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Discuss Cave of Fear

I have just finished watching 'Cave of Fear' and i really think this is the episode where everyone shines their best.

Especially Marguerite and Roxton. Tears were falling down my face watching Roxton screaming after his brother, trying to save him again. The same when Marguerite had to listen those hurtful words from her mother and her mother handing her the gun to kill herself. When Roxton saved her just in time yet Marguerite was still trying to get the gun and she kept screaming......very heartbreaking to watch.


I also liked Summerlee's cleverness of putting the fungus on the skull. This showed that Summerlee was not just a sweet old man, he did what was necessary to protect his family. He contributed. He saved Roxton's life as well.

I liked the interplay between Veronica and Malone too. They make a sweet couple and completely the opposite of Marguerite and Roxton. They always work well together as a team, especially when they were trying to get away from the dinosaurs. I liked when Malone puts his rifle in the dinosaurs mouth and shoots. I think he say's something like 'eat this!' but i'm not sure. It is at this point that you can Malone begin to change and develop. Learning how to survive.


Tribune: Frankly, Centura's ambition makes me look like a slacker!

Writing my little fiction about Cave of Fear got me to look back at the old crux review. Thought I'd share it once again.


A nightmarish episode for most of the explorers, reduced from a band of brothers to unsure individuals facing tough internal demons on their own. Each person is rescued from their nightmare by the kindly intercession of one or more of their band.

The journalist's progress

Ned's awkwardness in The Lost World is demonstrated in the first few seconds of the episode. Caught gawking at Veronica bathing in the waterfall, he sneaks away, embarrassed as Veronica smiles. Next he freezes in the face of danger and pays a painful price. Later he shoots too quickly earning Veronica's mocking laughter. At the end, however, he gains redemption facing vicious raptors and his own self-doubt with courage. He also wins the reward of Veronica's kiss. He is bold enough at the end to ask permission to kiss her again. If he only knew how rare those kisses would be.

Lord Roxton -behind the mask

We learn a lot about the great hunter in this episode. In the beginning he mentions his promise to Challenger to 'follow him to hell and back', a pledge that will guide his actions for the next three years.

Though a brave guardian, Roxton is a harsh judge of people. He scorns Ned for his indecision, thrusting his rifle at him "Next time, use this." He is uncivil to Marguerite, taking the map from her hands at the first cave, then slapping it back at her. He is rude to Summerlee after his frailty puts them in danger with the big stony dinosaur. "Pull yourself together man!" Both Marguerite and Summerlee earn their way back into favour: Marguerite with her sensible, skilled partnership throughout their journey and Summerlee through his act of cleverness and courage in the cave. Only Veronica escapes his criticism, he respects her jungle savvy.

He softens a bit even before the harrowing experiences with his tormented memories. He puts out a guiding arm when Marguerite falls and though his comment is patronizing, it doesn't have the same edge as his normal tone to her. He expresses some real concern when they split up to explore the tunnels, a change so noticeable that Marguerite appears not to know how to take it.
At the end he takes a chance, showing kindness to Marguerite, giving her an opportunity to 'sit this one out' and is visibly hurt when she blows it off.

You're always hurt by the ones you love

The hardest part of Cave of Fear is watching the twisted cruelty of the conjured loved ones toward their close family members. Perhaps it indicates that the pain we inflict on ourselves is the worst.

Roxton's ghost is physically and mentally cruel. He is the prosecutor making his summation to the jury and the judge proclaiming the verdict of guilty. And guilt is the chief emotion that Roxton feels, not fear as his faux-brother says he wants, but guilt - for murdering his brother, stealing his title, breaking his father's heart and abandoning his mother. William then gives him a chance for redemption 'Save me!' which would result in John's death- if not for Summerlee's sharp thinking.

