Other Doctor Lives: Gentleman Jack: Season 1, Episode 4 – “Most women are dull and stupid” (2019)

*Spoilers for the end of episode 3.*

We’ve reached the midpoint of season 1. This is a strong episode, featuring some good drama and compelling performances as things heat up.

At the end of the last episode, Mrs. Priestley walked in on Miss Walker and Anne kissing, and Miss Walker’s entire family is whispering about the incident in no time at all. Anne insists that the best course of action is simply to carry on as normal, but everything is thrown for a loop when Miss Walker receives some shocking news from a family friend.

The biggest narrative driving point here is the letter, which causes a major setback for Miss Walker’s nervous condition and her overall health. Anne was proud that Miss Walker had been improving since they were together, but now she’s in a tailspin and Anne doesn’t know what to do. The contents of the letter are upsetting enough for Miss Walker on the face of it, but there are deeper implications going on that have to be dealt with. This puts their entire relationship into question, and Anne, who’s been longing so much for a permanent companion, gets defensive and stubborn as the life she’d hoped for is threatened for reasons she doesn’t understand.

Some other interesting stuff going on here too. I particularly like Anne taking Miss Walker to York to see a different doctor, once with a less provincial perspective. Yes, he does say that most of Miss Walker’s health issues stem from “nervous hysteria,” but he also acknowledges that mental health is just as crucial as physical health, despite the medicine of the day having fewer effective treatments in that arena. He and Anne discuss ways to help Miss Walker improve her health by way of her spirits.

And as I mentioned, the whole Walker/Priestley clan is up in Anne and Miss Walker’s business now. For all of the Priestleys’ approving words toward Anne in the pilot, their turn is almost immediate. As Mrs. Priestley tells her husband what she saw, she rails about how foolish she feels, having defended Anne against gossip for years “because [she] never once thought that it was true.” Miss Walker’s relatives, many of whom have been grasping at her wealth, now cluck over Anne having her “under [her] spell.” As the matriarch of the family solemnly proclaims, “She’ll have her in Paris before we know it.”

As for Mr. Priestley, his first thought is to keep knowledge of this “indiscretion” contained, but since his wife evidently deals with her shock by telling every single person she knows, the cat is already out of the bag before he even hears about it. This leaves Mr. Priestley in a rather feckless position, all but wringing his hands as he vainly tries to pretend the gossip isn’t happening (even though it’s all anyone is talking about.) He’s a bit of a lump here, and Peter Davison plays that effectively—a Victorian stuffed shirt whose niceties are failing him.

Neurodivergent (Headcanon) Alley: Elphaba Thropp (Wicked)

*Elphaba-related spoilers.*

I’d originally planned on doing another Ted Lasso post today, but my brain lives here right now, so here we are. Part of the reason why I’m so much more obsessed with the movie than I was with the original musical is because of the neurodivergent interpretations that leapt out at me. Obviously, I’m looking for that sort of thing now in a way that I wasn’t back then, but that never stopped me from latching onto hella neurodivergent stories without realizing why they spoke to me so deeply (i.e. Pushing Daisies, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Scrubs.) I do think the movie feels more ND to me than the show does, though I’m sure it helps to get the actors’ full performances onscreen instead of just listening to the cast recording. I (briefly) considered holding off on writing about this until Part 2 comes out, but let’s be real—that wasn’t likely to happen. I can always write an update post when that time comes. At any rate, we need to start, naturally, with Elphaba.

It’s true that Elphaba wouldn’t have fit in with her classmates at Shiz no matter what. Being green instantly marks her out as different, and the other students are quick to ostracize her. And it could be argued that Elphaba’s toughness is purely a product of having been laughed at her whole life, going her own way because she doesn’t expect anyone to be on her side. But to me, her portrayal comes across as very autistic.

Green skin aside, one of the first things you learn about Elphaba is that she’s 100% herself. She’s rarely afraid to speak her mind, going toe-to-toe with everyone from Galinda to the Wizard. She doesn’t go along to get along, and I don’t think she can. It’s so antithetical to who she is. She has to contradict, to question, to plant her own flag. When she arrives at Shiz, she knows people are going to gawk at her anyway, so she gets ahead of it, answering all the rude questions they haven’t yet asked. At the extreme end, this quality gets her branded as public enemy number one at the end of the act/movie. While Galinda wants to play politics, Elphaba can’t even pretend to go along with the Wizard and Madame Morrible for the sake of playing a long game—no, she instantly denounces both of them and flies off on her own rather than compromise herself for a second.

