Being written originally by a Brit and being novelized by a Brit, Gareth Roberts' Shada is full of slang.
For instance there's the Doctor's reference to "bung[ing] in peace across the universe" (on page 261). Translated into North American English, this simply means to casually throw away or give (http://www.peevish.co.uk/slang/b.htm). Though that doesn't fully spell out the Doctor's meaning of casually travelling the cosmos.
Much more curious is the labelling of prisoners' rooms on Shada. Instead of being cells and blocks, the prisoners are in "chambers" and "cabinets" (page 286). These two words carry a lot of political weight in any English, but the second is also associated with storage.
Considering that Shada's a prison locked out of the regular flow of time, such an association seems appropriate. All the more so since the prison was designed to be a holding facility while the death penalty's legality was debated on Gallifrey. Nonetheless, referring to cells as cabinets is eerie.
Doing so implies a strong desire to see those imprisoned within as merely objects. It's a subtextual meaning of "cabinet" that dehumanizes what is within; effectively turning whatever is into "contents."
On the one hand, such dehumanization of Shada's inmates suggests that Gallifrey was truly torn on the matter of the death penalty. Those who were headed for it could only be officially recognized as objects.
On the other hand, the rhetorical flourish implies a dehumanization of the politicians embroiled in the debate (at least from a human perspective). Though their dehimanization would be to a more positive end: the coming together of many to rationally decide the best course of action for the group.
The way that the Doctor and Romana speak of the ancient Time Lords, though, suggests that their politicians were anything but coolly rational. All of which points to the strange pointedness of the two contexts of "cabinet" found here.
No comments:
Post a Comment