If Roxton's ghost would beat him to death with fist and boot, Marguerite's demon would slice her to pieces with a stiletto. The false mother alternately led Marguerite on then spurned her, allowing the lonely lady to share her hopes "It's the way I've dreamt it a thousand times." before telling her no mother could ever love her. She had Marguerite in tears, curled up in the foetal position, hands over her ears to keep out the quiet barrage of soul-destroying abuse. Then with a few words, she lures her to her feet and holds out her christening blanket, only to have it contain a pistol. Then she quietly urges Marguerite to make an end to a life where she never belonged. The hardest moment for me though was when she finally convinced Marguerite that she was her mother. As the abandoned orphan hugs her new-found parent, the woman stiffens in her embrace, her face icy, emotionless.

Wonderful moments

After Ned is injured, the explorers have to make a decision. All are suspicious that Marguerite would leave him 'to the wolves' Instead her idea is practical, accepted and acted on, probably for the first time.

Marguerite has such an open soft spot for Summerlee. She tries to protect him from the stony dinosaur and comes to his rescue when he falls behind. As Roxton and Marguerite approach the cave before Summerlee, she gives Roxton that little headshake to indicate that the professor shouldn't accompany them. Then Marguerite follows it up with the sweet 'call Scotland Yard' comment.

The slip in the cave and the great way Marguerite shrugs off Roxton's helping hand. It's like her whole body can't bear to be touched by him (at this point, she is still very defensive around Roxton).

Challenger, Cassandra's plaything. Some very unusual moments for George. I believe this may be the only episode in which he never uses the word 'science'. He does however say he has "another destiny". And in the face of imminent death he tells Lady Yorkton that her lovemaking played second fiddle to a 'barmaid in Brighton'. Challenger's Jessie is a barely-thought-of entity in this early episode.

Roxton's rescue of Marguerite. At first it's a fight but there is a telling moment as she is first pressed against his chest. One hand reaches up to his face in a kind of caress. Of course, he tosses her to Summerlee at that moment (sigh)

Lines to remember

Marguerite: He'd better be dead or I'll kill him

LCY's toast: To old friends and new ones. All: To old and new!

GC: I'm a married man! LCY: How Victorian of you!

LCY: I changed my mind MK: Bitch! LCY: Queen!

LCY: There are no rules here. This is a new world.

Veronica: That was one angry pig!

LCY: No man leaves me. (Marguerite-Paradise Found)

WR: Be a hero. Be a man. Kill me again.

WR: You know what I was afraid of? You, dear brother.

Marguerite's 'mother': And those thoughts you have, those terrible thoughts..."

LJR (as he recovers from the fungus): Marguerite!

Wonderful episode. They really split up the explorers in this one and each actor does a great job - Ms Blakely's role is particularly harrowing. By the way, pause the DVD when Cassandra points at the map. It's quite a cool map -tropical island, mountains (or pyramids), serpents, flaming something??

sc

I've read your fanfiction and I liked it very much. It has some different points that in the chapter they aren't shown but they accord perfectly. I don't know if I am explaining well, my English is quite basic.
My favourite season is the third but I love also the one. For me this chapter show us the beginning of the developping of the character of Roxton and Marguerite. He was quite dull but he cares for Marguerite and she is selfish but she cares for Summerlee. Also, we discover the courage in Ned.
I am waiting for reading your next Fanfictions.

I agree with you, montse, that this episode marked a real change in Roxton. Before this he has kind of a cool, superior attitude but when he is with his brother he doesn't know what to do. His skill and strength at fighting is no use to him here.
As for Marguerite, we saw in Nectar that she could be kind as well as hard but in Cave of Fear we understand how awful things were for her as a child. That line "those thoughts you have, those terrible thoughts" lets us catch a glimpse of what is inside her.

Thank you very much for your compliments on my story. I am glad you enjoyed it. I should have another story coming out in a couple of months or so.

sc

I don't think it's so much that it's what's inside Marguerite, but what she herself believes is inside her from her years of not knowing who her parents are or why they supposedly abandoned her. All she's had to let her know that she had parents is her locket and she's not even sure if it's from her birth parents or not. Sadly during the time period that Marguerite was born and lived in, orphans were treated horribly. Like it was their fault they were orphans. That had to do a number on her psychologically. That's why I think she thinks she's "evil" like the vision she had of her mother said (I don't think for one minute that her birth mother really felt that way - how would a hallucagenic (sp?) drug know what her birth mother was thinking if she wasn't there with her?). I think the mother we saw is the one Marguerite believes she has since from what we can gather, she had no loving mother or father raise her. I think she probably lived a very lonely childhood tossed from orphanage and boarding schools where because of her gifts she was the outcast and made fun of.

