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one-of-us-blog · 7 years

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The Eaters of Light (Doctor Who S10E10)

Today Drew is forced to watch and recap “The Eaters of Light”, the tenth episode of Doctor Who’s tenth series. There’s a monster on the loose in ye olde Scotland, and it’s up to the Doctor and his cronies to send it back from whence it came. Can they stop the beast before it eats all the light in the universe? Can they convince a bunch of Scots and some Romans to not kill each other?

Keep reading to find out…

Eli, I’m so thrilled that you enjoyed the last half of “There Goes the Bride” so much! I really, really liked Truby, and I felt like she would have fit right into the group if Dorothy actually had left the show. She felt like she had her own unique personality, and a savvy black widow would have been really fun to see play off of Rose, Blanche and Sophia. But, obviously, I’m happy to have my favorite Girl still on the show! I liked that Dorothy got to be the one to turn her back on Stan this time, and Sophia’s decision to finally give her blessing didn’t feel forced or false. She trusts her daughter, even if she doesn’t always agree with her, and that was really sweet to see play out. I’ll stop gushing about the episode now, but let me say that you did a great job with your recap! And, speaking of, I’ve got a recap of my own to post!

Buttocks tight!

Episode directed by Charles Palmer and written by Rona Munro

We start off at the Devil’s Cairn in Scotland, right here in the good ol’ present day. A young man chases after his even younger sister, who says she can hear music coming from inside the hill. The young man says the sounds she’s hearing are from ghosts, as everyone knows, and if she hangs around listening to ghosts no good will come of it. They start to leave, but then the girl starts hearing some raucous subterranean slappers. As her brother calls to her to leave the hill, we see that one of the stones adorning it has a little TARDIS etched into it.

After the credits, the TARDIS lands near the Devil’s Cairn all the way back in the second century. For some reason Bill has a sudden interest in Roman history, and she insists she knows about the Ninth Legion than the Doctor. The Ninth Legion is pretty famous, apparently, and they’re mainly famous for having vanished. The Doctor says they were killed in battle, but Bill says they just wandered off somewhere. The Doctor and Nardy go off to find the Legion’s last battlefield to prove they all died, while Bill goes off toward a river to find the missing Romans. Bill is observed by something spooky and comes across a woman, who, by the by, is sporting some interesting face painting, in the midst of a mourning ritual. She screams at the sight of Bill and chases after her with a sword, causing Bill to fall down a hill and come face to face with a Roman soldier.

The Doctor and Nardole, meanwhile, are still looking for dead Romans. Nardy catches sight of some creepy crows, but the Doctor’s not interested. The Doctor’s apparently never told Bill about the TARDIS’ telepathic translation program, because she’s shocked to find the Roman before her speaking in English. To him, she’s speaking Latin, and she soon deduces there’s some sort of space magic afoot. Bill asks if he’s from the Ninth Legion and he says he is, hinting at something bad happening to the rest of his squad. The Doctor and Nardole find a lumpy, boneless Roman body, and we find out that a lack of sunlight over a period of decades makes your bones disintegrate. The Doctor says this is alien handiwork, and nearby he and Nardy find a field full of dead members of the Ninth Legion. Nardole and the Doctor are then surrounded by more people wearing face paint, and suddenly it’s nighttime.

Bill and the Roman climb out of the hole, and the Roman says the Legion was killed by a spooky beast roaming the forest. The Roman says there were a few of his fellow soldiers who survived and they’re holed up somewhere, so he needs to check on them. He says the only Romans left alive here are the ones who deserted in fear of the beast, and then said beast shows up and kills him. Bill runs for her life as the beast follows, and she just manages to get inside the surviving Romans’ hidey hole before the beast slaps her with one of its glowing, striped tentacles. Bill and the Romans manage to block up the entrance, and Bill lets them know their homeboy is dead. The soldiers start to panic as they realize the beast knows they’re in here and they’re trapped, and then Bill passes out from the wound the beast gave her.

Nardy and the Doctor are being held at spearpoint by some Scots in face paint. One of the Scots, referred to as the Gatekeeper, arrives and explains that she’s responsible for killing the Romans. The Gatekeeper goes on an anti-Roman tirade, but the Doctor doesn’t buy that she personally killed the Romans. He wants to know what gate she’s supposed to keep, and what’s on the other side of it. Thanks to some popcorn from Nardole, he and the Doctor escape. The Doctor heds to the cairns nearby, since the Socts think of them as gateways to another world. The Doctor pokes around inside the cairn while Nardole is recaptured by the Scots. The Gatekeeper says the gate is opening, and that the Doctor won’t be coming back. He does see some sort of portal open, and on the other side he sees some creatures like the beast swimming around. The portal closes and the Doctor heads outside, finding out from Nardole (who’s now sporting some face paint of his own) that he was in the cairn for two whole days.

