Helix - In a White Room With Black Curtains



 

Is there any doubt that that in the "White Room" that is the world of Helix, they are not afraid of going to the darkest places?

Here's some of the lyrics to Cream's "White Room".

"In the white room with black curtains near the station.
Blackroof country, no gold pavements, tired starlings.
Silver horses ran down moonbeams in your dark eyes.
Dawnlight smiles on you leaving, my contentment.

Ill wait in this place where the sun never shines;
Wait in this place where the shadows run from themselves."

The lyrics to White Room were from a poem written by Pete Brown and adapted to music by bassist Jack Bruce back in 1968.  They are oddly prescient to the place where Helix finds itself now.  The "Black Curtains" evince the funereal feeling that now hangs over Helix.  The "Dark Eyes" belong to the morphine addled Sarah.  "The Sun Never Shines" in this arctic Hell and "Wait[ing] In This Place Where the Shadows Run From Themselves" evinces thoughts of virus plagued zombie vectors bouncing off the walls if not the "shadows" that lurk in the heart of every man and woman that is trapped there. 

I guess I should have known we were headed for a dark place when I heard the monkeys screech when Sergio set them to flame  Does that mean the monkeys were held in a frozen stasis until revived by the flames?  Let's keep that thought in our back pocket till later.


"Oh happy dagger!  This is thy sheath; there rust and let me die!"

 
Increasingly, Hatake has taken on the form of some tragic Shakespearean figure.  Juliet?  Hmm, probably not.  Perhaps closer to Hamlet, Lear or better yet, Prospero of "The Tempest" fame.  Yet, Hatake does invoke some weird romantic vibe reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet especially when he talks to Julia.  Oh, I get it, Juliet, Julia, now it makes sense. 

That's a little creepy.

If Hatake were to be a Lear like figure looking to bestow his kingdom to his daughter then that would make more sense.  Especially in light of the childlike scrawl Julia discovered in the previous episode added to the fact that Hatake tells Julia of his own daughter's death and how Julia reminds him of her.

Was Julia truly a child when she left that scrawl and Hatake began to treat her like the daughter he lost?  At one point when Jaye was (get it, Jaye as in "J" for Julia) revealed to be a hallucination I thought the scrawl was a hallucination also but now I think not.



Julia remarks to Jaye she "would have remembered those vacations to the Arctic Circle as a child."  But since we now know Jaye is a figment of Julia's imagination, Julia may not be consciously aware of her visits of long ago.  Or not long ago.  Hatake doesn't seem that old to be a father figure to Julia.  I'm thinking Julia was reduced to a child like state when she was held there by Hatake.

I'm conflicted over this theory so I will have to wait until we get some Hatkae/Julia flashbacks, if we get any at all.


Hatake did manage to maneuver himself into meeting up with Julia.  He played upon her sympathies by wounding himself and gave himself a convenient alibi as to why he was down there and what happened to the "three wise men" he shot in the episode before.

My obsession with the Hatake/Julia dynamic is beginning to mirror the obsession Hatkae has with Julia and I am dying to know what her role is here.  But let's get back to the other amazing and darker revelations from this past episode.

Darker Places


Sorry, I had to include this image.  Poor Doreen.  In interviews, Cat Lemieux did say she wanted her face shown in this episode after all the makeup work she had done.  Is this what she meant?

At least the secret is out about her death and Sergio has been outed as the killer.

And speaking of secrets, look at what's in the white room!

 
Wow!  Decapitated heads held in a blue circle of frozen stasis!


And lo and behold we get "Dr, Hvit."  Is HVIT an acronym for something?


I'm not sure what "HVIT.EIMAR" is supposed to mean if anything.  At one point I thought the HV of HVIT stood for, "Human Vector" but I haven't worked out the rest of it.  But this does harken back to our frozen monkey scene from the beginning.  When thawed they came alive and screeched aloud.  Is that why the good Doctor's head is being kept out in the frozen badlands?   Was he infected, decapitated, and then instantly frozen only to be thawed and resuscitated for later use?

