Initial thoughts on Dracula episode 2
Thursday, 2 January 2020 22:39![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
strange_complexI swore to myself I wasn't going to write about this one this evening, as I'm dog-tired and I need to work tomorrow. But it was just too good to resist...
What I liked most is that both episodes now have been framed as narrations, and full of references to the unreliability of narration too. Jonathan's 'manuscript' proving to be nothing but ravings in the first episode, the whole setting of Dracula's account to Agatha nothing but an illusion, and Piotr (or whatever his real name was) and the cook at the end steeling themselves to the task of telling the story of what happened on the Demeter - which would always be imperfect from anyone, but is especially likely to be so here when Agatha specifically told them to lie about what happened. All of this takes the unreliable narration which Stoker originally built into Dracula and runs with it.
I also like that each episode so far (and this will clearly be true for the third too) has been its own distinct, self-contained story as well as part of the whole. Tonight's was in the grand tradition of Agatha Christie murder mysteries, several of which precisely happen at sea, but with Dracula enjoying the role of both murderer and detective. He's still quipping, but I'm entirely at ease with that now. It is part of his devilry, consistently used to entrap and mock his victims, and it also helps to have Agatha on hand, calling him on precisely that.
As for the inter-texts in this episode - oh my! I think the one which impressed me most was a portrait, only ever seen out of focus but clearly based on this image, on the wall in the ship's dining room:
It is not only Christopher Lee, which would be a heart-warming enough tribute on its own, but it is specifically Christopher Lee in The Devil-Ship Pirates which suits this narrative perfectly, both in its title and in the reverse colonisation theme of the narrative. You have to a) know your genre material and b) just be generally pretty clever to do something like that.
I also thrilled at the inclusion of a young woman called Dorabella, who is the eponymous vampire in this (very good) episode of Supernatural. Again, it's one thing to include a character called Lord Ruthven, but having a character called Dorabella is on another level. And I take the chess set in Dracula and Agatha's shared illusion to be a reference not only to their antagonistic relationship, but to the chess set also used to signal much the same in Hammer's Dracula... and AD 1972! (The first Van Helsing clearly stole it after killing Dracula.)
Even the unexpected (but I like the potential!) switch to a modern setting after Dracula's time under the sea is, I strongly suspect, inspired by another Christopher Lee film, Dracula père et fils (1976), in which a similar narrative device transports he's-not-really-Dracula-honest from the early twentieth century to the present day part way through the film. And the helicopter searchlight seems to me a twist on the role of the frightfully modern electric searchlight in Stoker's description of the efforts of the men onshore during the storm heralding the arrival of the Demeter:
What I liked most is that both episodes now have been framed as narrations, and full of references to the unreliability of narration too. Jonathan's 'manuscript' proving to be nothing but ravings in the first episode, the whole setting of Dracula's account to Agatha nothing but an illusion, and Piotr (or whatever his real name was) and the cook at the end steeling themselves to the task of telling the story of what happened on the Demeter - which would always be imperfect from anyone, but is especially likely to be so here when Agatha specifically told them to lie about what happened. All of this takes the unreliable narration which Stoker originally built into Dracula and runs with it.
I also like that each episode so far (and this will clearly be true for the third too) has been its own distinct, self-contained story as well as part of the whole. Tonight's was in the grand tradition of Agatha Christie murder mysteries, several of which precisely happen at sea, but with Dracula enjoying the role of both murderer and detective. He's still quipping, but I'm entirely at ease with that now. It is part of his devilry, consistently used to entrap and mock his victims, and it also helps to have Agatha on hand, calling him on precisely that.
As for the inter-texts in this episode - oh my! I think the one which impressed me most was a portrait, only ever seen out of focus but clearly based on this image, on the wall in the ship's dining room:
It is not only Christopher Lee, which would be a heart-warming enough tribute on its own, but it is specifically Christopher Lee in The Devil-Ship Pirates which suits this narrative perfectly, both in its title and in the reverse colonisation theme of the narrative. You have to a) know your genre material and b) just be generally pretty clever to do something like that.
I also thrilled at the inclusion of a young woman called Dorabella, who is the eponymous vampire in this (very good) episode of Supernatural. Again, it's one thing to include a character called Lord Ruthven, but having a character called Dorabella is on another level. And I take the chess set in Dracula and Agatha's shared illusion to be a reference not only to their antagonistic relationship, but to the chess set also used to signal much the same in Hammer's Dracula... and AD 1972! (The first Van Helsing clearly stole it after killing Dracula.)
Even the unexpected (but I like the potential!) switch to a modern setting after Dracula's time under the sea is, I strongly suspect, inspired by another Christopher Lee film, Dracula père et fils (1976), in which a similar narrative device transports he's-not-really-Dracula-honest from the early twentieth century to the present day part way through the film. And the helicopter searchlight seems to me a twist on the role of the frightfully modern electric searchlight in Stoker's description of the efforts of the men onshore during the storm heralding the arrival of the Demeter:
On the summit of the East Cliff the new searchlight was ready for experiment, but had not yet been tried. The officers in charge of it got it into working order, and in the pauses of onrushing mist swept with it the surface of the sea. Once or twice its service was most effective, as when a fishing boat, with gunwale under water, rushed into the harbour, able, by the guidance of the sheltering light, to avoid the danger of dashing against the piers... Before long the searchlight discovered some distance away a schooner with all sails set, apparently the same vessel which had been noticed earlier in the evening. The wind had by this time backed to the east, and there was a shudder amongst the watchers on the cliff as they realized the terrible danger in which she now was... The rays of the searchlight were kept fixed on the harbour mouth across the East Pier, where the shock was expected, and men waited breathless... The wind suddenly shifted to the northeast, and the remnant of the sea fog melted in the blast. And then, mirabile dictu, between the piers, leaping from wave to wave as it rushed at headlong speed, swept the strange schooner before the blast, with all sail set, and gained the safety of the harbour. The searchlight followed her, and a shudder ran through all who saw her, for lashed to the helm was a corpse, with drooping head, which swung horribly to and fro at each motion of the ship. No other form could be seen on the deck at all.It's unusual for a nun to have direct descendants, of course, though not impossible. But who's to say how many sisters or brothers she left behind in the Netherlands? Can't wait to find out all about the twenty-first century Agatha tomorrow...
