Reviewing time for MAG140! … abridged version because I want to be Caught Up with these before this week’s release and Time Is An Enemy and so is my ability to do things without a deadline.
- I have not much to say about the statement itself except that:
(MAG140, John Flamsteed) “You are familiar of course with my persecutor and tormentor Edmond Halley. The one so oft descending upon me as Nemesis with her sword to avenge upon my hubris. […] I will admit that in my heart, I nurtured such dreams of revenge that when they came to me the name of God felt hollow upon my lips. Another dignity stripped from me by mine enemy. […] No. If there was to be a confrontation or action taken against Raymer, it would be I, and I alone, that would have to take it. […] Again he traced his path under that dark and hidden wood, and again I followed, quiet in my manner, keen in my observance. […] It was that in his visit, he was accompanied by Edmond Halley. My dear Raymer, whose body had gone cold and still in my own cruel hands. […] they were the eyes of my Raymer, the one I couldn’t destroy.”
… insert here Kate Beaton’s “MY NEMESIS” comic, holy Mew John Flamsteed. In the same vain (warning for description of murder by drowning):
(MAG140, John Flamsteed) “I wasted no time, and drew my smallsword, and praised to God, who gifted me foresight to carry it. I struck Raymer a fierce blow to the leg. He fell, still clutching at me, and in a moment, cast my sword away into the trees and grabbed at my coat. With a fierce strength never before awakened within me, I gripped the head of my foul adversary, and forced it down, into the dark pool before us. There I held it, the water so cold upon my skin the marks have yet to fade. And Raymer trashed, and kicked, and made such sounds as I have never before heard of the dying.
And he was still.
I drew him up with the black water still thickly flowing from him. He was dead at my hand, and though I well knew it to be an act of defence and retribution, I felt within me a sudden terror of discovery.”
I wonder what Flamsteed would have said, if he had been discovered spontaneously stalking and stabbing and drowning Halley – wait, no, I know, he would have muttered “Self-defence”, probably. It just escalated so quickly, as a natural progression in the way that he told the story… but seriously. You were so very chill with murder, dude. (That was a strong grudge, wasn’t it.)
- Alright, so; the events were precisely dated:
(MAG140, John Flamsteed) “I know it was the second of May [1715] when this took place, for it was no doubt the crowning glory that he had stolen from me that occupied his mind that eve, and caused his steps to quicken and grow careless.”
He is referring to the date of ~Halley’s Eclipse~, which Halley correctly predicted would take place on May 3rd 1715 – except “Note: Great Britain did not adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1752, so the date was at the time considered 22 April 1715.” (I know Nothing about dates of eclipses and Britain’s own calendars so I have to trust Wiki on this x”)), so oops, Jonny…? Flamsteed should not have referred to it as being in May...
So The Dark is once against tied to solar eclipses; Oliver had first seen Gertrude’s death as happening around the day of an eclipse in Ny-Ålesund in March 2015 (MAG011, MAG025), and Basira had pointed out the relation between Halley’s Comet and The Dark’s activities in MAG108. If so, that would give Jon&Basira some time to operate in the North pole, given that the next (partial) solar eclipse planned in Ny-Ålesund on August 11st. Given, however, that season 4 has constantly reminded us of the subjectivity of symbols appropriated by Fear cultists and all… I don’t think the dates will actually matter all that much, at the end of the day, and they’ll be screwed anyway.
- The way I understood it: Edmond Halley had discovered Dark cultists and was joining them, was meant to do… something, but got killed by Flamsteed before that could happen and something different happened? Did the cultists have no idea about how to free the being-that-became-Maxwell-Rayner in the water, and whatever they wanted to do around the time of the eclipse wouldn’t have worked because the thing trapped in there needed a corpse to get out?
(MAG140, John Flamsteed) “a strange and shrouded wood not a league from what might draw the interests of the pompous fool with whose whims I was now so well-acquainted. And in that quiet seclusion, while I looked on in silence and astonishment, he would meet with figures both man and woman alike, with dull clothing, and eyes that in the darkness of that wooded place seemed wholly black, and empty. Their words were soft and impenetrable to me from the spot wherein I was concealed, but they had much impact upon Raymer – who oft would stagger backwards as though struck. […] And as I waited there, the enormity of my actions settled upon me like lead, and Raymer’s dark-eyed compatriots arrived to attend him. Seeing him prostrate and lifeless upon the ground was clearly a shock, and their distress was marked upon them. And yet there seemed no sadness or horror within their passion, but surprise and confusion, and the question they cast between them was that of what was to be done, for it seemed Raymer was vital to a task as yet unfinished.
