Revisiting Kingdom Hospital – episode 12

Kingdom Hospital is drawing to a close, and there are an awful lot of loose ends to tie up, a lot of plot threads that have been spun out and need braiding into some kind of coherence. The tone of the series has well and truly changed from light-hearted and slightly spooky, to darkly serious and intense. So, what new delights does episode twelve have to show us? The episode opens with a silhouette of the evil doctor we have seen glimpses of throughout the series but have not yet been properly introduced to. He spouts a rather jaunty ditty, which I thought was worth including here:

“Here they store what came before. Pain and suffering from days of yore. Before and after, tears and laughter. After comes before, before comes after. Past and future and then, hereafter. The naked and the dead, the young and the old. Their stories end here, their tales untold. Here sickness and death Have left their pages. Written in blood for all the ages. Someday, your story will be here, too.” Sally Druse, Peter Rickman and Dr. Hook are all taken to the old kingdom by Mary and the ant eater, where Antibus now appears to look like Paul, only a nicer version. They confront Paul and the sinister doctor he is associated with. Paul fires some rather impressive special effects at our heroes, which are of course dodged, and then the ant eater fires his own lightning beams, and the doctor and Paul disappear. Then Antibus reveals that many people in the hospital may die – including Druse’s son, and Otto the security guard – unless they act now and help Mary. And so, it is decided there must be a séance in the sleep lab. In order for it to properly work, apparently, they need Elmer, Christa and Abel, who all have some sort of magical power or connection to the old kingdom – it isn’t made very clear. In fact, things are getting a bit muddled now, and there seem to be a lot of plot threads that have just been completely forgotten about or skimmed over, and the explanations aren’t exactly forthcoming or are foggy at best. So unless everything is answered in the next and final episode … Anyway, elsewhere, it transpires that numerous copies of the Mona Klingerman report have leaked and somebody – namely Dr. Hook – has posted them all over the hospital, thus incriminating Stegman. Stegman discovers this, completely loses his rag, and goes a bit mad. He grabs a gun, then has a visitation from the ghost boy, Paul, who tells him to end the lives of all those who have betrayed him. And so, Stegman marches through the doors of Kingdom Hospital with murder in mind. The voice over tells us that in the last episode, some will live, and some will die. Join me to find out, won’t you?

Kingdom Hospital episode 11