to Michael Spivey and Steven Knowlton in their work “Anti-Heroism in the Continuum of Good and Evil,” from the book The Psychology of Superheroes,” When analyzed in a continuous state space, it becomes clear that the anti-hero concept is flexible enough to accommodate some rather intriguing variations” (p.61), and the Doctor is a perfect example of this intriguing variation. Spivey and Knowlton note that “what all anti-heroes have in common is that they…balance their evil methods with their good intentions” (p.62). This inability to categorize the Doctor as either a hero or an anti-hero is another key dynamic behind Doctor Who’s longevity and  it’s this uncertainty—this confliction over the boundaries of good and bad (and everything in between)—that makes the series exciting science-fiction.

However, what is considered good and evil to some might be the antithetical opposite to others. Both terms are not only extreme but are also highly subjective and the Doctor is a dual paradigm both of these subjective categories. To his own race, he breaks the laws enacted by his people: he interferes with the order of time; he changes events that have already transpired even if they are for the greater good, permitting life to flourish in the universe; he will  think nothing of obstructing history if life is in danger; he jumps timelines when he deems it necessary; and he doesn’t hesitate to create spatiotemporal paradoxes if it means he can save a life from certain doom. Thus, within the boundaries of Gallifreyan law, he is committing heinous crimes against spacetime. To the Time Lords, the Doctor’s saving of lives is irrelevant; however, to the inhabitants of a small blue planet located in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, he is viewed as quite the opposite.

In Doctor Who, there is little doubt that the Doctor—and main protagonist—is a hero. Even though the Doctor has “been captured by his own people and tried in Time Lord court for his frequent meddling and contravention of sacred Gallifreyan Law” (Muir, p.3), as Katherine Stannard observes in the book Politics, Gender and the Arts, the Doctor “is the prototype of the hero” (p.66). Furthermore, John Muir observes that the renegade Time Lord “has defeated villains as diverse as mutated Daleks, the brutal Zygons, the militaristic Sontarans, the Krynoids, the Silurians, the Martian Ice Warriors, the Borg-like Cybermen and the non-corporeal Nestene. He has also grappled with intergalactic terrorists such as Omega, the Master, Scaroth, the Shadow, Magnus Greel, Eldrad, the Black Guardian, Solon and Morbius” (p.3). Of course, the Doctor’s list of enemies is much larger than the hostile alien races and vile individuals listed above. As one can imagine, 50 years worth of clashing with a variety of antagonistic aggressors with ulterior motives would require several additions built onto the already-crowded rogues’ gallery mentioned above.

In a superheroic sense, the Doctor straddles the line between the classic paradigmatic extremes established in the Superman/Batman dichotomy. In Superman on the Couch, author Danny Fingeroth clarifies, “When Superman punches an adversary’s face…all he sees is the criminal’s face…When Batman punches a foe, he sees the face of the man who killed his parents and left him…as a  7-year-old wailing to the unheeding emptiness: (p.64). This clarification between the two is significant to Doctor Who because, like the Man of Steel and the Dark Knight, the 900-year-old Time Lord is himself newly orphaned. When Doctor Who returned from its sixteen-year hiatus in 2005, then-producer, Russel T. Davies, decided to shake things up a bit by destroying Gallifrey and eradicating the Time Lords in a great (and mysterious) Time War with the Doctor’s arch-nemeses, the Daleks of Skaro.

Though the sole Gallifreyan survivor resembles Superman in the sense that both are alien characters whose respective homeworlds were destroyed, the Doctor was not an infant when this catastrophic incident occurred…as was the Man of Steel’s case. And like Batman, both the Doctor and the ‘caped crusader’ share a common traumatic bond by witnessing their loved ones’ deaths…and in the Doctor’s case, his entire species.  However, it should be noted that Batman witnessed his parents’ murders during his formative years, while the Doctor was a fully-matured adult when Gallifrey was annihilated. Still, it would be rather myopic to suggest that beholding the genocidal extermination of one’s entire race wouldn’t leave massive psychological scarring and/or an overwhelming sense of survivor’s guilt.  All in all, this dichotomous Superman/Batman orphan model, which has now been infused into the re-emergent Doctor lends credence to heroic/anti-heroic duality discussed earlier. Nevertheless,, the Doctor’s embodiment of both antithetical extremes makes for limitless possibilities in character development.

These super-heroic qualities engrained into Doctor Who may also be perceived in its hyperbolic extreme. In Doctor Who and Philosophy: Bigger on the Inside, Ruth Deller furthers this extremity into the realm of religiosity in her piece, “What the World Needs is…a Doctor,” by intimating that the Doctor is semiologically comparable to the imagery associated with that of Christ’s: “Like the Biblical Jesus Christ, the Doctor is a savior. He saves individuals and worlds from peril, and often from their own ‘sins’ or misguided doctrines and actions” (p240). Deller further establishes that “like Jesus, the Doctor is also a ‘redeemer’. He makes people and worlds ‘better’” (p.240); however, Deller does note that unlike Christ, “the Doctor is by no means flawless…Russell T. Davies [Doctor Who producer from 2005-2010] has projected onto the Doctor not only the power and majesty of a god, but the problems that come with such a status” (p.241). Yet another comparison between the Christian savior and the Gallifreyan rogue, can be found in their resurrectional symbolism; although, in the Doctor’s case, the supernatural quality is removed and replaced with a purely biological one exclusive to the Gallifreyan physiology.

The Doctor, like all Time Lords, is genetically imbued with the ability to regenerate his body in the final seconds before death; thereby, cheating it. This regenerative capability is a clever tactic that Doctor Who’s writers have infused into the television series to explain the exiting and entering of actors who have portrayed the Doctor, but as Michael Hand points out in “Regeneration and Resurrection” from  Doctor Who and Philosophy: Bigger on the Inside, “Regeneration…is an immensely powerful dramatic device. It is key to the enduring appeal of Doctor Who, and to its vice-like grip on the imaginations of those who love it” (p.214). It’s hard to deny that Doctor Who has found a rather ingenious way around the often aggravating event of a beloved actor stepping down from the role of a character that he/she has helped to characterize and/or popularize. Such TV show events have dooming consequences: falling ratings and disgruntled fans. Yet, with the Doctor’s regenerative powers, this nightmarish scenario appears to be bypassed.   

And what about his revolving cast of companions? Well, as John Muir explains, the Doctor “holds a special affection for…Earth. He harbors this love because he considers human beings terribly vulnerable” (p.3). This affection the Doctor displays for Earth and its inhabitants is best exemplified by the individuals he chooses to keep company with: his companions…most of whom happen to be Earthlings—in particular, female Earthlings. At this point, one might start to wonder if his favoring human women as companions has the underpinnings of the classic/cliché b-movie absurdity of interspecies eros—or, if you prefer, the ‘beauty and the otherworldly beast’ scenario—prevalent in mid- to late-twentieth-century science-fiction? According to Katherine Stannard, in her piece “Technology and the Female in the Doctor Who Series: Companions or Competitors?,”  this isn’t the case. Stannard states that “Doctor Who abounds with archetypal images and…it may be this perennial mythologic quality that has been responsible for its…immense popularity” (p. 66); however, his companions are rarely, if ever, the assembly-line ‘damsel in distress’. Stannard argues that “his female companions, who change with a fair degree of regularity, represent the Doctor’s anima” (p.66), and are also his “conscious competitors…usurping the masculine prerogatives of the Doctor” (p.66). Gender issues aside, the Doctor’s rapport with his companions serves as the perfect teacher/student platform for relaying and conveying science; though, it’s worth noting that there are a plenitude of incidents where the student educates the teacher in Doctor Who.

When the show’s creators, Sydney Newman and Donald Wilson, first conceived it, they “envisioned Doctor Who as an educational program which would enlighten children” (Muir, p.9) with a heavy emphasis on accuracy in both history and the space sciences. There are even occasions where Doctor Who has inspired future scientists who grew up watching the series to actualize some of the fantastic technological gadgetry employed by the Time Lord himself. For example, not believing in wielding weapons, the Doctor carries on his person a device dubbed the ‘sonic screwdriver’. In an article titled “Doctor Who Sonic Screwdriver could Become Real Device” from The Telegraph, dated December 4^th, 2010, Professor Bruce Drinkwater—an ultrasonics engineer at the University of Bristol—is developing an ultrasonic device, which was inspired by the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver. Drinkwater remarks, “the technology is definitely real and there is potential to turn it into something like Dr. Who’s sonic screwdriver” (http:/www.telegraph.co.uk). Journalist, Richard Grey, notes that “the sonic screwdriver is the latest of a number of technologies that have been imagined by science fiction writers which have subsequently become a reality” (http:/www.telegraph.co.uk).Conversely, unlike the sonic screwdriver, the Doctor’s time machine is nowhere near technological actualization.

The TARDIS—an acronym for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space—is “a time machine/spaceship bigger on the inside and smaller on the outside, or dimensionally transcendental, as the Doctor puts it” (Kalyniuk, p.328). The TARDIS is somewhat semiologically indicative of a technology so advanced that it appears more fantastical than factual; however, this is also part of the allure of the Doctor Who series. In Doctor Who and Philosophy:Bigger on the Inside , Alexander Bentland discusses this Levi-Straussian bricolage composite in his piece,“Doctor Who as Philosopher and Myth Maker.” Bentland states that “the Doctor holds that science dictates there’s an element to time he can’t change. However the science that’s doing the dictating isn’t necessarily the actual laws of time and space, but the Doctor’s limited understanding of these laws” (p.370). In other words, even an exceedingly advanced society such as that of Gallifrey’s, still doesn’t know it all.

