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WATCH ALONG | CLASSIC DOCTOR WHO | 7x25 | Inferno: Part 7 (Patreon)

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2023-09-28 09:03:30
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A Few Notes:

Please no spoilers beyond this episode unless you see that later episodes have already been released. In that case, no spoilers beyond those episodes.

This reaction is in a watch-along format. This means you'll need your own copy of the episode to watch alongside my reaction. This is in an effort to avoid copyright infringement.

If you're based in the UK (or using a UK streaming site), here are instructions for how to get your copy to sync with mine.

The show footage will play for the first 30 seconds with both video and audio. After that, the show footage will be silenced, and the video will be blurred for the remainder of the episode. There is also a count-up timer that begins once the episode has started. These things will hopefully make it easier for you to keep your copy of the episode synced with mine.

This episode was viewed on BritBox via Amazon Prime.

If you want to know what’s coming up, check out the schedule here.

*****

*Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use. NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT INTENDED. All rights belong to their respective owners.

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Comments

Azmat Mahmood

There's also something to be said for when writers keep the origins of certain monsters open ended and (relatively) unexplained. Not knowing what they truly are and where they come from only makes them more mysterious and increases their fear factor. It’s playing into the fear of the unknown. The Midnight Entity and the Flood (from 'The Waters of Mars') are two such creatures from modern Who. The lack of any real explanation of what they are and where they come from is widely recognised as one of their biggest strengths because it emphasises the wider scope of the universe and that there are things beyond anyone's comprehension. Even the Doctor’s. And the rare occasions when that happens are scary because you expect the Doctor to know the answers. Besides, sometimes an explanation is unsatisfactory because it doesn’t meet the viewers expectations, or it doesn’t live up to the potential the idea had for one reason or another. The writer just ends up undermining the concept they were going for instead of enhancing it. This is why it's better sometimes for things to be left open ended and allow the viewer to put the pieces of the puzzle together instead, allow them to use their imagination. Don Houghton doesn’t fully explain the goo, (a decision I feel he made very deliberately and it makes the story better, I'll get back to why later), but I do still think there’s more than enough in the story for the viewer to put the pieces of the puzzle together themselves. We know that the goo converts humans and turns them back into animals. This is why the converted humans are called ‘Primords’ (they're never called that in the story, but it's in the credits). The goo takes humans back to a primordial state. The way we were when the Earth was a lot hotter and rather like what we saw the parallel Earth was turned into at the end of episode 6. The Doctor called it a “retroregression of the body cells”, supporting the theory that the goo is simply taking humans back in time, in a manner of speaking. All of that ties into the Primords radiating heat and in fact feeding on it to stay alive, which is why in one of the early episodes, one of the technicians that had been converted, increased the power to make the drilling go faster. The Primords want the drilling to go ahead because they know it will create the perfect environment for them to thrive in upon completion. All of this is caused by a goo/bacteria buried deep within the Earth’s crust, which heavily implies that there’s something in the Earth itself that wants to destroy us all. I think the Primords are simply the destructive forces beneath the Earth - lava+heat in this specific case - personified. The lack of any real explanations also positions everything to do with the goo and the Primords as a natural phenomenon and not some evil plan any alien has set for humans. This is supported by the story itself because of the moment the Doctor mentions hearing the sounds the Primords make during the volcanic eruption of Krakatoa. This is an effective way to ominously foreshadow that the Inferno project could be heading towards a similarly destructive path, but it’s also a clever way to imply that the goo and the Primords happen any time there’s a natural disaster that generates a tremendous amount of heat.

Azmat Mahmood

All of this is good enough on its own, but the reason why it works as well as it does is because the story actually gives reasons for why we can’t get an explanation. We're told that the goo is too hot for anyone to analyse, and the Doctor speculates that it'll never cool down. I like that the origins of the goo are at least addressed a little bit by the characters in the story because it would be weird if it weren't, but it's not something the writers particularly focused on and it's all the better for it imo because (getting back to the point I was making earlier) the lack of an explanation keeps the focus on the true moral of the story. Tying into the idea that the Primords are the destructive forces beneath the Earth personified, I also see the goo converting humans back into rabid animals as nature's way of putting us back in our place. To remind us that despite all our technological advancement, we're all still just rabid animals underneath and that we're getting too big for our boots. All of the doom and destruction caused by the drilling in this story is a warning for humans to not tamper with things we know nothing about and that our greed for progress can lead to our annihilation if we’re not careful. You see, this story isn’t really about scary monsters or anything like that, it’s about showcasing the worst of humanity and what we’re capable of doing to ourselves and what we can turn into if the situation is bad enough. Don Houghton achieves this through characters like Stahlman, who represents humanity's greed for power and glory. The Primords who are the representation of our base, animalistic instincts and what could happen if we let people like Stahlman rule the world. Then there’s also all the characters from the parallel Earth (but primarily the Brigade leader) and what ends up happening to them, which shows that fascism is inherently self-destructive and the importance of free will and authority being questioned rather than followed with blind devotion. This is then brilliantly contrasted with our Earth being saved, which shows that despite all the problems and flaws the Doctor has encountered in the previous stories of the season, there is still a glimmer of hope because the people of our Earth aren’t as close minded as those from the parallel Earth and will listen to reason more readily. The drilling plot, the base under siege plot and the parallel Earth plot are all just frameworks through which Don Houghton explores human nature and our morality. If the story had laid out exactly what the goo and Primords were, the focus would’ve shifted on to them and none of this would be possible. It's more productive to focus on the situation at hand and what those things intend to do and how that affects the characters within the story rather than give arbitrary exposition that adds nothing substantive to the story. It’s better to focus on the conflict and danger this situation has put everyone in and how the characters will react and resolve everything. This is why it’s so beneficial for stories to sometimes not fully explain everything and leave it open for interpretation. The story isn’t constricted by what’s written down on paper, it’s allowed to grow and become more in the viewer’s mind. It’s a great show of restraint and respecting the viewer's intelligence from Don Houghton. Not explaining something isn’t always inherently bad. In fact, sometimes it’s better. Looking at all of this purely from a story mechanics POV, all this is clearly meant to be an example of lovecraftian horror. That type of horror is built upon the principle of creatures being unknowable and incomprehensible. It emphasises the fear of the unknown because oftentimes what we don’t know or understand is scarier than the things we do. This works especially well in a show like Doctor Who. Usually we expect the Doctor to have all the answers, so when even he doesn’t really understand what he’s up against, that amplifies the threat/fear factor of a creature even more. The reason why exposition in Chibnall’s era is criticised so heavily by so many people is because all of the over-explaining feels clunky and it doesn’t allow the story to breathe. The stories have nowhere to go because he’s boxed them in so tight. ‘Inferno’ is the antithesis of that approach. It’s amazing what Don Houghton is able to achieve within the framework of a typical base under siege story, while introducing the concept of a multiverse to Doctor Who at the same time. ‘Inferno’ is an absolute classic imo, the Pertwee era peaks early with this one.