In 1818 Mary Shelley wrote the novel
‘Frankenstein’. It told of an eccentric
scientist called Victor Frankenstein who created a monster in his laboratory
and brought it to life using galvanism – direct current electricity, also known
as voltaism.
As much as the experiment was a success
the result of the creature coming to life scared Frankenstein enough that he
fled the laboratory. The monster itself
also left the laboratory and lived in a peasants woodshed, afraid to show its
face due to its deformities, and only coming out at night to eavesdrop on the
family inside to listen to their conversation, learning from them how to speak
for itself. It also befriended the blind
father of the family who was unable to view its disfigurement and formed a
friendship, strengthening its ability to converse and learn more skills. However on the return of the family, it was
driven away.
The monster upset by the behaviour of
people towards it, after rescuing a peasant woman from drowning in a river and
was shot in the shoulder for its troubles sought revenge against the whole of
humanity and made its home on a mountain top where it felt safe. The monster called for Frankenstein to make it
a bride so that it could have something that belonged to the creature, but despite
Frankenstein agreeing to this, Victor halted the procedure killing the
bride.
The monster made it his mission to destroy
all that Frankenstein held dear by killing his best friend Henry Clerval and
his bride Elizabeth Lavenza who was Victor’s half sister, this in turn broke Victor’s
father’s heart and he later died.
With nothing left in his life, Victor
Frankenstein made it his life’s mission to find the monster and put an end to
its life. The mission ends in the Arctic
Circle, when after slipping into the water after losing control of his dogsled
and contracting severe pneumonia, Victor is rescued by a ship exploring the
region and relays his story to the Captain Robert Walton before giving in to
the illness and dying. When the monster
boarded the ship to take his revenge on Frankenstein he was overcome by grief
at the sight of the dead man.
From there the monster vowed to travel to
the ‘northernmost extremity of the globe’ where he’d burn himself on a funeral
pyre so that he would become ash, in order for no other man to create another
monster like him. He disappeared on his
raft and was never heard of again!
In the parallel universe, the leader of
the Cybus industries, John Lumic was a man with a vision but he was also a man
dying from an incurable disease and used a motorised wheelchair to get around. In order to extend his lifespan he created a
metal bodied creature that he could one day be transferred into for longer
life, and would be able to walk and not be confined to a metal chair. But to test out the metal body he needed
subjects, so by collecting up the homeless he had them brought to the testing
facility in Battersea Power Station, the Cybus factory in London and turned
them into cybermen.
Having already created the earpods where
the visuals of the internet were downloaded into the human brains, faster than
the links to a mobile phone, where all people were fed exactly the same
information, and the same jokes, the humans were already partly upgraded to
follow orders laid down by Lumic. So
that when Prime Minister for Great Britain refused to allow John Lumic the
chance to put his project in motion, he had the Prime Minister killed and
prepared his metal army for battle.
When Lumic now transferred a little ahead
of schedule, into the walking Cyber leader was destroyed at the end of ‘Age of
Steel’ we thought this was the last we’d see of the metal monsters, but as with
any SF story ‘life finds a way’, the cybermen returned in ‘Army of Ghosts‘and
‘Doomsday’ which would significantly be the moment when Lisa Hallett and Ianto
Jones’s story officially began.
The
battle of Canary Wharf saw the cybermen coming through the void using the ghost
shift, in the Torchwood One building.
Establishing themselves in the building in London, they began upgrading
humans, the earpods were installed, which were fitted to their brains, the
human was already dead. Using the humans
with the earpods the cybermen were able to override the manual controls to
bring through the entire army of cybermen.
It wasn’t an invasion, it was a victory.
The cybermen were on Earth, and there were armies of them in every known
city and country right across the planet.
But not only were there cybermen, in a basement, there was the piece of
timelord science, the Dalek prison ship.
So the battle commenced, and while cybermen were battling the Daleks,
more bodies were called for and instead of upgrading only the brains of the
humans, they were upgrading full bodies.
And the new form of cyberwoman was created.
But
how does this story compare to Frankenstein?
In a lot of ways this story does compare
to Frankenstein in so much that Ianto Jones is ‘Victor Frankenstein’, he may
not have created the monster, but he kept her alive using pretty much the same
technology as used in Frankenstein’s laboratory. To energise the cyber body the use of galvanism
was used – where direct current electricity runs through the body, stimulating the
nerve endings and muscle, similar to that of Victor’s monster. An idea and invention by Luigi Galvani way
back in 1790. http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bl_Galvani.htm
By taking Lisa away from Canary Wharf
where she was upgraded and hiding her away in Torchwood 3, means it’s no different
to the monster being created in the lab and then fleeing only to hide in a peasants
woodshed. Coming out only at night to
hear the conversations of the family and learn to develop new skills. This could possibly be likened to Ianto
finally taking Lisa into the basement at Torchwood 3 and visiting her every
night, noting the bowl of fruit and flowers, the photograph of her before the
upgrade, and the putting together of her life support unit. Her informing Ianto of what equipment he
needed to bring her, he providing a daily update on life outside which would
stimulate her desire to be free of her shackles and experience it for
herself!!!
When the monster was discovered by the peasants
family and driven away, the same reaction was given to Lisa when her actions
after being released from her life support machine and able to galvanise her
systems forced the team to come down to the basement and discover her, and more
especially, the fully functional cyber conversion unit.
When it was clear to Lisa that her ideals
of love and togetherness were considerably different to that of Ianto’s ideals,
she knew they were no longer compatible, and subsequently killed him. This would be the same reaction in the
monster after it sought out Frankenstein after he stopped the progression of
the ‘bride’ for the monster.
Jack’s role in this was similar to that of
Captain Robert Walton, who was onboard the ship that rescued Victor. The Captain heard Victor’s confession about
the monster in much the same way as Jack learnt about Lisa in the basement, and
although the differing factor in this was that Victor didn’t show any love or
feeling for the creature only that he had to find it and kill it, Jack’s
reaction was more for the fact that Ianto had kept Lisa a secret, hiding himself
from the rest of the team.
In the final part of this story for Ianto
and Lisa was the acceptance that in Lisa’s metal mind, Ianto wouldn’t accept her
in her present form, and so by changing her appearance to fit in to society she
transplanted her brain into that of the pizza girl. But it wasn’t her mind that he fell in love with;
it was the person she was, before the upgrade, before the monster took over.
In the same way that
Frankenstein’s monster craved to be accepted by humankind, to be accepted for
what he was, and to be loved. In a world
where appearance is everything, his deformity, and his abominable looks were
too much for people to accept, that he took himself to the furthest most point
of the globe and destroyed himself, so that no other man could create another
like him.
In the same way, the Torchwood 3 team eliminated
the pizza girl, not just because she was now human, but she was an abomination
that would never be accepted in human society.
Protecting the Earth against alien
threats!
But that’s where the story differs, right
at the end. Where Victor Frankenstein
died before he located the monster in order to kill it, Ianto lived and
realised that there was no turning back for Lisa and no matter how much he
loved her, he couldn’t and would never accept her in any other form.
Images courtesy of BBC
Doctor Who
BBC Torchwood
Google images
I saw some elements of Maria from the 1920's b & w movie " Metropolis ", as well as the Bride of Frankenstein. There was also the element of " The Doomed / Tragic Love Affair " looming over everything else, because there was no way poor Lisa could be truly turned back into a true flesh & blood human being.
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