[…] he began to thank me.
His gratitude was so plain and sincere that I could scarce understand it as he spoke, but he repeated it again and again, thanking me for his life. For his freedom. I stared into his eyes, and though they met mine, I saw spreading inside them the darkness, and mist.”
And what had trapped the creature in the water? Trapping is usually Web’s favourite activity but… here, in water…?
I was super-cautious about the idea that Rayner was body-hopping, but it seems I was wrong to be, that is what he was doing! Though I think it might not be a human-who-became-an-avatar but a full monster emanating from the power, if he was the water all along? (Aaaand it fits the fact that so many Dark-related activities involved that brackish water. We already had the connection to Svalbard, though, but it’s fitting that Rayner had been sealed in a lake or something.) Or was Rayner even older than the XVIIIth century and had been sealed in the forest for a long time, and only began to body-hop when it first came in contact with a corpse? Even Jon was unsure about a few bits:
(MAG140) ARCHIVIST: So Edmond Halley was… Rayner. Or, at least… whatever was inside him. You said he was dead, though.
BASIRA: I thought he was. We shot him to hell before he could, uh… “pour himself” into that kid.
ARCHIVIST: Mm.
BASIRA: But I mean, didn’t you say he got blown off in World War One as well?
ARCHIVIST: Ah– uh, p–possibly, the, the details are, hum… It’s not exactly clear.
And indeed, back in MAG007 Jon had noticed the name “Rayner” rang some bells (that he later identified as Maxwell Rayner’s cult when it came up in MAG009), though according to Smirke’s categorisation… “Joseph Rayner” didn’t seem be related to The Dark after all, but rather to The Slaughter (potentially with a bit of The End)?
(MAG007, Clarence Berry) “The only thing they’d found nearby were the tags of the dead man among his remains. A man named Joseph Rayner. […] You know the phrase “to pay the piper”. I thought on it a lot through those many months – the debt of Hamelin, who for their greed had their children taken from them, never to be returned. […] It was a month later that I woke up to find [Wilfred Owen] sitting next to my bed. He stared at me, not unkindly, though there was something in his eye that put my ill at ease. “Almost over now, Clarence,” he said to me. I said yes, it did seem to be all coming to an end. He smiled and shook his head.”
I had understood it as… Wilfred Owen exchanging places with “Joseph Rayner” in order to not die, until he had paid his due, and/or the fact that he was allowed to live leading to the continuation of WW1 (as Clarence was hypothesising)? I’m surprised that Jon and Basira brought this up again as potentially being the same being as “Raymer” and “Maxwell Rayner”. What would have caused it to change names, from being called “Maxwell” during Smirke’s time, then “Joseph”, then going back to “Maxwell”?
And how come it took the name “Raymer” in the first place, given how it was John Flamsteed’s nickname to designate him? Unless Abraham Sharp betrayed Flasmsteed and told “Edmond Halley” everything he knew?
What about the thing about dark water pouring out of the mouths of avatars of The Dark, since we know it wasn’t just a Rayner thing – there had been the victim taken by Darvish, too, and we know that Darvish used to be… pretty high in the hierarchy apparently (MAG135, Manuela Dominguez: “I suppose there is also an element of provocation here as well; even with the loss of Darvish, we will still be victorious.”) before Trevor and Julia stabbed him and other followers to death, as they recalled in MAG109. The homeless man (Morris? Maurice?), who was already dead, had water pouring out from his mouth – was he meant to be a host for one of the cultists too…? Is that a regular thing some Dark avatars do, not only Rayner…?
