Christie's Line Between Reality and Doctor Who
Doctor Who includes several interesting characters, some of which are made up, and other based on real historical people. Having never heard of Agatha Christie before watching “The Unicorn and the Wasp”, I had not realized this character on the show had been a real person and actually existed in the 1920’s. Throughout the episode, Christie’s personal life was introduced in pieces. The Doctor and Donna arrive at a dinner party in the 1920’s and Agatha Christie arrives at the party moments after. Through the next interactions, we learn that she is currently a successful mystery writer, has been struggling with her marriage because her husband has been having an affair, and this is the day she will mysteriously disappear.
Picture below from:
Agatha Christie Limited. “Christie’sLife.” Agathachristie.com. http://www.agathachristie.com/abou t-christie#christies-life (retrieved March 28, 2016).
After finding out that Christie was actually a famous writer, I wanted to take a look into her real life. Tina Jordan wrote an article, “Agatha Christie” for Entertainment Weekly in 2014. After reading this article, I realized how close the Doctor Who story line featuring Christie stuck to her actual life. According to Jordan, Agatha began working as an apothecary, which is similar to a pharmacist, during World War 1. She became interested in poison during this time, and began her career as a modern mystery writer (Jordan 2014.) A website all about Agatha Christie also states these life events, but includes more details. Agatha had met her first husband during the war, and they got married and had one daughter. Agatha began writing more by 1919, and this when her career gained momentum. A few years later, Christie’s husband fell in love with another woman. This event along with her mother’s passing was hard on her. According to the author, one night Agatha left her daughter with the maids and did not say where she was going. Her car was found abandoned the next morning and a nationwide search was issued. Agatha Christie had then somehow traveled to Harrogate and checked into a spa and hotel under the name of someone else, which allowed hotel staff to notify people where she was. When her husband came to pick her up, she suffered from a possible concussion and amnesia, and did not know who anyone was. After therapy and other help, Agatha finally divorced her first husband in 1928 (Agatha Christie Limited.) The only information Jordan mentions over this topic, indicated there were speculations that Christie staged her own disappearance, and shortly after this event she divorces her first husband (Jordan 2014.)
A Majority of the information in Doctor Who matches Tina Jordan’s article and the information from Agatha Christie Limited. During the episode, we learn about her struggles with her marriage, which was occurring within the same time frame as this episode. When Agatha Christie first entered the party and was asked why she was alone, she responded with a comment about women making their own way in the world. This response made me think that she was either becoming more independent, or already was.
Since Christie was a mystery writer, it only seemed logical that the Doctor Who episode “The Unicorn and the Wasp”, was a murder mystery, and all of the characters looked to Christie to solve it. Once she figured out the entire plot, she realized she needed to stop the wasp. She lures the wasp away and in the process suffers from amnesia. The Doctor and Donna take her the Harrogate Hotel 10 days later. Because no one truly knows what happened to Agatha Christie during this event in real life, the Doctor Who series was able to use this unique event to create an episode that aligned with her real life time frame. Doctor Who used an episode to explain the 10 days Agatha Christie was missing and why she suffered from amnesia.
Picture Right From:
IMDb. “The Unicorn and the Wasp.” IMDb.com. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1208130/
(retrieved March 10, 2016).
Not only did this episode create a plot around a real event in Agatha Christie’s life, but it also seems like they used Death in the Cloud, a book written several years later by Christie based around poison and wasps, to explain the significance of the wasps in the show. The Doctor pulls out the book and says it could have been written with the memories of the event in the back of Christie’s mind, which only increases the amount of real events featured to increase the reality of the entire episode.
While this Doctor Who episode did pull in all the “real” events of Christie’s life into the plot, we cannot truly be sure the writers made her character similar to how she would’ve been like in real life. In my opinion, “The Unicorn and the Wasp” episode did a pretty good job in showing viewers a part of Agatha Christie’s life. Although I am sure she never actually solved an actual murder and defeated a giant wasp, there were many other key elements about her life that the audience could pick up on. I actually learned about a new mystery writer from watching this episode, which makes me think I was not the only one to take away the historical context from this episode.
References used for this blog post:
Agatha Christie Limited. “Christie’s Life.” Agathachristie.com.
http://www.agathachristie.com/about-christie#christies-life (retrieved March 28, 2016).
Doctor Who. “The Unicorn and the Wasp.” DVD. Directed by Graeme Harper. Written by
Gareth Roberts. BBC Wales, 2008.
IMDb. “The Unicorn and the Wasp.” IMDb.com. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1208130/
(retrieved March 10, 2016).
Jordan, Tina. "Agatha Christie." Entertainment Weekly no. 1343/1344: 31-33. 2014. Academic
Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed March 10, 2016).