Nevertheless, the Doctor accepts and respects the fact that there are some things even he cannot explain, and the series imparts the Time Lord’s belief in a science/magic duality of all things within the multiversal construct: “Doctor Who presents an interesting ethical and philosophical response to this: mythical thought ought to balance the power of scientific thought…[and] contains wisdom that helps  one keep from being too decadent and greedy. Indeed, science itself in its quest for knowledge can cause one to lose track of moral goodness” (pp.370-371). This, in fact, was one of the determining factors behind the Doctor’s unresolvable, philosophical disputes with his fellow Gallifreyans whose scientifically-motivated, logical pomposity infuriated and set him at odds against his fellow Time Lords. This philosophical belief the Doctor fervently accepts as truth is yet another signifier of how this television series is the perfect platform for such heady debate.

Yet another example of this cut’n’paste philosophy in Doctor Who can be found in the series’ narrative composition and the appropriational approach the show’s writers take to its storytelling. Muir notes that “popular films and literature aren’t just rehashed in Doctor Who, they are turned on their heads and dramatized in innovative fashion” (p.53). Likewise, elements of Doctor Who have also been rehashed in other science-fiction series and films; take for example, the Borg from Star Trek: The Next Generation. As John Muir remarks, “The main purpose of the Borg is to assimilate humanoid cultures and use them as ‘raw materials’ to build more Borg…The Cybermen [one of the Doctor’s primary foes]…also replaced body parts with mechanical limbs, and they also sought to procure more bodies so they could continue to build more Cybermen. The idea is identical.” (pp.49-50). However, the motives behind Star Trek: The Next Generation’s ‘assimilation’ of the Cybermen is irrelevant; considering Doctor Who has been built upon popular science-fiction films and literature right from the TV shows inception. 

As John Muir states, “Doctor Who did not spring from the minds of its creators…as a completely original, fully developed work of art. On the contrary, its many roots in the cinematic, video and literary forebears are fairly obvious” (p.42). with its main protagonist being a nameless time-traveller who refers to himself by a title rather than a given name coupled with his misadventures in a makeshift time machine, the most obvious and immediate comparison would be to H.G. Wells’ literary classic, The Time Machine. Muir reveals that “Doctor Who came about as a kind of cathode tube version of director George Pal’s hit movie The Time Machine” (p.42), which is quite clearly a filmic adaptation loosely-based on the Wells novel; however, this is just an example of previous source materials utilized in the composition and creation of the series, and but one instance of Doctor Who’s story-telling appropriation.

In the four-part story, “The Ark,” the First Doctor lands his TARDIS in an ark set adrift in space, due to Earth’s destruction by the Sun. The Ark space vessel is a generational ship headed for the planet Refusis 700 years away from its current location. The plotline is highly reminiscent of George Pal’s Oscar-winning film When Worlds Collide. A similar story, “The Ark in Space,” would later re-examine elements from both When Worlds Collide and “The Ark,” transmogrifying them into a tale of scifi horror with the introduction of the vespoid/humanoid alien species, the Wirrn. When the fourth regeneration of the Doctor—along with his companions, Sarah Jane and Harry—find themselves transported onto Space Station Nerva, they discover that the Wirrn have invaded the space station and begun impregnating their larave into the ship’s crew while sleeping in cryogenic freeze. Though,  neither director, Ridley Scott, nor writer, Dan O’Bannon, has ever made mention of it in any interviews or commentaries, it’s hard to believe that neither were inspired from “The Ark in Space’s” plot when creating Alien. There are too many similarities between this Doctor Who tale and the 1979 film to believe otherwise. Also, keep in mid that “The Ark in Space” aired in 1975—that’s four years prior to Alien’s release.

Possible unacknowledged science-fiction appropriations aside, Another infusion from classic science-fiction cinema that has made its way into the plotlines of Doctor Who has been Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which has influenced several story arcs throughout the series’ run. The most overtly inspired by the 1956 scifi classic being “The Faceless Ones.” In this six-part story from 1967, the Second Doctor ‘faces’ a race called the Chameleons who have sinister intentions for Earth. As the Doctor & co. stumble into the Chameleons’ rather mysterious plot—by way of their airline front, Chameleon Tours—it is discovered that the shape-shifting extraterrestrials plan to remove 50,000 humans from the face of the Earth, store them in a spaceship in Earth’s orbit, and assume the kidnapped humans’ identities. Another similarity to Invasion of the Body Snatchers revolves around “people who should be familiar, yet are not. The face is the same, but what exists behind it is horribly evil, horribly wrong” (Muir, p.141).

Elements of Invasion of the Body Snatchers were also utilized in “The Android Invasion” a four-part story arc from 1975. This time around, the Doctor—in his fourth regeneration now—and journalist, Sarah Jane Smith, materialize on what looks to be Earth, but later turns out to be a simulated environment duplicating the small English village of Devesham. There, the time-travelling duo are confronted with villagers who are acting oddly when their not aware they’re being watched, and displaying abrasive and anti-social behavior once they realize that they’ve guests in town. It later is discovered that the villagers are, in fact, androids created in pod-like devices by an aggressive alien race named the Kraal who are planning to invade Earth with pods that will fashion the formless androids housed within their shells into human doppelgangers. Once this has transpired, the Kraal plan to release a virus into Earth’s atmosphere—via the androids—which will exterminate all life on Earth in a matter of weeks, making the third rock from the Sun ready for the Kraal taking. The oversized walnut-shaped pods that house and refashion the androids into their human duplicates is heavily influenced by the look of the pods housed in the green house scene from Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Furthermore, the town square scene from the 1956 film was an obvious homage to the village square scene in “The Android Invasion.”

In keeping with the mechanoid mayhem from Kraal, the Doctor Who story, “Robot,” draws on several different science-fiction sources; most notably, King Kong. The focus of this four-part story from 1974 revolves around a robot created by the reclusive Professor J.P. Kettlewell. The robot is being controlled remotely by the Think Tank Organization to purloin advanced British military weaponry and top-secret documents—unbeknownst to Kettlewell, I might add. The robot itself was obviously influenced by Robbie the Robot from Forbidden Planet…including its emotionless, baritone voice…while its programming is reminiscent of Robbie’s and Isaac Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics.” Elsewhere in “Robot,” influences of King Kong appear; specifically,  between the Doctor’s companion, Sarah Jane, and her interactions with the robot. This intercommunication between Sarah and the robot can easily be paralleled with that of Ann Darrow’s and the gargantuan gorilla. Kettlewell’s creation also is mysteriously endowed with the ability to grow in mass and size, which is reminiscent of the robot character, Jetjaguar, from Godzilla vs. Megalon (1973) and/or the Japanese series, Ultraman. At this point in “Robot,” the mechanoid man has become Kong-like monster and grabs Sarah Jane with its metal claw. Even the robot’s demise at the end of the four-part story is met with sobering, downtrodden looks by the Doctor and Sarah Jane, recalling King Kong’s death in the 1933 film’s finale. Only in this case, it was beauty that killed the robot.

From king-sized gorillas to human-sized apes, the three-part story “Survival” pays homage to Planet of the Apes by having an other-dimensional, super-intelligent, and nameless race of Cheetah People on horseback hunt down humans for sport. Yet another of this 1989 story’s inspirational sources can be found in the H.G. Wells novel, The Island of Dr. Moreau. In this instance, the gradual regressive transformation of any life-form exposed to the atmosphere of the other-dimensional feline home-world into that of the savage Cheetah People themselves. A further parallel between “Survival” and the 1896 Wells novel occurs when the Seventh Doctor implores his companion, Ace, to remember her humanity and to not fall prey to her heightened feral instincts. Later, even the Doctor must face and battle his bestial side when he too succumbs to the savage planet’s transmogrifying. Recalling “Are we not men?” from The Island of Dr. Moreau, the Doctor now questions himself while fighting the urge to yield to his bestial side. “Survival” happened to be the final story of the original series before it was unofficially cancelled in 1989.

During its sixteen-year hiatus from 1989 to 2005, Doctor Who was mostly kept alive by its ardent fan-base, which continued to flourish via: international fan-clubs and local meeting groups; VHS/DVD releases from the show’s back catalog; by reruns in syndication; and, most notably, the advent of the internet, which constructed a  public forum for fansites, blogspots, webisodes, and, of course, message boards dedicated to Doctor Who. It was also during these years that saw the exponential increase in the cable television market; more importantly (and rather pertinent to the Doctor’s return to TV), the 1998 launching of BBC America—a haven to British television and an anglophile’s version of paradise.

Meanwhile, back across the Atlantic, when Doctor Who was finally re-commissioned by BBC back in 2005, it returned to the airwaves and re-emerged with a ratings vengeance, and, when Doctor Who was finally given a timeslot on BBC America, it had finally found its niche here. This new interest in Doctor Who introduced the Doctor—now on his ninth regeneration—to a new generation of internet-savvy viewers who hopped online to find out what all of the ‘who- abaloo’ was about. In the process of Doctor Who’s new ratings success, several spin-off series were created (Torchwood, The Sarah Jane Adventures, K-9); all centered around the Doctor’s former companions. However, without a doubt, a vast majority of Doctor Who’s recent resurgence in popularity is due to the technological progress that transpired during the show’s sixteen-year absence from the airwaves. Then again, as the Fourth Doctor once extolled, “Progress is a very flexible word, you can make it out to mean just about anything.” Perhaps, he was correct.

 

 Bibliography

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Doctor Who: Survival. Perf. Sylvester McCoy. BBC America, 2000. DVD.

Doctor Who: The Android Invasion. Perf. Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen. BBC America, 1996. Videocassette.

Doctor Who: The Ark in Space. Perf. Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen. BBC America, 2002. DVD.

Doctor Who: The Ark. Perf. William Hartnell. BBC America, 1999. Videocassette

Fingeroth, Danny. Superman on the Couch. New York: Continuum Publishing. 2004.

Gray, Richard. “Doctor Who Sonic Screwdriver could Become Real Device.” The Telegraph.(http://www.telegraph.co.uk). December 4, 2011.