Nardole says he and the Scots looked for Bill over the last two days, but have had no luck. Back with the Romans, we see Bill and the Romans still stuck in their hidey hole. Bill knows she needs to find the Doctor, but the Romans say the beast is still outside and it’s not safe. The Doctor confronts the Gatekeeper about the interdimensional portal; the Gatekeeper says the beast is known as the Eater of Light, and her people have been keeping it in check. It got through, though, and the Doctor says more of them will break through, too. This is interrupted by a scream, which everyone runs off to investigate. In the hidey hole, the Romans explain to Bill that sunlight cures the blight inflicted by the beast. We get a prolonged bit where Bill explains that she’s a lesbian to one of the Romans, Lucius, and because we’ve got to turn expectations on their heads we find out that all these dudes are bi as hell (except for one exclusively gay one) and that’s just how things are in ancient Rome, baby!

This lovely bit of queer fun is interrupted as the beast begins to circle the hidey hole. The Doctor and the Scots find a deboned Scot, and the Doctor says that the stronger the beast gets the dark the world gets. The Doctor confronts the Gatekeeper about purposefully letting the Eater of Light through; she wanted it to kill the Romans, and thought the Romans could weaken or kill it. She admits this is true, and the Doctor congratulates her on dooming Earth. Bill tries to rouse the spooked Romans to join her in leaving the hidey hole and finding the Doctor, and eventually they get on board given their limited options. The Doctor makes plans to drive the Eater of Light back through the gate. The Doctor shakes the Gatekeeper out of her mourning and sulking and convinces her to help him fight the beast.

The Romans begin to make their way out of the hidey hole. One of them wants to rush out and gets snatched right up by the beast. Bill and the other Romans make it out of the hole just in time, and Bill and the Doctor are reunited (and it feels so good). The Scots and the Romans aren’t exactly on good terms, but thanks to the TARDIS’ telepathic field the two groups are able to understand each other. The Doctor convinces them to put aside their enmity to focus on the Eaters of Light, who are apparently going to eat all the light in the universe if left unchecked. The Doctor puts together a plan to lure the beast near the gate. The beast is attracted by sound, so the Scots let loose a raucous slapper like we heard in the beginning. The beast is attracted by the sound, and the Romans and Scots use some special Scot magic to weaken the creature with poisoned light.

They keep the creature subdued until sunrise, and at that point the poisoned light is too much for it and it slinks back through the gate. The Doctor says someone else has to guard the gate, so he’s gonna do that for the rest of time. Bill’s not cool with that, though, and neither is the Gatekeeper. The Doctor insists no one else can do the job like he can, but Lucius says he’ll help. The whole Ninth Legion says they’ll stay and fight alongside the Gatekeeper, and finally someone just conks the Doctor on the head to get him to shut up. The Gatekeeper and the Romans head into the gate to do… whatever they’re going to do, and the gate is made unstable by that amount of people going through at once. The chamber collapses, and the Scots begin memorializing the Gatekeeper.

Bill, Nardy and the Doctor head back to the TARDIS. For a minute Bill hears a bit of that raucous slapper, but the Doctor says music’s just funny like that sometimes. Inside the TARDIS, they find the Mistress waiting for them. Nardole is livid, but the Doctor says this is all cool. The Mistress says she’s biolocked inside the TARDIS so she can’t escape, and the Doctor’s having her do some TARDIS repair for him. The TARDIS takes off, and we see that little girl listening to the ghost music again. The Doctor plays a slapper for the Mistress in the TARDIS, and she sheds a tear without knowing why. The Doctor says she might be faking to impress him, or this might be a genuine display of emotion which would mean it’s time for them to be friends again. He’s not sure, but he hopes it’s the latter. He leaves the Mistress alone to cry and contemplate.

The End

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I have some mixed feelings about this one! On one hand I ended up liking the Romans a lot more than expected to (probably because they’re a bunch of queer dudes), and while I found the Gatekeeper a little annoying at first she grew on me by the end of the episode. I liked the bit with the Mistress at the end, and I liked seeing Bill stand on her own without the Doctor nearby. On the other hand, the Eater of Light was a really, really dumb monster. It’s gonna eat the sun? Really? I thought its technicolor Tim Burton design was interesting, but it was just a dumb idea. I also had no idea how the Gatekeeper and the Romans going through the gate is supposed to keep the beasts at bay, and the thing with the crows was totally unnecessary. So there were some things I liked, and some things I really didn’t like. I’m just not sure which way the scales going to tip! Just kidding, I totally do.

I give “The Eaters of Light” QQ½ on the Five Q Scale.

Tune in soon to see Eli become the victim of a long con with his recap of the next episode of The Golden Girls, “Older and Wiser”, and after that I’ll be up to bat with my recap of the next episode of Doctor Who, “World Enough and Time”.

