Discursive Essay: Doctor Who S8.05 - Time Heist

The Time:            2000 + some more years

The Place:           Karabraxos Bank

The Situation:   Starlight Robbery

RECAP

Skip to the TARDIS picture if you don’t need a recap.

The Doctor and Clara are discussing an adventure. The Doctor answers his phone, and ends up in a room with Clara and two other members of a team who have been enlisted in a bank heist. A mysterious ‘Architect’ gives them vague details about the heist. Their memories have been wiped, but there is a recorded message which lets them know they have consented to the wipe. They have little choice but to carry on with the heist.

Their team (Team Not-Dead) includes:

• An augmented cyborg named Psi, an expert hacker who has to deal with ‘dry glitches’. Facing interrogation in prison, he deleted his own memories to protect his friends and family. For robbing the bank, he is promised a reboot drive that can make him regain his memories.

• A shapeshifter named Saibra. Her mutant genes force her to transform into anyone who touches her, making it impossible for her to be intimate with anyone without being freaky. For robbing the bank she will receive a gene suppressant that allows her to touch others without triggering her ability.

• Clara, a ferocious high school English teacher from the planet Earth. Seriously though, if you don’t know the kind of shit she deals with on a day to day basis, watch Skins and you’ll have some idea. Undoubtedly one of the toughest explorers in outer space.

• Last and certainly not least, The Doctor, an enigmatic Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey. He is face-blind and has cross eyebrows. An egomaniacal needy game-player.

As soon as the heist starts, they are introduced to The Teller, an imprisoned alien with mind-reading and mind-eating capabilities. The Teller is commanded by the bank’s manager, a cheery sociopath named Delphox, who is acting under the orders of the bank’s director, the eponymous Karabraxos. The Teller is the reason Team Not-Dead has been memory wiped: it uses its mind-reading ability to sniff out guilt in the bank’s patrons (who are career criminals, and must therefore be guiltless in their own minds if not in reality), and then crushes those who pose a threat to the bank. The only safety from this introspection is to lose self-awareness (Don't Think).

Team Not-Dead is led through the bank, placing faith in the plan of the Architect. They are provided with an ‘exit strategy’ (assumed at first to mean a lethal poison) and with the select information and tools which the Architect provides. The Doctor takes charge, and conducts the mission with his usual grumpy charm.

“Underneath it all, he isn’t really like that.”

“It’s very obvious that you’ve been with him for a while.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re really good with the excuses.”

~Clara and Psi

The first time they face The Teller in the vault it hones in on Saibra, who has the greatest ‘guilt’, or as it may be termed, ‘Self-Hatred’, which has its basis in to her mutant nature. She uses the exit strategy to avoid becoming a semi-conscious soup bowl.

The Teller pursues them as they sneak their way through the lower levels of the vault. It finds Clara and starts to attack her, but Psi saves her by way of self-sacrifice. This is important because Clara is a relative stranger, and he still values her life more than his own, which is a second example of Self-Hatred. Psi uses the exit strategy to avoid becoming a soup bowl.

When they encounter an obstacle that can only be breached during an unpredictable solar event, The Doctor determines that the Architect must be in the future, planning the heist at a point vulnerable in the past. They recover the reboot drive and gene suppressant before they are captured by Delphox and The Teller. Delphox reveals that she has assured The Teller’s loyalty, claiming that everything has its price.

Psi and Saibra are revealed to be alive, masquerading as guards. The ‘exit strategy’ was really a teleport device that takes them to a ship in planetary orbit. The team continues on with the heist, toward the private vault in Karabraxos’ office.

Karabraxos is revealed to be a tyrannical ruler of a criminal empire, cloning many ‘Delphox’s from her own genes to act as her managers, replacing them when they fail her.

“She hates her own clones. She burns her own clones. Frankly, you’re a career break for the right therapist.”

The Doctor hates the Architect, and this gives him a clue to the Architect’s identity: as someone overbearing, manipulative, and far too clever, he suddenly realizes that he is the Architect. He has been plotting the course of the whole episode.

