Character Highlight: Vislor Turlough (Doctor Who)

I debated over what sort of write-up to do for Turlough.  I do enjoy him, shifty little sneak that he is, but in the end, I couldn’t quite put him in Favorite Characters territory, so a Character Highlight it is.  Turlough allowed classic Who to cover some new companion ground, which, 20 years into the series, was appreciated (a few Turlough-related spoilers.)

Turlough stands out from the “typical companion” in quite a few ways, even considering the wider variety of companions we see in the classic series compared to new Who.  He’s both a male and an alien – not unknown in classic Who, of course, but there are a lot more who are female and/or human.  More interestingly, he’s an alien who’s been stranded on Earth in the 1980s, stuck at a preppy boys’ school and desperate to get off this rock.  The full story of who he is, where he came from, and why, isn’t explored until the tail end of his time on the show, but from the start, it’s clear he doesn’t belong.  (In a weird way, he’s a tiny bit like the First Doctor back when he and Susan were living in London, only Turlough doesn’t have the safety net of a ship he can use to leave.  He’s stuck, and that makes him edgy.)

This unique position as an alien stranded on Earth leads to the other point that sets him apart as a prospective companion:  the only reason he gets in with team TARDIS in the first place is to kill the Doctor.  I mean, not just for the sake of killing him – Turlough is under orders from the Black Guardian, with the promise that the Black Guardian will fulfill Turlough’s desire to leave Earth if he does as he’s told.  Still, regardless of his reasons, Turlough talks his way onto the TARDIS with the (increasingly-reluctant) intention of committing murder.  That’s a level of moral corruption we just don’t see on board the TARDIS, along with the self-serving drive that fuels it.  When Turlough enters the Doctor, Tegan, and Nyssa’s lives, he’s entirely focused on what he sees as his own untenable situation and prepares to do something unconscionable in order to change that.

Of course, Turlough doesn’t kill the Doctor.  In part, he can’t work up the nerve to do the deed, but also, the more time he spends with our heroes, the more he realizes 1) the Doctor doesn’t deserve this, 2) the way the Doctor does things is better, and 3) Turlough doesn’t have to become this.  He actually takes a bit of time to reckon with the act he comes close to committing and begins taking small steps to change himself.

But when I say small steps, I mean small.  Turlough’s automatic tendency is still toward the self-serving, and being noble or heroic doesn’t really come naturally to him.  When the shit hits the fan, his first reaction is usually to look out for himself, but then his second reaction, more and more, is to remind himself to act a little more like a companion.  At times, this can be a tactical advantage for the crew – if Turlough goes all “every man for himself” and books it when the bad guys show up to capture everyone, that means he’s free to eventually come back around and try to rescue them from the outside.

Slowly, by fits and starts, with a lot of backsliding, Turlough attempts to be better.  When he first appeared on the show, it was a new sort of story for Who to be telling, and I really don’t think they’ve quite done another like it since.

News Satire Roundup: March 25th-March 28th

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Us (2019, R)

I’ve been waiting for Us since it was just “Jordan Peele’s next movie, starring Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke,” and the closer its release got, the more psyched I became.  The first trailer was so good that I spent the next couple days nervously closing my curtains.  When it came out last week, I contemplated going opening night but, considering said reaction to the trailer, I decided I’d be better off waiting until I could see it in daylight, so I caught it that weekend.  Even despite my precautions, it still took me a few days before I stopped leaving all my lights on and holding my breath whenever I rounded a corner/entered a room while I was home alone… :shudder:  For today, I won’t spoil anything that you can’t see in the previews, so expect another, more in-depth write-up or two on this movie another time.

In many ways, the Wilsons are an ordinary family on an ordinary vacation.  They have a summer home by the lake, and dad Gabe cheerfully makes plans for a drive to the beach in Santa Cruz.  However, mom Adelaide had a traumatic experience there as a child, and she’s on edge, constantly looking over her shoulder.  Her fears come to pass that night as the family is beset by a group of eerie doppelgängers who break into the house with the aim of doing their lookalikes in.  Led by Adelaide, the family fights to survive the night.

As I said, I’m avoiding spoilers today, so there’s not a whole lot more I can say about the story.  The themes it explores are interesting, touching on several diferent ideas without definitively spelling out any one-to-one “doppelgängers=X” analogy.  It goes to some unexpected places, not all of which are quite slam dunk developments but which I’m still pondering and unpacking.  The creep factor is up to here, but, while the film is definitely violent, it’s not super-high on gore, which I appreciate; a lot of the most vicious blows are filmed either with the camera on the perpetrator (rather than the victim) or from a distance.  Like Get Out, it demonstrates a great command of mood and atmosphere, and Peele knows when to break up the tension or lure us into a false sense of security with some moments of humor.

Anything with “evil twins” that has the actors playing dual roles is going to draw attention to its acting, and that is very much the case here, deservedly so.  All the actors do a terrific job differentiating between their characters (and one another – each doppelgänger is “off” in a similar, but not identical, way.)  Like many others, I discovered (and loved) Winston Duke through his performance of M’Baku in Black Panther, and it’s great to see him play two such different characters here.  I really enjoy Gabe’s warmth and corny dad jokes, and I like seeing his determination to stand up to the doppelgängers, even as it’s clear that this is like nothing he’s ever done before – “big scary Black man” is such a readily-available image to conjure, especially for a man of Duke’s size, so kudos to the film (and Duke) that it gets us to genuinely laugh out loud at his early attempts to seem intimidating.  Both actors playing the younger Wilsons, Shahadi Wright Joseph as daughter Zora and Evan Alex as son Jason, also turn in strong work, and Elizabeth Moss is effective in a supporting role.

But this film turns on Lupita Nyong’o’s twin performances, and she’s stunning.  Her work has impressed me in pretty much everything I’ve seen from her, but here, she’s given so much to sink her teeth into.  Adelaide is such a layered character, and her doppelgänger is by far the most complex.  I can’t say enough good things about how awesome she is here, and I’m thrilled to see her playing the lead in a film so worthy of her talents.

Warnings

Violence, strong thematic elements, disturbing images, drinking/drug references, and language.