As much as Marguerite tries to hide it, she deep down is a truly compassionate person but because life dealt her a pretty awful hand, she's learned that compassion doesn't get you very far, not in the life she's had to live or lead (as in her time during the war). Until she felt comfortable enough with the others, she rarely showed that compassion and it was usually always with Summerlee. I think she did this because he never gave her a reason to not trust him. He, imho, never judged her or her motives. I think that is why she was always so kind and compassionate towards Summerlee.

SunKrux

I think your conclusions about how Marguerite's awful upbringing led to her being the woman she is are right on. However my take on this episode is that the fake mother is a manifestation of Marguerite's own beliefs about herself. In a later episode another 'spirit' described Marguerite's inner state as being full of 'fear, guilt and self-loathing' 'Adrienne' said that it might not be true but it was what she (Marguerite) felt.

So in this case when the fake mother says Marguerite is full of aching and has terrible thoughts, I believe that is a true description of what's inside Marguerite.

If we accept the 'battle of good and evil' storyline proposed by J&G I suppose it follows that Marguerite would be partly evil - her heritage from Morrigan. But if we see her as just an ordinary person, then what she thinks and feels about herself is 'what's inside her'.

I wonder sometimes why she's kind to Summerlee here. If you look at the first 3 episodes Summerlee is not particularly nice to her- he doesn't come across very well- scared for his life and usually bickering with Challenger. I wonder perhaps if the connection is more due to what happened in Nectar - that when she had to take care of him when he was on death's door it activated some kind of deep-seated 'maternal' instinct. Is it a Confucian concept that says a person becomes responsible for a life they save? Well I think something like that happened to Marguerite.

But definitely as time went on their relationship turned into respect and deep caring.

sc

Uh, you just said the same thing I said.



Since Marguerite knows nothing of her heritage, she wouldn't necessarily know that she is possibly part "evil". Therefore, I think that a possible reason she feels the way she does is because of how she was treated as a child. I'm sure no one who knew about her heritage bothered to ever tell her about it, so as a small child she was probably treated very differently because she was an orphan basically and quite possibly her adopted parents might have known about her heritage and they were scared by it and treated her accordingly until they too abandoned her.




I don't think he went out of his way to treat her any differently, not like the others. I don't recall him ever blaming her for stuff when things went wrong, even if it was her fault. I'll have to watch the first three eps again to see what you're seeing.

I think she's always had a compassionate side, but like I said earlier, she's kept it hidden. The scene when the German pilot and she are recalling an event from both their pasts it appears to me that she's displaying some of the compassion she has as she's recalling the young woman begging for her life before she gets shot.

Basically SC, I think you and I agree on Marguerite and how she sees herself.

Sorry, Sunkrux, I misunderstood. When you replied in your post that it wasn't what I said it was
and underlined the difference,

I thought you were disagreeing with what I'd said. My mistake! Glad we're on the same page.

sc

No worries. It's all good. I might have gotten a little confused because you mentioned that Marguerite is a decendant (bear in mind it's been a while since I've read the summary that J&G gave us) of Mordren. When I read the summary, I was under the impression that she wasn't necessarily related to him, but that she was the deciding factor in which line, Protectors or Mordren's line, would get the Plateau. To me that didn't really mean she was his decendant, just that she would be the one to make the choice of who wins. Hence my not believing that she is "evil". Do I think she thinks she pure evil? No, I do think that she thinks she's some what evil, but I think that's because of her feelings of abandonment and possibly how she was treated by most people as she was growing up.

