MovieChat Forums > The Bletchley Circle (2012) Discussion > Crowley question *spoiler ep 2*

Crowley question spoiler ep 2

posted 12 years ago by Mycrofette_Holmes
6 replies | jump to latest

I know it's a very morbid and alltogether not very important detail, but do you think Crowley killed the woman he was trapped with in the bombed building and then raped her or was she killed by the bomb and he was just trapped with her corpse for 3 days?

I imagine sitting there, in the closed space, without hope that he will be found, waiting to die of starvation or lack of oxygen - he either lost it and killed her, perhaps to preserve more air for himself; or she could have asked him to kill her, not bearing to wait for a slow death; or indeed she was dead to begin with, from the bombing. Either way, the trauma and shock of inevitable death would have made him seek a connection with the last human he will ever see, last human whose fate he will share- thus the necrophilia. Suppose he even fancied himself inlove with her, and that's what he's trying to recreate now.

I'm wondering because I want to establish whether he was turned into a necrophiliac and murderer by that particular trauma ( the shock and/or associations) or if that incident just served to bring out what was already there.

I've been thinking about it since last week, what do you think the author wanted it to be? Not sure which option is creepiest, really.

I love this show so much, I hope they will make more series!

[–] bluemagicmist 12 years ago

My thoughts are that the woman was dead or died fairly soon after the bombing and Crowley had sex with the corpse. He kills young women who look like the trapped woman, recreates the same scenario, even down to the scent that she wore. It appears this is the only way he can be sexually aroused and he is not adverse to killing over and over again to achieve a sexual high. If he was deprived of oxygen and/or suffered a head injury, this could explain his personality change.
Unless there is a twist and he's not the man, after all we only have the word of the psychiatrist who could be lying.

[–] 12 years ago

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[–] Mycrofette_Holmes 12 years ago

I have to say it's still not entirely clear to me even now that the 3rd episode is finished. I suppose it was the trauma of being buried alive which really brought these things out (enough for them to be readily noticeable by others) and of course they said he "changed" AFTER that.

But since the fixation had been there way before that, it makes me wonder more than ever whether they a) were not buried together by accident and b) he wasn't trapped with the corpse, but killed her after she denied him yet again. In which case he was already in the murderous state, it wasn't the traumatic fixation which brought the killing urge on, just its details (modus operandi, victim type, necrophilia etc).
I would kill for a novel written on this miniseries script and hope so much they'll make other series!

[–] 12 years ago

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[–] ph75006 12 years ago

I doubt that he was totally fine before; I don't think serial homicidal behavior such as his would just suddenly develop, even after a great trauma; I feel like there must've been some sort of seed there beforehand, some sort of latent psychosis that had been successfully repressed up until that point. Many people have pretty sick (sexual) fantasies but very few actually reenact them in real-life but maybe being trapped under that rumble and thinking that he was about to die anyway was enough to send him over the edge.

[–] SrEditor 11 years ago

My impression...but I must admit I'm still wondering too (which is why I came here!)... was that they discovered Crowley/Croft had had a fixation on that young woman long before the war. This information was NOT planted, because Cavendish had provided it before he was murdered.

Seeing Crowley/Croft with the box of grenades even made me wonder if he had set up a similar situation with Julie, and when she denied him he had gone through with setting off a bomb! (rather than a chance bombing while he had her trapped)
Think about it: what a coincidence that a bomb trapped them both alive when she had been avoiding him. What? Just after he'd tied her up under the stairwell?

Also it seemed as if he was saying that he had done it all before.

I'd love to read somewhere what the writer's concept was, because the special features interviews on the DVD did not cover these questions.