More, he realizes that the one with the greatest motive to act against Karabraxos is Karabraxos herself, as she is self-hating, and in the future she has come to regret her past. He gives her his phone number. The Karabraxos Bank faces imminent destruction from the solar storm, and Karabraxos leaves.

In the far future, she calls up the Doctor to act against the part of herself she hates the most – the part that imprisoned The Teller by threatening to kill the one other of its kind still in existence.

Meanwhile, in the past/present/future, The Teller scans The Doctor and doesn’t destroy him. Its telepathy lets him see the memories erased at the beginning of the episode, and The Teller realizes that The Doctor has come to set it free.

The Teller releases its companion and escapes the bank with the Doctor and his team. He drops them off on a solitary planet, and sends the team home.

ANALYSIS

The theme of this episode rests solidly on trans- states, and judgement as it exists through Self-Hatred and Self-Love.

Self-Hatred: The Transformation

“Would you trust someone looking back at you out of your own eyes?”

~Saibra

This concept is much less scary than it first sounds. All the main characters in the story except The Teller have their self-hate pointed out to some degree:

• Saibra hates herself because of her nature, how she was born a mutant.
• Psi hates himself because of his circumstances, which made him give up his memories.
• The Doctor hates himself because he acts as an officer, giving orders to others which he himself won’t follow.
• Clara hates herself because of her nurture, as she sees herself slowly becoming like The Doctor.
• Karabraxos hates herself because of her own imperfection, and because her aspiration for perfection consumes her.

In all these instances except one, the characters successfully manage to externalize their hatred. This means that they have severed one part of their identity from their active self with the intention of destroying it:

•  Saibra separates her identity from her body.
• Psi separates his identity from his amnesia.
• The Doctor separates the ‘officer’ identity of himself from the ‘soldier’.
• Clara separates her identity from The Doctor, hence her pivoting love/hate for him – and the pivoting love/hate for herself which prevents The Teller from locking onto her thoughts.
• Karabraxos doesn’t. She is truly self-hating, meaning that she cannot separate her faults from her central self. Thus, she destroys her whole self by implementing clones, and destroys part of herself (the decisions she made) by implementing time travel.

In the practice of Self-Hatred, it is important to pinpoint what is being selected for the active, hating self, and what is being externalized as the passive, hated self. For this the nature of ‘hate’ need be divulged:

Put simply, ‘hate’ is an inseparable species of judgement. When a person loves something, it means that they recognise its worth, and feel pleasure at attaining its value. Hate is the concordant opposite – to recognise worthlessness, and feel pleasure at being rid of it.

So it can be said that what hates is what judges, the part of identity that is aware of value, and pursues worth.

In the case of Karabraxos, constructive hatred is impossible because what she actually hates is her poor judgement. She makes terrible, superficial choices, locking herself away in a vault with stolen treasures, enslaving and controlling the beautiful and unique rather than seeing it thrive, and devoting her administrative talents to the protection of thugs and criminals. In Karabraxos’ case, Self-Hatred feeds a self-destruction to which the only release is true death.

In the case of Team Not-Dead, however, the effect is the reverse. They actually see their judgement as the best part of themselves, and arrange their identity according to its dictations. The amnesiac state they find themselves in is included to intensify this, and to establish judgement as a sort of ‘soul’: a higher existence deprived of their immediate worldly identity (their choices). Self-awareness is an awareness of their motives and judgements; they instead have to base choices on something beyond identity, what might be called their own Self-Esteem. Four Karabraxos clones wiped of their memories and placed in the same situation would never make it to the heart of the vault, even should they have the same abilities as Team Not-Dead – they would lack the self-esteem to judge the situation correctly, trusting neither themselves nor those around them.

What this teaches is that there is a very important difference between ‘Self’ as Judgement and ‘Self’ as Identity. Identity is fluid – facets of identity actually exist in one of three states, which are called Ultra-, Trans-, and Cis-:

Ultra- (Latin, ‘The Far Side Of’) is a state in which everything that encounters this facet of Identity is expected to conform to it. This is a state adopted by extremists, often those who hold together an identity by force, as Karabraxos does by militantly ruling over her bank and its management.

It isn’t entirely forceful, and isn’t always nonconsensual. An Ultra- may simply believe that all identity will conform to their own in time as a matter of rightness. But they’d be an asshole to say as much every time they met you.

