Episode 3 - Doctor X

This was a tricky one to pick a song for, then my shuffle function threw me Search and Destroy, a cover of The Stooges by Skunk Anansie. Skunk Anansie are a band I’ve recently grown to adore, and I actually saw them live earlier this year – honestly, I’d have preferred one of their original songs (there is only one other cover in the Miraculous: Contingency playlist) but nothing lyrically fit as much as Search and Destroy. If you want, just imagine Tear The Place Up as an alternative song…

Original Plan for Marie

Oddly, Marie Rayne was one of the first Akuma ideas I came up with, in a way. I didn’t know her name or what her eventual Akuma form would be, but in the first draft I’d had a couple of episodes where a sweet little old lady interacted with the Akumas, apparently completely oblivious to them being monsters (In Arbalest and Miss. Direct). My plan at that point was to have her make continuous appearances throughout seasons 1, 2, and 3, before she eventually got Akumatised in Season 4 – the fact that she could refuse to be Deakumatised was always the plan, although originally I’d intended it to be an episode where the heroes and villain have to reluctantly team up to take out the bigger threat.

The main reason that it didn’t happen like that is that I had to take a large break between writing the first drafts of season 1 and season 2 and I forgot. When I went back to do the second draft, I was spending more time on character work and description for each episode, so there wasn’t enough space to include Marie and that subplot had to go. I still wanted to use the concept, so I finally gave Marie a name and a motivation.

Doctor X

As I’ve mentioned before, one of the most difficult things about writing Miraculous: Contingency was that coming up with new Akuma ideas is really tricky. Doctor X came about because I was trying to think of things I associated with France. Marie Skłodowska-Curie, the Polish-French scientist (first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only person in history to win two Nobel Prizes in different fields of science) is high on that list, so I decided to build something around her.

The idea of focusing an Akuma around X-Rays and radiation is quite scary. This Akuma might have a little too much going on – between the anxiety about aging and her failing faculties, her mistrust of people’s intentions, and the hugely complicated abilities, there’s a lot. I think that it works, even if it’s tricky. I like the physical design, presumably looking like Marie in her youth, but with moving blue-green effect flowing over her whole body. The addition of electrical arcs when she teleports feels like a tribute to really old films like the original Flash Gordon serials which represented lasers like a lightning bolt.

Refusal

This was something I was nervous about including. I don’t know whether it would work in the show, but it seemed like a logical extension of the ability to resist/reject Akumas that Chloé, Alya, and Félix showed in the show, and the Gorilla has shown in Miraculous: Contingency. It’s just that Marie is too stubborn and her force of will is a match for Gabriel’s. It makes for quite a scary foe, and also meant that the defeat of the Akuma is gentler because she chose to end it herself. As I said, originally the intention was for Ladybug & Chat Noir and Papillon to have to work together to defeat her, but that wouldn’t work, especially with how far-gone Gabriel is now, so instead I brought in Ryuko to be the additional fighter.

Adrien, Marinette, and Kagami

It’s probably very obvious that I love this throuple. I want them to do well, and to feel happy. I’ve tried to build up their relationships here. Their habit of racing across Paris felt like a fun little game that would develop now that they’ve all got so much more confident in their superpowers and their connection. Also, we got a nice little cameo from André the ice-cream vendor. I think it’s nice how Kagami and Adrien are willing to do something completely new to make Marinette feel better, provided that Marinette is willing to extend them the same courtesy in future.

Lila (Again)

I don’t know how subtle the cameo in this episode is – on the one hand, there’s very little description of the nurse who tries to protect Master Fu, but the fact that she disappears after seeing what Doctor X can do feels really suspicious to me. That could just be because I know she’s there, of course.

Then there’s the misdirection at the end of the episode, where we see Lila in her new headquarters preparing the latest fake information about where she is. The line about “returning to Paris” was intended to make people think she’s out of the city, but that contrasts with the fact that Cerise was very obviously in the city last episode – it becomes clear that she was being sarcastic in The Last Play: The Lost Girl. This was the first cameo I’d included in the first draft – I feel like it would work much better in animation, where we could just see her hands doing all the tricks before it eventually pans up to show her face, but I tried my best with narrative.

Motivations and Heroics

This is one of the biggest philosophical things I’ve ever had to include, but it’s deeply based on my own personal beliefs. There’s a show called The Good Place where one of the characters has done a lot of charity work and raised an awful lot of money to help people, but when it gets to her judgement it’s treated as irrelevant because she was doing it to make herself look good and important. I feel that completely ignores the fact that, regardless of motivation, she still did good in the world.

It's the same problem I have with how the show treated Chloé’s heroism as somehow inferior to Ladybug’s because she wanted to be seen as a hero. After her first mistake almost causing a metro crash*, she learned her lesson and always helped Ladybug. Even though a lot of her revelled in the status and the adoration that being a superhero gave her, she was still doing good and helping to defeat Papillon. That desire for recognition doesn’t negate the good she does.

I don’t fully believe that it’s possible to do anything for one hundred per cent selfless reasons – even if you don’t get any external reward, most people get an internal reward for it. Your brain releases chemicals which make you feel good. Chat Noir alludes to this (which makes sense, given Adrien is studying medicine now). In Miraculous: Contingency Chloé loves the attention she gets from being Queen Bee, but she is still helping people. That matters to me. The same applies to all of the other superheroes. There is a degree of Ryuko which is intent on proving her skills through being the best hero she can be, Chat Noir uses his hero persona to vent a lot of the emotions he feels he has to hide as Adrien, Ladybug allows Marinette to calm her more frantic personality. This is only human and it’s not a bad thing.

I don’t believe in detachment from the real world, I feel like that’s just as unhealthy as rampant materialism. This might be controversial, but I stand by the position. So long as you’re not actively doing harm as a side effect of your good deeds, while you do something that makes you feel good, you are worthy. Because of that, although this might be a sort of filler episode in season 4 (I don’t think it is, but I can see why other people might think so) it’s one of the most important episodes in the whole of Miraculous: Contingency to me.

*Which was an appalling mistake, I’m not going to say otherwise, but it doesn’t negate the good she’s done later.