The Game of Traps
Feb. 1st, 2026 10:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pedantherI was pondering a possible rule set for a chess variant inspired by Doctor Who, when I had one of those revelations that make you wonder if you've overlooked something obvious that everybody else spotted immediately.
It's this: In "The Curse of Fenric", the winning move in the chess puzzle is the same as the winning move in the Doctor's real conflict with Fenric.
In my defence, the story presents a much more conspicuous explanation for the symbolic significance of the chess puzzle, which makes it harder to consider that the chess puzzle might represent more than one thing.
The solution to the chess puzzle is that the white king cannot be threatened by any of the opposing pieces, but is taken out when one of his own pawns breaks out of its assigned role and turns against him.
(We will take the arguments about the rules of chess as read. Onward.)
In the story, this is overtly paralleled with Bates and Vershinin breaking out of their assigned roles as pawns in the "game played by politicians" that is the War and deciding to work together instead of accepting their appointed parts as opponents.
If you think about it, though, neither of them fits as a direct counterpart for the white pawn in the chess puzzle. It's not a case of one of them switching to the other's side; rather, the impression I get is that they're rejecting the concept of sides and planning to take themselves off the board entirely. One of them does take out Millington – but Bates can't bring himself to shoot his own commander, so Millington is taken by Vershinin, the pawn who was already nominally his enemy. And Millington, whatever he might have thought, was never a king.
Instead, consider how the Doctor defeats Fenric: by persuading one of Fenric's pawns, the Ancient Haemovore, to turn and move against him. Fenric gains the victory for black in the puzzle, but in the real conflict he's been the white king all along.
(A nice little inversion of a standard colour symbolism there, too: the obvious assumption, which Fenric himself makes while studying the chess puzzle, is that the black pieces represent the ancient evil and the white pieces represent the heroes.)
While I was writing this, I skimmed through the last episode to see if I could get a clear look at the board layout of the chess puzzle, and didn't find one, but I did notice an interesting thing about the editing. The sequence leading up to Ace recognising the solution to the chess puzzle cuts between her and Fenric contemplating the puzzle and Bates and Vershinin having their own revelation, but it also cuts occasionally to a third scene: the Doctor having a conversation with the Ancient Haemovore, to what end is not apparent on first watching but in retrospect is the Doctor setting up his winning move.
It's this: In "The Curse of Fenric", the winning move in the chess puzzle is the same as the winning move in the Doctor's real conflict with Fenric.
In my defence, the story presents a much more conspicuous explanation for the symbolic significance of the chess puzzle, which makes it harder to consider that the chess puzzle might represent more than one thing.
The solution to the chess puzzle is that the white king cannot be threatened by any of the opposing pieces, but is taken out when one of his own pawns breaks out of its assigned role and turns against him.
(We will take the arguments about the rules of chess as read. Onward.)
In the story, this is overtly paralleled with Bates and Vershinin breaking out of their assigned roles as pawns in the "game played by politicians" that is the War and deciding to work together instead of accepting their appointed parts as opponents.
If you think about it, though, neither of them fits as a direct counterpart for the white pawn in the chess puzzle. It's not a case of one of them switching to the other's side; rather, the impression I get is that they're rejecting the concept of sides and planning to take themselves off the board entirely. One of them does take out Millington – but Bates can't bring himself to shoot his own commander, so Millington is taken by Vershinin, the pawn who was already nominally his enemy. And Millington, whatever he might have thought, was never a king.
Instead, consider how the Doctor defeats Fenric: by persuading one of Fenric's pawns, the Ancient Haemovore, to turn and move against him. Fenric gains the victory for black in the puzzle, but in the real conflict he's been the white king all along.
(A nice little inversion of a standard colour symbolism there, too: the obvious assumption, which Fenric himself makes while studying the chess puzzle, is that the black pieces represent the ancient evil and the white pieces represent the heroes.)
While I was writing this, I skimmed through the last episode to see if I could get a clear look at the board layout of the chess puzzle, and didn't find one, but I did notice an interesting thing about the editing. The sequence leading up to Ace recognising the solution to the chess puzzle cuts between her and Fenric contemplating the puzzle and Bates and Vershinin having their own revelation, but it also cuts occasionally to a third scene: the Doctor having a conversation with the Ancient Haemovore, to what end is not apparent on first watching but in retrospect is the Doctor setting up his winning move.