It also encompasses the idea that facets of identity ‘pull’ toward a certain alignment. Karabraxos, who is Ultraggressive, may find that other facets of her identity become trans- in an attempt to exemplify that ultra- state. Suppositionally (and only as an example) she may become transmedicated in the search for medication that lets her control her body. She may also be considered something along the lines of ‘transingular’, in that she is attempting to produce perfect clones of one genetic reality.

The Doctor is predominately an Ultra- outside of this episode. It’s probably why he’s manipulative, meddlesome and controlling. He’s a special kind of Ultra-, though: one that exists as a counterforce to other Ultra-s. This kind of Ultra- action is seen as acceptable – even admirable – more than any other: if someone uses force on ‘the far side of’ identity, it requires someone on the opposite end of the spectrum, also a ‘far side’, to maintain balance.

Cis- (Latin, ‘The Near Side Of’) is a state in which an Identity is consistent with a judgement of worthwhile values. Cis- can be seen as an end-state to a facet of personal Identity, if an end-state is even conceivably possible.

In its regular sense, the term ‘cis-’ relies on an external judgement on the combinations of facets that are ‘normative’, which is to say they are aligned to reflect with the values of other facets that relate to them (or are seen to relate to them). The most common example of this is in sexuality and gender: we presume Clara is a woman, and the cisgender relative to this is ‘female’. But, ultimately, a completely regular sense of the cis- notion establishes permanent ideals of norms based on external judgements, not on internal, self-motivated judgements. In an internal, individual sense, a person may only feel the value of the ‘symmetry’ of their facets when they do not resemble the external cis- model at all; their parts are only ‘on the near side’ of one another when they are in a state that external judges would call ‘trans-’ (which implies a state of change). This is why those who are comfortable with their identity but still outside of ‘normative’ structures are labeled differently from other cis- types, as ‘queer’.

Cis- is often mistaken as a sign of sound judgement or concrete self-esteem, but is actually more than often a sign that people believe they cannot possess the values they deem worthwhile, or that they are incapable of judging a way in which they might more fully possess their identity.

This episode doesn’t deal with Cis- characters, but rather with characters attempting to attain internally valued Cis- identities.

Trans- (Latin, ‘To Go Beyond’) is a state in which an Identity is inconsistent with a judgement of worthwhile values. Trans- is the state we find Team Not-Dead in; they are all there to change a facet of their identity to something they value, and are all in a process of personal and actual struggle.

It is important to note that not all struggles for the attainment of a valued identity are the same, even though they are trans-. This can be because of actual physical barriers, but also because of immense social pressures.

For example, in this episode Psi is the closest interpretation of a Cis- character: he has been something he values, and he has had his cis- identity before. He doesn’t want to become something new, he wants to recover what he was in the beginning. No-one objects to this, they all believe it is a good, ‘brave’ decision.

Saibra on the other hand is the closest interpretation of a trans- character who is likely to be identified by others as queer for the remainder of her life: the group automatically questions her decision, believes she is wrong for ‘not accepting herself as she is’, and sees her choice as one more cowardly in ‘running away’ from her birth identity.

They are both trans-, but there is a double standard in the way they are perceived. This mainly has to do with direction – it’s always easier to go with the flow than against it, to remain what people expect rather than change.

So: ‘Self’ as Identity is fluid across Cis-, Ultra- and Trans- states. The episode shows this by having its characters quest for a different identity, and attain it.

But what about ‘Self’ as the vital, judging, ‘soul’ part?

Karabraxos is our interpretation in this case, as the one whose soul is inherently flawed. Right up until the end of her life, we see her lashing out at her whole self, not at externalized facets of her identity but at the rational, judging part of it that makes consistently bad decisions: at the identity’s managers. It’s not lazy writing, that both the bank and the villain share the name ‘Karabraxos’. Her character is locked in a continuous struggle to manage herself.

She does at least try to change the quality of her judgements at the end, and the method chosen is Remorse. Remorse in its truest sense is to go back on one’s decisions, to seek not to change the identity, but the soul. To reassess one’s values is the purest form of guilt-driven self-destruction. And yes, it is possible to hate the soul, and let it liquefy and become something better. But when you love it – when you have self-esteem – then it is very solid indeed.

