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One character’s story is still vastly untold as the first season of Archive 81 ends and its resolution may revolve entirely around their actions.
WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for season one of Archive 81, streaming now on Netflix.
Dan and Melody have yet to meet in the real world in Archive 81 and it has been teased by showrunner Rebecca Sonnenshine that much of a potential second season would revolve around Dan trying to figure out a way back home and potentially meet the object of his observations for the first time in the flesh. It is presently unclear how he would go about doing that, and the podcast on which the show is based diverges significantly from the show, but he may find some help from someone surprising and familiar.
Dan’s father, Doctor Steven Turner, has been an integral cog to the various spinning gears in the 1994 timeline. He may have inadvertently led Samuel to Melody, he furnished her with coping mechanisms that helped her stay grounded in her home dimension and when last seen he was tasked with finding Jess and keeping her safe before smuggling Melody out of the city. Along with all the things that are known about what he hasn’t done yet that have been attributed to him, they all lead to Doctor Turner becoming a focal point going forward. Season 2 could explore all the ways he took up the fight against Kaelego and his cultists, perhaps with grown up Dan alongside him.
A lot of what the audience knows about Doctor Turner depends upon the credibility of Davenport since he is the character that offers up much of what is known about his whereabouts and actions. According to the ever shady benefactor, Doctor Turner at some point returned to the Visser, after leaving Melody and Annabelle in safety, where he recovered the tapes before allegedly leaving them in a New Jersey storage facility. This is more than likely a gap in the information that he had access to if he didn’t actually know what was on the tapes since it is clear that Jess was in possession of Melody’s archive. It may be more accurate to state that in keeping his promise to go about protecting Jess, he came across her and the tapes and took them to safety.
Dan has no memory of Jess so that would probably mean that he didn’t bring her into his home but there is an indication that he did bring the tapes inside the house. His daughter Emily is humming the Kaelego prayer and playing it on the piano. When her father asks her where she heard the song she responds from the tapes. He tells her to stop playing it but doesn’t seem terribly surprised. The fact that it disturbs him though suggests that he has seen the tapes at this point and has a firm understanding of the forces they are dealing with. Turner asks Dan to go walk the dog and it is heavily implied that this flashback happens on the same die that the house burns down.
Another conversation, this time between Dan and Emily, suggest that Turner’s daughter was privy to information that his son was not. In this flashback Emily is beneath a tent of sheets and blankets and begins discussing ghosts as Dan joins her under the makeshift canopy. She told him that he didn’t need to be scared of ghosts because they are simply lost. She doesn’t reveal how she’s come to these sophisticated supernatural conclusions but she does say that their father believes in ghosts as well. Emily also shares that she sees them from time to time and is surprised that Dan does not. Perhaps she came across their father at some point while he was looking at the tapes and she saw something over his shoulder and once he became aware of her presence he may have tried to explain what she saw on the screen so that he could help her understand and bury her fear.
Davenport also claimed that investigators had internal deliberations suggesting that Doctor Turner suffered some type of nervous breakdown prior to the fire that consumed his home and may have been responsible for the arson. Turner does seem agitated in the moments before he sends Dan out with the dog and it’s unknown what happened in the house after that moment. Davenport however was fairly liberal with assigning blame for that particular fire. At one point he accused Melody and during his final confrontation with Dan he said it was set to the torch by people that needed to ensure that Kaelego stayed locked away in his own dimension and destroying the tapes was the most efficient means of achieving that result.
There are also anachronisms concerning what Doctor Turner believes and doesn’t believe as well as the true motivations behind his suspension from the University. When Melody approaches him about her experiences and arrives with Jess in tow to describe hers, Turner comes across as a skeptic which seems odd in hindsight. According to the labels on the tapes, he met with Melody and Jess on March 16, 1994. The letter that he received outlining his suspension was dated March 22, 1994 which placed him on temporary paid leave from his position at NYU due to an anonymous complaint that claimed he violated the university’s code of ethics, specifically article 6D. The details were sealed and the complaint was withdrawn after the Turner fire but the letter describes an infraction involving published material that would affect the reputation, community or educational standing of NYU.
Dan finds a copy of papers his father wrote for paranormal magazines within the compound. One was titled “The Frequency of Thought: Vibrational Manipulation As a Means of Creating Cross Dimensional Bridges.” Another was, “Night Terrors: Paranormal Perception In Non-Schizophrenic Adults.” This would suggest that Turner was publishing documents based on his work with Emily and never confided in her that he believed something extraordinary was taking place, since he would have had to have written them prior to meeting with Emily and Jess on the 16th because the suspension comes six days later. It speaks to a broader dichotomy experienced by Turner because he later tells Melody the reason why he suspected she was the one who made the anonymous complaint was because of a message board interaction with Samuel, but that isn’t what the separation letter says.
It’s possible the reasons for his suspension were twofold and he wanted to continue to keep Melody in the dark but this split persona of Turner’s is also backed up in how he is perceived by his children. Emily thinks that he believes in otherworldly occurrences while Dan is shocked that his father would support that kind of thinking, even into adulthood. Of all the characters encountered in the first season, Doctor Turner has the most compelling questions to answer and the most ground to cover in terms of reconciling seemingly contradictory information. Considering that he is poised to assist Jess and may have been responsible for keeping her safe, it would make sense that Dan would contact him as someone that might be able to help him, much as Mark partnered with him in the present, and return him to his proper time.
To see the mysterious Doctor Turner, all episodes of Archive 81 are streaming on Netflix.
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