Lewis, Courtland and Smithka, Paula, eds. Doctor Who and Philosophy: Bigger on the Inside. Chicago: Open Court Publishing. 2010.

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The Master, Margarita, and Madness

(An Operatic Commentary of Mephistophelean Proportions)

“The Past lies upon the Present like a giant's dead body.”

                  ~Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of Seven Gables

Not as subreptive to the point of incomprehensibility as Dostoyevsky’s The Demons and, conversely, not as exceedingly overt in a multiplicity of meanings as Bely’s Petersburg, Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita is effectively swathed in enough symbolism to make it both an excellent companion piece to and a golden mean between the other two novels of antithetically symbolic extremes. Likewise, Bulgakov has textually constructed his novel into a operatic masterwork—straddling the paragraphic lines between opera seria and opera buffa—and organized The Master and Margarita into three interlaced tales: that of  the adulterous interactions between the novel’s namesakes, the Master and Margarita Nikolayevna;  the visitation of the Devil—under the moniker of  ‘Woland’—and his motley entourage in the city of Moscow; and the story of Pontius Pilate and his dealings with the citizens of Yershalaim.

Each of these interconnected stories serves as allegorical columns supporting the overarching sociopolitical and religious themes of the novel. Through Bulgakov’s use of symbolic and syntactical identifiers, he has suffused these stories together and embedded them within a structural hotbed of issues plaguing early-20^th century Russia. Since his utilization of these aforementioned identifiers ranges from the symbolic use of the eye/eyes (approximately used upwards of 130 times, by my count) to the knife/sword (by my estimation, it’s used upwards of 40 times) to chess/checker(s)/checkered (used approximately 20+ times), I will focus on Bulgakov’s semiological use of the head/face/mind, which the author uses with overwhelming frequency to convey his thematic extremes of religion and godlessness, sanity and insanity, fear and freedom, and, ultimately, as a platform to criticize the institutions embraced by Soviet Russia under a Stalinist regime.

Out of all of Bulgakov’s semiological identifiers, the head, face, and mind—as well as various types of pain inflicted upon one or all of them—is, perhaps, the most recognizable and most utilized within The Master and Margarita. For starters, the character of Pontius Pilate is incessantly plagued by headaches: “Oh gods, gods why do you punish me?...Yes, no doubt, this is it again, the invincible, terrible illness…hemicranias, when half of the headaches” (p.19). Moreover, due to the heavy heat cast down from the noonday sun upon Yershalaim, Mathew Levi experiences troublesome thoughts: “A single feverish thought was leaping in his burning head” (p.177). While back in Moscow, the Master himself is masterfully intertwined with the events that transpired in Yershalaim. Here, we find his mind plagued by his creation—the manuscript concerning Pontius Pilate. The morning after Satan’s Ball, Margarita and the Master argue and, in the process of his pushing Margarita away, he realizes what he has done and begins to cry. Without hesitation, Margarita casts her own hurt feelings aside to comfort the Master and confesses, “Ah, my much-suffering head!” (p.367). The Master replies, “I know that we’re both victims of our mental illness, which you perhaps got from me” (p. 367). Bulgakov not only has intertwined the fates of both the Master and Margarita to Pontius Pilate, but has also addressed the issue of losing one’s faith in one’s religion as well as one’s self; however, the author’s semiological utilization of the head takes on far greater phantasmagorical properties, pushing it over the edge and into the hyperbolic extreme elsewhere in the novel.

The heads of both Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz—noted editor of the publication, Massolit—and Georges Bengalsky, master of ceremonies at the Variety theatre, encounter similar cerebral traumas–namely, that of decapitation—however, the former’s beheading is gruesomely predicted by the foreigner and resident Devil in disguise, Woland, whereas the latter’s is brought about by the artiste of the black arts and his gaggle of grim minions for the audience’s—but mostly for their own—entertainment. Berlioz’s headless demise is met at Patriarch’s Ponds: “The tram-car went over Berlioz, and a round dark object…went bouncing along the cobblestones of the street. It was the severed head of Berlioz” (p.46). While in Bengalsky’s case, an audience member attending Woland’s séance at the Variety theater shouts, “Tear his [Bengalsky’s] head off!” (p.125) to which Woland’s gaunt lackey, Koroviev retorts, “’What’s that you said?...Tear his head off? There’s an idea! Behemoth!’ he shouted to the cat [another from Woland’s retinue]…Growling, the cat sank his plump paws into…the master of ceremonies and in two twists tore the head from the thick neck with a savage howl” (p.126). Metaphorically, both men’s decapitations serve not only as a physical assault upon the body by the Devil disguised as Woland but also as an indication of a greater evil afflicting the Russian mind—that of the dependence upon logic and reason to explain away the inexplicable—thereby, excorticating even the merest whim of a preternatural element involved.

Fortunately for Bengalsky, the head-severing escapade spawned by Woland & co. isn’t quite as permanent as Berlioz’s and his head is soon returned to him; however, his mind is not…or, at least, it is assumed so by Dr. Stravinsky, head of the insane asylum where Bengalsky will soon find himself institutionalized. Later, during Woland’s gala of all things satanic, Berlioz’s head turns up: “’Mikhail Alexandrovich,’ Woland addressed the head in a low voice…the slain man’s eyelids rose, and on the dead face Margarita saw…living eyes filled with thought and suffering” (p.273). At this point Woland adroitly addresses Berlioz’s bodiless head and bemuses, “You have always been an ardent preacher of the theory that, on the cutting off of his head, life ceases in a man…my guests, though…serve as proof of quite a different theory…There is also one [theory] which holds that it [death] will be given each according to his faith” (p.273). Here, Bulgakov rather comically addresses his overarching lamentation concerning the removal of religion under the Soviet way of life. By revivifying the bodiless head of Berlioz—a staunch supporter of the more fashionable atheism sweeping communist Russia—Woland reviles in decimating the Massolit editor’s theory that there is no soul and, therefore, no afterlife.

Yet another bodiless head worth noting comes in the form of Yeshua (otherwise known as Jesus Christ). In the introduction to The Master and Margarita, Richard Pevear notes that “during Pilate’s conversation with Yeshua…he sees the wandering philosopher’s head float off and in its place the toothless head of the aged Tiberius Caesar” (p. xvii). Here, Bulgakov has masterfully entwined the past with the present, interlocking the events about to unfold in 20^th century Russia to those that occurred at the dawn of Christianity. The fate of Berlioz, the Massolit editor, is intermixed with that of Yeshua and acts as textual exchange of warning and lamentation: the former, a signifier that religion is an inescapable part of everyday life and that its extraction from the human psyche is possible but ill-advised; the latter, a sobering reminder that religion might be replaced by a secularized dogma embracing atheism and science, but it has rather bittersweetly not been forgotten.

Bulgakov’s appeal to the Russian people to not totally abandon their antiquated Russian Orthodox faith for ones purely set in the fashionable and often obsolescent modes of the scientific method and communist manifesto is further—and somewhat ironically—paralleled with the first moments that gave rise to Christianity; specifically, by channeling this message through the story of Pontius Pilate. After the Roman procurator dismisses Yeshua Ha-Nozri as a crazed yet harmless individual, he meets with Joseph Kaifa, high priest of the Jews of Yershalaim, and passively attempts to persuade him into releasing Ha-Nozri instead of the criminal, Bar-Rabban, from execution in observance of the great feast of Passover. Here, the attempts of the past’s powers that be—in this case, Joseph Kaifa and to a lesser extent, Pontius Pilate—to quash the emerging new religion are conversely paralleled with Soviet Russia’s attempts to eliminate the very same religion and replace it with a sociopolitical movement.

Pilate’s indirect endeavor to convince Kaifa to liberate Yeshua is met with an emphatic ‘no’ from the high priest: “The crimes of Bar-Rabban and Ha-Nozri are quite incomparable in their gravity. If the latter, obviously an insane person, is guilty of uttering preposterous things in Yershalaim and some other places, the former’s burden of guilt is more considerable…Bar-Rabban is incomparably more dangerous than Ha-Nozri” (p.14). The procurator’s subtle pleas—disguised as intimated threats—to free Yeshua rather than Bar-Rabban are echoed in Bulgakov’s overall tone of The Master and Margarita. Like Pilate’s subtlety, Bulgakov indirectly urges Russians to embrace their past rather than to neglect it through The Master and Margarita. Through his storytelling, the author vocalizes his view that the only viable option to accept the challenges of Russia’s future is to accept its past. Bulgakov’s wishes for a flourishing Russian tomorrow resonate in the character of Pontius Pilate and his roundabout requests—both to Yeshua and Kaifa—to stop the insanity he is witnessing but does nothing to stop; thusly, the author has managed to intertwine the madness  of the past with the myopia of the present and, just perhaps, has broken the endless cycle of submission and cowardice through the written words of his novel. For Bulgakov, the hammer and sickle are modern icons appropriating the roles formerly held by saintly statuettes Their symbolic usurpation is an obstruction to Russia’s religious past, and Bulgakov considers communism to be nothing more than a fear-mongering iron fist bullying his homeland’s future.

It can also be surmised that Bulgakov’s use of mental illness and the institutionalization of Soviet citizens solely for hallucinations throughout The Master and Margarita was a direct commentary on the early 20^th-century shift away from religiosity and toward a secularized modernity. Furthermore, what better backdrop for such removal of religion, tradition, and their respective practices on a purely national scale than that of communist Russia? This shift from orthodoxy to atheism is succinctly embodied within the first few opening pages of the novel during Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz’s critical conversation with Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev (aka- ‘Homeless’) concerning the “the long anti-religious poem for the next issue of his [Berlioz’s] journal [Massolit]” (p.8). Later Berlioz further elaborates that “atheism does not surprise anyone…the majority of our [Russia’s] population consciously and long ago ceased believing in the fairy tales about God” (p.12); as I have previously mentioned, such a bold statement from Berlioz will later to come back to haunt his bodiless head.

