Once Upon A Time - Season 2 Episode 5 - Recap and Review - The Doctor
Although not to the extent of last week's Rumpelstiltskin-centric installment, Once Upon A Time again excels by narrowing the focus. "The Doctor" isn't as busy an episode as some of the more crammed narratives in the series' short history, and so the story has a chance to breathe. There's room to develop Dr. Whale (David Anders) in his fairy tale persona, which is implied to be that of Victor Frankenstein. This is an exhilarating development, in that it opens a host of literary possibilities beyond fairy tales and Disney movies for Once Upon A Time to pursue. They kind of hint at this by implying that Whale is the Wizard of Oz in Fairy Tale Land. He might still be, as an amalgamation of Dr. Frankenstein and the eponymous Wizard. But beyond the possibilities this episode opens, there's just as much thematic content to unpack in "The Doctor," which is a rumination on letting go. Moving on has a transformative power of its own, and though it's unbearably difficult, it's the only route towards progress.
As much as "The Doctor" serves as an origin story for Dr. Whale, it also continues the corruption of Regina (Lana Parrilla) through flashbacks to Fairy Tale Land, where she was once an apprentice in the dark arts to Rumpelstiltskin (Robert Carlyle), "The Dark One" himself. Her training begins with Rumpelstiltskin imploring her to kill a unicorn by ripping out its heart and crushing it in her hands. Still reeling from what her mother did to her fiance, Daniel (Noah Bean), and still wracked over having pushed her mother through the dimensional mirror, Regina can't bring herself to do it. So Rumpelstiltskin dismisses her, telling her that before she can master the dark arts, she has to figure out what's holding her back. This kickstarts the episode-long foray into what it means to live in the past, in suspended animation, as Daniel's corpse is (Regina is preserving the body from decay via an enchantment). Regina, in her desperation to be reunited with Daniel, learns from Jefferson (Sebastian Stan) that there is a wizard, of sorts, who can raise the dead. This brings her to Victor/Whale, who requires an enchanted heart to withstand the traumatic revival procedure. Of course, since this is Once Upon A Time, Victor/Whale has ulterior motives.
The flashbacks to Fairy Tale Land are paralleled with events in Storybrooke, where Regina discovers that Whale's procedure worked, and that Daniel is alive. Unfortunately, it's with the caveat that Daniel is essentially a mindless monster, less the stable boy she loved so much in Fairy Tale Land, and more an empty husk, sort of like the big stuffy robot body Krang used to get around on the Ninja Turtles back in the 80s. And if that's not bad enough, Whale isn't really in any condition to help out with the problem he's created, having lost an arm in all the ensuing chaos. Making matters worse, Daniel is on the loose, and closing in on the stables where Henry (Jared S. Gilmore) is conveniently hanging out. What follows would be corny in just about any other show, with Regina luring Daniel out of his monstrous state and snapping him briefly back to humanity simply by declaring her love for him and imploring him to come back to her. It's Gothic, in a sense, how this romance has played out, from its initially-benign conception, to its dark conclusion. In his few lucid moments, Daniel begs Regina to let him go, to free him from the torment of a waking death. I really have to give it to Lana Parrilla this week. Normally she goes way too broad in her performance, but she hits the right level of desperation and sentimentality, playing her as a heartless woman remembering what it feels like to have one. It's one of her best scenes in the entire series.
There's a third plotline in this week, in which we follow Emma (Jennifer Morrison), Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin), Mulan (Jamie Chung) and Princess Aurora (Sarah Bolger) in Fairy Tale Land in the present, where Captain Hook (Colin O'Donoghue) attempts to ingratiate himself to the party with tales of the horrors that Cora (Barbara Hershey) has committed. Naturally, Emma isn't buying it, and so she and the rest of the party ties Hook to a tree with the intention of leaving him for the ogres to feed on, unless he tells them who he really is. He reveals his true identity, and stops just short of revealing his true motivations, saying only that they both want the same thing, to go to Storybrooke. It's nice to get a little progression on this front, since it feels like there hasn't been a whole lot of movement on the Emma/Snow storyline, which should feel far more important than it does. But there's still a whole lot of potential to mine from the story, as the series has a really great, clear-cut villain in Cora, and a goal: get to Storybrooke, while also preventing Cora from doing the same. Goal-oriented storytelling is how this show best operates - everyone has their own goals, with intentions often conflicting between the characters. There's a sense of real purpose when these kinds of stories are being told.
"The Doctor" is a fine episode, and even while it answers some of the show's longest-running questions ("Who is Dr. Whale?") it provides us with several others to chew on ("Who is Whale's brother? How did he die?"). There's also a ton of character-based questions to asked, such as how Whale's faith in science has been influenced by his reliance upon magic, and whether Regina will continue her path to redemption after disintegrating Whale, or if she'll fall back into her old ways? Her sessions with Dr. Hopper (Raphael Sbarge) imply real progress, but it's hard to know for certain. What we do know is that Whale's failure to resurrect Daniel in the flashback timeline is what sends her over the edge and inspires her to embrace the hate, so to speak (little does she know, the procedure was a ruse by Whale to secure an enchanted heart to resurrect his late brother - he never really tried to resurrect Daniel, nor ever intended to). She became all-powerful, but that power bespeaks a central loneliness at the core, which can only begin to be healed by letting go. It's a universal scenario, whether in the news or in a fairy tale. We all make sacrifices, and we all have to say goodbye. The difference between characters like Regina and Snow are in how they deal with that loss, whether through steely resolve, quiet stoicism, or moral decay.