Memories

[hazelk]

It’s interesting reading the reactions to Journey’s End. Or before that to what Willow did to Tara or Angel to Connor or Noah Bennett to possibly everyone he’s ever met. Obviously a lot of people have a very visceral reaction to the very idea of memories being wiped. Personally, I found River Song/CAL’s ending much creepier than Donna’s but more on that later.

Which is not to say that fictional mindwipes can’t be horrific. Bennett using the threat of taking all his mentor’s memories of family is chilling. Angel wiping Connor’s mind to ‘fix’ him inHome similarly, if for different reasons. However, I find it very hard to think of Willow making Tara forget their argument as equivalent to rape or of Donna losing her Doctor memories as a fate worse than death.

One factor may be that I understand wiping memories as being similar to removing a record of whatever happened or even just access to a record but not the same thing as undoing the events themselves. Donna post mind wipe is still different from the Donna of Runaway Bride (who I liked even then, brash and determinedly oblivious as she was). She may not know what it is but something seems to have taken the edge off the underlying insecurity that Ten2 diagnosed as driving her bolshiness. Donna dismissing the Doctor in her final scene in the kitchen already seems a fundamentally happier person than Runaway Bride Donna.

In other cases though the effects of mindwiping on the wipee are portrayed rather less positively. Tara (in Tabula Rasa) and Wesley (in Origin) have probably the most extreme reactions. One obvious difference between them and Donna is that they both become aware of what’s been done and in fact much of their negative reactions relate to knowing that but not knowing exactly how much has been changed. We get Tara singing

“Wish I could trust that it was just this once,”

and Wesley afraid that the memories he’s lost will show that Fred’s life was the price of changing Connor’s reality If you think about it in terms of dementia, it makes a lot of sense. The worst part (for the sufferer) isn’t the final state but the earlier stages while the mind is still sufficiently intact to be aware of its own disintegration but at any one time unable to judge the extent of it. There is another issue involved though which has not so much to do with the mindwipe per se but how performing it reflects on the wipee’s relationship to the wiper. Sandra Bennett, for example, seems almost unconcerned about what the particular memories are that she’s had taken from her but absolutely determined that Noah stop treating her like this. Interestingly Sandra seems far less scatty once she’s been told what’s been done to her even though it had looked as if the writer’s had intended to imply that all the memory manipulation was starting to cause a more general deterioration. I think it’s more about the violation of trust than of mind. Bennett’s actions like Willow’s forget spell are closer in intent (and effect) to lies than to physical violations like rape. They conceal information from the subject, they don’t invade and alter her character or personality.

That said in both those examples it’s still about power and issues of consent are still relevant but not always easy to assess. When the Doctor takes Donna’s memories the scene is written as if the only alternative were almost immediate disintegration. When she begs to stay it’s ambiguous whether she’s making an Achilles-style choice of glorious end over mediocre life or simply protesting that the whole situation sucks. However, for the most part the Doctor’s choice doesn’t come across as self-serving and that takes much of the sting away. When Angel suppresses Connor’s old memories in Home, Connor has just told him that he can’t be saved by a lie and explicitly sees death as the only alternative. Much more clearly than Donna, he accepts that possibility. Angel’s choice for many reasons comes across as far less disinterested than the Doctor’s. It feels as if what he’s doing isn’t so much saving Connor as rejecting him, literally replacing the real but psychologically damaged Connor with the healthy boy he imagined his son would be.

So in conclusion I think what I’m saying is that while the idea that someone would decide to wipe your mind is pretty horrifying (unless the only alternative was death) missing memories in and of themselves aren’t inherently unbearable. Possibly I base this on a growing awareness of quite how incomplete and unreliable my memories are. You forget so much and misremember large parts of the rest but you still get by. A more necessary fiction is the idea that somewhere out there, an objective reality to check those memories against actually exists. I think that’s why I find the idea of (eternal) virtual existence like that given to CAL and River so much more creepy than memory loss. What Donna did is still there, still informing whatever she and everyone around her becomes. Nothing CAL or River does will ever have that much substance again, they’re both trapped inside their own or maybe each other’s dreams forever.

Comments

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Agreed. I'm so much more creeped out by the fake life that River will lead than the life that Donna will -- Donna's life is has a measurable effect on the world and people around her while nothing that River ever does again will ever matter.

Plus, it's like what the Doctor told us about Agatha Christie -- the memories may be gone, but her mind was left changed by the experience of having them. She may not remember, but some part of her is still affected by what happened.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

*Fake* eternal life exactly, although it seemed to be River's choice but the whole CAL thing with them destroying an entire world of forests to keep her in virtual faux-existence creeped me out even worse than the Connor thing.

[par-avion.livejournal.com]

When the Doctor takes Donna’s memories the scene is written as if the only alternative were almost immediate disintegration. When she begs to stay it’s ambiguous whether she’s making an Achilles-style choice of glorious end over mediocre life or simply protesting that the whole situation sucks.

I agree. (And I was starting to wonder if I was a bad person!)

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

We're both very bad *g* I just can't see Donna seriously going for the death and glory option though and there was that part when she agreed that she understood exactly what was happening.