Building the Bad Guy

[Lalwendë]

Now this has got me to thinking about Doctor Who again...there's a family show aired on Saturday at tea-time, on the BBC, and so obviously it must not offend at all costs. Yet it must also have the ability to scare the pants off the viewers and send them scurrying behind the settee. The creators of Doctor Who, specifically Terry Nation, pulled this off in great style by creating the Daleks and the Cybermen.

Both are sexless, ageless, classless, raceless (etc) enemies. In fact their very difference from everything we take as 'human' (emotion, warmth, etc) makes them even more frightening. I think it was in the second of the new series of Doctor Who when the Cybermen first rise again in the parallel world, they have a little speech about how they will 'upgrade' humanity and that if all humans become Cybermen they will forever be free of social divisions such as race, gender and poverty. It was quite chilling - like Political Correctness taken to an absolute and absurd extreme. Of course then there are also the Daleks who don't even have a humanoid form to make them that bit more alienating.

I think Tolkien pulls this off in his own way by portraying Orcs in the main as this mass of dehumanised beings - certainly in his battles. Yet he plays with our heads by then showing us Orcs chatting about retirement - and they do similar things in Doctor Who, trying to make us feel emotional about the remnants of humanity in a dying Cyberman or showing a lone Dalek's feelings. Is that 'messing with your head' bit an essential?

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

Is that 'messing with your head' bit an essential?

I actually discussed this subject not too long ago at a terrorism lecture. It amounts to being the difference between biological and 'traditional' physical warfare. If somebody bombs you, shoots you, stabs you, you die. If somebody slips a strain of something into a couple reservoirs... It's more of a paranoia thing. You never have to throw a punch as long as the world is enough intimidated by you that they aren't willing to pick a fight. People who risk being shot by 'the enemy' aren't nearly as defeated as people who are afraid to drink water or leave the house.

Think about Tolkien's evil forces catapulting the heads of the fallen soldiers over the walls of Gondor. It was unnecessary on a level of brute force. What, are you going to give your enemies concussions? But think of seeing your brother or your best friend or your father, staring at you through lifeless eyes that still hold the traces of terror that were burned into them in their last second of life. It's a far more effective weapon than a boulder. The hesitation alone caused by the psychological impact can turn the battle in favor of the bad guys.

Messing with heads isn't essential, exactly, but it's effective as hell.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

All of warfare is ultimately about morale. The natural human instinct for self-preservation is only held at bay by a complex (and artificial) structure of training, discipline, esprit de corps, confidence, patriotism and so on, collectively termed morale: but there can come a point for any soldier where it all collapses in the face of the biological desire to be somewhere else, as fast as possible. Napoleon understood this instinctively: he spoke of a battle as "two large groups of men trying to frighten each other," and of the "crucial moment" in a battle which, when seized properly, will cause the enemy to "break." Battles aren't decided by killing every last one of them, but by inflicting sufficient casualties and creating the prospect of inflicting a lot more, such that the rest run away or surrender.

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Feanor of the Peredhil

I actually discussed this subject not too long ago at a terrorism lecture. It amounts to being the difference between biological and 'traditional' physical warfare. If somebody bombs you, shoots you, stabs you, you die. If somebody slips a strain of something into a couple reservoirs... It's more of a paranoia thing. You never have to throw a punch as long as the world is enough intimidated by you that they aren't willing to pick a fight. People who risk being shot by 'the enemy' aren't nearly as defeated as people who are afraid to drink water or leave the house.

This is why to me, the Witch King is such an effective enemy. It's not necessarily anything to do with his personal power or the forces he commands, but it has a lot to do with his reputation. There is the prophecy that he cannot be killed by 'Man' - and this works well for him until someone who is quite literally not a man (but without the capital ) comes along with a little Hobbit and disregards this. As in real life, the only way to defeat terror is not to allow yourself to be swayed by it!

Think about Tolkien's evil forces catapulting the heads of the fallen soldiers over the walls of Gondor. It was unnecessary on a level of brute force. What, are you going to give your enemies concussions? But think of seeing your brother or your best friend or your father, staring at you through lifeless eyes that still hold the traces of terror that were burned into them in their last second of life. It's a far more effective weapon than a boulder. The hesitation alone caused by the psychological impact can turn the battle in favor of the bad guys.

Messing with heads isn't essential, exactly, but it's effective as hell.

I think that the heads would have hurt if they'd hit you - but as you say that's not the point! There were better missiles to launch! However firing the head of an enemy over a wall does not only have a psychological effect it can also spread disease; in medieval warfare biological methods were widely used, such as dipping arrow heads in rotten diseased flesh and hurling carcasses of diseased beasts over the walls and dropping them in wells supplying water.

And going back to the psychological effects, the other is that using these heads as missiles shows immense disrespect. It shows that the enemy are somewhat dehumanised and will stop at nothing in order to beat you. It's not so common these days in warfare as we have the Geneva Convention, but it still goes on - forces on all sides still take great delight in humiliating prisoners when they can get away with it