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timespanner · 5 years

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Earth. They called it that, because they were standing on it.

Putting together some (too many?) words on The Dan in the High Castle, before it falls off the iPlayer in just a little over a week.

(Speaking of which, you might want to have your say on the future of the iPlayer - you know, just in case you’d like to stop your favourite shows from disappearing into the void after a measly thirty-day time span.)

Here be spoilers. Consider yourselves warned.

If there is one good thing that’s come out of having to wait two long years for Time Spanner 2, it’s that we all time-travelled to Martin Gay’s future in the meantime. (Everything’s a very slow time machine, if you think about it.)

The new episode starts right where we left off, only with Laika the Dead Space Dog doing a quick recap of - well, you know, everything. It’s been two years after all, and the pilot episode’s no longer on the iPlayer (though you might want to try here, if you haven’t already.)

As Laika quite rightly points out, the exact logic of the Angel’s plan - tasking our feckless hero with stealing the Time Spanner, and then using it to bring back some unspecified technology from the future in order to save the world - has yet to be tested. Even more so when the Angel reluctantly admits to the true nature of said technology - a flesh-eating death laser, which she claims ‘is to be used only for good’. (Which, for some reason, keeps reminding me of that JFSP sketch featuring a young Hitler, and a time machine. Oh, well.)

As the story develops, the Angel seems to be gradually losing her aura of aloofness and power - not only does she appear somewhat bumbling at times, but she also sounds a tad jealous of Gabbie’s role in Martin’s life, such as it may be. We also find out what happened at Kraken Self-Storage: the explosion towards the end of the previous episode was caused by the Metatron, who blew up Mr Kraken’s scrying glass from the Heaven’s end - yikes, indeed - and there are now factions of angry Not-People (angels? some other supernatural beings?) after our Angel/Muse/Lady Wizard, and possibly Martin Gay, soon.

(I am aware I’m most likely reading too much into this, but I find it quite intriguing that the aforementioned factions call themselves ‘The Usual’. You know, what with Martin mentioning he’s ‘the usual, thirty-eight’ in the pilot episode - apparently forgetting he’s a whole two years older than that. But hey, this is probably just me, so you might as well ignore this bit.)

We also learn that, along with granting its bearer the power to travel through all of time and space, the Time Spanner also serves as a means of communication between the transcendental dimension and the physical plane; either by functioning as some sort of transceiver implanted straight into your brain, or by turning any old mirror into an otherworldly version of FaceTime - provided that you mark said mirror with a sigil, that is.

(Apparently, any and all sigils would do, but for some reason the Angel sees fit to start with a swastika, only to end up having to hastily reassure a rightfully indignant Martin that she definitely, definitely didn’t give the Time Spanner to Hitler. Which is even funnier in the context of the episode’s title being a reference to The Man in the High Castle, as I believe we can safely assume.)

And yes, the future. As rubbish as 2018 looks to Gabbie and Martin’s eyes - and heaven knows they’re not that wrong - things are not as bleak as they appear to be at first glance. The Nazis didn’t take over, or at least, Dan(iel) Kraken didn’t - he may have been made a Lord, but his overzealous Yellowcoats are a mere private security force, and the titular ‘high castle’ turns out to be nothing more than a flat in Vauxhall.

(While it’s true that I do not know enough about South London to fully appreciate the extent of this joke, the whole ‘that’s Vauxhall’ exchange is one of my favourite parts of the entire episode. Lord Kraken and Gabbie are truly wonderful throughout this scene, especially when addressing one another - and may I just say, David Mitchell and London Hughes did a pretty amazing job there, which is really quite something when you consider how talented the entire cast is.)

And here we find Mr Mergatroid as well, who’s apparently been in the service of Lord Kraken for the past two years. Oh, and it (he?) has also been holding on to Martin’s shoes for all this time, which means our hero can finally stop wandering about shoeless; and while he’s not getting future shoes like Gabbie suggested at the beginning, he’s still getting his past shoes back from the future, which is - significant, somehow?

(On a somewhat related note, how did Lord Kraken successfully locate Gabbie’s phone - in the future? Do phones still work when you suddenly jump two years ahead of when you last paid your bill? Am I just fixating on an entirely irrelevant detail for no reason?)

So, yeah. Daniel Kraken may be little more than a rich (and possibly disturbed) individual, but he does seem to be perfectly fine with using force to extract the truth of what Martin saw on the other side of his magic mirror. Which in turn leads to some interesting questions about the morality of Gabbie’s choices at the end: Kraken is not lying when he says he didn’t kidnap Martin two years ago, but he did technically hold him there against his will, and while he never had the time to use force, it’s reasonable to assume that he would have done - does he deserve to be arrested, then? (To be fair, I’m just as terrible at this kind of question as Martin is when asked what he wants to do, so let’s just leave it at that.)

But let’s not jump ahead of ourselves. We finally get another very interesting piece of information, which is that the Angel is not only capable of opening a portal that will bring you back to the real world, but also a portal to any (?) chosen point in time and space. (Incidentally, if on November 3rd, 2016 Martin skipped eight hours of his life to get to six o’clock in the afternoon, that means the first episode took place around, let’s say, ten in the morning? Well, its ending, anyway.) At least now we know how on earth she expected Martin to be able to bring those ‘ideas’ (or weapons, as they may be) back from his world’s future, when she spent the better part of the first episode claiming that you cannot travel backwards in time. (Never mind that Martin proved her wrong by travelling all the way back to the Big Bang, and then out the other side. Cool.)

And then - those final five minutes are such an emotional rollercoaster that I was left reeling in the aftermath of my first listen. The Time Spanner’s broken, so the only way they have to go back to 2016 is through the portal 'Bridget’ opens up for them; only then she claims she will remain trapped in the mirror until the sigil is erased, and my goodness, that moment when Martin volunteers to stay behind - well. (I’m so proud of him, I tell you.)

Martin’s trapped, and then he isn’t, as 2018 Gabbie shows up in a Yellowcoats uniform, and rescues him. I’m so here for this now twenty-two-year-old badass coming in to save the day, and that’s even without taking into account how much ‘time travel story where character A has to wait for n years to be reunited with character B’ is my cup of tea.

(Speaking of which, might I interest you in this lovely and quite touching audio play written by Peter Davis of Monster Hunters fame? That’s the first thing that came into my mind right after this whole scene played out, anyway.)

And then - oh my days, that ending.

“But Gabbie, the Time Spanner’s broken.”

“Everything’s broken. Fix it! Oh, sorry, am I sounding old and grumpy?”

“Everyone gets hopeless.”

“Ha! Who said that? Was it someone amazing?”

That’s one of the most inspiring, life-affirming bits of writing I’ve listened to in a long time. We can but hope that not only Martin and Gabbie will succeed in making the world a better place, but that we the listeners will somehow do, too.

#Time Spanner #Time Spanner 2 #The Dan in the High Castle #meta #episode discussion #spoilers #seriously - back away if you haven't listened to the episode yet

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