This weekend the British science fiction show Doctor Who, of which I am an avid fan (though not a rabid fan), had an episode that can only be described as an instant classic. Over the weekend its user rating on IMDb was 9.7 stars out of 10, which would make it the second most popular episode ever of that show.
Brief synopsis (with spoilers, so skip this paragraph if you don’t want to know them): The show’s main character, the Doctor, has just lost his traveling companion Clara in the previous week’s episode. However, he has no time to grieve because he is immediately teleported to a mysterious place that looks like a medieval castle completely surrounded by water. Here he is hunted by a very implacable, very slow creature called the Veil, which is basically a representation of Death.
Over the course of the episode we come to learn that the Doctor is caught in a prison of his own mind, surrounded by his own worst nightmares. The only exit appears to be blocked by a 20-meter thick (or 20-foot thick? I’m not quite sure) wall of diamond. Over the next two billion years (you read right: two billion years in one hour of TV) the Doctor pounds the wall with his fists, while being killed over and over again by the Veil, presumably 20 million times. Each time he dies, he comes back in the transporter as good as new, to continue the same cycle of figuring out the clues and banging away at the wall.
Here is the one thing about the episode with special meaning for readers of this blog. Throughout the episode, the Doctor keeps seeing Clara in his mind. In his visions, she communicates by writing questions on the blackboard. And the third question is:
How are you going to win? (with the word “win” underlined several times).
It’s the Mike Splane Question! If we are to believe the show, this question is what leads the Doctor to concoct his plan of breaking down the wall with his bare fists and allowing himself to be killed over and over so that he can be revived again.
This episode might be an apt metaphor for a chess game, although thankfully I’ve never played a game yet that lasted two billion years. The next time I face a position where I seem to be banging my fists against a stone wall, perhaps I will think about this episode of Doctor Who. I will remind myself to stick to the plan… and if I don’t have a plan, try to find one by asking the Mike Splane Question (which is now the Clara Question too).
P.S. I’m surely not the only viewer who wondered, “Would it really be possible to break down a diamond wall with your bare fists if you had two billion years?” From my understanding of hardness, you can’t even scratch a diamond a little bit with a material that is softer than diamond. Not a teeny weeny bit.
But maybe it’s not quite so all-or-nothing as that. If one hundred punches wear away one micron of diamond, then 2 billion punches would wear away 20 meters, and that would be enough to get the Doctor through the wall.
Does anyone know if it is plausible to abrade off a micron of diamond with a hundred punches?
There are certain other plausibility issues with this plot. As this article points out, it’s easier to cleave diamond than to scratch it. Presumably the Doctor, with his super-intelligent alien mind, could figure out where the cleavage planes are and try to chip off little fragments. Also, a super-intelligent being should have figured out that he could make quicker progress with a spade (which is shown twice in this episode) rather than his bare fists. Finally, as the millennia went by and he battered his way through the diamond wall, either by cleaving or abrading, there should have been some debris left on the floor: diamond dust or diamond chips. With the diamond dust he should have been able to make some kind of abrading tool, a drill bit or sandpaper or something, that would have done the job much, much faster. He’s the Doctor, after all. He comes up with this sort of solution in most episodes. Why did he turn off his brain in this episode and only use his fists?
Well, the answer is (as it always is in fiction) because the writers wanted it that way. They liked the image of breaking down the diamond wall with his bare hands. It was more epic. Or as my wife says, “It’s all metaphorical.”