Moreover, in the tradition of Dostoyevsky’s The Demons, Bulgakov interlaces a network of incidents regarding the head—or, more specifically, the mind—as average Russian citizens are almost instantaneously institutionalized for describing the dastardly actions of Woland and his retinue. Almost immediately diagnosed as delusional by qualified, professional types such as Dr. Stravinsky, many Soviet citizens feel the backlash of a society sterilized of its superstitions simply for explaining the events that have unfolded before their very eyes. Usually, these unbelievable events are brought about by direct or indirect interaction with Woland, the Devil, and his insidious minions; however, due to their nature—or rather, supernature—the experts in their respective fields brush aside the metaphysicality of these events as hokum and hex of the, and, instead, favor a more logical, plausible, and, therefore, more palpable explanations such as traumatic shock or, worse, chemical imbalances within the brain. These general pangs and fits from mental illness are yet another overarching theme throughout Bulgakov’s novel. Not more than a hundred years prior to The Master and Margarita’s creation, similar cases wouldn’t have had such a secularized view of those suffering from mental illness; in fact, many of them would’ve been considered demonically possessed. In Malleus Maleficarum, Friars Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger note, “The devil can also essentially possess a man, as is clear in the case of frantic men… they [demons] sometimes…injure men only in their own bodies; sometimes in their bodies and in their inner faculties…others they at times deprive of the use of their [men’s] reason” (p.129).  The friars further note that “all Angels, good and bad, by their natural power, which is superior to all bodily power, are able to transmute our bodies” (p.124).

Furthermore, with religion removed from the sociocultural equation, the citizens of Soviet Russia are incapable of recognizing the dark arts that will soon lay siege to the city of Moscow and, as a result, are blinded by—what Friars Kramer and Sprenger distinguish as—demonic possession by “those who are skilled in sorcery and glamour [who] deceive the human senses with certain apparitions, so that corporeal matter seems to become different to the sight and touch…in the matter of creating illusions” (p.93). In a nation removed of its religious tradition and embracing secularized modernity and an atheistic ethos, what would’ve once been immediately identified as deviltry is now referred to simply as hypnotism or mass hypnosis: “Citizens, you and I [Bengalsky, the master of ceremonies at the Variety theatre] have just beheld a case of so-called mass hypnosis. A purely scientific experiment, proving in the best way possible that there are no miracles in magic” (Bulgakov, p.125).

Additionally, after Woland and his entourage have wreaked their own brand of fresh hell upon the citizens of the Russian capitol, the proceeding investigation conducted by the Russian police ignores any indication of the unclean element in favor of a more logical explanation: “the criminal gang…were hypnotists of unprecedented power, who could show themselves not in the place where they actually were, but in imaginary, shifted positions” (Bulgakov, p.388). Again, by consulting Malleus Maleficarum, one will soon discover that demon possession extends past full bodily control to that of hallucinations: “He [the devil] must first occupy the head and faculties…the devil can draw out some image retained in a faculty corresponding to one of the senses…he causes such a sudden change and confusion, that such objects are necessarily thought to be actual things seen with the eyes. This can be clearly exemplified by the natural defect in frantic men and other maniacs” (pp.124-125). This lends further credence to idea that Bulgakov has used The Master and Margarita as a clarion call to the Russian people not to forsake their religious faith in order to entirely embrace ones based in the sciences and in modernity.

Altogether, Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita is an explorative commentary on the foibles, follies, and fears of the 20^th-century Soviet mindset hell-bent on removing both небеса и ад from the Russian vocabulary. Furthermore, Bulgakov has deftly entwined this commentary into the straightforward approach of old-fashioned storytelling, similar to that of Gogol’s works. In doing so, he has approached the folktales of Russia’s rich past by expropriating them, then reanimating them with a dissenting clarity of silenced religiosity and sociopolitical perspective under the watchful stare of a Stalinist USSR; thereby, not only adding an electrifying jolt but an interesting twist to the traditional ghost stories told ‘round the fire.

Bibliography

Bulgakov, Mikhail. The Master and Margarita. New York: Penguin Books. 1997.

Kramer, Heinrich and Sprenger, James. Malleus Maleficarum. New York: Dover Publishing. 1971.

Profiting from Prophecy 

Somewhere between serendipity and synchronicity, the repetitive sci-fi mantra of contemporary culture is chanted as follows: the fantasies found in the works of yesterday’s science-fiction become the pioneering and fringe sciences of today become the everyday amenities of tomorrow. Somehow many of those technological innovisions and advancements found in the other-worlds or manifold futures frequently explored in science-fiction take a foothold into our reality and—whether out of desire or destiny—into our imaginations. Furthermore, in a culture fueled and forged by conspicuous consumption, obsolescence, and fad technologies, this sci-fi providence materializes more so out of consumer demand and the almighty dollar than simply out the often thankless scientific method and such lofty ideals as the betterment of humanity. Such is the nature of the technological beast… and such examples of this beast can be found in the communicator/combadge of the Star Trek franchise, the videophone from the film Blade Runner, and the interactive television snippets interspersed throughout the movie Starship Troopers.

The first of the three, the communication devices employed by Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets in its various chronological incarnations in the Star Trek universe (the communicator in the original series and the combadge in Star Trek: The Next Generation and thereafter) is a “communication device used by many species for person-to-person, person-to-ship, inter-ship communications. Communicators usually transmitted on subspace frequencies” (http://memory-alpha.org), and “served purposes beyond basic communication. For example, communicators were often used to allow transporter locks for beaming, thus acting as homing transponders” (http://memory-alpha.org). In the Star Trek timeline, by the 24^th century—and by the time of Star Trek: The Next Generation—Starfleet has already introduced the combadge which is a compacted combination of the Starfleet insignia badge and the communicator. Moreover, the combadge expands upon the communicator’s capabilities by configuring it “to act as universal translators” (http://memory-alpha.org).

Although the ‘subspace frequencies’ utilized by the communicators/combadges in Star Trek are out of grasp within the foreseeable future—mostly, due to the fact that “what subspace is has never been revealed on screen” (http://memory-alpha.org)—the interpersonal communicative, homing transpondent, and universal translative capabilities of the device are very much a part of our contemporary culture. Our current cellphone devices are, for all intents and purposes, the handheld, person-to-person communicator devices of the series, which is “oft-cited as a Star Trek invention” (http://www.tecca.com), but it goes much deeper than that. The cellphone of today “was invented by a team led by a Motorola vice president named Martin Cooper. Cooper has said in interviews before that the Star Trek communicator was his inspiration for inventing and developing mobile phone technology…Star Trek gave us cell phones” (http://www.tecca.com).  

There’s no denying that the modern cell phone has been assimilated into our contemporary culture to the point of it becoming an accepted norm and not a technological fad or curiosity, and its list benefits are manifold. One advantage is the ability to “stay connected with our loved ones in any part of the world and anytime. Gone are the days when we used to stand in queues to make an STD or ISD calls” (http://www.techacid.com). Another beneficial service the cell phone provides is SMS (Short Message Service), which permits users to converse during “situations in which a person can’t attend a call, so all you have to do is simply send an SMS and without talking your message is delivered” (http://www.techacid.com). Yet another benefit cell phones offer is during emergency situation: “The benefits of cell phones in emergency situations is undisputed. The Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 74 percent of Americans say they’ve used a cell phone in an emergency” (http://cmch.tv). Lastly, the modern cell phone works as a miniature PC/laptop, “equipped with windows and internet facilities. So you don’t need to wait for the newspaper! You can simply access the internet on your cell phone and get to know about the latest news, your e-mails, movie shows and a lot more” (http://www.techacid.com).

Additionally, the Star Trek communicator’s ability to be utilized as a homing device is comparable to a cellphone’s GPS (Global Positioning System) tracking capabilities: “Cellphones have had GPS locators in them since 2005…Manufacturers are always on the lookout for new ways for customers to use their cellphones and there seem to be few limits on the applications. Smartphones already make the old 'communicator' that once seemed so slick on Star Trek look like a kid's toy” (http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com). GPS tracking allows its users to “keep track of your children, post your location to Facebook or find a lost phone” (http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com). Likewise, the universal translative capabilities added to The Next Generation’s combadge device are currently being worked on as we speak and I type: “Google Conversation, so far only available to translate between Spanish and English, generated excited headlines speculating that a true universal translator -- an idea popularized by "Star Trek" -- might be just around the corner” (http://www.cnn.com); thereby, breaking down the language barrier.

The videophone in Blade Runner is yet another example of sci-fi fantasy materializing into everyday reality. Although “the concept of videotelephony was first popularized in the late 1880s” (http://en.wikipedia.org) and not the sole creation of the FX-wizards of the film, with webcams adorning PCs everywhere and the built-in cameras found in most laptops—not to mention, such pixelated platforms as Skype Blade Runner had its celluloid finger on the futuristic pulse. Considering that the film is set in the year 2019, Ridley Scott & co. weren’t too far off the mark. With that in mind, even though the laptop and PC have become the main source of such audiovisual, communicative endeavors and not the videophone, it still has a marketable niche in contemporary culture. For example, the ASUS AiGuru SV1 videophone is geared towards “the grandma/grandpa/computerphobic set” (http://www.engadget.com), which permits certain contingencies of society either confounded by or wary of the personal computer to have real-time access to the faces and voices of their loved ones separated by distances both great and small.

Likewise—and in the same vein as the Star Trek combadge’s universal translator—the videophone serves as a translator for the hearing-impaired “and makes the phone as useful a tool for the deaf as for the hearing” (http://www.cbsnews.com).  The Sorenson VP100 is a video relay device “clear and free of the graininess and jerky playback...These are important factors when trying to follow signing and observe facial expressions” (http://www.cbsnews.com), and is part of a federally-funded program “aimed at providing equal telecommunications access to the deaf and hard of hearing. Under the Americans With Disabilities Act, all long-distance telephone companies are required to pay a percentage of money collected from phone customers into a national telecommunications relay services fund” (http://www.cbsnews.com).  Since video relaying occurs in real-time, it allows its subject “to introduce tone and expression into the conversation” (http://www.cbsnews.com), resulting in a congruity and harmony unfelt in other devices for the hearing impaired. 

