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Show Notes
Beware the horrible monster, Erik, that lives in Norway.
Simon and Eugene discuss, “It Takes You Away.”
Episode Synopsis:
In a wild part of Norway, the Doc and the Gang find a creepy, barricaded house. They notice someone peering out a crack from within and go to investigate. Inside, they find a lone, blind girl named Hanne. The house is besieged by a monster. Her father barricaded the house to protect them, but four days earlier, her father went missing, taken by the monster. A monster which, like clockwork every day, makes its presence known from the woods. The gang hole up in the house and wait for its arrival.
Soon they discover a strange mirror in Hanne’s father’s bedroom. The mirror is a portal to somewhere else. The Doctor, Graham and Yaz go through the looking glass, into the Upside Down looking for answers. Inside, they encounter Ribbon of the Seven Stomachs, an implausibly motivated character in an implausibly explained universe. He agrees to show them where Hanne’s father went in exchange for the Sonic Screwdriver. He is; however, eaten by an implausible swarm of flesh moths when he attempts to double cross the Doctor.
Meanwhile back in the real universe, Ryan discovers that the monster in the woods is just a sound system timed to played recorded roars at the same time every day, but before he can tell anyone, Hanne has escaped through the mirror looking for her father. Ryan follows her.
The gang find another portal through which they pass, finding another universe mirrored to the one they left. Once there, they encounter the real monster of the story, Erik, a loathsome, pestulous scumbag of a human being, who also happens to be Hanne’s missing father. A monster so foul that he imprisoned his blind daughter in a remote house in the middle of nowhere, with limited food supplies, no heat, no electricity and paralyzed her with fear by engineering a fake monster to terrify her and keep her in place just so that he could live an idyllic life in a parallel universe where it seems that his wife is still alive.
From a nursery story the Doctor was once told, she deduces that this is the universe of the Solitract, a thing so inimical to the the other universes that it had to be banished to form its own universe, where it exists all alone. Both the Solitract and the real universe will be destroyed if they continue to interact, because OF COURSE THEY WILL BE. The Doctor must get Erik to return. A curveball is thrown when Grace shows up and now Graham has reason not to leave, either.
Things are looking bad, but then, Hanne – but not Ryan – manages to pass through the portal into the Solitract’s universe and she uses her comic book, blind-person super powers to instantly detect that the person her so-called father has abandoned her for is a fake. When Graham realizes that “Grace” isn’t worried about Ryan being trapped, he rejects her for the fake she is and is ejected back into the Upside Down. One by one they are all rejected (and are ejected by) the Solitract. All except Erik and the Doctor. The Doctor uses the fact that the Solitract has no loyalty to Erik and trades herself as the perfect companion for the Solitract, which promptly ejects the superfluous Erik.
Unfortunately, with even one person in the Solitract’s universe, both universes are still collapsing and the Doctor convinces the Solitract to eject her as well, leaving the Solitract behind in the form of a frog that never got kissed and turned into a prince.
Back in the real universe, everything is going to work out fine for Hanne and her disgusting, scum-bucket father. Similarly, it looks like Ryan has finally accepted Graham as his grandfather.