- I’m still not sold on the Elias=Jonah Magnus theory (mostly because I don’t really feel like the way people have been describing Jonah so far… matches how people talk about Elias overall?), though I admit that it could make sense given that Smirke mentioned Jonah’s fear of dying, the fact that Rayner and Elias have ~history~ (and Rayner was around during Jonah’s time), and we now we have a Precedent of body-hopping confirmed – and not just Spooks serving a god to sustain themselves into old age like Simon Fairchild or the Lightless Flame.
(Not believing in what follows, but it did cross my mind that… in a way, Isaac Newton, as described in this statement, could kind of fit, given how he was getting closer to now-possessed-Halley at the end of the story…? (MAG140: “He is a blockish creature of vanity, concerned with his appearance only, and likely to fly into an indecent heat and knavish talk at any dispute. He has no reverence for God, and I pity him the fire that awaits. […] I was… astonished at how cordial his conduct seemed, his temper even and his head steady. But it was not the attitude of the president, that robbed my tongue of speech. It was that in his visit, he was accompanied by Edmond Halley.”))
But whatever Elias is or is not, we might get a few more things about that history between them at the North Pole… ;;
- I wonder how Martin will take the news of Basira&Jon leaving for the North Pole. Will he know before they leave? Or will he notice they’re… not around anymore and Peter will shrug it off because THEY decided to leave on a trip, it’s not his responsibility if they decide to go get butchered in a dangerous place! (Martin’s Life Is Hard and no one understands, especially not Peter.)
Will Basira&Jon keep their receipts to claim their expenses at the Institute. Will Martin process the reimbursement.
- Basira mentioned a boat:
(MAG140) ARCHIVIST: […] So what’s the plan?
BASIRA: I’m getting us passage on a boat heading up there.
ARCHIVIST: … Right.
And I think she would have mentioned the Tundra if it was it, at least to prepare Jon psychologically? So it’s probably not it? But maybe Peter will be the one to take them back, given how his ship had a Precedent of travelling into very cold waters (Sannikov Land, described by “Michael” in MAG101). Well. “Them” if both Basira and Jon make it.
- It makes sense, and feels satisfying, that Basira is indeed heading towards Ny-Ålesund and was the one to gather clues about The Dark: as mentioned, her encounter “kinda stayed” with her.
(MAG140) BASIRA: You remember Maxwell Rayner?
ARCHIVIST: Yes, of course, your… warehouse showdown?
BASIRA: Yeah, well. The whole thing kinda stayed with me.
ARCHIVIST: Mm, I can imagine.
Her encounter with Rayner between MAG072 and MAG073 was not another spooky story in her Section 31 career: it’s something that led to drastic changes in her life. It’s because she witnessed the cover-up of her colleague’s death, and his defaming, that she got pissed enough with the police and decided to quit (MAG075). And because she had given that statement to Jon, she was apparently pursued by the dreams until she signed her contract with the Institute in MAG092 (MAG120, Elias: “The Archivist wanders. He is searching, though, for what he does not know. He passes those places he can no longer watch: […] the empty warehouse of thick darkness and frightened children”). When she joined the Institute, her research brought her towards The Dark again:
(MAG108) BASIRA: I was reading through a bunch of stuff about the Church of the Divine Host. Did you look into that statement about the chapel in Hither Green? Because apparently, right around that time, there was a full solar eclipse going on in, guess where?
MARTIN: I don’t know.
BASIRA: Ny-Ålesund! And when Natalie Ennis talked about it being 300 years ago, well. How much do you know about the relationship between Edmond Halley and John Flamsteed?
MARTIN: What, Halley like the comet?
BASIRA: Exactly.
It’s her thing. Part of her story. So it feels satisfying that she would be the one to end up piecing things together, even without apparently consulting Manuela Dominguez’s statement from MAG135 (though Jon was thinking about sharing it with her), and to organise the journey:
(MAG140) BASIRA: You don’t know what the ritual for The Dark is, right?
ARCHIVIST: Not really, no. Hum, based on this and everythi– Er, something to do with the Sun, I would guess? I– An eclipse, maybe.
BASIRA: I don’t think so.
ARCHIVIST: Mm.
BASIRA: There’s not one due for a while, and I’ve been wondering for ages: why Ny-Ålesund? I mean, sure, that far North, it gets dark for a long time, but… there’s also really long days in the summer. […] I don’t think Ny-Ålesund is the ritual location.
