Day 23: The Screaming Jungle

This episode continues the psychological horror trend of Marinus, by this time featuring a scientist who was doomed by their own work. The essence of his studies were looking at accelerating the course of nature, however he accelerated the overgrowth of the jungle, and it come forth and attacks him every single night. It's an interesting concept of a person's work coming back to attack them, and has been used in places such as Frankenstein, and it's a concept that in some ways reflects the overpowering nature of technology as it threatens to destroy our world, and how perhaps scientists should be kept in check, such that they don't create their own screaming jungle, screaming out at them night after night, never ceasing as it tries to destroy you.

This sort of thing holds a special horror for me as I had to study Frankenstein for my final exams at high school, and so the last thing I want to do is write about that sort of thing again. So instead, I'll write about something else that I didn't have to write about for my final exams, and that's the absence of William Hartnell. Hartnell is on holiday this week, and so that means that the character of the Doctor is absent from this episode. It's a bit odd, but it's not overwhelmingly surprising that the show can cope without it's title character, mainly because it was established early on that the real heroes of the show are Ian and Barbara, and the chance for them to get an episode to themselves is much appreciated, as the two characters have a wonderful chemistry, and are both incredibly strong and memorable characters, who are able to have adventures without the Doctor. What is odd though, is that at the end of the last episode, we picked up two more travellers, Altos and Sabetha, who are promptly sent away a third of the way through this episode. It's odd because these characters were clearly introduced with some sort of purpose, and the writer Terry Nation has obviously realised that their purpose is not needed as of yet, which begs the question, are they actually needed? We'll find out in the next episode.