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shadowkat The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street is a classic episode of the Twilight Zone that aired in the early 1960s. It is about what happens when a bunch of citizens hear that human looking aliens have invaded their neighborhood and paranoia strikes. They start pointing fingers at each other, believing anyone who is different must be one of them, the others. Until the others literally have no voice.
This is a common trope in horror, Stephen King did it in The Langoliers, The Mist, and in Storm of the Century, where the people themselves become far more frightening than any demon in their wake. And it is a common theme in social psychology - the group or tribe mentality. And it has not just happened in sci-fi, the Zimbarda Prison Experiment showed what happened when people are placed in certain roles. War World II demonstrated what happens when we start demonizing others - both in the US and abroad. Italians, Germans, and Japanese-Americans were placed in internment camps in the US during WWII, believed to be the enemy. And during the 1950's, McCarthy imprisoned numerous Americans for potentially being Communist traitors. Today, the US detaines and tortures people who it suspects of being terrorists, many of whom are not. I know, one of my co-workers husbands at the video developer company in which I worked last year, had her husband detained, with threat of deportation, and torture, because he was Arabic, from Egypt. He was told he would be set free if he agreed to join the US and go to Afghanistan or Iraq, and act as an interpreter. If he refused, he'd be cast out and deported back to Egypt, even though his American wife resided here, in New York.
Often science fiction will find a way of presenting real nightmares in a story format, as a means of understanding the moral complexities of what we've done. Battle Star Galatica, the most recent version, has devoted an entire series to exploring the themes discussed above.
Midnight - the most recent Doctor Who episode shown in the US (not shown in UK or downloaded online), directed and written by Russell T. Davies, concentrates on this issue. It's not quite as innovative or layered as Steven Moffat's episode, but it is a memorable one.
Midnight is a leisure world with beautiful diamond and sapphire surface - the stone turned into gems by a toxic sun that vaporizes all life that comes in contact with it. The Doctor and Donna go there for a vacation, Donna to sunbath, the Doctor to see the sights. Donna tells him to be careful. He states, 'what can happen on a leisure cruise with a bunch of strangers.' The environment of Midnight, the name itself, serve as metaphors. The Doctor is going through Witch Canyon to see a beautiful waterfall of sapphires. Cold gems, created by a hot vaporizing sun. The sun shines light on all, but solidifies it, turns it to stone or vapor. There is no life. There is no air in this environment. It is paralyzed. Made of hard stone. Voiceless. And Midnight is the witching hour, when thought is the stuff of dreams, and people act crazy.
When the Doctor's tour begins, the hostess tells the passengers to sit back and enjoy the provided entertainment, which consists of MTV videos, cartoons, and a weird light show, all going at the same time. The Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to short-circuit the system, much to relief and chagrin of all aboard. What do we do now? - they ask in chorus. "We talk to each other," the Doctor states to a bunch of disgruntled glares. And he proceeds to talk to each and everyone of them, individually, one on one, and together.
They are having a grand time, until the ship stops and breaks down. Then an alien invades it, unseen. It appears to have invaded one of the women aboard, who just happens to be an insecure and somewhat isolated gay older woman. The Doctor attempts to talk to her, but she repeats everything he says, everything everyone on board says. The passengers begin to panic jumping to conclusions right and left, not listening to the Doctor. Why should we trust you? they state. OR believe you? What is your name? Who are you? He becomes the unknown entity. And the more he tries to reason with them, they more they ignore what he is saying. I've had this experience myself, recently. With a friend, who kept insisting that my reasoning, my attitude, my values were because I was raised "Catholic". Her reasoning was that because my views reminded her of five other friends of hers, all of which she'd argued with and struggled with, and all who just happened to be "Catholic", that this was the reason I thought the way I did. The more I attempted to reason with her, the more she insisted I was wrong - that I was thinking this way because I was Catholic. The argument that inspired this view - was when I told her that killing someone else to protect your family and friends was morally wrong. Or rather neither right or wrong, so much as in that gray area. To kill, to destroy someone who is threatening you - is a selfish act of preservation. She said that I was wrong, she was correct to want to kill someone holding a gun to my head. Wouldn't I want that? Sure, I responded. But killing that person is still wrong. What makes one life better than another? It's complicated. She told me that this reasoning was because I was raised Catholic. (She was raised Protestant).
