Dr. Killjoy

Doctor Killjoy
Real name	Q.L. Killjoy
Status	Ghost
Sex	Male
Voice Actor	John Armstrong

Dr. Q. L. Killjoy was a psychiatrist and medical practitioner who's known career existed primarily on Carnate Island, at the facility known as Carnate Asylum. His specific study was in the treatment and curing of conditions such as schizophrenia, paranoia, severe and chronic melancholia, disassociative personality disorder, and other severe psychoses. However, his treatments were considered dangerous, abusive, and often deadly. Despite his well known disregard for individual human life and controversial methods, it is believed that his underlying intentions stemmed from a good will. He is voiced by John Armstrong.

Appearance

By far the most human of all the ghosts in the series, Dr. Killjoy demonstrates none of the deformities exhibited by other apparitions, perhaps due to his possibly deliberate means of obtaining immortality. A tall, thin, dignified-looking gentleman, he is easily recognized both in person and in paintings by his slicked-back hair, widow's peak, and impeccably-waxed mustache. Perpetually dressed in the stereotypical garb of a surgeon, Killjoy is further distinguished by the bloodstained apron, smock and head mirror he wears; in keeping with his air of sophistication, however, he clearly wears a waistcoat and bow tie under his smock, the latter of which can clearly be seen in most of his appearances.

Also differentiating Killjoy from the other ghosts of Carnate and Baltimore is his form of manifestation: rather than simply materializing out of nowhere like Copperfield or the Creeper, or coalescing from gas or electricity like Hermes and Horace, he is instead most commonly emerges as a colorless three-dimensional image produced by specially-designed film projectors. Though seemingly incapable of interacting with the physical world, his ability to control technology other than his projectors allows him to appear virtually anywhere provided that the environment is dark enough to sustain his image and that his projectors remain intact. During the sequel, Killjoy also demonstrates the power to communicate with Torque via television sets and movie theaters across Baltimore, during which he also manifests a laboratory in the background, though it's not known if this is a real place or simply an illusion devised for the sake of his supernatural broadcast.

In both games, Killjoy speaks with a deep "Mid-Atlantic" accent - a combination of American English and British Received Pronunciation, further adding to the air of sophistication he cultivates.

Personality

Grandiose and profoundly narcissistic, yet urbane and possessing a twisted charisma, Dr. Killjoy is clearly in love with the sound of his own voice, and will gladly take any given opportunity to wax messianic on his talents as a surgeon, psychiatrist, and actor. Throughout the asylum, he boasts of being "a star of unprecedented proportions," bragging of the hitherto unseen regions of the human psyche he has unearthed and how this makes him worthy of global attention. Every single scene he appears in features Killjoy making a spectacle of himself, commonly utilizing wild theatrical gestures, deliriously purple language, and lurid promises of the show that his patients will enjoy; for good measure, he often punctuates these monologues with vulgar demonstrations of the power he can still exert over physical reality.

In keeping with his pretensions of being an actor, he enjoys monologuing on the glories of theater, the Golden Age of Radio, and even of Hollywood blockbusters; in both games, he regales Torque with classic Shakespearean soliloquies, not even caring that his audience is either not listening or too busy trying to stay alive to pay much attention. Though little harm can come to him in his intangible state, attacks on his projectors in the asylum laboratory result in an immediate temper-tantrum, in which Killjoy sneeringly dismisses Torque as a "neanderthallic barbarian" and explodes with disgust at the mere thought of anyone being able to smother "one of the brightest stars in the sky"; appropriately enough, the destruction of the last projector in the room merely results in him burying his ego for the only point in either game and swiftly effecting a cure for Torque.

Second only to Killjoy's ego is his desire to experiment, analyze and create - often through nightmarishly violent methods. It is in this desire that the Doctor's utopian ambitions and sociopathic callousness most commonly find expression: having already given Torque a means of controlling his "rage form" in his introductory cutscene as part of the first step towards properly curing him, Killjoy follows this up by conducting a lecture on the proper procedure for lethal injection - using a live inmate as a test subject; during this scene, Killjoy abandons his usual procedure in favour of simply lacerating the inmate to death with a scalpel, claiming that "we're not really trying to be humane anyway." The sight of the dead, mutilated inmate horrified even Dallas, an upbeat but hardened felon (in part due to the fact that he and the inmate were lovers).

Exploring the asylum reveals further horrors inflicted on the C.O.s relaxing there: one was left unresponsive after extreme, ETC. treatments intended to "tame" his brain; another fatally gouged his eyes out after witnessing something horrific in a roomful of Rorschach inkblots; a third lost all four limbs and was left to writhe helplessly in a padded cell - apparently because his body threatened the safety of his mind.