ARCHIVIST: Right.
BASIRA: I think it’s a, er… a staging ground.
ARCHIVIST: For what?
BASIRA: The darkest place on the surface of the Earth: the North Pole, during the Winter Solstice.
ARCHIVIST: They have an Eldritch ball of some sort of manifested dark matter, that’s going to be the focus of the ritual.
BASIRA: … I thought you said you couldn’t know things about them!
ARCHIVIST: I can still read. Actually, you should… probably see that sta– You know what, no. Later. [INHALE, EXHALE] So what’s the plan?
BASIRA: I’m getting us passage on a boat heading up there.
ARCHIVIST: … Right.
BASIRA: I bring all the guns from Daisy’s old stash, you bring the spook you used to mess up that delivery guy.
[SILENCE]
ARCHIVIST: Wh… at? That’s it? [PAUSE] Christ, I thought my plans were half-arsed.
BASIRA: It’s all about when we go.
ARCHIVIST: … I don’t follow.
BASIRA: Summer solstice is the 21st of June. So we leave in a fortnight. […] And should arrive about a week before. No danger of sunset or darkness for a long time. Stands to reason that they will be at their weakest.
… Though it’s coming with its fair lot of Worrisome Things:
1°) Basira still hasn’t told Jon that her intel source is Elias which… would probably make Jon way more cautious about the whole thing. If Elias read her right, Basira’s weakness is her “pride” and if he knows it, he is already using it. Elias did say that he needed Jon to be more powerful, and if he wasn’t bullshitting about that, he had a hand in Breekon’s visit at the Institute (or at least knew it would happen soon); he knows how to use Jon’s concern for people to push him further and to get him in direct contact with more Spooks. Jon is still missing a Dark scar/direct experience… and then last one of the list would be The Lonely, if it’s not already happening with Martin – he completed The Buried and The Flesh in season 4 already.
2°) Basira, stern and unimpressed but hovering, giving Jon a drink, organising the trip to Svalbard, including him in, complaining that Jon doesn’t share enough information with her, concerns me a bit. The parallel with Gertrude taking Michael as a sacrifice to stop The Spiral (by boat, even!) is a bit too obvious, especially given how Jon had called her out about how “You’re starting to sound like Gertrude.” (MAG133) recently. I’m… not sure that’s she’s not planning to try and use Jon to stop The Dark and The Beholding at the same time – since she knew The Eye still “had a chance” at its ritual at this time, and she knows that Elias has been watching and scheming. I have no idea about what Basira is thinking, but more about that later.
3°) Having BASIRA head into THE DARK’s turf is an extremely bad idea, even worse than Jon, given how… she was There when Maxwell Rayner was officially killed. If he’s still around, he will remember her. If he’s not, then the surviving members of the cult (we know there were some survivors) will identify her as responsible for his death (and I REALLY wouldn’t put it past Elias to have leaked that information to them, possibly even making it sound like she was the one to pull the trigger).
4°) If… if that Section 31 operation didn’t manage to get rid of Rayner, that means we know which body he managed to parasite. Until now, I had assumed that whatever Rayner had been trying to do, he had been stopped and killed while accidentally vulnerable, back in the warehouse, and that Leo Altman had been collateral, since he was… dead – I thought that Natalie Ennis had probably killed him thoughtlessly, in revenge?
(MAG075) BASIRA: [Maxwell Rayner’s] robe twitched violently as he staggered backwards, and all the dark liquid suddenly washed down onto the floor in a single movement, leaving Callum untouched. It still gushed from his mouth, though, and as the shots tore through him he spun about and an arc of the dark substance flew through the air. Altman had started running towards them as soon as he had seen the kid, and was almost at the chair when the wave of it spewed out. A few droplets hit him on the cheek and he started to howl and claw at his face. Goodman fired again at Rayner, dropping him to the ground, and the horrendous noise stopped suddenly, leaving only Leo’s cries of pain. The lights came on all at once, and in the sudden painful brightness none of us had time to do anything as a woman who hadn’t been there a moment ago ran up to Leo. She wore a robe similar to the old man’s, and by the time any of us had seen the knife in her hand she had buried it in Altman’s throat. […] It was too late, of course, but as I looked at his still, cold face, I saw his eyes were a milky white.”