Until then, as always, thank you for reading, thank you for face-painting and thank you for being One of Us!

#doctor who #one of us

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storiesbehindthefog · 8 years

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“My role model? Jesus Christ, obviously.” Don

I always knew I wanted to come to San Francisco, so I did. It’s where the hippies were. I was a bit of a hippie when I was a teenager. San Francisco has its appeal.

Because of the cost of living in San Francisco, I have spent a good percentage of my adult life living in Golden Gate Park and Presidio, while I actually held a 40 hour a week job. My favorite job was scooter messengering. I got paid to ride a scooter all day long, you know. And there was a lot of camaraderie with the people that I worked with.

My favorite place to live was the Presidio, living in the woods. It was really nice up there. I was living there until this past rainy season. The park police confiscated everything I had a couple of times. And I didn’t bother to check it, because I’d probably get cited and get on their list.

I don’t blame people for getting at the end of the rope with homelessness in the city. I usually kept out of the way. I cleaned up after myself, kept it looking the way I found it. But not all the homeless do that. I also lived down at the Embarcadero where homelessness smells like urine and caca. I used to keep my own bottle so it wouldn’t smell so bad. I tried to do my little bit. I’ve gotten burglarized, I had air mattresses slashed while I was away. So it got to be a drag after a while.

I have a home now. It cost me a little bit more than I thought it would. But all in all it balances out. I’m taking it as this is God’s will. I’m here for his purpose, not my purpose, and to make the best usage of it.

I’m a born-again Christian. I’m a happy camper, but I should be dead. I deserve the wrath of God, and God saved me instead. I saved myself, too, but I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for him.

I have to pray every day to overcome regret. Regret is like cancer. That and sloth are my major cardinal sins. Yeah, I started regretting at an early age. I could bore you to tears with regret.

“Regret is like cancer. That and sloth are my major cardinal sins.”

You want to know who my role model is? Jesus Christ, obviously. And also Saint Therese of Lisieux. I read Story of a Soul, her autobiography. She is a saint that died of TB. I figure if a 24-year-old nun could leave this world without complaining, so can I. Another role model is Charles Spurgeon. He was very anti-papist, and Saint Therese was a very devout papist. So my role models are conflicting, but they actually both move me.

“I figure if a 24-year-old nun could leave this world without complaining, so can I.”

My father was a great role model too, but he was kind of out to lunch when I was growing up. He was a scientist in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Oak Ridge was part of the Manhattan project in WWII, where the atomic bomb was invented. My father didn’t work on the atomic bomb, he was a WWII veteran who volunteered. He was a premature left-wing anti-fascist.

I have been harassed and emotionally abused as a teenager, mainly by my mother. I had a lot of interference early in my life that was catching up with me later. I was a one-man wrecking crew for a while.

I was probably an alcoholic before I turned 19, on just beer alone. It caught me quicker than I thought. I also went through a period of prosecution because of a false accusation, but I was eventually vindicated of that. But it was the one-two blow that put me on the path to where I eventually wound up. I was in and out of halfway houses. It’s just cause and effect. I guess I shouldn’t feel too bad about myself being homeless.

I had my last drink in 1982, as a matter of fact. I quit on September 11th. It wasn’t hard to quit. I just went through enough. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. Cigarettes, I quit them in ‘85.

“I had my last drink in 1982, as a matter of fact. I quit on September 11th.”

I keep pretty busy these days, doing what I can. I help out at the senior center, feeding people. I used to volunteer at Glide. And I get on the computer a lot, because I like to know a lot. I would rather understand than be understood.

I am on SSDI (Social Security Disability Insurance) after wear and tear over the years. The odd sleeping habits, keeping tents — it can catch up with you. I have sciatica and pains in the neck and this and that, and two different kinds of cancer. I started to get into alternative healing. I have been doing my Wim Hof breathing techniques and I take cold showers, and it’s gotten me through a lot of depression.

“I would rather understand than be understood.”

Doing Yoga at the Healing WELL makes me happy. So does bottled Starbucks coffee, I think I have an addiction to it. Sugar is so addictive. So that gives me something to live for too, kicking another habit, and looking forward to what comes next, haha.

We’ve interfered with homeless too much. If you fight wildfires too much, you get more and uncontrollable fires. I do believe in more laissez faire. But we could share the wealth more equitably, share the properties more equitably. Those things are hardwired by nature, and that would be the solution.

“We could share the wealth more equitably, share the properties more equitably. Those things are hardwired by nature, and that would be the solution.”

Shared weekly on Medium, and soon to be published in a book, ‘Stories Behind The Fog’ is a compendium of 100 stories of people affected by homelessness in San Francisco. The project was triggered by one man’s story that will be released next year in the form of a feature-length documentary: www.moses.movie. This story is in collaboration withHealing Well.

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