460 – Doctor Who – The Haunting of Villa Diodati
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Show Notes
There is history and then there are moments in history. This is one of those as the Doctor pays a visit to Lord Byron and the gang. Simon and Eugene discuss the Haunting of Villa Diodati.
Episode Synopsis
It is June 1816, and in a completely atypical fashion, the Doctor has decided to pop in at a famous moment in history just for her companions to sniff the air around some famous historical figures and then leave. They’ve popped back to the infamous night when Lord Byron challenges his guests, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Godwin AKA Mary Shelley, Claire Clairmont, and Dr. John Polidori to write the most terrifying ghost story imaginable. It is the infamous night that gave rise to Mary Shelley’s story, Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus.
But Percy Shelley isn’t there, and the others are more interested in parlor games to pass the time than writing ghost stories.
The Doctor detects an evil vibe in the house, plus there are apparent ghosts and animated human bones flittering about the place. Then the walls go all funhouse on them, except no one is laughing. During this time, ghosts feed Graham some lovely nom noms.
Percy is found in the coal cellar. He has been infected by, and become the guardian of, the Cyberium. A database of a bunch of stuff from the future about the Cybermen… and the Lone Cyberman wants it back. You know, the one Capt. Jack warned everyone about. About which he said, “whatever you do, don’t give it what it wants.” Yeah, that Lone Cyberman.
Not coincidentally, the Lone Cyberman, who’s name is Ashad, is here, too.
The Cyberium will kill Percy if it stays in his head. If he dies, Earth’s history is irrevocably altered and all the companions probably won’t have existed. The Doctor takes the Cyberium into her head, so the Lone Cyberman threatens to destroy the Earth to get it unless the Doctor does the one thing she’s been warned she must not do.
So, of course she does it. History and the planet are safe, but the future has been threatened.
For some reason, the departure of the Lone Cyberman also undoes all the ecological disaster that was the aftermath of the eruption of Mount Tambora the year earlier.
Also, it now seems like Lord Byron’s poem, Darkness, is not about the apocalypse, but about the Doctor. Byron scholars will be confused for centuries.