Day 16: Five Hundred Eyes

Halfway through today's episode, I noted that this episode is slow, and oddly comforting in it's slow pace. Halfway through it, Susan's friend, Ping-Cho, decides to tell a story involving hashish and Ala-eddin (or Aladdin as we know him in the Western World). It's not often in stories where you can just sit down and not be in constant peril all the time, and just relax and listen to stories. It's a comforting approach, and one that I was getting used to, until Barbara had to go and get kidnapped by some Mongols. This adds some pace and peril to the story, which presumably gets the kids interested. It's also interesting as to the three people who form Barbara's rescue party: The Doctor, Susan and Ping-Cho. Marco Polo and Ian are clearly the action heroes of the piece, so it's odd to see the old man and two kids go out and get involved. This isn't a bad thing though. The Doctor has now quite clearly slipped into the role of a hero, and it's nice to see him actually doing things for the benefit of others, as he becomes more like the Doctor that we know today. Susan and Ping-Cho's inclusion in the rescue is fun as well, as it's nice to see these characters get something important to do, and it's also nice that Susan gets someone to play off of, instead of just stabbing cushions with scissors or screaming her head off in Skarosian jungles. And yet, the cliffhanger of this story is that eyes on a picture are moving. This shows just how far we've come as a culture that, 50 years ago, this was considered to be scary, but it's now become such a familiar trope that we can look at it, roll our eyes and say, "Seriously?". We see the character of the Doctor back then as an example of the changes that have been made since the 60's and we can be intrigued by how much he's changed, but we can also be intrigued at how much we've changed as a culture as well, as we see that this program acts as a time machine for us, allowing us to step back to a simpler time, when we can stop an exciting story halfway through for an intermission with hashish.