Slaughterhouse 5 - An Analysis

One thing I have to get right out of the way: this book was, in many ways, not exactly what I had expected. But then again, perhaps that’s because I didn’t exactly have a clear idea of what to expect. Until a short while ago, the most I knew about this book was that it was an anti-war novel, and that it was something of a classic. That was literally it.

Then a couple of months ago, over drinks down a pub (where many great stories begin), I was talking to one of my oldest friends which, along with other important matters like Doctor Who, awesome presents, and what titles we could come up with for porn movie titles of classic movies, we also discussed reading and writing, including my own science fiction novel that I had been working on-and-off for some time, with one key idea being the main protagonist finding himself travelling mentally backwards and forwards in time. This, to my surprise, brought up the main plot of Slaughterhouse 5, in which main protagonist Billy Pilgrim finds himself doing the exact same thing, going backwards and forwards in time, mainly from travelling from two key periods in his life: his time as a prisoner of war and his eventful life afterwards, which included getting married, getting a job as an optometrist, and living on the planet Tralfamadore.

As you can imagine, this wasn’t what I had expected from an ‘anti-war classic’.

Of course, it was only a week or so later, after my friend had actually bought me a copy of the novel for me to read, that I discovered just how completely unusual it is, not just in terms of war stories, but in literature overall.

The first thing that leaped out was how much author Kurt Vonnegut was himself a part of the story and its telling, including an opening and closing chapter on some of his personal experiences and even how he came to write the story and why he wanted/needed to write it. This actually threw me off at first because I was just expecting the novel to simply leap into the story of Billy Pilgrim, but after finishing the novel, I think it’s one of those key things that I’ll appreciate more on a second reading. Because it establishes that the writer of this story and his experiences are as important as the story he’s telling. Considering that, in my experience, writers themselves when it comes to fiction at least tend to be essentially invisible when telling their stories, the fact that Vonnegut not only does this but does it in such a way that he doesn’t come across as a massively pretentious wanker is already incredibly fascinating.

The second thing that leaped out about the novel was how funny and blackly satirical it was at times. Vonnegut’s writing is packed with brilliantly deadpan wit, especially when telling things that were at the same time absolutely ridiculous and perfectly everyday. This is never more clear than how he presents death in the book, something that is not only commonplace but is always punctuated with the words, ‘So it goes’. His continual use of these three words at the end of every single death described, even if those deaths were completely horrific – no, especially if those deaths were completely horrific – was something that I always found blackly hysterical. This is mostly due to the deliberate detachment Vonnegut has to most of the characters, as the writer himself admits at one point that in this book there are no characters, at least not in times of war, with everyone growing essentially detached from both their own lives and from life itself.

Even in Pilgrim’s life both before and after the war, there are many characters – including those in Billy’s own family, especially his daughter – that don’t come across as human beings as such. Not to call them flat or one-dimensional, but more that they have a detachment and lack of human empathy or sympathy at times that reminds me a great deal of the works of Roman Polanski. Another great friend of mine, Jean, who has written some brilliant analytical reviews of Polanski’s work, has noted that a common theme amongst his films is that a great deal of them involve protagonists who are sympathetic victims that are surrounded by ‘monsters’, in his terms – men and women who generally seem to lack empathy or sympathy or even humanity, even if it’s in the mundane way possible. This is, to me, the perfect way to describe a great deal of the characters in Vonnegut’s novel. The one time a character is even described as such is someone who we’ve always been told is essentially a doomed man, a victim that’s heading for, like many other people in war, a meaningless death.

Now, for the time travel. I’m a man who loves his time travel in stories – whether comedic or dramatic, some of my favourite stories have involved brilliant uses of this storytelling device. In fact, when it comes to many stories, there are times when I take it too seriously – Looper’s use of it was great throughout its first half, with a protagonist facing himself in both his past and his future, and neither viewpoint particularly likes the other, but then the completely non-sensical ending partially ruined it for me (the rest of it was ruined by a second half that just did not seem to fit the brilliantly nourish and character based first half) – so I was worried whether my obsession over things like cause and effect, what can and can’t be changed and any ‘rules’ of time travel that are presented in a story that are or are not adhered to, might ruin my enjoyment of a novel, even a greatly loved classic. But Slaughterhouse 5 is a story that has used it in a way that I’ve never really seen used before, and it’s one that I adore.