Self-Love: The Tale of the Teller(s)

The story of the Tellers is told so that at the end, the message of Self-Love (not like that) is pulled into the spotlight, where Self-Hatred has been dancing all the while. It’s important to note the anatomy of the Teller, particularly its stalked eyes. In the process of mind-crushing its victims, its eyestalks twist so as to look at one another, symbolically an indication of Self-Awareness. In this act of reflection, the Teller itself survives while those around it are scoured for guilt (self-hatred) and are destroyed should they reveal any. The idea behind this is that, juxtaposed, the perfection of one thing can cause the destruction of the facets around it, just as it does with Ultra- states. This really just says that existence requires love, which seems a pretty obvious conclusion. The trick is that change requires hate. If a person is forbidden to hate, they can’t change. If they are stuck as something they can’t love, they can’t exist. Which is a cultural example of a viral reaction called lethal aggression, and the very basis of ‘Normative Culture’.

 The Tellers walk into the sunset as the only two of their kind left in existence, practically mirror images (Cis-), accompanying themselves down into an Eden as a united Judgement and Identity.

The message is that in the end, having split yourself into Subject and Observer, you are two of a kind that never was and will never be again.

Appreciate yourself. Set yourself free. Do whatever it takes, to make sure Self & Self remain united.

The Architect: The Doctor as Transitive

This episode integrates very well into the arcing parable of officers and soldiers, and Clara’s slow evolution into an equal of The Doctor. This is because within the theme of self-hatred, the ‘Soul’ and ‘Identity’ form the same kind of dualistic relationship as the ‘Soldier’ and ‘Officer’.

The Soul, as a sense of judgement and value, is sibling to the Officer (the Governess, the Superego, the Ideology). It is Directive – a moral conscience which tells people what they should do. It should not be mistaken for something inherently rational, or declared inferior if intuitive (there are good intuitive thinkers, and bad intuitive thinkers). It may tell a person that their world is wrong or their body is vile without explaining why, and without that explanation the rest of the identity is still expected to follow along.

The Identity, as an amalgamation of characteristics and decisions, is the Soldier. It is Active, following the plan devised by the directive Self. This means that it has to deal with all the rules of the game, dig the proverbial trenches and face the reality of the decisions the Soul makes. The Directive part feels love and hate – the Identity feels strife and pain. Sometimes without even knowing why.

“I still don’t understand why you’re in charge.”

“Basically, it’s the eyebrows.”

~ Psi & The Doctor

In the planning phase of the break-in, The Doctor strategically manages the plan as himself, a united Soul and Identity. He is not one or the other.

In the execution, he must follow the plan as a different person, not his unified, Ultra- self, but one whose Soul and Identity have entered an unaligned, Trans- self state.

During the execution he is forced to be the Soldier, or ‘Identity’. He isn’t party to any of the reasons behind his identity, or the Officiated decisions made by his Soul. He still has his judgement, but its only available choice is that of any soldier: to follow a commanding officer, or reject it. He can’t see the full picture, which means he risks judging wrongly at any point. This is the root of his self-hatred: he is a curious person who wants all the details. He’s been denied all the details by the Architect. Therefore, he hates the Architect for denying him the curiosity that is his identity. But the judgement he trusts – what pulls him along – is his own self-esteem. He knows from the recording at the beginning of the heist that he chose to undertake it as a willing participant. He trusts himself, even though his identity – curiosity & control – has been compromised.

Tower Mythos?

There are certain clear distinctions I’d immediately draw between this episode and elements of The Tower Mythos, most particularly the ‘Wizard of Oz’ interpretation. In it we have our tin man (Psi, the cyborg who deleted his heart), a cowardly lion (Saibra, who has claws and would not use them), a brainless scarecrow (The Doctor, removed from his own rationale) and of course Clara as Dorothy, our unifying protagonist. Karabraxos is naturally our wicked witch (or witches, as it may be), and the bank – practically a gold brick depository. The Architect may be interpreted as the Wizard, as he is a shadowy figure who promises to dish out hearts, brains, and courage to those who do as he says.