This leads us to Elphaba’s intense empathy and passion for justice. Growing up, one of the only people who was kind to her was her nanny, Dulcibear. At Shiz, she in turn stands up for Animals like Dr. Dillamond. Once she learns about the troubling things happening to Animals, she wants to help, and she’s keenly aware of how their treatment is the result of scapegoating. She’s especially distressed to realize that some Animals are losing the ability to speak, because she’s often felt forced to hold her tongue by her father. Elphaba is a character who’s frequently prickly to others, but she’s nothing but kind to Dr. Dillamond.

Anger is a powerful emotion for Elphaba. Again, she doesn’t have it in her to play nice, so her emotions are frequently evident on the surface, but her anger is also a trigger for her magic. While Elphaba is extremely powerful, she can’t control it at this point. In her lessons with Madame Morrible, she struggles to perform magic on command. When she’s upset, however, we see objects begin to rattle or shake as the emotion builds inside her, bursting out dramatically as she’s overwhelmed. I’m reminded a little of Matilda and “Quiet” here, in that I feel a connection between the use of Elphaba’s powers and meltdowns. In Matilda, her powers are born after she’s taken mental refuge from a combination of sensory overload and fury against injustice. For Elphaba, injustice is also a huge factor, along with feeling a strong loss of control.

The last thing I want to talk about with Elphaba is her ability (or struggle therein) to read people’s intentions. As I said, she’s quick to go on the defensive where her appearance is concerned, pushing people away before they can hurt her. But that means she can completely miss when someone isn’t looking down on her. She holds Fiyero at arm’s length for a long time, distrusting his friendly overtures. While she can see through his shallow party-prince routine and see that he doesn’t like the persona he’s taken on, she can’t see that he genuinely likes her. And on the flipside, she falls easily for the Wizard’s song-and-dance, giving him her trust and adoration. This adds to her incensed reaction when she realizes who he really is—she’s of course starkly opposed to his scapegoating of the Animals, but she also hates that he tricked her, making her feel like he cared for her and wanted to help her make a difference.

The Sarah Jane Adventures: Series 1, Episodes 7-8 – “Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?” (2007)

New Who has sometimes struggled to hit the right notes with their Doctor- and/or companion-lite episodes. Some of them are absolute bangers, while others fall pretty flat. Hats off to The Sarah Jane Adventures, because the Sarah Jane-lite story in every season is really good. I’m sure it helps to have an ensemble cast instead of just a main duo or trio, so there are more characters to work with when the star has limited screentime. But all these stories are excellent, starting with this one back in series 1.

Overnight, the world changes. Sarah Jane Smith has disappeared from time, and Maria is the only one who remembers her. She’s unsettled by Andrea, the new neighbor living in Sarah Jane’s house that everyone seems to know. Luke is gone, and she and Clyde aren’t friends anymore. This is devastating enough on a personal level, but Maria also knows the world won’t survive long without Sarah Jane there to protect it. So it’s up to her to figure out what happened and find a way to bring Sarah Jane back.

“What would the world be like if this person wasn’t in it?” is a popular storytelling trope. You have your classics, like It’s a Wonderful Life, and new Who does its own take on this story in “Turn Left.” It’s good multiverse fodder, seeing what happens to the fabric of the universe when a single thread is pulled out of the tapestry. This is an interesting version of that story, because it’s not just the removal of Sarah Jane—it’s the addition of Andrea, which deepens the mystery.

Although I cited The Sarah Jane Adventures’ ensemble as an asset that helps the show navigate its Sarah Jane-lite stories, this one is especially Maria-centric. One of the most immediate effects of Sarah Jane’s removal is how it shrinks Maria’s circle of close friends. Sarah Jane wasn’t there to rescue Luke from the Bane, so he’s gone too, and there were no adventures to bring Maria and Clyde together. Clyde still appears in this story, but it’s as a distant acquaintance, a classmate and nothing more—Maria is largely on her own. Even her relationship with her parents is strained here, because her frantic insistence about a non-existent neighbor no one can remember has Alan worried about her mental health. Maria is really isolated, forced to dig deep to solve the mystery and figure out how to fix the world.

Both Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures add some really excellent characters to the larger Whoniverse, but I think the Trickster might be my favorite baddie who’s introduced in the spin-off shows. He’s since been referenced on Torchwood and Doctor Who—there were moments during Fifteen’s first season when I wondered if we were somehow leading up to a Trickster Big Bad reveal, and I was definitely here for it! This is his first appearance in the franchise, and the story does a nice job introducing him and showing us what he’s about.