God, I hope so.





TV has made great use of decapitated heads recently.  From Futurama to Sleepy Hollow and the Walking Dead.   All kept in stasis and ready for later use.  Awesome.


Speaking of being held in "stasis".  Peter seems to be coming out of his stasis like coma state.  Good thing he has kept his head.  But this is in keeping with the thematic line of resurrection.  Should we make the connection between "Dr. Hvic" and Peter "coming out of it" and or "resurrected?" 

I say yes.

Once Hatake makes it back I can see him being reunited with Dr. Hvic (Human Vector Infected Component?) and Hatake will hook up the tubes and electrodes which will resuscitate Hvic.

The eyes will open, he'll look around, his mouth will move and he'll say......





Comments

  1. Hi Dave,

    Oh poor Doreen, that was truly gruesome.

    I liked the explanation of the “white room”. Every time someone looks out Hatake’s window they stare out into that abyss. Infinite and claustrophobic in it’s lethality at the same time. A white room does evoke images of a padded cell for the mentally deranged. Not a bad comparison considering the mental state of the vectors.

    I don’t know what is most disturbing: frozen heads in jars or the fact that there is apparently a storage facility designed to hold frozen heads in jars. (Next to BURN-E’s blue light) Let’s round out the head in a jar club with Newton the shape shifter on Fringe. Of course they will revive Dr. HVIT, he’s Chekov’s head, and the monkeys are certainly foreshadowing. So can the virus be stored frozen in brain tissue, but killed by fire? Final play, nuke the base. As for HVIT, “human vector in transition”? I think it’s more likely that it is just his name as the bald lab doc thinks HVIT refers to a specific man and there are multiple heads in jars.

    Julia/Jaye. I guess this plot device has been used plenty, but it reminded me of the story in World War Z (in the book, not included in the movie) about a female pilot who’s plane went down in zombie territory. Julia’s inner self knows her way around the base and where the supply lockers are. I think the initials on the wall are real. I am curious why Hatake went through such an elaborate ruse to gain her trust. Is he trying to get her to remember a specific incident when she saved someone from harm? Or is he just trying to push her to her heroic limits, encouraging her brain to rewire in a particular direction? Odd. I hope we haven’t seen the last of Jaye, she was fun.

    Leaving Sergio stabbed with his clothes lying nearby out in the snow instead of just finishing him off is a bad Bond villain move.

    Sarah, yawn. It’s nice that she’s compassionate, but she should be doing SOMETHING to contribute to stopping the virus. I hope they find something useful for her to do.

    Prepping for a snow day, Lynne

    ReplyDelete
  2. So how did the snow day go? We were told not to report for work so we watched "Captain Phillips." I thought it was pretty good.

    I've seen a list of episodes for the full season and there is one called "Level X." I made a joke on the Facebook Helix discussion page that is where the heads go to chill out. Get it? Ha! Seriously, how deep does this place go?

    It turns out Hvit as a surname has Germanic and Nordic origins and it literally means "white." Appropriate for the "room" they kept him in.

    Spoiler alert - Looks like we're done with Jaye. Her IMDB page only credits her for two episodes. I was hoping Hatake was trying to invoke hallucinations as part of his experiment with Julia. Guess not.

    I like your theory Hatake is trying to lead her around and get Julia to reveal something from her prior experience there. Sounds good. Maybe she will remember Dr. Hvit.

    Oh, I know what Sarah's job is. To distract Alan as much as possible! Not in an evil way just in a lame plot device way. Sheesh! Maybe Peter will steal her away also.

    Alan, you cannot win.

    We haven't seen the last of Sergio. He has to come back and get his revenge on Daniel. Sooooo, Bond villain.



    ReplyDelete
  3. 9 inches of snow here. I'm glad they called it the night before so I could sleep in :)

    Nice work on Hvit, white makes sense. Interesting also that the virus oozes black. Bummer about Jaye, I liked her. Sarah just irritates me.

    Yeah, maybe Julia has something buried in her memories that Hatake needs.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular Posts