This is distinctly Tower Mythos because it deals with anti-heroes: ones who hate themselves throughout the story in the course of unifying what they have constructed in their mind with what actually exists in the physical world.

The Tower Mythos

I: The Magician

Long ago, in a land much like our own, there was earth below, and sky above. On the earth there lived a score of little creatures, simple things who dreamed brightly. They looked around the earth and were dissatisfied with the limits of their existence. Life was short, and cruel. There was no shelter from the rain. They were trapped in a world of torment, and saw no means to escape.

Then one day there came a brilliance to their kind, one different to the rest. Food would not sate him. The earth around was an especial torture, for he looked up and dreamed of the sky. Perhaps, he thought, Heaven is the place where I was always meant to be. He thought that if he could reach it, all of his problems would be solved.

He envisioned the Tower. He would learn of the earth and all of its contents, and perfect its shape. He would build foundations and supports, master architecture to make the tower scrape the belly of the clouds. Then, perhaps, he would ascend to his place in Heaven.

When the others on the earth saw his efforts to create a tower, they believed him great. They called him ‘The Magician’ or ‘The Wizard’, for what he did was magic to them. Many understood the beauty of the tower, and offered to help him build it. Though they lacked his brilliance, their hands could labour and turn the physical earth. Over time, more and more of the creatures flocked to the tower. They built their homes in its shadow. This was how the metropolis was born.

By  JC Barquet

II: The Metropolis

The more people who came to the Tower, the harder it became to support them. Great farms and fisheries were needed to feed the creatures of Metropolis, forests were stripped bare and mines cut into the earth. One magician could not oversee all of this, and because these were matters of earth and not heaven, he let others manage the affairs of the city. He locked himself inside the highest room of the tower, and philosophized over how to make it become even taller without collapsing.

In the rooms below him, others established a hierarchy to determine who was closest to the heaven, and who closest to the earth. Hierophants and Empresses, Kings and Courtiers all vied for the position of master of the earth. At some times they shared this power, linked to one another in arcane conspiracy. At others, they divided Metropolis into districts of higher or lower importance to the cause. The magician grew distant from his city. Many on the earth even questioned whether he was real. Every once in a while the highest of them would say, “I am the Magician!” and use the powers of earth to convince people of the claim.

In the lowest districts of the city, life was as bad as it ever was. Though the creatures of earth labored tirelessly for the tower to keep growing, they saw little of the greatness on its upper levels. Everything on earth seemed to disappear up the steps of the tower, leaving behind only scraps for the laborers. There was a terrible separation between the Hands that brought together the energies necessary to keep the tower standing, and the Mind that made it grow taller. The tower’s foundation was unstable.

What the Metropolis needed was a Heart that would tell the Magician what the Hands required, and deliver to earth the beauty of the Magician’s Mind, and all it envisioned.

But this would not be so easy. For from those that schemed to puppet the earth came a sorcerer of particularly evil temperament, who sought not to rule the tower, but to destroy it.

 

III: The Wheel

By Michael Whelan

The evil sorcerer is known by many names. Sometimes, he is called ‘The Necromancer’, to show the abject disconnection between his living mind and his dead hands. Sometimes, he is ‘The Devil’, or ‘The Man in Black’, or a ‘Wicked Witch’. Whatever his name, all that is known of his motives is that he wishes to destroy the tower. Subtle and insidious, he knows of the growing gap between the Mind and Hands, and that all the Tower really needs to be destroyed is to be allowed to grow while its foundation crumbles. But there is a problem with this design: the birth of the Heart. He knows that should she reach the Magician, the Tower will be saved.

She the Heart also goes by many names. She has been called ‘The Lady of Shadows’. She has been called ‘The Lamb’, or ‘The Stone’. She is quick and cunning, and kind, with strengths belied by her form.

The Necromancer imprisons her within the tower, where he believes that she will be under his rule. Exercising control over the world, he believes that it is only a matter of time before the tower crumbles.