Firstly, whenever Billy Pilgrim travels, he always seems to know exactly where he is in his life. If he arrives in 1945, he knows he’s a prisoner of war in Germany. If he arrives in 1968, he knows he is a widower with a daughter. He even knows the exact date he’s going to die and how. And he never really attempts to change or prevent a single moment – once again, there’s a key detachment that’s focused on, and the detachment that Billy has is to time itself. He still finds degrees of happiness and sadness in his life, but overall, he has a unique perspective of time that no one else has. It’s almost like an experience of life that has been edited for Billy in the wrong order, and he just allows himself to go wherever time takes him, whether it’s as something as blissful as his honeymoon or whether it’s something as terrible as seeing the ruins of a bombed city and digging out rotting bodies out of ‘corpse mines’ afterwards.

The way Vonnegut has used time travel here is unlike anything I’ve seen in other time travel stories, mostly because it just works on so many layers. Looking at how the narrative and Billy constantly switch from the war to afterwards, I can’t help but think of the perfect metaphor here of how everything about war never truly leaves you. Afterwards, you can get married, you can have kids, you could even get abducted by aliens and fuck Hollywood stars on an alien world, in Billy’s case, and you can even experience things as terrible as grief. But as much as you can try to focus on the good things afterwards, war never truly leaves you. The things a man sees, the things a man lives through. The soldiers and the innocents who die in such conflicts. The sheer soullessness of it all. Vonnegut has written a war novel unlike any other by doing what all the greatest science fiction writers have done: using a key science fiction idea to put across something important – perhaps something even deeply important and personal to the writer himself – to allow a reader an easier understanding of something that perhaps is almost impossible to understand unless it’s something they’ve been through.

But I think Vonnegut’s novel is a lot more than just about war. It’s about life and death – these two extremes especially – and everything in between. It’s about how broken and fractured life is in general, about those moments that we always come back to, the best and the worst. It’s about all the things I’ve mentioned and, I strongly suspect, so much more that I’ve missed, and therefore make it a story that I will inevitably come back to. It is literally quite unlike any other novel I’ve ever read, and one I am so grateful to have read.

The Name of the Doctor Analysis (MAJOR SPOILERS)

Wow. What a finale. You gotta hand it to Moffat – after all that worry over whether an anniversary ep would be able to celebrate 50 years of continuity, he practically gives us the equivalent of such an ep 6 months early, with multiple Doctors, a ton of references from all over the history of the show, and of course, what makes Doctor Who arguably so great, a cliffhanger. No, not just any cliffhanger: after a season of practically no cliffhangers (with the possible exception of The Snowmen), we get the MOTHER of all cliffhangers.

So where to begin? The beginning seems appropriate, since we are talking about THE beginning here: seeing the moment when an old man leaves Gallifrey with his granddaughter, in an old type 40 capsule, was just fucking glorious for so many fan-gasming reasons. I mean, for starters, there’s the obvious, like seeing the actual beginning of the story like never before, seeing not only Gallifrey itself but some nice clips of William Hartnell included, but there’s also the little things, like the early TARDISes being reminiscent to the TARDIS capsules that we saw in classic story The War Games. Followed by some nicely included clips of The Five Doctors, Castrovalva, The Invasion of Time and Dragonfire, to name a few. All of which involving Clara, the Impossible Girl we had been wondering about since Asylum of the Daleks kicked off. What a way to kick off the story by celebrating both the past 50 years and building up the finale to the past 13 episodes all in one.

Then we got cracking on with the main plot, involving Trenzalore. Having been built up since the end of season 6, I was eager to see it. And what is Trenzalore, exactly? The place where the Doctor will one day be buried. The place where his entire timeline exists and could potentially be accessed by anyone. Now, I've gotta wonder, is this worth all the build up? Not just since the ending of the series 6 finale in which Trenzalore was first directly mentioned and “The Question” was fully revealed, but since The Eleventh Hour, when the arc of the Silence first started and which slowly revealed over time how an entire order had been set up to make sure that the Doctor never, ever answered “the Question that must never be answered”? Well…yes and no.  Yes in that trying to protect the Doctor’s entire timeline – a timeline in which he has not repeatedly saved the universe but also visited so many places and so many times – would be something you’d want to make sure never got touched by the wrong hands, even if it meant ending the life of that person, (and the irony that River, some who was originally meant to kill the person who was supposed to answer the most dangerous question is the one who gives the answer is absolutely fucking delicious,) but I still think there’s numerous questions left to be answered, including why they blew up the TARDIS in The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang (if it was really them). I still don’t buy that the explosion was caused by either the events of Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS, which was clearly an accidental explosion or by the Great Intelligence accessing his timeline (although a voice without a body COULD explain the “Silence Will Fall” moment in Pandorica, it is, at the moment, not entirely satisfactory, considering the Intelligence re-wrote EVERYTHING in the Doctor’s history and Clara helped re-write it back). To be honest, I really think the Silence should’ve returned for this episode, although we still have the anniversary episode to look forward to, with some massive rumours going around that it will answer MANY questions from across Moffat’s entire run of the show. Gotta say, I really hope those rumours are true.