… but MAG140 showed that the thing taking the name of Rayner had managed to get free by invading Edmond Halley’s dead body, and that his eyes were becoming white when Flamsteed met him again (matching MAG098’s bit of Rayner having “white eyes”). So: did Natalie Ennis kill Leo because he had killed Rayner for good… or did she do it in order to allow Rayner to use his corpse? Was Rayner really killed-killed back then, or did he parasitise Leo Altman’s body – which was apparently dead, back then, but… could have come back alive.
Because if so: then, Basira is going to see Leo Altman again, moving and seemingly alive, and it won’t be him, and it probably will be worse than The Unknowing for her, on the scale of emotional torture.
- I worry about Basira but, at the same time, I don’t think she’ll get killed soon-ish. The thing is: Basira is still… a plain mystery, for us listeners. We know what she did in the police but we barely know anything about her personal life or thoughts, or what drives her, or… things she likes (except for reading). And she’s been a recurring character for longer than Melanie and Daisy! She has been there a lot, she has been amazing and funny and deadpan, but… I still feel like it’s hard to understand her, because she tends to hide in plain sight. She snaps and makes dry comments and talks about the others, but rarely about herself outside of what she does?
And Jonny has proven that he’s aware of such things: Melanie and Daisy both revealed themselves in MAG131 and MAG133, and these episodes were necessary pieces to understand their current-day behaviour. But Basira is still… concealing and hiding herself. The only glint of her perspective was when she snapped about trusting:
(MAG128) BASIRA: Do you know how I survived the… The Unknowing?
ARCHIVIST: I… No. No, I don’t.
BASIRA: No powers, no… magic or… help. I was trapped in that place, and so I tried to figure it out. And I did. A little. So I kept doing it. I kept going through until I got out. I… reasoned my way out of that nightmare.
ARCHIVIST: Good lord…
BASIRA: Then everything ended, and Daisy was gone. And you were gone. And Tim. And then I got back to the Institute, and Martin sent me to meet the new boss. Then I stood alone in an empty office for more than one hour. I can trust me, Jon. That’s it.
(Honestly, on the list of people likely to die soon… I would bet more on Daisy. Because we know her more, she has a drive, she has people she wants to protect. Melanie is still in a vulnerable place and it would feel too much like kicking the puppy – I’m expecting her to get something around John Amherst before she can kick the bucket. Martin is… a likely contender, too, but MAG138 gave me the impression that no, he needs Something more for a potential death to feel satisfying: he needs his story without involving Jon, or not as a constant helper/sacrifice. Basira is facing Her story right now, but, as mentioned, her feelings are still a mystery to us.
Doesn’t mean that Jon&Basira will be safe in Svalbard, I’m fully expecting them to get hit very hard but… we would need Basira’s words and perspective and feelings, I feel, before she could die.)
- On the subject of Basira being secretive… it seems like Jon’s powers get out of control around her the most? He only slipped in front of Melanie when she was heading out to see her therapist (Melanie going out was an odd thing, he was curious and accidentally compelled her) but he… tends to Know a LOT around Basira, in a way that never happens with Daisy for instance. Is it because Basira is hiding herself too much, which kicks his Beholding side into relying on his powers to dig out truths about her? Because he doesn’t understand her and wants to know her, while Daisy just spontaneously agrees to talk and… Melanie has already poured her heart out? He managed to refrain from Knowing about Martin, though, until he consciously tried to use his powers.
I’m in the minority here, but I don’t feel like Basira has been… A New Beholding Avatar in the making overall. She makes me think more about what Gertrude was trying to achieve, actually – staying outside of the box, trying to not get used by the powers and to use them instead, intervening and doing things rather than contemplating and feeding from other people’s misery? She had managed to stay out of The Hunt despite signing a few Section 31 forms (and getting in contact with various spooks: The Desolation, The End, the aftereffects of The Corruption, The Dark…); we know that, unlike Jon, she had been able to stop and quit instead of trying to dig further into the events surrounding Leo Altman’s death: it’s exactly the opposite of what Michael Shelley and Tim did (joining the Institute in order to understand what had happened to a close one who was killed by the powers) and of how Jon himself had behaved back in season 2 and 3 (pushing for knowledge at all costs, including shaking Jude’s hand because it was the only way to get more information about what was happening around him and to him). Comparatively, I tend to see Basira more as unaligned – on a very fine and dangerous line, but… not Beholding yet? She has stopped recording statements and even refuses to witness Jon doing so (“You’re not staying?” “Watching you do your thing? No.”); she constantly scolds Jon for using his powers; she followed Elias’s leads to try and do something to rescue Daisy from the coffin…
(- Aaaaand the answer to “What happened at the end of MAG139?” was that Jon both succeeded and failed to Know at the same time, because he couldn’t process everything!