There is one person he does not count on standing against him, because he has already failed to find his heart and comes from outside of the world in which the Tower is built. This unlikely antihero was vanquished long ago by the black magician, found wanting and forever cursed by his failure. He is ‘The Hanged Man’, ‘The Gunslinger’, ‘The Voodoo Cowboy’. Once he had the potential to be as great a magician as the one who built the Tower, but having failed in his ambitions, he turns to petty sorcery, earthly dabbling, and profitless pleasures. No-one would ever expect that this wasted creature would have a part to play in saving The Heart, and yet it is he who finds her, and is tasked with helping her. They begin their long journey to the top of the tower together.

Others of the Dispossessed join their journey along the way, manifest in the spirit of the tower itself. They sometimes meet a cowardly warrior, or a mindless scarecrow. Beggars, thieves, and whores are those who end up being the champions of The Lady, because all of them are in one way or another those made worthless by the disconnection between the Hands and Mind. But by being exposed to Her, they connect with their own Hearts and find the qualities that once held them back from greatness.

By Gregory Manchess

As the heroes approach the Tower, they make many stories of victory over the neglect of the Necromancer. All of earth is won over, and at last the necromancer is defeated. The Heart rules in the Tower, restoring balance and communication between the Mind and Hands.

IV: The Wood Between the Worlds

Reaching his coveted position at the top of the Tower, The Hanged Man learns the secret of moving between the worlds, and the fate of the one from which he came. He finds the means of creating his own Tower, becoming the magician for the next age.

The space between the worlds reveals the true nature of reality: a vast network of towers, all with their own story, all connected by the same central players, who wear different faces from earth to earth. Most importantly, the new magician believes he has found the means to create a Tower which will climb higher than any that came before it. He sets out with this goal, ultimately doomed to the fate of all magicians who came before him. He creates a Tower in a Revised Eden, which falls prey to a new Devil.