Marguerite is a blending of the two lines, no? She's descended from Morrighan, who is descended from both the Protectors and Mordren. It would be safe to say that she has a gene or two in common, but she's not "evil" and she's probably distantly related enough to both of the lines that free will could easily triumph over genetics. Don't forget that Marguerite is a believer that people are who they choose to be, not the product of their ancestors. That's critical in determining who she is and her part in the epic struggle of the Plateau.

Yes, she was an orphan-but she was a well educated orphan. She was never adopted, just was put up for adoption. There's a pretty big difference. My guess is that somehow Summerlee had something to do with the trust fund that allowed Marguerite to not be a little street urchin like other orphans of the time. Marguerite attended boarding schools alongside children who had families. I agree that this is were her self-preservation probably developed. Other kids can be quite cruel and probably treated her like scum. I wouldn't put it past them to have beat on her in secret. Has anyone ever read "Chinese Cinderella"? The young girl in that story was picked on in school quite viciously just because her parents didn't bestow gifts on her while she attended boarding school. It's a great book, but pretty depressing. Not unlike Marguerite's probable time in school, I'd wager. Kill or be killed, something Madge took to heart.

"Those thoughts you have, terrible thoughts..."

What a piece of psychological torture, huh? LOL Marguerite's hallucination was terrible. Being shunned as a kid, being different, unloved easily caused her to be cruel and feral in response. But to say that those dark thoughts she had at the expense of her attackers were caused by her being evil? Bologna. It was just survival. Marguerite had to work hard to survive childhood, let alone Paris, the FatMan, WWI, and Shanghai Xan. That's why her sense of self preservation is so keen. It's just sad that Marguerite doesn't see it that way. That she feels that she is evil, and that that's why she is alone, without a family, and empty inside. Ouch, Fake!Mother. Way to try to drive the nail in the coffin.

While I agree with what most of you guys have said, as presented above, I don't think that Marguerite is part evil. Yes, she feels evil, but ultimately she's good. If she were really evil, she wouldn't think of herself that way. She would feel proud, justified, and display more than a little megalomania. Should Marguerite have been evil because of her parentage her hallucination would have had been different, perhaps portraying her as weak and incompetent instead. If you think you're crazy, you're not. If you think everyone else around you is insane, you probably are.

Evil is the end of a Spectrum of Morality, Good is on the other end. Marguerite is always sliding back and forth on the scale, never quite one or the other. That's why it's not fair to say she's "part evil". Evil is endgame. She can be bad, skewed, dark, but unless she's Mordren, Lucifer, or demonic, it's an impossibility.

Okay, I hope I made sense there. That was longer that I expected.

Actually she was adopted. In Legacy, Roxton asks her point blank how old she was when she was adopted. She said around 2 years old I believe. However, she was not raised by her adoptive parents. I think she was sent to convents and boarding schools since I think that her adoptive parents were in name only.




Interesting theory about Summerlee. Not sure how or why he'd even know she existed before they met on the Plateau, but it's an interesting theory.

But she spent from what she told Roxton and the others, a great deal of time on the streets, especially when she was much older (I'd hazard as a teen) running from the Paris police.



But considering that seriously in that time period the child was blamed for being an orphan, I totally get why Marguerite would think she was evil. She probably heard from her earliest memories that it was her fault her parents left her or didn't love her. Talk about psychological torture. Then to have to survive life on the streets and as a triple agent, you betcha she built up those walls to keep everyone else out.



I don't think she's evil at all. I think she, like everyone, has the possibility of being good or evil. I think if she had not landed on the Plateau with the others, she might have gone "bad/evil" but with the love and acceptance of (most) the others, she realizes that she isn't as awful as she and people from her past think she is.



Exactly. I think she might have evil tendencies (like torturing poor Malone about his journals and stuff. LOL But all older siblings are evil to some extent when they pick on their younger siblings) but I don't think she's down right evil or about to be come so, regardless of who her ancestors are.

She actually said "Not more than a year". : )

Thanks Tina, I knew she wasn't much older than 2 when she was adopted, just couldn't remember if she said she was 1 or 2 when it happened. *HUG*

You're welcome.