Finally, the interactive television of Starship Troopers is also no longer the telecommunication device of some distant future, but one of today: “When Starship Troopers debuted, the Internet was still in its early phases as a mass-consumer communications device…Today, however, broadband speeds allow for the interactive television experience through Web video as seen in the…movie. Actual Online video sites like youtube allow users to completely customize their viewing experience, watching only what they want and linking to related videos automatically” (http://www.tomsguide.com). Moreover, the instantaneousness and simultaneousness of interactive TV will enable “a geographically dispersed population [to] be reached immediately, irrespective of location… which allows information to be given to all remote areas at the same time, regardless of distance from the source” (http://www.ajol.info). Additionally, ITV relies “on the ability, particularly of satellite technology, to reach anywhere within its footprint, irrespective of distances or geographic obstacles” (http://www.ajol.info), making it infinitely more accessible than the passivity of regular television.

Surprisingly—or, perhaps, unsurprisingly—the science-fictitious advancements of yesterday have become the technological innovations of today. Other than the calendar year being incorrect, all three of these works turned out to be correct on some level and even inspired others to take the initiative to make  science-fiction science-factual. This creative inspiration can be seen as a sort of future-past paradox, enticing some within our sociocultural construct to submit to the nostalgic state of action-reaction-creation; thereby, paying homage to youthful reminiscences of  science-fiction through human ingenuity and its subsequent implementation. Cellphones, GPS tracking, universal translators, videophones, and interactive TV all have their detractors. Much is the case with just about every fresh gaggle of hi-tech gadgetry flooding department-store shelves and e-tailers with a sometimes daunting—other times, desperate—tenacity for consumption by tech whores and impulse shoppers alike. Of course, there will always be cons to progress; however, ultimately, the advantages in the above-mentioned cases outweigh the negatives. With the tactile implementation of these sci-fi fantasized technologies into mainstream consciousness, their subsequent realizations, and overall practical application in contemporary culture, it becomes quite apparent that certain percentages of society—unable and/or hesitant to participate and communicate with the greater communal whole—have now been enabled to make the transition from a 20^th- to 21^st-century mindset. This switch in states of mind would never have occurred if it weren’t fro science-fiction and its admirers who took yesteryear’s future-fantasy from fictitious conjecture to utilitarian advancement; thus, making the inaccessible accessible, the impaired empowered, and  the immediacy of emergency to applicable exigency.

Revenge of the Horseman

“4,320,000,000 years of human reckoning—constitute a single day of Brahma, a single kalpa…Such a day begins with creation or evolution (sristi), the emanation of a universe out of divine, transcendent, unmanifested Substance, and terminates with dissolution and re-absorption (pralaya), mergence back into the Absolute. The world spheres together with all the beings contained in them disappear at the end of the day of Brahma, and during the ensuing night persist.”

                                 —Heinrich Zimmer, from Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization

In his final psychological work, Man and His Symbols, Carl Jung wrote, “The general function of dreams is to try to restore our psychological balance by producing dream material that re-establishes…the total psychic equilibrium…The dream compensates for the deficiencies of their [people’s] personalities, and at the same time it warns them of the dangers in their present course. If the warnings of the dream are disregarded, real accidents may take their place” (p.34). Jung’s observations concerning the symbolic significance in dreams seems uncannily descriptive of Andrei Bely’s Petersburg, which was written almost fifty years prior to Man and His Symbols. Conjointly, Carl Jung’s Fabian policy to heed the symbolic and metaphorical elements contained within dreams as a forewarning also permeates its pages. These prescient symbols often have multiple meanings to the conscious and subconscious lives of the characters encapsulated in Petersburg, and are often escalated into a subjectified state of personal interpretation. Intermixed amongst this the phantasmagorical fogs, the glazed regality of ornamentation, the pulsating flashes of wisplike lights, and the cyclical spatiotemporality of fluctuating spheres, Petersburg is a novel imbued with imagistic potency. The power of this hypnogogic state trumpets its clarion call within the dreams of three of the novel’s main characters: the dreams of Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov, his son Nikolai, and Alexander Ivanovich Dudkin. It is within these characters’ minds (and their incessant pursuits of ‘cerebral play’) that Bely attempts to evoke and infuse the five senses into attaining a state of textual Nirvana. The result is a world in constant flux between the extremities of chaos and order and the pursuant subjugation to interchangeable symbolism, dimensional paradox, and temporal displacement.

Within the hazy labyrinthine gray matter of St. Petersburg, Bely first introduces the reader to Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov, a gentleman “of venerable stock” (p.3), a prominent senator, and “head of a Government Institution” (p.5). Apollon is predisposed to the clarity that only logic, reason, and structure can provide and is prone to episodic lapses into ‘cerebral play’ whenever stressed by discord of daily life: “Proportionality and symmetry soothed the senator’s nerves, which had been irritated both by the irregularity of his domestic life and by the futile rotation of our [Russia’s] wheel of state” (p.10). In such moments, Apollon would escape the harsh realities of a chaotic Russia: “by an act of his will, [Apollon] shifted the center of his consciousness” (p.19

Exhibiting a somewhat psychological addiction to this ‘shifted center of consciousness’, Apollon seeks out the conditions necessary to facilitate his cerebral play. As the senator prepares for bed, he anticipates his entrance into this twilight realm and “would pull up the blanket in order to embark upon a journey, for sleep is a journey” (p.93). Arriving at his dream-state destination, Apollon would deconstruct the ornamentations and excesses of the tactile and corporeal into their basic geometrical states and occlude reality altogether: “Ableukhov’s eyes saw bright patches and dots of light, and iridescent dancing spots with spinning centers. They obscured the boundaries of the spaces. Thus one space swarmed in the other space” (p.93). As Apollon continues his spiraling descent into sleep, he becomes aware that “the bubbling vortex suddenly formed into a corridor stretching off into an immeasurable expanse. What was most surprising was that the corridor was an endless continuation of his head…he…was not Apollon Apollonovich, but something lodged in the brain, looking out from there…With the opening up of the sinciput [the forepart of the skull], something could run along the corridor until it plunged into the abyss” (p.93). The narrator further details that this intangible, fragmentary world the senator has entered was his ‘second space’.

It is here that Apollon dreams of fragmentary, foreboding events and false awakenings. Furthermore, it is also here that the reader is introduced to the first of three momentous dreams that appears in Petersburg and interwreathes itself amongst later ones by Apollon’s son, Nikolai, and the mustachioed Dudkin. Almost from the start of his arrival into this ‘second space’, Apollon finds himself “in armor, like a little knight” (p.94), which parallels the imagery of the Ableukhov “coat of arms: a unicorn goring a knight” (p.9). This idiosyncratic familial crest is a rarity amongst such noble emblems and unicorn lore, although it appears repeatedly throughout Petersburg.

During the masquerade ball, a mock battle is re-enacted for the entertainment of the guests; here, the reader is confronted yet again with the imagery from the Ableukhov coat-of-arms as well as the allusion to Apollon as ‘a little knight’: “Cutting across the ballroom was the wizened little figure of a knight…From among the maskers and Capuchins a one-horned being hurled itself upon the little knight” (p.112); however, in this instance, these icons of chivalry (the knight) and purity (the unicorn) are being lampooned rather than revered and, as the reader will discover, Petersburg is rife with symbols possessing multiple meanings and/or antithetical extremes …the Ableukhov coat-of-arms being no exception. To a lesser extent, the silvery specter of Apollon as a knight is echoed in the antiquated weaponry adorning the Ableukhov estate: “On the walls glittered a display of antique weapons: a Lithuanian helmet glittered beneath a rusty green shield: the hilt of a knight’s sword sparkled” (p. 33). Though, much like the masquerade ball’s lampoonery of medieval legends, these weapons of war are simply trophies now—parodies of their former power--stripped of their totemic virility while collecting dust.

The symbolism in Apollon’s dream isn’t solely ironic or paradoxical, but ominous as well. As the senator continues his slumber, he hears the repetitious tapping sound, “Tk-tk…tk-tk-tk…” (p.94), which, as the reader will later discover in the novel, is an allusion to the explosive device encapsulated in a sardine tin, being harbored obliviously by Nikolai Apollonovich Ableukhov (Apollon’s son), and meant to assassinate the senator himself. The bomb is also the symbolic crux unifying Petersburg’s three main characters in the waking world: Alexander Ivanovich Dudkin (bearer of the bomb), Nikolai (keeper of bomb), and Apollon (the bomb’s target). However, during Nikolai’s dream he transmogrifies from the explosive’s custodian into the makeshift armament itself: “Nikolai Apollonovich was an old Turanian bomb” (p.166); Of course, at this juncture, Bely—in his grandiloquent, circumlocutory manner—has identified the word ‘bomb’ with that of a ‘Turanian’ or Mongol. This syntactical identification and interchangeability between the two words is echoed elsewhere in the novel.

Most notably, the Mongol invader is emblematic of the Ableukhovs’ ancestral origins, ‘the Kirghiz-Kaisak Horde’ which—as the reference notes contained in the back of book explain—“were descendants of the Mongols who had once dominated Russia” (p.298). This fact also represents a great father-son irony in Petersburg: Apollon’s shame and/or embarrassment his family’s ancestral origin manifests itself as disgust toward the Mongol menace, while Nikolai desires to explore and embrace his Asian heritage. Apollon’s disgust for the Mongol manifests itself during his dream, “The clatter was the clicking of the tongue of some worthless Mongol with a face he had already seen…it was Nikolai Apollonovich” (p.94). It should also be mentioned that Bely’s use of the word ‘clatter’ to describe the Mongol, is later used during Alexander Ivanovich’s delirious dreamlike state: “A weightily sonorous clatter swept across the bridge to the Islands. The Bronze Horseman flew on” (p.210). The Bronze Horseman, of course, is the domineering bronze statue of Peter the Great located in Petersburg’s Senate Square and from Aleksandr Pushkin’s phantasmagorical poem titled The Bronze Horseman.