(MAG140) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] Yesterday, I tried something I… [INHALE] I–I deliberately tried to… Know something, like I did in the coffin, but… there was a lot. Too much [SIGH], and I…
BASIRA: What did you find out?
ARCHIVIST: [SNORT] Nothing. There was “too much”.
BASIRA: You don’t remember any of it?
ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] You drink the whole contents of a bar in three seconds, you don’t remember what the merlot tasted like. [SIGH] It just… hurt.
Sounds a lot like Jon personally knows about the feeling one gets when trying to “drink the whole contents of a bar in three seconds”.
Is all this information within him now, though, and will he be getting a few more coherent pieces later, or was it just a plain failure…?)
(- Even if Rayner turned out to be dead-dead, even if Manuela turned out to have been offed by Gertrude since her statement, you know what’s presumably still around and unkillable? THE DARK’S CREATURE.
I’m not super confident about Jon coming back from this with his two Actual Eyes. Not sure he would still need them to see anyway. But yeah, hum. If he needs a scar, there is a creature that is known for coming back again and again.)
(- I’m not holding out much hope but guuuuh, I wish Julia&Trevor could pop up to fight against The Dark too… given how it was Julia’s story… but she specifically said she wasn’t keen on a long boat trip (after her experience with Darvish&co told in MAG109), and their illegal status makes it hard to fly, so they’re stuck in America…
Wonder, though, if Jon will learn more things about what happened to Julia’s mother, and what Robert Montauk was trying to achieve…)
* Jon is a Disaster and I love him.
* I’m still Hysterical over Jon&Basira’s interactions, they’re just too damn funny… and heartbreaking at the same time. Because Basira used to find Jon funny! And it sounds like dry scolding, nowadays, with Jon being a bit more biting than joking with her.
* I friggin’ love Basira, holy heck. (“You know, we’ve actually got a group chat going, called “British Cops Who Love To Do Extrajudicial Spook-Killings On Foreign Soil”. I’ll just see if they’re free this Saturday.”)
* I also can’t believe that Jon is slowly filling up a Spook drawer next to his stationery drawer. He’s been hoarding the pens after his inability to find one in MAG123, uh? (AND HE’S KEEPING HIS RIB… I wonder if it will become useful as an anchor at some point, or never, and just be the joke that oh yeah, Jon has a rib hanging around, he has to find somewhere to store it.)
* MmMMMMMMMM, did Jon’s powers TMI about Daisy&Basira?
(MAG140) BASIRA: Coffee. Drink it.
ARCHIVIST: I don’t really, er… [INHALE] Fine. [TAKING THE GLASS]
BASIRA: You look awful. You tried drinking with Daisy again last night?
ARCHIVIST: [CUTTING] She was here last night, as you know.
That final line sounded like JON knew too much about it.
* … That small moment of vulnerability when Basira mentioned that no, Daisy is not coming because they fear that it could make her join The Hunt again…………………. ;_;
* SVALBARD TRIP SVALBARD TRIP SVALBARD TRIP!!
Title for MAG141 is… absolutely NOT ominous at all, I can’t believe nothing bad will happen ahahahah (sob). It… really doesn’t bode well for Basira&Jon, uh…
No clue about the entity involved statement-wise, though… Could it be about another journey of the Tundra? John Franklin’s expedition on the H.M.S. Terror – Rayner had been interested in that one back in MAG098, possibly because of Arctic Explorations (though according to MAG133, the crew ended up with The Hunt)?
Anyway: “Nice Boat.” I guess………………………………