In Midnight, the Doctor states that the crew should not cast out the woman repeating everything they say, who could infect them as well. Who could steal his voice and that he said would be very bad. But they shouldn't kill her. What if she was a life form seeking to communicate, seeking a way to survive? What if she/it was looking to them to determine what to do next? No, the passengers and hostess insisted we must cast her out. Kill her. To save ourselves. There's something wrong with you that you don't think this way. Who are you? You are obviously not one of us. Because you disagree. No, no, The Doctor insists, I'm just Clever! What's that mean, the others respond, that you think we are stupid?? This is when the woman, Skylar, who has become posessed, begins to just echo everything the Doctor says. Jeffrey, the teenage son of the family on board, states - "wait, she's stopped, she's not echoing anyone but the Doctor." And they begin to back away from him.
Desperate the Doctor goes to the woman, sits with her. Tells her that he can help her/it find a way to live without stealing a life. Without stealing a voice. Without hurting the woman it is currently in. Do we have a deal? At that moment, the voices change, the woman, Sky, is ahead of the Doctor, she has stolen his voice. He now echoes everything she says. He has become paralyzed. Unable to even turn around or move. He feels everything she says - "I was paralyzed, I could not speak except what you said, I was cold, and could not breath...but now I'm free and it is inside him." Everyone but two of the passengers begin to believe that she is right. That the Doctor is now the other, the alien, the thing that must be cast out. Isn't it obvious? He's not one of them. He doesn't think like they do. The Professor's assistant, tries to argue, stating that it's probably still in the woman, it has only evolved, moved to the next stage. But the passengers ignore her - when Skylar states that this is the Doctor talking, the Doctor in their heads, telling them what to do. That they must cast him out. Are they strong enough, man enough to do so?
In the Rod Serling scripted episode The Monsters ARe Due on Maple Street, much the same thing happens, the mob turns on those who are outside it, who are other. They lose their voice, they are not heard.
In Midnight, the lead character, the Doctor, always clever, always in control, finds himself in this same position, an alien, cast out, treated as the other, he has no voice, no ability to move. The man who made friends with everyone on board, who felt he'd connected to them, is now being treated as their enemy. His voice stolen from him by the crowd who now speaks over and at him. Who refuses to listen to him. Dragging him, paralyzed, and against his will to the sunlight grave beyond. He is saved by an unexpected source, the one he fought to begin with, the hostess, who had told the others to cast the woman out at the beginning and he'd told her not to. It's ironic that it she who casts Skylar out the opposite airlock, dooming herself as well. Freeing the Doctor once both are gone. Proving the passengers attempting to kill the Doctor were wrong. What motivates the hostess, is when Skylar literally starts speaking with the Doctor's voice, stating what he would say - "Montebello, and Allonzey" both of which he'd said to the hostess when he sat down on the plane. Words that Sklyar would not have said.
The other passengers, the wise professor, and the family, find themselves cast in the villian roles, curled in pain, grief-stricken, embarrassed and shaken by the realization of what they'd almost done, seeking refuge in denial and justification.
It's a frightening episode because it holds a mirror up to what we do on a daily basis in our own lives. Which is not a comforting place for any of us. We live in a world that permits water boarding as torture. That justifies killing to protect our tribe, our family, our friends, and our own survival. We would destroy our coastline in order to obtain enough oil to heat our houses or run our cars. We would drill into the Alaska wilderness, upsetting the delicate natural balance to do the same, then we turn around and whine when a hurricane wipes away our houses or a wildfire burns them down. We band together against the outcast, those who are different and we have always done this, since the beginning. In a hundred years, we have not changed. We still make the same mistakes.