However, In Petersburg, Bely bestows upon the bronze statue of the Russian tsar a symbolism, which is closely entwined with that of the Mongol invader’s: the dissolution of Russia. In Bely’s eloquent, mellifluous style, the symbolic fusion between these two seemingly disparate visages—that of a Russian tsar notorious for his Westernized attitudes and the lowly Mongol barbarian bent on wreaking his Asian brand of chaos across the fatherland—materialize and intermingle in the mind of Dudkin. Lost deep in thought and during his own brand of cerebral play, Alexander Ivanovich envisions the, “The metallic Horseman had galloped hither, when he had flung his steed upon the Finnish granite, Russia was divided in two. Divided in two as well were the destinies of the fatherland” (p.64).  This vision is an obvious reference to St. Petersburg’s Western influence clashing with Russian tradition. The imagery of the mysterious Mongol invader takes this clash a step further by raising it to revolutionary heights: “Alexander Ivanovich had preached burning the libraries, universities, museums, and summoning the Mongols” (p.203). The Mongol as a chaotic, uncontrollable, and unknown element materializes during Dudkin’s fever-ridden nightmare. Ironically, Alexander Ivanovich summons forth the phobias surrounding and effigies of the Eastern-Asian stereotype, which was assumed be an accurate depiction by a majority of Russians during the late 19^th and early 20^th century—especially, since “Japan had just proved victorious in a war that Russia was supposed to have won” (p.xii)—then symbolically intertwines Russian revolutionary with Mongol invader.

This Russian disgust for all things Asian, is embodied  in the character of Apollon whose dreams continue to be plagued by the Mongol: “according to his [Apollon’s] calculations the Mongol…was stealing toward him…pulling his consciousness out through the blue sincipital breach: into that which lies beyond. Something scandalous had taken place” (p.95). The senator’s nightmarish ominations of ever-looming scandal are catalyzed by the Mongol invader whom, as I have previously mentioned, Apollon has associated with his son. This omen serves a dual symbolism in the novel, both concerning Nikolai: that of Apollon’s son’s cupidity and stupidity concerning Sofia Petrovna and the red domino, and  that of his son’s witless harboring of the sardine tin with the ‘horrible contents’. Obviously, the senator is unaware of the latter of two until the final chapter of the novel, but as I’ve already discussed, Carl Jung  that serves as an omen of his to liquidate Apollon himself. To the reader, it should become quite apparent that Bely has masterfully intertwined the characters (and ensuing dreams) of Apollon, Nikolai, and Dudkin, while methodically and melodically interlacing prescience with symbolism with the supernatural with societal scandal.

The image of the Mongol appears in Nikolai’s dream as well; however, the symbolic significance of this Asiatic invader has transmuted its meaning from that of threat to that of heredity. After the masquerade ball where he has discovered that the package delivered by Dudkin is actually housing the ‘horrible contents’ of a bomb, Nikolai Apollonovich falls under the spell of sleep—albeit, on top of the sardine-tin-encased explosive—and dreams of his ancestors: “His Kirghiz-Kaisak ancestors had maintained relations with the Tibetan lamas. They swarmed in the Ablai-Ukhov blood in goodly number. Was that not the reason why he had a tender feeling for Buddhism? Heredity told. In the sclerotic veins heredity throbbed in millions of corpuscles” (p.165). Nikolai’s embracement of his Eastern Asian heritage is the antithetical extreme of his father’s disgust over the Mongol scourge; thereby, infusing the Mongol otherness with interchangeable significance between the father’s and son’s perceptions of the self and their progenitors.

As Nikolai’s dream progresses, the mythic imagery of the mystic Orient materializes once again. This time, in the form of “sharp-beaked, golden, winged miniature dragons” (p.165); these miniaturized draconic imps are echoed later in Petersburg. After Dudkin has awakened from his dream, the peasant Styopka remarks to him, “You’ll drink yourself silly until you start seeing a Green Dragon” (p.215). In the reference notes following the novel, the ‘Green Dragon’ is explained, “In the context of this passage…the expression also takes on apocalyptic overtones (the Dragon of Revelation 12 who threatens the ‘woman clothed in the sun…)…which Bely emphasizes by capitalizing the words” (p.347). Again, the image of the dragon appears later in Nikolai’s dream: “The Ancient Dragon was to feed on tainted blood, and consume everything in flame” (p.166). Much like the father-son duality of double-meaning pervading the term ‘Mongol’, the dragon embodies both the infernal facet of apocalyptic leviathan and the antidotical formula to purge the Western influence and purify the Mongol bloodline.

While subconsciously incarnated in the body of an ‘age-old Turanian’ Mongol, Nikolai is illuminated by peering through the ageless, omniscient lens of enlightenment: “He was nirvanic man. And by Nirvana he understood Nothingness” (Bely, p.165-166). In Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, Heinrich Zimmer further elaborates on the concept of Nirvana, “which is beyond all concepts and forms…beyond all earthly and celestial forms… beyond limiting, qualifying attributes and characteristics, has become…Buddha out of Nirvana, the anonymous void” (p.200). Zimmer’s association of Nirvanic enlightenment with the ‘void’ is paralleled countless times throughout Petersburg; not to mention, all three significant dreams in the novel embrace, acknowledge or accept this nothingness of the endless void. Although Apollon’s somnolent encounter with the Nirvanic is similar to Nikolai’s, “he hung suspended over a timeless void” (p.93), the senator stops short from referring to his twilight enlightenment as anything beyond logical: “Apollon Apollonovich always saw two spaces: one, material…the other, not exactly spiritual” (p.93).

Conversely, Dudkin’s encounter with the void—though still enlightening—is anything but pleasant, “Had he at that moment been able to stand aside and take a look at himself he would no doubt have been horrified: he would have seen himself clutching at his stomach and straining his throat as he bellowed into the void in front of him” (p.207). Furthermore, Alexander Ivanovich’s entanglement with the abyssal nothingness is transmogrified into living shadow; thereby, imparting a sinister meaning into the void’s vivification. The therapeutic ‘two spaces’ of Apollon’s dream metamorphosed into a living entity in Dudkin’s and given a name, Mr. Shishnarfne, “who was growing ever more subtile. A man of all three dimensions had entered the room. He had…become a contour (or, two-dimensional), had become a thin layer of soot…this black soot had suddenly smouldered away into ash…And there was no contour” (p.207). Here, the Nirvanic nothingness of the void has now transmuted from enlightenment into something sinister in the dark of Dudkin’s room.

Not only is Mr. Shishnarfne a dual-dimensional living shadow, but he’s also the harbinger of yet another of Bely’s paradigmatic shifts in symbolic interpretation and antithetical duality; at this juncture, the void of enlightenment from previous interpretations has been twisted into the abyssal void of deviltry and revelation. As Dudkin lucidly dreams his conversation with Shishnarfne, Alexander Ivanovich soon realizes the pitch-black has diabolical intentions: “’Shishnarfne—Shish-nar-fne…’ From his vocal apparatus came the reply: ‘You summoned me…Here I am…’ Enfranshsish had come for his soul” (p.208). The idea of a shadow representative of the devil or demons is nothing new. In the book, Dictionary of Symbols, the following line is given under the entry for ‘shadow’: “As the antithesis of light, the Devil was himself a shadow” (p.181). With this in mind, it seems Bely was drawing from symbolic sources of shadow as devil during Dudkin’s nightmare.

A demonic manifestation is but the first of Alexander Ivanovich’s visitors riddling his fever-ridden dream; the Bronze Horseman himself pays a visit. The statue of Peter the Great is symbolic in many senses, but before I delve into the manifold meanings, let’s consult the Dictionary of Symbols once again for the metal ‘bronze’: “An alloy of copper and tin…symbolizing force, power and hardness, sacred to the lame Hephaestus, who in Greek mythology, fashioned from it the bronze giant Talos” (p.30). Beyond the patinated luster of St. Petersburg itself, the elemental components of bronze appeared previously in Petersburg; in particular, both appeared in the Likhutin house in the shape of Sofia Petrovna’s ‘phoo-phoo’ box. As the notations in the back of the novel point out, Angel-Peri’s copper collection box “was tin only a few paragraphs earlier. We [the editors] cannot decide whether this…is a careless slip on Bely’s part, or whether he deliberately pokes fun at the inconsistencies so common in many of the long Russian nineteenth-century novels” (p.318); I say it is neither. Considering that both copper and tin comprise the bronze alloy, I believe this to be an omen of future events. Furthermore, the fact that the box is meant for guests to deposit coinage every time they utter a vulgarity—or, if you will, pay for their sins—suggests another indication that the ‘phoo-phoo’ box can be paralleled to that of the visage of the Bronze Horseman in Dudkin’s dream sequence.

The narrator also refers to the Bronze Horseman as “The Metallic Guest” (p.214), which, when looking at the notes of the back of the novel, “alludes to both [Pushkin’s] “The Bronze Horseman”  and to The Stone Guest” (p.347) Further notations reveal that Pushkin’s play, The Stone Guest was about “the Stone Commendatore, that emblem of retribution and doom, of the Don Juan legend. A huge stone funerary figure of the man the Don has killed, he leaves his grave at the Don’s defiant challenge and drags him down to Hell” (p.336). This suggests that the Bronze Horseman is the embodiment of the grim reaper and has taken his duties to cull the dead. However, the Bronze Horseman—as a symbolic manifestation of the Grim Reaper—has not come to collect Dudkin’s soul, but rather to bestow his phantasmagorical powers and duties onto Alexander Ivanovich himself. This transference of otherworldly powers is indicated after Dudkin awakes from his dream: “He felt a coppery sensation in his mouth” (p.215).