Now, that’s pretty much my main complaints out of the way, now onto what else I enjoyed about the episode. First, how much of a rollercoaster it was for my emotions to go through. Honestly, there were some beautiful moments for me to watch, including, but not limited to: the Doctor’s reaction to finding out about Trenzalore and what it really means to him; the site of the dead TARDIS as the Doctor’s tomb (“where else would they bury me?”); Clara accepting her fate and jumping into the Doctor’s timeline to save him; even the kiss between the Doctor and River was great, not to mention hysterical (“since I’m the only one who can see you right now, god knows how that looked”). There was something emotional about the episode in general, as it is, as with season 6, the Doctor confronting his own mortality – only here, he really is confronting it literally. He’s seeing that, no matter how much he’s cheated death before and no matter how many more times he’ll continue to cheat it, one day, he will die, and his beloved blue box will be buried with him with no one to look after her. Neither he nor we know when it’ll happen, but still, it’s a sad sight for all when the Doctor is forced to accept that his story will have, one day, an ending.

It’s not just the future the Doctor has to face in this episode, however. It’s also his past, which brings us to the Great Intelligence, (of which I was glad to see make a return appearance, rounding off not just the trilogy of stories that he’s appeared in this season, but also his entire story since The Abominable Snowmen with the Second Doctor), and of course, River. Now, bringing River back post-Forest of the Dead was a bold move on Moffat, but it wasn’t a decision I minded, for two reasons. First, the fact that they didn’t really bring her back from the dead, considering it was always made clear in the episode Forest of the Dead that she still lived on, just in data format, and what’s beautiful here is that she’s still just that. She isn’t magically given a new body, she is, essentially, still a ghost. And I really do hope it stays that way.

The other thing I liked about including this particular version of River in this story is how fitting it is, both for the story of the episode and for season 7 in general. It’s the Doctor not just facing up to his past; it’s facing up to another ending. He’ll continue to see River perhaps, but (hopefully) not as she is now. It’s saying goodbye to another Pond. That, more than anything, is why I liked seeing this version of River in the season 7 finale.

As for the other returning characters…I like the trio of Vastra, Jenny and Strax, but I do think they are overused at times, especially as comic relief. It was great to see Strax acting as a proper Sontaran though when history started to change, I must admit. It was a great reminder of how scary and how ruthless the Sontarans can be and how much the Doctor can change things so drastically. Can we have more scary Sontarans back soon Moffat? Please? And less of the, to quote The Office (UK), “She’s deaaaaaaad…” “SHE’S NOT DEAD!” moments, thanks? Hearing Jenny say, “I think I’ve been murdered,” I couldn’t help but think, “Don’t worry, it’s a Moffat script, you’ll be back in no time.” And sure enough, she was…before she died again fifteen minutes later, and was brought back from the dead less than five minutes later! That’s gotta be some kind of record, even for Moffat!

Still, the climax and the resolution of the “Clara mystery” was worth it. I’ll be honest, I did guess some time ago that there was never anything special about this version of Clara, not until some kind of future event would cause the whole multiple Clara thing would one day happen, but only because we all know how much Moffat loves his timey-wimey plots, and to be honest, so do I, so I was glad to see that the resolution made sense, at least.