And the Doctor in this episode is frightened and pained by this, much the same way he is pained by the realization in the Season 3 finale that future mankind could turn themselves into a bunch of sadistic killing machines, whose sole purpose is to kill others.
Donna asks him if he'll tell the authorities on Midnight, so that they can guard against this presence attacking again. He nods and says, yes, so they can construct another leisure palace on another rotating world. When she repeats something he says, comically, a simple phrase, Montebello, he says, sternly, "don't, don't, please, don't do that."
He's been the other now. He's lost his voice. And he's discovered how humanity can turn against anyone to perserve itself, without reason or logic.
This is by no means a new theme, as I've already stated above. But have you ever asked yourself why we keep repeating it in our stories? Why this theme keeps appearing in everything from Buffy to BattleStar Galatica to Doctor Who to Supernatural to Grey's Anatomy to Desperate Housewives? Why? Perhaps because we are trying to learn, trying to evolve past the animalist and selfish desire to perserve ourselves and our lifestyle regardless of the costs? To realize that maybe our way of thinking, the generalizations we base our choices upon, are wrong and must be questioned. That we can learn, we can evolve. And not continue to make the same mistakes over and over again.
What was the hostess's name, the Doctor asks. No one knows. Any more than anyone knows the Doctors, anyone but River Song. What is in a name after all? Except a link to our family, a distinguishing marker. An identity tag. Even if others have the same. John Smith he tells them, and they don't believe him, obviously a fake. A name that too many others have. What was the hostess's name? We don't know, she was just the hostess. Heck thinking back, I can't remember any of the passenger's names but Skylars. By not naming them, they too become the other. Easy to dismiss. Easy to forget. Nothing but a couple of monsters arriving on maple street. Or in this case, people stuck in a cruiser, trying to survive.
[As an aside, yes, I noticed Rose's plea to the Doctor on the scratchy tv. She has been appearing off and on all season long. Almost as if she is out-of-phase between realities, a ghost attempting to break in. In this episode, her attempt to communicate, but lack of a voice - is yet another metaphor for the loss of voice and language. The inability to be heard above the mob. To be seen. The idea of being silenced, voiceless. Disconnected.]
This is a common trope in horror, Stephen King did it in The Langoliers, The Mist, and in Storm of the Century, where the people themselves become far more frightening than any demon in their wake. And it is a common theme in social psychology - the group or tribe mentality. And it has not just happened in sci-fi, the Zimbarda Prison Experiment showed what happened when people are placed in certain roles. War World II demonstrated what happens when we start demonizing others - both in the US and abroad. Italians, Germans, and Japanese-Americans were placed in internment camps in the US during WWII, believed to be the enemy. And during the 1950's, McCarthy imprisoned numerous Americans for potentially being Communist traitors. Today, the US detaines and tortures people who it suspects of being terrorists, many of whom are not. I know, one of my co-workers husbands at the video developer company in which I worked last year, had her husband detained, with threat of deportation, and torture, because he was Arabic, from Egypt. He was told he would be set free if he agreed to join the US and go to Afghanistan or Iraq, and act as an interpreter. If he refused, he'd be cast out and deported back to Egypt, even though his American wife resided here, in New York.
Often science fiction will find a way of presenting real nightmares in a story format, as a means of understanding the moral complexities of what we've done. Battle Star Galatica, the most recent version, has devoted an entire series to exploring the themes discussed above.
Midnight - the most recent Doctor Who episode shown in the US (not shown in UK or downloaded online), directed and written by Russell T. Davies, concentrates on this issue. It's not quite as innovative or layered as Steven Moffat's episode, but it is a memorable one.
Midnight is a leisure world with beautiful diamond and sapphire surface - the stone turned into gems by a toxic sun that vaporizes all life that comes in contact with it. The Doctor and Donna go there for a vacation, Donna to sunbath, the Doctor to see the sights. Donna tells him to be careful. He states, 'what can happen on a leisure cruise with a bunch of strangers.' The environment of Midnight, the name itself, serve as metaphors. The Doctor is going through Witch Canyon to see a beautiful waterfall of sapphires. Cold gems, created by a hot vaporizing sun. The sun shines light on all, but solidifies it, turns it to stone or vapor. There is no life. There is no air in this environment. It is paralyzed. Made of hard stone. Voiceless. And Midnight is the witching hour, when thought is the stuff of dreams, and people act crazy.
