Weird question

leaper1

PQL Security Staff
Staff member
Sep 1, 2002
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Bedford, England
How have I never thought to question this before?

After all this time, several complete series re-watches and having written over a dozen fanfiction stories, this question has ONLY JUST occurred to me.

I'm working on another fanfic, and writing a scene with the leapee in the Waiting Room.

We've seen that it is a fairly bland room, with a single door, and the single piece of furniture more or less in middle that looks like a glass topped table that doubles as a bed, because there are pillow shaped bulges at either end. We never see anything else of the room.

True, we can't be sure we've seen the WHOLE room.

Forgive the indelicacy, but what do Leapees use as a latrine?
Some leaps are over and done in a few hours, but many take place over several days at least.

It was established in Killin' Time that Leapees have to stay in the Waiting Room. Logic therefore suggests that there is an en-suite facility in a corner somewhere for ablutions and comfort calls.

I'm imagining that the door to this small room would not be lockable - a leapee could get distressed and try to drown themselves in the bath or something. For which reason I suppose there would just be a shower, not a bath. Al would respect privacy and wait for the leapee to come out unless Ziggy reported something was amiss.
Following the logic, would leapees be allowed to shave? With a battery operated safety razor of course.
I know TV shows tend to gloss over this stuff - and Sam only tended to use the men's room as a place for a private chat with Al - but in the interests of realism, these questions need to be addressed.
 
A great question for sure.

To me, the PQL waiting room is like a frayed tapestry. Pull at any one of the edges and the whole "it's a big blue room" starts to come unraveled.

If the show were done today, I think they'd have to put a bit more thought into this. Maybe they'd make the walls have a holographic image projected on them that's appropriate to the time period that the leapee is from to reduce anxiety. A bathroom and food area would be provided and so forth. I think the last thing I'd do is make a bed that doubles as a mirror!

I think the waiting room was kept as simple as possible and then in later seasons the writers started wanting to tell stories that tie into the future or have questions asked of the leapee. Shows today must be sophisticated and truly suspend disbelief. They have to cover all the bases and avoid obvious continuity pitfalls.