And now, onto the biggest part of the episode of all: the cliffhanger. “Introducing John Hurt…as the Doctor.” Wow. Bold, Moffat, definitely bold. How do I feel about it? Well, if it is who I suspect it’s meant to be, it completely writes out my McGann death scene fanfic. Ok, seriously, do I think that Hurt is supposed to be the “original” Ninth Doctor? Yes. Looking back, there are clear hints about it, if you rewatch Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS – where Clara discovers the Doctor’s name, where does she discover it? In a book about the Time War. Not of Gallifrey in general, but specifically the Time War. I thought it was odd that the book would mention his real name, but now it kinda makes sense. If the Doctor gave up his chosen name when he did the things he did in the War, it not only explains why his name would appear in a book specifically about the War, it also gives greater significance to where the series began again in 2005. Suddenly, the idea of Eccleston’s Doctor being so different to all before makes more sense than ever – he’s not just recovering from the War, he’s learning to be “the Doctor” all over again. And I’ve gotta be honest, that’s an idea I really, really like. I could be wrong, he could be a pre-Hartnell Doctor, but considering the leather jacket and the idea that he “broke the promise”, I’m convinced that he’s meant to be the incarnation between the 8^th and the 9^th.

I do have to say though that there is a bit of a missed opportunity here, especially if Moffat’s had this planned for a while. Namely, who’s cast as the “missing” Doctor. Now don’t get me wrong, John Hurt’s brilliant, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what he’ll do with it. But I can’t help but be reminded of Scream of the Shalka. In 2003, an animated webcast, Scream of the Shalka, was made to celebrate the 40^th anniversary. What was so special about this particular story? It was set after the end of the TV movie and featured a brand new Doctor and was supposedly the start for a brand new online series. Who played this Ninth Doctor? Richard E Grant. That’s right, the guy that played the Great Intelligence. Now this story wasn’t AMAZING, but it did have plenty of great little ideas (my favourite being the Master being turned into a robot servant of the Doctor and was forced to be his companion), was funny and was a pretty cool way of bringing Doctor Who into the 21^st century, or so it seemed at the time. Then of course, in November, they announced that Doctor Who was coming back anyway and Scream of the Shalka was written out of canon altogether, along with Grant’s version of the Doctor. Now, with this episode, I can’t help but imagine how much cooler it would've been if they had held off casting Richard E Grant until this particular episode, therefore revealing that actually Shalka was canon after all. Would’ve been even more of an amazing twist for this fan. Still, like I said, Hurt’s a fine choice for playing the part, and I’m looking forward to seeing more of his incarnation.

One more thing I'll mention: the title, and how the story relates to it. I think it was genius of Moffat to have the title suggest one thing, something I was very afraid of, before revealing it meant something else entirely. We thought "The Name of the Doctor" referred to his real name, or at least, the name he had before he became the Doctor. I was incredibly worried that Moffat would actually reveal it, as in my opinion, the name had been so shrouded in mystery for so long, and that mystery was so important to the series, that I didn't think there was any possible way that the revelation of the name itself could've been anything better than anti-climactic. (Unless his name turned out to be Batman, that would've been cool enough.) But instead, it's about something else entirely. It's about the Doctor's identity. About what it is to be the Doctor, and not just any Time Lord. About his life, his death and, most importantly, why being the Doctor is so important. "What I did...I did in the name of peace and sanity." "But not in the name of the Doctor." Perfect words to end on.

So that’s my analysis of the episode: flawed, but overall a great episode. 8/10. As for season 7 overall? I’m not going to give it a rating until I watch it a 2^nd time through, but I must be honest, this season hasn’t impressed me as much as season 6. Don’t get me wrong, there are a number of individual episodes that I enjoyed, particularly Asylum of the Daleks, the Snowmen, the Bells of Saint John, Cold War, Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS and of course The Name of the Doctor, but I haven’t been as eager to watch it week in, week out as I did last season. I do think that the lack of cliffhangers is partly responsible for that. I love cliffhangers, I love going “WTF?!?” and wondering what the hell’s going to happen next, and more importantly I think that they’ve been a vital part of the show’s 50 year legacy. Season 6 was full of some amazing examples, too many to list, although my favourite still remains The Almost People, and I wasn’t even much of a fan of that story. Season 7, by comparison, hasn’t had nearly as many. Aside from this episode, there’s been no stand-out cliffhanger, other than the Snowmen – the closest thing we’ve had to a cliffhanger since then was “Oh no! The Doctor’s going to be stuck with KIDS in the next episode!” So, as great as it was to have a terrific cliffhanger for the finale, I hope to God Moffat brings the cliffhanger back on a more regular basis for season 8. There’s also been not much development for either the characters or the arcs this season, so I think that’s affected it. But most of all, season 6 really was one of my favourite seasons ever, in fact it was pretty much my ideal season of Who. Anything after that was, for this fan at least, going to seem like a step down. I’m looking forward to re-watching season 7 in full at least, hopefully after catching up on my entire series watch, anyway.