When the Doctor's tour begins, the hostess tells the passengers to sit back and enjoy the provided entertainment, which consists of MTV videos, cartoons, and a weird light show, all going at the same time. The Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to short-circuit the system, much to relief and chagrin of all aboard. What do we do now? - they ask in chorus. "We talk to each other," the Doctor states to a bunch of disgruntled glares. And he proceeds to talk to each and everyone of them, individually, one on one, and together.
They are having a grand time, until the ship stops and breaks down. Then an alien invades it, unseen. It appears to have invaded one of the women aboard, who just happens to be an insecure and somewhat isolated gay older woman. The Doctor attempts to talk to her, but she repeats everything he says, everything everyone on board says. The passengers begin to panic jumping to conclusions right and left, not listening to the Doctor. Why should we trust you? they state. OR believe you? What is your name? Who are you? He becomes the unknown entity. And the more he tries to reason with them, they more they ignore what he is saying. I've had this experience myself, recently. With a friend, who kept insisting that my reasoning, my attitude, my values were because I was raised "Catholic". Her reasoning was that because my views reminded her of five other friends of hers, all of which she'd argued with and struggled with, and all who just happened to be "Catholic", that this was the reason I thought the way I did. The more I attempted to reason with her, the more she insisted I was wrong - that I was thinking this way because I was Catholic. The argument that inspired this view - was when I told her that killing someone else to protect your family and friends was morally wrong. Or rather neither right or wrong, so much as in that gray area. To kill, to destroy someone who is threatening you - is a selfish act of preservation. She said that I was wrong, she was correct to want to kill someone holding a gun to my head. Wouldn't I want that? Sure, I responded. But killing that person is still wrong. What makes one life better than another? It's complicated. She told me that this reasoning was because I was raised Catholic. (She was raised Protestant).
In Midnight, the Doctor states that the crew should not cast out the woman repeating everything they say, who could infect them as well. Who could steal his voice and that he said would be very bad. But they shouldn't kill her. What if she was a life form seeking to communicate, seeking a way to survive? What if she/it was looking to them to determine what to do next? No, the passengers and hostess insisted we must cast her out. Kill her. To save ourselves. There's something wrong with you that you don't think this way. Who are you? You are obviously not one of us. Because you disagree. No, no, The Doctor insists, I'm just Clever! What's that mean, the others respond, that you think we are stupid?? This is when the woman, Skylar, who has become posessed, begins to just echo everything the Doctor says. Jeffrey, the teenage son of the family on board, states - "wait, she's stopped, she's not echoing anyone but the Doctor." And they begin to back away from him.
Desperate the Doctor goes to the woman, sits with her. Tells her that he can help her/it find a way to live without stealing a life. Without stealing a voice. Without hurting the woman it is currently in. Do we have a deal? At that moment, the voices change, the woman, Sky, is ahead of the Doctor, she has stolen his voice. He now echoes everything she says. He has become paralyzed. Unable to even turn around or move. He feels everything she says - "I was paralyzed, I could not speak except what you said, I was cold, and could not breath...but now I'm free and it is inside him." Everyone but two of the passengers begin to believe that she is right. That the Doctor is now the other, the alien, the thing that must be cast out. Isn't it obvious? He's not one of them. He doesn't think like they do. The Professor's assistant, tries to argue, stating that it's probably still in the woman, it has only evolved, moved to the next stage. But the passengers ignore her - when Skylar states that this is the Doctor talking, the Doctor in their heads, telling them what to do. That they must cast him out. Are they strong enough, man enough to do so?