By Victoria Thorndale

~~~

Greater Aspects of The Tower Mythos

The Magician:              This is a symbol for ‘Brilliance’. The Magician is easily identified with genius and science, an embodiment of The Tower as a person. The Magician is not always the one who rules the Tower, but is always the one who envisions it.

The Tower:                   This is a symbol for ‘Power’. Towers perfectly exemplify an abstract power that reaches beyond brute material force. It can be associated with divinity, or with magic, or even with the more subtle magic of language, politics, reason and rhetoric. It is also seen as a bridge between a lower state of existence and a higher one. Those who control the bridge determine who gets to cross.

The Metropolis:            This is a symbol for ‘Society’. It is popular to express The Tower as a city or nation because The Tower Mythos mirrors the problems that arise as a result of social hierarchy, and suggests how these problems can be fixed.

The Mind(s):                 These are symbols for idealism, aesthetics, and morals. The Emperors, Queens and Hierophants fit into this category. In the beginning of The Wheel, they are seen as corrupt, or open to corruption. They spout ideals of control, strict order, and crippling extortion which permits them to lead extravagant lives. Inevitably they attempt to control The Tower by means of force. The Mind’s restoration is shown in the Metropolis as social consciousness and movement up or down the class system by means other than force. It is shown in the Magician as a return from isolation within The Tower.

 

The Hand(s):                     These are symbols for practicality, cultivation, and productivity. The labourers, bourgeois, and crafters fit into this category. In the beginning of The Wheel they are seen as being oppressed to a point of dysfunction, suffering famine or plague, or openly riotous. There are those among them who hold that violent revolution is the only way to achieve their goal, though without the Heart success in this regard only leads to a different corrupt Mind. By the end of The Tower Mythos famine ends and plagues are cured, and the working class experiences a renaissance.

By Neville Dear

The Necromancer:        This is a symbol for ‘Corruption’. The Necromancer, though he is one kind of magician, does not have a brilliance for creation. His talent is for destruction. As such, he needs a Tower to destroy. The Necromancer, like the magician, is not necessarily the one who rules The Tower, but is always the one who envisions its destruction. The Necromancer may be taken as what happens to a Magician when he loses his Heart.

The Wheel:                    This is a symbol for ‘Revolution’.  It denotes both travel and a cyclical pattern. The stories that take place in The Tower Mythos are most commonly part of The Wheel, markedly distinct from the events around it, which are mostly related to background and setting. It can be seen as the action linking cause (what comes before The Wheel) and effect (What occurs after it). The Wheel is an effective symbol not only due to its association with travel and cycles, but also because of its physical shape. A central, transverse axle holds the wheel in place, and the wheel moves around it. There is a distinct hub and rim, joined together by spokes. All are good points on which to base metaphors.

The Heart:           This is a symbol for ‘Restoration’. The Tower’s Heart is frequently replaced by soldiers or a guardian when it is not in its rightful place, showing that force is being used in absence of conscience. The Heart is the point of mediation between the Hands and Mind. The Heart also tends to restore the balance to all metaphorical extensions of The Tower: by encountering people, people are healed. By encountering a nation, the nation heals. By being placed in The Tower, The Necromancer is healed and replaced by a Magician.

The Heart is also identified with sacrifice, and does not always survive the turn of The Wheel. When the Heart is sacrificed the Tower is destroyed, along with The Necromancer. Hands and Minds are rendered equal, and are tasked with building a new tower in the revised Eden. Should the Heart survive and enter The Tower, then it is taken that the Tower, Metropolis, and Magician are all saved too.

The Hanged Man:

This is a symbol for ‘Struggle’. The Hanged Man is a third variation of the Magician, endeavoring endlessly to become his equal, but held on earth, incapable of breaking through to the upper levels of The Tower. The corruption that has seeded the earth and stripped it of its resources prevents him from constructing his own Tower. Thus he becomes an enemy of The Necromancer.

At the beginning of The Wheel, The Hanged Man is suffering the same disconnection between Hands and Mind as The Tower and all its other manifestations, capable only of the lowest sorceries and mechanical pursuits. It his encounter with The Heart that restores him to his true ambitions, and enables him to face The Necromancer. He is frequently depicted as an antihero; sacrificing and pragmatic, an abuser of drugs (including alcohol) and language. He is, in a word, ‘Real’ rather than ‘Ideal’ due to his unwilling imprisonment on earth. He changes over the course of the story, becoming more Ideal as his heart is restored.

The Hanged Man is the Magician of the revised Eden. Once he has reached the top of The Tower, his struggle is rewarded when he discovers the means of creating his own, either by building in the ruins of a destroyed Tower or entering a world where a tower has never been.

By Robert Sammelin

The Wood Between the Worlds:

The Wood is a symbol for the fabric of reality, the ‘hidden truth’ that the Magician discovered by reaching the heavens. It is a physical manifestation of the phrase, “It’s the journey that matters, not the destination.” In a way, the Wood can be identified as a Library (another place made of trees and filled with stories). The Wood’s part in the Mythos is to reinforce the idea that nothing really ends, but simply becomes part of something larger and more complex.

The Revised Eden:

The Revised Eden is the name for an earth without a Tower, upon which the Hanged-Man-Turned-Magician plans to create a new, improved Tower. The ultimate teaching of The Tower Mythos is that even this attempt shall fail, but the way in which it fails may be different, or less harsh. There is one significant difference in varieties of The Tower: The fate of The Heart. In some instances it is sacrificed to save the world, and in others it and its Tower survive to become part of the greater world.