(One more thing that I couldn’t fit into the analysis: LOVED the mention of the Valeyard, one of my favourite ideas for a Who villain ever. Wasn’t an overall fan of the story he appeared in in the Classic series (The Trial of a Time Lord), but the revelation that he was the Doctor more than paid off. Glad to see that he’s finally been name-checked in the new series at last.)

Life on Mars Analysis: Series 1, Episode 5

So more than a little overdue, here is my analysis for the fifth ep, which focuses on football. Now I don’t really give much of a shit about football, to be honest, but as far as storytelling goes, like many other subjects that bore me, a number of layers can be given. One is the obvious, the focus of the crime: hooliganism. However, as Sam points out, hooliganism shouldn’t be the only thing to focus on. Another thing is how people can bond over a simple pleasure in life just as much as they can ruin the enjoyment of it by taking things too far – in this case, watching a simple game. Once again, we’re given another contradiction of life: something that can make people happy can also make men fight and hate each other.

Among all of this, we also learn more about Sam. Naturally continuing a theme from the last episode, we specifically find out more about his early life with his parents: in the previous episode, it was his mum, in this, it’s his dad, despite the fact that we never see him in this ep. We just learn a lot about him, including that he wasn’t around much, which meant that the time they did spend together was really important to Sam, and that Sam doesn’t know where he is. I can’t tell you how much I love that that’s exactly the way Sam phrases it – no dodging the issue, no getting angsty about it when he’s asked, it’s just something he’s just had to live with for nearly his whole life. That lets us know a lot more about Sam in just one line that a lot of tv shows take an entire episode to flesh out. It gives us reason to wonder why he became a cop, and I mean really became a cop instead of letting a childhood dream die, that he might just have had a deeply personal reason to do it. Not that its stated in the episode, it’s really just a theory, but it’s one I genuinely believe the writers have given us, purely because, unlike so many other series I’ve watched where similar revelations are given but in a much more “dramatic” way, one that tries so hard to exploit so much drama out of it that it all eventually becomes sickening, in this series the writers assume we’re not idiots and just let us form our own theories based on one line. 

Have I mentioned how much I bloody love this show yet?

Another aspect I love is how football is used. As I've said before, I’m not the biggest fan of football, but football hooliganism is a great subject to tackle when done right, and…well, no surprises that the writers handled it completely right here. Because we see clearly that there’s nothing wrong with the game itself, in fact it’s something great that can bring people together. But like many great things, all it takes is a few stupid people to ruin it for everyone else. We see how this affects Sam more than anyone, as he knows what’s coming, and how much worse it’s going to get. It’s bad now, with a boy’s father ending up dead, but it’s gonna get so much worse, and a lot more innocent people are gonna end up dead by the hands of not gangs, but police, because of what's happening now. It’s interesting that there’s nothing directly personal to Sam in this story, like Sam stumbling across the body of a father of someone he knew as a kid or some bullshit like that, and yet it still affects him on multiple levels – as a policeman, as a fan of football, as someone who lost a father at far too young an age. Wonderfully complex and emotional writing of the character that avoids being exploitive. 

But it’s not all serious drama - it is Life on Mars, after all. One thing I have to mention is the excellent comedy writing given to us this ep by Sam and Gene working undercover in a pub, where Sam expects to easily talk to the customers but of course, even with his love of football, finds it difficult to blend in, while Hunt unsurprisingly blends in perfectly. Actually, thinking about it, there’s really nothing different about that: Sam has been, and will continue to be, the outsider in this world. The one who finds it difficult to talk to people, to blend in. Even (or should that be “especially”?) as the professional, undercover work in this world isn’t exactly his specialty. 

So, at the end of the day, we’re given an ep that uses football as a perfect way to explore how something that brings people together for the best reasons can also turn people against each other for the most stupid of reasons, both on society as a whole and, just as importantly, on our main character Sam. It’s a testament to Life on Mars really that it’s not one of my personal favourites and yet it’s still something I can find huge enjoyment in both watching and exploring its multiple layers.