Cuck the police

Skip to content

Daniel Harper

1 Comment

  1. The Flan in the High Castle
    October 9, 2016 @ 1:49 pm

    I actually really like the weird “they’re still in the game” conclusion of this one. The writing maxim that “stories should never end with a character waking up” has become almost as much of a cliché as the convention it criticises, so it’s kinda fun to see something that swings the other way.

    This sort of ties into the whole canon debate for me – in the same way that it’s silly to argue about which works of fiction “count”, it’s also silly to privilege stories that present themselves as part of a “real” world over those that take place within dreams or virtual realities (eg, like 90% of Philip K Dick books). And I just love the trollish implication that maybe the crew never escaped – that every subsequent episode is actually just part of this virtual reality game. In this respect it’s very like the unsettling non-conclusion of The Mind Robber.

    Grant and Naylor do have a tendency to just throw up their hands and end an episode any old way when they’ve got too many pieces on the board to resolve properly, but I think it fits the show’s chaotic tone quite well – Stasis Leak is another fun one. Looking back, I actually think these endings have a similar quality to the abrupt conclusions of many Adventure Time episodes (though those are more like little non-sequiturs tacked on for a laugh, whereas these are visibly the narrative itself coming apart at the seams).

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Discover more from Eruditorum Press

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading