I
recently rewatched this Bletchley Park mystery drama and was reminded how much
I enjoy these two. It’s not a perfect
movie – since The Bletchley Circle
doesn’t take place until after the
war and The Imitation Game takes some
glaring dramatic licenses, I’ve yet to find a Bletchley Park story that’s
everything I want it to be – but Hester and Tom get pretty close. Here’s to my favorite code-breaker OTP!
During
the Second World War, both Tom and Hester devote their energies to their work
at Bletchley. Of course, while Tom is in
the inner circle, tackling the Germans’ Enigma code and operating his “thinking
machine” (at times, Tom seems like a fictionalized excuse to have a straight
Alan Turing,) Hester is a “glorified file clerk” who puts up with sexual harassment
between cataloguing intercepts.
Essentially, he has a seat at the table and she doesn’t. However, their investment in the same mystery
is what pulls their stories together.
The
main story kicks off with the revelation that Claire, Hester’s roommate and Tom’s
ex-girlfriend, is missing. Tom is so
hung up on Claire that he’s only recently returned to Bletchley after a
post-breakup nervous breakdown, and even though Hester isn’t terribly impressed
with Claire’s character, they were close somewhat in spite of themselves, and
she’s concerned for her friend’s safety.
When Tom finds proof that Claire removed enciphered intercepts from
Bletchley and hid them, he realizes that there may be foul play in her
disappearance, and Hester, sharing his suspicions, joins him in a mission to
get to the bottom of it.
I love
a good old-fashioned sleuthing team, and if you throw in a little
cryptanalysis? I’m so there. Hester and Tom are unstoppable together,
taking ever-increasing risks in their search for the truth and pulling out some
fantastic intellectual work. Even though
their alliance begins chiefly because Hester happens to walk in on Tom’s
discovery of the hidden intercepts and later because she’s positioned to have
access to information Tom needs, they quickly become equal partners in the
enterprise, both giving their all to find out what Claire knew and why she
disappeared. Both of them work better this
way, bouncing ideas off each other and benefiting from each other’s strengths
in a sort of analytical tag-team.
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