Yet another signifier that Dudkin is now the possessor of the grim reaper’s duties, not only resides in Alexander Ivanovich’s “business which brooks no postponement” (p.215)—the liquidation of Lippanchenko—but also in his choice of weapon to commit the murderous act: a pair of scissors. Bearing in mind that the Grim Reaper carries around a scythe to harvest the dead to the afterlife, and that scythe and scissors have a common “pseudoetymological association with Latin scindere (to cut or cut with)” (www.dictionary.com), it becomes more apparent to the reader that the Bronze Horseman has become the Grim Reaper has become Alexander Ivanovich Dudkin. I would also like to make mention of the fact that, according to the Dictionary of Symbols, the entry for ‘sickle/scythe’ notes, “The curved sickle was a lunar harvest symbol of the agricultural-god Chronos (in Roman myth, Saturn)… sometimes personified as Father Time or the Grim Reaper” (p.182). With this in mind, it would appear that Bely has deftly interwoven several meanings and symbols into the guise of the Bronze Horseman and supplanted them into that of Dudkin.

Taking all of this into account, let’s take another look at the Grim Reaper’s symbolic origin in the Greek myth of Chronos—or his Roman counterpart, Saturn—and how he fits into the symbolic equation of Petersburg. The child-devouring Titan appears several times throughout the novel; most notably, during Nikolai’s dream: “his [Nikolai’s] father was Saturn. The circle of time had come full turn. The kingdom of Saturn had returned” (p167); here, Bely has masterfully suffused Apollon Apollonovich with the god of time. Although, it would appear that Apollon—named after Apollo, the oracular god of Greek myth and charioteer of the Sun—would much rather be likened to Zeus—Chronos’ son, Apollo’s father, and king of the Olympian pantheon. During his forays into cerebral play, the senator muses that he “was like Zeus: out of his head flowed goddesses and genii” (p.20). Bely has masterfully blurred the lines between perception and self-perception; in this case, Nikolai’s choice of linking Apollon to the aged Saturn, and the senator’s observations of himself not as the dethroned, tyrannical Titan but as Zeus. Furthermore, Bely has also entwined the antagonistic father-son relationship between Nikolai and Apollon with that of the hostile father-son relationship between Zeus and Chronos.

While on the subject of Saturn, the Titan’s planetary equivalent and namesake, is also mentioned several times throughout Petersburg: “We feel the seething of Saturn’s masses in the spine. The stars of constellations eat their way into the brain” (p.262). Yet again, Bely has interconnected and exchanged symbolic meanings; thereby, linking the fates of his characters with the stars. Saturn is not the only celestial body inhabiting the night sky that’s enumerated in the novel. Ironically, during Dudkin’s liquidation of Lippanchenko—the mastermind behind the plot to assassinate Apollon Apollonovich, the revolutionary loses consciousness and falls into his fateful/fatal abyss, “His consciousness expanded. The monstrous periphery of consciousness sucked the planets into itself, and sensed them as organs detached one from the other. The sun swam in dilations of the heart; and the spine grew incandescent from the touch of Saturn’s masses: a volcano opened up in his stomach” (pp.263-264). Lippanchenko’s body symbolically exchanges identifiability with the cosmic body of the universe.

Considering this symbolic exchange between the human body and the universal one and since I started this examination into Petersburg by quoting Jung, I’d now like to exchange one Carl for another and quote the astronomer and astrophysicist, Carl Sagan, from his book Cosmos: “There is the deep and appealing notion that the universe is but a dream of the god who, after a hundred Brahma years, dissolves himself into a dreamless sleep. The universe dissolves with him—until…he stirs, recomposes himself and begins again to dream the great cosmic dream. These great ideas are tempered by another…It is said that men may not be the dreams of gods, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men…These profound and lovely images are, I like to imagine, a kind of premonition of modern astronomical ideas” (p.214). Sagan’s remarks are significant to Bely’s Petersburg not only because the noted cosmologist mentions the gods, premonitions, dreams, and the universe in one fell swoop, but because he references the cyclical, fluctuating nature of everything encapsulated within the cosmos. Likewise, I find this to be Andrei Bely’s overarching theme and commentary on the state of early 20^th-century Russian society and beyond: the cycles of discord and order are universal, infinite, and unavoidable.  Petersburg is but a city in Russia is but a country on a continent on a planet orbiting a star that is but one of billions of stars in the spiraling arms of a galaxy that is but one of billions of galaxies comprising the universe that —over many hundreds of billions of years of expansion and contraction—is annihilated then re-animated from nothingness, which starts the process all over again; thus, making Petersburg a work of illumination that reaches far beyond its 293 pages.

 

Bibliography

Bely, Andrei. Petersburg. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1978.

Dictionary.com | Free Online Dictionary for English Definitions. 1 Apr. 2011. <www.dictionary.com>.

Jung, C. G., and Marie-Luise Von Franz. Man and His Symbols. New York: Dell Pub., 1968.

Sagan, Carl. Cosmos. New York: Ballantine, 1985.

Tresidder, Jack. The Dictionary of Symbols. London: Watkins, 2008.

Zimmer, Heinrich Robert, and Joseph Campbell. Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization. [New York]: Pantheon, 1946.

A Darker Side of Science 

Though differing in mass and size, both Godzilla, Tokyo’s favorite colossal lizard, and the doubly-dentigerous xenomorphs in Alien are monsters cut from the same miscreant mold in many other respects. With that in mind, even though these twain terrorizers of the cinema screen were created from divergent cultures both share the common traits of science gone astray and technology run amok in their inceptions and subsequent storylines . These two ‘horriferous’ abominations also arose as reactionary anamneses in the aftermath of 20^th-century wars—in the case of Godzilla, WWII, and that of Alien, the Cold War. As a result, both films share a similar nightmarish vision concerning the meaning of ‘monster’, while the fears behind their inceptions are quite noticeably different. However, neither the otherworldly Alien humanoid/biomechanoid nor the subterranean Godzilla transmogrified by the atom is constrained by the restrained logic and lofty reasoning that the scientific method so heavily relies upon. If anything, both silver-screen classics point a disapproving finger towards science; that is, when science is out of a scientist’s hands.

The term ‘monster’ itself seems like a cinch to ascertain a definition. Who hasn’t been afraid at some point in their lives of what might lurk in the depths of the dark (for myself, it was the Sleestaks from The Land of the Lost and Bigfoot…but that’s the subject matter for an entirely separate paper). A quick Google search for the word ‘monster’ and its definition will result in myriad options. So, let’s take a look at a few. Merriam-webster.com defines the ‘monster’ as “an animal or plant of abnormal form or structure” and as “a threatening force.”  Dictionary.com defines ‘monster’ as “a legendary animal combining features of animal and human form or having the forms of various animals in combination” and “any animal or human grotesquely deviating from the normal shape, behavior, or character.”  With such descriptions in mind, it’s a no-brainer that Alien and Godzilla are infested with the monster scourge. Both beasts grotesquely deviate from acceptable, contemporary—albeit earth-bound—norms; furthermore, both monsters are a combination of human, animal, and myth.

In the case of Godzilla, the creature is partially-dinosaur and partially-dragon/sea serpent from Japanese myth and legend. In the audio commentary of the film’s DVD, Ed Godziszewski, publisher and editor of Japanese Giants magazine, notes that Godzilla was a combination of “a Tyrannosaurus, an Iguanodon, and…a Stegosaurus.” In the film, the element of sea monster from Japanese legend and lore is addressed when news reporter Hagewara questions the village elder of Odo Island—the location of Godzilla’s initial wrath. He explains to Hagewara that Godzilla is “the name of a monster that lives in the sea. It will come from the ocean to feed on humankind to survive.”  Steve Ryfle, author of Japan’s Favorite Mon-Star and commentator on the Godzilla DVD adds, “Many movies featured an island or an isolated place where the monsters began as a legend.” Ed Godziszewski also denotes, “The fact that Godzilla’s first appearance occurs during a fierce…further reinforces the idea that the monster is more than just an animal,”

In keeping with this element of myth, the phantasmagorical association of a fire-breathing dragon is evident in Godzilla even to those unfamiliar with the hirsute Japanese variety. Moreover, although the sub-aquatic monster’s hydrogen-bomb exhalations are scientifically explained in the film as a result from nuclear testing in the Pacific and the ensuing exposure to massive amounts of radiation, Godziszewski argues that the inhabitants of Odo island “are cut off from modern society and their customs and lifestyle are still rooted…when people believed in legends. This gives Godzilla a sense of the supernatural and even though we’ll get a scientific explanation for the creature’s appearance later on, it’s really only a theory.” He also adds that “we never really know if the monster [Godzilla] is a legendary beast or a nuclear mutant or both…the creature has a mythical dimension here.”

And what about the sleek specimen from the xenomorphic species found in Alien? Just because it’s extra-terrestrial in origin doesn’t mean it’s absolved of earthly ‘monster’ myths and meanings. The combination of human being and beast is apparent; however, what isn’t as clear is just which animal or animals comprise the beastly half. The anatomical construction of the extra-terrestrial in Alien leaves little room for refutation that there’s a humanoid element thrown into the mix—one head, two arms, an upright torso, bipedalism, opposable thumbs, and a pectoral girdle will do that—but the beast in ‘Star Beast’ (Alien’s original running title) is much harder to pinpoint. This general obfuscation is touched upon in the book Monster Theory where we find editor and contributing writer, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, verbalizing this confusion by stating that the monster in Alien defies “every natural law of evolution; by turns bivalve, crustacean, reptilian, and humanoid…It sheds its skin like a snake, its carapace like an arthropod. It deposits its young into other species like a wasp” (p.6). Perhaps, director Ridley Scott can shed some light on the subject.

