Day 597: Enlightenment Part 2

Enlightenment, as pointed out yesterday, is set on an Edwardian sailing ship in space. This sailing ship is taking part in a race, where it and other ships from different periods in Earth's history sail around space to reach the finish line first, and win Enlightenment. The people who take part in this race aren't really people at all, instead they are beings known as Eternals, who are a race of immense power, and who decide to do things only to amuse themselves. The danger, however, is that they require Ephemerals, or mortal humans, to provide solutions to problems as well as doing various bits of work.

This creates an interesting argument that the Doctor and Tegan have with the Eternals over the course of this episode. The Ephemerals don't actually do their work willingly, and have been kidnapped and brainwashed into working for the Eternals, acting as toys as they play their little racing game. This little racing game, in order to make things more interesting, occasionally reaches the point of deadliness, as seen when the Greek ship explodes, killing all Ephemerals on board, whilst the Eternals continue to live on in eternity. The Doctor and Tegan are shocked, in particular Tegan, as it represents normal human lives that have been killed in the name of a race.

But the Eternals do not see death. They do not understand the consequences of actions, for they only see life as a game, and death is just a small annoyance for beings such as them. But death is something that is pivotal to the life of the Ephemeral. It is something that reminds us of how fragile and short our existence can be, such as that which affected Tegan when she saw the death of people like her Aunt Vanessa, or Adric, and how she is now making the most out of her life because of this. Death is something that we can try and fight, like the Doctor, who potters around the Universe, saving people from a variety of fates. It can also be our objective to bring death, such as that of The Black Guardian, who orders Turlough to bring death to others, namely the Doctor. Turlough's punishment for not doing this, as shown by the cliffhanger, is to live on this ship forever, an eternal life of servitude without the sweet release of death and as we saw in Mawdryn Undead, this can be far more of a curse than a blessing.