It’s electric! The TARDIS fam goes off to the Gilded Age this week to meet up with half of science’s most famous frenemy duo in this week’s episode of Doctor Who, “Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror.” As always, spoilers within.
1. Flynn!!
You may know the face of Tesla, Goran Višnjić, as County General’s Dr. Luka Kovac, aka The Dude Who Replaced George Clooney on ER, but I know (and love) him from a short lived NBC series called Timeless, a high-concept time travel series mixed with government conspiracy. Višnjić was Garcia Flynn, a bad guy later turned good guy caught up in the theft of a time machine. (Sound familiar?) Timeless lasted two seasons and a TV movie, and was another one of those shows that had the fans to thank (in part) for saving it.
2. Aliens of the Week
Meet the Skithra, scorpion-like beings who have a propensity to take rather than give, collecting technology from across the galaxy. But eventually that technology breaks down, and since their relations with other planets are, well, less than cordial, they are now in need of some tech support. And what they want is Tesla’s creative mind to fix everything on their ship. They can go through all of time and space, present and future, but it’s a mind from 1903 New York that they want. And the Doctor is going to make sure that Does. Not. Happen.
The structure here is your standard Doctor Who formula: Doctor and friends meet historical figure, aliens come with plans to disrupt the course of things and humanity itself, Doctor and friends and historical figure must solve and defeat alien threat from destruction of Earth. Indeed, it’s paint-by-number in execution, but after last week’s powerful and pointed social message of eco-consciousness, lighter fare such as this is a nice break.
3. Inventor Meets Inventor
The Doctor has seen wonders of time and space, advanced technology far beyond the reaches of human imagination. But she’s still just as excited to see Tesla’s lab (even though it’s a bit underwhelming) and talk about the joys and frustrations of the inventor life: losing investors, public opposition, failure after failure after failure. It’s so meet-cute you can’t help but wonder if Tesla’s crushing on the Doctor (in spite of some unresolved feelings between him and his assistant Dorothy), thanks to Višnjić’s charm.
4. Frenemies
If you have a Tesla story, you are going to have Edison play a part. Of course, the rivalry between the two comes into play here, with an associate of Edison’s initially accused of numerous attempts on Tesla’s life (before the reveal of the alien threat). But this is very much a Tesla story. With his famous rival reduced to supporting player and their competition mentioned here and there in passing, they both end up working together (albeit in separate tasks, it’s Tesla’s know-how that really saves the day) to stop the Skithra. There’s even a clever moment when Edison uses the negative press Tesla has received to actually help the situation at hand. It’s a hint of the potential these two scientific geniuses could have had if they worked together.
5. But Does This Change History?
So Tesla saves the world from aliens, and now he’s the hero of your science and history books, and grows up rich and famous with blockbuster biopics and entire museum wings devoted to his work, right? Wrong. As the Doctor tells Yaz at the end, he still dies penniless, with his Wardenclyffe laboratory already in foreclosure. The Doctor has made it clear many a time that they do not mess with history’s already charted course. Vincent Van Gogh still killed himself. Agatha Christie still disappears for ten days. Tesla’s legacy still becomes nearly lost to time. But at least along the way all three of them have had a glorious adventure that left everyone a little bit better in the end.
Afterthoughts:
– One of Tesla’s inventions looks a little bit like the Witchblade. Hmm….
– Most of this episode takes place in the daytime, despite the title.
– Thanks to a crowdfunding effort from the The Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe and “The Oatmeal” creator Matthew Inman, efforts are underway to build a museum and science center on the Wardenclyffe site.
Lines of the night:
The Doctor (to Tesla): “I always wanted to meet you. Shame you’re a big fat liar.”
The Doctor (to the Skifra Queen): “If I had known I was going to have a royal visit, I would have put the kettle on.”