In the second game, this habit for brutal and often arbitrary research continues when, annoyed by the heroin-addicted "rabble" cluttering up his makeshift laboratory, he decides to test the effects of purified narcotics on the brains of the addicts - resulting in all but one of the unfortunate group dying from cranial explosions. Most startling of all, Killjoy went so far as to modify the Slayers, using his machines to grant them the power of reanimation; his reasons for doing this are not entirely clear, but monologues from throughout the asylum indicate that he wanted to use them as co-stars in his continued attempts to play at being an actor. Perhaps because of his obsessive scientific bent, he has little love for the devoutly religious, regarding Hejira as "a self-important zealot" - though this is also born of his great appreciation for drama, as he is heard to regard the theater as a "temple of the arts."

However, despite his narcissism, his lack of empathy, his disregard for morals and ethics, and his eccentric disconnection from human attitudes, Killjoy is sincere in his desire to help others. Ranse Truman firmly believes that the Doctor's intentions were pure, but merely corrupted by the supernatural environment on Carnate Island; in turn, the ghosts of the asylum patients seem to believe that the treatments they were subjected to made them better people, often reflecting how happier they feel for what the psychiatrist-surgeon did to them. Killjoy himself can be heard to reflect sadly on how few of his patients lived to see the bright new world he offered them, though he never blames himself for the low survival rate, of course. In the present, the methods he uses to cure Torque of his afflictions are undoubtedly extreme, but if the player has taken the good or neutral path through the game, Killjoy's efforts pay off: in the climax of the game, Torque will use Killjoy's Rebirth Machine to destroy his Hatred and end the rogue personality trait's reign of terror over his mind (for the time being, at any rate).

Likewise, his affable mannerisms, though theatrical and deliberately exaggerated, are not entirely artificial in nature: Killjoy truly is an amiable gentleman; he always happy to see Torque and he reacts with sardonic approval for Torque's more benevolent acts throughout the game, and even expressing regret when Torque is forced to reclaim his rage mode during Ties That Bind. As stated before, he genuinely wants to help Torque, even going so far as to accept his temporary defeat in his boss battle as a sign that he needs to be more prompt in treating him. For good measure, his efforts to cure Torque are not limited to experimentation, for in the second game, he goes so far as to serve as a guide of sorts for the players, directing them through the maze of ruined streets and onto Blackmore's trail.

In The Suffering

He once worked out of the Asylum in the early 1900s. He used many deplorable methods on his patients, more often than not resulting in their death. No one knows what happened to him, but his spirit now lives on through old film projectors. Killjoy gains an interest in Torque during their first meeting and tries to cure his mental instability, though the reasons for this are ambiguous at best. Torque meets him at several points of the game and confronts him in the old ruined Asylum, wherein he destroys Killjoy's projectors. Following this, Killjoy delivers Torque a diagnosis and makes a final apparition right before the final battle to deliver him his "cure". This "cure", which is a device patented by Killjoy which allows energy to be fired, is crucial toward the end of the game in defeating Torque's Hatred at the docks, thus curing Torque's instability and allowing him to be rescued from Carnate by the skiff. He represents the past.

In The Suffering: Ties That Bind

The former operator of the Carnate Institute for the Alienated who has followed Torque to Baltimore. As a doctor he wants to help Torque understand his mind and ultimately cure him of his dementia. To this end he serves as something of a guide for Torque although his methods of guidance are questionable at best.

In his journal entry for the character Jordan, he mentions that malefactors have been appearing in different parts of the world in small numbers for many years, and the incidents from Carnate Island and Baltimore are the first time they have appeared in large numbers. This would indicate that perhaps Torque, with his horrible past, has something to do with these apparitions. Or perhaps even Blackmore himself, who might not be just an alter-ego born from Torque's supposed mental illness, but perhaps a demon or spirit of supernatural origin, similar to the malefactors.

Not long before the final showdown between Torque and Blackmore, the Doctor claims that he met Torque's mother once, hinting that he and Torque share a deeper relationship that has yet to be explained.

Trivia

• Dr. Killjoy's appearance and personality are modeled primarily on legendary horror actor Vincent Price, who played both monsters and mad scientists throughout his career and was easily recognized by his mellifluous Mid-Atlantic accent and a pencil mustache.

Archive Entry

One of Abbott's most persistent legends tells of Doctor Killjoy, the quite insane psychiatrist/surgeon who ran an asylum on Carnate. Doing research of my own, I found that he did indeed exist, though which stories are true and which are fabrication is anyone's guess. Since the cataclysm I have three times seen a surgeon formed of pure light, reminiscent of sixteen millimeter film projection come to life. Could this be the fine doctor?