This shot has always filled me with dread. Maybe because I don't remember seeing it on airing night, and it's not often discussed, and so in my first rewatch, after tons of discussion and reappraisal and general accounting of what I thought was every element, this scene jumped out at me without context, almost like it was re-inserted into the show when I wasn't looking. Or maybe because it's so elusive; I can't say I have anything approaching a definite grasp on it.
My immediate feeling is that it imparts me with a sense of industry. I don't know if that's the intent, but it's such an industrial design, and seeing endless copies of the same thing in what appears to be a storage room gets my mind to thinking of commodities.
The implications of that make my skin crawl, but I'm not sure I can explicate.
So, I happened to have read a passage last night in Dion Fortune's Psychic Self-Defence, the occult book where a great deal of TP's mystic mythology originates.
"...the Watchers, that curious section of the Occult Hierarchy which is concerned with the welfare of nations. A certain section of their work is apparently concerned with the policing of the Astral Plane. Very little is actually known about them. One comes across their work sporadically and pieces the bits together. I have crossed their trail on several occasions...Whenever black magic is afoot, they set to work to put a spoke in its wheels. Be that as it may, I came to the conclusion that, in view of what had now transpired, the impulse I had had [to write a series of articles on the abuses prevalent in occult fraternities] might have emanated from the Watchers."
Elsewhere, the "occult police force" that is the Watchers are tied to the White Lodge: "the occult police force which, under the Masters of the Great White Lodge, keeps guard over the nations..."
I mention this because it's this same scene where we see Briggs again, and he seems to have incorporated into the workings of the White Lodge in cahoots with the Fireman in some capacity. Elsewhere, we've seen a previous officer character, Jeffries, seemingly become transmogrified and, if not inhabiting one of these devices, using them to communicate, or as a conduit of some kind. It's hard to reckon with what's going on here because the general fan apprehension, half in jest, is that Jeffries is the device, lovingly called a tea kettle.
I have a friend who theorizes that the parallels between Cooper and Jeffries (and Chet Desmond) lays out a definite trajectory. These are all "occult officers" who, in diving deeper into the White Lodge, become either lost or superhuman. We see Cooper begin to have some kind of mastery over the lodge space, just as Jeffries was said to have been incorporated into the lodge space enough to have been to the meeting of entities. If we take these as similar tracks, it would mean that Cooper, eventually, winds up utilizing (or stuck inside?) one of these devices.
So does that mean these devices all correspond to an ascended human? What does this imply about the similar device that Naido leads Cooper to which seems to act as some kind of electrical transformer? Are these not unrelated, and Jeffries is also some kind of electrical transformer? Are the fates of these characters to become energy sources of some kind, powering the workings of the White Lodge?
Briggs' role here also fills me with dread. He's a beloved, good-hearted character, and yet I can't square that with the tone of his spectral appearance. If we compare him to the Fireman, what we're seeing is someone putatively good operating at such an elevated state that it becomes unfathomable, even dread-inducing. But the shot of the endless devices is so dread-inducing to me that I can't take it at face value as being connected to a source of good, even as their workings are re-directing a blatantly evil character like Mr. C.
It's kind of maddening!
Anyway, so, Briggs as a head is apparently because his body is still in reality, unlike Jeffries and Cooper whose entire selves are in the lodge space, able to transmogrify and inhabit a device. And so, is that the only reason Briggs isn't also inhabiting a device? Wouldn't that make his presence "lesser"? Then why does it seem like he, on the contrary, at least visually, is elevated above the rest, to the point he inhabits a universe in Part 3?
Beats me!