Scott mentions in the audio-commentary accompanying the Alien DVD that he envisioned the downed alien spacecraft as “a biological or biomechanoid carrier of lethal eggs inside of which are the small creatures that, actually, fundamentally integrate—in a very aggressive way—into any society or any person.” The Alien director further elaborates that he was inspired by footage from an Oxford Scientific documentary: “They [Oxford Scientific] watched a slice of bark…and there’s a grub underneath the bark…across the top of the bark is crawling an insect [ichneumon wasp] which…feels the grub is there…It…produces a needle from…between its legs and drills through the bark and bull’s-eyes right into the grub and lays its seed…what comes out of the union between the grub and that particular insect, does that become a version of both? And that’s what we basically went along with.”

Ridley Scott expounds on this concept by explaining, “If you [the Alien] land on a human being, you’ll have a resemblance to a human being. If it's dropped on an ostrich, it would look like an ostrich.”  In other words, before the facehugger’s parasitoid impregnation of the host, the victim’s genetic makeup is somehow assimilated into the xenomorph’s composition; thereby, peripherally mimicking the host body. So, what can we gather from these two descriptions? Well, for starters, we can ascertain that the bestial half of the alien species in the film is a cryptic mixture of:

·         metamorphotic insectoid: egg→facehugger→chestburster/warrior/queen

·         mimetic parasitoid: facehugger→host/chestburster hybrid

·         cybernetic organism: biomechanoid

Scott’s use of the word ‘biomechanoid’  rather than ‘xenomorph’—as the species is referred to in sources outside of the film—suggests an even stronger reverence for Alien artist/designer H.R. Giger’s work; namely, his “Biomechanoid” series, which was released prior to his work on the film in the early 1970s. In his book, H.R. Giger ARh+, the artist remarks that his ‘biomechanoids’ works were “a harmonious fusion of technology, mechanics and creature” (p.48) Giger further elaborates that his artwork is laced with a grim message: “gene research will yet teach us fear. Cloning is already…a nightmare” (p.48). The allusions to the extra-terrestrial species in Alien possibly being a cybernetic organism with adaptive, assimilative abilities during its metamorphotic stages coupled with the beast’s unknown planet of origin, generates a level of fringe-scientific mystery comparable to Godzilla’s rather ambiguous origin (ie- Is he the result of nuclear testing, a mutated prehistoric dinosaur or some mythical sea-serpent worshipped by the inhabitants of Odo Island?).

Aside from shared contextual meanings and mysterious origins, the 50m-tall irradiated reptile and the biomechanoid life-form also have similar altercations with the ‘darker’ side of science. These scientific discoveries—and their sinister applications—aren’t in the hands of scientists but warmongers nations and their myopic governments.  It’s alluded to in Alien that the biomechanoid species is one that has not evolved on some distant planet over hundreds of millions, but, rather, one specifically created and/or modified as a weapon of war by some other extraterrestrial race. In the commentary, Ridley Scott remarks, “I think the space-jockey [the alien giant found by members of the Nostromo crew] is, actually, somehow the pilot and he’s part of a military operation, if that’s the word you want to apply to his world and, therefore, this is probably some kind of carrier. A weapon carrier.”

Likewise, on the audio commentary of the Godzilla DVD, Ed Godziszewski notes that “Godzilla is a stand-in for the [atomic] bomb,” while Steve Ryfle remarks, “When he [Godzilla director, Ishiro Honda] returned to Japan after the war [WWII], he and his fellow soldiers travelled through the decimated city of Hiroshima and…This experience haunted Honda and he often claimed it had a major influence on the way he directed Godzilla. To Honda, Godzilla was not so much a metaphor for the bomb, but actually a physical manifestation of it.” Thus, Godzilla’s duality as innocent, prehistoric denizen of the deep caught in the crossfire of hairless apes and as harbinger of holocaustic retribution upon the civilization that dared a dalliance with the atom. Thus, Honda has deftly entwined social commentary with cautionary tale.

Honda’s fortified belief that the exploitation of science by personages bent on utilizing its applicative potential not as a tool to build but as a weapon to destroy is echoed in Godzilla’s other empirical tinderbox: that of the Oxygen Destroyer. Dr. Serizawa, the scientist responsible for its invention, describes the Oxygen Destroyer as “a device that splits oxygen atoms into fluids,” and further explains, “I came across an unknown form of energy…I discovered a powerful force that scared me beyond words…Used as a weapon, this would be as powerful as a nuclear bomb. It could totally destroy humankind!” In the commentary, Steve Ryfle notes that “Serizawa has been compared to J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who spearheaded the Manhattan Project…many of the physicists whose research led to the atom bomb actually started out searching for ways to apply Einstein’s theories to develop new sources of energy and eventually it was discovered that this energy could be used as a powerful weapon.”  However, Ryfle further states that, while there are many similarities between Serizawa and Oppenheimer, there are also differences. Unlike the physicist behind the Manhattan Project, Serizawa viewed the Oxygen Destroyer as a scientific aberration and, because of this, has elected to keep it a secret from the rest of the world rather than pursuing any further experiments into its destructive capabilities.

Ryfle also indicates that Ishiro Honda, “placed more faith in men of science than the government of the military” and that, via the character of Serizawa, the Godzilla director was urgently “pleading with the scientific community to stop this madness of the Arms Race, and if you [the scientific community] do inadvertently invent another doomsday weapon, it’s your obligation to never reveal it.” Ultimately, Serizawa is persuaded into revealing his mysterious device to the world in order to eradicate the irradiated thunder-lizard, but only after he sets fire to his life’s work—the documents and paperwork containing the Oxygen Destroyer’s cryptic equations and schematic designs: “This will be the first and last time that I will ever allow the Oxygen Destroyer to be used,”

Unfortunately, the scientist in Alien isn’t as honorable or conscientious as Dr. Serizawa is, but he does keep his secrets. As the film progresses, we learn that Ash—resident science-officer of the commercial towing spacecraft the ‘Nostromo’—has a secret: he isn’t human but an android…an android programmed to follow through with the ‘Special Order 937’. The Nostromo’s owners and the crew’s employers, The Weyland-Yutani Corporation, has planted Ash amongst the towing starship’s crew, rerouted the Nostromo to rendezvous with the downed spacecraft housing the alien eggs on planetoid LV-426, and ordered the android to: “Investigate life form. Gather specimen. Priority one. Insure return of organism for analysis. All other considerations secondary. Crew expendable.”

Throughout Ash’s scenes in the film he is performing duties and task befitting a scientist; however, the android has his orders…even if it means lying to the crew members about the results of his empirical experiments, withholding any accurate information that he has gathered, and treating his fellow crewman as test subjects when he deems it necessary. After Ash’s hidden agenda has been exposed and his secret revealed, a confrontational scene between the android and the remaining crew members occurs. Ridley Scott signifies, “This is a great turnabout in the story because really just when you think your main—and only—aggressor is this thing loose on the ship, you now got a much bigger problem. You’ve got two aggressors which raises the paranoia and that of the audience twofold.” With that in mind, unlike Dr. Serizawa in Godzilla who has chosen to suppress his scientific discoveries and volatile device for the betterment of humankind, Ash in Alien is programmed to execute atrocities in the name of science; thus, making Alien have not one but two monsters.

After viewing both Godzilla and Alien, it becomes obvious that both of these science-fiction cinema classics are really nothing more than modern ghost-tales told ‘round the fire. So, what can we ascertain from watching Godzilla and Alien? For starters, both films portray the ‘monstrous’ repercussions of science when it’s used for military gains, to ensure political power, and/or to quench corporate greed. Furthermore, the use of science—or, more often than not, pseudo-science—as an instrument to demystify and rationalize the phantasmagorical element in contemporary cinema isn’t restricted to just Hollywood. It can also be surmised that monsters in science-fiction are re-appropriations of timeless myths and/or religious iconography that are identifiable beyond invisible borders. Perhaps, the language barrier and unfamiliar customs might be perplexing to the viewer at times, but what isn’t is the visual and visceral malevolence these Mephistophelean composites embody as they gnash and snarl and claw across theater screens.

 In his book, The Savage Mind, anthropologist and ethnologist, Claude Levi-Strauss wrote that “instead of contrasting magic and science, [it is better] to compare them as two parallel modes of acquiring knowledge…Both science and magic…require the same sort of mental operations and they differ not so much in kind as in the different types of phenomena to which they are applied” (p.13). In relation to Godzilla and Alien, it could easily be argued that both the irradiated dinosaur with atomic halitosis and the xenomorph with an infinite set of fangs and barbed prehensile tail are spoken in scientific terminology, but they could just as easily be referred to as a wingless fire-breathing dragon and a pointy-tailed “black devil”—as Jeffrey Cohen refers to the xenomoprh terrorizing the Nostromo. This might help explain why both of these filmic fiends evoke fear in their viewers; thus making it that much effortless to suspend one’s disbelief. Both monsters symbolize and are synonymous with terror and danger in any language, to any culture, in any time, and in any size.

Bibliography

Alien. Dir. Ridley Scott. Perf. Sigourney Weaver, Ian Holm. 20th Century Fox, 1979. DVD.

Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. Monster Theory: Reading Culture. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, 1996. Print.

Dictionary and Thesaurus - Merriam-Webster Online. Web. 27 Mar. 2011. <http://www.merriam-webster.com/>.

Dictionary.com | Free Online Dictionary for English Definitions. Web. 27 Mar. 2011. <http://dictionary.reference.com/>.

Giger, H. R. HR Giger ARh +. Zurich: Taschen, 1992. Print.

Gojira. Dir. Ishiro Honda. Toho Co. Ltd., 1954. DVD.

Levi-Strauss, Claude. The Savage Mind. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996. Print.