Lesser Aspects of The Tower Mythos

A Rose by Any Other Name

The Rose often depicts a revised attempt at creating a Tower more in tune with its heart and the earth from which it grows. One of the permutations of the Tower, The World Tree, is seen as a stable basis for the Hand-Mind relationship which promotes the idea of conservation working alongside civilization. The message here is clear: Don’t forget that the earth is what keeps the Tower standing. A balanced Tower works in harmony with nature.

Sexual Metaphysics

The Tower is pretty obviously a totemic symbol, erect and phallic. It appears at once to mean Power, but in the context of the greater narrative it is an unstable power that, ungoverned by a heart, becomes corrupted. In order to remain stable it needs to heed the Eden that surrounds it, and if not it will crumble and no second Tower can be born to an Eden Revised.

The ultimate lesson to this is the necessity of connection and cooperation between sexual partners in establishing a lasting existence.

The idea of The Tower as a rose or a flowering tree is also important in this sense: flowers, in sexual symbolism, are associated with femininity due to the way they are pollinated and due to their passing resemblance to female genitalia.

Masculinity is identified with brute force, mechanics and ‘heartless’ emotional disconnection.

Femininity is identified with diplomacy, nurturing, and empathy.

The implication is that The World Tree – the most stable permutation of The Tower – is female, or that the magician at its peak is feminine.

Why is The Tower Mythos so recurrent?

The Tower Mythos recurs whether or not people are aware of it because it is based on forms that affect the world we live in, principally:

Evolution:       The idea that hierarchies will always emerge, strong elements will succeed and weak ones fail. A power vacuum will cause conflict over resources, those who have not earned power yet still possess it will attempt to exploit others to stay in power.

Entropy:         The idea that systems will arrange themselves in a way that gives off the maximum amount of energy to neighboring systems. In The Tower Mythos, the earth is one system and the sky is its encompassing neighbor, the Tower the channel between them, and The Hanged Man the manifestation of the maximum potential of the World.

Sequence:        Expressions can be arranged into a state where latter components are extrapolations of former components. As a cyclical Myth, cause and effect are interconnected in a fluid network that allows for maximum variation. All that will happen has technically happened already, so the order in which things occur is of minimal consequence to the events of the narrative.

Opposition:     Every expression that exists has an absolute state, a negative of that absolute state, and a neutral point between it. The Tower Mythos is very effective at demonstrating this through parts that connect in the form of ‘Thesis-Synthesis-Antithesis’. For example, ‘Earth-Tower-Sky’, ‘Hand-Heart-Mind’, ‘Necromancer-Hanged Man-Magician’.

Logic:              Most Tower stories are a sum of their conceptual elements. Given the interactions between all possible permutations of class, worldscape and character, similar events are foregone conclusions.

In short, The Tower Mythos recurs because it makes sense. It is a metaphor for the systems we encounter every day, both personally and in the world around us.

The Tower Mythos, being a story, also has all major characters and plot elements that fit the contemporary terms of conducting a narrative:

The Magician:                                                    Creator of the Situation

The Tower:                                                          The Conflict

The Metropolis:                                                  The Setting

The Mind(s):                                                        The Obstructive Secondary Characters

The Hand(s):                                                        The Assistive Secondary Characters

The Necromancer:                                             Antagonist

The Wheel:                                                          The Storyline

The Heart:                                                           Love Interest (Not always Romantic)

The Hanged Man:                                              Protagonist

The Wood Between the Worlds:                     The Turning Point

The Revised Eden:                                             The Conclusion

The Tower Mythos is not a Monomyth, but it is a specific interpretation of a monomyth with attributes that lend themselves to broad interpretations, and similar interpretations frequently recur. For example, the nature of its Protagonist as a reluctant or unlikely antihero, or the return to a Garden of Eden at the story’s conclusion, or the bafflingly consistent use of Towers, flowers and trees to mirror a climax. The Tower Mythos may be one small part of a larger story. But the gist of it is that it does rise again and again.

As such, it is incredibly helpful in understanding the concepts behind a story, and identifying the elements within a story from their subliminal associations. For example when someone is looking for a story’s point of conflict, they may not find it because ‘conflict’ is too abstract. However if they simultaneously condition themselves to look for a ‘Tower’, there is more chance of finding a concrete association with Conflict and realizing all the other conceptual elements that form around it.

The Tower Mythos can get a little out of control, a clear example of Apophenia, the habit of seeing patterns in things where there are none (For example with number patterns, or religious characters in breakfast foods). It encourages a feeling of conspiracy. Yet, we do know that not all that may be considered apophenia is. The Golden Ratio is a concrete example of a recurrent number pattern. It occurs because reality has certain immutable principles in common with mathematics. If The Tower Mythos is the same, it holds that it too has this quality.

~~~

MINI-UPDATE:

I'm still finding connections to the tower, trying to be strict about what I consider part of the Mythos and what is really little more than my own feverish imagining.

This candidate struck a chord I can't help but work into the melody: Amanda Palmer put up an animation of an old voice-note of Neil Gaiman sleep talking. It made me think of The Wood Between the Worlds immediately.

Props, Amanda.