I was quite a fan of Blossom when I was younger. I think there is something about the fast talking kid who always has the answer that appeals at a certain age. Once you get pass that age you stop rooting for Bueller and start sympathising with Rooney.
Once the setup for the episode became clear I must admit I was thinking this one would be a dud. Young women in a mental institution, the hard bitten one, the overbearing medical staff and the friendships that slowly develop, it's been done so often that it has lost most of the interest for me.
Also there was very little in the way of sci-fi which can be used to put a bit of a twist on otherwise well worn stories.
Having said that I think the performances did win out with the episode. I initially found Rita a bit one not "I am angry at everything and everyone" and found the initial scenes a bit eye rolling. Once we got passed this it turned into a more nuanced performance.
We got to see Rita gaining more insight, more control and more empathy.
Jane didn't do much except lie there and look glum but it was more about Rita's story and her development.
It was nice to see Lochlyn Munro. His face looked very familiar and looking at his listing there is loads of places I have probably seen him. I think I even remember him as Meat in an episode of Blossom. He gives a decent performance as the concerned doctor who becomes an ally to Rita. He has a permanently concerned expression which seems to fit his role.
The other 2 medical staff were fairly interchangeable, concerned more with using their power and advancing the research than helping Jane.
The experiments seemed a little crude. I understand they wanted to see if they could get Jane to feel pain but the mess they make seems unnecessary. There are many ways they could test this with far more control and without leaving her with dried blood smeared on her and what appear to be burn marks on her arm.
In the end they bungle it and end up killing her.
Believe it or not, the most science-fictiony element in the tale was the solution that injected into the neck produced almost instantaneous unconsciousness.
Rita was knocked off by that "Vulcan pinch serum,"
Yeah it's one of those strange tropes that I think we are stuck with. Rendering people unconscious and the implications of it are always oversimplified in media. Need to get past a guard, a quick choke and he is out for at least 10 minutes. In reality he would start to gain unconsciousness almost immediately after you released the choke to raise the alarm, unless you had done serious damage in which case he wouldn't be getting up for some time. Either way it's not the humanitarian, no kill option presented in movies, tv and video games.
There are drugs I use at work which can render people unconscious very quickly, we usually administer them in the arm so they take 1 arm brain time to work (the time it takes blood to carry the drug from arm to brain) usually around 15-30s. To speed this up you could administer it in the carotid artery thus ensuring it goes directly to the brain, but that is not something you could hit reliably without having a feel first and even then there would be a bit of bleeding depending on the needle size.
The other problem and it is what Michael Jackson ran into, is that anaesthetising someone comes with a variety of problems that need to be managed. Suppressing the consciousness can lead to loss of airway maintenance, you see this to a degree in people who snore when they sleep after drinking alcohol. If complete there is no oxygen getting in and unless the airway is restored damage can occur quickly.
Add to that the side effects of the drugs and there is a reason I have a job.
There is developments on using needleless administration of drugs but they are much slower as they rely on the drug diffusing through multiple layers. We do have them now in the form of patches and creams, including nicotine patches. But they are good for slow continuous release of a drug rather than rapidly rendering someone unconscious.
- What's in a sign? - Something weird. I noticed the Young Doctor had what looked like an infinity sign on his tunic, and Rita specifically mentioned that.
Did the sign only turn up for that scene? In which case could it be that was when she was wearing the goggles. Perhaps they sometimes use it in tandem to do therapy and she projected the sign.
- Location, location, location - Welcome to Paradox is a low-budget show. But I like the way they creatively use ordinary buildings that just suggest some futuristic aspect.
Yeah that's one of the nice aspects of the show. It was something Doctor Who would also do, finding interesting or advanced looking building as locations. It works better than the CGI which is limited at this point.
In the end this episode did have a lot to do with Anaesthetics. The futuristic methods to render people unconscious and the girl who cannot feel pain. As our Royal College motto is "Divinum sedare dolorem" It is divine to alleviate pain.
Overall I thought this was going to be a dud but it turned out ok, not what I was looking for in this type of show but ok none the less.
6 ways the experiments did not conform to ethics committee standards out of 10.