In the Rod Serling scripted episode The Monsters ARe Due on Maple Street, much the same thing happens, the mob turns on those who are outside it, who are other. They lose their voice, they are not heard.
In Midnight, the lead character, the Doctor, always clever, always in control, finds himself in this same position, an alien, cast out, treated as the other, he has no voice, no ability to move. The man who made friends with everyone on board, who felt he'd connected to them, is now being treated as their enemy. His voice stolen from him by the crowd who now speaks over and at him. Who refuses to listen to him. Dragging him, paralyzed, and against his will to the sunlight grave beyond. He is saved by an unexpected source, the one he fought to begin with, the hostess, who had told the others to cast the woman out at the beginning and he'd told her not to. It's ironic that it she who casts Skylar out the opposite airlock, dooming herself as well. Freeing the Doctor once both are gone. Proving the passengers attempting to kill the Doctor were wrong. What motivates the hostess, is when Skylar literally starts speaking with the Doctor's voice, stating what he would say - "Montebello, and Allonzey" both of which he'd said to the hostess when he sat down on the plane. Words that Sklyar would not have said.
The other passengers, the wise professor, and the family, find themselves cast in the villian roles, curled in pain, grief-stricken, embarrassed and shaken by the realization of what they'd almost done, seeking refuge in denial and justification.
It's a frightening episode because it holds a mirror up to what we do on a daily basis in our own lives. Which is not a comforting place for any of us. We live in a world that permits water boarding as torture. That justifies killing to protect our tribe, our family, our friends, and our own survival. We would destroy our coastline in order to obtain enough oil to heat our houses or run our cars. We would drill into the Alaska wilderness, upsetting the delicate natural balance to do the same, then we turn around and whine when a hurricane wipes away our houses or a wildfire burns them down. We band together against the outcast, those who are different and we have always done this, since the beginning. In a hundred years, we have not changed. We still make the same mistakes.
And the Doctor in this episode is frightened and pained by this, much the same way he is pained by the realization in the Season 3 finale that future mankind could turn themselves into a bunch of sadistic killing machines, whose sole purpose is to kill others.
Donna asks him if he'll tell the authorities on Midnight, so that they can guard against this presence attacking again. He nods and says, yes, so they can construct another leisure palace on another rotating world. When she repeats something he says, comically, a simple phrase, Montebello, he says, sternly, "don't, don't, please, don't do that."
He's been the other now. He's lost his voice. And he's discovered how humanity can turn against anyone to perserve itself, without reason or logic.
This is by no means a new theme, as I've already stated above. But have you ever asked yourself why we keep repeating it in our stories? Why this theme keeps appearing in everything from Buffy to BattleStar Galatica to Doctor Who to Supernatural to Grey's Anatomy to Desperate Housewives? Why? Perhaps because we are trying to learn, trying to evolve past the animalist and selfish desire to perserve ourselves and our lifestyle regardless of the costs? To realize that maybe our way of thinking, the generalizations we base our choices upon, are wrong and must be questioned. That we can learn, we can evolve. And not continue to make the same mistakes over and over again.
What was the hostess's name, the Doctor asks. No one knows. Any more than anyone knows the Doctors, anyone but River Song. What is in a name after all? Except a link to our family, a distinguishing marker. An identity tag. Even if others have the same. John Smith he tells them, and they don't believe him, obviously a fake. A name that too many others have. What was the hostess's name? We don't know, she was just the hostess. Heck thinking back, I can't remember any of the passenger's names but Skylars. By not naming them, they too become the other. Easy to dismiss. Easy to forget. Nothing but a couple of monsters arriving on maple street. Or in this case, people stuck in a cruiser, trying to survive.
[As an aside, yes, I noticed Rose's plea to the Doctor on the scratchy tv. She has been appearing off and on all season long. Almost as if she is out-of-phase between realities, a ghost attempting to break in. In this episode, her attempt to communicate, but lack of a voice - is yet another metaphor for the loss of voice and language. The inability to be heard above the mob. To be seen. The idea of being silenced, voiceless. Disconnected.]
